4 Doctors, 12 Companions, What Could Possibly Go Wrong?
by CaitlinJ9831
Summary: The second part of the "3 Doctors, 9 Companions" saga, carries on directly. The universe is still tearing apart and leaving Doors allowing for cross-dimensional travel. Introduces a female Doctor, a psycho synth, twin realities, a useless vampire, Sally Sparrow and a conspiracy to resurrect dead Torchwood members. Everybody has superpowers, and things get sort of gay.
1. Who Let The Dogs Out?

**AN: The second part of the _3D9C_ trilogy, which comprises of/will comprise of _3 Doctors, 9 Companions, What Could Possibly Go Wrong?_; _4 Doctors, 12, Companions, What Could Possibly Go Wrong?_ and _5 Time Lords, 13 Companions, Can Anything Else Go Wrong__?_ So, accordingly, this will make absolutely no sense if you haven't read the first part. And if you go back and read the first part now, it probably sucks. But this part is way better, and the last part will be way better as well, so you kind of have to wade through the garbage to get to the good bits.**

**DAY 75**

_Who Let the Dogs Out?_

_Clara_

She was thrown from unconsciousness onto the floor and hit her head – hard- on what she thought was the opposite bunk. Then she felt the bus spin, somehow, and then she was thrown in another direction, utterly disorientated, and crashed into something else as the buss fell onto its side and stopped completely. All in the space of about ten seconds.

She lay still for a few moments, before resolving that the best thing to do would be to drag herself to her feet. She hadn't showered due to the abundance of cheese in the water tank, so she was still filthy from the day before and completely disgusting in her own opinion. She was standing upright now inside her bunk, on what had previously been the wall, and there were cushions and sheets from the other beds around her which she had to kick out of the way.

"What was that?" Donna coughed from behind Clara, whose head felt very warm. When she dabbed it, her fingers came back red and wet.

"I don't know, but there's a lot of blood in my hair and that is gonna be hell to wash out…" Clara muttered, wiping her hand on her sleeve. And then somebody was clutching her shoulders.

"Are you okay?" Oswin asked urgently, who'd apparently just materialised out of nowhere in front of her and taken her by complete surprise.

"Doesn't she have a 'personal nanogene cloud' that means she can't get hurt?" Donna asked slightly resentfully. Oswin ignored her.

"She's right," Clara said, "I'm okay, just my head is bleeding. I think it's stopped, actually." Clara swatted Oswin away when she tried to grab her and examine her crown (she wasn't a baby).

"Seriously, what is happening!?" Jenny then demanded. Clara didn't know where the others were, hopefully not dead though.

"…Oswin, were you driving the bus?" Clara asked her seriously.

"I was not!" Oswin said, "I'm not allowed to drive the bus. I know that. Except for two days ago when I was under strict supervision. River was driving, she veered off the road and crashed us because there was an explosion from inside the other bus and it went a bit mental and skidded and she was trying to avoid crashing into it."

"An explosion!?" Clara asked in shock, and then she walked straight out of the wall next to her, followed closely by her sister, spotting Rose almost instantly, who'd clearly teleported out along with River, leaving the others to find the tricky way out through the door, which was facing up towards the sky. It was early morning, clearly, the sky still a little dark and the sun yet to rise.

The other bus was thankfully still upright, but it was completely still in the middle of the road.

"There is too much damn nostalgia here, sweetie," Clara grumbled to her sister, going after the other two to find out what had happened. Prank War aside, all the girls except for Jenny and Donna seemed to be romantically involved with somebody on that bus – and those two were still the daughter and best friend of the Tenth Doctor.

"Yeah, well, I'll be damned if that bus runs now it's slid across the desert like that," Oswin said, "Which means we are stranded. I'm thinking our excursion might be nearing it's end."

"Fina- …Oh…." Clara stopped when the door of the bus opened opposite them, and nothing in all of her time on the TARDIS could prepare her for what came out.

"Are they dogs!?" Oswin exclaimed, and Clara couldn't help but notice the smartest girl in the whole damn universe was cowering behind her. But they were dogs. And there were eight of them, and they all seemed remarkably happy given their current state of _being dogs_.

"What the hell have they done!?" Rose demanded, as a golden retriever bounded happily over to her, leaving another, identical dog lurking behind looking, well, broody (if that were possible for a dog). It was a husky and a Yorkshire terrier which both padded over towards the Twins, the former going straight for Clara and trying to jump up and possibly lick her face.

"Down!" she ordered, conjuring a telekinetic barrier between herself and the dog, who floated in the air for a moment, before dropping down back to all fours and whimpering a little. The terrier sat obediently as Oswin's feet, and she eyed it suspiciously, until she gasped.

"Oh, shit! The shape alteration inducer and the explosion!" she shouted quite loudly.

"What?" Rose asked.

"They were all pissing about with this device that can cause extreme mutations. Cross-species mutations," Oswin said.

"Are you trying to say that these dogs are the blokes!?" Rose said.

"Well, they… Yes!" Oswin said, "That's what they are… Brilliant! Ugh…" an Alsatian had meandered over to River, so Clara assumed that that must be the Ninth Doctor. And the husky was the Eleventh. And the terrier was Adam Mitchell. So the retrievers were Ten and Tentoo, which left just a pug, a Labrador and a springer spaniel to be identified.

"My husband is a dog!?" Clara exclaimed.

"Yes," Oswin said.

"But… What if he tries to sit on me and lick me!?" Clara said, trying to keep the over-excited husky at bay. She wondered if any of the dogs were entirely aware of what was being said by the persons around them.

"I fail to see how that is any different to what he usually does," Oswin said flatly.

"What if he wants me to play with a bone!?"

"I fail to see how that is any different to what he usually does."

"What if he poos on the floor!?"

"I fail to-"

"Don't," Clara said, and Oswin was quiet, and Clara then thought of another point to bring up about her husband's canine activities, "But what if I have to put him on a lead?"

"I-"

"If you even dare I will hurt you," said Clara coldly, "It's not funny. I think your boyfriend might try and shag your leg in a minute though." They both glanced down and saw that the terrier was giving Oswin a sad look. "Can you fix it?" Clara asked her.

"Yes," said Oswin, "As long as the thing is still on the bus. But I'll need my lab back. Otherwise I don't know if I can properly reprogram it."

"What's going on?" Martha asked then, the remaining four girls finally making their escape from the bus. The pug shot over to her and the Labrador trudged a little moodily towards Amy. Which left just the springer spaniel – so Clara assumed that must be Jack. It was quite interesting to see what forms they'd take if they were dogs.

"The boys have accidentally turned themselves into dogs," Rose said, "You're officially up to speed. And we desperately need the TARDIS back."

The sound which next reached Clara's ears might as well have been the strumming of a harp, or a chorus of angels. The thrumming of the TARDIS filled the air like music, the complete sound of freedom, and she very nearly squealed with excitement at the prospect of showering, and sleeping, and all these other, mundane things. Having enough room to walk around, not having to fight for the bathroom. No stink of cheese. Not to mention the coffee machine.

The blue box appeared in front of them all, girls and dogs alike, and it opened its doors on its own to allow them back.

"I'll go get the SAI," Oswin sighed, walking off. Clara waited behind to be at the end of the group for her sister to come back, her husband waiting loyally next to her.

"Are you naked?" she asked the dog when nobody else was round, "If you turned back into a person now, would you have no clothes on?" The dog just looked at her and wagged his tail, and she sighed, "Of course you can't talk. You're a dog. You haven't ruined your wedding ring with this transformation business?" But he still couldn't answer.

"Clars, are you speaking to the dog?" Oswin returned with the pill-shaped device from yesterday, heading towards the TARDIS with Clara and the dogs trailing behind her, "It's scientifically proven that dogs don't know what you're saying." Clara shut the door behind her sister, and was so glad to be back on the TARDIS, and was just waiting for when she could shower and go back to sleep.

But when they passed through the console room into what she was expecting to be the usually, large, lodge-esque room they used for everything, they came out into an entirely new environment.


	2. Home-Coming Out

_Clara_

_Home-Coming Out_

They walked out into a completely new environment, to Clara's shock. Women and dogs were already flocking around the new room, which came with just as much surprise as the first time their lodgings had changed to be more appropriate into the large lodge. But this wasn't a lodge, it was far more… 'Spacey' was the only word Clara could think of. And definitely smaller. And very circular. Next to her, the dog version of her husband seemed to be examining the room (she somehow still understood his expressions even when he was an animal, and she thought that went to show the extent of their relationship. That, or a third superpower to vaguely understand dogs had manifested recently), though he kept 'accidentally' nudging her hand with his head. Maybe he wanted petting.

The whole room was a circle, but the positioning of everything was quite awkward. For example, she wasn't looking directly onto the room, she was looking through a window. Because there seemed to be a curved corridor spanning from where she was standing in front of the door about a quarter of the way around, but rather than be completely made out of wall, the middle section of it was a window. Clara thought that it was a peculiar sort of stylistic choice, but then she wasn't an interior designer. In the middle of the room was another circle, made out of four sofas, each of them making up a quarter of the circle but pulled apart so there was a gap in between, allowing people to walk in. And then the strange, quarter-room corridor was mirrored on the opposite half, but that side was embedded with a countertop, as though it was a shop, with three stools in front of it, and through there Clara could see a new kitchen, all the appliances curling into the design of the wall. Then there were the tables, two of them, shaped to fit in with the room (Clara thought they resembled kidneys), raised quite high with eight stools around each, identical to those of the odd bar. Then there were the colours, everything clean and well-kept; the walls were white and shiningly clean, the sofas were white leather, the tabletops, the kitchen appliances and the stools – all white. Everything but the carpet, which was TARDIS blue (as was the linoleum layering the kitchen floor), and so was the ceiling. And the doors were silver, and discounting the entrance she had just come through, there were two. One of them where the two quarter-corridors would ordinarily meet in the middle, though instead there was a door sitting and they both abruptly ended, leaving the door sandwiched right between two walls. The second door was next to the kitchen, and wasn't half cut off but instead quite open, though nobody knew where these doors went.

"Well, this is new," Clara mused, crossing her arms and walking around the wall of the quarter-corridor so she had actual access to the room. She winced a moment later though, when Rose shouted very shrilly at the dog which must be Tentoo to get off the sofas. "Don't you go near those, they are nice sofas and you are dirty," Clara told Eleven firmly. And to her surprise, he whined, "You'll have plenty of time to sit on the sofas when you're a person again."

"I don't think dogs speak English, Clara," Oswin told her.

"Translation matrix, Oswin," Clara said, "Just because he's not physically capable to speak English doesn't mean he can't hear me."

"Maybe you should bark at him?" Oswin suggested. Clara paused for a moment and thought, vaguely remember the barking alien at the Festival of Offerings a good few months ago and was seriously debating pretending to be a dog for a few moments.

"…No, I'm not gonna bark at him," Clara said, but then Theodore (it was very odd to call him 'the Doctor' when he was a dog, or even Eleven, so she settled for Theodore until he was a humanoid again) stood up from where he'd been sat and wagged his tail, "Don't even start you gropey little pervert."

"Oh, you're nice," Oswin said when the dog whimpered.

"Did you just call the Doctor what I think you did..?" Jenny, who didn't have a dog to 'look after' (unless she wanted to be a good daughter), asked Clara.

"With good reason," Clara muttered, "Anyway," she turned to Oswin, "Don't you have something to be doing, hmm?"

"Um..?" Oswin was puzzled for a few moments, "Oh, right, the dogs, and this dangerous thingy…" she held up the SAI, "Yes, I should do that. Now, Clara, I know it's been a while – six days, to be exact – don't shag the dog."

"Jesus, Oswin! You're filth, you are," Clara shook her head, "Utter scum. Get out." Oswin looked offended as she trudged away to the door with her scrappy terrier of a boyfriend bouncing at her feet.

"The hallway's changed," Donna then called from the door stuck between the quarter halls. Clara headed towards it, dear Theodore loping at her heels. It had. It was now circular, with fourteen doors, including the two at either end that were different to the other twelve in the way that they weren't bedrooms like the rest, one was the one Clara had just come through and the second presumably lead elsewhere to other parts of the TARDIS.

"Thank god the doors have names," Clara said, spying the first one on the left which simply read 'Noble.' Then she looked along the right and saw Smith-Jones, but then she found what must be her own room, which read 'Skank.' "Oh, brilliant. Martha, do you think this is mine?"

Martha walked over, took one look at the word SKANK in fancy, golden, cursive lettering, and burst out laughing. Clara was unamused.

"Maybe it's your sister's?" Martha suggested.

"No," Rose called, "Oswin's is this one. It says 'Oswald' on it. Guess the TARDIS wanted to differentiate?" Clara sighed, and slowly opened the door. Which, yes, lead into her bedroom. And then she was almost knocked over when the dog barged past her and she kicked the door shut to yell at him undisturbed.

"Off the bed! No – NO! Don't you – Great, now those sheets need washing," Clara said as the dog circled on the bed and then sat down, giving her a soppy look with his tongue lolling out, pawing at the sheets. Then he farted. "And you're having a go at me for farting in the bed? The hypocrisy is despicable. And I also smell, so that's excellent. And you're probably more than aware with your nose and everything… My god, I'm talking to a dog… I'm married to a dog… I'm in love with a dog. Great." Theodore barked.

Clara scratched the back of her head, finding knots in her unwashed, unbrushed hair, and then went and threw herself into one of the chairs next to the bed and sighed. The dog lay his head on his front paws and watched her.

"I hate this Prank War," she told him, "And all of it was Jack and Jenny's fault. What were we doing, hmm? Well, actually, I'm sure you do… The point is, we were quite happy before this split. Although you, you animal, are no better than the rest of them. I didn't carry out one prank, you know. And you're the one who did the first one! I blame you. For everything. I hope you remember this when you change back." She wanted to have a shower, ideally, but she didn't want to leave the dog behind, incase he shat on the floor. Or the bed. Or anywhere. She kicked side to side in the chair, watched intently by the husky, and she almost felt some kind of pressure to keep thinking of things to say. To bombard him with confessions when he couldn't argue back with her and was forced to listen to her every word.

"I'm sorry," she apologised, and the dog seemed to frown, "For not ever actually telling you about, you know. Bisexuality. And stuff. Well, mainly just that… And also that you found out from Adam Mitchell, of all people. For the record, I didn't tell him. My sister must've. And I didn't tell her, either, she just knows things. And then she tells everyone. But it's difficult, you know? I don't know – do you? Well, yeah, you must, it's like… Every time you meet a new person you have to explain everything about being a Time Lord and Gallifrey and two hearts and regenerations and the TARDIS and the screwdriver and the psychic paper. Every time I meet anyone new, it's just that all over again. 'Hey, I'm Clara, I like girls and boys.' And it didn't used to matter with us, because we weren't together, and it was like, I knew you weren't homophobic, so it was irrelevant. You wouldn't have really been bothered if I mentioned it. But then we got married – only, we got married the same time all of these new people who didn't know me were thrown into my life, and in the middle of all these remarks about ex-girlfriends or whatever, I just… I just wanted to avoid awkward questions. It… It was too much to tell you when we first got together, and I know to you it doesn't feel like a big deal, but to me something like that is always so fraught with ambiguity and the prospect of bigotry because of the time I'm from… I mean, my own father still denies that I ever dated a girl. He just pretends he can't hear me. Well, he used to, I don't talk about it anymore… I thought if you find out, they would all find out, and I know they're all good people but if one of them – just one of them – was some unaccepting piece of… Well if they were, living on the TARDIS would be unbearable and I didn't think it was worth that. I don't really know how often people have told you you're not an alien, or completely denied your existence and then told you you HAVE to be something else to fit with their parameters of normality. Maybe a lot, being as you're an alien. I'm not sure. You'll have to tell me when you… Return or whatever. The thing is, you never stop coming out. And it sometimes doesn't get easier, and it's not a shame thing, I'm not ashamed, but I've had a lot of horrible arguments about it before and now I tend to avoid them."

Clara stopped talking then and looked over at the dog, and then spluttered and leant away when he licked her face.

"…That means I'm forgiven, right?" she asked, keeping out of tongue-shot. The dog barked happily. "Great."


	3. Wildest Dreams

_Clara_

_Wildest Dreams_

"Do I have anything else random to confess? Umm... I don't know... Yes, _yes_. But you won't like it..." The dog sat up on his paws and watched her. "Don't look at me like that. The thing is - this is hilarious, you'll laugh at it when you're you again - all the girls think I am dating my sister! Isn't that funny?" Theodore did not look amused. "You are so judgemental for a dog, you know." He whined, and she span the chair around so that she wasn't facing him at all while speaking. "You might be really insecure and also think I'm having a secret affair with her, but you know, if your Flesh doppelgänger were here you'd be all over him. Instant BFFs. I just think that after one gets past the hatred of a clone of oneself, then friendship is bound to spark. But an obscenely vlose friendship because of the fact we're the exact same, physically identical person. I'm not actually having an affair with her, no matter how much people seem to want me to be. But you have no idea how fun it is freaking people out like that. It's-" she was cut off when the chair seemed to spin back around of its own accord, and then doubly cut off when somebody was wildly kissing her. She pushed the body away, and then discovered that it was a naked body, and it was that of her husband. "That's impolite!" She stood up.

"What!?"

"Why don't you have any clothes on!? My god, you're filthy, what is all this stuff all..." she trailed off when she remembered what Rose had said about spunk-dunking them with refuse. Or, dump-dunking was perhaps a better term...

"_I_ was turned into a dog, Clara, not my clothes," he said, crossing his arms. A second later he seemed to finally realise that he _was _naked, and what that meant, and dragged a pillow from the side to hide himself.

"You're disgusting," she said.

"Me!? So are you! I can smell you from here."

"Oh, charming," she said, "It's not my fault the water tank was full of cheese."

"Is that blood on your head?" he asked seriously, almost falling off the bed in his urgency to help her.

"Yes," she pushed his hand away, "It's all healed now, it doesn't matter. Go have a shower."

"_Me_ have a shower? _You_ have a shower!" he protested.

"You're covered in the poo of other people, Chin," Clara said.

"You're covered in blood!"

"I'm not covered in it! It's just a bit..." She saw that there actually was quite a lot of blood on her left side, and felt it dry on the left of her neck, "Eugh. Maybe I died or something."

"What a nice talking point," he said.

"No, listen, the shower is not big enough for both of us, so-"

"Yes it is," he said.

"...What?"

"The shower _is_ big enough. And there's also the bath," he said, shrugging.

"I'm not having sex with you in a shower," she told him.

"I never said that!"

"You were hoping."

"I'm _always_ hoping," he smirked, revealing dirty teeth. And he'd kissed her with that mouth not minutes before. Ew. But then, he had a point, "Look at us here, Clara. Both filthy, both in desperate want of a shower, a remarkably spacious bathroom right over there, both neglected of opposite-sex company for days on end..."

"Don't you dare. I have self-control, I'll have you know. No matter what you think," she said, "I will never, _ever_-"

"Do you know, I think we've missed our two-month Second Wedding anniversary in the midst of this Prank War," he said.

"You're emotionally blackmailing me now?"

"I just think the circumstances are so acutely perfect today, Coo," he kept saying smugly, like he'd already won. But he had a point. He had a lot of good points. God, she hated having an intillegent husband with a skewed sence of morality bobbing around being all... Logical.

"I'm going to brush my teeth," she muttered, "And _you_... Put the sheets in the wash, they're gross."

* * *

__Oswin__

She was lying boredly on Adam Mitchell's bed, with nothing better to do at that moment other than wait for him to finish showering so that she could drag him out somewhere with her. But _apparently _other peoples' crap took ages to wash off, and she had resorted to mindlessly tossing a bouncy ball she'd found at the door, catching it, and throwing it again.

Just when she was re-evaluating her choice in men though, she finally heard the water cut off and he finally emerged in a towel, just in time to get a bouncy ball to the shin.

"Ow!" he complained.

"Are we going, then?" Oswin asked.

"Going where? What? I'm not dressed," he said.

"So get dressed," she said with a shrug, "There's important stuff to be done, and you know I hate dealing with social situations on my own."

"Where are you wanting to go..?" he asked again, though she was happy to answer him now he was actually going to get dressed.

"To ask Mr Smith what he knows about parallel dimensions and AIs and holograms," Oswin said, "I want to know what a Xylok knows about all this. It might be interesting and helpful."

"What time is it?" he asked next.

"Like, seven in the morning," Oswin told him, watching him get dressed while he was facing the other way, "No, don't wear those jeans, they're not very... Becoming."

"You'll be coming in a minute..." he grumbled, though he did swap them for another pair.

"What was that? It sounded like you _threatened_ to please me sexually, as though that's a bad thing," Oswin said sarcastically.

"So what if I did?"

"It's not a good idea to make empty threats," she shrugged, catching him smirk when he turned around.

"Are you watching me get dressed?" he looked over his shoulder at her, and she lifted her eyes to meet his.

"Yeah - what did you think, you just got a free pass to see me in my underwear, like, all the time and you don't have to return the favour?" she asked.

"Well, if you're sure that's a fair trade... What shoes should I wear?" he asked.

"Who are you - my sister? And anyway Mitchell, I know you only have one pair of shoes."

"Should I buy _more_ shoes? I don't think you can ever have too many shoes, you know..."

"Okay, first of all, you _can't _have too many shoes. It's impossible. And second, of course it's a fair trade, you grossly underestimate how much I like you," she told him, and he smiled to himself as he searched the floor for his jacket, "You need to stop treating me like some sort of goddess."

"As soon as you stop treating me like a god and worshipping the ground I walk on," he grinned when he found what he was looking for and stood back up. She smiled a little, and he kissed her on his way past. "Are we going, then?"

"Oh, um, yeah. Ealing. London. 2014," she reminded herself.

She was momentarily surprised by the circular room, she'd been expecting the usual bedroom corrider she'd gotten so used to. At least the way out was still to the right of Mitchell's room, and she dropped hold of his hand to go through slowly.

"This is way cooler than the lodge," Mitchell observed, "It's cooler than _my_ house. And my house cost over half a million quid."

"Half a million!?" someone exclaimed from somewhere else in the room. Adam and Oswin both jumped when Ten appeared from behind the counter in the kitchen with a banana, "Why don't you just steal a house?"

"That's squatting, and it's against the law," Mitchell told him as he sauntered out.

"Nah. Rules are made to be broken. Anyway, where're you two off to in such a hurry? Not somewhere fun?" he asked.

"You've just spend nearly six days in an alien desert, how much more fun do you need..?" Mitchell asked incredulously. Oswin was stood back trying to scan the situation for any tensions.

"More than that!" he then bit his banana and said something else while chewing, but the only word Oswin could understand was 'boring'. "Where are you going? Can I come?"

"We were actually gonna go to the Smiths' and ask Mr Smith and Luke about AIs and other things," Oswin told him. He was friends with Luke Smith and the rest of Sarah-Jane's old gang, if he wanted to catch up with them, he was more than welcome.

"And you didn't invite me!?" he protested.

"Umm... Well you can come if you want. It wasn't a date," she said.

"Wasn't it?" Mitchell asked.

"No," she told him, "Who goes on a date to a student house shared with like, four other people? Mitchell, this is why you can't get a girlfriend."

"But..?" Ten asked, "Aren't..? Oh, nevermind, I'm coming too. Before Jenny finds me to ask for more fatherly advice..."


	4. The Doctor Pays A House Visit

_Ten_

_The Doctor Pays A House Visit_

He didn't think his company was very much appreciated by Adam Mitchell, which was odd because they'd gotten along well enough the last few days, and the boy had to be assured multiple times that (despite the crass remarks of the Eleventh Doctor) he was _not_ trying to 'steal his girlfriend'. He was an honourable man, a Time Lord, he was above such petty Earthling disputes between Adam and Oswin, which didn't even technically exist. Besides, if Oswin didn't want to be with Adam Mitchell (even though she _clearly_ did), that was entirely her business. If the human boy picked a fight with him, that could only succeed in changing her opinions for the worse and making her think he was jealous scum. Ten, however, decided after this that Mitchell was probably just vying for alone-time after days apart. Ten could always slip off and talk to Luke, or Clyde, or Rani. Or the new one, whatever her name was - he'd not even been so much as introduced to her.

The TARDIS thrummed musically as it apparated into the twilight of Bannerman Road on March 16th, 2014, the sky clear and the air a little crisp when Ten stepped out first and took a deep breath. Yet he was so glad for cool, fresh air (even if the air was technically rife with the pollution of congested, Twenty-First Century London) after the stagnant, sticky heat of Preyonov's vast deserts.

That day, they didn't even have to knock on the door. Luke Smith was standing with a toothbrush hanging out of his mouth in open doorway, casting a shadow onto the empty driveway they'd appeared on.

"Luke Smith!" Ten declared his name happily, strolling broadly over and dragging Luke into a hug. Luke only hugged back after the stun had worn off. It must be odd for them, Ten thought, hardly any contact with the Doctor for years and then suddenly they spring up asking for access to their alien files, and to use Number 13 as a homebase for various illicit operations. He supposed he needed _somebody _to visit, now that everyone he might desire to was living with him.

"Doctor..?" Luke asked unsurely. Why was he unsure?

"Yes, that's the real one," Oswin called when she left the TARDIS, "Not the clone. I, however, _am_ the clone. As always. You lot should be happy - the smartest girl in the universe making house visits."

"Sometimes wish you'd call ahead," Luke said, eyeing the TARDIS. Probably wondering somethig about how a bunch of people living in a phone box were incapable of making phone calls.

"Nah!" Ten said, "We like to be spontaneous! Who's in? Everyone here? Clyde? Rani? Other one?"

"Sanjay?" Luke asked.

"Who? No, the girl," Ten said, not knowing who that was.

"Oh, Sky. Yeah, everyone's in," Luke said, "...What's going on though?"

"I just need to have some words with your super-computer-Xylok in the attic," Oswin said to him, "Mainly about parallel dimensions." Luke stepped aside and let the three of them in, probably glad that it really was only three and not a whole flock of a dozen like it could so easily have been.

"What's going-? Doctor?" Rani came around the corner at that moment, and looked completely shocked at the emergence of the trio out of the blue.

"Rani Chandra!" Ten said happily, hugging her as well, and then as soon as he spotted Clyde: "And Clyde Langer! The whole gang!" he hugged him too.

"Yeah, this is a bit of a surprise," Clyde said, "Hello again. Which one are you..?" Ten always hated that question. It was a new one. Months ago, when he'd _actually_ been the Doctor, he'd never had to be asked who he was. He kept his face in a smile though.

"The Doctor," he said with a taut grin, "The proper one. Just popped in for a visit!"

"Really?" Rani asked, "No more blood-stealing or food poisoning?" That question was mainly directed at Oswin. Ten knew about the food poisoning incident, of course he did, but he didn't know why on Gallifrey they were asking about blood-stealing. What had Oswin been up to before?

"No," said Oswin defensively, standing on the second step, about to resume her ascent to the loft, "Not today. Can I go up? I have to talk to Mr Smith."

"About what?" Rani asked suspiciously. They were _very _suspicious of Adam and Oswin. What had they both been doing before?

"About inter-dimensional travel, mainly," Oswin said, "Nothing dangerous. Unless it's abused. And I never abuse technology." Adam Mitchell seemed to open his mouth to make a start then, but he frowned, and shut his mouth. Ten thought he'd been about to disprove her and bring up a time where she _had_ been abusive of her position as a hyper-intelligent time traveller, but as far as he was aware, she hadn't. Most of her inventions were relatively harmless, in fact, which was of great contrast to her occasional, unbridled savagery when she did things like flog people to death. Multiple times. Maybe that was a side-effect of her past creating bombs - she was all too aware of the dangers and she was very careful about studying things and not leaping through the Dimension Doors spontaneously, like Ten would've done.

"Never? Not when you killed that sheep?" Rani challenged. _Sheep?_, Ten thought, confused. So she'd moved on from goats? Oswin's grip on the banister tightened.

"I killed that sheep with a stick, which is not a piece of advanced technology. And it was an accident," she said.

"You smashed its skull open!"

"Yeah," said Oswin, "_Accidentally_. At _least_ I didn't blow up a mermaid's head with a microwave."

"What!?" Ten exclaimed, Adam flinching next to him at the mention of the microwave. Nobody else seemed to know what she was talking about, aside from him.

"It doesn't matter! Because _I_ didn't do it. Can I go upstairs now? I have to ask about AIs, too. I don't suppose you lot know anything about Qetesh technology, do-?"

"Qetesh?" Rani, Luke and Clyde all asked at once. Ten listened interestedly now, wondering if they knew anything useful about Helix's origins.

"Yeah," said Oswin, "Why? What do you know?"

"There was this woman," Rani said, "Called Ruby White. Only, she wasn't a woman, she was one of them."

"But she went against them and they locked her up in this prison cell above the planet," Luke said, "She managed to escape and came to Earth to try and take it over by draining mum's life..." he finished sombrely.

"Oh, really? You stopped her though, right?" Oswin asked, letting go of the railing and leaning on it instead with her arms folded.

"Yeah, obviously," said Clyde, "After she tried to kill me _and_ Sarah-Jane. She exploded. It didn't smell too nice."

"Mmm, no, wouldn't..." Oswin said, more to herself than to the others, "Do you know anything about their AI developments?"

"Yeah, there's the games console upstairs in the safe," Rani said.

"Mr White," Clyde added, "He was her Mr Smith, sort of. I was never allowed to play with him though... Shame, he's way cooler than a PSP."

"Mr White could project and create holograms, he was an AI. He's locked away now though," Luke said.

"Can I have it?" Oswin asked, "It's just, we have this huge AI on the TARDIS now called Helix - Clara found it and brought it home, nothing to do with me, she was hungover so I don't trust her judgement-" Adam Mitchell laughed there "-But it would be good if we could upload him to a hand-held. He's so much more polite than the TARDIS."

"Maybe if you were nicer to her," Ten said.

"I am! _Clara's_ the one who isn't. _I'm_ the one who fixed the stealth systems _and_ the stabilisers _AND_ the navicomm," Oswin said, "_Not_ the one who calls her a 'snogbox' and shags the Time Lord who lives there."

"Do you and Clara actually get along?" Rani asked. Ten didn't blame her - the way Oswin was talking, you'd think she spent her time plotting the demise of her other self.

"Famously," Adam Mitchell answered her with a sigh.

"Whatever," Oswin turned to Ten and said, "Don't judge me for the sins of my little sister. Otherwise I'd be getting judged for having a terrible, annoying, unattractive, possessive boyfriend with a stupid surname. Who is also dead."

"I'm not - You - What!?" Mitchell exclaimed.

"Not you, Danny Pink," Oswin clarified.

"He's _dead_!?" Ten was shocked.

"Yeah, he got hit by a car," Adam told him.

"Who's Danny Pink..?" Clyde asked.

"Clara's boyfriend," Oswin and Adam both reiterated.

"Hit by a car!?" Ten questioned.

"Yeah, while she was on the phone to him saying how in love with him she was," Adam explained, to Ten's great horror. What a dreadful way to die.

"Her _boyfriend_?" Rani frowned.

"Yes - don't tell Clara though," Oswin ordered her.

"Don't tell Clara that Clara's boyfriend who died on the phone to her is dead..?" Clyde asked slowly.

"Different Clara!" Oswin, "There are two! I mean, not two, technically, um... See, this is the problem with alternate dimensions, it's hard to keep track... Which is why I really have to go upstairs and talk to your supercomputer."


	5. Can We Keep Him?

_Ten_

_Can We Keep Him?_

Ten didn't do a lot while Oswin discussed various matters with Mr Smith in the attic, lounging about in one of the chairs and examining all of Sarah-Jane's old gizmos she'd recovered from various places. Every now and then he would make an off-handed remark about what something was, asking where the Ealing lot had even managed to find it, and Luke – who was staying upstairs now to make sure they didn't break anything.

But the Doctor wasn't the one they were watching, instead Luke, Clyde and Rani were focusing all of their efforts on the pair of geniuses.

"Alright," Ten said eventually, spinning around in the chair and kicking his legs out in front of him, crossing them over each other, "What's all this about blood-stealing and sheep-killing? Hmm? Is someone going to tell me?"

"I think Adam and Oswin should," Rani said, dropping the both of them right in it. Ten wasn't sure what 'it' was, but it seemed as though Rani thought he had the power to somehow punish or discipline the pair of them. Which was ridiculous – he barely had the power to discipline his own daughter. In fact, he really didn't, Jenny was a loose a cannon. Oswin was distracted by a strange, white, portable device and wasn't listening, so the eyes turned to Adam Mitchell.

"Don't look at me, it wasn't _my_ idea," he said.

"What? She just said 'Come on, do you wanna steal some blood,' and you just _did_?" Rani asked, doing a slightly amusing impression of Oswin's inherited, Northern accent, which caused the genius to look over finally.

"…Yes," said Adam Mitchell. _Well, wasn't he assertive?_, Ten thought to himself. All three of the students raised their eyebrows at him, "She can be very persuasive!"

"What did you do to him!?" Rani asked Oswin. Ten was halfway inclined to just yell that she should _not_ have asked that question; that was the worst possible question to ask Oswin Oswald.

"Pfft," Oswin shrugged, "Existed in his general vicinity, probably." _Oh thank god_, Ten thought. It could have been so much worse.

"Is anybody going to answer me?" Ten asked.

"Okay, we broke into UNIT and stole loads of blood samples from all those other superheroes," Oswin said, "It was, like _ages_ ago. We might've also released them all. I mean, they only arrested the _safe_ ones."

"That's very irresponsible!" Ten exclaimed in shock. He thought she knew better than to do things like that!

"Chill out, nobody's died yet," Oswin said.

"Yes, they have, that inside-out-turning-things girl killed her cat!" Rani said.

"That was a cat though," Oswin told her, "I don't care about cats. We don't have cats in space."

"You don't have anything in space," Adam Mitchell pointed out to her.

"Yeah, you weren't in space either, maybe I should go back," she grumbled. Ten didn't understand how that dig made Adam Mitchell laugh. Oswin completely ignored him being amused by her insulting him, like she was used to it. Which she could well be, Ten thought. He was beyond deducing those two. Their dynamic was far too weird.

"We had to clean up your mess!" Rani shouted at Oswin. It seemed there was a lot of pent-up hostility towards the smartest girl in the universe right then, but she didn't seem too aware of it, "They came after_ us_!"

"Well I didn't mean for that to happen, did I? That wasn't my aim," Oswin said coldly, and then she shut up, which indicated to everyone that the conversation was over. Ten would have to ask her boyfriend for the details on what had been happening later on – but as far as he could gather, she'd only been collecting blood samples. Albeit in a reckless, probably highly careless fashion.

There was an annoyed groan from outside the door then, and it was kicked open by a teenage girl carrying a large something-or-other with her and wearing a grim expression. And then the Doctor was completely disgusted at himself for thinking 'something-or-other' instead of recognising it for what it was.

"K-9!" he shouted gleefully, bounding straight over to relieve the girl of the robot dog she was carrying, but his happiness was scuppered very quickly by sad when he saw the rust on the casing of the dog, one of his panels was broken and one of his ears had fallen off.

"What _is_ that?" Adam Mitchell asked.

"It's a Fifty-First Century K-9," Oswin told him, staring at the dog in Ten's arms with a sort of awe, "Where did you lot get a robot dog from the future from!?"

"The Doctor," Luke answered, nodding at Ten, who was cooing over K-9 as though he was a baby.

"He wanted to come upstairs," the teenage girl (this must be Sky, Ten assumed) said.

"What happened to his hover systems?" Ten asked, wondering why K-9 had to be carried up the stairs now, when he was sure that the last time he'd restored K-9 he'd given him hovering capabilities.

"He's breaking," Clyde answered, scratching K-9's head affectionately, in the manner one would an actual dog.

"What!? How? What's wrong with him? Why haven't you fixed him?" Ten demanded, holding K-9 away from them all protectively. But he was very heavy, so Ten eventually resorted to placing K-9 down on the floor.

"_This unit is in requirement of a new battery, Master_," K-9 answered for himself.

"A new battery!? He just needs the battery replacing? Why haven't you done that? Just pop in a few triple As!"

"He doesn't run of Duracell, he's not a rabbit," Clyde said.

"Depends what sort of rabbit you're talking about," Oswin snickered. Ten groaned, and Clyde and Adam Mitchell were the only two who laughed, which was to be entirely expected. Oswin cleared her throat and went on, "It's not that sort of battery."

"I know," Ten said, "He has two fission batteries in him. Couldn't you just build a new one?"

"That technology doesn't exist yet," Luke said sadly, "I've tried."

"But… Well, you can't let him die! He can't even go up and down the stairs anymore! And what happened to his ear!?"

"Oh, that was my fault, sorry," Clyde apologised, "I tripped over him. A while ago."

"You lot are monsters!" Ten accused, "That's it. I'm exercising my right as his creator. Taking him in the TARDIS to fix him."

"You won't bring him back!" Luke argued.

"Well maybe I won't!" Ten said, "He was Sarah-Jane's dog and you lot… Are you even giving him water? Or food? He loves Pedigree Chum." The three of them, and Sky, looked at him like he was crazy. And then there was a zap and a red flash, and a hold singed in the wall. Everyone looked to Oswin, but Oswin was doing nothing other than looking at Mr White, and the long passage of coding on Mr Smith's screen. She wasn't listening.

"He sometimes shoots of his laser, too," Sky answered what had happened.

"Well then he's going to hurt someone one day!" Ten said, "I can't leave him here for longer."

"You can't take K-9," Luke said, "You say that it's not safe here – is it safe on the TARDIS?"

"Of course it is!" Ten defended himself.

"It's not safe when your daughter's on board," Oswin said, "She tried to shoot everyone with that laser gun she nicked from 1928." That didn't do anything for Ten's case at all, and it seemed Oswin figured this out because a second later she added, "But, um, she doesn't have the gun anymore!"

"Yeah, so she resorted to landmines," Adam Mitchell muttered.

"It wasn't even a landmine, it was a jury-rigged radio," Oswin told him.

"I don't care what it was, there was blood everywhere," he said quietly. Not quietly enough though, as everyone was listening to him.

"What was that?" Rani asked.

"Doesn't matter," said Oswin, "Just, you know, the Tenth Doctor's daughter and Jack split up because he cheated on her with a hologram version of herself and then she tried to shoot him and the TARDIS didn't like that so we've spent the last six days in an alien desert. And then she blew him up with a radio."

"See? It's not safe," Luke said.

"It's perfectly fine," Ten said, "It's only dangerous after people leave. That's when, you know, people get maimed."

"Maimed?" Sky asked, "Sounds fun."

"Ask my sister how fun it is," Oswin muttered, "Or how fun getting impaled is. I didn't sense that she did have a lot of fun that time. I _do_ think she had fun in Fort Frolic though, when she ripped the crossbow bolt out of her face."

"Fort Frolic?" Clyde asked, "Like… In Bioshock..? The video game?"

"This is what I mean by _parallel dimensions_ and _fictional worlds being real_. I swear, one of these days we'll be on the Starship Enterprise. Or the Death Star. Maybe Hogwarts," she said, "Technically it was called Castle Gambol – but it doesn't really matter what it's called, because I'm sure Martha didn't remotely care when that splicer shot her in the foot."

"Oh, you should've seen the bees…" muttered Ten.

"I'm not letting you take K-9 to get shot at!" Luke protested, stepping between Ten and K-9, "I'll come with you, and make sure you bring him back."

"Wh-what? We can't just… We can't just pick people up," Ten said.

"Um, what about Jenny?" Oswin pointed out.

"Or you, I remember picking you up," Adam said with a sly grin to himself. Somehow, that rude remark made his girlfriend blush. He was right though, Jack and Amy had just gone and salvaged Oswin out of nowhere.

"Doctor, to be fair," Oswin said, "He could help with a lot of stuff. And he'll only stay for like, a few days."

"No! _I_ am the Doctor! I won't have it! I have a right to my dog!"

"He's not your dog anymore!" Luke argued.

"…Where would he sleep!?" Ten asked next, "Hmm? Where? Go on – tell me."

"…The TARDIS just makes rooms," Oswin said, "Didn't hear you having a go at Rose when she stole that girl two days ago!"

"What girl!?"

"Oh, you weren't there," Oswin said, "Yeah, Rose stole a girl."

"What!? I mean… It doesn't matter – I don't care what Rose it doing," he said bitterly, "I'm taking K-9 to fix him. He'll be safe on the TARDIS! We do nothing more dangerous now than we've done before."

"That's why there are four different models," Sky said, watching this exchange between her brother and the Doctor (the Doctor who was becoming all-two-aware of his loss of leadership recently – he couldn't even reclaim his own possessions without being challenged).

"The Twelfth Doctor kidnapped that girl," Oswin said.

"Yes! And we all agreed that he shouldn't have done that, it was a terrible thing to do! I won't allow this! I… I refuse! As a Time Lord! And-"

* * *

"So up those stairs is the lab," Oswin was saying to Luke in the console room of the TARDIS, pointing to the stairs curving around and upwards, "Well, it's _my_ lab, for me. Through those doors is the room where everyone else spends most of their time, with the kitchen and everything… I don't know what's even in either of those doors…" she was waving her hand around to direct Luke, who was carrying a suitcase now, K-9 trundling on the ground behind him.

"This is temporary, okay?" Ten said.

"Yeah, just until you fix K-9," Luke reminded him, "Where do you all sleep, then?"


	6. Not A Leg To Stand On

_Clara_

_Not A Leg To Stand On_

She didn't know if it was the night or not, because the passage of time had suddenly become irrelevant again. As long as everyone was awake at a similar time throughout the day, and were synchronised enough to achieve anything and they didn't end up on a nocturnal flipbook, that was a success. It had been early when they'd gotten the TARDIS back, and Clara was convinced that more or less everybody who needed to had gone back to sleep (after taking care of whatever 'important business' was keeping them awake, which, in Clara's case, was something exhaustive and superficial, as usual). But what Clara _did_ know was that she had been woken up with the strangest feeling, equally peculiar as it was unpleasant and upsetting. And the other thing she knew was that this feeling – it wasn't hers. It was her sister's, and she was getting it fed to her second-hand via the mind patch. And finally she knew that, though in her stupor she couldn't identify this sensation for exactly what it was, it was bad. Very bad.

"What's wrong?" Eleven asked her. He hadn't slept. It must not be his night to sleep. She'd understandably lost track, but she was sure that he'd not slept the few days before the beginning of PWII, which could only mean that at some point he'd slept on the bus. Otherwise his routine she so delicately kept tabs on was ruined, and she'd have to figure it out all over again.

"I don't know," Clara told him. She was sitting up, holding her face with her hands and frowning as she tried to discern what was happening, "I think Oswin's upset. Well, no, I _know_ Oswin's upset..."

"Why?" the Doctor asked, sitting up next to her as she stared blankly at the wall just below the dark television, rubbing her forehead and dropping her other hand to her side.

"I don't know. Crap, I think it's bad," Clara said, "I'm gonna have to go see…"

"I'm sure Adam's-" the Doctor began as Clara stood up, groggy and squinting in the dark, and precariously ventured over him and jumped lightly down onto the floor (before telekinesis, she would probably have stumbled and fallen on her face.

"He must not be there – you don't… Urgh, it doesn't matter, I just have to check," Clara said, going to find any kind of pyjama trousers from the floor where they might be strewn. She found some instantly though, and was sure they hadn't been there the day before. This lead her to the conclusion the TARDIS was helping her, and that if the TARDIS was helping her to help her sister, the terrible feeling of woe she was getting from the genius must be very, _very_ dire, and Clara could only hope she was in her room and not in need of rescuing somewhere. But it wasn't a feeling of peril.

She picked up her dressing gown from the side just as she heard the Doctor behind her mutter something about coming too, and heard him get up, but she didn't wait for him, just cut across the dark, circular hallway (admittedly disorientated by the change of story) to enter into Oswin's room, where there was Oswin and only Oswin – no Mitchell in view – and she was clearly crying. No, not crying, that was the wrong word. It was much more than that, a pain-wracked sob that was nearly inhumanly sorrowful.

"Oh my god, Oswin, what's wrong? What's..?" Clara trailed off. She saw what was wrong. It was hard to miss, with her sister curled up in a ball, shaking like she was in an earthquake, but it seemed like her left leg was… Well, it was gone. For want of a better word. Clara's utter confusion might have turned to laughter, were it not for the fact that this was clearly having a horrific effect on Oswin, no laughing matter at all. She dropped to the floor next to her sister as soon as she was subjected to the crying, and dragged her forcefully into a tight hug with an arm around her shoulder, "It's okay, it's fine. I'm here now, alright? I am right here."

Oswin didn't say anything, her face was streaked with tears and her eyes were sore and crimson, like there was something far worse going on, an underlying sense of recurring grief in the middle of all this.

"What's going – Wow…" her husband said when he came in, closing the door behind him, and so obviously noting the fact there were only three identical legs on the floor where both the Oswalds were sitting, instead of the usual four. Clara turned to him and mouthed at him to shush, nothing he could say would help, and Oswin wasn't going to utter a single word of what was going on until she calmed down. And calming her down was going to be no mean feat, as she shook in Clara's arms.

"Everything's okay, you're on the TARDIS. You're safe," Clara was telling her, then she turned to Eleven, "Sweetheart, could you make some hot chocolate? With marshmallows and whipped cream?" Clara asked him, partly because she thought that might help her sister, and also because she knew that (even though he pretended not to care for Oswin Oswald) he felt useless standing by, and wanted to do anything.

"Yes! I will… Do that… Should I get anyone? On my way back..?" he glanced from Clara (who had her eyes firmly on him) to Oswin (whose wasn't looking, and Clara wondered how aware she was of her surroundings) with a puzzled gaze, not knowing who he should address. 'Should I tell him to get someone?' Clara thought that Oswin might have an easier time if she tried to talk psychically, but it seemed she was wrong, because Oswin was unresponsive. It was like she wasn't even there.

"Um, no," Clara said, "But don't rush," she advised him, and he nodded, and dashed out of the room, closing the door quietly behind him, "Oswin, it's just me now. You're totally safe, on board the TARDIS, it'll pass. I _promise_ it'll pass, every storm has to end, just listen to me…" The only slight inkling Clara got that Oswin could even hear her, or was even vaguely aware of what was happening, was when she curled her right leg up and seemed to try and bury herself in Clara's shoulder.

It went on for hours. It was arduous, but Clara's simple 'boredom' was nothing compared to whatever kind of emotional attack her baby sister was suffering through, because all Clara was doing was sitting there – Oswin was the one suffering, for an as yet partially unknown reason. Hopefully there would be some explanation when she calmed down, but Clara had no idea how long that would take. Every time Oswin seemed to stop shaking, or hadn't sobbed for a few minutes, Clara would get hopeful, but in the interminable, torturous cycle that this was, Oswin would crash down, feeling some sort of impossible, unidentifiable nausea (how the hologram was nauseous, Clara didn't know, but the fact remained that it amounted to nothing, because Oswin could not vomit and give in to it - it just wasn't possible) that was creeping its way through her like a toxin, growing like a tumour and collapsing her non-existent organs in upon themselves. But the non-existence and the impossible feelings weren't important, what was important was that all of these feelings Clara knew Oswin was being forced through were being created and manufactured by her own brain, working against her. Which was terrifying. And the cycle resumed.

Clara had started to wake up, but her own legs had begun to fall asleep, her own limbs had begun to cramp up and her eyes were painful with sympathetic tears she didn't even understand the origin of. She did not let up though – she was full of reassurances, full of mundane, domestic stories when Oswin's shaking eventually began to subside and she stilled with nerve-wracked breaths always burgeoning on becoming some synthesised kind of hyperventilation. As soon as this happened, it was like a cloud had been lifted and Clara knew that Oswin was 'back' from whatever had been happening, though not yet out of the woods. She told the Doctor to come back and check every hour or so, and so far, he must have checked at least four times, but she didn't know if he wasn't cutting the time short and checking more frequently than she'd told him to. She couldn't say she cared.

"…And _then_ this guy, he shows up at my door, like, 'Hey, can I get my jacket back? It's just it's cold ice-skating,' and I asked him why he was going ice-skating and he was like 'Oh, I'm breaking up with you, I just got back with my _ex-boyfriend_,' and I was-" Clara had been telling a tale that might have usually been interesting, about when one of her exes had dumped her because he'd decided he was going to change sexualities as often as he changed his shirt.

"I forgot," Oswin mumbled in a small voice, and Clara stopped rambling her distracting reams of nothing important instantly. Clara paused, and heard Oswin breathe out.

"Forgot what?" Clara asked her after just a moment. Oswin shrugged.

"About… that…" she said, nodding at the stump. It was cut just above her knee, or where her knee would be, were it there. But the thing Clara had noticed which she thought was strange was the fact it wasn't… She didn't know if 'clean' was the right word. If someone had decided to keep the Prank War going and had just used the TARDIS to hack Oswin and eliminate the leg, surely it would just end like it had been cropped out of a photograph? But Clara was sure she could see a poorly-stitched, ragged scar on the blunt end of her thigh. She moved then, properly for the first time, moving out of the hold of her sister and hiding her face away in both of her hands. She sighed again, like she was being very careful to stop herself from breaking down again. "And then I remembered."

"You know, I, um, hate to ask – and you don't have to answer – but could you be more specific? Please? If you want…" Clara asked carefully, as Oswin pulled up her one knee and hugged it tightly with both arms, resting her chin on the top and staring straight ahead with eyes completely swollen all around and bulging.

"I don't want to talk about it," Oswin said, which admittedly took Clara by surprise, "Not right now," Oswin shook her head strongly. There was a meek knock on the door then, the signal at the Doctor had returned for another check-in. When he opened the door, Clara managed to smile at him. Oswin didn't look at him, just put her head back on her knee and shut her eyes to fight back the increasing anxiety she was battling with.

"Is everything, um..?" Eleven asked. Well, kind of asked. It was up for debate what he _had_ asked, really.

"Do you know where my brother lives?" Oswin asked him, and he seemed surprised she was speaking.

"I… Well, which one?" Eleven asked, mainly looking at Clara instead of the one actually talking to him. Who could blame him? After all – he was extra-in-love with her right then because she'd finally given in to his whims and he kept getting distracted thinking about how lucky he was. Or something. Probably. Hopefully he'd been humbled for a while (it was probably why he was in such a good mood and offering to help her sister, too).

"Frank," she answered.

"Yes," he said, "Well, sort of. I can find out. It's not tricky… Or I'll… Bring someone who knows…" he fumbled a little and scratched his head.

"Okay, can you go to my brother's house and ask for my… Spare leg?" Oswin took a deep breath before the words 'spare leg', and Clara wondered when she was ever going to get the full story. But the plot was thickening, because of this whole mention of 'forgetting' and a 'spare leg'. As in an artificial leg – but as though there were at least two, "Take… Take the Tenth Doctor with you, he needs a fission battery from that century anyway… And - and tell Frank I told him to explain it all to you…"

"Yes, alright, okay," Eleven agreed hastily, "I'll go now. And be back soon." Clara knew he was only rushing because he thought the faster he did that, the sooner he could reclaim his wife from the clutches of her mentally ill, unstable sister.

Clara watched Oswin closely for a few minutes, until Oswin finally seemed to be able to speak again, and speak about what, exactly, was going on.

"It's not even… I…" she said, not forming anything too coherent, "It was… It was near the end of 5118. It's nothing too… There was… One of my experiments. One of the bombs. There was a malfunction," Oswin shrugged, "That's really it… It blew off my leg. There's not much else to it…" Clara wanted to ask how she'd possibly forgotten that, how Oswin had quite clearly had both of her legs completely intact for the last two months.

"How did you forget?" Clara asked gently.

"Because, um… Well," Oswin laughed slightly, though it was clearly an awkward, spasmic laugh, and she wasn't going to be saying anything funny as her face was briefly a ghost-smile, "You know how I… _Forgot_ about being turned into a Dalek..? Until the Doctor told me? And I had no choice but to believe him? Well… It seems that that wasn't the only memory I repressed and shut away… I… I had two legs, when I was, you know… Because it was all stuck in this little box of _trauma_… And now I'm…" Tears had formed in her eyes again and she wrapped her arms around her head and put her forehead on her leg, hiding her face and looking at the floor. Clara hugged her again. But it explained Oswin's strange, subconscious reactions to Kohg's cyborg race, who sliced off their extremities and replaced them with robotics solely for aesthetic effect. And everyone instantly pitying Tanya just days ago for her fake hand, and then being bitter about the artificial limbs that had been tossed away in the scrapyard. It all suddenly seemed to click together, and even in the Dream – because no human being could snap their own broken ankle back into place with hardly a whimper, so some subconscious part of Oswin must have been incapable of creating that sort of manufactured pain in her left leg. It must have been significantly numbed down, all because of this. But Clara still didn't understand why _now_. Why her leg had, for want of a better word, _fallen off_.

"Maybe you should go sit on the bed?" Clara asked, "It's comfier. I'll help-"

"No, I'm not moving," Oswin said firmly. Clara sighed. She didn't want to try and force Oswin into anything. She just hoped the Doctors got back quickly, and managed to remember where Oswin's younger brother resided without bumping into her elder brother or _other_ younger brothers, who weren't so keen on her. She wondered why Oswin was so sure that Frank, after ten years or more, still had a fake leg of hers. And why her family had never pointed out, "_Where'd your new leg come from?_" before. Maybe she was just always that quick to explain she was a returned-to-life hologram. Maybe just the face she _was_ a returned-to-life hologram who'd been apparently dead for ten years was enough to make them forget to ask that question.

"Why did it happen now? Of all the times?" Clara asked her.

"Someone did it to me," Oswin said in a shaky voice, a voice shaking with anger, "It's a virus. And there's nothing I can do about it."

"Oswin, you're a genius, who master erased the Doctor from the Daleks' collective memory bank," Clara said, "Are you sure?"

"Yeah. It's a virus being emitted by the TARDIS. And it's genetically encoded _through_ the TARDIS, meaning I'd have to hack the TARDIS, which I could do – but the TARDIS would hack _me_ and switch _me_ off before I could," Oswin said.

"Genetically encoded? Genetically encoded to who?"

"To the only other person on this spaceship who probably doesn't have any living, organic tissue for us to salvage and manipulate the bio-lock," Oswin said, and even though she was seething, she was talking in full-sentences.

"But… No, Oswin, no, it won't be. Are you sure you're not jumping to conclusions?"

"You think I just collapsed in a heap on the floor crying my stupid eyes out without trying to do anything to help myself!?" Oswin suddenly turned, and demanded furiously, "You think I did that!? You think I wouldn't make deadly sure before accusing your stupid husband's ex-wife of pulling some shit on me for no good reason!?"

"Alright, I'm sorry! I'm sorry," Clara apologised, very worried by the angry mood-swing. She'd never seen her sister flip like that before. Not in seconds.

"It _was_ her!" Oswin was crying again, "_She_ is the only person the TARDIS would let do this! She and the Ninth Doctor, I'm sure of it. Them and their new little stupid love-affair… And you know what else? I know that my leg is too big and heavy to teleport with. It exceeds the limit. That means if I try to teleport anywhere, it falls off. I can't teleport, or walk through walls, because of _this_! URGH!" she hit the side of the bed in anguish and then pushed the balls of her palms into her eyes and groaned, and Clara watched uselessly, not knowing what to do since Oswin was always so unpredictable, "I can't even conjure a new leg because the virus attacks that, too. I don't know how they found out I lost it. Medical records, maybe? _I_ forgot I lost it – so they're going out of their way to do this."

"Even if it was River, Os, she won't have known you forgot, she won't have realised-"

"That doesn't matter, Clara! Who the hell goes around cutting off peoples' legs!?" Oswin demanded, which was a fair enough question, and Clara didn't have a good answer as she tried to force herself to play devil's advocate on River's behalf, "It's messed up." It _was_ messed up. "I'm going to erase my medical files from existence. The spare leg isn't even a proper one! The _proper_ one was blown to hell on the Dalek Asylum. They were lacking in resources because of the Dust Cloud, they couldn't build two."

"Wait, then, does it work?" Clara asked.

"Oh, it _works_, it just doesn't really look anything like a proper leg..." she faded off and stopped talking, and Clara didn't know if she should ask any more questions or just wait until Oswin would answer them. "Can we... Can we just, watch TV?" Oswin asked abruptly, after another little sigh.

"Um, yes, of course," Clara allowed, taken aback, "...Do you want anything? Any ice cream? More hot chocolate?" Clara began to stand up, watching Oswin, who shook her head.

"No. Nothing."

**AN: For the record guys, with this whole massive new thing, I do know what I'm talking about (not to the extent of any amputees, leg-less or disabled people reading, and if there are any, I'm not trying to be insensitive, and if I ****_am_**** being insensitive feel free to yell at me and tell me why so I can be less-so in the future and so I can apologise) kind of, because I have a permanent leg injury where one of the three ligaments in my knee is completely torn, and the one next to it is sprained, and it dislocates a lot and it will never heal at all, I do not go out of the house without a leg brace, I can't run or jump or stand for more than an hour, really, I can't roll over in bed a certain way, and I have a walking stick I'm supposed to use all the time. So I'm not ****_completely _****oblivious, because if I do any physically activity my knee WILL come out. Like, it WILL. It has done before. Multiple times. It's very painful.**


	7. A TARDIS Breakfast II

_DAY SEVENTY-SIX_

_Clara_

_A TARDIS Breakfast II_

Clara and Oswin had been sat for about an hour watching property shows and waiting for anybody to return, the former of them being very careful to monitor her sister's state and how she was doing. Clara had already been trying to figure out where she even stood on helping Oswin, because they technically _weren't_ sisters, so Clara was at a loss to if she had any solid authority as a caregiver (which she so direly needed), and she didn't know if Oswin was even able to decide what was best for herself or if Clara was going to have to do things on her behalf. One thing she decided though was that Oswin should not be left alone, somebody was going to have to stay with her, be that herself or Adam Mitchell, whenever he decided to wake up and come looking for her. If Oswin_ was_ allowed to be on her own, no doubt they would all be in for another one of her apathetic slumps where she didn't move or speak for days on end – and they weren't healthy. But at least Oswin was making quips about the amount of money the people on Escape to the Country had to spend, and even remarked some weird things about the geographical locations of some of the houses Clara didn't understand the relevancy of. Which was only a good sign, as the anxious waves swept over Oswin repeatedly, though they were weaker with every tide.

Thankfully, it was about then that the Eleventh Doctor's quiet knock sounded through the room, announcing his return, but when he opened the door, the Tenth Doctor pushed past him first to fawn over Clara's sister, though Oswin tried to ignore him initially when he asked her if she was alright.

"She's fine, it's all fine," Clara told him firmly, standing up and shaking a little from being sat in one position for so long, having to steady herself on the side of Oswin's bed. Eleven walked in holding something then, which Clara could only presume was the infamous 'spare leg'. What it looked like was a bunch of sticks with balls stuck on them, but apparently it was a leg. Clara remembered what Oswin had said about it being incomplete due to lack of resources. There was one ball on the end about the size of an orange and coated in some sort of gripping material, like rubber possibly, then there was just a long, metal rod going up to another, larger ball, which Clara assumed worked like a knee. Then a shorter rod, and the bit on the top was like a bowl, but it was uneven inside and filled with something that looked like goo. Eleven passed it to Oswin, and then he trapped Clara's shoulder and handed her a coffee and she smiled graciously at him.

"How does it work?" Eleven asked, crossing his arms, "What's the goop?"

"The 'goop' is sort of like glue, it just moulds and sticks," Oswin said to him, "There are animatronics in the rod-thing." Clara didn't really know how that wasn't painful if it was stuck to her, or how it stayed on in the future, but maybe three-thousand years in the future they'd made some huge advancements in artificial limbs.

"You don't need any help to stand up?" Clara asked, not knowing if she was being too intrusive or patronising. Oswin had been grimacing for the last hour though, and her expression didn't change, so Clara still couldn't tell.

"You don't forget how to walk," Oswin said, pulling herself to her feet, ignoring the Tenth Doctor who was standing by awkwardly, as though waiting to catch her if she fell. Oswin sat back down on the end of the bed though, staring at the floor where she'd spent the last five hours or so. "You should probably go get…" Oswin waved her hand instead of saying a name, in the direction of the opposite wall.

"Adam?" Clara suggested, and Oswin nodded, "Okay, we'll go get him, the Tenth Doctor will stay." Oswin wasn't looking as Clara pulled Eleven out of the room with her and shut the door, and as soon as she did, she left the coffee mug hovering in the air and threw her arms around his neck to hug him, which was a habit that had not yet failed to make her feel better.

"Are you okay?" he asked her, hugging her back.

"I am fine," she said firmly once she'd let him go, but he bent down a little and moved his hands to her waist, "Just tired, and hungry." She smiled and pushed his hands off her, and he straightened up.

"You can't go back to bed, it's the morning, and Rose is looking for your sister, I'm not sure why," Eleven told her, "And you won't guess what the Tenth Doctor's done."

"Tell me after I send Adam Mitchell into her room," Clara said, going over to his door, thankful that it was only the next one along on the right. She knocked loudly, in case he was asleep, and she really didn't want to go in (she was convinced his room smelt bad, even though she'd never been into his room). When he didn't answer after a few seconds, she kicked the door.

"_Whaaat_?" he groaned when he opened the door, rubbing his eyes and yawning. Then he noticed it was Clara and the Doctor there, and apparently didn't know what to think, "What's going on?"

"It's complicated," said Clara, "But you're gonna go spend the day with your girlfriend, and under no circumstances leave her."

"Why? What's happened?" he asked seriously then, waking up straight away.

"Her leg, it, um… Fell off..?" Clara said, not knowing how to concisely explain what happened. She looked at the Doctor, and he just shrugged, "Whatever. She has a fake leg. Don't ask her about it, don't make a huge fuss, she's in a really bad state right now. She'll tell you about it on her own."

"Thanks," he said, shutting the door and pushing past both of them into the next room. Clara sighed, and started heading back to her own bedroom. If she wasn't allowed to go to sleep, the least she could do was fix her hair and face and get dressed.

"What did the Tenth Doctor do?" she asked him, yawing slightly.

"He went out to Sarah-Jane's house yesterday and tried to steal K-9, only, Luke wouldn't let him take K-9 to fix because he didn't believe he'd bring him back. So now Luke Smith is staying on the TARDIS – apparently temporarily," Eleven told her, seeming annoyed about this. Clara was quite surprised as she searched through her wardrobe for anything to wear, "Half of your clothes are on the floor, Coo."

"Yeah, I know, I'll wash them later…"

"You _always_ say you'll wash them later, and you never have," he said. She said nothing in her own defence then, since he was right, "Shall I do it, then?"

"No," she said, "I _will_ do it later. Today. But after I have breakfast and find out what Rose wants Oswin for," he sighed behind her, "_Promise_," she added.

* * *

Rose, Tentoo and Martha were sat at one of the large, bean-shaped tables, the one closest to the kitchen on the left-hand side when Clara walked in with her coffee, completely exhausted but unable to sleep.

"Oh, Clara?" Rose called over, and Clara drifted towards the two girls as her husband went off to the kitchen to make her breakfast since she was still incapable of cooking. She'd tried to learn, but it was impossible. She thought that her refraining from cooking was undoubtedly for the greater good. "Where's Oswin? I have to talk to her."

"About what?" Clara asked, glancing around the room for either River _or_ Nine (who'd probably tell her Clara had been saying anything about her, if it came down to it, though she _was_ trying to be the bigger person in the hologramic feud).

"She said she wanted to look at the dimension cannon at Torchwood whenever I went back to get Tanya," Rose explained, which made sense.

"Oh, okay," Clara said, "I don't think she's coming out today."

"Why..?" Martha asked. Clara hadn't managed to spot either of _Niver_ as she examined the room, and she knew Rose and Martha were definitely going to find out what was going on at some point, just like everyone else on board the TARDIS. And if they found out beforehand, it would save her sister from any horrifically awkward, unpleasant questions. So Clara sighed, and explained as best she could about the loss of Oswin's left leg, repressed memories and biologically locked computer viruses.

"No way," said Rose, disbelieving.

"Yes way," said Clara, "I've been in her room with her all night trying to get her to calm down. It was so bad the emotional link woke me up."

"Well then, what should we say when we see her?" Martha asked, "Should we ask if she's alright?"

"I don't know," Clara shrugged, "I guess… I don't think you should stare at it or anything? I mean, it's really weird, she said it was half-finished. It works, but it doesn't look like a leg. But then if you act like it's not there, she'll just know I told you not to ask, and that might be worse…" Clara thought for a few moments, "I'll get back to you." The Doctor sat down next to her then, sliding a plate of toast in front of her, which she welcomed gratefully.

"River though," Tentoo wondered, "River. I wouldn't expect it."

"I don't think she's gonna leave her room today, so… Be tactful."

"I'm going to sort out everything with Tanya today though," Rose said, "I don't know if there'll be another chance to go visit home and Torchwood."

"Well then… Then I'll go," Clara said.

"Will you?" Eleven asked her, puzzled.

"Yes, if there's anything important, she can project. You know, astral-ly. It's complicated," Clara said. She didn't actually understand it. Although she could do it, but, it was weird, "Or if she wants to be really weird she can search my memories."

"But you don't know what you're looking for," Rose pointed out, "Or what Oswin's looking for, specifically."

"That's true…." Clara sighed.

"Take Luke," Eleven suggested.

"Sorry?" Rose frowned.

"Luke Smith."

"Bit random," Rose commented.

"No, he's on board," Eleven pointed out with a mouthful of toast, "Tenth Doctor brought him while he fixes K-9. Luke wanted to make sure nobody nicked him. I don't think he has much else to do. Plus he's a genius."

"We know a lot of geniuses. What level of genius? Are we talking Adam Mitchell genius, Time Lord genius, Oswin genius..?" Rose asked.

"Why does she get her own category!?" Tentoo demanded of his wife, but Clara thought it was a little funny.

"Oswin level," Eleven admitted to her, begrudgingly, "He might be the smartest boy in all of time and space. Although, technically he was grown as an archetype of perfection by the Bane, so I don't know if he technically counts in the 'human' category…"

"And here I was thinking it was just going to be a quiet visit home…" Rose said. Tentoo didn't look too bothered by these additions to he and Rose's party though.

"Can I come? I've never seen the Torchwood on your world," Eleven said, "Don't you still use Canary Wharf for it?" Rose nodded at that, but didn't accept his plea.

"Are you two going through one of your phases where you refuse to be separate?" Rose asked them.

"We've just been apart for six days, give us a break," Clara said defensively, "And anyway, he's clever too. He can look at the cannon-thingy."

"'Cannon-thingy', great, I have so much faith in your ability to tell your sister what's important," Rose grumbled, "Fine! I can't really stop you. It's not like either of you are gonna break anything."

"I don't know about that, Clara hasn't slept. She's weird when she hasn't slept," Eleven told Rose.

"I won't touch anything," Clara said, "Properly or telekinetically. No superpowers. I'll be careful. And - you're all forgetting that before I got banned from computers two and half months ago, I was basically a computer genius. And am. If I'm allowed to use any. A privilege of being downloaded by wifi."

"Well, this should be fun…" Rose grumbled.

"I'll go find Luke…" Tentoo offered, getting to his feet and loping off.

"Oh, yeah, I'll go let Oswin know about all this," Clara said, snatchinng the last slice of toast out from her husband's fingers, to his obvious annoyance. She was sure he slid off to make himself more though, as she went to tell Oswin what was going on.

The Tenth Doctor had been evicted from Oswin's room in the last forty minutes, it seemed, but Clara was just counting her lucky stars at the fact she _hadn't_ walked in on anything "private." He was just muttering quietly to her on the bed, holding her hands, as she stared at the floor. But they both looked up when the door opened.

"Rose is going home to visit and sort Tanya out today, and I'm going too, with the Doctor, to see the dimension cannon - do you want me to tell you when we find it so you can, y'know, project yourself and look at it?"

"I'm not an invalid, Clara," she said coldly, "I can walk fine to come look at it."

"No, you're staying on the TARDIS," Clara said, "Until you calm down, and get out of your slump. Don't argue with me."

"You're not my mother."

"No, you're right, because unlike _your_ mother I'm actually really worried about you. And I'm not gonna let my favourite daughter run herself into the ground just to be unnecessarily defiant," Clara said, and couldn't tell if she quite got a weak, flicker of a smile from Oswin at the 'favourite daughter' line or not, "Stay with Adam, listen to what he says, if you need me to come back just ask. Okay?" No response. "Oswin. I said _okay_?"

"Fine," Oswin snapped, and Clara knew that was the best she was going to get, and shut the door on her way out.


	8. The Torchwood Institute

_Clara_

_The Torchwood Institute_

Clara was surprised to say the least about where the quintet were when they stepped out of the TARDIS. Yes, she knew that the Pete's World Torchwood was situated within Canary Wharf still (rather than buried under Cardiff), but she didn't know that there was a large space of it being used as residency for the members of the institution. Including one designated to the Tylers. She also, when the door was knocked on and Jackie and Pete Tyler emerged to greet Rose and Tentoo with hugs, couldn't shake the feeling that she was intruding. She, Eleven and Luke were all not-really supposed to be there (Clara was thinking that even the ghostly company of her sister would relieve the awkwardness). Although, in fairness, they _weren't_ supposed to be there. But Clara thought that maybe it was a good thing she'd gone with Luke and the Eleventh Doctor in place of Oswin, because if Oswin had gone on her own, who knew what marvellous ways she could have found to offend people?

She was also having to keep a tight grip on her husband's arm at this point though, to stop him from attempting to hug Jackie _or_ Pete, since at that point they didn't know what he looked like or who he was. Just a tweed-wearing weirdo skulking around behind Rose dragging a short girl around.

"Don't hug them they don't know you," she hissed at him through gritted teeth. He looked at her, still smiling, but she could see his eyes were glaring. She smiled politely back, which annoyed him so much that he rolled his eyes and looked away.

"Who are they?" Jackie then asked rudely. But, Clara thought, that was what Londoners were like. Rude. And if she picked her up on it, she'd get into a fight she would have to run away from because she would lose.

"That's Clara, that's the Eleventh Doctor, and that's Luke Smith," Rose indicated each of them in turn.

"Hello," Luke said brightly and politely, holding out a hand to shake, "I think you might've met my mum a few years ago?"

"Did I..?" Jackie asked unsurely.

"Sarah-Jane, during the Dalek Invasion in… 2009, I think," he said.

"Oh, yeah!" Jackie beamed, "How is she?" Luke's smile faltered and turned a little sad.

"She passed away," he said.

"Oh, I'm sorry!" Jackie apologised, looking upset with herself.

"Don't worry about it, it's fine," Luke assured her, keeping his smile until he dropped her hand and then passed between Jackie and Pete to follow Rose and Tentoo into the flat (though Rose was loitering right by the doorframe, checking nobody said anything stupid, no doubt).

"Hi, I'm Clara," said Clara, "I think you've spoken to my sister over the phone before..?" she asked.

"You're the annoying one?" Jackie asked.

"I…" Clara kept smiling, "Rose, why..?" she didn't ask the full question.

"Sorry, that's just how I know you," Jackie apologised. Why was she the annoying one!?

"I'm sorry, but you are!" Rose tried to defuse the situation by insulting Clara further.

"Well, at this rate I should've just sent my sister along to look at this cannon," Clara grumbled.

"Why isn't she here? Isn't she the clever one?" Jackie asked.

And then Clara said, "We're both clever!" at the exact same time both Eleven and Rose just answered, "Yes," and she scowled. Clara continued, "Just be happy she's not here."

"But I thought she was a genius?"

"She is, definitely the smartest person I've _ever_ met. _Nobody_ even compares. _Nobody_," Clara firmly reiterated the word 'nobody' to annoy the Doctor, who, two months ago, had definitely been the smartest person she'd ever met. And now he was second-best to a clone of his own wife – it was amusing.

"Anyway! Jackie Tyler! Haven't seen you for centuries!" Eleven beamed and instantly tried to hug her, which was clearly very awkward on Jackie's part, though he didn't seem to notice, "I'm the Doctor – well, you know that, Rose said. The _Eleventh _Doctor. So, the next one. Good thing I'm not the Twelfth Doctor though, eh? Wouldn't wanna meet him, he's a right old… Anyway," he cleared his throat right after Clara thought he might curse. Jackie just nodded oddly, and then left to go inside, telling Eleven to close the door behind him.

Clara, however, took his arm and pulled him back while they had a few moments.

"Oh, I have something for you," Clara said, pausing and searching through one of the pockets of her only transdimensional coat (she thought she should probably get her sister to make _all _of her pockets transdimensional some point – even the stupid fake ones that served no purpose). Out from it, she fished –

"My sonic screwdriver!?" he exclaimed, snatching it without as much as a thank you, "You_ did_ steal it! You liar! Why didn't you give me it back yesterday!?"

"I was busy!" Clara defended herself from him, as he stared at her like she'd done far worse than steal a gizmo she thought she'd needed more than him anyway.

"Busy doing what!?" he demanded. She gawped at him for a moment or two.

"Doing _you_, you idiot! Don't you remember?" she challenged, and almost instantly his anger was replaced by a dirty smirk.

"No. I suppose we'll just have to do it all again, won't we?" he said, doing his 'thoughtful' voice he did whenever he was trying to convince people that his solution was the only logical one (and she was ashamed to say that it still worked on her, and had done as recently as yesterday).

"Nice try, Chin. I'm not _that_ easy," she said, and then she herded him in and shut the door before he could make a remark about her_ definitely _being 'that easy.'

'Oswin! Rose Tyler's mother knows me as "the annoying one"!' Clara instantly resorted to complaining about this to her sister in her own head. '_You ARE the annoying one out of both of us_,' Oswin answered, and Clara never thought she'd be so glad to hear her sister insult her. 'Not out of us two. Out of everyone on the TARDIS.' '_Oh. Jenny's way more annoying. Rose would know that if she had that little sex-pest skulking around_.' Clara managed _not_ to laugh aloud.

"Oswin says that Jenny's more annoying than me," Clara muttered quietly to Rose on her way past, but Rose didn't look amused.

"Shut up, you're here as a walking projector for her and that's it," Rose said coolly, and before Clara could exaggerate exactly how insulted she was, Rose had gone to follow Tentoo and fawn over her half-brother. Was he a half-brother? Clara didn't know.

"Well, you know, I think we'd better slip out of the way for a moment while they have their reunion," Eleven advised, and it took her a moment of eyeing him carefully to gauge if he was being dirty or not. "…What?" he asked her.

"Oh, nothing," she said.

"What is all this about dimensions, anyway?" Luke Smith then asked, "Heard something about you having another boyfriend?"

"Has my sister been telling you about Danny Pink?" Clara asked him, and he nodded, crossing his arms and looking genuinely interested in the alternate version of herself, "Ugh, basically, there's this other universe where the TARDIS dimension stabilisers never malfunctioned after Trenzalore, and I kept travelling with just him," she pointed to Eleven with her thumb, "Until he died and regenerated into the Twelfth Doctor. At which point Other Me decided to go actually get a job as an English teacher or something and literally get with the first guy she saw, which was a maths teacher called Danny Pink. And he's a complete dick."

"He punched me in the face," said Eleven, "And he punched Adam Mitchell in the face."

"Who can blame him?" Luke joked, and Eleven frowned, "I mean, not you, Adam Mitchell." Clara snorted.

"What's Adam Mitchell done to you?" she asked, interested now.

"Just his attitude," Luke said, and Clara laughed.

"I'll have to tell Oswin you said that about her boyfriend."

"Does she even like him that much? They never act like it," Luke said, "It's like, she went out with him out of pity."

"No, she likes to _pretend_ she goes out with him out of pity. She's into Adam almost as much as I'm into him," again, she pointed at the Eleventh Doctor.

"Usually _I'm_ the one into _you_," Eleven said, and then Clara blushed angrily and stood on his foot, which he pretended had hurt, "Ow!"

"Shut up! He's like, young, he doesn't need to hear someone he idolises making creepy sex jokes, does he? How old are you?" she asked Luke.

"I'm twenty-two," he said, and Clara was dumbstruck. He was only two years younger than her!? But the conversation got cut short then.

"We're going to see the cannon now, then you lot can all leave," Rose said, and Clara couldn't blame her for wanting family time without her 'other' family. Clara had suffered through people acting awkward around her father too many times to count, and now she just didn't mention him unless she was in the mood for a roast, in which case she declared she was going home for tea so that her dad would cook one for her.


	9. A Wild Genius Appears

**AN: Trigger warning for anxiety attacks and depression, probably. Best to be on the safe side, isn't it?**

_Oswin_

_A Wild Genius Appears_

"I have stuff to tell you," Oswin said eventually after a deep breath - she didn't know _why_ she took a deep breath since it technically wasn't a breath at all. But she crossed her legs and movede bed, and he did the same, sitting opposite her.

"Stuff like what?" he asked softly.

"I don't know how often you talk to Clara**,** but um, so, a lot of this you'll know from guessing and observation... But I thought I'd tell you," she said, and continued on quickly, "So, I'm ill. I'm _very_ ill, psychologically, which unfortunately isn't fixed by being a hologram... Clara thinks I'm unaware. I'm not. It's... It's worse than she thinks... She used to be a lot less in tune with the emotional link, but I think proximity stengthens it, so the longer she spends with me, the more she knows about _my_ emotional state. But a while ago, it wasn't like that. I have traumatic flashbacks, and anxiety attacks, that last for hours, and I used to have them when I was alive. I'd have so many nightmares... Clara has nightmares. Her echoes are prone to nightmares. I don't sleep anymore though. But it's still... It's always there. I have these slumps where I don't move for days - I had those when I was alive, too. The nights on the TARDIS used to be awful, because there wasn't anybody around. I'd just end up suffering and then take it out on Clara. I mean - I was locked inside my house for twenty years, I can't interact with people properly. I'm completely messed up, alright? And I know that I am. And I thought you'd want to know from me, instead of guessing..."

"But if you're bad on the nights, how come I've never known you to have any kind of attack when you've been in my room..?" he asked.

"Because, I..." she couldn't finish her sentence, "You don't get it - it's like, it's like there's a _block_ that stops me from saying anything good to you ever. Because you shouldn't be with me, I am a terrible person! I have killed thousands of people! No, you know what? I killed 10,082 people in the Dust War. And I know every single one of their names and I spend so much time trying to think of a way to apologise - but there's nobody to apologise to! Whole families died because of _me_! If - if they lose everything when they die, why shouldn't I? It's only fair! I do not deserve you, or anyone! I don't deserve to be brought back to life when so many people died, and I don't deserve to travel on the TARDIS and I don't even deserve Clara!" at that point she was furious, she was furious at herself, and she tried to stand up, but as she did her hand was grabbed by Adam Mitchell and he dragged her into a hug. A tighter hug than any other hug he'd given her before, and she couldn't stop herself from crying again. "Why should I have anything at all when they don't?"

"You'll be okay," he said.

"No I won't! It's so hard to stay somewhat sane!"

"You will," he kept saying firmly, not letting her escape from his arms, "You're going to calm down, and they we're going to find out how you can help those people. You know their names? Then we can... Make a memorial. Some giant space memorial..."

"Won't bring anyone back," she muttered, "Why do you waste your time with me? What're you gonna do, spend your whole life trying to 'fix' me and then die in vain in seventy years?"

"I'm not going to try and fix you," he assured her, and then she pushed him away.

"Because you can't do it!? Because I'm broken beyond repair!?" she shouted.

"That's not what I meant," he said calmly.

"How can you-? _Why_ are you so _calm_ all the time? What is - what is _wrong_ with you!?" she didn't know what she was saying, she wasn't thinking anything through, she could barely hear herself. All she knew was she wanted a rise out of him, she wanted some display of emotion that didn't revolve around his affections. "It must be so quiet in your head! Without all the noise!"

"What noise..?" he asked carefully.

"I don't know! Everything's so loud! All the time! It's like - it's like _explosions_, and-" 'Oswin?' Clara's voice penetrated her mind and she stopped talking completely.

"I won't try and fix you because I-"

"Clara needs me for the dimension cannon," Oswin cut across him flatly, and he stopped talking, looking a little hopeless and like he couldn't articulate properly. She frowned at him. "What?"

"Are you alright..? You just... A moment ago..."

"I have things to do, I don't have time to try and force my glorified babysitter to talk in full sentences," she snapped at him, and he looked at a complete loss when he sat down on the foor of her bed, and she went and swung the large chair in the middle of the room so that it was facing the TV, away from him.

* * *

_Clara_

"What's wrong?" Eleven whispered to her, and she jumped. She hadn't been paying attention, just trying to gauge what was happening with Oswin elsewhere.

"I, um..." she said, not really knowing what to say, but then she saw Oswin appear out of nowhere (not in a shimmer of pixels or a haze, like usual) nearby, looking displeased and confused. "Nothing," she told him.

"I'm here now," Oswin said to her, "Where's this cannon?"

"Where's the cannon?" Clara asked on Oswin's behalf.

"It's not really a cannon, so to speak," Rose said, leading them off into another room down in the basement of Pete's World Canary Wharf. In this room was what Clara could only describe as a Stargate. And she didn't even watch Stargate - but that was what it looked like, a big circular doughnut made of metal with nothing in the middle.

"Isn't this the Sphere room?" Eleven asked, abandoning Clara to sniff the 'cannon'. She didn't know why he wanted to smell it, but he was beyond her most of the time.

"Yeah," Rose said, "We thought it'd be good, since the Sphere wasn't technically part of this dimension."

"Sphere?" Oswin asked Clara.

"What's the Sphere?" Clara asked for her.

"It was a Dalek ship, had the Cult of Skaro in it," Eleven explained brashly, not taking into account that Oswin might be listening. Clara watched her sister carefully, who didn't seem amused by this reference, "Designed to travel through the Void."

"Weird, we pass through dimensions instantaneously without encountering the Void at all..." Oswin said, "Clara, come closer to it. You know I can only see what's in your peripheral vision." Clara sighed responsively and crossed her arms as she walked over to stand and look at the dimension cannon.

"Why do you call it a cannon then?" Clara asked, letting the geniuses all flock around the device.

"It makes a bang when anything goes through it," Jackie explained, "Loud."

"Well I'd expect the bang to be quiet until she specified," Oswin muttered. 'Be nice.' '_They can't hear me_.' 'But I can.'

"Makes sense," was all Clara said.

"I don't get it," said Jackie, "Who is this girl? Sister from the future?"

"Basically, this sort of, being-thing called the Great Intelligence went to a planet called Trenzalore where the Doctor's grave is, and in there was his time stream of his whole life or something and the Great Intelligence went in and killed him at various points throughout time and space. And then to save him, _I_ had to jump into his time stream, which created about a thousand different versions of myself. And Oswin's one of them," Clara explained quickly.

"...I don't get it," Jackie said.

"Nobody gets it," Rose assured her, "All we know is that they're having a secret affair."

"You're just jealous, Rose," Clara said the exact same time Oswin said to Clara, "She's just jealous."

"It's a good thing your sister doesn't need to shower," Eleven walked casually past Clara under the guise of going to look at the other side of the cannon and whispered that to her. She went red helplessly, unable to say anything to retaliate at him that wouldn't give her away.

"What did he just say?" Oswin asked Clara, who looked over at her and saw she had her hands on her hip and her eyebrows raised. 'I don't know, I didn't hear...' Clara thought. "Clara Oswald. I'm disgusted. You gave in didn't you? _Didn't you_!?" 'Can we talk about this later?' "She admits it! Tell everyone!" 'DON'T tell everyone! Or anyone! At all! Go look at the cannon!' "Go look at the cannon, Oswin. Go fix your irreperable mental disorders, Oswin. Go bring back thousands of dead people, Oswin. You all ask too much of me." Clara then made a mental note to have a discussion about all of those worrying statements as soon as she got home...

**AN: Dear Anyone Who Thinks I Should Stop Focusing On Oswin's Mental Health (if such persons exist): No, because, people with mental health issues can't just "switch it off" if they "get bored" and I'm trying to be realistic here and give people actual insight into the thinking processes behind these neuroses. And her damage reflects back on the Doctor's, so itMs interestin in that respect as well.**


	10. The Plot Thickens

_Clara_

_The Plot Thickens_

The air was thick and wet and full of fog and rain pellets, choking on darkness and the thick trunks of black trees surrounding a bastion-like red glow - an oasis of capitalism - marking the site of an all-night diner. A closed down all-night diner, Clara noted, as she kicked her feet absently in the air and watched the sullied, checkered tiles glow with every passing car in the storm. She was sitting on one of the tables, swinging her feet back and forth in the air, but she had better things to he worrying about than them breaking into a recently-closed eatery to fry some lunch. She was very tired, as well, as she peered into the stormy gloom of Washington (the Doctor had told her that was the state they were in, but she didn't think that was particularly important when they were just lounging around in the middle of some dreary woodland).

"What was it you said to me?" Clara called through to the kitchen, "Something about all of time and space outside those doors? Runaway all I like and still be back in time for tea?" She didn't get an instantaneous response, "Remarkable. All of time and space. We could go to some restaurant on the edge of the galaxy, we could go to the Ritz in the Sixties, or Paris in the future. And where do you take me?"

"I think it has charm," the Doctor responded to her eventually. The last time she was in any sort of diner, it'd been in the Dream, and her sister had gorged herself on burgers while she had the opportunity. God knew what the Doctor was cooking in the kitchen, but she had to admit it smelt good.

"If 'charm' is Gallifreyan for 'dirt and grease,' then yes, sweetheart, plenty of charm," she said, glancing around, "Wasn't Rose staying at Jackie and Pete's for a while?" Clara asked after a momentary silence.

"Yes," the Doctor replied, and she jumped down from the table and trotted over the dirty tiles, around the grim bar and into the kitchen, where he appeared to have sliced up a few bananas and was frying them, for whatever reason. "Why?"

"So... Then..." she was perplexed, but the brief confusion passed without incident and she leant on the counter next to him. He tried to flip a burger (banana and beef? What a combination), but glanced over at her and it landed funny and spat oil at his hand.

"Ow! That's_ your_ fault," he declared.

"How is it my fault that _you_ can't flip a burger!?" she demanded to know.

"You distracted me," he said, "What was it you said you wanted again, that you made me bring you all the way here for?"

"Sorry?"

"...You were asking for some specific type of junk food," he replied, but he, too, seemed puzzled.

"I didn't ask for anything," she said, "_You_ declared we were going out for a 'fancy meal' at a 'five star establishment'," she told him.

"...I don't remember saying that," he said, "...Where's the TARDIS? Didn't Rose have possession of it today?"

Clara and the Doctor both looked through and past the bar, out of the windows, into the darkness. They saw - though visibility was low - no blue box. And Clara was beginning to notice something; she plainly had very limited recollection of the recent hours. On a day like that one, with so much going on at home, her husband wouldn't forcibly take her out to eat at a dingy, out-of-business American diner. But he seemed just as confused, if not worried, as she was.

"If the diner's closed, where did you get fresh ingredients?" Clara asked, and though she certainly didn't have a culinary mind, she thought this a perfectly valid and reasonable question. But Eleven couldn't answer, he just fumbled. And then dropped the fish slice on the grill and shut it off, staring around. She saw that, though there was sliced banana sizzling away, there weren't any peels around. If she didn't know any better, she'd say it was a plot hole.

"Don't wander off," he told her coolly, staring at the door, like she was, neither of them moving.

"I won't," she said, "...How did we get here?" That, he didn't even try to answer. They stayed still in the kitchen as the sound of cooking food died down, now there was no heat. She didn't remember deciding to come out anywhere, or asking for food, or going to sit on the table and leave him to cook. She just remembered being all-of-a-sudden aware that she was there, and that there was food. But something was most definitely afoot.

There was a bang, and she yelped a little out of fear and backed into the Doctor, who was staring around looking for the source of the noise. All she could hear was her heartbeat in her ears and the rain lashing on the windows and the roof, however, and the breathing of the Doctor behind her. Then there was another bang, and movement. But the movement came from a door they hadn't quite noticed before in the corner of the room, and it was moving as though something on the other side was hitting it. It shook again, like knocking, almost.

"What is that..?" Clara breathed taking a hold of his hand, if for no other reason than making sure he definitely didn't walk off and abandon her in the middle of a creepy, lonely diner with no idea how either of them had arrived.

"We can smell the food!" a voice yelled.

"Martha!?" Clara exclaimed in bewilderment. It had sure sounded like Martha Jones, shouting from the other side of the dead-bolted door. The raucous attack on the door ceased.

"Clara?" Martha asked, "Let us out of here! What are you playing at!? Where are we? I don't remember how I got here!"

"Like us," Clara whispered to the Doctor, though she was never one naïve enough to blindly trust voices emanating from behind closed doors. It could be anything out there - though she _had_ been recognised. "What do you mean 'we'?"

"I'm here too!" Mickey shouted. Both of them down there? Was it likely or unlikely that an alien trickster would know the finer aspects of the inter-TARDIS relationships enough to know Mickey and Martha were married?

"I'm opening it," Eleven declared, beginning to walk off.

"What!? No, what if it's a trap!?" she hissed, keeping hold of his hand, until he sighed and pried her fingers off himself, and she stood there hopelessly a few feet away from him.

"What's life without a few risks, eh?"

"Safe! That's what it is! No - Chin - Doctor - what're-!?" but he had already twisted the key sitting in the padlocked door. Which was odd - because Clara was sure that a few seconds ago it had been a deadlock. What on Earth was going on?

Mickey and Martha seemed, as best as she could tell, to be themselves, however, when they were freed from what must be a storeroom or a cellar of some kind.

"Why did you lock us down there!?" Martha suddenly soured, and came for Clara looking almost vengeful, but Clara ducked out of the way, and tried to go through the wall, but instead crashed into it.

"I haven't locked anyone anywhere!" Clara said, not knowing what was happening at all, "We were just here! I don't know what happened!"

"If you two didn't lock us downstairs, then who did?" Mickey challenged, and Clara didn't have an answer for that. Mickey frowned and looked outside though, "Where's the TARDIS?"

"We don't know," answered Eleven, "We don't remember, like Clara said. I just remember being here. Do you two remember anything?"

"We woke up in the basement, then we find the way out and you two are up here talking about food," Martha said.

"Why would I lock you in a cellar?" Clara asked.

"Why _wouldn't _you?" Martha countered, crossing her arms. But then the Doctor tapped Clara's arm, and she looked around at where he was looking.

"Was there always a chain around the door handles?" he asked her quietly.

"I..." she was at a loss, but she didn't think so. She was sure she would have noticed.

Two bodies, complete with splayed out palms, threw themselves at the glass of the door, seemingly out of nowhere, and all four of them jumped, staring at the ghostly-pale faces glaring into the room.

"Is that the Ponds!?" Mickey exclaimed after a few moments. Clara frowned. Because it was the Ponds, seemingly furious, both banging on the door to be let in. Eleven and Mickey instantly went over to help them and try and unlock the chain on the door, Clara and Martha loitering awkwardly in the kitchen. Clara did not like the fact the walls were all windows. Behind her even, in the kitchen, was a glass sheet giving them a view to the black forest behind the diner. She didn't like having her back to it - she felt exposed - so she followed after the other two quite quickly.

"Can't you sonic it?" Martha suggested, when they both struggled to unlock the chains and let Amy and Rory in, who were looking dishevelled and windswept in the coldness of the night.

"Oh, yes, let me..." Eleven reached into his pocket and frowned, then turned a disapproving gaze on his wife, "Did you steal it again!?"

"I haven't stolen anything!" Clara defended herself, "I gave you it back when we got to Rose's Torchwood, remember? You were mad at me?"

"Yes, I do remember, but you could have easily stolen it again," he argued.

"I haven't," she said, "My intangibility isn't working either, though. Or my telekinesis, look," she nodded at a ketchup bottle on the table next to them and waved a hand at it, and it remained completely still.

"Strange..." Eleven mused. Mickey had left by this point, he'd slunk off into the kitchen, but at that instance he returned wielding a fire extinguisher. Clara and Eleven stepped away from either side of the door as Mickey ran at it with force and shattered one of the windows, only just giving the Ponds a chance to duck out of harm's way. Glass shattered in shards and dust onto the floor.

"What the _hell_ is up with you lot!?" Amy roared when she marched across the threshold, "We've been out there braying on the windows for hours! Why did you lock us out!? And chain up the door!?"

"We didn't!" Martha said, "We didn't do anything! _We_ were stuck in the basement with those two up here!" she pointed at Whoufflé, neither of whom appreciated being blamed for this. They were just as baffled as everybody else.

"Did you do it?" Rory asked.

"No! _We_ let them out when we figured they were downstairs! Plus, his sonic screwdriver is missing, and I don't have any of my superpowers, so something totally weird is going on!" Clara said.

"How did we get here?" Rory asked a second later, "Where's the TARDIS? I didn't see it?" They all glanced outside at the old, small carpark, bathed in the electric blue of the neon sign above them.

"I could've sworn the sign was red ten minutes ago..." Clara breathed.


	11. Inconsistencies

_Eleven_

_Inconsistencies_

He didn't want to say anything to the others, but secretly, he was loving it. He was loving the atmosphere and the confusion and the quirkiness. All of it was fantastic. The first solution which sprang to mind was that the Prank War had somehow resumed itself, and the six of them were the new victims, and it was an elaborate scheme involving a memory worm, perhaps. Yet - it was hard to pinpoint - he didn't feel as though he'd forgotten. It was like the events leading up to his surreal awakening in the diner were a hazy dream he couldn't quite relate the details of - though he was sure there _were_ some details, just enough unintelligible glimpses to keep him assured that this was _not _the work of a memory worm. Not to mention Clara's superpowers were gone. But removing superpowers didn't seem to be something anyone less-sophisticated than Oswin could do, and Eleven would bet his wedding ring that Oswin had not kidnapped her sister, her brother-in-law, and a random two other couples, gone to the trouble of removing superpowers, all for some unknown reason. Which left him, ultimately, right back where he started: Idea-less.

"Are you even listening?" Clara asked him.

"No, sorry," he answered, "What were you saying?" Amy groaned, and the began whatever she'd been saying again. Though now she had his interested.

"Stuff keeps changing," Amy said, "We were out there, and there was a full moon, and then all of a sudden there was a new moon."

"And downstairs, there was a monkey wrench on the floor and ten seconds later it was a crowbar," Mickey said, "And the heating pipes changed colour from dark green to grey."

"Not to mention the sign being red earlier," Clara said, "And the door suddenly being chained shut, and the lock on the cellar changing from a deadbolt to a padlock."

"And there were bananas, but no banana peels..." Eleven joined in, amused by these quandaries, "Isn't it exciting?"

"No!" Amy argued, "It isn't! I didn't even get to have breakfast, and suddenly I'm here."

"Well, you can always finish frying those..." Eleven paused and frowned, seeing that the grills in the next room did not have any burgers or bananas on them, but rather, shallow-fried banana skin.

"Banana skin," Rory said, "Like you were saying. There was none, now there is."

"Yeah, and it's burnt to hell," Clara said, "Isn't that a bit aggressive?"

"What are you saying - there's an all-seeing force getting a bit offended and aggressive with banana skin?" Amy asked her incredulously. Clara shrugged. It didn't seem likely, Eleven had to admit, though it _was_ an odd happenstance, and he was going to remember it.

"Maybe we should do a timeline?" Mickey suggested, "Of what happened before we got here?"

"Yes, might be useful," Eleven agreed. He was at a loss really. Somebody must have taken his screwdriver though, and his only suspect for that crime was his wife, who had a track record of such foul play. But then, she'd lost both of her powers, so in light of such problematic circumstances, he trusted she'd stop hiding things from him. Plus, hours before (at least, he assumed it had been hours) she'd returned the device to him.

"Well, we were with Rose," Clara thought hard, "Then she got annoyed at us all intruding and kicked us out..."

"...So we went back to the TARDIS..." Eleven continued, "And _you_ four were..."

"...We were having breakfast," Mickey concluded. Granted, it didn't seem to be a partiularly astoundig tale so far.

"And Clara was whining that she was tired," Amy muttered.

"Clara's always tired," Eleven said, though he didn't quite know what that meant. He certainly didn't intend it to be a dig about sex, but Clara seemed to take it that way and elbowed him, "Ow!"

"Focus!" she told him, and he shut up.

"Oh look, now the floor's changed colour," Martha pointed out, and everyone looked down at the red and white tiles, rather than black and white.

"This is like a badly written story," Clara muttered, "Ow!" she then exclaimed, and waved her arm around, and Eleven heard a buzzing and a ball of black fuzz seened to shoot past his face, "That bee just stung me!"

"Bee!?" Amy stared around. The little bee wasn't harming anyone though(except the Doctor's wife), and was perched on a mucky glass on the countertop of the bar, bumbling quite happily. At least, he _thought_ that was what bees did. He, admittedly, was no expert.

"Yes, look!" Clara dragged up her coat sleeve and revealed a small red blot on her right arm, and Eleven took her arm at the wrist and the elbow and crouched down to examine it. It certainly _looked_ like a bee sting. He pinched it for her and pulled the stinger out of her skin where it was lodged.

"How did it sting you though your coat?" Martha asked.

"And why isn't it dead if it stung you?" Rory asked. Clara was at a loss, but she was definitely stung.

"Not allergic, are you?" Eleven asked her worriedly.

"I think I'd've told you if I was."

"Hmm..."

"Hate bees..." muttered Amy, "But this is really weird. Why is everything changing?"

"Telltale sign of an unstable reality," Eleven said, looking around, though he didn't know what for just yet, "But..." he flicked the glass with the bee on it, and the creature buzzed off and straight out of the smashed pane of door, "Feels stable."

"Dreams always feel real when you're having them," Mickey pointed out. Which was true enough. But the Doctor didn't think it was a dream at all.

"I don't think it's a dream at all," he said what he'd just thought.

"So what is it?" Martha asked.

"Shhh," he said.

"The Silence!?" Rory exclaimed.

"What? No, not them. I just meant be quiet," he said, leaning on the bar, "Where were we? Clara complaining about being tired at breakfast?" he asked brightly, putting on the false pleasantness to try and hide his deep suspicion and unease. He had positioned himself so he had all eyes on the group to watch them, and the front windows. And if at least one of them was looking at him, the favour would be repaid. He'd never thought he'd be so glad that Clara often seemed to be incapable of taking her eyes off him for more than a handful of minutes.

"Yes," Clara clarified begrudgingly.

"Then what happened?" Eleven asked.

"Luke offered to make all of us coffee," Martha shrugged, "Including Jack and Donna."

"Maybe Jack and Donna are here too?" Rory suggested, "Wherever 'here' is."

"Maybe..." Eleven mused, "Does anyone have a phone?" The five others all instantly checked their pockets, but all drew a blank. "No way to contact anyone. Is your mind patch working?" he asked Clara. Even in such a delicate state as she was in, Eleven had enough faith in Oswin to figure out what was happening.

"No," Clara answered after a few moments. That was unfortunate, Eleven thought.

"This is too weird," Martha shook her head.

Nobody said anything, the Doctor watching out into the gloom of the night. Until a glint of light on metal caught his eye and he frowned, and his grip on the counter behind him he was leaning in tightened, his skin stretched taut on bone.

"Doctor?" Rory asked, glancing outside, "Did you see something?" He didn't think that lying would do anyone any good, but he didn't want to worry anyone either... So he said nothing for a couple of seconds as he mulled the prospects of his options over.

"Chin?" Clara asked, following his frozen gaze outside.

"Doctor, what was it?" Mickey asked.

"I think it was a person."


	12. Hearing Voices

_Eleven_

_Hearing Voices_

"A person?" Martha asked, "Are you sure?"

"Unless the machete was floating of its own accord, then yes, I'm sure there was a person," the Doctor said calmly. There was no reason to panic, they were just stranded alone in a diner in a woods in a storm with no obvious route of eacape and someone outside with a very large blade. Getting panicked wouldn't do anybody any good.

"A machete!?" Clara exclaimed, "You don't think you might've mentioned that first!?"

"I didn't think it was important!" he defended himself, "After all, if any of you get cornered by someone with a machete, I don't see what you can really do about it." And then Clara hit his arm quite hard. "Ow! Wifey!"

"Please don't have a domestic," Martha groaned. Clara refrained from hitting him a second time as he rubbed his arm with his other hand, "Do you have no idea what's going on?"

"Of course I do! We're clearly in a fractured reality somebody is controlling," Eleven said, "Which is why Clara got a bee sting when she criticised it. So nobody criticise it."

"Like a simulation?" Amy asked.

"We're not in the simulators, are we?" Rory queried.

"Well, I... I suppose we _could_ be," Eleven admitted, "But we'd remember either being knocked out and forced into them, or going into them voluntarily. So I don't think so."

"Then what is it?" Mickey said.

"Well, I don't know. But I _do_ know that the hole in the door isn't doing an awful lot of good at keeping the knife-person out," Eleven advised, nodding at it.

"If somebody's controlling this, then nothing we do will keep the knife-person out," Clara hissed.

"And they can probably hear you whisper if they control everything," Eleven told her, and she shushed.

"_The short girl quietened when the tweed-clad man told her off_," a voice all of a sudden boomed overhead. Tweed-clad!? Nothing wrong with tweed, he thought to himself. It was a symbol of class. A bold fashion statement on occasion, too.

"Why am I the short girl!? Martha's the same height as me right now! I have heels on!" Clara protested.

"_Little does he know that she secretly hates him_," the narration from above continued. Clara didn't hate him, if Clara hated him, she would never have given in to the shower. And she probably wouldn't agree to marry him on a daily basis, either.

"Why is there a disembodied voice trying to pretend Whoufflé hate each other..?" Amy asked carefully. Eleven didn't have an answer for that.

"Is this your sister?" Martha asked Clara, who shrugged.

"_None of them yet know that the girl's sister... Is dead_," it paused for dramatic effect and everything. Everybody frowned. Did it know who they were or not? It took away his screwdriver, but didn't know about Oswin and the fact she was very, _very_ dead and they all knew it?

"_It was a dark and stormy night, the rain was pouring down in what was a bad storm. Lightning flashed, rain fell, but all was quiet,_" the voice said.

"How is it queit if lightning is flashing? What about thunder?" Clara asked it, just as there was a bright flash of lightning across the sky outside like a glowing scar in the clouds. And it illuminated the knife-person, outside, with what was now a scythe (a scythe? Really?) standing in front of the trees. Everyone screamed at the sight of it, and Clara attached herself to his arm.

"I don't think the disembodied voice likes you, sweetheart," he told her.

"_The tall, ugly ginger one almost makes a joke about how nobody likes the short girl_," the voice declared.

"OI!" Amy yelled, and Clara snorted, now she wasn't the one being insulted. Well, she was a little, but Eleven didn't think it wise of him to point that out while she was distracted.

"I was actually about to make that joke," Martha admitted.

"Oh, thanks, Martha," Clara grumbled.

"Sorry!" she half-heartedly apologised.

"_It's true though. Everyone thinks the short girl is annoying,_" it said.

"Are you sure that's not your sister?" Eleven asked Clara.

"Umm..." Clara thought, "Oh, I wonder if Gerald's here? He was asking me for mangos earlier..."

"What does that even-?"

"Shh," Clara shushed Rory and they paused and waited for the voice to say anything else.

"_Nobody knows what the short girl is talking about. The loneliness of the forest is taking its toll on her brainium,_" it said.

"'Brainium'? What?" Amy asked.

"It's not Oswin," Clara said, "Oswin would've let me out if she heard that."

"Who on the TARDIS doesn't like Amy _or _Clara?" Martha mused.

"_The OTHER short girl is confused and obviously stupid_."

"What!? Is that me!?" Martha demanded furiously.

"_None of the girls know how funny it is when they are angry._"

"Who on the TARDIS doesn't like girls?" Mickey rephrased Martha's question.

"Jack?" Eleven suggested.

"This is so weird..." Rory sighed.

"_None of the clan know what is about to happen. They don't know about the ghostly, axe-wielding creeper in the forest, circling them. He can smell fear on the rain, THEIR fear, as stongly as if he were right in beside them. He is pawing at the ground, seeing through the dark by some unnatural, unknown means_-"

"Is he a cat?" Amy asked it.

"Cat with an axe?" Clara furthered the question.

"Oh, an axe now, is it? First a machete, then a scythe," Eleven said, pretending to be bored.

"_They don't know that they are all going to feel the wrath of his cool, bloody blade in their neck, and they will all-_"

"It should be 'necks', plural," Clara pointed out.

"_-Die_," it finished its sentence, but it wasn't done, "_He will manifest their greatest fears. The god of fear, Necropyro, and-_"

"That's just Latin for dead-fire!" Eleven argued with it - what were they in, a poorly written fanfiction!? Dead-fire! Of all things! God of fear! The only frightening thing about all this was the low-quality of the narrator's lines.

"_-AND THEY WILL FACE THEIR DEMONS_," it had to raise its volume to speak over them insulting its poor story-telling capabilities.

"Well my greatest fear is waking up from weird dream-simulations," Clara said. Nothing happened though, so apparently the Voice didn't believe her. Perhaps it had some kind of genuine, psychic insight into their heads'? But then again, it didn't seem to have learnt any of their names yet, so probably not. Eleven thought that it was playing on generic fears, like the claustraphobia of the diner, being lost in the woods. Not to mention Necropyro God of Fear and Fluctuating Bladed Weaponry.

"Well!" Eleven said, and he would have clapped his hands, were his left one not motion-impaired by Clara holding it tightly, and also the rest of his arm, "I think we should build a barricade. Just because of the knife-man outside."

"I think you mean Dead-fire, the god of fear," Amy corrected him.

"Oh, yes, of course..." he muttered, shaking his head, looking around for any moveable objects. Really, there were just stools, since all the tables and benches were attached by nails to the floor and walls.

"We should find some weapons," Mickey said.

"What we _shouldn't _do is split up," Rory said to Mickey, mainly, when the latter started to walk off, "That's what happens in every horror film. And then people die."

"I agree with Rory," Eleven said, "Stay together. Now. Let's go tactically position those stools."


	13. Fear Factory

**AN: This was so painful to write. Thank god it's only one chapter.**

_The Narrator_

_Fear Factory_

_The sky was as black as a black raven's wings, the feathers flapping through the air and making the clouds ragged and torn in the sky above. Rain was bulleting down onto the ground, making the grass swim with brown mud sludge. Yet, despite the heavy rain, the sky was clear and the full moon beamed down onto the ground, illuminating the world whitely through the sticky darkness. It was pitch black, the only light source being the green, flickering sign of the small, run-down diner, the lights within shining out as well, penetrating the night. And it smells of liquor._

_There are six people in the diner, six people, trapped, with only five others for company. They had not never met before this day, whence they become stuck and puzzled in the bar. There is an annoying short girl, and then also the angry short girl. Also, tall ginger girl with a strangely contorted bone structure. Finally, there is a man with flopping hair and tweed and a bow tie. Last of all are two men, who would like nothing more than to leave. Little do the others know that they are gay lovers?_

"You two are gay lovers?" _the ginge disbelieves._

"No!" _the blondish one exclaims in rage, pretending to be an homophobe._

"Seriously, if a kid in my English class wrote something this appalling and then read to me and forced me to listen to it, they would get a detention," _short-arse speaks, just as a spider seems to conjure into existence above her and falls right on her head. Annoying Short Girl squeals like a pig and flails wildly to get it away, and it lands on the floor and scuttles off._

"Spiders don't scuttle," _says Other Angry Short Girl_, "That's crabs." _Other Angry Short Girl has crabs_.

"If it says you have crabs, maybe you do?" _Blond Gay Man (Gay Man One) says._

"My publishers would totally reject this,"_ Ginger says, _"Wouldn't even look at it. I mean, Necropyro? God of Fear?" _She says this frightenedly, trying to hide her fright from the other members of the battalion_.

"'Battalion' is not a synonym for 'group,'" _Annoying Short Girl declares wrongfully,_ "Can you take constructive criticism or not? Seriously? Come on." _They are all terrified, because their deepest, darker fears are known to Necropyro, the fearful God of Scaring_. "I'm seriously wondering if we're in Monsters Inc. or something."

_Necropyro knows that the Annoying Short Girl fears most is commitment. She could not have a man. She would leave, after sex, because she is a heartless user. Every man ever has left her at the altar. She frowns, like she didn't know Necropyro was aware of all this about her. But Necropyro sees all, as he is a god, and gods see all._

_The Ginger's biggest fear was brunettes._

"I'm quite sure it's not," _said Floppy Tweed Man: brown-haired Floppy Tweed Man… Ginger is downright terrified, though she was hiding it well._

"This is the worst tense-agreement I've ever heard,"_ the Ginger will say arngrily_, "Oh, for heaven's sake, you don't have to read your misspellings out loud as well. 'Arngrily'?" _She slips, stupidly, on nothing, and hits her face on the table. There's blood, and her nose is crooked_.

"I said it was dangerous," _Floppy Tweed Man points out. Probably the only clever one, the only one who was still aware of Necropyro's stalking outside._

_Lightning flashed outside, to reveal an empty space opposing the diner._

"Ooh, Necropyro's gone,"_ Floppy Tweed Man pointed out. He was right, the dark-clothed skulker has moved. Circling his prey._

"Maybe he's gone on holiday to somewhere where the weather's nicer?"_ Annoying Short Girl suggested very annoyingly. She was annoying._ "I get that, thanks. I'm annoying. You don't have to keep calling me 'Annoying Short Girl'."

"You could call her the Annoying Twin, that's what everyone else calls her," _Angry Short Girl suggested angrily._

"Then what do you call my sister!?" _she demanded._

"Oswin," _Angry Short Girl would reply._

"Oh, great…"

_Angry Short Girl's worst fear is bats. They are terrifying her. Wings and faces, like winged rat-rodents, torturing her as she sleeps and they flock around the window and throw themselves repeatedly against the glass. They are in her nightmares always. The bats. She never escapes from the paralytic fear of flying sonic monsters._

"You're scared of bats?" _Gay Man Two asks her._

"How long have we been married, Mickey? I think if I had a paralysing fear of bats haunting my nightmares, you'd know,"_ Angry Short Girl lied. She does not know that her apparent husband is gay, and in love with Gay Man One. Gay Men One and Two give each other shifty looks – wondering if people are onto them._

_Floppy Tweed Man has a secret fear as well. His fear was fruit. Although mainly, it was pears. The green, reverse-light bulb cretins._

"How does it know!?" _Floppy Tweed Man hisses to Annoying Short Girl._

"Doctor," _begans Ginger,_ "It doesn't. It was a lucky guess."

"I hate pears!" _Pears frighten him to his core_.

"Oh, a pear-pun, very funny," _Gay Man One criticises. He is the bad seed of the group._ "And another one!" _They have all forgotten Necropyro is STALK-ing them._

"Maybe we wouldn't have picked that one up if you didn't put such a massive emphasis on 'stalk'," _Ginger muttered._

_Pears are the things woven into Floppy Tweed Man's darkest, DARKEST dreams. Nobody knows why this is, but the truth is, when he was a very young child, there were some boys at his school. They were eating pears, a few years above him. But they didn't like him. They called him 'queer', and then… They stuck the pair up his anus._

"WHAT!?" _Floppy Tweed Man yelled_, "That has NEVER happened! I just don't like the texture! That's disgusting! Why would you think of that!?"

"Very defensive, sweetheart. Sure you don't have something you want to tell me?"_ Annoying Short Girl asks._

"No! Nothing! I have never had a pair – or any kind of food – inserted up… _There_! That isn't the intended use of fruit!" _he protests, furious._

_Gay Man Two can laugh about this, but it isn't so different to his OWN twisted demon._

"Err…?"_ Gay Man Two is confused. He was trying to distract everyone from his damning fear of horses._ "How is a horse anything like a pear?" _When he was a young boy, a horse trampled him to death._

"What!?" _Angry Short Girl shouted_, "That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard. He's not dead. He's alive. He's right there." _Gay Man Two is a ghost._

"Oh, wonderful,"_ said the ginger_, "That explains everything. Come on then? What's Rory's phobia? Apples? Goats?"

"Sounds like my sister," _mutters the Annoying Short Girl._

_Gay Man One has, perhaps, the most debilitating phobia of all of the gang. He has chairophobia. Fear of chairs, and sitting down. They frighten him beyond measure. He has not sat down since the age of nine, after he rocked back too far on a chair, and split his head open on the floor._

"That has literally never happened to anyone in the history of ever," _Ginger declares assuredly. She cannot believe that Gay Man One has kept any secrets from her._

_Phobias revealed, people raw and bleeding from emotion, they have all forgotten one thing._

_They have forgotten that there is a back door._

"Shit."


	14. Necropyro: God Of Fear

_Clara_

_Necropyro: God Of Fear_

Having an obnoxious narrative voice dictate your every moves was indubitably annoying, Clara decided, especially when the narrative wasn't even well written. She thought if it _was_, she could possibly move on from it. And also if she couldn't hear it. It wasn't like characters in books were always privy to how the narrator was depicting what was going on all the time, and she really wanted it to shut up.

Thankfully, after it had announced their fatal error of not barricading the backdoor that hadn't existed five minutes ago (urgh), its continuous string of inconsistent, contradictory description stopped gracing them with its presence and pissed off. Hopefully to describe what ever 'Necropyro' was doing.

All six of them looked up at the kitchen, through the window behind the counter that allowed food to pass in between the kitchen and the waiters without needed to use the door, and saw the figure standing there. Perhaps a competent writer would have been able to think of something genuinely frightening to place there, but what it looked like was a tall hooded figure brandishing a rusty pitchfork – and Clara thought that the scariest thing about it was the risk of contracting some kind of disease from the decaying weapon if she ended up being stabbed by it. Necropyro stood, faceless, breathing loudly.

"It's like if a dementor became a farmer," Martha whispered, and Clara saw Eleven trying to resist laughing, because undoubtedly the fright-deity wouldn't appreciate being laughed at when he was supposed to be the terrifying God of Fear.

Clara, however, ate her words.

The stand-off between Necropyro and the sextet ended, when Necropyro roared. Roared a sonic sound, like a bat, only it was completely deafening and high-pitched and they were all physically pushed backwards by it, when it raised its hand, the lights above them flickered and flashed and then a stool somehow threw itself across the room. _Oh great!_, Clara thought, _It's bloody telekinetic!_ Which it was, and the stool ended up hitting Rory in the face.

"Oh my god!" Amy exclaimed, immediately going to his aid when Necropyro roared again and conjured a cloud of bats from nowhere to flock after Martha. Now, Martha didn't have a bat phobia, but Clara thought that it was entirely reasonable for anyone to run away when a quite obviously-murderous cloud of the things was wailing and trying to claw at you. Which was what Martha did, wildly throwing down the barricade they'd built at the hole in the door and running out into the night, hounded by sky-rats.

Somehow, Necropyro was actually managing to utilise the fears the narrator controlling it had pretended they all had, and was using imaginary phobias against them. Clara reached for Eleven's hand and started trying to pull him out of the door. Mickey had gone straight after Martha, and the Ponds were distracted by Rory's apparently severe back injury from the Stool of Death that had been flung at him. A huge clump of what looked like hair then seemed to fall out of the very air above Amy Pond – _brown_ hair, specifically – and landed on her, so huge and heavy that she was knocked over and Clara didn't know if she could breathe or not. But she _did_ know that Necropyro only had three people left to attack with stupid, falsified fears.

"But the Ponds-!" Eleven protested against Clara.

"-Will be fine! He's after _us_ now, not them!" she shouted at him, the storm suddenly picking up outside, the noise of booming thunderclaps and howling winds and cascading rain. She could barely hear anything out of the weather as she dragged him through the smashed door, finally convincing him that the pair of them were in fair more danger from pears and commitment than the Ponds were from chairs and hair.

They heard a neigh though, and then a distinctly male, Mickey-esque scream. Maybe he _was_ scared of horses? But then, Clara didn't have a horse phobia. And she thought she would be beside herself if she got attacked by a horse. Especially if it wasn't one horse, it was a _lot_ of horses, which she gathered there were going after Mickey going by the sound of galloping hooves and multiple whinnies she heard.

"Which way!?" she asked him, hoping he had some kind of notion where they could go to escape from Necropyro and the annoying narrator.

"I don't know! Down the road or into the woods!?" he suggested their only two options. And they _were_ their only options. Clara would have suggested a car, but there were none, and she was getting quickly soaked from the rain, and the road offered no protection. So she started to make for the trees and he followed, hoping for any inkling of shelter the canopy of the branches would offer her from the storm.

"Do you have any idea what's going on yet!?" Clara asked him.

"I don't know! It could be Jack and Rose getting you back for that weird simulation you put them in two weeks ago?" he suggested.

"No, then Oswin would be here! And none of the others were anything to do with that! This is so. Awful. Urgh!" she complained.

Lightning flashed above and the figure of Necropyro was suddenly in front of them, where it threw a knife straight at Eleven's head. Clara shrieked out in fear for him, but he managed to duck and the knife lodged itself firmly into a tree behind them. A second later he was brandishing a katana above his head and he roared again, and they ducked and went left.

But Eleven seemed to trip and stumble on something, and when Clara looked back, a net of pears that had been hanging in the tree above with a _bloody tripwire_ connected had triggered, and the fruits had all fallen straight down onto him, knocking him straight over and off his feet. And she didn't know what to do, she didn't know if she should help him free from the pears or not. So instead, she just stood still, more or less completely useless.

Until she felt a stabbing pain in the third finger on her left hand – her ringer. She yelped and brought her hand to her face, and then saw a little bit of blood spurt out from the stump there where her wedding ring had been. But apparently, her wedding ring had cut off her finger completely, and she saw the pink, bloody think in the mud by her feet. She supposed that was a symbol of her fear of commitment.

* * *

She coughed when she woke up, and after the surreal darkness of the forest Necropyro had been inhabiting, she was blinking against bright light, and she thought she was being shaken.

"What the hell have you lot gone and done!?" she said. No wait. She didn't say that. It was someone who sounded like her.

"What have _me_ done!?" Clara was sat down, but she pushed herself to her feet, squinting blearily at Oswin, "Says YOU!"

"What? Come here," Oswin said when Clara stumbled and slipped.

"I can't stand…" Clara mumbled.

"Oh, really? Join the club, Clars," Oswin said darkly, going over to Clara and pressing the back of her hand to Clara's forehead. And then she stood on tip-toe, perched on her right foot only, and forced Clara's eye open with her fingers. "Why are your pupils so dilated? What have you taken!?"

"Gerroff," Clara grunted, meekly pushing Oswin away. Oswin stepped back and crossed her arms, and Clara saw other people in the room, too, and then recognised the room as the brand new interior of the TARDIS, all the circular, white furniture and the blue carpet. Adam Mitchell was standing by too, and so was Ten. And she definitely saw a ginger who _wasn't _Amy. She couldn't quite discern who the others were as she found her left hand with her right and checked her finger was intact. When she found it was, she tried to force her wedding ring off her finger.

"What're you doing!?" Oswin demanded of her.

"It cut off my finger! I only had three!" Clara shouted.

"Well, I can see how that would be debilitating for you, honey. You'd be a rubbish lesbian," Oswin muttered, "Your wedding ring doesn't have a knife attachment, Clara, I'm sure."

"I don't care! Are there any pears!? There were horses. And _bats_," Clara hissed dangerously.

"What!? Okay, okay. What happened?" Oswin sighed. Why was she out of her room? She wasn't supposed to be leaving her room. Had someone coaxed her out? Who'd managed that?

"There was a diner, and then Necropyro the God of Fear tried to kill us!"

"Who the hell is Necropyro!?"

"Where's Necropyro!?" Martha demanded urgently, and Clara looked to her right and saw the other five all slumped over the table as though they were sleeping, mugs in front of them, "And the bats!?"

"Luke, are you sure you don't know what happened?" The Tenth Doctor asked Luke Smith. Who was loitering in the kitchen, Clara saw. The others were apparently waking up though, and all asking identical questions about Necropyro, bats, horses, hair, pears and chairs.

"Someone has clearly drugged them all," Oswin said, "Is this what happens when I'm not around for half a day? Almost half the crew get drugged?"

"Drugged how?" Jack challenged, "C'mon, it must've been on the TARDIS. And we _all _had the same coffee Luke made."

"Well do you and Donna take sugar?" Oswin asked in a patronising voice. Jack paused, and didn't say anything for a few moments, until both himself and Donna answered in the negative. "There you go, see? It's the sugar. Clearly."

"Oh! It was… Urgh!" Luke seemed to suddenly realise something, "My sister likes to mess around with stuff in the attic," he pulled a little box of sweeteners out of his pocket and tipped one into his hand, "Yeah, this isn't really sugar… I knew I recognised 'Necropyro', she writes weird stories."

"Your sister," Clara began, "Has the _worst_ grammar, of…" she fainted.


	15. Friends Without Benefits III

_Ten_

_Friends Without Benefits II_

Adam Mitchell was asleep, and Clara was asleep, which left the Tenth Doctor the only other person to be considered 'eligible' to do a stint watching Oswin. So they were sitting in the library, at some early hour of the morning, which was where he often spent his brooding time. As Donna called it. Which was why he'd been avoiding her for a while – he was sick of it being pointed out he was brooding.

"I've never really minded it, you know," Oswin said with a slight sigh. She was sat on the floor, leaning on one of the bookshelves with her feet out. Ten was stood up nearby, perusing the new collections Eleven had spent the three-hundred years of his lifetime gathering. Three centuries was time to gather a lot of books, Ten noted, from all across the stars.

"Minded what?" Ten asked, not really looking at her. Not that he wasn't listening – he was. He was always interested in listening to the idle musings of Oswin Oswald. Her being the smartest girl in the universe, he would have thought she had some interesting things to say.

"Missing a leg," she said, "I guess I never went anywhere though, being stuck in an attic any everything, so it wasn't a big difference. It's what it reminds me of, really."

"War scars," Ten said to her, and she laughed sadly.

"Mmm, yep. War scars," she agreed, "Plus it doesn't look like a leg." Ten looked around to see her staring at it with a frown. He had to agree with her though, it didn't look like a human appendage of any sort. "I think I might make up a story about how I lost it. I don't want to tell anybody the truth." The Doctor didn't know how far he agreed with her there, though. But he wasn't going to tell her what she should and shouldn't do. "How do you atone for your sins?"

"Um – sorry?" he was taken aback, and had to think for a moment, "Do good?"

"Oh, yeah, I could do one good deed for every person I've murdered," she said sarcastically, then in an almost sing-song (but blatantly bitter and resentful) voice she said, "How – many – people – have – I – killed?" rocking her head either said for each world. And then she hit the back of her head on the bookshelf on purpose and slumped down further. "12,126."

"You know the exact number?" Ten asked her.

"Don't you?" she challenged him darkly. She wasn't looking for an answer, she already knew it was 'yes'. Ten knew how many lives had been lost as a result of him.

"A lot of humans might not take the care," Ten said quietly.

"I don't know what 'a lot of humans' would do. 'A lot of humans' are dead because of me," she said, "10,082 on Horizon, in Heph alone. 466 in other bomb attacks on Horizon. 1578 on Quadrant Twelve in both of those Drifter Squadrons. Not to mention, probably millions of Daleks."

"Haven't you killed more than enough Daleks to make up for it, then?" Ten asked her carefully, trying to gauge if she was a particularly superficial person or not, "For how many other lifeforms each Dalek would kill, isn't it the greater good?"

"The 'greater good' is an idiom people use when they can't face the truth, Doctor, and it's an idiom I lived by. But I'm not alive anymore, so maybe I need a new one. Like, every death at my hand is a bad death." Ten knew he disagreed with her, and he thought that maybe sometimes some things needed to happen. But he wasn't exactly going to stop her on her quest to not-kill people. "And no amount of good deeds can bring all those people back."

Ten sat down next to her, and she kept staring ahead into space, as though deep in thought.

"You could do so much good, you know," he said.

"Yeah, but I've already done so much bad. You know what? Eternal life is so much more of a curse. I mean, people say it's a curse, but they don't understand. I'm not even alive – I'm half alive. I don't taste, or smell, or really feel any touch. Can't eat or drink or breathe or sleep. But I don't have the personal audacity to label it a torture in comparison with actual death, though sometimes I think I'd rather have had that."

"Don't think like that," Ten said, "You didn't have a choice on Horizon."

"Yes I did, I had the same choice I always had. The choice I eventually made – to leave, and sacrifice my family in the process. I mean, I thought that's what I was doing. I didn't know they survived. I could've done that straight away, when I was twenty, instead of waiting around for five years and losing a limb."

"You're just bargaining now," he told her, "Now, listen, you're brilliant, Oswin Oswald. Everyone knows it. Nobody has a clean past, we all have ghosts – some more than others – but you'll find opportunities to do good things. You're the one who created the antidote to the plague on Jack the Ripper's people – from what I heard."

"That sounds bad when you phrase it that way!" she protested, "He was called Kohg, and he killed those women for…"

"The Greater Good?" Ten suggested.

"Urgh. He did what he had to do."

"And you didn't?"

"No! No, I didn't!"

"Hindsight is 20-20," Ten told her, "Another idiom for you. You're convicting yourself, and I know more than anyone what that's like. You could keep a list of all the good things you do."

"What – and do the sums? How indignant to the dead is that? I added up enough coffee-runs to wipe them clean off my conscience?"

"No. But it'll remind you that you're not a bad person."

"The Eleventh Doctor thinks I'm a bad person," Oswin pointed out, in a last-ditch attempt to make him admit that she was a demonic human who needed to be smited down or something. He laughed though, which she didn't appear pleased about.

"No, no. He thinks _he's_ a bad person. All his problems are about him. Anyway, even if he does, I don't, and we all know that _I'm_ the best Doctor," said Ten. She smiled. And _then_ her phone rang.

"Oh, great," she said when she checked it.

"What?" he asked.

"UNIT are calling me," Oswin said, "This better not be about that blood – I left them an IOU and everything. I don't want to speak to them."

"It's UNIT though, it's probably important," Ten said.

"If it's _so important _then why don't _you_ answer it?" she held out her phone to him. He stared at the screen as it rang, and frowned.

"Are you _sure_ this is UNIT? Because the name… Well… It's not UNIT, that's for sure…" The name on the phone read '_Untidy Neglected Infected Twat_'.

"Yes, it has the same initials," she said. Nevertheless, he answered very guardedly.

"Hello?"

"_Hel- Doctor?_" said a female voice.

"Yes, this is him," said Ten, putting the phone on speaker, "Who's this?"

"_Brigadier Kate Stewart_," she answered.

"She's _the_ Brigadier's daughter," Oswin whispered to him.

"You're-? Kate! Wow! You know, I don't believe we've met! Isn't this exciting?" Ten was beaming.

"_I'm sure we've met already, and why are you using Oswin Oswald's phone?_" Brigadier Kate Stewart asked.

"She doesn't want to talk to you," he said, "She's not very happy right now. Her leg fell off."

"_What_?"

"What? None of your business, really. Why do you need her?"

"_I don't need her specifically, but nobody was answering the TARDIS phone._"

"Oh, sorry about that," apologised Ten, "I normally would've, but I'm in the library."

"_Well do you think you can get down to UNIT headquarters quite quickly? We have a problem_."

"Oh? What sort of problem?"

"_A werewolf problem_."


	16. Above The Noise

_DAY SEVENTY-SEVEN_

_Ten_

_Above The Noise_

Shortly after the phonecall from UNIT, Oswin ended up recieving a text notifying her of the awake-ness of her boyfriend, and decided to leave Ten alone in favour of spending time with Mitchell. She'd mumbled something about needing to apologise to him for some kind of outburst the previous day. Then she'd tried to teleport away, before forgetting that her artificial limb exceeded the boundaries of her Sphere's teleportation capabilities, and she trudged away, her footsteps odd-sounding.

It was about an hour after that, that Ten had gotten bored of searching though his future self's books, and got to his feet and took the same route as Oswin had back to the main room (Martha had humorously nicknamed it 'nerve centre' the day before) - though, he did _not_ go to Adam Mitchell's bedroom. That would be weird.

It was dark, the lights all off aside from the ones in the kitchen where somebody stood, apparently making something.

"Morning!" Ten called, and Martha - for that was who it was - jumped, "Oh, sorry. Didn't mean to scare you."

"I'm just jumpy," Martha replied, "Keep thinking about bats." She notably cringed there, "I wasn't even scared of them, but then I had a nightmare and now I can't get back to sleep."

"Making a snack, then? Midnight snack?" Ten suggested, bouncing over, eagerly awaiting the opportunity when he could propose that she come with him to investigate Brigadier Kate Stewart's werewolf problem, which she had nicely refused to elaborate on over the phone.

"It's seven o'clock," Martha said.

"Early bird catches the worm," he said, taking the jar of marmalade she'd just been using and dipping his finger into it. She looked at him disgustedly. "Wha'?" he asked, mouth full of jam.

"Don't put that back in the cupboard where someone else will eat it," she told him.

"Oi!" he protested, "I am _not_ diseased, Martha Jones. I'm perfectly clean." He scooped another lot of marmalade out with his fingers.

"You're putting me off my toast! Worse than Mickey when he goes the toilet and then tries to eat crisps without washing his hands," Martha muttered.

"Eugh. Humanity's lack of grip on hygeine still confuses me..." he sighed.

"Says you! You'll put anything in your mouth," Martha said. And really, he couldn't argue with her at all.

"So," he said, "_Martha Jones_."

"What do you want?" she asked him, obviously suspicious.

"I got a call from UNIT a few hours ago," he said.

"Has something come up? If something's come up, I'm coming out with you. I can't stand being stuck around any more," she said.

"Werewolves in London," he said, his eyes lighting up with excitement.

"You're _kidding_?"

"Nope!"

"_Werewolves_!?"

"Yep!"

"Hang on - didn't you already meet a werewolf before? Rose has mentioned something about it. And something about Queen Victoria being a werewolf," Martha said.

"Yep," he answered brightly, "But this is different. I think. I mean, I hope so, or it means we did a terrible job of it in 1879..." he frowned to himself, before shaking himself out of it, "Anyway! Werewolves, Eartha, sounds fun!"

"Won't Luke be annoyed at you for taking ages to fix K-9?"

"Luke-Schmuke! He can come too if he wants, I'm sure he'll be beneficial. And he'll have fun! I think. Is that what teenage boys do? Have fun?" Ten asked her.

"You _do_ know he's only two years younger than Clara?" Martha asked him.

"What!? No! He was only a kid a few weeks ago!" Ten sat down on one of the sofas, next to Martha, who was eating her toast quite contentedly now he'd stopped eating marmalade with his fingers in front of her.

"Yep. Anyway, who else are you going to take?" Martha asked him.

"I don't know. Whoever wants to come," he shrugged.

"Rose'll want to come and see werewolves," Martha said. Ten didn't know what to make of that. He shamefully tried to avoid Rose at most opportunties, especially when that metacrisis of his was lurking about, because they had never been remotely keen on one another.

"How do _you_ know what Rose wants to do?" he questioned.

"Rose is up for anything," Martha shrugged. He could almost hear Oswin saying, "_Too right she's 'up for anything'_" in the back of his mind, probably followed by some excellently-classy joke about homosexual women. "Why? Have you been talking to those twins? _What_ have they been saying?"

"I haven't talked to them!"

"Nice try - I know you and Oswin are all buddied-up," Martha said, dropping her toast on her plate and giving him a rather scary look until he relented.

"She hasn't said anything to me! Why - should she be?"

"No. Oswin has the strange idea in her head that every girl she meets is a lesbian, for some reason," Martha said, "She thinks something's going on with me and Rose."

"Oh, that girl..." Ten said, not knowing what else to say on the subject. He didn't care what was going on with anyone, save for possibly Jack and Jenny, the latter being his daughter, the only other Time Lord present who _wasn't_ defying the laws of reality to simultaneously exist. He had a duty of care to her, and he'd already failed by letting her give herself over to Captain Jack Harkness, of all the people.

It was then that the fabled blonde made her entrance into the 'nerve centre', and Ten found himself wondering what she did at night to occupy her time now she was single. Cried into ice cream pints, probably. Obsessing over the Twins. She looked tired and unhappy, at any rate.

"You alright?" Ten asked her straight away. Her skin had a slight grey pallor to it - perhaps she was ill? Though - where had she been to contract any kind of illness?

"Why do humans make soap smell so nice if it's inedible?" she asked out of the blue.

"You've been eating soap!?" Martha exclaimed, "Lucky thing you're a Time Lord, that's really not good for you." Ten just stared at her, though he was quite interested in how much soap she'd consumed. However, seeing Martha's disdain, she just traipsed past them both into the kitchen and went about making herself some breakfast.

"You in any sort of mood to come out today, then?" Ten asked her.

"I don't know, have you asked Martha's girlfriend yet?" Jenny asked. Martha scowled.

"Pretending me and Rose are a couple isn't going to impress Oswin, she doesn't fancy you," Martha told her sharply, then she turned to Ten and said, "You know, eleven weeks ago I'd never been tangled up with so much lesbian-drama..."

"And now you're tangled up with Rose," Jenny said, still able to hear everything Martha was saying, despite the fact she had lowered her voice to address the Doctor.

Ten sighed, "Ignore her," and then he turned to Jenny, "And you - don't be mean."

"I'm not being mean!" Jenny argued, waving a bottle of milk around in protest, "It's a compliment! Rose is totally hot!" Martha groaned.

"I see what you mean..." Ten muttered to her. Lesbian-drama. Definitely not something he'd had to deal with an awful lot before this whole dimension crash.

At least Donna emerged to rescue the both of them from Jenny's passive advances on Rose Tyler about then, groaning and rubbing her head.

"I hate fighting couples," she said.

"Who's fighting?" Ten asked. The only couple he could rule out were Mickey and Martha, since one of them was next to him.

"Rose and the other one," Donna grumbled, passing Jenny on her way around the sofas into the kitchen to make tea with the kettle the blonde had just boiled. Jenny collapsed onto the sofa opposite Martha and Ten, paying only vague attention as she ate what looked like toast spread with whipped cream and jelly.

"Tentoo? Why? What's happened?" Martha asked.

"I have no idea," said Donna, "Something to do with them visiting home yesterday. It sounded bad though."

"Oh," was all Ten said. He wasn't going to pretend he wasn't interested in this row between his clone and Rose, yet he was more than a little ashamed to admit that he was having to do all he could to avoid begging Donna for every smidgen of information she might have gathered. If only he hadn't been in the library all night, he might have heard...

"It's because he wants to leave," Jenny said, "I heard it too. I think he quite liked living domestically. Might be why he barely ever goes out on here. Lost his taste for adventure." Surprisingly, that made sense, and wasn't the idle comment about this or that he'd come to expect from his daughter recently.

"It's all been kicking off lately, hasn't it?" Martha said to Ten, "First River and Nine, then Jack and Jenny, Oswin's leg, now this." Jenny didn't enjoy the remark about herself, but Martha was right, so she couldn't argue.

"Mmm," Ten said, "Sixteen people under one roof, it's bound to, I suppose." Was anyone above the TARDIS drama? Well, yes, he thought. The Ponds never seemed to get entangled in it, and neither did Mickey, despite the nosiness of his wife. And a few weeks ago, Nine and River, too. Though their status as 'newest couple' (who knew someone would pique Adam and Oswin to the post so quickly?) now made them indubitably interesting to the others.

Rose stormed through the doors, and Ten thought this would have been a lot more dramatic with the wooden doors they used to have, rather than the new automatic slide-y ones. Everyone was quiet though for a few moments as she barged into the kitchen and went to re-fill the keytle, Donna taking her tea and coming into the next room.

"...What happened to Oswin's leg, then?" she asked, taking the scrutiny away from Rose, "I saw it yesterday, but she was ignoring everyone who wasn't unconscious."

"It's, um..." Ten was only half-paying attention, he was watching Rose.

"Doctor?" Martha asked, nudging him.

"Oh, right, her leg, yes, sorry," he babbled, and then went on to tell Jenny and Donna (who had yet to hear the story) as much as he deemed necessary about her teenage 'accident' (he made it clear to them both he didn't know the exact details of this incident, an all-out lie), including River's speculated involvement. Like Rose and Martha the day before, not to mention himself, they didn't believe him straight away. This meant Ten had to go into specifics of describing how this limb-deleting virus worked via the TARDIS and a DNA lock and all that.

"That's a dirty trick," Jenny said.

"What's Oswin done to _her_?" Donna asked.

"Oh, nothing, she's just resentful. Doesn't know what she's done. Probably didn't think about it too much. I expect she had a lot on her mind - it won't do any good to question her about it. Best just let it be," Ten advised. Keeping out of things was for the best, that's what he always thought.

"Anything going on today?" Rose then asked loudly, and Ten jumped.

"Oh, yes," he answered, "I got a call from UNIT about some werewolves in London. I let Martha know already."

"I'm coming," Rose declared. Ten did not ask what agendas she had for so adamantly deciding to come along.

"Werewolves? Sounds exciting," Jenny said.

"Yeah - refreshing after that bloody desert," Donna said. It seemed he'd wrangled four people to come with him out of nowhere - plus Luke, who Martha had already advised he bring along, which made six.

"Well! When shall we leave? As soon as possible?" Ten said, standing up so that he should go retrieve Luke from the guest room in the next corridor on from the bedroom circle.

"I just have to shower..." Rose said, "Need to find a shower... Do you reckon Oswin'll let me use hers?"

"I think Oswin's busy," Ten said, "Best ask Clara."

"What if they're _both_ busy?"

"Oh, just use mine," Donna told her, and Rose nodded and left, Ten waiting until he was sure she was in Donna's room to go and get Luke, aware of Martha following behind him to go get dressed for the day's outing.


	17. Revelations

_Ten_

_Revelations_

He would be damned if he was going to work for UNIT in their current state. They were far too militarised for his liking sometimes, though Martha probably had some pull with them. He had a year (2014), a place (London) and a tip-off from the government (werewolves). And really, that was more than they usually had. Usually, they'd just show up out of the blue(box) wherever they chanced to be and trouble would find them. That's what always happened.

"I thought we were going to UNIT?" Martha asked Ten when they emerged into an alleyway which was, most definitely, _not_ the headquarters of the United Nations Intelligence Taskforce. It was grim and dark and his breath kept clouding in front of him, posters chipping off the black brick walls and a streetlight casting light into a puddle on the ground. It was a huge leap from the stagnant desert of Preyonov, and a welcome one at that. Another day, another planet, and the refreshing air of London.

"I always forget how much I like it here," Ten said, putting his hands in his pockets and grinning as he stared around at the terraces and the skyscrapers of the city, "Breathing in this air..."

"Oh, I wouldn't," Donna told him, "The air's one the reasons we moved to the Canaries."

"I've missed it," Rose said with a slight sigh, "We're back in the... Original dimension now, right?" she asked.

"I think so," said Ten, "But we know where the portal is, if..." He didn't know what 'if' meant, or what he was going to say afterwards. Rose nodded, but didn't say anything, and he cleared his throat a little.

"I thought you said 20_14_..?" Luke asked him, and Ten looked over to see him stopping to pick up a grubby newspaper from the floor.

"Why? What year is it?" Ten asked, sauntering over to peer over Luke's shoulder, as the other four headed over to the alley mouth to explore more of their immediate surroundings.

"The paper says 2017," Luke said, "Three years after you got called... Look at the headline," Luke held out the paper. Only Jenny remained with the both of then, and it was her who read the paper aloud:

"_Contagion Spreads Through Underworld_," she read, for that was the headline of the paper, dated August 1st, 2017, then she took it from Luke and began to report to them what what was written, "_Mysterious lycanthropy plague continues to move through the seedier parts of London, leading to the creation of Zone B_."

"Zone B?" Ten asked, and she shrugged.

"The rest is covered in, um... Something..." Jenny dropped the paper and its curious, brown coating into the puddle below them.

"Doctor?" he heard Donna call from outside the alley, and he looked over to see her beckoning urgently for him to leave, "I think you should see this..."

Intrigued, he followed her out, and they came across something hideous. It was a huge wall, at least fifteen feet high, made of reinforced metal with barbed wire on the top and covered in painted, yellow signs of warning. And then, written big and white, it read, _ZONE A_. So, whatever these Zones were, there were two of them, at least.

"What is it?" Rose asked.

"Quarantine," said Martha, "See the biohazard symbol?" she nodded at that very symbol, in emblazoned yellow, on the side. Going by that, Ten assumed they were _outside_ of Zone A, rather than within. But he couldn't see a way in from where he was.

"This is... Worse than anticipated," Ten said slowly.

"Can't we just take the TARDIS back three years to when we got called?" Luke asked.

"No. Not now. Part of events and all, Lukey," Ten told him.

"How come we arrived late? Didn't you all spend _ages_ on fixing all the TARDIS' systems?" Martha questioned him.

"Yeah. We did," Jenny said, "Have you been up to anything?"

"Me!?" Ten exclaimed.

"Yes, you!"

"No! No, I swear!" Ten pleaded, not wanting to be subjected to the wrath of his daughter, of all people. The tiny blonde was scary, that was something he was never going to deny, "I like getting to the right place and time!"

"This smells of sabotage..." Jenny muttered.

"Yes, well, think about that later, there are more important things happening now," Ten said to her, then he turned to the rest of the group, "We're splitting up. There's too many of us, we draw a lot of attention. Rose, Martha and Luke, you three go to UNIT and try to find out what's going on from them."

"Then where are _we_ going?" Donna inquired.

"Into Zone A," Ten said, "Soon as I find the door, that is..."

"You're just gonna leave us to it? Doctor-less?" Rose asked him, and he turned and paused slightly before speaking.

"Um... Yes. That's really what I was... Why? You'll be perfectly safe..." he mumbled. They'd be fine. Rose had control of the time vortex, and superstrength. Luke was a genius, and Martha was a well-valued and appreciated part of UNIT. Probably. If she still worked for them, that was... He'd never asked... He hadn't even known where Donna lived...

"Coming?" someone touched his arm. It was Donna, trying to pull him away.

"Yes, yes!" he forced a beam, "Of course. This way, then?" he wandered off, trailing after Donna and Jenny as the others went a different way.

London always seemed to be a dreary place, but the Doctor loved it because it was so full of life. Bulging with it, in fact, tearing at the seams with fascinating people (even if a lot of those people were very cynical). However, now, as he crept through the gaps between houses to try and follow the Zone wall along and hopefully find any kind of access point, he hardly saw anyone. He wondered if there was maybe even some type of evacuation order.

"If it's August, why is it so cold?" Jenny asked him.

"August!?" Donna exclaimed, surprised at this news.

"I don't think it is, I think the paper was old, it must be later in the year than that," Ten told her, feeling proud of her for asking questions. He even thought himself to be educating her investigative skills.

"So what's going on with Rose?" Donna asked him, and he was startled.

"With..? With, um? Oh, with..? _Rose_? What do you mean? I don't really... We don't... Speak. Why would I know? _How_ should I know?" he found himself rambling. He couldn't read Donna's face at all - he didn't know if she was exasperated or amused, but it was a peculiar mix, to say the least.

"You should talk to her," Jenny said, and he frowned. He wasn't going to lie - he was confused.

"What? About what?"

"_Don't_ talk to her," Donna said, "You'll just confuse her."

"Confuse her about what..?"

"If she should stay or go. She obviously came out here to get away from Tentoo and think things through," Donna said, "And she wants to talk to _you _about it, which is what that back there was all about. But you shouldn't speak to her."

"Why not?" Ten asked coolly. Why wasn't he allowed to talk to Rose, all of a sudden? Even if, in all honesty, he didn't speak to her much _anyway_ because of the fact her husband was so irritatingly cocky about the fact he was married to her.

"Because you'll only confuse her more," Donna said.

"But he needs to tell her," Jenny said to Donna.

"Sorry - what do I need to tell her..?"

"That you don't want her to go and you think she should leave him for you," Jenny said. They were dictating things to him he hadn't even had a chance to think about yet, what with the werewolves and the... Oh, who was Ten kidding?

Every single action of his for _years_ had been a distraction from Rose, and the loss of her, in varying forms. He'd literally _given himself_ to her, but he and Tentoo were not the same. He'd been kidding himself that they ever had been - Tentoo was just a cockier Nine, who thought he was absolved from the Time War because it 'technically' hadn't been him there. He had someone else's memories stuffed in his head. No, he had _Ten's_ memories. _The Doctor's _memories. If he didn't want to stay on board the TARDIS, then that was where they primarily differed. Ten was not going to 'give in' and lead a happy little life in a flat full of family, with crudities like soap operas and routines and weekly traditions and plushy amenities. No Doctor would do that - not even Eleven, with his cosy bedroom and his wife and his wedding rings, would leave the TARDIS.

"And thinking things like that is exactly why he _shouldn't_ talk to her," Donna said to Jenny, "He's not unbiased. And clearly neither are you."

"You just don't want Rose to be happy," Jenny argued with her.

"She _is_ happy!" Donna said to Jenny.

But was she, Ten wondered? He didn't know. But if they _were_ happy, then surely Rose wouldn't be so affected by leaving the TARDIS? She'd be content with him. Maybe it was all about the travelling. Rose wanted the travelling and the stars, nothing more. But... She didn't go travelling with Tentoo. The only time they seemed to spend together appeared to be on the days off. Even then, he saw her with Jack, or Clara, or Martha, more than he saw her with her husband. Her husband was off with Mickey and Rory.

And then... Then... When Rose had returned at first, they had... Of course they had... And she had lied... And he had kissed her, he remembered, and she had been nothing less than _elated_ to his best recollection... Then Tentoo came back, and Ten was flung away, apparently... But what did all that mean? Surely it couldn't... Surely it...

"Dad?"

"Hmm?" Ten smiled, "Sorry, got distracted. Anyway - this Zone. Have we found the door yet?" He walked past them both, trying to let nothing slip of what he'd been thinking about as they argued on his behalf. Little did they know what _their_argument had sparked within the Tenth Doctor, or of the thoughts racing through his mind.


	18. Corporate Espionage

_Martha_

_Corporate Espionage_

As soon as they found a street sign, they were able to figure out where they were in relation to UNIT. Thankfully, the TARDIS had put them down relatively nearby. Well, by car, at least, it was relatively nearby... They were not going by car though, and nobody had money for a taxi, and none of them were too inclined to go steal a car in the middle of crime-addled London.

"What was that fight about this morning, then?" Martha asked, not being able to ignore Rose's peculiarities any longer. She didn't think Luke, however, was interested. He'd probably much rather have gone into the Zone with the Doctor than trailed with the two girls to UNIT. But in fairness, Martha had heard Luke was lucky to even be there, and Ten had fought quite frivolously _against_ him being allowed to tag along with the crew, and being thrown into dangerous situations. Maybe Luke would rather be out with a different of the Time Lords.

"Oh, nothing," Rose evaded her question, pretending to be interested in the thin traffic than what Martha had to say.

"Come on," Martha said, "What's going on with you and him?"

"Nothing. He just wanted to stay at home," Rose shrugged, "Guess he's homesick or something. It's not like he's ever known anything else..."

"Rose, you're lying. He's not homesick. He's the Doctor," Martha said firmly, "The Doctor doesn't-"

"He isn't the Doctor," Rose said flatly, "Do we have to talk about this? About him?" Rose turned to her, and Martha could've sworn she saw golden flecks in Rose's eyes as she looked at her.

"Why does he want to leave?" Martha asked.

"He just does, I don't know," Rose muttered. She was fidgeting with the adrenaline inhibitor on her left wrist as she spoke, but when Martha glanced down she distinctly saw a lack of wedding ring on Rose's hand, and that told her more than Rose herself ever could. So she dropped it, and moved on with a sigh.

"So, werewolves..?" Luke began awkwardly, in the middle of a conversation about Rose's marriage the girl clearly didn't want to have. It was almost ironic, considering Rose was a named partner of the now-disbanded 'Harkness &amp; Tyler Love And Relationships Help Service', or whatever their pseudo-company had been called. And now Jack's relationship had ultimately failed, and apparently Rose's was plenty rocky.

"Oh, yeah. Rose met a werewolf before," Martha said, trying to force Rose into the conversation in order to distract her from whatever else was going on.

"Uh-huh," said Rose, and then Luke was enthralled enough to ask her for the story, and she perked up slightly as Martha discreetly took out her phone to text Clara.

_Have u spoken 2 Roses husband 2day?_ she asked, not caring enough to type with proper grammar, hoping Clara wouldn't decide to be annoying and pick her up on it.

_Trying to steal Rose from her husband is no reason for bad grammar_, Clara replied a moment later, and Martha had to refrain from groaning so that she wouldn't draw attention to herself. Clara hadn't even answered the question, so Martha sent back three question marks until she responded properly. _No, why?_

_They had a fight, Rose has no wedding ring on_, Martha sent back.

_I'll send Theodore to ask discreetly_, Clara replied, and Martha locked her phone and put it away as Rose was wrapping up her tale with a remark on the mysterious royal blood disease the royal family had been afflicted with since the Nineteenth Century.

And then there was a ringing, and heat on the back of her head. Her eyes watered, and she felt her knees hit the floor. All of a sudden, somebody had flogged her right around the back of the head and knocked her right into unconsciousness.

* * *

She woke up in a white room, lying down to her best awareness, and not having much of an idea what else was going on. She squinted through pain, pain originating from the base of her skull, which was where she assumed she'd been clouted. She reached up a hand to it and felt dried blood. Dammit, why couldn't _everyone_ have their own personal nanogene cloud?

"Hey, hey, it's alright," someone said quietly when she tried to sit up, helping her, "We're fine. All three of us are fine." It was Rose. "I mean, I think. Luke isn't actually awake yet."

Martha could see the boy's limp form on another bed nearby, and there was a third, empty bed, which Martha assumed was the one Rose had vacated to come and sit by her and check her wellbeing.

"Did they hit you?" Martha asked her.

"Erm, yeah, but I've had worse," Rose said, "Plus, I recognise this room. I was here about four years ago, I think. Boxing Day, 2013. Or at least, a room _like_ this..."

"Why?" Martha asked.

"It's a UNIT holding cell for 'dangerous' persons," Rose said, "We met a teenager called Rick Thompson, who could fly. He talked to Clara about shoes for a _long _time..." Upon mention of Clara, Martha was instantly inclined to search for her phone. Apparently, however, it had been taken upon arrival.

"Can't you do anything? Or get us out?" Martha hissed.

"Not the best idea," Rose said, "Besides, they have cameras, and they already snuck up on us and knocked us all out. They might have guns."

Martha was about to say something else, but the door was opened and in marched Brigadier Kate Lethbridge-Stewart, looking positively fuming.

"Three years! It has been _three years _since I called you about a _minor_ _problem_! And now look at it!" she raged.

"No need to bloody hit us!" Martha argued, standing up.

"You would be inclined not to swear at your superiors, Dr Jones," Kate snapped.

"I don't work for you anymore," Martha said darkly, "I haven't for years, apparently. And it's hardly our fault if the TARDIS doesn't want to be convenient."

"You're just lucky you were found by our scout teams before you were found by the Hunters, after one of our best defected and stole the scanning equipment," Kate told them.

"Defected why?" Martha asked, "Don't tell me you've gotten even shadier lately." Kate said nothing in response to that, and Luke still hadn't woken up.

"Why'd you knock us out?" Rose demanded, "And where's my adrenaline inhibitor? I need that."

"The scanners picked up on you," Kate said to Rose directly, "Because of your little gift you picked up the last time you were around."

"Mmm," Rose fake-smiled, "Brings me nothing but trouble."

"Tell me - did a second power ever manifest itself with you?" Kate asked.

"No," Rose lied quickly, "None. Guess I was just too powerful already. Why are you taking people off the streets? What are you scanning for?"

"Danger," Kate said, "Electrolytes."

"Supers, then? Why are you scanning for Supers? I thought your problem was about werewolves?" Rose asked.

"If your husband had bothered to listen to me on the phone, then maybe-"

"He's not," Rose said, clenching her fist. She had a grip on Martha's arm, too, and in light of the fact she was - unbeknownst to Kate Stewart - superstrong and lacking of her inhibitor, Martha was understandably worried for herself. "I think you'd better tell us what's going on, _Brigadier_."


	19. A Cold Welcome

_Ten_

_A Cold Welcome_

They came across a hole in the side of Zone A, but it didn't look like it was meant to be there. It looked forcefully manipulated, as though melted down, and it was barely four foot high, meaning all three of them had to stoop to make it through. Ten knew it would be guarded at the 'official' entrance, and that if he flashed his psychic paper they'd probably be forcibly taken to UNIT and the Brigadier, and he didn't want that to happen. So, secretly, into the Zone they crept.

It was a slum. He hadn't known what he'd been expecting - possibly just something the same as the rest of the city, only cordened off? He hadn't expcted to see partially collapsed buildings and waste bin fires scattered around in the middle of roads. He hadn't expected to hear people coughing, all blatantly ill. There were people sleeping out in the streets, and the Zone wasn't nearly as large as he had thought. It was long, but thin, and hardly two streets came between their present location and the opposite, metal barricade. He didn't quite understand how something like this was happening in London, of all places, but it sickened him.

"This is awful..." Donna breathed next to him. Ten rememberd his visit to the Hoovervilles of the Great Depression, and couldn't help but draw similarities between the two situations. "Why is everything wrecked?"

"Werewolves, I suppose?" Ten suggested.

"I wouldn't say taboo words like that, if I were you," Jenny whispered to him, when he got a few shady looks from some of the more rugged inhabitants. Perhaps she was right, and it wasn't a good idea.

He didn't quite know what he was looking for, or who he should talk to. The denizens of the place didn't look particularly hospitable, but the military forces he was sure were lining the exits didn't sound too endearing, either. Especially not if the subjects of all his questions were unwelcome topics in the slums. He didn't want to cross any potential werewolves, that was for sure.

However, all of that was blown out of the water when, after mere minutes in the squat, their path was blocked off by a marauding 'patrol'. It struck Ten as the sort of place where internal hierarchy ruled far above the might of UNIT, or whoever had dumped the people in the Zone.

"Who're you?" a sharp-featured, pale woman asked, narrowing her eyes. Ten recognised her instantly as albino, and it nearly pleased him to see her as the leader of a militant gang of misfits. Perhaps it meant society was growing to be more accepting in the near future.

"Hello! I'm the Doct-" he stepped forwards, holding out a hand by way of greeting, and was punched in the face so hard he completely staggered back. Jenny was the only thing stopping him from falling and knocking himself out on the old stretch of tarmac beneath his feet. "Ow! That isn't how you should treat guests!" He glared at the burly man who'd smacked him.

"Guests get treated how _I_ say," said the girl.

"Yeah? Who're you, the... Queen..?" Jenny questioned.

"What?" Donna asked her quietly.

"I don't know, I couldn't think of anything funny," Jenny hissed at her.

"Right, anyway, who are you?" Ten asked her, stepping forwards again (but slowly, this time, with one of his hands up in surrender and one of them holding his nose).

"I'm the alpha," she said, holding her head high, "The _moon child_."

"Oh, I see you're adopting all the wolfy-lingo, aren't-" Ten got punched again, this time in the eye, "Stop hitting me! I'm a Doctor! I'm here to help!"

"We don't need help," said the 'alpha' coolly, "We are superior." She breathed deeply then, as though summoning some kind of strength. Ten really hoped she wasn't about to turn into a werewolf, but if they could control it, then it bore no correlation to the moon. And _that_ meant it wasn't the same thing at all that they'd been dealing with in 1879, it was something else. Not a 'true' werewolf.

"That'd why you're locked up in here, then?" Ten questioned incredulously.

"It's to keep those degenerates safe," she said.

"Safe from what? From you?"

"Don't act like you don't know," she snarled. They were all _very _animalistic in their actions, and the Doctor couldn't tell if it was visceral or artificial.

"Maybe I don't," Ten shrugged.

"You were just talking about it, I heard you, I have _enhanced senses,_" she said, then she breathed out, "_Werewolves_."

"Well, I mean, don't know anything for certain," Ten said, "Could you maybe, um, englighten us? Perhaps? Just a thought... Bit out of my depth here, I'm afraid. Least until I get some information."

"Tell us what the hell is going on, or I'll shoot you in the face!" Jenny shouted, pushing Ten aside and brandishing a sonic blaster.

"Bloody hell! What're you doing!?" Donna demanded.

"Step back! I'll do it, I swear!"

"You have angered the wolf," said the Alpha.

"Okay, brilliant, Jenny!" Ten shouted at her sarcastically, "Threaten to shoot the wolf monsters! Please, do you have any other grand ideas!?"

"Don't take your sexual frustration out on me!" Jenny yelled right back out of him, and he spluttered, before turning angry.

"My _what_!? I don't have any-!? Give me that!" he snatched the pistol and then threw it to the ground. However, that turned out to be an incredibly bad move, because the firing mechanism triggered and a laser shot straight through the crowd and into the sky. It didn't hit anybody, but it was enough to instigate something, and for the Alpha to yell some kind of attack command.

"Well this is just GREAT!" Donna growled at both of the Time Lords, whom the blame lay with.

It was the Alpha who changed first, and a grotesque sight it was, and she (and the others) were screaming, like they were in terrible pain by this transformation. Claws split through fingernails and skin, bones stretched and warped themselves as fur sprouted through pores, stretching the skin so taut it was unrecognisable across new flesh and muscle growing from nowhere. Her face changed into a snout, nose and mouth and jaw elongating, everything accompanied by a crunching sound, as though bones were breaking and snapping. It was not a wolf, but it was not a person, it was a hybrid of DNA, a stumpy tail, human-enough eyes, and it was stood on two legs, arms handing down at its side as it breathed deeply as soon as the ordeal was over. And _then_ Ten realised why the albino girl was the elected leader of the wolfpack; she was as white as the moon (probably where the 'moon child' nickname came from), and stood out from the rest. The rest of the werewolves. The werewolves who were standing in front of them, who were angry at them, and who had been ordered to attack...

"Well, I... I... Look, a bone!" Ten shouted, pointing. They didn't move, they stared at him, and the others, "...Worth a try... Run!"


	20. Milking It

_Ten_

_Milking It_

"So this is fun," Donna said dryly, cringing as she stepped through sludge and slime. The only place they'd found to escape the marauding wolf pack had been a sewer drain, and so that was where they were, wolves howling from the entrance. Ten dropped down from the ladder after closing the grate above them and sonicking it, causing a splash when he did so, "Did you have to?"

"Yeah! Come on, little bit of dirty water never hurt anybody," Ten beamed.

"Yeah, except everyone who's ever died of cholera," Donna muttered, holding up her phone as a torch, "There aren't alligators down here, are there? Mutated ones?"

"Why on Earth would there be a mutated alligator in a sewer?" Ten asked her, confused.

"Because, people get them as pets, then flush them away, and then you get sewer crocodiles," Donna explained. Ten was baffled.

"Alligators and crocodiles aren't even the same thing," Jenny said.

"Oh, whatever, like you can tell the difference," Donna said.

"They have different noses. Or snouts, whatever. They're different," Jenny said.

"It doesn't matter how they're different, because there aren't any down here. You watch too many films..." he shook his head, "Sorry, can I borrow this?" He took Donna's phone right out of her hand.

"Oh, maybe you shouldn't..." Donna said, "I'm... Expecting a call! From... Shaun!"

"Well, if he rings, I'll let you know," Ten said.

"No, I need it back," said Donna firmly, holding out her hand. Ten paused, confused about why he wasn't allowed to use Donna's phone as a torch.

"Just give her it back," Jenny told him. He didn't move, trying to figure out what was happening.

"Doctor?" Donna asked him, just as the phone rang in his hand. But it wasn't Shaun, it was Amy, "Probably Shaun, better answer," Donna stepped forwards and snatched the phone back, rejecting the call.

"If that was Shaun, why did you hang up?" Ten asked. Donna hadn't even had time to read the name before she clicked the 'lock' button and held her phone up.

"I... Well, I'm not exactly free right now," she said.

"Shouldn't you tell him? So he doesn't worry about you?"

"Oh, no. It'll be fine," Donna assured him.

"Yeah, don't worry about it," Jenny added. What was going on? If he didn't know better, he'd say something was going on behind his back. Something he wasn't allowed to know about. He crossed his arms.

"What is it? Because I saw who that was, it wasn't Shaun, it was Amy," Ten said.

"Oh, was it?" Donna lied, checking her phone, "Oh, it was. Probably just asking us to pick up some milk." Donna's phone rang again.

"Who is it now? Your mother?" Ten asked.

"...No, it's Jack," said Donna.

"Are you gonna answer..?" he asked after a minute, "Probably should, if they're both calling you."

"...Hello?" Donna answered, turning away from Ten. Jenny stood closer than Ten thought she would, given it was her ex-fiancé on the phone, but it was almost like they were blocking Ten from hearing anything. "Yep... Yes... No... No, Jack!" Donna hung up.

"What was that about? Is everything okay?" Ten asked, concerned.

"He was just... Asking me to buy him some skimmed milk. But I hate skimmed milk, so I... Yelled at him," Donna said, "Anyway, phone's on airplane mode now."

"...Donna's very passionate about milk, didn't you know?" Jenny said.

"Love milk," Donna said, nodding, "The higher the percent the better. Full fat for me."

"But we only ever have semi-skimmed on the TARDIS," Ten pointed out, and Donna paused for a moment.

"...I know! And I'm so angry about it! All the time! You never buy the right milk!" she shouted at him.

"Me!? I don't go shopping!"

"Yeah? Well maybe you should," Donna snapped at him darkly, shaking her head as she walked past to lead the group, Jenny trailing after her like the pair of them were suddenly inseparable.

"What!? What just happened!? I'm very confused!" Ten stood still for a few moments before following them, since they were obviously not waiting around for _his_ opinion on anything.

What would Jack and Amy both be calling about that would cause Donna to shout at him and hang up abruptly? While hiding the call from Ten? Which just made him think it was a call about him. But he didn't know what he'd done lately. He had brought Luke onto the TARDIS? But Ten didn't know why that would concern Jack, or Amy. Or Donna, or Jenny, even. What did those four have in common? Nothing, as far as he was aware. What could possibly be so important that Jenny would miraculously forget about her feud with Jack? Just a few days ago she'd turned a radio into a mine and blown him to pieces! So what could it be?

"This is about Rose, isn't it?" Ten stopped dead when it hit him like a train. Jenny and Donna stopped walking and exchanged a look, but a _look_ was all he needed to know he was right. "Come on then. What is it about her that I'm not allowed to know?"

"If Tentoo leaves, and Rose stays, what'll you do?" Jenny asked him, crossing her arms.

"...I... I hadn't thought about it. Why? Do you think he's going to?" Ten asked, crossing his arms and trying to look thoughtful.

"...Let's just keep moving..." Jenny sighed, shaking her head a little. Then Ten heard her whisper to Donna, "_He's clearly already decided_."

"Decided what?" he asked, standing rigid and not moving.

"What to do about these werewolves," Donna told him.

"They're technically not werewolves, they're shapeshifters of some kind. All bearing a common mutation. UNIT are trying to contain it, and you two are trying to change the subject. I'm not an idiot, I wish you'd all stop treating me like a child," he said coolly.

"Yeah, well, so do I," Jenny grumbled.

"You _are_ a child," he told her sharply.

"And _you're _acting like one," she argued, "Pretending you haven't been obsessively thinking about her ever since you found out they've had a fight."

"I'm not-"

"She's right," Donna said.

"Oh, I see, everyone's against _me_ now, are they? What have _I_ done? I've not done anything! Are you all talking about me behind my back? Talking about us?"

"There isn't an 'us', and there isn't a 'we' and there isn't a 'you and Rose' anymore," Jenny told him, and it felt like a punch in the face.

"Shhh," Donna told her, almost as though they were disagreeing.

"Alright, what do you think? Hmm?" he questioned Donna.

"I know what you're thinking," Donna said, "You think that with the metacrisis gone, everything will be perfect between you and Rose."

"...Yeah, alright! Maybe... Maybe I do. What of it?"

"You don't _need_ Rose," Donna hissed, as though someone were eavesdropping and was going to hear them, "But you seem to think she's the key to your happiness."

"Everybody sees you moping around, dad," Jenny said, "Everyone knows why you're so sad. Because you _won't_ let go."

"Do you know how hard it is!? Seeing her every day with-"

"It's not about you!" Donna shouted over him, "It's _Rose's _problem, with _her _marriage. Just because he looks like you... Don't get confused about who the one struggling is."

"And _I'm_ not struggling?"

"That's not what I-" Donna began, but Jenny interrupted.

"You don't have to be," Jenny said, "You could let it go and move on."

"You don't under-"

"YOU COULD. LET IT GO. AND _MOVE ON_. Okay? Don't go around fishing for sympathy when you don't have to do anything. You don't have to be so full of yourself," Jenny said.

"So what, then? Tell me - since you're both such huge fonts of wisdom - what should I be doing?"

"Don't talk to Rose."

"Don't talk to someone I live with, and see every day?"

"Oh come on, you go ages without talking to certain people. It isn't a lot to ask," Jenny said, "Just keep away from her until all this pans out."

"And what if it pans out badly? Hmm?"

"Badly for who? For you or for him?" Jenny questioned, "Now we're done talking about this. There are werewolves after us, and you apparently aren't capable of figuring out what's going on. Just sit there brooding, as usual." And Jenny took Donna's light and walked on ahead, Donna torn in the middle, watching Ten.

"Come on," she motioned to him to follow her, which he did. Donna wasn't angry at him for thinking. No matter what happened, he knew he'd have her as a friend.


	21. Exposure I

_Martha_

_Exposure I_

They waited for Luke to wake up in the white room, Kate pacing around and asking a few offhanded questions about how other members of the TARDIS crew were doing. Rose didn't say a word, but Martha answered vacantly, usually just proclaiming that whoever she was asking about was fine.

It didn't take long for Luke to reemerge, or for Martha to give him a brief update on what had happened (they'd been attacked and dragged to UNIT by some team of scouts). But whatever was going on with the "Supers" - as Rose called them - was apparently something to do with the werewolves.

"The Doctor did tell you it would be dangerous," Martha reminded Luke, when he rubbed the back of his head and grimaced.

"Yep," was all he said.

"Going to let us into the loop yet?" Rose asked Kate. The first thing she'd asked for a while. Martha watched her carefully. She was entirely aware that Rose wasn't being herself, but Rose not being herself was one thing. Rose not being herself _without her adrenaline inhibitor _was something else entirely, because she could assume command of reality and smash things if Kate made her angry. Combined with the morning's fight, Rose getting angry seemed to be a likelihood. Though, in spite of the odds, Martha would like to endeavour to keep Rose calm.

Kate sighed, keeping her hands behind her back and addressing them curtly. TARDIS perks, Martha thought. You were treated as some kind of specialist just for travelling with the Doctor. Originally, Martha _had _thought herself to have some sort of higher knowledge. She supposed she did. But, after spending weeks on end with the other people who graced the TARDIS walls, she thought maybe they weren't quite the asset the government and the military thought them to be.

"After we figured out what was causing the Supers to manifest-"

"You mean after _we _figured out?" Rose interrupted, "No offence, but I didn't see you getting kidnapped and having your head smashed in by a metal pipe. Or having your fingers and toes broken. Or having cigarettes put out on your face." Martha was shocked to hear Rose talking about that particular ordeal. She'd learnt from Clara that it was a grim topic, and it was rarely discussed.

"Yes..." said Kate slowly, then she paused, crossed her arms, and continued, "After the Supers were all understood, and their origins with electrolytes were brought to our attention, experiments began."

"The electrolytes cause the adrenaline production to increase, right?" Martha asked for clarification.

"That's what happens, yes," Kate affirmed.

"A genius kid was drugging people through a coffee shop near my house," Luke added, "He was called Rian Simmonds."

"He was, and it appears now that he had more apostles than we originally thought. After the incident, we found out that he'd been grooming one of our doctors, convincing them of all sorts of things in order to get them to listen and obey. Unfortunately, nobody picked up on it, and it worked. They told Simmonds of all sorts of classified information about the experiments we were running, and he convinced them to release a certain specimen."

"What sort of specimen?" Martha asked.

"They were splicing adrenal samples from some of the Supers we still had in quarantine up here with animal adrenal samples to see the similarities. All humane - it was simply, give the animal a fright, tranquillise it, and take some blood. Specifically though, the samples released were those spliced with wolf DNA. Technically, they're not werewolves at all. The samples taken were those of a shapeshifter we have here, when mixed, it... Makes that specific power, and-"

"You can give people specific ones?"

"Accidentally, Dr Jones, we see now they're far too dangerous to be manufacturing," Kate said, and Martha shut up.

"If they're all so dangerous, did you destroy them?" Luke asked.

"They could be vital to medical research," Kate said defensively.

"Or weapons research?" he questioned.

"Mr Smith, I don't believe it's in your best interest to question us. We don't lie," said Kate.

"Of course you don't," he muttered.

"If we were ever to find a healer, the benefits to the human race would be monumental," Kate said.

"Where's my inhibitor?" Rose asked, "What did you do with it?"

"It's being studied," said Kate.

"You better not break it. In fact, you'd better just give me it back," Rose said, "I could make a very big mess for you in here." Martha saw Rose's eyes flash gold, and Kate looked unnerved.

"It's important for dealing with the outbreak. That's why I originally called the inventor, but instead I get you. Not even a Time Lord," Kate shook her head.

"We split up," Martha said, "He wasn't with us when we were ambushed. So, these samples were released into the population three years ago, and you've been trying to contain it?"

"We've build facilities."

"You mean the Zones?"

"Yes. But they keep escaping. Ripping through the walls. They're dangerous," Kate said.

"I'm surprised you haven't been putting them down," Rose said.

"I've been doing all in my power to _prevent _that from happening while I stalled for you and your gang. Sometimes you can't afford to be late, because people suffer," Kate said darkly.

"I'll be sure to tell that to whoever sabotaged the TARDIS' navigation systems," Martha said, "Because it wasn't any of us here. What did you want, then? Just the inhibitors?"

"Where did the Doctor go, then? Who's he with?" Kate didn't answer.

"Why should we tell you? If you bring back the inhibitor and our phones, maybe-"

"The inhibitor stays, it's needed," Kate said.

"Yeah. _I _need it," Rose said, "What are you planning on doing with it? How do you plan on 'dealing' with this problem?"

"We simply make chips from the inhibitor, and implant them into the sufferers," Kate said.

"And what if they rip them out?" Rose said, "They're still dangerous."

"There is no genetic reversal, this is the best there is. It's the only solution, apart from the final one," Kate said.

"What's that? Killing them? The 'final solution'? You are aware who you sound like saying that?" Martha questioned.

"Of course I am aware!" Kate shouted, and Martha jumped, "I am also aware that those Zones are slums and a living hell, and I'm aware that the ration managers have been trying to cut down the food and water supplies going in there for a while. But they are _dangerous_ and they _kill people_ and there isn't a cure. You can't reverse mutations."

"If you insert the inhibitors like that, they'll all be docile. They'll be slaves," Luke argued.

"They won't be slaves, they'll be calm," Kate said, "Less violence on the streets."

"And what next? It works so well _everyone_ gets one? What next from adrenaline? Other chemicals? Dopamine? Epinephrine?" Luke questioned, "Next thing, you've got Cybermen without the metal."

"You can't manufacture emotions. I've seen that happen, it's awful," Martha said, remembering her visit to New New York and the emotion patches. Including the 'Bliss' patch and its mutation.

"A world where people can never be sad again would be awful?"

"Yes, of course it is," Martha said, "It's inhuman. The Doctor would agree."

"Well then where is he? If he's so bothered?" Kate challenged, "You have four, don't you? None of yours could show up, yet the fifth one did."

"The fifth Doctor..?" Martha asked. She'd never met the fifth Doctor...

"No," said Kate, "The Twelfth."

"Oh, great, Old Twelvey's been here too, has he?" Rose said, "You shouldn't listen to him."

"He said it should be contained by any means necessary, and if numbness is that mean-"

"You want to talk to the Doctor? Fine. I'll find him for you," Rose said, and then she vanished into golden whisps. What had Twelve been doing there if he hadn't fixed their problem for them? Was he incapable of creating one of the inhibitors? If he was, Martha couldn't help but think that was a little amusing.

"Oh... Crap... That's not good..." Martha said, "Could I have my phone back now? I have to warn Donna that Rose is going to show up."

"Where are they?"

"I don't know," Martha said, "But I'm sure they'll be here soon."

"If you don't know, why does Rose?"

"Part of her power," Luke said.

"Yeah," said Martha, "And I need my phone." Martha was worried about what Rose was going to do. She was angry, inhibitor-less, and not thinking anything through. That was a frighteningly dangerous combination, and Donna and Jenny needed to be alerted of it. To Martha's best awareness, the whole TARDIS crew were talking about what was going on with Rose, Tentoo and Ten right then. But Martha, for all she was worth, couldn't see a positive outcome no matter which way the the tables turned.


	22. Pretty Little Liars

_Martha_

_Pretty Little Liars_

"Well _where_ have you lot been?" Amy asked. Martha traipsed glumly into the TARDIS. 'Fun day out!' he'd said. 'Werewolves!' he'd said. And technically, all of it lies. What had they left with? A promise. A little promise from UNIT that they wouldn't dabble around in genes anymore, and that they wouldn't abuse the inhibitor technology. Ten was as useless as Twelve had been a year before they'd got there - not one solution, since it was almost a natural mutation. This was the best the 'Last of the Time Lords' could come up with. Getting the people who had built the huge prison slums to just _promise_ they wouldn't do it again. To hell with it, she thought. It was Ten's problem now.

She threw herself down on the sofa next to Amy, who was reading something. The holobox still hadn't been explained to those of them _not_ from the future, and Jack had left the thing on some wildlife channel and gone off somewhere else, meaning that unless some other future-dweller wanted to mess with the settings, they were stuck watching a fascinating documentary about the cordyceps mushroom.

"Out," was all Martha said, "What are you watching..?"

"It's a documentary about this fungus that infests dead insects and then lives inside them," Amy said, "Totally gross. Zombie ants."

"Oh, sounds fun," said Martha with a sigh, sinking down in the sofa so that she might possibly turn invisible. The Tenth Doctor was, in Martha's opinion, being an idiot. And Rose was just being cruel. As soon as she'd gotten her phone back, texts from Clara throughout the day had come pouring through, and she'd found out everyone had an opinion on the matter, but nobody was willing to share with the people whom it actually concerned. And that included herself. Martha, like everyone else, was scrambling to stay out of the mess.

"Well you should've seen the one about these alligators in the sewers, and then-" Amy began, but she shut up when Rose walked past the sofas and slipped out of Nerve Centre into the Bedroom Circle. "Oh my god, I was just waiting for her to leave. What did you find out?"

"That very soon, a bomb is going to go off, and I don't want to be a part of it," Martha said.

"But I thought you were best friends with her?"

"What? No. I mean, I guess we're close. But I'm close with the Twins. I'm just gonna hang around with Mickey instead for the next couple of days, we can all stay away from it," Martha said.

"What about tomorrow? Tomorrow is 'Man Day,'" Amy told her, eating popcorn absently from a bowl as the fungus ate the brain of the ant on the holobox.

"It's what?" Martha asked.

"It's new, Rory's been telling me _all_ about it," Amy said, "The human boys bonded while we were all away. Now they're going out together tomorrow."

"Oh, sounds like an excellent way to avoid getting dragged into this..." Martha said glumly, "So if I can't hang around with Mickey tomorrow, what do I do?"

"You can hang around with me, we'll go to a spa or something to get away from it," Amy said.

"I think I'll take you up on that. Find me in the morning," Martha told her, "Rose has been in an awful mood all day. She went all weird when the Brigadier thought she'd spoken to Tentoo over the phone and referred to the Tenth Doctor as her husband. No idea about him though, you'll have to ask Donna or Jenny. But not right now." Rose had just returned. Behind her, however, came Clara, carrying mugs to wash up.

"Oh, are you all back?" she asked mainly Martha.

"Yep. What a fun day it's been," said Martha. Clara dropped off the mugs by the sink and came back to sit on Martha's right.

"So?" she asked expectantly.

"So what? Shh," Martha said, Rose busy in the kitchen making tea. Martha nodded at her when her back was turned.

"Oh, sorry," said Clara quietly.

"We were thinking of going out somewhere tomorrow to get away from everything," Martha said to her.

"Do you want an escape?" Amy offered.

"Um, no thanks, I already arranged to be out for the whole day doing wedding-things with the Doctor, and-" Clara said, but on the word 'Doctor', Rose, who was apparently eavesdropping, dropped her mug where it shattered on the floor. "...You alright?" Clara asked her, "Want any help?"

"I'm fine," said Rose quickly, getting the dustpan and brush out of the cupboard, "Oh, do you think your sister'll mind if I ask to stay in her room?" she asked Clara when she knelt down to sweep the floor. Martha couldn't see her from where she was sat, the wall of the kitchen was hiding her form.

"I... I don't know," Clara said carefully, clearly struggling to maintain a smile.

"Well where is she?" Rose asked, "I need a new adrenaline inhibitor as well, so..."

"I suppose she's probably in Adam Mitchell's room," Clara informed.

"...I'm not going to walk in on anything, am I?" Rose asked, clearly trying to make a joke.

"No," Clara answered firmly, "Shouldn't think so." Rose nodded and left again, without attempting to make more tea. "What was that all about!?"

"You said 'Doctor'," Amy told her.

"It's his name, what am I supposed-"

"Theodore?" Martha suggested.

"Alright, fine. As I was saying, _Theodore_ and I are out wedding planning as an excuse," Clara said, "Why does Rose need a new adrenaline inhibitor?"

"Long story, don't ask," Martha said.

"But she needs my sister to make one, and my sister isn't in Mitchell's room," Clara said, "But as soon as she finds out, she's gonna look into the time vortex and find out where they really are."

"Why? Where've they gone?" Amy asked, clearly looking for some kind of interesting gossip about Adwin.

"They're only in the lab out there, but she can't go into the lab, because the Tenth Doctor is in the lab," Clara said, "And Oswin can't emergency teleport back, what with that leg now."

"What's with Rose?" Donna came and sat down.

"She dropped that mug on the floor when Clars said 'Doctor'," Martha said.

"Don't call me Clars," Clara told her distantly, like she was a world away. She was probably confering with the genius.

"...Right. Well, yeah, and now she's trying to get to stay in Oswin's room," Martha told Donna, "What did you say to the Tenth Doctor today?"

"Told him to stay away from her," Donna said, "Both of us did. No idea if he'll listen."

"What happened to not getting involved..?" Amy asked.

"It was because he took my phone to use as a torch because sewers are dark, and then you called, and he saw who it was. And then _Jack_ called and I had to answer, and he figured it was about her," Donna explained.

"Sewers!? Is that what the smell is? Did you take your shoes off!?" Amy seemed to go into cleaning-mode and started ordering Donna to remove her poo-y shoes.

Rose came back into the room, glared at Clara, walked around the sofa and left out of the other door into the console room. Martha supposed she was about to run into Ten.

"Was he mad?" Martha asked Donna.

"Yes! Very!" she said as she was forced to take her shoes off and hold them aloft next to her until she could put them somewhere that _wasn't _the room where everyone ate.

"Hold on, if we're all out tomorrow _without _Rose, and the boys are all out tomorrow _without_ Ten, and Ten's only other friend is _also out_, who's watching them?" Martha realised.

"You're going out!?" Donna demanded.

"Oh, yeah, spa," said Amy, "You're welcome to join the two of us."

"Then where's she off?" Donna nodded at Clara, who was pulling an unpleasant face, but seemed to be rejoining the conversation.

"Out with husbandy," Martha answered, "Jack can watch them."

"Jack can't, he thinks they should get back together," Amy told her.

"What? Why!?"

"'True love'," Amy did air quotation marks when she said it, then rolled her eyes.

"Nobody should watch them, we should all just leave them to make a mess of it themselves," Clara said, "We aren't H&amp;T."

"We're concerned friends," Martha said.

"It's not like they'd listen to anything we said," Amy pointed out, "And they're adults. He's like, ten times an adult."

"He's an idiot and we all know it," Donna muttered, "_Especially_ when it comes to Rose." They all murmured agreement.

"We should just stay away," Clara said, "Try to be so busy they can't ask us for advice, ever."

"Yeah," said Martha, "Everyone should just keep themselves to themselves."

"Even if they ask for advice," Donna said.

"Because they're both consenting adults," Amy agreed, and none of them said anything for a moment.

"...I'd better go wash those mugs," Clara stood up and wandered over to the kitchen.

"Yeah, and I'll sort my shoes..." Donna got up and headed for the Bedroom Circle.

"I might get changed..." said Martha.

Rose stormed through the doors and straight towards Clara then, and everyone stopped making for different directions to watch what was happening.

"Your sister!" Rose shouted, "Is a psycho!" and then she left back into the Bedroom Circle.

"What just happened..?" Martha asked Clara.

"I think Rose was just very insensitive to people with mental health problems, that's what," said Clara, going to get the milk out of the fridge.

"What did Oswin do?" Amy asked.

"Hang on," Clara said, and paused for a moment, then rolled her eyes as though speaking to someone, "Right, she decided the best course of action was just to make out with Mitchell in the doorway so that Rose couldn't get past, and then completely ignore her until she left."

"Fun," commented Amy.

"Hey, it worked," Clara shrugged, "Now I'm going back to hiding from everyone in my room."

"...Yeah, I might join you," said Martha, and Clara frowned at her, "I meant hiding from people. I'm obviously going into my own room. I'm exhausted."


	23. Hello

_DAY SEVENTY-EIGHT_

_Oswin_

_Hello_

She did not understand the appeal of staying in someone's bed all night while they slept and you couldn't, but whatever it was, she had shamefully succumbed to it, and for the whole night she'd had her arms wrapped around Adam Mitchell, and hadn't been restless at all. At any rate, she had plenty of things to be thinking about to keep her occupied. Like how to avoid Ten and Rose for the rest of forever; how to build a proper memorial for the Dust War whilst making it impervious to government cover-up operations; how comfortable beds were when sharing them with warm living-people. Important things.

While she was musing upon these urgent matters, distracted from the room around her, Mitchell awoke and attempted to stretch. And then he realised he couldn't stretch too well when she was holding on to him like a dead python. He yawned.

"Wide awake?" she asked him quietly, her head right behind his, if a little lower on the pillow.

"Apparently," he replied, relaxing, "What time is it?" She reached over him to the bedside table and showed him his own phone from where it was, "Eight o'clock? Seriously?"

"Yeah, why? Do you have somewhere to be..?" she dropped the phone on the bed next to him. Where was Adam going? Adam never went anywhere, he stayed in his room all the time.

"I have been cordially invited to Man Day," he said.

"...What on Saturn is 'Man Day'?" she asked with a slight smirk. She didn't know what it was, but it sounded rather pathetic.

"Mickey named it," Mitchell said, "He and Rory. Apparently it took them ages."

"I can see why, it's a very complicated name. What time does Man Day start, then?" Oswin asked.

"An hour."

"Oh, that's ages, you don't have to get up yet," she told him, sinking back into the pillow, "What should I do while you're out, then?"

"Go hang out with your sister," he suggested a little boredly.

"I can't, she's '_busy_' right now," she put enough emphasis on the word 'busy' to make it clear to him exactly _what_ Clara was busy doing at that moment. Or 'who' she was busy doing, to be more accurate.

"Seriously? But it's eight in the morning..."

"Apparently love knows no boundaries. And it also doesn't know manners, either. Or what a sense of common courtesy is."

"Well, you can hang around with the Tenth Doctor, then. I know you want to," he said, and she could hear his annoying grin in his tone of voice, and though he couldn't see her, she rolled her eyes.

"I wouldn't if my afterlife depended on it," she muttered.

"I have to spend the day with Tentoo - it's only fair," Mitchell said.

"You have fun with that. Maybe I'll have lots of fun making keys for the lab. Maybe I'll get another key cut for your room for myself," she said.

"I already told you you could yesterday," he reminded her, "Maybe you should get Rose a key to _your _room?" The previous night, Rose had managed to corner Oswin out of nowhere to practically demand she allow her to borrow her bedroom, in spite of Oswin's best aversion efforts.

"She's not staying in there for more than one night," Oswin said, "I need it tonight, tonight is film night. Well, actually last night was film night, but those plans were scuppered."

"You have fun trying to evict Rose today, then," he said, "_I'm_ going to shower."

"But there's still ages-"

"I want to have time to cook breakfast, Oswin. It isn't _my_ fault you're so attached to me," he joked.

"On the contrary, it very much is. Fine. If you're getting up, I'll go make coffee. Pass me my leg?" she requested.

"Where is it?"

"On the floor somewhere," she said. He sighed and leant over the edge of the bed, and she finally moved her arms so that he could actually move, and she sat up.

"Found it," he said, picking the fake leg up from where she'd ended up leaving it the night before and passing it to her so she could reattach it to herself, "So, coffee?"

"Yes," she said, "Coffee," she kissed him and then stood up.

"White, one sugar," he called after her.

"I know how you have your coffee, Mitchell," she said as she closed the door, smiling slightly, proper clothes shimmering into existence as she walked towards Nerve Centre.

The day had started off fine - good, even, by comparison to what the last few had been like for her. She was even looking forward to having coffee she couldn't taste.

But, of course, it couldn't last. Everything fell to pieces as soon as she entered the other room and heard laughter, and paused. And then she saw Clara, sitting at the table, giggling. And in between such giggles, she was kissing Captain Jack Harkness.

"Clara!?" Oswin exclaimed. Clara _hadn't_ been sleeping with her husband, it had been _Jack_!? Clara was _cheating_!? With JACK!? What the _hell_ was she thinking, doing something like that and then sitting around in the main room just waiting for somebody to find her, "What the fu-!?"

"It's not her," Jack said.

"Wait, it's..?" Oswin began, "Then _who_ the hell is that!? What are you doing!? Is that - is that an _echo_!?"

"A what?" asked the echo sharply. Oswin stared at her, desperately trying to discern who it was. And then she saw a flash like light in her right eye, and the pupil dilated unnaturally. As soon as the echo blinked, it returned, and Oswin spotted the fading, but still present, scar cutting down her face and through her eye socket.

"Oh my god... Why have you _fucked_ Eyeball!? That's _Eyeball_!" Oswin yelled at him.

"How do you know that name? Who are you!?" Eyeball asked.

"Who am _I_!? It doesn't matter who _I_ am! _I'm_going to get Clara," Oswin turned and barged through the doors, straight to Clara's room, where she banged loudly on the door, covered her eyes with her hand and barged straight in.

"OH MY _GOD _OSWIN _GET OUT_!" Clara practically screamed.

"SHUT _UP _CLARA! I HAVE MY EYES COVERED, OKAY!?"

"WHAT THE HELL DO YOU WANT!? HOW IMPORTANT CAN THIS - _POSSIBLY_ BE!?" After 'this' there was a bang, and Oswin guessed that maybe Clara had fallen over.

"JACK SLEPT WITH EYEBALL AND THEY'RE IN THE OTHER ROOM!" Oswin shouted at her. She didn't know why they were _still_ shouting, but now Clara was even angrier than she had been five seconds ago.

"_WHAT_!?"

"Yeah! I'm not kidding! I thought it was urgent enough to interrupt your normal _routine_, Clars!" Oswin turned around to face the door (she _really_didn't want to see anything), "It was awful! _I_ thought it was you."

"Me!?"

"What was I supposed to think!? I didn't know who it was until I noticed the eye. And then she seemed really shocked when I called her Eyeball."

"Who's Eyeball? Which one..?" the Eleventh Doctor asked. Oswin assumed Clara was getting dressed.

"Did your wife never tell you she has the collective memories of _every_ Echo in her head?" Oswin said, "Which means everything on Phollim actually happened. Only, without us there."

"Yeah, not that we did a lot except let it all happen," Clara snapped.

"I thought you were over that."

"I _am_ I'm just in a bad mood," Clara muttered, "Come on," she took Oswin's hand and pulled her along with her out of the room, after ordering her husband to stay put.

"Thank god you have clothes on," Oswin said.

"Wait - are you saying Eyeball _doesn't_!?" Clara rounded back on her.

"No, she has clothes on, luckily," Oswin said.

"Good, because the Victorian didn't. I mean, she did a bit - I try to block it from my memory," Clara said, shaking her head a little, "Whatever, apparently I have to go yell at Jack."

"Who says he'll listen to you?"

"They're _my_ Echoes, and they're _my_ responsibility, he has to," Clara said darkly, and Oswin was admittedly frightened. She guessed this was how angry Clara got if somebody interrupted her 'morning routine'. "JACK! What the HELL are you playing it!?"

"I'm not playing at anything! We just hit it off, okay!?" Jack argued with her.

"Okay, who are these two people you live with..?" Eyeball asked him, Clara totally blanked her and kept on at Jack.

"You 'hit it off' with everybody, Jack. What sort of competition are you and Jenny in, hmm? Who can shag the most Echoes?" Clara challenged.

"Well, she didn't technically-" Jack began.

"So it _is_ about that?" Clara questioned.

"No, of-"

"Yes, it is. Do you want me to go get Jenny? Do you want to have it out with her? Maybe you'll just have angry sex and stick yourselves back together until the whole thing shatters again, hmm?" Clara questioned.

"Oh, come on, I hardly think that's-" he started to shout.

"Fair? No, what isn't fair is you going around playing with real peoples' lives just because your ex-girlfriend is being immature. You are using her to make Jenny jealous, so you're going to apologise to her, and then you're going to tell _me_ where you found her, or so help me I will rip your spine out through your arsehole, Jack." Jack stared at her, completely shocked. For most people, that was an empty threat, but not for Clara, who could probably quite easily do that with a combination of intangibility and telekinesis.

"...Seriously, who are you!?" Eyeball asked. Oswin tried to ignore her.

"A prison," answered Jack, "A prison in... 51...3... Something."

"Charming, you don't even remember what year it was," Clara said, "And you broke her out of prison."

"Hey, I was put in there wrongfully," Eyeball said, "And you still won't tell me what's going on!"

"You were arrested because you killed and dumped government experiment," Oswin reminded her, breaking her policy of staying out of it.

"Who the hell are you!?"

"Look, I'll tell you who you are when Jack pisses off," Clara said, "But you won't like it. Leaving, Jack? Go crawl back to your room and cry about Jenny, probably what you do every day."

"Hey, it's not funny," he said, grimacing when he walked past the Twins.

"It's hilarious. You accidentally slept with her clone and she dumped you."

"On day it'll happen to one of you two," Jack called back.

"'Oh, sorry Oswin, I thought you were Clara, I didn't notice the fake leg or the lack of body heat or the massive projector floating around or anything,'" Oswin said sarcastically, watching him go.

"The Echoes are off limits to both of you!" Clara shouted as the door closed, "Perverts, the both of them. Urgh. Why're you wearing black?" she turned to Oswin, "I've only seen you in not-red twice, and both times we were trying to be totally identical."

"I'm grieving," Oswin said, "And I'm also making coffee for everyone," she walked around the counter into the kitchen to fill the kettle.

"Grieving who? Yourself?" Clara asked dryly.

"No, all the people whose deaths have been my fault. I don't want to talk about it - can we move on?"

"Yes, we can move on to _what the fuck is happening_?" Eyeball interrupted.

"Watch your language," Clara snapped.

"Clars, you're no better, shush," Oswin said.

"Whatever. It's a long story, and it needs coffee, so you'd best wait. And yes, Jack is just using you to make his ex jealous."

"She look like me as well?" Eyeball asked sardonically.

"No."

* * *

Oswin let Clara tell the story of how Eyeball came to be, going as far as to briefly vacate the room to deliver Mitchell his promised coffee and tell him Jack had banged a Clecho, and there was a minor Oswald-related emergency. Jack had since returned to the room, as well, lingering in a corner and blatantly eavesdropping on the three of them.

It was just when Clara was going over how she and Oswin knew so much about who Eyeball was, and how they knew what she'd done to get thrown in a prison in Andromeda, that Oswin's phone rang. She didn't recognise the number, but given that it was fourteen digits and had two dashes inserted here and there, she knew it was from her own century. Which was odd, because the only person who called her from the Fifty-Second Century was her younger brother Frank - and strangley enough, he was saved in her contacts.

"Who is that?" Clara asked.

"I... I don't know, I should take this..." she said, standing up and going over to stand in the corner to answer the phone. Mitchell, who was awaiting Mickey for 'Man Day' (stupidest thing she'd ever heard), watched her from the sofa carefully. "Hello?"

"_Oh my god, sis! I didn't think you'd answer, thought Frankie might've given me a fake number or something!_" said an unmistakeable voice.

"Z-Zach!?" she stammered. Some people near her looked over, but she could hardly care. Why did he sound so happy? The last time she'd seen Zachary it had been Christmas, 5131, and he'd been an alcoholic with an estranged wife and daughter who hadn't said a word in her defence at that year's disowning. "Why are you calling me!? How did you get this number?" she hissed.

"_Frank gave it to me_," Zachary said.

"Well why the hell did he do that!? What're you trying to do, invite me to a family gathering? Hmm?" she questioned him.

"_I've cleaned my life up,_" Zachary told her.

"Okay, great! I'm happy for you! But you've not said a single word to me since before I died," she was talking in whispers, and Donna was definitely listening in to try and figure out who she was talking to. Oswin glared at her for this, and she drifted away.

"_I'm sorry, okay? I'm sorry about last Christmas, to tell you the truth I don't even remember what happened, I was completely blacked out_," he said.

"Oh, you were shitfaced? Is that supposed to make me feel better? You've never cared before, why should you care now?" she demanded. She was getting too many looks now for a private conversation, so she swept off into the medibay, which had the closest door to the kitchen.

"_Because I'm sober now, Os. I'm clean, I said, and I'm sorry_," he apologised bluntly.

"Oh, sober, are you? So how's Elanor, hmm?" He stayed quiet. "Not that sober, then?"

"_That isn't remotely funny, and you know that,_" he said, "_But I've hurt you, so I can't be angry. I have to make ammends_."

"You've been to too many AA meetings, Zach," Oswin told him sharply, "You're just preaching the crap they've been telling you to get you to stop drinking."

"_Yeah? Well that 'crap' worked, and I'm calling to ask for your help, so get off your damn high horse_," Zachary changed tones to one of slight anger in a second.

"Help? Why? What can you need my help with? Need some more bombs?" she growled.

"_Those bombs weren't anything to do with me, I was barely sixteen, I don't know what you're playing at. I'm trying to be a better person, can't you understand that_?" he asked, and she felt like she'd been punched in the face for the second time that day. She was full of hypocrisy, trying to make up for what she'd done in the Dust War and refusing to let Zachary fix their relationship at all. Maybe he could even help with memorial ideas... He probably felt partly guilty, at least.

"...I'm sorry. Fine, okay. I'm listening. What do you want?" she asked him.

"_I moved away from Horizon. I had to. They all hate me there anyway. There's this planet, Eslilia, it's where I've come now. I don't know if you heard about the end of the Spores, Os, but-_"

"Yeah, I was there. They were stupid, they thought they could defy nature and kill a volcano or something, I don't know, they all died," she muttered, breathing deeply and rubbing one of her eyes.

"_Not all of them. Y'know your old friend, Flek? Well she got put in charge of Echo, the science one. The whole Squadron defected, Os, and they left the Spores to become a peaceful colony here. On Eslilia. I heard about them, so I came here_," Zachary said.

"You joined the Spores? The _Cluster Spores_? After everything they-"

"_No, it's not like that! They're not patrolling or tying to be activists, they're just trying to live. They're all just scientists. I mean, they live in the trees now, they just study plants. They have a lot of amazing botanists, I think they're looking to cure diseases, and Flek's in charge of it all_," he explained. She didn't know how far she trusted the Cluster Spores, and she didn't know how far she trusted her half-brother, either, "_They don't call themselves Spores, they just call themselves Remnants_."

"Yeah, Zach, Remnants _of the Cluster Spores_," she said.

"_You know as well as I do, they aren't all flawed. A lot of them were good. ARE good._"

"What do you want, then? Why do you need my help? Hmm? Want me to run away with you, Zachary? I do plenty of running already," she said coldly.

"_Really? With THAT leg_?"

"You're not funny. What do you want?"

"_There's some weird plague. It started with some animals - just game-type creatures. Small, woodland-y. But Flek warned me that it could mutate into something more, and affect us. So, I convinced Frank to give me your phone number to convince you to come down here and see what's happening. I mean, he told me you live in a time machine, right?_"

"I... Yeah, yeah I do. But that doesn't mean I'll... I mean... Ugh... What sort of plague..?" she knew she would regret asking.

"_Some kind of plant-thing. I'm not good with the details. It sort of, takes over their bodies, a parasite_," he explained as best he could. And yes, it sounded highly intriguing. Nobody was denying that. Fascinating, even, and... And a chance to help someone had just offered itself up to her on a silver platter...

"I... I'll think about it. What are the coordinates of where you are, then?" she asked, giving in to him with a sigh and a feeling that this wasn't really a good idea at all.

Five minutes later, she returned to the main room in, somehow, an even worse mood.

"...Not going back to prison," Eyeball was saying to Clara, "You aren't taking me back there."

"There's nowhere else for you to go," Clara told her firmly, looking annoyed, "You're a _fugitive_, okay?"

"Oswin, are you alright? Who was on the phone?" Mitchell asked, coming over. Clara looked up then, too, from where she'd been arguing with the Echo.

"I'm fine, it was Zach," said Oswin.

"Who's that?" Donna asked nosily.

"One of my brothers. A middle child. Ex-alcoholic, apparently," Oswin told her, leaning on the wall.

"That was Zachary Lutece J Cohen, the boy with the best name ever?" Clara asked, "Is he as hot as Frank?"

"I wish you'd stop asking me if my brothers are hot, Clara," she said a little apathetically, sighing again. Everyone always seemed to sigh so much, "And actually, she doesn't have nowhere to go..." Oswin had a brainwave.

"She can't stay here," Clara said.

"No, no, that's not what I meant... I mean, there's this colony of the remnants of Drifter Squadron Echo on a planet called Eslilia, and-" Oswin began.

"Cluster Spores?" Eyeball asked incredulously.

"_Ex_-Cluster Spores," Oswin told her, "The Homeworld Alliance won't come anywhere near you if you're with them. Probably won't even look for you there. And they also, sort of, need my help... Maybe... A little... With some plague..."

"A _plague_? What sort of plague?" Clara asked.

"I don't know. They don't know. Zach didn't give me many details. Look, they need help, and you haven't found a better place to dump her, I just think-" Jack cut Oswin off.

"Eslilia's all jungle," he said, walking over.

"Yeah, Zach said they live in trees."

"Well, sounds plenty fun, but that whole planet's a death trap, full of poison and, like you said, plagues. I've been there before, when I worked for the Time Agency," Jack said.

"You are _not_ coming," Clara told him.

"Yeah, nice try sweetheart, but _I_ am an asset. And I brought her here, so it's my responsibility to make sure she's safe," Jack said.

"I can keep myself safe, thanks," Eyeball told him bitterly. It appeared she'd gone off him since she'd found out she was just a pawn in Jack and Jenny's game of jealousy.

"You can't stop me, I'm a valuable asset if you're gonna go jungle-crawling," Jack argued, "It's dangerous, and maybe you need the immortal man to taste your food."

"Clara can taste our food. _Her own_ food. I don't eat, remember?" Oswin said.

"Alright, here's the thing: I want to come. I'm not gonna try anything on with anyone," Jack said.

"You're always trying stuff on with people," Clara snapped.

"I'll keep a lid on it. Sounds fun, anyway. Jungles. Mysterious plague."

"Yeah, sure," muttered Oswin. '_Just let him come, Clars. He might be helpful. It sounds like a dangerous planet. Best he finds the danger than we do. Maybe he'll die and you can feel better_.'

"You know what? I don't feel like arguing right now, so you can come, I can't say I care much if you eat something poisonous," Clara gave up.

"Well then I'm coming too," Eleven interrupted.

"...What?"

"I love jungles, Coo. Anyway, I really don't want to stay on the TARDIS today. I just feel I don't get out enough," Eleven put forward his case. His case of not wanting to be left with Ten.

"Why am I suddenly in charge? I don't want to be," Clara said, "I'm going to get dressed. And this is a terrible idea, Oswin." She skulked away.


	24. The Welcoming Committee

_Eleven_

_The Welcoming Committee_

When Jack had said it was a jungle, he hadn't quite taken into proper consideration what that meant, he'd just been looking for an escape for the day. He'd found one, that was for sure, and now they were without the TARDIS trying to navigate through some treacherous thicket of thin, snaking trees that grew in curls and spirals rather than straight up towards the sun. It was humid, as well, and tweed was not the most breathable of fabrics. He was sweating within minutes, and he'd tripped multiple times already, and the greenery was so vibrant he thought he must be looking at everything through some sort of emerald film.

Jack had been given the job of leading them to whatever town had been settled on Eslilia, and was making better work of it than Oswin had been doing, considering every few seconds Eleven heard her curse from somewhere behind him because she kept tripping up far more than everybody else. He was also wondering why the girl had taken to wearing black instead of red. Admittedly, it wasn't nearly as loud as bright red 24/7 was. Part of him wondered if it was because there were other, easier ways to discern between which of the Twins was which now that one of them had an artificial limb, so Oswin didn't need to go the trouble of making it phenomenally obvious anymore.

None of that distracted him from the heat of Eslilia though. Somehow, though the leaves above them were so thick it was practically impossible to tell if it was night or day, he almost felt like he was being sunburnt, and his skin was itching like it was being exposed to the open air. He was more and more agreeing with Clara's earlier statement that it was a stupid idea coming out anywhere, but the day was still young, and it could well improve from the early morning that had already been so disastrous. The _other_ thing he wasn't thrilled with was the fact they were on a mission to leave Clara's echo behind on the planet, and that he'd not had it fully explained to him who she was. Only vaguely by Clara, and only when she had been recapping the Dream to him. He barely knew a thing about her, other than she certainly had an attitude and seemed to be constantly pissed off.

"So, how come a hologram has a fake leg?" Eyeball asked Oswin, who didn't actually answer at all, "Hey, zombie, talking to you."

"Alright, piss off," Oswin muttered, refusing to answer her. Eleven got the immediate sense that Oswin disliked the other Echoes highly. Well, she probably thought she was superior to them. In fact, she probably had reason to. All Eleven knew was that he'd prefer to stay out of Echo-politics, and hoped that Clara was capable of diffusing any situation that might arise between them. Thankfully, Intangible Clara wasn't as frustrated as the rest of them at the dense trees, because she could just walk through them.

"Why can't you just animate a new one? Then you'd be able to walk through these trees no problem, like her," Eyeball said, and Eleven presumed she'd nodded at Clara (Jack was leading, he was behind Jack, and the three clones were lumped together somewhere out of his way).

"It's not your problem, okay?" Oswin said grimly.

There was a noise then. It was quite dull, and visceral, almost grunt-like. The five of them stopped moving, listening out. Eleven remembered what had earlier been mentioned of the hostility of the planet, and wondered if maybe there were some inhabitants that hadn't been formerly mentioned by Jack to them.

"…What was that?" Clara asked.

"If you would have let me have a gun, I could shoot it for you and find out that way," Eyeball said, sounding a little bloodthirsty. The Doctor didn't like that tone of voice. Bloodthirsty people never seemed to be doing anybody else a favour, all they cared about was quenching their own bloodlust. He was sure the girl had some kind of traumatic past, but he'd heard enough of _Oswin's_ traumatic past already, and didn't need the colossal knowledge of the hardships of any more of the people who had been created to save his life.

"You've been in enough trouble for shooting things on alien planets," Oswin snapped, finally gaining the upper hand on her, it seemed. Eleven couldn't wait for Eyeball to be gone from the group. He had enough bickering from the Twins, he didn't need _Triplets_ on his mind to worry about.

There was another growling sound, and Eleven saw Jack reach and pick up a particularly large branch from the ground, presumably to use as a weapon against whatever fiend was stalking them through the thicket. He didn't know if he should be reaching for something as well or not. He was sure Jack was capable, but Jack could be killed quite easily. And even though he would inevitably come back to life, who knew what would happen to the others during that time? And by others, he namely meant him, since he didn't see what harm a hologram and Clara (what with her nanogenes) could come to. He started scanning the forest floor for weapons, straining his ears in the silence.

They heard a rustling, like something was moving around the outside of where they were clumped together in a line. It was by no means a clearing, and the Doctor could hardly move for the trees weaving around and knotting together crudely, keeping them trapped with little by way of escape.

There was a clicking sound, and it came out of nowhere, rushing them completely. Eleven couldn't even see what it was, but it seemed to be of a human enough size and stature, and it went straight for Jack, who ended up flailing and kicking quite wildly, and managed to get it in the knee. Eleven heard a crack, and it fell to the floor – whatever it was – writhing around, clawing after Jack's feet next, as apparently knocking its whole leg halfway out of place wasn't nearly enough to stop it.

"What the hell is that!?" Clara shrieked.

"Shhh!" Eleven hissed at her, waving a hand to make her shut up, "There might be more!"

"More _what_!?" But then Eleven saw Oswin clamp a hand over Clara's mouth to make her shut up. Not that that would do any good at all, because the thing itself was writhing and continuing to force noises out of some mouth-like orifice he supposed it had to have, a grunting, rattling sound like a choking person trying to scream. But it was moving too much for the Doctor to get a good look at it still, he just saw blurs of yellows and greens in colour as it struggled on the ground.

Then there was a ferocious squelching noise and a spatter of orange-ish liquid sprayed over him and the noises coming from the beast ceased. Jack had bashed it over the head with his stick, which was now lodged in its brain.

"What is it?" Clara whispered into the eerie silence of the jungle. And it _was_ quiet, because Eleven had been to the rainforests on Earth, and on other planets. They were full of life, and sounds – the chirping of birds, the hisses of snakes, and the footsteps of big cats. But it was remarkably quiet where they were, up until they'd been ambushed.

He and Jack both crouched down to examine the corpse, Jack wrenching his stick free and giving them all a view of the interior of the skull of it. And it looked plenty human, if it wasn't for whatever seemed to be growing inside of it. It was almost like mushrooms, and the orange goo that had exploded from it when Jack had clubbed it had been a mix of some sort of yellow secretion and human blood. The fungi was growing out of every crevice, peeking out of the eye sockets, the nose, the ears, straight out of the mouth and strangling it from within. This person was not alive at all, they were playing host.

"…What did your brother say about this plague, again?" the Doctor asked Oswin, who was standing over him to peer at the poor victim of a hostile mushroom.

"He said it was sort of like a plant. A parasite, he called it. It was infesting animals, and they wanted me to come and examine it to see if it could mutate and become a danger to humans," she breathed, not wanting to alert anything else that might be hiding and moving quietly through the leaves and the branches. Eleven pushed his hair out of his forehead, trying to stick it out of his way with his own sweat, cringing at his slimy hand, and wiping it on his trousers.

"I think I've found your answer," Eleven said, standing up. So did Jack. They thought they were done with the thing then, until one of the larger mushroom heads sticking out of its mouth shook once, and then seemed to explode almost, scattering tiny particles into the air as though it was a dandelion.

"Shit, Clara, get rid of the spore cluster," Oswin ordered, "Telekinesis, go!" Clara fumbled, but waved a hand, and all the spores shot away instantly into the darkness of the jungle.

"Spore cluster?" Clara asked her.

"Yeah. Isn't it ironic, the remnants of the Cluster Spores being terrorised by clusters of fungal spores?" Oswin half-joked, "Whatever, keep moving. This place is in the trees, Zach said. Can't be far… Stay quiet…" she advised. At least Eyeball was savvy enough to listen to what Oswin was saying, and Eleven and Jack both more than agreed that keeping quiet was their best course of action. Oswin even stopped swearing every five seconds when she tripped.

"Okay," Jack whispered to the group, stopping, keeping his eyes on his vortex manipulator he was using to track the coordinates Oswin's brother had given them. The TARDIS had not been able to land there exactly, it had searched and searched for the closest place with room to actually materialise in the dense maze of tree trunks, "The VM says this is it."

They looked up. And what they saw was _incredible_.

Rope and wood bridges from tree to tree; tiny, spiral staircases and ladders leading up to different levels; intricate huts where people were living. It looked safe enough from whatever plague was inflicting people below, unless there were any kind of avian creatures afflicted with it that could fly into the rafters of the beautiful, treetop city and pass the infection that way. The Doctor thought that this was the sort of place he might want to settle down, if he absolutely had to. Of course, he had no such intentions of doing such a heinous thing, but he could see the appeal of living in the trees above the world. And supremely high up, above everything else, was a crashed spaceship, completely protected from much damage or from falling by how very thick the tree canopy was. It was balancing there, and Eleven spied a ladder leading up to it from the rest of the trees. So they hadn't 'found' Eslilia, per say, they had crashed. But they didn't appear to be causing much damage to the ecosystem, as far as he could tell.

"Ladder, there, okay," Jack said, nodding at the closest tree trunk. They crept towards it, trying to avoid any other encounters with the paralytic kind. They made it though, Oswin muttering complaints about how a week ago she wouldn't have had to climb a ladder because she could have just teleported. Until Clara ordered her to be quiet. And then instead Oswin complained about the difficulties of climbing a ladder when you didn't technically have a 'foot', just a rubber-coated sphere, and Eleven thought that was a slightly more valid thing to whine about. Apparently so did Clara, because she let her whinge until they reached the top of the relatively tall ladder, and were met by armed persons.

"Ah… Hello," said Eleven stiffly. Jack had been first up, with him following, "Sorry for invading your area like this… I thought we were expected? Or at least, Oswin was expected?"

"Oswin?" somebody asked, some tall, dark-eyed and dark-haired individual brandishing a makeshift axe of some sort, "Where is she?" He continued.

"On the ladder," Eleven said.

"But we should warn you," Jack advised, "There are… Three identical girls." Whoever the man was, he ignored Jack and pushed past him to peer over the edge, right as Oswin (third in line) was struggling up, and he reached down to help her, dropping his axe on the wooden floor in the process, "Oh my god, where've you been? I called over six months ago!" _Oh_, Eleven thought, _this is Zachary_. Oswin seemed shocked, maybe even affronted, when he hugged her out of nowhere.

"Um, yeah, Zach, hi…" she said awkwardly, trying to escape, "Just to warn you, about these, um, clones. Of me. Sort of. I will explain everything…" Clara emerged, followed quickly by Eyeball, and then Zachary (and the rest of the Remnants who hadn't said a word so far) looked incredibly surprised by the fact there were three of them. "What do you mean, six months?"

"Yeah. Six months. The infection has mutated since then," Zachary told her.

"Yeah, we know," Jack said, "Ran into one of those, eh… What do you call them?"

"Zombies," Zachary said simply.

"Interesting," Jack said, then he held out his hand to shake, "Hello. Captain Jack Harkness. Who might you be?"

"Don't start, the threat about ripping your spine out still stands, Jack," Clara said coolly, and Jack withdrew his hand. Eleven looked at her, and noticed she was filthy already, after barely an hour out in the jungle. Though it was still ferociously humid, and Eleven was boiling, and the itchy, burning sensation on his skin was only slightly relieved by the increase in altitude. He wondered then, if it was something to do with the trees. Maybe he had some kind of Time Lord allergy. In fact, he ought to check…

"You're dirty," he told Clara quite brashly when she was trying to scratch a bit of filth from her arm. She looked up at him and raised an eyebrow.

"I'm always dirty," she said with obvious bedroom eyes. Oswin clapped her hands together.

"Okay, well, you two are disgusting and you need to have ice water thrown on you," she said shrilly, "Moving on, where's Flek? And do you have a lab?"

"Yeah, about Flek. Well, she's… She's in the lab. Come on…" Zachary said, but Eleven wasn't liking the sound of that half-finished sentence, and he wondered about it all the way up the ladders to the spaceship balancing precariously on the branches, which was apparently where their lab was situated.


	25. Family Feud

_Clara_

_Family Feud_

The promised laboratory they were then directed to was the one in the crashed spaceship above. She didn't recognise the ship, but then, she didn't have a particularly vast knowledge of spacecraft. Inside it was clean enough, even if the walls were a little grimy and there were tendrils of some ivy-like plant with leaves more turquoise than green creeping in through the doorway. She wondered how sterile it was though, if they were using it for medical research, and it wasn't very large at all. She was also questioning how safe it was for them up there, balancing on the trees. Hopefully they had built some kind of wooden reinforcements.

"This place is great," the Doctor commented next to her. She looked over at him and saw him scratching his arm quite fervently.

"That's what happens when you wear tweed to the jungle," Clara said to him, and he raised his eyebrows at her, "Don't itch, it'll just get worse." He scowled at her, with his I-am-1200-years-old-you-can't-tell-me-what-to-do face, but she ignored him as he crossed his arms tightly. Clara went back to trying to figure out who Zachary looked like she could use to taunt her sister with. Why were all of Oswin's brothers so attractive? What were the other three like? '_Well, one of them's about sixteen, you sick freak_.' Oswin was glaring at Clara, so the latter stuck her tongue out.

The rest of the welcome party who'd been with Zachary had since dispersed, so it was just him in the room with them, heading towards a door to the right of the side-entrance into the ship (to the left was the small cockpit), and he spoke quietly to whoever was inside the room.

"Great set-up here," Jack said, looking around, "What is this, a stolen Alliance medical wing? Don't they track these?" Nobody answered him though, since Eleven probably didn't know, Clara definitely didn't know, Eyeball was still ignoring him, and Oswin was engrossed in whatever was happening with her other hot brother.

"Oh my god, Flek!" Oswin squealed and made Clara jump.

"Who is this girl?" Eleven whispered to Clara, when a short girl with bubble-gum pink hair (where she was getting hair dye from on an alien planet, Clara had no idea) was attack-hugged by her little sister.

"An ex, I think?" Clara said, shrugging. If Flek _was_ an ex, they were on indubitably better terms than Clara had been on with her ex-girlfriend. She still had nightmares about being accosted in a woods by filthy, crazy, tree-obsessed Denise.

"How long has it been? I lose track," Oswin said.

"Only three years since Quadrant Twelve went down," Flek told her, but that didn't help Clara in figuring out the year. Clara also wondered what Oswin was going to tell Flek about the two other identical girls loitering around in the next room, "Which is a shame, I was hoping we could reunite sooner."

"Probably not in the way you were thinking, I have a boyfriend now," Oswin was telling her, quite happily. In Clara's experience, that would be an atrocious thing to say to an ex, but Flek didn't seem to care at all.

"Well, you can sure reunite with _me_," Jack said smoothly, "Captain Jack Harknes."

"She's gay, Jack," Oswin told him, and he made the hand he'd been holding out to shake into a fist and stepped back again, Oswin shaking her head.

"Not Alitt?" Flek asked seriously.

"God, no. Of course not. Don't be disgusting, not him," Oswin shook her head, apparently repulsed, even though Clara was sure that when they'd been on Quadrant Twelve it had been blatantly obvious that she'd slept with this Alitt, "Ew. You've never met him. He's not here. But there's something you should know about the people who _are_ here…" Oswin said, stepping out of Flek's way so that she could see Clara and Eyeball, the latter of which was more interested in the view out of the front window that whatever was going on behind her. All Clara saw out of the window were trees.

"Who are they..?" Flek asked, "I didn't know you had twin sisters…"

"Oh, they're not," Oswin said.

"How come she's the only one who ever believes that sisters lie? Honestly, no-one every goes for it," Clara muttered. It was true – every time they met an Echo they tried to spin the 'separated at birth' nonsense, yet despite the fact they were literally identical, they always thought there was something else going on. Which, admittedly, there was, but Clara was at a loss to way they never failed to jump to that conclusion before the most obvious, and the simplest, explanation.

"It's very complicated," Oswin said.

"Yeah, who are they?" Zachary asked next, "You haven't told me. I think I have a right to know."

"You don't have a right to know anything about me, Zach. Whatever I tell you, I tell you out of the goodness of _my_ heart, not because I owe you something," Oswin said coldly. Clara wondered exactly what had happened between Oswin and Zachary, since Oswin still got along more than fine with Frank, and Zach was the only other brother Clara had heard her actually mention.

"Wow, you used to be the guardian angel of that house. What happened?" Flek asked Oswin seriously.

"I died, that's what," Oswin muttered. Flek seemed completely unaware of this fact up until this point, and her face was a picture of utter shock. Then Clara remembered that from Flek's point of view, Oswin had probably just vanished and inexplicably showed up on the other end of a radio line a good few years later before vanishing off again. There hadn't been time to explain the unfortunate circumstances of Oswin's demise. "I'm a hologram."

"A hologram with a fake leg," Eyeball quipped from the other side of the room.

"You, shut up," Clara ordered her, "Else I'll throw that eye of yours out into the jungle, and you can go look for it." Eyeball scowled, and her eye turned red, which was unnerving to say the least, and Clara looked away from her.

"Yeah, don't ask about the leg…" Oswin muttered.

"Wait, so, how did you..? You know..?" Flek asked.

"Die..?" Oswin suggested for her, and she nodded. Clara couldn't help but notice how pale and ill the girl now looked. She was definitely thin and her eyes were sunken, and if she had to say, the whites of them appeared to be a darker, unnatural colour from where she was standing. "Well, it's a hilarious story, involves me sneaking off Horizon and stowing away in a starship, which then crash landed on the Dalek Asylum – of all the places – and I got converted into a Dalek until I ended up sacrificing myself to save him over there," she waved a hand at the Eleventh Doctor.

"Hello!" Eleven said brightly, before frowning and trying to itch his arm again, but Clara stood on his toes to make him stop. Honestly, he wasn't doing himself any good, "I'm the Doctor, I'm a Time Lord."

"I thought the Time Lords were all dead?" Zachary asked.

"They were. Are. I'm the last one," Eleven said, "Your sister saved me."

"Yep…" Oswin muttered, apparently trying to resist making some insensitive joke about Clara's husband. They weren't on the TARDIS, they were out doing something serious, and it really wasn't the time to make a dumb joke about the Doctor for no apparent reason, "Anyway, I don't like to talk about that, it was only two months ago…"

"I don't remember you saying anything about Daleks," Zachary said to her with a flat tone. She glared at him.

"You were drunk," was all Oswin said to him, and he scowled back at her. Oswin's family always seemed to be a Don't Ask Don't Tell situation, and Oswin only ever talked about them when she _absolutely had to_. But then, Oswin only spoke about a lot of things when she absolutely had to. Clara couldn't blame her, they were the same in that regard. It wasn't like _she'd_ ever spoken about her mother.

"Well, what a reunion. You're dead, I'm dying, what-"

"You're _what_!?" Oswin exclaimed, "What do you mean 'dying'? Dying how? Dying in the metaphorical sense that technically everyone is slowly dying?"

"Didn't Zach..?"

"No. No, Zach didn't. Please, Zach, explain why you didn't tell me that Flek was dying?" Oswin asked him through gritted teeth, and Clara prepared herself to perhaps jump in and stop Oswin from doing... Well, truthfully, Clara didn't know what she was worried about Oswin doing. But whatever it was, she was intent on preventing it.

"I thought she'd want to tell you herself," Zachary said quietly, crossing his arms.

"It's not this weird mushroom plague, is it? You're not gonna turn into one of those things, right?" Oswin asked urgently. Eleven, for all he was worth, was barely paying attention and had moved on to itching his neck now, and she elbowed him and hissed at him to stop, to which he replied he couldn't.

"No, it's Ceposea," said Flek. Clara had never heard of that particular affliction, but Oswin clearly had, and Eleven even briefly ceased his desperate itching then.

"Ceposea..?" Oswin asked, "But… Ceoposea's terminal. Why are you here on Eslilia? You should be somewhere else, some hospital! Why haven't you left!? There must be some way… I can fix the ship, I'm sure, you can-"

"There isn't a cure, Oswin," Flek said.

"Then I'll make a cure," Oswin declared.

"Can't you just get the Miracle Medicine, Os..?" Clara suggested to her, and she laughed coldly, going to lean on the wall, rather than doing her usual pacing. Clara could feel the worry and the thinking emanating from Oswin.

"No. Well, I mean, I could, but that would only benefit Flek. If I could cure Ceposea, that would help millions of people through the Empire," Oswin said, "There must be a way to cure it on this planet somewhere…" Clara had absolutely no idea if any of Oswin's efforts would be futile or not.

"I didn't think you were much of a biologist," Clara said.

"I'm not," Oswin answered, "I know basics."

"And basics for you, is..?" Clara asked.

"PhDs," Oswin said simply, already deep in thought. Clara could smell another slump coming on for her sister, where she wasn't going to speak to anybody. They didn't even have the advanced laboratory of the TARDIS there though, or Helix. Clara didn't doubt Oswin's intelligence, but she perhaps doubted the facilities offered by a crashed spaceship and an abandoned settlement of unpersons on a remote planet.

"Sorry, but a PhD isn't basic knowledge," Eyeball said, apparently thinking she was better than everyone else.

"It is with an IQ of 352, okay?" Oswin snapped.

"Oh, so you'll tell her, but not me!?" Clara exclaimed. Oswin said nothing, didn't even look at her, and she sighed. Well. She finally knew what her sister's IQ was, after what she was sure must be over a month of questioning and pestering. "And why do you keep scratching!?" she turned on Eleven, who cringed away from her as though he were frightened. Maybe he was scared she was going to rip out his spine through his anus.

"I don't know!" he said, rolling up his sleeve, and it appeared he'd suddenly broken out into blotchy, red hives.

"What _is_ that?" Clara asked him, but he was staring at his skin, "Oswin?" Clara asked her, but she was still not listening, "Oswin!? _Winny_?"

"Don't even-" Oswin instantly snapped out of her spell.

"Here," Clara ordered her, and she scowled, apparently not liking being bossed around by Clara.

"What? What do you – oh my god, why does your husband's skin look so disgusting? Are they hives? Wow," Oswin was immediately enthralled by the mysterious rash the Doctor was suffering from. Jack sauntered over to examine it, too. Clara was staring at the angry welts with shock and worry. "So, Doctor, explain to me about Time Lord immune systems?"

"Sorry?" he asked.

"Do Time Lords have allergies? Is this like – Gallifreyan hay fever?" Oswin joked slightly.

"What?"

"You're having an allergic reaction to something out there," Oswin nodded at the door, "I don't know if it's particularly dangerous, or just unpleasant. If you want _my_ advice, I'd say stay in here out of the open air with me."

"What do you mean 'with you'?" Jack asked, "Why are the rest of us leaving?"

"Because I'm going to hack into the botanical databases of the Nemo Consul – because that's what Galaxy we're in – to find out what plants are on Eslilia and then you guys are going to go fetch them for me so I can cure the zombie plague and Flek," Oswin said, "It's not nice being bossed about by someone exactly the same as you, is it, Clara?"

"You've made your point. How come you're not coming, then?"

"Oh, I'm not going to go out there and trip over anything else," Oswin said, "I'm of more use here, in the lab. You and Jack have assets. Jack can't die, he knows the century, and he's not afraid to club one of those things to death; and you have superpowers, a nanogene cloud, and a psychic connection to the smartest girl in the universe."

"Well what about Eyeball, hmm? Where'll she go?" Clara crossed her arms.

"She can go with you, she's _your_ responsibility," Oswin argued, "_You_ created her, _you_ can drag her out zombie killing. Besides, she's already killed plenty of things. Like my patience."

"If we're killing zombies, can I kill you again? I'm not sure the Daleks got the satisfaction," Eyeball said, "But maybe I do want to bash some heads in."

"Fine by me," Jack shrugged eventually.

"I'll come too," Zachary offered, "I'm no good in the lab."

"Great! Fighting zombies. If there are cannibals, I will ban you from marshmallows again," Clara threatened Oswin.

"You can't ban me from marshmallows!"

"I can ban you from what I like! And you can't even taste. Go on then. Find these plants. I'm waiting."

"You can really tell you're a teacher sometimes, Clars."


	26. In The Heart Of Darkness

_Clara_

_In The Heart Of Darkness_

The trees curled into knots above her head, blocking the sunlight breaking through the green sky of Eslilia. It was humid and warm and her skin was permanently damp from sweat and moisture clinging to her, not to mention the dirt she was getting on her arms every time she had to brush through a narrow gap between two trees. It stank of death and flowers, a frigthening combination that made her desperate to cover her nose. She could feel the decay around her, and wondered exactly how close any of the 'zombies' were to them, prowling around, sightless due to the fungus crawling out of their eyes. And she didn't want to begin describing what she could taste on the damp air, but after only a brief amout of time, whenever she swallowed she was hit with the taste of rotten meat.

They hardly spoke as they moved, trying to follow the virtual map of the land the Remnants had geo-mapped out for themselves upon arrival. Clara didn't know how long they had been out there - it was either considerably longer or considerably shorter than what she thought, and what she thought was an hour, possibly? Through such a dense web of tree trunks and forest, they probably hadn't made much progress at all. She was just trying to strain her ears to check if they were being followed, but there was hardly a sound aside from their own footsteps. For a vast jungle, it was quite void of anything other than plant life. Maybe not too many people had been infected in just six months? After all, the Remnants lived in the trees, it would be quite difficult for one of those twitchy beasts to climb up the ladders to get the rest.

As they crept, Clara kept a hand tightly around the bow she'd been leant by the citizens of Skybound (the name of the treetop settlement), upon Jack requesting they all be given weapons. She'd had the idea that no matter how useless she was with the bow, as long as she could get an arrow to shoot, she could redirect it telekinetically. She trusted her telekinesis more than she trusted her own hands. Jack had a machete, Eyeball had a makeshift pickaxe that was really a curved bit of shrapnel tied and bound to a branch, and Zachary had the same spear he'd not let out of his grip since their arrival.

"How far away is this, um, grove?" Clara asked Jack quietly. Flek had said some of the plants resided at a grove the Remnants had originally scouted out. They had found them, recordd them, but not known their significance until Oswin and the Doctor came and pointed it out.

"Well, let's put it this way: Do you like camping?" Jack asked her.

"Not anymore..." Clara grumbled. His remark insinuated they'd be out there for days, at least, and she wasn't looking forwards to it at all, despite her intangibility allowing her far easier passage than any of the others.

"You're telling me I have to be stuck out here with _her_ for days?" Eyeball questioned, so blatantly referring to Clara, "Miss Bossy?"

"She's a teacher, it's just how she works," said Jack, "And I think it would be 'Mrs' Bossy, she's married."

"Shouldn't be talking," Zachary said quietly, and neither Jack nor Eyeball said anything more, for fear of alerting whatever predators might be about.

They had waited until dawn rose above to leave the town, not that that did an awful lot of good while they were stuck in the forest, which had layers of leaf canopies high above them, making it dark about from a few stray beams of light that could penetrate through the gaps in the greenery. Clara didn't know how long the days were on Eslilia, whether longer or shorter than those on Earth, but she didn't want to ask anybody. Maybe shorter - since Jack was so sure they'd be out for a while. However, if they _were_ longer, than that spoke volumes about what they were undertaking.

Clara was sure that Jack, at the very least, thought her naïve and possibly incapable of doing any real damage to the creatures that might be out in the jungle. Somehow, since the Dimension Crash, things had gotten a lot more gritty aboard the TARDIS. And they'd increased further after the Dream. Clara was only glad that little of the tension came from the crew anymore. Although there were minor feuds between individuals, there were no longer warring factions with huge prejudices against each other where all newcomers were forced to pick a side straight away. But, the threats from _outside_ the TARDIS were abysmal, and involved her getting frequently mutilated. She'd had a break from it lately, in her opinion, but was thinking that this trip could sound evolve into another pain-fest for her, much like Atlantis had been, or Quadrant Twelve. She could only count her blessings that as of yet, she hadn't been impaled.

"Shhh," said Zachary. Clara thought this out of place, as for a while now, nobody had spoken at all. But she heard his footfalls stop behind her, and then so did Jack, so she followed their lead and stayed still. "You hear that?"

"Hear what?" Jack asked him. Silence for a few seconds, until Clara _did_ hear it. Well, she heard something, she wasn't sure if it was the same thing Zachary had been listening for. Running water. A trickle. She was sure there was a stream nearby, some body of water.

"The water," Clara breathed.

"What? No, I thought we must've missed it, because... C'mon, it's been two hours and we've only gone half a mile?" Jack complained, "I'm gonna die out here."

"Yeah, yeah," Clara ignored his pessimism.

"We can follow the river around to the grove, look," Zachary was pointing at a green line on the map, passing through darker red shaded areas that apparently represented the trees. Clara wasn't sure why the colours were so peculiar, but as long as it was accurate in every other respect, it wasn't much of a problem.

"Yeah, and increase our journey by a whole day, at least," Jack argued, "We should just go in a straight line, we have a compass, we just follow the arrow."

"It'll be faster to follow the river. You said yourself, we've only gone half a mile in two hours because of all the trees. It we stay on the river bank, we can walk faster," Zachary pointed out.

"Yeah, but we'll have less cover from your little zombie problem out there, and they'll hear us splashing through the water," Jack said.

"We can see them coming. Anyway, there aren't many human ones. A lot of the smaller ones are easy to kill and less dangerous. The further we get from Skybound, the less likely we are to run into any of them," Zachary said.

"We're not all immortal, Jack," Clara said, "These two, at least, need water. And _I_ certainly don't want to go without it."

"Oh, you agree with _him_ now?" Jack challenged her.

"Yes," she said quietly and calmly.

"So do I, so you're outvoted," said Eyeball. This entire process but Jack in a bad mood, but he couldn't argue with the majority. Clara thought he was being ridiculous, anyway, like he had some kind of point to prove. Since when did Jack care more about proving a point than his charges?

They were following their ears more than they were following the map then, trying to find the stream. Thankfully, that didn't take long, and they headed right along it, remaining firmly on one side as it grew and snaked a thin, easier to traverse path for them and they could quicken their pace. After stepping on so many twigs and tripping on so many vines, Clara's ankles were already smarting more than her feet, and her back hurt from having to duck and crouch to weave through the trees.

All of a sudden, the trees seemed to split and Clara saw light ahead of them, gouging its way into the darkness the trees were causing and illuminating the few feet in front of it, sending light ripples across the water. They all slipped through this opening and were immediately forced into ankle-deep water, because the stream had broken out into the river, out of nowhere. And the trees didn't grow in the river, so there was a gap of light above them where Clara could see the sun beating down in the jade sky, and was - funnily enough - reminded of Oz and the Emerald City. It was cooler, as well, which was welcome in the heat.

"Why aren't there any animals out here?" Clara asked whoever was more inclined to answer her.

"The virus, whatever it is," Zachary began, "It spread through everything else before it got to the humans." Clara nodded, as they started following the river to the right, staying to the bank but occasionally splashing into the water (which was unpleasant - her shoes weren't exactly waterproof).

She wondered how well Zachary was holding up o Eslilia in general. Oswin hated the concept of nature, and trees, and the outdoors. Clara didn't know if that trait was universal amongst those born and raised on spacestations, or just people kept locked up in their house and barred from leaving for two decades. She didn't think now was the time to ask how he was coping with living outside, in the open-air and the virus-riddled forest.

Onwards they travelled in search of the strange, medicinal plants, trekking through the river now escaped from the grips of the trees, and Clara was bracing herself for the worst to come.


	27. Cold Blooded Pro

_Clara_

_Cold Blooded Pro_

The gushing of the river was welcomed and melodic in the silence of the jungle they were immersed in. It was almost friendly, and at the very least it was familiar. More familiar than the green sky, or the blueish leaves, at least. She felt there was some kind of solace or safety in the water, and she wasn't so sure why. Possibly because of the stillness of the rest of the planet, it was refreshing to see _something _moving. It gave somewhere so supposedly full of death some life, and talking felt less taboo when there was the sound of the river to drown it out a little.

"I'm dying to know," Zachary began, drifting back towards Clara, "What are you two?"

"Wow, you're quite blunt, aren't you?" Clara asked him. _Get that from your sister?_, was the extra question she didn't add. It was true enough though. Her sister was no stranger to asking brash questions.

"I guess," Zachary said coolly. He was unreadable, and his eyes had the same streak of coldness that Oswin's always did. The streak of coldness Eleven claimed was how he could tell them apart.

"Well, you know the Time Lord back there? The Doctor?" Clara began, and then she was forced to embark on the story of the Great Intelligence and the Echoes for the second time that day, and she thought perhaps the recital was more exhaustive than the journey they were currently on. She definitely felt sweatier after telling him the whole thing.

"So... So, what? Her life meant nothing?" Zachary was suddenly angry, it had come out nowhere. Jack heard the anger in his tone and looked around from his position as the leader of the group.

"Her and me both. Can't wait to see how _I_ die," Eyeball said bitterly, and Clara glared at her, though she wasn't looking. She was kicking something through the water and watching it stroke the muddy shoreline.

"Not all of you die," Clara said to Eyeball, and then she turned back to Zachary, "And that isn't what I meant, don't mince my words." Clara walked past him to catch up with Jack, not liking how angry he suddenly was.

"Hey, what was with him?" Jack asked quietly, "Oswin ever talk about him?"

"She talks about him a whole lot more than she talks about the others. Never good things," Clara whispered, "Which either means he's not as bad as the other three, or he's worse. I don't ask about her family. She has attacks, and I don't like putting her through that." Eyeball went off to make some resentful conversation with Zachary, and Clara was sure that she, aside from Oswin, was the only Echo who knew the truth. And, like Oswin, she wasn't taking it well at all. Clara was stuck with Jack to talk to.

"Well, do you know anything?" Jack asked, "He seems... Shady. And I don't say that lightly, I never like to judge a book by its cover."

"As far as I know, his wife left him and took his daughter too, and he doesn't see either of them anymore. And he used to have a drinking problem," Clara explained, "That's all I know. And apparently one time he ate a stick of butter for a dare."

"Let's just keep..." Jack trailed away when he turned away from Eyeball and Zachary, as though he saw something. Clara followed his lead and his gaze and quieted upon seeing what Jack saw standing right in the middle of the river.

The water sloshed up around its shins, and it was stood still, but it was twitching quite violently. Jack shushed the other two, and motioned at the thing with his head. They all fell quiet and didn't move, trying not to make any noise. It wasn't like it could see, there were orange strings of mushroom growing out of its facial orifices, but it was threatening enough.

"Okay... Zachary, you go over there and splash about and make some noise, I'll sneak around the back in a pincer movement and get it, and then Eyeball, you just throw the pickaxe like a tomahawk. You can throw, right?" Jack said quickly and quietly.

"I have good aim," Eyeball said, and Clara winced when she saw her pupil glow and seem to magnify.

"What do I do, then?" Clara asked Jack, raising an eyebrow at him.

"You can... Just... Stay here. You don't really wanna have to use that bow, right? You should... Preserve your ammo," Jack said. Clara instantly understood. Jack thought she needed babying and coddling, and was entirely incapable of doing anything to hurt someone, no matter how dead and dangerous they already were. She supposed it was a compliment really, given the climate she lived in, to be still thought of as in need of protection. But at that moment, she didn't take it as such at all.

"_Or_ you could do this?" Clara suggested, reaching to pull and arrow from her quiver, placing it rather messily in the bow, aiming vaguely in the direction of the creature and firing. Thank god for telekinesis, she thought, because the arrow twanged straight through what Clara knew was the spinal chord (for that was where she had aimed), severing any link to the body. Even fungus couldn't fix that, and it twitched spastically a few more times before collapsing into the water. "Easier, no?" she shook her head at Jack.

"Whoa, whoa, Clara," Jack said, grabbing her wrist when she tried to walk off. She crossed her arms and looked up at him, annoyed at her height for once and her lack of ability to look formidable, "Where the hell did you learn to do that?"

"I didn't. Telekinesis, remember?" she said bitterly, aware of Zachary and Eyeball glancing between her and the carcass in the river.

"Not shoot. Kill," Jack said, "Without remorse. You barely even looked twice!"

"Whoever they were, they died a long time before I shot them, okay?" Clara said to him, trying to ignore the water seeping into her shoes from the mud. "You don't know what happened in that Dream, Jack."

"Well I know it wasn't real," Jack said, "That's for damn sure. But this _is_ real. There could've been a cure!"

"But there wasn't a cure when you were gonna sneak around and cut its head off with that machete?" Clara challenged.

"...I just thought, better I do it than you. Okay, we're talking about this later," Jack said firmly, "Right now, we're gonna keep going." And then he walked off, and she was stuck following him, wondering what kind of lecture he was possibly going to be giving her. He, who just hours earlier, had been 'intimate' with one of her _Echoes_.

"What, exactly, _do_ you teach..?" Eyeball asked her.

"English," Clara replied, and then she walked off after Jack.

The river ran dark orange in a streak spilling downstream from where the body lay, and Clara tried not to look at it. The colour made her feel ill, and the way the thick secretions from the fungi were mixing with the water. There were some hushed agreements that they should go walk in the water, and a minor argument about the sound of footsteps (Jack, however, insisted that if Zachary wanted to follow the river this was the easiest way), and so she trudged past it, trying to rub some of the dirt from her forehead while avoiding looking at the corpse.

They continued on. As the large sun grew brighter overhead with the day, the sky grew even greener and reflected jade into the water of the the shallow river. Clara remembered when she was impaled, and how all the trees had blurred into a leafy mess, and for the best part of those two days she'd despised the colour.

She drifted off for a while at distant memories of the Dream, and realised that she'd been friends with Oswin for longer than she _hadn't_ been, and that surprised her, since it seemed their feuding had gone on for eons. She was remembering Day Seven, when they'd ended up battling zombies and she'd had to plunge a crowbar straight into a skull. She still winced at the crunching sound it had made. She'd had quite a large argument with Oswin about not wanting to kill the zombie, as a matter of fact, and wondered what had changed since then. She didn't much feel like making a timeline of all the recent, traumatic events of her life, however, so a while later she allowed herself to return to reality, and noticed the much louder sound of gushing water in her ears, and was sure the cool river was deeper than it had been.

"What's that noise?" Zachary, now trudging at the back, called ahead to Jack, the leader.

"The waterfall," Jack replied.

"The _what_?" Zachary seemed shocked. Had he never seen a waterfall before? Clara wasn't too surprised. He might have been living on Eslilia for a year or so, but that didn't mean he'd ever gone exploring far. And certainly not _this _far before, because when Clara looked back she could no longer see the sun bouncing off the silver metal of the spaceship atop the trees.

"Didn't you know there was a waterfall when you suggested we go this way..?" Jack asked him, and he shook his head, and Jack groaned, "You spacestation goons are all the same, think you know everything because you grew up in a box. Come on," he muttered, increasing his pace.

"Do we have to go over the waterfall? Or fall down it?" Clara asked. Going by the way the water was fighting _against_ them, instead of pulling them with it, she supposed they would have to find a way up and over. And she didn't know _how_ they were going to do that. She didn't have the foggiest.

The water grew louder and louder, and they turned left on a sharp corner not soon after that exchange and the waterfall was staring them down from the opposing cliff face. It was almost glowing green under the noon sun, and was even more entrancing than any waterfall back on Earth, white foam and mist bubbling at the bottom of it. But there was no way up, the cliff continued along, blocking their passage, and Clara hoped they wouldn't have to turn back and start cutting through the trees again (she much preferred the river).

"What do we do now?" Clara asked Jack, raising an eyebrow at him. He seemed to be thinking.

"Hold this," he handed her the vortex manipulator he had been using as a map to guide them, and began to wade out into the deepening waters towards the basin of the waterfall. Then Jack was gone, vanished into the mist and fog the water was causing to rise up and drench them all already, making her feel even more clammy than she already had done.

"Where did he go?" Zachary asked. Clara didn't answer, because she didn't know, and she couldn't see anything on the map that would indicate why Jack suddenly felt the need to plunge into the bottom of a waterfall.

Captain Jack's excursion was only short, however, and he returned looking a little happier than he had done before. Grinning, even.

"There's a cave!" he called over the roaring water, "I'm pretty sure it goes through, I felt a breeze!" _Goes through where, though_, Clara thought? Would they be completely lost when they came back out? In totally the wrong place? But then, maybe it really _was_ a sure-fire shortcut through the cliff?

She was dragged out of her worries when Jack decided, for whatever reason, he was going to take off his shirt.

"What're you..?" Clara asked him.

"What?" he asked, "I'm making a torch out of branches. Thank god _some_ of us still carry a lighter, hmm?"

"I quit again, shut up," Clara snapped. Why he was making a dig at her for not smoking, she had no idea. But she was really thinking that then would be a great time for a cigarette, minus the waterfall they were about to pass through, the awful heat, and the fact nobody had any. She wished she'd brought some gum with her.

"Anyway, I love going bareback," Jack smirked as he climbed up onto the shore to find an appropriate sized branch.

"I did not need to know that," Clara shook her head, a little repulsed at the amount of information she'd suddenly been graced with about Jack's sex life.

"Is it dark in there?" Zachary called out from where he was lingering, far away from Jack and Clara and the waterfall.

"Yeah, it's a cave, that's the point, Zachy," Jack told him sarcastically. Clara was sure Zachary didn't like being called 'Zachy' one bit, going by the way he grimaced when Jack addressed him that way. However, she was also sure that Jack didn't care. "These pants are so waterlogged."

"Could you try and keep _some_ of your clothes on?" Clara asked him, more or less begging by that point, keeping her arms crossed and her bow hung around her back.

"I can _try_, but if you need a torch as well, just let me know," he then winked.

"Just because you're not allowed to try it on with my Echoes, doesn't invite you to try it on with me."

"I've been trying it on with you since the moment we met, sweetheart. It isn't _my_ fault you only have eyes for husbandy," Jack said, and Clara (in spite of her best efforts) had to laugh. "C'mon then. Into the caves."


	28. Underworld

_Clara_

_Underworld_

The torch marred the cave walls with an orange glow they had probably never seen before, covering them with the bright marks of the outside world. Insects of some kind scuttled into black cracks as the flickering light passed over their hiding spots and caused them to run off, white from the darkness. She never got a chance to examine the small creatures properly, but from what she saw the words to describe them were 'legged' and 'bloated' as they scuttled along the ragged walls above and around them. She could hear the dripping of water coming down from the cave roof, hanging from the stalactites before dropping into clear pools that flashed yellow when they passed by and sent reflections onto the walls. Their own warped shadows stalked them, towering and creeping along the damp rock, and the floor was slippery and rocky with formidable cave formations leering out of the gloom and threatening to trip somebody up at every turn. It was still humid as they headed downwards with no other way to turn, growing increasingly colder and so she was soaked in an unpleasant, cool layer of moisture that was no longer sweat. She could smell dirt and something metallic, which she guessed was just a quality of whatever alien stone the passage was carved into, but it was harsh and stung her nose when she took a breath, or alternatively her teeth if she switched to breathing through her mouth and sending a puff of mist in front of her face. Again, she longed for gum, and thought it would be more than a good investment for their outings.

It was interesting though, trekking in silence through the caves that were so quiet she didn't know if her heartbeat was in her ears or if it was echoing off the walls around her. Every footstep, every cough, every breath - it all seemed magnifyed as they sank on the slope beneath the ground, the effervescent roaring of the waterfall a distant memory. The only thing left of the river was a thin trickle of liquid following them down one side of the tunnel.

Her hands were even sweatier than the rest of her, and her clothes were wet from passing beneath the falls. Every time she went to wipe dirt and moisture from her face, she just spread the muck and made it worse, and there were no dry surfaces to cleanse herself on. She didn't have a lighter and they didn't have food, or any other resources aside from the vortex manipulator map which was utterly useless in the cave depths, since the Remnants had never cared to explore them. Until they reached a fork, Clara deduced they were safe enough, but she wasn't looking forward to the arguments when they did. She almost thought that it would have been worth inviting Rose Tyler along to guide the way, even worth her talking about her man-problems she had brought on entirely by herself. It wasn't _quite_ hellish enough for that yet, and Clara had read enough Jules Verne in her life to be intrigued as to what 'adventuring' really was like. This wasn't the normal kind of futuristic, detective-work she was used to on the TARDIS, but rather a whimsical scavenger hunt through the recesses of an unexplored land. It was straight out of a storybook, and this one didn't have a highly objectionable narrator preaching back at her the whole time - no doubt that would have made the journey quite unbearable.

In her head, Clara was tracing back over what events of Journey to the Centre of the Earth she could remember in hope for any kind of fictional guidance (if she didn't strike Eyeball as an English teacher before, as soon as she started spouting quotes from adventure novels, she was sure the truth of how big of a bookworm she was would come out), but she didn't know how much the imagination of a man from the Nineteenth Century correlated with the jungle planet of Eslilia, with its zombie-plague. She had very nearly forgotten about the zombies while musing upon the prehistoric beasts that lay within the belly of Earth.

Right up until there was a rumble, followed by a second one. However, the second one and its resounding echoes made it identifiable as a rockfall of some kind, maybe a minor cave-in somewhere far off. The fact that the second sound was a rumble, however, meant the first sound remained a mysery, and every one of them stopped moving.

"...What was that?" Zachary asked. Eternally useless, Clara thought. At least, despite her reclusive nature, her sister's genius meant she had _something_ going for her on the planet. She didn't know why Zachary had insisted of coming with them, instead of catching up with his long deceased sister. It struck Clara that maybe that was exaclty what Zach might be trying to avoid, and she remembered there was a reason she wasn't asking about the family situation.

"A noise, shh," Jack hissed at him, the sound reverberating around them for a few moments. They heard nothing else though, "It'll be nothing..." Judging by Jack's tone of voice, it wasn't 'nothing' at all. Clara didn't want to say anything though, lest she jinx it. Apparently, superstition wasn't one of the traits she and Eyeball shared, however, because Eyeball had absolutely no concern for saying what they were all thinking and probably frightening Zachary (who flocked to indoor light like socially retarded moth) half to death.

"Probably a monster," she said with an air of mischief. Probably waiting for a chance to shoot at it, no doubt. Hang it as a trophy.

"There's no monster, okay?" said Jack uneasily.

"Yeah, don't be ridiculous," Clara said, "Caves don't have monsters in real life."

"Yeah, well my real life doesn't have caves," muttered Zachary resentfully, "So I'm not gonna take my chances by believing you."

"She's right. Only thing your gonna find in a cave is rocks and cobwebs," Jack thankfully agreed with Clara to try and diffuse the anxious situation, "The weirdest creature in this cave is Clara."

"I'm not a weird creature!" Clara protested in anguish, watching the torch he was holding warp the shadows of his grin into something unsettling.

"Then why do I hear all those strange noises coming from your room at night?" he asked wryly. What did they all get out of tormenting her? Was her reaction highy amusing or something? She sighed internally (she wasn't really daring to make a sound) and wondered if maybe Jack was just trying to ease the tension and didn't actually know that Clara was sick of being messed with so often and so impudently. At any rate, though, it was neither the time nor place to give him a lecture about her bruised ego or her hurt feelings.

By this point, going back was out of the question, so they were left with no choice but to keep moving forwards, deeper into the caves and the lair of whatever was after them. Clara was hoping for some big, friendly cave monster. Maybe with marshmallows and a warm fire and blankets. Was that too much to ask for? For _once_?

Instead of going through old books in her head, she was now fiercely remembering every other time there had been some imposing foe after her. She remembered the insane denizens of Atlantis - the mad doctor and the master composer. At that time, she was glad that a cave monster probably wasn't going to crucify her or strap her to a piano and then force her to play wildly (even though she did play piano, she didn't fancy getting plastered onto a dynamite-saddled one and forced to playfor her life). The cave monster also wasn't a psycho-cannibal locked in a food court who would drop her in a McDonald's deep-fat fryer at the first chance, nor was it an opportunistic Martian in a flying saucer who was going to probe and abduct her. And it also wasn't a ghost, or a werewolf. When worse came to worst, Clara always thought she should be glad she _wasn't _in an abandoned, haunted lunatic asylum. Unless she was. Then all hope was lost, really. The last monster she'd found in a cave had been a giant, firebreathing ant three weeks ago, and that had been surprisingly easy to kill. Maybe it would just be another giant insect. As long as it wasn't a giant spider, she didn't think she'd mind. She could always phase into the walls and be a coward.

There was another noise, almost like a rattle, and that could definitely not be passed off as just a rockfall miles away through the cave system. Zachary whimpered, but Eyeball seemed to be enjoying herself. Jack, too, was radiating excitement as much as he was caution. Clara just wanted to rest, she hadn't stopped walking for _hours_ by this point. She took a few deep breaths and tried to get it through to herself that no matter how frightened she was, the threat didn't equal the fear.

"Oh, god..." Zach muttered, "Maybe we should go back and go through the jungle? Probably safer."

"Safer? With the mushroom zombies?" Jack questioned him, "No way."

"Well whatever's in these caves could be a mushroom zombie too," Zachary pointed out hysterically, switching his weight between his feet like a dog who needed the toilet.

"No, the spores won't be able to get down here," Jack explained. Clara didn't know if that was good or bad. Eventually, she decided it was bad, because if the thing wasn't overrun with fungus it probably had a lot more freedom of movement. "We'll keep going. We might be able to totally avoid it, if we're quiet."

"I'm sure it knows its way around its own lair," Eyeball said. She was doing absolutely nothing to help the situation, and Clara was wondering how long, exactly, it would take for the emotional link to establish itself, since Oswin had told her that link to Echoes was about proximity. She wondered if the Echoes themselves could link up with one another, and though about asking Oswin, but didn't want to deal with the innuendo fallout of her asking that.

Quietness wasn't something they succeeded in.

There was another rumble, this one was from behind them, and it was far louder. It was definitely the caves though, but Clara had heard those rumbles before, on Quadrant Twelve. And it grew and grew, louder and louder.

"Run!" Jack shouted, bolting off the way the had been headed just as dust began to fall from the roof above them.

"Wh-what's happening!?" Zachary demanded to know.

"Cave-in!" Jack called, Clara and Eyeball wasting no time in going straight after him. She was full of panic and she stumbled as the crashes of the rocks falling start to catch up behind them, and she was glad of the fact her sister wasn't there to struggle with escaping from the cave-in.

They ran and ran as rocks tumbled and she desperately didn't want to get caught in the mess and dragged into the bowls of Eslilia.

And then the floor crumbled beneath their feet, and they were sent plunging downwards into a black abyss.


	29. Worms From Space

_Clara_

_Worms From Space_

She woke up and wondered why her hair was standing straight up on end and why her arms were up in the air above her head. It took her a few seconds to realise through her headache that she was suspended upside down, attached to something by her feet. Her hands were stuck together by something, but she wasn't gagged- though she wasn't sure what good screaming would do (if any).

She tried to look around and stay calm, breathing deeply and trying to keep some kind of rhythm, thinking through what she should logically do. She was convinced nobody would come to rescue her, so she either had to save herself or become monster food (and she wasn't sure how well nanogenes worked after they _and_ their charge had been pumped through the digestive system of some beast). Freeing herself would be easy enough, but getting away without getting caught and trying to find the others was suicide.

Her surroundings were quite bleak, but there was some kind of white light illuminating the cave. It took her a few seconds to notice that the very substance keeping her attached to the roof was glowing. It looked more like goo than web, but Clara supposed it was the same theory. It was keeping her there, and it was cold around her wrists and ankles. Squinting through the dark, however, she saw another hanging body next to her, and not a creature in sight in the cave.

"...Hey..?" she hissed, then she paused and listened out for any reply, either from the person or the creature. "Psst!" And the body moved, and tried to spin around to face her, and she saw the filthy face of Captain Jack look around at her.

"Clara!" he exclaimed, "Get us out of here!" He echoed slightly, so that they both immediately silenced. But they didn't hear anything. Whatever had dragged them into the cavern from when they'd fallen wasn't there anymore.

"No, shh," Clara warned him, "Where are the other two?"

"I don't know," Jack said, letting his head drop so he was facing away from her, "Hey, you don't think they're dead, do you? I mean, maybe we're here because we healed after that fall."

"Eyeball's not dead," Clara said, trying to tap into any kind of weak link that they may have after just a day, "I'd know if she was. So chances are, Zachary isn't dead, either."

"Okay, well they're not here, so we have to find them," Jack said, "And we don't have Rose to guide us."

"Yeah, I was thinking the same thing earlier..." Clara muttered, trying to look around, "Can you see the way out? Is there anything behind me?"

"I can turn that far," he said, "Maybe if you spin me? With, you know, telekinesis?"

"I don't want to break the thread-goo in case the thing comes back," Clara told him, "Not until we have a route of escape."

"It doesn't matter, we'll be fine, I still have my machete," Jack told her. He sounded strained. Hanging upside down wasn't very fun or comfortable, she noticed. She'd never had it happen before. "Y'know, I kinda thought you'd freak out about this."

"I've been in worse situations," she told him grimly, straining to try and bend in an unnatural and painful way to try and see what was behind her, but she gave up and let herself drop and swung a little back and forth. "Attacked by Jack the Ripper, blackmailed by mobsters, sunk on a pirate ship, involved in a car crash with an RV where the RV exploded..."

"Wait, what? When was this?"

"In the two week long coma," Clara said, "It's a long story... Hang on, I have an idea..." She tried to wriggle her leg slightly to see if she could still feel her phone in her pocket. And thank god, she did. She only hoped it wasn't broken from the fall, and that telekinesis still worked properly when you were suspended by your toes. It floated out from her jeans (_why_ had she decided to wear jeans to the jungle? Of all the things...) and in front of her face, where it lit itself up and she saw the screen was cracked, but it was still working. So, she switched on the torch, and the room was so dark it seemed to light up half of it.

"What's that light?" Jack asked.

"My phone," she answered, sending it floating off to scout for doorways.

"So you can do that, but you can't swing me?" he joked, but she ignored him, keeping close watch of the phone as it bobbed through the air. It floated in front of what looked like a dark passageway, perhaps their way out? She couldn't see any other.

And then there was a sort of guttural, slimy noise (like someone with a mucus cough and particularly clogged up lungs) and she jumped, and the phone crashed to the groumd and smashed to pieces, leaving them in the dark with only their bindings for light. "Great going."

Again, Clara ignored him, and they both stayed still and quiet whilst waiting to see if the creature, whatever it was, was going to return. They didn't hear another sound though, so Clara phased through the bindings on her hands and freed the top half of herself, at least. Not that it did much good, she couldn't reach Jack from where she was.

"Let yourself out, then let me out," Jack whispered to her, all the more aware of the danger they were in.

"I can't, I can't reach you from here and down there I won't be able to, either," Clara said, squinting and trying to see through the tunnel, but it was too dark.

"Get my machete for me," Jack said.

"Your damn machete - where on Earth are you keeping it!?"

"It's in my pants."

"You keep a _machete_ in your _pants_?" Clara hissed, but he didn't say anything in his own defence of what a stupid place to keep a giant knife that so obviously was. Not until a few seconds later, when he started asking her to get it for him again and she finally, begrudgingly, agreed, and floated the thing out from somewhere inside his trousers, and guided it into his hands where he cut his hands free (she was sure he simultaneously cut his palms, but he'd heal soon enough), and then sliced through the bindings on his feet and fell down the nine feet it was to the ground. His machete clattered loudly on the floor, and the repulsing sound of the cave monster sounded again. If it hadn't been alerted before, it definitely was now, as she heard the rattling, scuttle she associated with its movement.

"Quick, get down, we can hide!" In the spur of the moment, for whatever reason, she decided to follow him. She swung back and then phased her feet right through the goo-web, managing to drop and spin onto her hands and knees before Jack dragged her to her feet and over towards the bright goo that was culminating in the corner like a cesspool.

"What are you doing!? It's light over there!"

"It probably hates light, c'mon," he said, "It'll see better in the dark than it will the light, just trust me, I think I know what it is," he was dragging her quite forcefully until she finally relented, and Jack jumped into the goo, sinking in it immedietly. She braced herself, and was forced to take the disgusting plunge after him.

It stank, it stank like some kind of fecal matter, and she realised eventually that that was probably exactly what it was as it soaked her and her clothes while she pushed herself back to be as close to the wall as possible. Maybe the cave monster was a germaphobe and didn't want to go searching for its dinner in its own poo?

It was glowing when it came into the room, a huge, slighery thing with a million bony, translucent legs strailing little white footsteps on the ground. It was like a millipede, but it looked as slimy and segmented as a worm and it gurgled while it skittered into the room. Then it turned to face them, and she saw three full pairs of mandibles and two eyes the size of dinner trays, completely milky white with no pupils. It was hard to believe it could see anything as it padded around, rubbing its face into things and emitting some strange, phlegmy noise as though it was sniffing. What if it could still smell them, in an amongst its faeces? It found where they had both been hanging, and then it did what she could only describe as roaring and spat some liquid that _didn't_ glow into the wall, turning and going out of the room in a different way to the one it had entered through.

However, on its way out, it backed up a little, and let out a splurge of goo from its rear end, directly at Clara and Jack, the former of which ducked straight below the surface of the crap to avoid a facial (not that that worked in any way shape or form). And then it roared again, and moved away, out of the room.

A whole minute may have passed before Jack stood back up. The 'water'-line was up to his waist, but it was up to Clara's chest, and she was far more disgusted than he was. Even if he didn't have a shirt on.

"C'mon," he whispered, wading out of the glowing white poo. She followed, moving awkwardly to try and stop her clothes touching her skin, not that that was about to happen. If someone offered her a shower right then, but said everyone she'd ever met had to watch, she would have still taken the shower. "Was the Dream this bad?"

"No. Now. Where could the other two have gone?"

"I don't know, but Zachary has the vortex manipulator, so we need to find his body, at least," Jack said, and she hit his arm, shaking her head at him (though she was secretly wondering how she would, theoretically, tell Oswin what had happened), "Okay, well, when we're covered in this crap we're practically fireflies."

"Or glow worms," Clara muttered, trying to wipe her eyes clean, at least, "So we have light. Kind of. Don't you have a torch?"

"What kind of torch? You mean a flashlight, or fire?"

"The first one."

"No. Forgot it," Jack said, "Now do we go left or do we go right?"

"There are more footprints left, so let's head that way. Leave handprints on the wall so we don't get lost," she said, walking off first, trying to clean her face from gunk as she went, "Look, Jack, about killing the zombie..." She figured it was safe enough to talk now the worm had gone the other way.

"Uh-huh?"

"In the Dream. They might not have been real, but the threat they posed _was_. If I died _or_ Oswin died, _my_ body went into cardiac arrest. So we would both be gone. Which gives you a lot of perspective into survival. And also my sister's a bad influence and she bashes people to death a lot. And she shot that person. But none of them were still human, so it... It wasn't the first time I've had to do that. There was this zombie once, it grabbed her, she broke her ankle, I threw a crowbar into its head. And besides, that person was probably suffering. They didn't feel anything, I severed the connection to the nerve endings," she explained to him as they walked through, "Speaking of bows and arrows, I've lost mine."

"I'm capable of killing a worm," Jack said after thinking, "Maybe we'll stumble across your bow?"

"Yeah. Or the others."


	30. That Lucky Old Sun

_Clara_

_That Lucky Old Sun_

"So, then, I told you all about that," Clara said to Jack as they walked, "Now _you_ tell me all about your self-destructive sleeping around with my Echoes? Because it's not about me. It's about Jenny. And I didn't think Captain Jack Harkness was the kind of guy to go sleeping with people to make exes jealous."

"Oh yeah? What do you know about 'Captain Jack Harkness'?" he asked with a little grin, but it wasn't much of one. Clara thought he'd be in a fantastic mood after being drenched in worm excrement, but he didn't seem to be.

"I might not be as decorated as you, but everybody seems to know I've done my fair share of sleeping around," Clara said, "And sleeping with people to make exes jealous. And sleeping with exes to make them jealous. Just jealousy, really."

"Yep. Great story. Are you telling me how likely you are to cheat? Should I be warning husbandy?"

"I'm saying that everybody settles down eventually. If you're immortal, I guess it just takes longer," Clara said, "Don't give me some speech about your promiscuity being your personality. You just think you blew it."

"Cheating _is_ blowing it, Clara," Jack said.

"Yeah. If you're _that bothered_, Jenny will get over it. As soon as she figures it's no use trying to get with my sister. Anyway, we all know about the fact you apparently proposed with a hula hoop," Clara confessed. He shut up then, but she thought she'd made some kind of impact on him.

They wended, one behind the other but the leader alternating whenever the passage widened, through narrow tunnels that all had a pale, luminescent quality about they from the sloathing worm. It was quite easy for them to find their way and follow the trail, decided to always follow the more phosphorescent pathway, deducing that to be the most recently travelled. There were some surprisingly sharp turns, and at one instance a steep slope where Jack ended up slipping and launching himself down, Clara carefully following him and helping him to his feet as they listened out for the roar that signified the return of the cave dweller.

Apparently, the room they had been in before had not been its nest. The huge cavern they entered at that moment most definitely _was_. There were more and more bodies stuck to the walls by sonething, but whatever 'something' was, it wasn't the same glowing excretions as they were covered in. The bodies were definitely dead though, and one of them was even one of the Remnants fungal zombies. Stalagmites spiked up from the floor, passages cutting through them so that the worm could get around without impaling itself. They were huge though, and big enough for Jack and Clara to hide behind and weave between if it came back.

"Look," Jack nudged her and pointed at a top corner to their right. She followed his finger and spotted them both, Eyeball and Zachary, unconscious and stuck to the wall. They could only see by the flame from Jack's lighter, but the sticky, translucent coating across everything was impossibly shiny, and even the tiny spark of light bounced around and made the whole cavern glow. "I guess this is the living room?" Jack shrugged. In one corner, like a mountain, Clara could see what looked like a huge pile of slimy white eggs.

"If this is the living room, where were we..?" Clara asked, not really wanting to hear the answer.

"I guess that's the toilet." Clara cringed.

"Alright. So all the time I was thinking how lucky we were that the worm _didn't _eat us..?"

"Yeah. I think it ate us," Jack said, "Good thing it didn't eat them, I doubt they'd've bounced back quite so perkily."

"Yeah, but how do we get them down? What's sticking them to the wall?" Clara asked, touching it and feeling how gross and sticky it was.

"Spit," Jack told her.

"Eurgh," she withdrew her hand like a shot, and then winced and saw her fingertips were bleeding and the skin of them was stuck to the wall. She squinted at it. "Guess we can't just pull them down."

"Maybe it burns?" Jack suggested, "If we wake them up, and then set it on fire, then can drop down." As shocking as that avenue was, Clara couldn't think of a better suggestion.

"We have to get a little bit of it then, otherwise it'll just _all_ set on fire," Clara muttered. They were standing on a high-up overlook above the room, but there was a very thin slope curving around the edge and down to the lower level.

"I see a pool of it down there," Jack said, "Must be the worm equivalent of a spittoon." She tried to ignore what he said as he jumped down off the overlook and made a loud echo in the room, but they heard nothing from the worm. Clara didn't follow his bold lead, she scurried down the thin ledge and balanced herself carefully, getting to the bottom without falling and ducking between the stalagmites to follow Jack to the puddle of spittle he'd pointed out. She waited by the pool as he went and tore a rag of clothing from a suspended skeleton nearby, which rattled when he did (and a rib even fell off). He lit the rag on fire and dropped it into the pool, which ignited instantly, and Clara could finally see how disgustingly filthy Jack was, and ruled that she was probably just as bad, if not worse.

"Wow. Must be our lucky day," she said sarcastically. But then she felt a faint breeze on her back and she turned around sharply, seeing a dark passage, "Did you feel that?"

"Yeah. I'm guessing that's our way out. We have to wake those two up somehow though," Jack reminded her.

"I have an idea..." She brushed past him to pick up the old rib from the floor, and threw it straight at Eyeball's head. It hit her in the temple and she jolted awake as it fell to the floor and clattered to the ground.

"Hey!" Jack called to her, but at that moment they heard the nearby gurgle of the space worm, "Crap, the worm's coming back. Wake up Zachary!"

"What's going on? Why are you both glowing? What worm?"

"The giant worm thing that lives in these caves," Jack explained.

"The glowing stuff is worm shit, okay? It ate us, and shat us out, and then shat in our faces while we were trying to hide in a pool of shit," Clara added, probably with unnecessarily bad language.

"Potty mouth," Jack quipped.

"It's a potty mouth because it's full of worm shit, Jack," Clara grunted, retrieving the rib from the floor of the cave and flinging it up at Zachary, though she caught it that time to stop it banging as the worm made another noise.

"What is that?" Eyeball asked, watching Zachary as he woke up and whimpered at the plight of being stuck on a cave wall ten feet above the ground. Clara thought; at least he wasn't hanging upside down by his feet by a string of dung.

"The worm!" Clara reiterated, "You're stuck to that wall with worm-spit, and we have to set it on fire to get you down."

"_Fire_!? But if it ate you and you two are fine-"

"Nanogenes and exposure to the time vortex," Clara pointed to herself and then to Jack, "You two have neither. You have to just... Have good timing. I touched that stuff and it peeled off my fingertips, okay?" The worm roared, "Look, it's gonna be here in a minute. The spit's flammable."

"Jesus, just do something!" Zachary shouted, and it echoed through the cave.

"Great going. Yell. I guess Oswin gets her genius from her father." Clara didn't think that Jack had any right to say that, but she also didn't think that _she_ had any right to get involved in the argument. "Get ready to drop..." Jack walked forwards and then held up his lighter to the wall, as close to Eyeball and Zachary as he could reach.

The room was ablaze, full of orange fury as flames quickly spread in every direction. Eyeball was already wriggling to try and break free as the wall heated up, and thank god Zachary followed her lead and they both struggled as the flames grew all around the cavern.

"Make sure you don't get impaled," Clara warned them, eyeing the stalagmites dangerously.

"Yeah, it's not fun," Jack added.

Zachary was surprisingly the first to ween themselves free of the spit, though he wailed and grunted when he hit the ground hard in front of Clara and Jack. Eyeball, however, was actually intelligent enough to land properly and bend her legs, stumbling, but remaining on her feet as Zachary scrambled to his.

The white, bulging body of the ravenous monster then protruded out of the halls, but thankfully the fire was so bright it hid them from sight.

"It can't see us in the light," Jack hissed, he and Clara leading the way in between the stalagmites to get away from the worm and make their final escape. But by this point, the brightness of the fire made no difference, because none of them could hold their breath for long enough to prevent themselves from coughing in the smoke. And the worm could still hear. It roared when it figured out where they were.

"RUN!" somebody bellowed. Clara didn't know who, she was too busy trying to stagger through smoke and fire, blinded, choked and defeaned by the roaring of the flames and the guttural screeching of the cave worm that was now trying to head them off as they wove through the cave to the exit.

Clara was acutely aware of darkness falling around her and a cool gust of wind on her face and walls tight around her, and was sure she had made it to the tunnel at last. And then there was a huge explosion from behind them somewhere.

"THE FIRE REACHED THE EGGS!" Jack tried to explain as he ran, but all other sound was compeltely drowned out as the cave crashed around them and another lot of rockfall began.

But there was a glimmer of light ahead, a white chink, a square, growing bigger and brighter with every fumbled step and exhausted breath and wince against the dull ache that was stabbing through every inch of her body. The passage sloped upwards and she felt in constant danger of slipping and crashing backwards like a bowling ball, the dark figure of Jack being lined up for a target to grab if she _did_ end up slipping.

The gloom of the caverns was replaced by the twilight of the forest as soon as she stumbled out into the humidity that was oh-so-welcome after the blazing fires and muck she'd just been subjected to. She leant against the first tree she found, heaving deep breaths.

"How are you stopping!? It's right on us!" Eyeball protested, pleading with Clara directly.

"It's fine, it won't follow us," Clara told her.

"How do you-?"

"_It's fine_," she said firmly, "Okay? We aren't staying here anyway. It's dark. We should make camp," Clara suggested. Jack praised this as a good idea.

"Camp!? No, _no_. Not here with that thing," Eyeball was pacing agitatedly. And the pacing hit Clara like a bullet, the sliver of familiarity it had, the shared habit that reminded her of herself and her sister, and probably countless other Echoes.

"We'll go someplace safe then, find a clearing where we can watch the perimeter," Clara said, catering to Eyeball's whims rather than anybody else's.

"Clearing? In _this_ jungle?" Jack asked. Zachary was not a part of the conversation, he appeared to be hyperventilating.

"It's a different part, it looks thinner," Clara said. It did. "It'll be no trouble. Come on, Jack. You take Zach and look for firewood, we're going to go find somewhere to camp."

"And how will I find this camp? Call you?" Jack questioned.

"Um... You're right... Okay, we'll _all_ look for a clearing. Shouldn't take too long."


	31. The Genius And The Storm I

_Eleven_

_The Genius And The Storm I_

His rash seemed to clear up during the day and the time he spent with Flek in the isolated pocked of the spaceship and the laboratory. She was kept closed off from the outside for fear of the high oxygen concentration on Eslilia agitating her Ceposea, which was an easily-aggravated lung condition.

He didn't end up doing much for the first half of the day other than looking over Oswin's shoulder and pointing out shortcuts in her calculations that she, with her over-complications and long routes, had not noticed. He tried not to irritate her, but it seemed that after only a couple of hours she had done all she could without the necessary botanical supplies the others were retrieving. It became his duty, however, to occupy Oswin and keep her distracted enough that she didn't go after the plants herself. That wouldn't possibly help anyone.

By the time night closed around them, however, he had run out of petty games to play with the pair of them and there was quiet in Flek's modified sick-room (which, though he wouldn't dare say it, didn't smell too dandy).

"D'you think they're bored?" Oswin asked. Eleven looked over at her, but she was staring at the floor with her legs crossed and her head on one of her hands, rocking side-to-side slowly.

"Who?" Flek asked her.

"The others, outside in the jungle. Walking through trees for twelve hours. It can't be too fun," she shrugged.

"Just because _you_ hate trees," Flek joked. She was in bed, and had been in bed for the whole day, coughing on occasion.

"Trees are stupid," Oswin muttered, "And nature is overrated. I've never breathed fresh air, and I don't intend to start."

"You lock out far too much of the world," Eleven sighed and shook his head slighly. But shaking his head made the skin on the back of his neck sore and itchy, and he had been well advised by his sister-in-law that if he didn't want to have to strip and be forcibly coated in antihistamine lotion, he should do his best to stay still. Oswin had seen enough of him already that day, when she'd intruded early that morning, and he wasn't inclined to take his clothes off aroud her any time soon. Or ever, for that matter.

"My mother locked it out for me," Oswin told him, "I didn't partake in my juvenile isolation at all if I could help it. It was never voluntary. I'm sure Zach will tell you all about it, lord knows he was jealous. I'm not sure why, though."

"Why aren't you sure?" Eleven asked, intrigued now by Oswin's life, which was always a source of interest.

"Zachary's father walked out when he was a toddler, our mother married Augustus - the third and current husband - when he was about five. Mother hated Zachary's father, so he hated Zachary. Augustus just hated everyone who wasn't a child of his own," Oswin said, sitting forwards to look at the Doctor as she spoke to him, "They liked Andrew because he was a suck-up mummy's boy. They _tolerated_ me because I brought a lot of money into the house. They ignored Frank because he did nothing to make him stand out. They hated Zachary because he saw what happened to Frank and thought that even bad attention was better than that, so he acted up. That house was hell for him, is my point, I don't know why he always tried to skive school."

"Did you not go to school, then..?" Eleven asked her. She shook her head.

"Nope. Except for one time, but that wasn't technically... That's a Nina-story and I don't want to get into it," she said, sitting back in the chair again and sighing, "You'd also disagree with it on a moral level."

"What happened between you and Zachary, though?" Eleven asked, finding an opportunity and pouncing upon it, trying to coax information out of her when he thought he had a chance.

"Doctor, I already gave you my life, I'm not entitled to give you anything else," she said. The words were harsh, but her tone was soft and sad.

"I just wanted to learn about the family I've inadvertently married into," the Doctor said with a smile and a meek shrug. Oswin raised her eyebrows at him, but shook her head rather than argue with him.

"Technically, I've been disowned, so you're not a part of that family at all..." Oswin mumbled, slumping in her chair.

"They've probably not been doing much," Flek got back onto the subject of the others, "I can't think of a lot to do in the jungle, other than... Sweat."

"I can't sweat," Oswin said, and Eleven gave her a look. "...What? I can't. Your wife sweats plenty, and apparently she stinks." Eleven glared at her, but she ignored him, "I wonder how bad Clara will smell when she gets back?"

"Maybe she'll... Wash in the river..."

"I've never actually seen a river, but I'm sure they stink," Oswin said. Never seen a river!? You could fill a million books with things the supposed 'smartest girl in the universe'_ hadn't _seen.

"They do," Flek told her, "But they're pretty. Lots of things that smell bad are pretty. Rivers smell _especially_ bad in the mornings." She was smirking, and Oswin's face was red and her jaw was clenched - but to keep from laughing or shouting, the Doctor didn't know. It did take him a few seconds to catch on to the joke though.

"Oh, _really_?" he drawled with a faint smirk when he figured it out. Oswin was grimacing at the floor, "I didn't know that was a universally shared trait between the Echoes. I shall have to tell Clara."

"Tell her nothing, or I'll find whatever your allergic reaction out there is to, and I'll cover your underwear in it," Oswin threatened, and Eleven snickered to himself. He was obviously going to tell Clara, it was very funny, and she deserved to be notified of her sister's constant hypocrisy. "Or maybe being out there, Clara's already _more_ than covered in it?"

"Clara's going to shower," he told her.

"And you'd know _all_ about that."

"Yes, I would," he said, not letting her humiliate him. It wasn't embarrassing anyway. Humiation stemmed more from the opinion of the person doing it, rather than the 'victim'. Perception was a key factor. Somebody might think eating chocolate was humiliating. Who that person was, Eleven didn't know, but the general opinion was that chocolate was delicious. He was not going to let Oswin's individual opinion get to him.

"...Am I missing something?" Flek asked carefully, frowning between them. Both of them possessed a corner of the room, Oswin on Flek's right and the Doctor on her left.

"Nothing important," he told her merrily, crossing his legs. He then winced, because crossing his legs wasn't a good idea when the delicate condition of his skin was taken into account. Oswin laughed harshly.

"He's right," she added anyway, "It's not important. Whatever the others are doing, I'm sure it's much more interesting than this."

"Maybe they're getting attacked? Or chased?" Eleven stringed negative 'what ifs' together, much to Oswin's discomfort.

"By what?" Oswin questioned him, and he shrugged and sat (carefully) back in his chair.

"I don't know. A monster. I always seem to run into monsters."

"Yeah, that's _you_. Not them. They'll be fine," Oswin said.

"There're no monsters on Eslilia anyway," Flek said, to assure Oswin more than Eleven that all was well with the other members of their 'rescue' party. A pitiful rescue it was, he'd been playing chess with Oswin for three hours earlier, until Flek got bored of spectating (mainly because it took them both an exceptionally long time to make a move, and by the end of the match, three pawns and a bishop were the only pieces that had moved). All that was only after they'd used up every object in the room in a strict and surprisingly intense game of I Spy.

"You wouldn't think there were any monsters in California in the 1940s, either. Or Victorian Scotland," Eleven said.

"What about the Loch Ness Monster?" Oswin suggested.

"...Alright, fine. In the sewage systems of a rural high school," Eleven changed his answer. Oswin shrugged.

"Children are monsters enough," Flek said. If Eleven didn't know better than to think he and Oswin were capable of having a conversation, he would have said Flek was trying desperately to intigrate herself into the one they weren't having. But that couldn't be possible. He and Oswin conversed rarely, and the happenstance that it wasn't an argument was a rarer occurrence still.

"I like children," Oswin said.

"You're not allowed near them!" Eleven exclaimed, "Not after what happened with Courtney Woods."

"I was nothing to do that. She followed me. She was very amused by the fact I was telling her all about her English teacher's most intimate experiences," Oswin said.

"How do you think Other Clara feels about a girl in her class - and probably the whole school by this point - knowing all that about her?"

"I believe she's more worried about the death of her boyfriend right now," Oswin retorted.

"Okay, why don't we all play a game where you two _don't_ have to talk to each other?" Flek suggested, "Hmm?"

"...Fine..." they both said.


	32. Diary Of A Salt Denier

_Clara_

_Diary Of A Salt Denier_

She didn't know what it was, only that it was cat-sized with coarse, navy fur and emerald blood, and Eyeball had cut off its head.

She was holding it proudly by its tail in the dawn twilight. Clara was bleary eyed and stiff all over, and in spite of a half-hearted effort to wash in the nearby river late in the evening of the previous night, it had proven too difficult in the dark and she'd only just succeeded in clearing a pink spot of skin where her face was of jungle-grime. She was standing in front of the leaf bed she'd made, which she didn't think was soft enough to be called a bed, but she neglected at that moment to think of a better word. It was very difficult to hide repulsion and mask it with concern with your arms crossed when the only light was faint, scarlet fire embers from the night before and you were shivering from the coldness the flames hadn't been able to ward off. She didn't think she managed it as she clenched her muscles to keep from shaking so violently, with her eyebrows raised and her mouth a little agape at the proudness her Other Self was showing about murdering some animal.

"We found a lot," Eyeball explained, dropping the thing on the white ashes that were scattering the ground. Clara watched it fall to the floor and remained staring at it, "Just, a lot of them were infested."

Eyeball and Jack had woken up early, and decided to look for food. Dinner had been made of some tiny, three-legged shelled creature they had found in abundance along a small pocket of the riverbank, but there had been scarcely enough of them to pass between the group to make a decent meal. And Clara and Jack had offered almost double their portions to Eyeball and Zachary, since the latter pair were not immortal. Mostly, Clara wanted to eat to taken her mind off the iridescent, white goop she was still covered in, which had lost none of its glowing-qualities during its time out of the caves. Maybe the sun would help with that, whenever it decided to rise and alleviate them from how cold it was (it probably wasn't that cold, but in stark contrast to the normal, day-time climate of Eslilia in combination with the fire-filled caves of yesterday, it might as well be the Arctic Circle).

"As delicious as that looks, I might have to pass on breakfast," Clara said, with a sheepish - but undoubtedly fake - smile, trying to appear as though she was allowing Eyeball more food out of the goodness of her heart, as opposed to the weakness of her stomach.

"Are you sure?" Eyeball asked her.

"...Yeah, sorry. I didn't live in Phollim's swamps for half a decade. I'm not as accustomed as you are to... Game..." 'Game' was the most polite word Clara could think of to describe it.

"Seriously? It looks pretty tasty," Eyeball said.

"It certainly looks _something_," Clara said, eyeing it. The word that sprang to mind most vividly about the dead creature was 'roadkill'. "I'm fine. Really. I'm full up on space lobster."

"I thought it had more a shrimp-vibe myself," Jack said from the other side of the fire, where he appeared to be trying to craft a spit using his teeth (and not doing a very good job of it, if Clara were to be truthful).

"I've never had seafood," Zachary mumbled. He was sat with his arms around his knees, a dark mess blotting out the view through the relatively thin treeline to the river from where Clara was standing.

"Your sister hates it," Clara told him, but that struck a chird in her memory and she was inclined to ask him, "Hey, in this century does salt come from a factory?"

"...Where else would it come from?" Zachary asked her, and she shrugged, "...Don't tell me your one of those Salt Deniers."

"What's a Salt Denier?" Clara asked, and Jack groaned.

"A 'salt denier' is what you and I call a sensible, correct person," Jack explained, "That is to say, somebody who believes salt comes from the sea. Which is does. Well, it used to, until the salt got poisoned from all the pollution."

"Salt was invented in the 4900s by Dr Ross Piliavin," Zachary said, "Before then all food was tasteless."

"Piliavin Incorporated are a key benefactor to the creation and up-keeping of Titan Beta," Jack said, "Everyone on Horizon was brainwashed."

"...I think I'm in the world's weirdest rewrite of Nineteen Eighty-Four," Clara muttered, shaking her head and turning back to where Eyeball had been, coming face-to-face with the decapitated head of whatever her 'pray' had been. She shrieked and jumped back, her shoe now having a fresh-coating of greenish blood on its toes. "Get that away from me!"

"No, it's a trophy," Eyeball argued. A _trophy_!?

"Well just let me know if it starts talking to you so I can burn it - I have read Lord Of The Flies many times and it doesn't need a re-enactment," Clara took a few steps away in order to distance herself from the Echo (who she was now convinced was some kind of humanised cat, the way she kept eagerly bringing Clara dead things).

"What are we even doing?" Zachary asked. Clara thought that was quite a broad question, but she'd learnt that he wasn't a very specific person. She'd asked him last night about the tenseness between him and Oswin, and all she'd been told was that when he was five and she was ten he'd stolen her building blocks and she'd never gotten over it. Hopefully Oswin would talk to her about it, but Oswin hadn't said a word to her at all. Probably busy finding cures to two fatal diseases.

"I think we should be able to get both of these plants today," Jack said, "Caves turned out to be a great shortcut."

"Think I'd take walking over a bath in worm faeces any day, to be honest," Clara commented dryly, sitting back down on her leaf bed until there was reason for her to try and stand up again (her legs were very sore, which was apparently not something the nanogenes helped with (she figured that, like hangovers, Oswin might have programmed them _against_ helping her)).

"Yeah, well, this area of forest is thinner than the bit near Skybound," Jack said, biting through a shoddy bit of twine of his own creation as he tied his spit together, "It shouldn't take the full day, as long as we don't run into any more trouble."

"Yeah, but how likely is that?" Clara questioned, "We _always_ run into trouble. Wherever we go, it will follow. You know, I used to think that was just a paranoid cliché, but not so much anymore."

There was a wooden clatter that made Clara realise she'd stopped paying attention and had been dwelling on her misfortunes instead. She looked around to see that Eyeball had just dropped a mediocre pile of fresh firewood onto the embers, which had fizzed a little, but none of it caught.

"Lighter's on the floor," Jack said, nodding next to him.

"I'll do it," Clara volunteered, then to Eyeball she said, "You can skin your thingamajig." She couldn't well be bothered using telekinesis right then, so she went to the extra effort of standing up and actually, physically _picking up_ the lighter and crouching by the fire to try and light a twig. Thank god years of smoking had given her experience of how to set things on fire. Maybe she ought to abandon literature and become an arsonist? A serial arsonist. An _infamous_ serial arsonist.

She realised these were the sort of weird thoughts people lost in alien-jungles who were half-frozen and had been through the intestines of a cave worm were prone to having, and going by that judged that becoming an arsonist probably wasn't a good idea.

The fire sparked back to life between her fingers and washed warmly over her, and she sighed, relieved, and sat back on her hands to watch the flames curl.

"...Clara?" Eyeball asked, and Clara looked over. It was the first time she'd been addressed by name by the girl. She was actually so used to the only voice she heard identical to her own being Oswin's she was momentarily surprised she wasn't called 'Clars' or 'Clary' or some other name.

"Hmm?" Clara looked up, from the fire. Eyeball was sitting across from it, looking thoughtful, if curiously nervous.

"Do you like the other Echoes?" Eyeball asked.

"Um... I don't know what you mean," Clara said.

"Well, do you get along with them?" Eyeball elaborated. The way she was fidgeting with the dead creature in her hands made Clara think this question had been eating away at her for a while. Perhaps there was more substance underneath her front of violence and brashness than first thought.

"Erm, well, I haven't met many. I... Suppose I get along with Oswin only because of this sort of, ordeal we both went through. There's always hostility, but it usually seems to dissipate... Why..?"

"Why is Oswin the one you choose to live with?" Eyeball questioned. Clara wondered how long she'd been building up these questions for.

"Erm, she's not. The thing is, a while ago I got married, only this wedding was planned by Jack and some others behind my back. They brought Oswin to the wedding to piss me off, and then she stuck around on the TARDIS to harass me. She has nowhere to go though, I mean, she's dead, she can't exactly-"

"She can always stay with me," Zachary said coldly, clearly listening to Clara pass ruling on his sister.

"Maybe you should take that up with her instead of me, Zach. Her boyfriend is on the TARDIS though, if she were going to go anywhere it'd be with him," Clara answered him coolly, and she then turned back to Eyeball after having more justifying ideas about her sister's homestead that didn't involve painting herself as being guilty of favouritism, "She chooses to live on the TARDIS. She has reasons to be there."

Clara didn't want to give any weight to the possibility Eyeball might be mulling over that there was a space for her aboard the TARDIS. Clara could not and _would_ not start inviting Echoes onto the TARDIS. Just because she and Oswin were friends didn't mean Oswin's continued presence was anything to do with Clara. Jack and Amy were responsible for her arrival, and Adam Mitchell was responsible for her staying. Factors Clara couldn't control. She didn't want to fill Eyeball's head with romanticised notions of time travel, which was not quite as romantic as it seemed. Sure, Clara had fallen in love along the way, but the suffering she'd had to go through had outweighed it. Taking it all into consideration, though, she wouldn't do it any differently... Perhaps the negatives _didn't _outweigh the positives? She thought she ought to have a good think about it later on, when she was less preoccupied.

"And I have to stay here?" Eyeball asked.

"Look," Clara sighed, "You can't stay on the TARDIS. _I_ don't have the authority to invite people on board, there are votes. Only two people have permanently joined us, and one of them's Oswin and the other is the Doctor's daughter."

"Exactly, Oswin, I'm-"

"No. I'm sorry. There's not an easy way to say it," Clara told her firmly and probably a little coldly. She didn't even want another Echo on board, she had her hands full with the responsibility of one of them. Every single one of them was a ball of stubbornness, a loose cannon. They were unpredictable, even for Clara, and if she took Eyeball she'd have to take each and every one she came across from then onwards. "You can't come."


	33. Save Our Souls

_Clara_

_Save Our Souls_

It burgeoned on the horizon like a great beast, swelling silver and glinting the colour of shamrocks beneath the sky and the trees. It was sullied brown and muddy though, wild patterned splotches dotting across it in a range of filthy shades, dark streaks from rain droplets sliding like tears down the bowl-shaped body. They stood in front of the treeline where all the the trunks were snapped beneath it, staring at the wreckage of the once-sleek spaceship, now crashed down in the marshes of a foreign planet and surrounded by nothing but decay and silence, and now the four of them.

Clara could not see over the top of it, it was so huge and obstructed her whole field of vision, leering at her like a great, metal boil on the landscape. She didn't recognise it, nor were there any symbols painted along its hull she might be more likely to place a name with. How long had it been there, slowly burning beneath the sun, staining itself with the muck of Eslilia? Years, probably, going by the way some sort of blue moss was festering at its base and creeping its way up the silver sides.

They had been walking for hardly more than an hour or so when they came across the ship, yet another bump in the road. But they'd not walked far, because the ground had started to give way and turn into swampland rather than rocky jungle, and the gunk was already climbing up to her knees and soaking through her shoes (the soles of which had melted in the fires the day before, but she hadn't noticed until her feet had gotten wet that morning).

"What do we do? Go around it?" Zachary asked. Zachary was always asking, but never offering solutions, as though he was entirely too used to people doing things for him.

"I actually think the swamp gets deeper around it, like its sinking the ground down. Back there it's probably left a huge trail from when it crashed, no doubt full of mud by now," Jack said. Clara could see where he was going. They couldn't go around the spaceship, and they obviously couldn't climb over it (it was enormous, the size of a toppled skyscraper). They had to go through it.

Luckily enough, Jack spied a hole. Well, _he_ said it was lucky, Clara didn't think it was lucky at all. The hole stretched barely a foot above the waterline, and seemed to have been made when the ship must have crashed awkwardly on a tree branch. To get in, they would have to crouch down very low - if not crawl - and wade through sloshes of muck, and then be stuck in a dark, lifeless hovel probably full of rot and mould.

"Looks like a great way in," Clara muttered sarcastically as Jack splashed over to it (it was still chilly out, and she didn't know how shirtless-Jack was managing to keep remotely warm in the absence of any kind if torch. Maybe there would be torches on board? There could be all sorts of useful things on board. Like soap, or clothes, or - god forbid - toothpaste. She'd brush her teeth with her finger if it meant eradicating the taste of crap from her gums.

"You'll be fine," Jack said dismissively, going and crouching down. How was it he never cared about what a state he got in while he was out? In a second, he had vanished into the underbelly of the shipwreck though, leaving Clara no choice but to brave following him (though, only after calling through and making sure it was actually safe).

She crouched, the smell of the swamp filling her nose, and balanced carefully (balancing was one of those areas where telekinesis never hurt) as she waddled under the metal wall and tried not to bang her head or fall forwards and bury her face in the sludge she was dragging herself through, but finally somebody reached down for her arm and helped her to her feet. She stretched each of her legs out to stop them ceasing up from all the stooping, and tried to get a look around their surroundings.

Remarkably enough, the ship clearly had some kind of power reserves, as the lights were still bathing the flooded storage space with a faint, yellow hue, causing the blackish watter to look even worse. Outside, the greenness of the water reminded her of vomit. Here, it was like a mix of all the foulest bodily substances, and she winced as she stood in it as it soiled most of her clothes and stuck to her skin like ink. Shortly, she and Jack were joined by Eyeball and Zachary, the latter of which looked thoroughly displeased by the coniditions he had volunteered to be in.

"Reminds me of the trenches," Jack said to Clara, "I fought in the war, you know."

"You'll have to tell me all about it one day," Clara said quietly. Even whispers echoed in the cavernous, hollow hull of the desolate spacecraft. There was little other than toppled, metal crates in the room though, and most of these were empty, as though they had already been raided. Probably by the crew who had abandoned the vessel there in the first place, though they seemed to be long gone.

"I think we should look around," Eyeball said, "For anything useful. Like guns, or torches, or rope." Clara didn't bother to mention all these resources had probably been stolen eons ago. She felt like she might have an ulterior motive to her silence however, like wanting to bide her time as much as possible before she had to traverse the swamp again.

"Yeah, guns sound good," Zachary added. Unfortunately for him, over the last day his opinion had become worthless. He didn't know what he was doing, only a handful of his life had been spent in close proximity to plants, or natural air. He'd probably never even felt a breath of wind before a year ago.

"Of course they do, Zachy..." Jack grunted, not caring much what Oswin's younger brother thought. "We don't have any way to contact each oth-"

"We do now," Eyeball said from behind Clara. Clara turned to see her holding a metal briefcase-looking thing, dripping water from its scuppered underside into the swamp where she'd just picked it up from. By the aerial, she held up a tiny, circular speaker. A walkie-talkie. "There're two."

"Is this one a genius as well, Clara?" Jack asked with a smirk. Eyeball threw one of the walkie-talkies to him, purposely trying to miss so he had to go fishing in the depths of the flood to retrieve it. Clara didn't know if it was fortunate or not that, through his fumbles, he still caught it, but she thought it probably was. Afterall, it might not work after being drowned in slime.

"I'll go with Eyeball," Clara immediately volunteered. She felt that since she was banning the Echo from the TARDIS, she at least owed it to her to spend as much time with her as she could beforehand. At least she now knew enough to _not_ argue with the Echoes. Eyeball had mellowed faster than Oswin though, and for that, Clara was grateful. And she hadn't mauled her yet.

"Oh, great," Jack said glumly. Zachary wasn't listening, he was balancing one one foot by holding onto the shelves with one hand and examining the sole of his right boot with the other. Feet were clearly very interesting to him...

"Huh?" Zach asked.

"Nothing," Jack smiled fakely.

"You go left, we'll go right," Clara told Jack, deciding for him so that she could get out of the gunk as quickly as possible. It was cool and not humid in the spaceship, and she'd greatly like to dry off for a while before returning to the boiling dampness of the jungle outside. "C'mon," she said to Eyeball, pulling herself through the mud towards a crooked staircase that lead up quite high on a curious angle to a little oblong of light that was a doorway into the rest of the ship. If she got lost, she could at least walk through the walls in a straight line until she found the outdoors again, despite the enormity of the ship.

The corridors were all dull grey, and at the foot of the walls there were dark patches of some kind of algae that had managed to spread through the metal. It all looked the same, and on occasion the lights flickered, and most of the signs weren't working which left most of the directions up to guesswork.

"What did you mean when you said the Echoes were hostile?" Eyeball asked Clara, still on the topic of clones, apparently. Clara tried not to sigh so as to keep the front she wasn't sick of talking about the Echoes. She owed it to the girl though.

"I mean that a couple of days after my wedding I had a fight with Oswin and she clawed the left side of my face apart," Clara explained.

"She _did_? And you _forgave_ her?" Eyeball exclaimed.

"Yeah," said Clara, "She was acting out. I mean, she was in a bad place - four days before she'd died after finding out she'd been converted into a Dalek, I can't really blame her for any outburst."

"A _Dalek_?"

"It's a long story," Clara said, really not wanting ro get into Oswin's business. But Eyeball stared at her, equal parts fascinated and expectant. So, Clara gave up, and resigned to tell her as little of Oswin's sorry tale as she could muster at that time when she was so exhausted already. A little here and there, a sprinkling of Cluster Spores, familial neglect and a dash of tragic-runaway until she thought she had gotten the message across that Oswin Oswald was _not_ a Dalek and was _not_ likely to shoot any body or attempt to commit genocide. She was safe enough.

"Wow."

"I suppose. Can we stop talking about the other Echoes now? Look here, I think it's a storeroom," Clara motioned to a half open door on her right, which was jamming and skittering dangerously. After a moment's observation, she deduced it wasn't going to slam itself shut any time soon. Storerooms were the type of places torches lived, and torches were eternally useful to them. However, the room was dark, and at that moment neither of them had a light source. "It's times like this I wish my husband had never convinced me to quit smoking," Clara mumbled. When she moved her hand to search a box she could just dimly see by the light in the halllway, she saw a glint bounce off the silver of her wedding ring, and she glared at it. The benefits of smoking were you always had a light to hand, and if not - well, you probably weren't a very good smoker.

"What happened to your phone?"

"I dropped it yesterday in the caves and it smashed," Clara answered bitterly. She'd never broken a phone before. She was ashamed, above all else.

The lack of phone reminded her of the overall lack of communication in her life at that momet. Once upon a time, three other people had been enough company. Living with another fifteen, however, gave you a new perpsective on what 'company' exactly was, and having a whole other persona floating around constantly close-by in your head just added to that. But Oswin had not spoken to her at all during her time out adventuring. She hadn't made a sarcastic comment or popped up in a dream, there was nothing, and Clara found herself questioning the stability of the mind patch in her sister's absence. She didn't realise how much she missed the lurid commentary until then.

Something dropped to the floor at her feet from a box and clanged, and the room glowed with the brightness of it. It was a torch, and when dropped the switch had been knocked. Clara breathed a sigh of relief, stooping to pick it up and glad of the light source.

"Um, Clara?" Eyeball said uncertainly. Why did Eyeball seem to think Clara was some omniscient, ethereal being? She was intelligent enough to answer her own questions.

"What?"

"There's a skeleton."

Clara turned look behind her, where Eyeball had been staring, and she jumped. The skeleton had ragged clothing shreds on it, and a blackening stain at its feet. Through its ribs a blade had been forced, though Clara supposed that must have been how the poor fellow died. Knife through the heart. Rather a dismal way to go, and painful, she judged, going by the amount of dried blood on the floor.

"How old do you think this ship is?" Clara mused aloud. Eyeball shrugged. "The power's still running."

"It'll have a back-up fusion generator, they run for eons," Eyeball said. In the back of her mind, Clara was aware of frequent lectures of Oswin's involving nuclear power-generating systems of the Forty-whatever Century.

"So they've all been dead for centuries, probably..." Clara said grimly. She gave the skeleton a sad look, and wondered who it had been before their untimely murder on an uninhabited jungle planet. "It's sad, really."

"Nothing we could do."

"That's no reason not to mourn. I think there's another torch here, you'd best find it."


	34. Flashback Sequence

_Oswin_

_Flashback Sequence_

The day she had met Flek had been a strange one. Flek was new aboard Drifter Squadron Iota, and still had a rather blind faith in the ideals of the Cluster Spores. Indeed, she was a new member to the entire faction, picked up from a little Pluto colony. She was a travelling girl, and until Eslilia, Oswin had never known her to so much as entertain the notion of ever settling down. Not on Iota and certainly not on Horizon. She got jittery with the way the Dust War politics were tedious and slow, always itching for more things to do or for some kind of action to present itself, though not for the cliché, bloodthirsty reason. No. Flek was a doctor, young but efficient and raised on bedtime stories of medical textbooks. She had never been one for fiction, and had exhausted Oswin's carefully-kept databases of anything biological very quickly. She wanted to help people get better, fix wounds left by the fury of battle. If there were no battles, there were no wounds though, and so Flek had been bored on Horizon.

She remembered it quite vividly. In about two weeks, Oswin had gotten through three Spore guards (assigned to lurk at the foot of the stairs to her attic and keep her from quitting the house at a moment's notice). The fourth guard-cum-butler given to her, however, was Flek Phisj. Always with the bright pink hair and the clashing green eyes and the pale skin of one of those people who had grown up on a spaceship without being exposed to the sun. Oswin had been twenty-one.

She cast a glance into the sickroom to her left from where she had been staring at the wall, seeing through the windows Flek, calm and asleep, and the Doctor, who seemed to be in thought. Oswin was locked out from the both of them after, at five o'clock in the morning, Flek had slipped into slumber (she didn't conform to the sun's way of dictating night and day anymore, not since she'd gotten sick, according to her), and Oswin had vacated the room to avoid any arguments with Eleven when there wasn't anybody to break them up. She was left with little to do but reminisce, to think up a colourful myriad of reasons why it was so important for this scavenger hunt of Jack's to go well.

She'd awoken to knocking on her bedroom door the morning of Flek's arrival, and rolled her disgusting self (at that point in her life, she typically lost track of the days between her washes. Usually she would pamper herself if the smell reached her and then only) to bury into the wall, pulling sheets and pillows to cover her from the coldness of the corridor that would come when whoever was on the outside opened the door. She had worked very hard to get her room to a perfectly inhabitable temperature (perfectly inhabitable meant tolerable both in and out of bed, and it was usually around 22.784°C, as far as she could tell), and the general atmosphere was disturbed whenever some unwelcome guest trespassed.

It always happened when they gave her a new guard. They felt the need to introduce themselves. She didn't know why. Their one job was to escort her to the bathroom and sometimes to the kitchen - though, as already mentioned, she rarely ventured to the bathroom and even rarer still did she brave the kitchen. Normally, she waited for food to be brought to her, as it always was. Dinner was the only thing that allowed her to keep the days straight in her head, and it had been for a while.

Knocks rang through again, and she just buried her head further. Her eyes stung, it had been a late night. As soon as this visitor left she would treat herself quite deservingly by going back to sleep. She alway thought she deserved more sleep.

The sound of the handle turning on the old fashioned door (it wasn't electronic to prevent her from hacking into it) then graced her, and she braced herself with the best assortment of understandable grunts and closed answers she could muster, the bleak words floating around in her head; _No_, _go away, leave, shut the door, it's cold_. All these would be artfully delivered to make the guest feel like they were fatefully in the wrong for intruding, uninvited, on her.

"Hello? Miss Oswald?" _That_was the most polite way she'd been addressed since the scientists stopped coming to run her through basic arithmetic tests every other Thursday. It was such a shock that she actually opened her eyes to acknowledge this sweet-voiced person.

"What?" she asked. 'What' was far more polite than her usual response of either an unintelligible grunt or just plain silence. For starters, she was admitting she was awake to this person. Countless times she had just pretended to be asleep until they went away.

"I just wanted to introduce myself," the girl had said. Oswin had then debated if she could be bothered to roll back over to face the girl, or even, to sit up. However, she ruled that it was positively impossible (and she had the odds worked out in her head already) the girl would look pretty enough to match the voice. She had best keep the shimmery image in her head of some petite, blonde angel who did not belong in war at all intact and remain stubbornly glowering at the wall. She didn't want to spoil anything. Best she spend the ensuing few days picturing fantasies of the appearence of the new stranger, yet always waiting until nighttimes to go shower and steal food, so as not to break the illusion and spot her.

"Uh-huh," Oswin had muttered.

"I'm Flek," the girl had introduced herself sweetly. Oswin said nothing, "I heard you're a genius." Still, Oswin kept quiet. Yes, she was a genius. Everybody knew she was a genius. It was common knowledge that Rosalind Sinclair's (for her mother's surname had been Sinclair at that point, the same as it still was) Bertha Rochester had the IQ of one of those rudamentary supercomputers they still used in some of the outdated military vessels. "People used to say I was a genius." Silence.

As Oswin stared at the wall of the Skybound medical wing, she glanced back (again) at the sleeping girl in the sick room. Those eight words had had a profound effect on her, and it had really only been five years ago to where she was currently. _People used to say I was a genius_. Oswin had never dismissed that sentence, it had played on her mind so much after Flek had left the room that first day, she hadn't even been able to bring herself to go back to sleep. She identified it for what it was; an attempt at empathy. Of course people suspected there was more to her reclusiveness than met the eye, something deeper and more apathetic and careless than they wanted to admit. Flek had seen that more than anybody else who had crossed the attic's threshold, and had tried a different tact to coax information from her.

That day, the urge to shower and prune herself rose up for once, as Oswin didn't know how long it had been since she'd felt water on her skin that wasn't grease sticking to her. However, she was still avoiding the girl at the foot of the stairs, so she couldn't well go have a wash. So to combat this, she tried to remember what she'd agreed to do for the Cluster Spores and possibly work on it. Vaguely, stealth systems and the idea of invisibility returned to her. There was little need of invisibility in space, as it was so hard to get a visual through windows anyway, but she had other reasons to want to hide from view. It boded well for her plans of sneaking out. She hadn't snuck out anywhere for two years. She waa hungry, too, but her stash of rations was exhausted. Eating required talking to someone to ask them to bring her something, or talking to someone to ask permission to go get something herself. And, again, she was firm on staying out of sight of this new guard of hers.

_People used to say I was a genius_.

On the paper she'd been using for calculations the word 'genius' glared at her in thick pencil. Unbeknownst to her, she had gotten distracted and traced the word before her a few times, watching the trail of her hand with glossy eyes. Why did they say she was a genius? Why had they stopped? Why had she told Oswin, if not to boast? She hadn't sounded boastful at all. She even sounded sombre. Sombre why?

These were all questions equations could not answer, nor could speculation. Perhaps only people she _used _to know _used_ to say that because she hadn't told anybody she knew currently? Perhaps it had only been her parents ro say that, in that encouraging, lying way parents always said things in? Perhaps she really had been a genius, but had been lobotomised, or suffered a brain injury? (She didn't much fancy the idea of finding an astonishingly beautiful lobotomite sitting outside her door, though.)

She dropped the pencil onto the desk where it rolled onto the floor, and then scrunched rhe paper up into a ball and dropped it out of the window. She liked dropping things out of the window, because her mother always made such a fuss of keeping her intelligence and her ideas private - after all, what good would it do if somebody copied her solutions to some impossible mathematical equation that had been baffling the officials for centuries? She never dropped anything with a solution, and more often than not it was doodles. Once, she had drawn some fancy ship (purely because she was bored, it was not a schematic at all, there wasn't a word or number on the whole page) and gotten bored and lobbed it into the garden, and her mother had gone ballistic that somebody was going to steal it and design a fleet of high-speed fighters to destroy the Homeworld Alliance with. Oswin had laughed in her face.

She brushed over to the door in a few quick steps - this was before she had lost her leg - and pulled it open before she changed her mind. Flek was, as expected, sitting at the bottom of the stairs. In fact, she was slouching down against the wall, sideways in the nook with her feet up against the otherside of the stairwell. It was a highly unprofessional manner in which to sit on guard duty, Oswin remembered thinking. They usually faced completely away from the door, with a book or something else to do.

"Have you had a lobotomy?" Oswin blurted out rudely, but it was the thing on the forefront of her mind. The first sentence she'd spoken to anybody for days.

And then Flek had looked up, and answered confusedly, but Oswin (to that very day) didn't know what she had said. She was too busy having that drolly-typical and cliché the-world-slows-down moment people often did when they saw somebody attractive. And Oswin never left her room, so seeing somebody attractive was all the more a noteworthy occasion in her life. A flash of vivid green eyes (the colour of the sky on Eslilia) and the hair the colour of bubblegum, coupled with a dazzling-yet-naïve smile was everything Oswin needed to have her minded emptied of Cluster Spores and stealth systems and horrific parents and sullen brothers, because she was only thinking of one thing then: Girls.

Well, Oswin thought presently with a faint smirk on her face as she watched Flek sleep, in truth she was always thinking about girls. Thinking about girls was an integral part of being bisexual.

"Huh? What did you say?" Oswin mumbled, keeping one hand tight on the door handly but leaning helplessly on the doorframe, sliding down it a little. She really needed to have a wash.

"I said 'no'," Flek repeated, smiling. Oswin nodded.

"Right. Okay." She closed the door behind her. And then two seconds later she reopened it, much to Flek's surprise. Perhaps she had been told Oswin was a hermit who never came out. She supposed it was true. She opened her mouth before she had thought of the words to say.

"Yes?" Flek asked her politely.

"...Why did people tell you you were a genius?" Oswin asked. Flek seemed taken aback. Yes, Oswin thought, she had definitely been told Oswin didn't speak to people. She didn't usually want to. She never felt like she was missing out on anything.

"I have PhD-level knowledge of medicine," Flek said, "But only because my parents taught me. I was clever."

"Was?" Oswin queried. Was Flek _sure_ she hadn't had a lobotomy?

"I don't know, I guess I'm not really though. Not compared to you," Flek shrugged. Oswin felt bad, as though her existence was somehow causing this poor, gorgeous girl sitting on her stairs to be self-depreciating. "Do you want anything else, Miss Oswald?"

"Who told you to call me that?" Oswin asked.

"They just didn't tell me your first name."

"It's Oswin. Did they tell you anything else about me?"

"That you're a genius, and that this job is easy because you don't leave your room," Flek said. Exactly as Oswin suspected. A shadow passed in the hallway, but the alcove of the stairs meant all she could see was a pair of legs, and she didn't know to whom they belonged.

"Did you get her to come out?" somebody drawled.

"Shut up, Zach," Oswin shouted at him. He was sixteen at that point.

"Oh wow, she speaks."

"Piss off, just not to you," Oswin snapped.

"I'm so insulted."

"Why don't you just go tell your daddy _all_ about it?" Zachary stood for a moment, the he cursed and walked off. She watched his shadow pass away smugly, reminded of why she refrained from conversing with her family as much as possible.

"So you don't talk?" Flek asked her.

"Not really."

"But you talk to me?" she asked with a smile. Oswin didn't need a mirror to know that she was blushing, and she rested her cheek on the cool metal of the doorframe as she stood, debating if she ought to wash or not. She was suddenly not hungry anymore.

"I'm going to shower," Oswin declared proudly, "Could you make sure none of my brothers are out there?"

"Sure."

The Eleventh Doctor cleared his throat, and Oswin blinked out of the past and saw him leaning on the doorframe of Flek's sick room. It now seemed Oswin was the guard-butler and Flek was the recluse, and she thought it was rather a queer role reversal they had there.

"Hmm?" she asked Eleven. He was smiling slightly.

"Awfully starey, aren't you?" he joked. She didn't answer, but let her eyes pan back over to Flek, and she relaxed in her chair. "What's wrong?"

"Nothing, I was just reminiscing," Oswin said, "Why?"

"Do you still love her?" Eleven asked, _very_ bluntly. Oswin laughed, quietly and a little sadly. But not the sorrowful type of sadness, she was more nostalgic than anything.

"No, no," she shook her head, "I was just thinking. The first thing I properly said to her was asking her if she'd had a lobotomy. Actually, no, the first thing I said was 'what' because I was being rude."

"How did you meet her if you were always shut in your room?" Eleven asked.

"The Spores used to have a guard outside my room. But I never came out, so they'd get bored and leave. Flek got assigned, but she never got bored," Oswin said, "That's all I'll say. I do miss her, though. We were friends as well as... Other things."

"She's going to be fine," Eleven said a few moments later, when she had lapsed back into watching Flek, "She has you looking after her."

"I hope so."


	35. Oswalds' Kitchen Nightmares

_Clara_

_Oswalds' Kitchen Nightmares_

Long ago, the ship had been the intergalactic equivalent of a cruise liner. It was traverse the skies and the stars and take people around to see the marvellous sights of the universe. The hallways were dark and gloomy, but they had acquired torches from an old storeroom, and had promptly decided that escaping was likely the best course of action. They had skulked through corridors for what Clara guessed to be the best part of two hours, through corridors lined with the guest rooms that had allowed them to deduce the purpose of the ship.

The room they were now in was a splendid one of grandeur; it was old-fashioned in its theme, red carpets and golden bannisters – illustrious and bourgeois. It was on an angle to match the one of the spaceship in the swamp making it difficult to walk through, and Clara found herself struggling as though she had some kind of limp. It was, undoubtedly, a ballroom, which she thought was peculiar. It was like they'd suddenly been flung back in time about 3300 years to some ancient nautical vessel. Undeniably, though, it was gorgeous. The wood panelling – though Clara was sure it wasn't real wood – was beautiful, and it shone like bronze in the dim light coming from the chandeliers. She would had loved to see it before it crashed, the décor so fascinating and utterly archaic given the century they were in.

The darkness had been so opaque in their journey through the hallways though, and the design of the ship so unfamiliar, she had not noticed yet. But the ship was completely sideways. The chandeliers were on her left, the ballroom on her right, and Clara was reaching up quite high to have a grip on the banister of one of the dual, curving staircases that ran down either side of the back half of the room while walking on the wall itself. She could only just reach across the full flight. On the wall, portraits that had once been hanging were torn and dirty, and most of them obscured by either tables and chairs that had been thrown this way and that in the crash, or the garden of dead bodies.

Clara said 'garden' because of what was growing, though. It was almost like a field where the frightful things were being cultivated. Out of every single body, there were masses of the yellow, club-shaped mushrooms, poking up out of the corpses and festering within them. For how many years had this virus been infesting Eslilia? To have worn down so many of its species? Apparently, Zachary was wrong about the virus' need to evolve to infect the humans. It had already evolved, centuries ago, by the looks of the ship and the state of decay the bodies were in. They were skeletons dressed with rags, eaten away by the mushrooms growing out of every crevice of them.

"What do we do?" Clara whispered to Eyeball.

"Why are you asking me!?" Eyeball looked shocked that Clara would be asking _her_ what to do about something. Clara thought that Eyeball really should be the one in charge though – considering this was her century, and she was the famously battle-hardened one of the two of them. Clara wasn't battle hardened, they last 'battle' she'd been in had been a verbal fight with Rose when they'd both had too much tequila.

"Do you think they can hear us?" Clara asked.

"They're _mushrooms_!" Eyeball hissed, "They don't have ears!"

"Shut up, okay!? Usually I have someone with an IQ of at least 250 here with me," Clara said begrudgingly. That was obviously a terrible thing to say, and it just made Eyeball feel inadequate. Then Clara ended up feeling guilty (well, she _should_ feel guilty). "Sorry. I didn't mean anything about Oswin. I meant I'm totally useless."

"…I guess just tiptoe?" Eyeball suggested meekly.

"I thought they didn't have ears?" Clara questioned her.

"Maybe they sense vibrations, I don't know!" she protested in her own defence, "None of your ideas are any better." Clara gave up then, and resolved that if they were attacked somehow, she probably had enough superpowers to defend the both of them, if it was called for.

So, they began their conquest of the ballroom, Clara casting odd looks at the morbid scene as they went. It was like crossing a minefield, a fungal minefield, only, on a minefield you knew that if you stood on a mine it was going to explode and you'd be splattered across the sky for a few seconds and then the remains of your body would be covered by smoke from the event. Clara had no clue what would happen if she stood on one of the mushrooms. Perhaps nothing – it would be crushed underfoot and would be dead. Were mushrooms stubborn to kill? She didn't know. She sort of remembered once hearing that they could communicate though, which she thought was strange, and definitely dangerous.

Had Amy not been watching a documentary of this exact morose nature not two nights ago? Something about the spores inhabiting the body of an insect until it was so full of the fungus that it would die and relinquish control of its brain to the parasite. Then they'd breed and release their devilish spores yet again. What way was there to kill them other than possibly burning? She didn't have a lighter. She was useless in the fight, other than making herself impervious to their attacks. But what good would that do? None, probably.

Still, Oswin was offering no kind of support. Clara didn't even know if she dared ask for it. If she asked Oswin, Oswin would either answer correctly immediately, or go off to confer with the Doctor. That last time Clara had gone out without either of them had been when Helix, the AI, was recovered. _Then_ she had proven her worth to the other members of the crew – proven that she wasn't _just_ the Doctor's latest wife, or she wasn't _just_ the girl who died a lot, or she wasn't _just_ Oswin's less-intelligent sister. She was definitely her own person, and she was determined to avoid a conference with either of them until they reunited (god knew when that would be.) She'd escaped from the cave worm without them, she had shot that zombie the day before without them – she was more than her relationships with other people, and she didn't want those to define her.

All this was running through her mind as she kept a watchful eye on the creatures on the floor (wall), fungus-clad skeletons with the crude remnants of tuxedos and ball gowns shredded and rotted. The ship had obviously crashed in its best hour, which was unfortunate, to say the least. It was perhaps some consolation that the people had died having fun? Well, they'd been having fun a few minutes _before_ they died. They'd probably died screaming and terrified.

They crossed eventually though, and at the front end they now found themselves at were the doors into the kitchen. There might be useful things in a kitchen, and Clara was ashamed of herself when her mind instantly went to weapons. She was even more ashamed of herself when the second thing her mind went to was cigarettes, and briefly the idiom that 'what Theodore and Oswin don't know won't hurt them' passed in front of her, but she shook it away. Just because _she_ wouldn't get hurt didn't mean that other people didn't get damage from the second-hand smoke. And it still wasn't a good habit. Being addicted to anything, no matter how harmless, was bad (at least, that was what she told herself when they pushed through the doors and had to drag themselves up and over to get into the place).

The radio crackled in Clara's pocket, and Jack's voice came through, a little distorted. She picked it up as quickly as she could, the door swinging shut, and she answered in hushed tones after whispering to Eyeball she should find something to block the door with, lest the ballroom-zombies awaken. The last thing she wanted to do was fight off skeletons. She didn't know how to kill a skeleton, for one thing. But she ruled that if the brain was rotted enough, there was probably little the mushrooms could do to 'revive' it.

"Hello?" Clara answered, "Jack?"

"_Yeah, hi_," said Jack bitterly, "_So the thing is, these people all got killed by this damn virus, we just-_"

"Yeah, we know, we found a lot of corpses just now," Clara told him, "We're in the kitchen. Or _a_ kitchen, I don't know if there are multiple kitchens. It's the ballroom kitchen."

"_There's a ballroom?_" Jack asked.

"Yeah."

"_I guess you've figured out the ship's sideways then, too?_"

"Yep."

"_We're in an elevator shaft right now. Don't leave the kitchen, we'll head your way, there are signs on the walls in here_." Jack stopped speaking there, and Clara didn't have anything else to say to him, so she put the walkie-talkie away in her pocket and tried to figure out where Eyeball had gone. All in all, the kitchen wasn't any more amazing than what you'd usually expect from one, except for the fact it was a lot bigger and the ovens were sleeker. Aside from all that, Clara didn't actually know what you found in a kitchen. She was banned from them.

"If only I could cook…" she heard Eyeball mutter, but she appeared to be looking for knives more than anything else. What other kitchen utensils could be weaponised? Spoons? Forks? Actually, Clara remembered the Dream, yes, forks. She had once shot a werewolf in the eye with a fork made of silver at a wedding. Then she'd awoken aboard the TARDIS incredibly confused…

"Yeah. Sorry about that. You get it from me," Clara apologised, "Do you think there are any crisps in here?" She was searching through the nearest drawer for anything useful, hoping she'd know what 'anything useful' looked like when she saw it. Eyeball said nothing. "Found anything?" Still, silence. Clara looked over, "Eye-?"

She was immediately accosted by a terrifying, horrific, _demonic_ face and she felt claw-like nails burrowing themselves into either side of her arm. It had once been a person, the head chef even, she dared say, recognising the outfit clinging to it. She didn't know how the fungus was moving the skeleton, but it stank of death and old meat and it was right in her face – hissing – yellow mushrooms protruding from its mouth like a grotesque bouquet. It somehow managed to spit blood on her from the remnants of organs still clinging to its face and throat, saggy, yet-to-decay skin.

She couldn't help but shriek and push it off her, sending a blast of telekinesis at it to hold it back.

"I told you they could hear!" Eyeball exclaimed. Clara ducked out of its grasp (the fungus within the bones wasn't very good at steering it), and as she turned she saw Eyeball smack it in the face with a pot, and the skull completely disconnected itself and went flying (still hissing) across the other side of the room and into the sink.

This didn't stop it at all though, it was still coming after them, apparently even angrier than it had been before as it held its hands out to feel for them. Clara had no idea how it was even following them, she was fresh out of ideas and she was full of panic, looking for anything to hit it with.

Her eyes fell on a frying pan and she made a grab for it, hurling it like a Frisbee where it bashed into the ribs of the assailant at stunted it for but a moment, long enough for her to duck behind one of the many rows of counters out of sight. If it even could see. Maybe they really _were_ using hearing in some way?

"Are you hiding!?" Eyeball yelled.

"What're you yelling for!?" Clara yelled back. And then she cursed her idiocy. There was no good hiding now, she crawled back out just as the skeleton-thing slumped over the counter to make a scrabble at grabbing her. Thank god it missed, but she had no idea where Eyeball had gone. Not until a metal meat tenderiser came flying out of nowhere, at the exact same time Clara put her hand up on the worktop to haul herself up. Eyeball had appalling aim, and a second later Clara was wailing with the pain of having a damn meat tenderiser lobbed straight at your hand, and she clutched her mauled extremity close to her (she took back her earlier thought of Eyeball not yet injuring her in some way in comparison with Oswin, and didn't know if the pain shooting all through her arm from the ligament damage compared to getting her face clawed). Her first two fingers were pink mush, and there were bits of flesh on the counter where her hand had just been. "What the hell!?"

"I missed!" Eyeball 'apologised'.

"That was my right hand!" Clara whinged, desperately willing it to heal as, with her left hand, she grabbed the nearest thing, which happened to be an eggcup. She threw this eggcup at the skeleton, and, though she didn't miss, it did nothing but agitate the beast further, and it knocked a whole assortment of crockery onto the floor, where it smashed to pieces.

"What good would that do!?" Eyeball exclaimed.

"I don't know! I panicked!" Clara growled. She finally found where Eyeball was, right as she dumped a bag of something-or-other onto its head, and white dust went everywhere.

"Shit, I thought that was salt!" Eyeball exclaimed. Salt? Why was she looking for salt? Clara didn't really care, but she didn't have anything better to do as she choked on the sickly-sweet and dry aroma of the icing sugar Eyeball had just doused the zombie in than look for salt. So, she searched all over to help her Echo, her hand smarting less and less as every second went by.

Finally she found a bag of the stuff and, for whatever reason, hurled it right at the skeleton through the clouds of dusty icing sugar that was now sticking to the sweat and grime on her skin – another layer of awful filth, and now her right hand had a pleasant coating of dried blood.

The bag of salt burst open on the monster, and to Clara's greatest surprise, it… Actually worked. It halted in its broken steps finally, and she was resigned to stare at it to see what would happen now it appeared they were all out of moves (unless she were to beat it to death with a fish slice).

"Why salt? What happened?" Clara asked Eyeball, who was stood, breathing heavily, on the other side of the room.

"It dried the mushrooms out. Enough salt can kill anything," Eyeball shrugged. Clara didn't want to know where she had learnt that strange motto. But it apparently worked.

"Wow," Jack Harkness' voice drifted through from somewhere behind them, to the back of the kitchen, "You gals been having fun in here?"

"Piss off," was all Clara said to him, "I've just been assaulted by a meat tenderiser."

"It was an accident," muttered Eyeball. Clara examined her hand again to find it red, but healed.

"This is exactly why you're not allowed to cook," Jack snarked.


	36. The Dish Ran Away With The Spoon

**AN: Okay, writing about lesbians is me definitely being a good author - it isn't JUST because I want to write about lesbians. It does no good to "say" they're bisexual and have them stuck in straight relationships. So. Have some gay on top of your banter.**

_Oswin_

_The Dish Ran Away With The Spoon_

In the ensuing week after the arrival of Flek, Oswin distinctly remembered being haunted by green eyes through her waking moments. They got more and more vivid with every passing day, and she daresay obsessed her far more than anything Adam Mitchell had done in _his_ first week. Although, she did admit that when she had met Flek she had spent her days boarded up on the top floor of the house, utterly alone, and when she had met Mitchell, Clara had been in dire need of nursing, and there was always so much chaos on the TARDIS she thought it was a marvel she had managed to think of him at all. It was hardly an equal comparison, and hardly a moral one, too.

Her behaviour grew even more unjust than usual. She started to keep time again, and went to shower more in the daytimes than the nighttimes for some reason she hadn't thought through at that point - she put it down to visceral inclination, above all else. In fact, she started to shower more in general, and knew how long it had been since the last time she had done so.

Showers aside though, she didn't go downstairs to eat as much. Vaguely, in the back of her mind, she was always aware of when a week or so had passed, and she'd decide to at least show herself downstairs. But she hadn't done that at all. She had been getting more meals delivered straight to her door than she had been going downstairs to receive them in person. Nobody picked up on that - well, nobody except Frank.

One day, there was a knock on her door, and she paused to listen for who it was. They hadn't woken her up that time, and she wondered if perhaps Flek had been keeping tabs on her sleeping habits. As usual though, she ignored the knock completely. Whoever it was would either leave eventually, or open the door themselves, and she was quite engrossed then in reading about the complicated ventilation system Horizon had.

"Oswin?" the door had opened so quietly she had not heard it, and she looked over from her desk to see Frank, pulling a sour face.

"Hmm? Yeah?" she stood up and went over to him, blocking his path as he tried to get into the room. She kept him firmly on the stairs, spotting pink hair out of the corner of her eye at the bottom of them.

"What's the smell in here?" Frank asked.

"Smell? There's no smell. I don't smell - what're you doing?" he had tried to push past her again.

"Investigating," he said coolly. He was nineteen then, and over a foot taller than her. She had no hope of keeping him out of her room if he was that set on entering, and pried her hand off the door handle and forced his way in, "It smells like rotting food."

"There's no rotting food," Oswin said quickly. There was though, it was all stacked under her bed.

"Why have you been getting more food than usual and then not eating it..?" he asked slowly, like he didn't want to know the answer.

"I just... I'm changing my diet to a healthier one. Since I can't exercise," she lied.

"I asked Flek, she said none of this is healthy, and it definitely doesn't smell it," at this point, Frank knelt on the ground to follow his nose to the source of the stink, "Jesus, Os! How come you've just left all this and not asked anyone to take it down!?"

"Because! I forgot," she said defensively.

"You've never forgotten anything in all the time I've known you," Frank said, waving the smell away from his nose when he stood back up, "I can't believe you've been sleeping above that."

"Okay, it's not that bad," she said.

"Yeah, it is, it's disgusting," Frank said, "Get rid of it."

"I can't."

"Why not!?"

"Because of the same reason I couldn't take it down as soon as I'd finished. Now can you go? I'll sort it out."

"Do not throw this out of the window," he told her sternly. She scowled. That had been exactly what she was going to do, and he knew it.

"I won't," she said, "I wasn't gonna. Go away."

"Not until you tell me why you're being so queer."

Oswin started, "Alright, it's not _my_ fault she's so attractive, okay!?"

"What?"

"You said 'queer'."

"Yeah, as in 'strange.'" Oswin realised her blunder. If her brother didn't talk so funny, she'd have been able to keep everything a secret. Probably forever.

"Oh."

"Wait - who are you talking about? Who's 'she'?" Frank asked.

"Nobody." She shuffled awkwardly, crossing her arms. "Are you going?"

"Are you talking about Flek?" he asked, and she could see the amusement in his eyes.

"Who? Who's Flak? I don't know any Fliks."

"Flek. Your new guard out there. The Spore. With the stupid hair," Frank said.

"It's not stupid!" Oswin protested in Flek's defence, and Frank smirked.

"So it _is_ her?" he quirked an eyebrow.

"No!" Oswin objected, uncrossing her arms and putting a hand on her hip, then moving so her hands were together in front of her, then crossing her arms again, before restlessness got to her and she groaned loudly. "No," she repeated.

"Have you been asking for more food as an excuse to speak to her?" As a rule, Oswin didn't like to think through her actions enough to come to those sorts of dreadful conclusions - she liked to think she was above all that.

"No," Oswin said.

"And showering more, why, exactly?" he asked.

"How do _you_ know I've been showering more?"

"Because since she arrived, your shampoo bottle has gone from full to half empty," Frank told her.

"I can't take the plates down, because she'll see I've left loads, and then get confused when I ask for more food later and don't eat that too," Oswin blurted out, and Frank laughed. She glared at him. "Don't start."

"You're so bad with girls that you make _me _look _good_ with boys," he joked.

"Are you leaving yet? I have important genius things to be doing. They're very important," Oswin said. Frank didn't move. "Did I mention they're important?" she went and pushed him out of the room, and he laughed again, just as she slammed the door behind him and sank down against it, burying her face in her hands.

* * *

"You asked for more food as an excuse to talk to her?" Eleven asked incredulously. At that tone, Oswin questioned why she was even telling him this stuff. "And I thought _I_ was bad at flirting."

"You can just shush or I won't tell you anything else," she snapped. He pouted.

"It's remarkably interesting though. After all, you never talk about anything," he said, "I love stories. That's why I married your sister."

"It isn't, it's because you were drunk. But fine, fine, if you're so interested..."

* * *

That was how she found herself awake at two o'clock in the morning, down in the empty kitchen, after tiptoeing out in the middle of the night. She did the journey back and forth three times, very carefully organising her filthy plates so that they didn't clatter about and make a racket. She had them stacked up next to her, and had a pair of rubber gloves on, the water warm and full of bubbles. She'd already had to empty it once, but as the crud mixed with the water the overpowering smell of mould had reached her, and she kept coughing and having to step away, uttering curses. So much for trying to be quiet. At least, in the future, walls were all thick and soundproofed. At least, she thought they were.

"Wow, I must be a really bad guard," came that same voice she heard in her head quite frequently from behind her, and she jumped violently and dropped a coffee mug back in the washing up bowl, turning around abruptly to see a tired Flek leaning on the back of one of the dining chairs. Oswin didn't say anything, she didn't know what she was supposed to. "...Sorry, they said I'm not really meant to talk to you. I'll be quiet." Oswin nodded, and didn't say a word, going back to her washing up, though she dropped the sponge a few times.

"Why are you washing all that up now?" Flek asked.

"I thought you weren't supposed to talk to me?" Oswin said. ("Wow," remarked Eleven, "Even more evidence of how excellent you are at flirting." She told him to shut up.)

"Yeah, and I thought _you_ weren't supposed to leave your room?" Flek asked with a peculiar tone Oswin didn't, at the time, recognise. "I guess some rules are made to be broken." Oswin looked over her shoulder and raised her eyebrows.

"That's cliché," Oswin said.

"Damn, I thought you were so closed off from the world you wouldn't notice," Flek scorned herself.

"I'm not a hermit," she mumbled, feeling the lie. She wasn't a hermit _by choice_, she meant. She didn't say that though. ("By the way," Oswin added in a sidenote to the Doctor, "Refrain from telling my boyfriend this story. I like to maintain the front that I'm really, _really_ good at chatting girls up." "I don't speak to your boyfriend," Eleven shrugged, "When would the topic of Flek come up in conversation with him?" "You know what I mean. Don't make any stupid remarks that either I or you will have to explain.")

"Oh yeah?" Flek asked.

"Yep. I mean. Hermits are like - I mean... They live in shells. Totally. The crabs, I mean," Oswin said (Eleven laughed when she recited this line.)

"Do you 'mean' that?" Flek asked.

"...Huh?" Oswin asked.

"You said... Nevermind, I guess I'm really bad at this," Flek shook her head and turned away for a moment, and Oswin frowned.

"At what?"

"Do you want any help with the washing up?" Flek asked.

"Um, no," Oswin said bluntly.

"Are you sure?"

"Only one pair of gloves," Oswin lied, there were two other perfectly apt pairs of rubber gloves in the cupboard. Hopefully Flek didn't know that.

"I don't mind getting my hands wet." There was a pause and Oswin stared at her with her brows furrowed and a bowl slowly trickling the water it was full of into the sink behind her. "Sorry, that was dumb."

"What was? What?" Oswin asked. She really didn't understand what was happening.

"Nothing. I should wait outside for you to finish," Flek walked backwards to escape, knocking into the doorframe and having to move to actually get through the door.

"...What?" Oswin asked again, of who, she didn't know, because Flek was gone.

* * *

"Really?" Eleven asked her, "You're telling me you're _both_ atrocious at flirting?" Oswin shrugged. "Well, I'd never have guessed. You're certainly good at keeping up appearences."

"Why thank you," she bowed her head slightly, with a small smile.

"So, you're just dreadful at flirting with people you actually have feelings for, then?" Oswin said nothing. "I'm offended, on the Dalek Asylum you were entirely capable of flirting with me."

"Who's flirting now, Doctor?" she snickered.

"It was joke!" he protested, and she laughed.

"I'm going to tell Clara."

"If you _lie_ to Clara that I've been unfaithful, I'll just have to tell her how pathetic you are with girls. I'm sure I can quote, I have a wonderful memory," he threatened wryly. She raised an eyebrow, and shook her head, admitting to herself they were at a stalemate. "Speaking of Clara," the Doctor moved on, "How come she doesn't know this story?"

"She's never asked."

"Why's that?"

"Well, she thinks it was a fling. She never thought to ask about somebody I'd only mentioned once - and barely, it was just some passing remark. I didn't even say it, _she_ did," Oswin nodded at Flek's sick room. She was still fast asleep, and had been for some time.

"Why wouldn't she ask about a fling? Don't you ask about all of hers?"

"Nobody wants to hear about a fling; if you're a virgin, it's patronising, and if you're a slut, it's boring," she shrugged again.

"What if you're in between?"

"Then you have enough of your own to worry about not to care about somebody else's sex life."

"I can't tell if that's actually wise or not..." he slumped in his chair, thinking over Oswin's promiscuous musings into the downsides of being too-pure or un-pure. "So! Not a fling! What happened next? After the washing up?"

"Oh, I actually managed to focus long enough to finish it and put the plates away, believe it or not. Why are you so interested?"

"Because! It's uncomplicated by comparison to anything I've been through, and mundanity is intriguing to a time traveller."

"Well, then. I didn't sleep at all, or through the next day, and I spent most of it sitting against my door listening and going back over every word she'd ever said to me while waiting for Frank to come home so I could talk to him..."


	37. Two Can Keep A Secret

_Clara_

_Two Can Keep A Secret_

The bridge proved invaluable when they finally found it. Emptied of skeletons - thankfully - the backup power systems allowed them to access the data records of the ship, and discover it to be called the HMS Illyria, some royal ship beloging to whatever remnant of Great Britain lurked around in that century. There was little information other than a sudden crash down to some devastating enging malfunction, though after close inspection, both Jack and Eyeball ruled it really _was_ an accidnet. No sabotage involved. Which surprised Clara, because she was so used to foul play being a stone's throw away from every catastrophe they encountered.

Most importantly though, they found a kind of map of the ship that gave them the simplest emergency route. And then Clara examined it further and deduced that, because of the harsh angle of the ship, the quickest escape route was _really_ out of the now-empty, escape pods. There were airlocks down one side of the ship, right by the cockpit, in fact. They ran like a beehive down the whole left side of the ship, and after some exploration the group found one they could jump out of to whatever whimsical 'freedom' awaited them back on Eslilia.

Fatigue felt like nettles on Clara's eyes, only irritated further by the noon sun beating down on her. Her eyes took a few minutes to adjust back to being coated in the emerald quality the sky produced, the green film over everything she saw, after the macabre grandeur of the Illyria. She really had dried off on board, too, and hadn't had a chance to notice that short-lived good luck whilst evading the deadly kitchen staff. Yet as soon as she leapt through the hole the long-gone pod had made upon evacuation, she was up to her waist in swamp again.

"I'm going to wash so much when we get back..." she grumbled, mostly to Jack, who had followed her back onto the planet second of all. He laughed, and nodded in small agreement with her.

And so the trek continued.

The swamp was dense and viscous, and it was like wading through treacle at certain points, and hunger caught up with her. Hunger and tired, thirst and ache, her primary companions above the others as they went. She thought she might sleep for a thousand years, if not more, the next time she found herself in a bed. It had been scarcely two days, yet a bed seemed a pipe dream in her head; an unattainable mirage of false-hope. It was nearly not worth putting faith that they would ever leave such a Hellish Eden. Above all else, it stank. What it stank of, she didn't know, some mix of dung and feet that had been baked in the scorching heat (and now there was the sweat of the four of them swilling around in it too).

"How far is it?" Clara finally asked, not being able to stand being kept in the dark about their journey any longer. But now she wanted to know exactly what was happening.

"About two more hours on foot, but I guess the swamp'll get lighter," Jack told her. Two hours. She could do two hours. "It'll be easier on the way back, we just follow the river."

"We tried that coming," Zachary snarked.

"Yeah? And whose idea was that, huh?" Zachary said nothing, "That's what I thought. Anyway, I found some rope, so we can abseil down the waterfall. It'll be faster, we could get back by the middle of the night if we're lucky. Midday tomorrow if we're not." Just one more night, then, Clara noted. Then they'd be home-free and she could decontaminate herself of about ten layers of grime.

Jack was right; eventually the swamp did begin to ease up. Soon they were trudging sloppily in ankle-depth pools of mush. By that point, Clara didn't know if her clothes were sticking to her from sweat or dirty water. But she was soaked through all over, and there was a humid mist of water vapour descending around them, making visibility terrible. She couldn't see more than three feet in either direction, and she hoped Jack would keep them going the right way with his exalted position as Chief Navigator.

There was some sort of flower partway along that piqued the interest of Eyeball enough to comment it was used as the insignia for some elite sect of the Homeworld Alliance, and she and Zachary were soon engaged with conversation about that. They lapsed behind Jack and Clara, who were more or less alone. And, taking advantage of the lack of interested eavesdroppers, Jack brought up Jenny.

"You think she'll forgive me?" he asked Clara. For a moment, she just frowned, not knowing who he meant.

"..? Oh! Jenny," she realised, "Oh yeah, sure, as soon as she gets over Oswin, like I said. I don't know where this infatuation has sprung from."

"You and me both," Jack muttered, "By the way, I forget to tell you that you're great in bed." Clara paled into a sickly pallor.

"Ew," she said.

"What? What do you have against me that you don't have against Adam Mitchell?" he questioned, and Clara knew that this was a genuine question, though she didn't know why Jack all of a sudden cared about Adwin.

"You and Eyeball are not in love. Adam Mitchell and Oswin _are_," Clara said, then she made a start and tried to cover her tracks, "I mean - do _not_ tell Oswin I said that. She is an idiot who hasn't realised it yet."

"What, seriously? I thought it was one-sided," Jack shrugged, "I thought one day she'd end up dumping him for the next pink-haired girl to come crashing into her afterlife."

"Not likely," Clara defended her sister's fidelity, "Neither of us are cheaters. And _I'm_ the one with the emotional bond and the psychic link; trust me, she's head over heels."

"Wanna place a bet on that?" he asked wryly.

"No, Jack. I have integrity."

"...But _really_? She really does?" Clara nodded. "I didn't know."

"She stayed with his family for three days before the Prank War and she lives in his bedroom, Jack. And she made everybody stop calling him 'Creepy Adam'. Go on, watch her when we get back," Clara challenged, "It's obvious with him. If you listen to what he says, he's always about to tell her, but then he stops."

"You're kidding? And she hasn't noticed..?"

"Not at all. It's hilarious. For supposed geniuses, they're not half stupid," Clara sighed pitifully. If only her sister was less oblivious. Then again, Oswin's vain ignorance wasn't harming anyone or anything, and Clara thought it would be resolved before it reached that point, anyway.

"I don't think it's morally right to use them for entertainment," Jack said, though he was grinning, which meant his statement lost a lot weight.

"It's _fine_, what they don't know can't hurt them. Anyway. How are you going to win Jenny back? Romantic dinner? Lavish gifts? Artistic sonnets? Gondola down the Seine?" The subject matter was rather dull, but Clara was going to cling to every shred of conversation she could get to alleviate the bitter funk she was in.

"Are they all dates the Doctor's taken you on?"

"What? No, I wouldn't tell you those. Speaking of dates-"

"Yes."

"What?"

"Weren't you about to ask me out on a date?" Jack winked; Clara was thoroughly unimpressed, but she did trip over a branch, and that gave him the wrong assumption about her 'feelings'. "Falling at my feet, huh?"

"I was going to say," Clara restored herself and watched the root-laced ground as she now walked, "I made a bet with Theodore that _I_ could take _him_ on a date that would actually impress him. Because he's always the one to decide what to do."

"Fish and chips," Jack said.

"And that's why you no longer have a girlfriend," Clara commented, smirking (her hair was hiding her expression though, since it was hanging down around her face as she watched her footing.)

"Just do him in the shower, c'mon, you and I both know that's what he's after."

"I refuse to do that twice."

"_Twice_!?" Clara bit her tongue when she realised she'd given up her secret to Jack Harkness, of all people. Whoops...

"Moving on," she said quickly, hastening to get away from the topic of showers and speeding up her pace a little, "I just mean..."

She had broken through the treeline, the green hue of her vision all instantly replaced by an orange one as they stood in front of an awesome, gargantuan sight.


	38. A Daydream Away

_Oswin_

_A Daydream Away_

Her brother was absolutely no help. In fact, if anything, Frank had actually made it worse than it had been before he'd given his input, because what Frank had decided to tell her was that Flek's curious behaviour was all some dreadfully-executed attempt at _flirtation_. And then Oswin had kicked him out of her room (he'd been giggling at the time) and had sunk down against the back of the door pitifully, trying to disprove everything he had just told her in her head. That had _not_ been what was happening, she was convinced. People usually had a far easier time of trying to flirt with Oswin, the last four bedroom guards had been enough proof of that, all of them being detached, chauvinistic, entitled, disgusting douchebags.

Yet now there was some stupid-hot girl sitting less than ten feet away from her every given hour of the day making remarks about having wet hands and bumping into things when Oswin looked at her. And none of those things could even be remotely construed as Flek having _feelings_ for her, because Flek did not, because Oswin was convinced that if she _did_ have… 'Those things', then someone such as _Flek_ would have _absolutely no trouble _in the art of 'flirting'. All those reasons were why Oswin was completely and utterly set on the idea that Flek was some sort of Spore-spy sent to get close to her to make sure she wasn't planning on mutinying against them, so Oswin no longer trusted the girl. She never had, really… ("You're a terrible liar," Eleven sniggered, "How much more of this self-denial do I have to go through listening to?" "It's not self-denial, it's… I don't know, I'm not denying myself, it's Flek-denial. Something else." "Well does it last for much longer?")

That early month in 5117 – the spring-time, Oswin assumed, though spring didn't mean anything on a spacestation – had been a little before the Dust War had officially broken out. Tensions were running high between the Spores, the Alliance and the militias, not to mention the denizens themselves. Rosalind Sinclair had wanted an escape, and so, that year had been a particular set of circumstances Oswin had originally hated. Her mother wanted to go on holiday, to one of the bourgeois artificial beach resorts they had attached by singular, monitored spaceways. She remembered the arguments clearly. Her mother thought that Flek was entirely capable of keeping Oswin in check for the three days' absence she and all five of Oswin's brothers _and_ the current step-father were going. Oswin was to be left alone, apparently undeserving of a holiday (of course, her mother spun various manipulative lies to make it look like a positive thing – a privilege, even – that Oswin was to be kept away from these things and left at home, but Oswin didn't care to repeat those).

* * *

"Hang on," Eleven began, "You were left alone in a house with her? Just you two?"

"Yes," Oswin told him. He stared, slack-jawed, at her, "What? Okay, as if I was pleased about you all dumping me in a hotel simulation with Mitchell for two bloody days – because _that_ was definitely enjoyable, wasn't it?" she grimaced at the memory. The deceit more than anything was the unpleasant part, and so was the embarrassment she still got in waves every time she remember her behaviour over the course of those two days.

"You _did_ fancy him."

"No I didn't, I didn't have feelings for him, and I still don't."

"But you've been dating him for the last month!"

"Irrelevant!"

"You live in his bedroom!"

"I do not. I have a bedroom of my own."

"Yes, and you haven't stepped foot in it in weeks. But anyway, on with the story," he said, sitting back and smiling. Oswin hoped his rash would come back, the way he was being so callous about her storytelling. No, it wasn't even her storytelling, it was the story itself. She may live in a time machine, but she couldn't change the past. Well, perhaps she _could_, but _she_ knew how the story ended, and she wouldn't change it anyway.

* * *

Often, she wished for a ball she could bounce on the wall opposite and catch, or anything to amuse herself with, but she didn't have much. Well, she had her computer and its infinite hacked databases, but she was too antsy now to research pointless avenues of information (unless that information pertained to the deduction and identification of flirting techniques), instead she was trying to occupy herself enough to erase the daydreams circling through her head. ("Daydreams?" Eleven asked. "You really want to hear about the daydreams..?" Oswin asked slowly, "That's a little private. All you need to know is they were very time-consuming and distracting and involved kissing.")

The daydreams really did involve a _lot_ of kissing, and looking back she was especially ashamed of her five-years-ago self. But she couldn't help it. Then again, she didn't try to help it, because she was still convinced Flek was plotting against her.

It was when one of these daydreams was in full-swing, a daydream specifically involving Oswin deciding to not care about anything or anyone - or leaving her door open so that the temperature became imperfect - and run out of her room and jump down the stairs and just kiss (like she said, there was a lot of that) the damn girl and then skulk away to privacy again, when there was a knock on the door and she fell off her bed. She'd been sitting with her head hanging off the edge, looking upside-down at the grey bedroom wall, but she made a start and didn't think about where she was moving (she more or less convulsed) and hit her face on the floor.

"What was that?" Flek asked from the other side.

"N-nothing," Oswin said, "I'm fine!" she scrambled to her feet. She had not been so immersed in a fantasy that she had had a terrible fright when it had been broken and injured herself. That wasn't at all what had happened – she was the smartest girl in the universe, and she wouldn't allow lust to overcome her better judgment.

She was still fixing her hair when she opened the door, looking everywhere but Flek, because to look at Flek was to blush uncontrollably, and she didn't want that to happen. Her imaginings caused enough blushing already, the presence of the girl would be enough to send her into fits if she didn't do something about it. The fact they were alone in the house wasn't helping her, either, there was no hope of random interruption from an obnoxious older brother or needy younger brother or neglectful parents.

"Oswin?" Flek asked.

"Hmm? Yes?" Oswin hadn't realised she'd been silently staring and not speaking, "Did you want something? I was just doing some calculations. They were very complicated, which is why I'm… Distant…" _Sorry, I was just daydreaming about making out with you, and it was very distracting so sorry if I try to avoid your gaze or anything_, was what she didn't say.

"Yeah, the thing is, I've run out of clothes…" Flek carried on speaking after that, but Oswin had zoned out again and wasn't listening particularly (Eleven then commented: "You were imagining her without clothes?" to which Oswin responded, "It is not a crime, and I was really trying _not_ to do that.") Oswin was vaguely aware that Flek had stopped speaking by that point.

"…Yes," she answered, nodding and coming back to herself. Flek frowned.

"I asked which buttons you press on the washing machine," she said.

"I… Yeah. That's what I meant. I meant, _yes_, I'll tell you how to work the washing machine so that you have clothes," Oswin tried to cover for herself and her own stupidity. Flek probably didn't even believe all the people claiming Oswin was a genius. Oswin was entirely a genius, as long as there weren't pretty girls near her. "But you know, even if you don't, nobody's gonna see you." ("You _actually _said that?" Eleven snorted.) Oswin felt like she wanted to punch herself in the face immediately after saying those eleven words.

"Erm, won't you though..?" Flek asked. Oswin didn't know if it was some kind of weird pink-hair trick of the light thing, but she could have sworn that at that moment she saw Flek avert her eyes to the ground and blush.

"What? I don't leave my room," Oswin said quickly, "You're basically home alone. I wasn't thinking about me. I don't care if you have clothes on or not. We're all humans. We all have skin." However, she didn't move at all. She stayed loitering in her doorway, shifting weight from foot to foot almost every second to try and thwart off whatever new daydreams and lusts were threatening her standing as a credible genius.

"Are you coming?" Flek asked.

"You go first, there's not room on these stairs to _not_ walk single-file. I'm sure you know where the washing machine is," Oswin said, "I mean, are. Where the washing machines _are_." She corrected herself because, in a house with seven people and then the Spore guard on top, one washing machine wasn't nearly enough. They actually had three.

All Oswin noticed when she was following Flek down two flights of stairs and into the laundry room as though she needed directions around her own home (perhaps she did, the amount of time she spent in the attic on her own) was that the girl smelt like cream soda, and that that was incredibly distracting, and now she had even more slivers of realism to accidentally add into her already vivid enough fantasies she was so prone to having. It took a lot of concentration to remember how to work the machine, and she was indubitably ashamed of herself, though she shockingly managed to do it all correctly without messing up and making a fool of herself (she'd made enough of a fool of herself already that day).

"So, that's just… Who's been doing your washing until now..?" Oswin asked. Flek had been in the house for the best part of a month by then, and Oswin thought it was unbelievable, to say the least, that she'd never had to wash clothes until then.

"Oh, um," Flek seemed to be thinking as she went, "Your brother."

"…Which one? There are five of them," Oswin reminded her.

"Oh, I don't know. I don't know their names," Flek said, and Oswin couldn't shake the feeling that she was lying. It was later on that Oswin actually discovered it had all been a rouse to try and talk to her, that Flek had been pacing at the foot of the attic stairs for about an hour trying to think of talking points and things to say, coming up with excuses to get her out of her room. But back then, Oswin did not know those things, and it seemed believable enough that she might not know the names of all the brothers. Though, after a month…

"I'll be going," Oswin said, deciding not to dwell on it. Not until she was alone and out of all danger of being overly-staring or anything, which she was very conscious of doing then. She turned around from the machine and was stunned straight away by how close behind her Flek had been standing as she'd been instructing her, and found their faces barely five inches apart, as were those intoxicating green eyes the girl possessed. "I'll…" Oswin stopped speaking, not finding words, edging closer and forgetting all her careful restraints.

Then the washing machine clattered loudly as it started to whir and she jumped and skittered away.

"Off back upstairs," she stammered, walking away from Flek, trying desperately to forget that she'd almost kissed her not ten seconds ago.

"Oswin?" Flek called, and Oswin turned back around, poorly attempting to act nonchalant.

"Yep?" she asked, as though nothing unusual had happened. Everything was fine and normal. She didn't want to kiss that girl. That hadn't happened.

"…Nothing. Thanks," Flek said. Oswin took her chance to leave before anything else could be said between them.

* * *

Eleven was guffawing in his chair at Oswin revealing she'd just run off instead of doing anything, and she herself was scowling at him as he made fun of her.

"Really!" he exclaimed, like he couldn't believe his ears. He'd seen evidence of her poor conduct around humans plenty of times, she was sure, her boyfriend was evidence enough of that. She wasn't nearly as bad with Flek anyway, she'd never injured her or constantly ridiculed her like she did to Adam. She didn't really know _why_ she felt the need to insult him, but he wasn't any better, and she never actually meant anything she said.

"Okay," Oswin said loudly over the top of him, "Your wife is no better at all. You were not there when she met Sally Sparrow – she spent the whole time staring at her and saying random crap to sound impressive. I am not some fluke in the list of Clara's Echoes, we're both like that. Maybe I'm worse because, unlike her, I was kept locked up for years and socialised with about ten people. But the fact remains that she's equally pathetic."

"Hang on, what do you mean when she met Sally Sparrow?" Eleven asked seriously, and Oswin smirked, "Clara does not fancy-"

"Oh yes she does. She lied about being married and hid her left hand behind her back trying her luck, I'd ask her about it if I were you." Oswin didn't really know why she was dropping Clara in it, but she wanted to make a point about Clecho-Awkwardness to the high-and-mighty Time Lord, "Anyway, do you want to hear the end of this story or not?"


	39. Smoke Me A Kipper

_Clara_

_Smoke Me A Kipper_

The woods had given way to a new kind of obstruction, a new sea of dense blockade keeping them from their goal. The green was gone, replaced by oranges and yellows and other autumnal colours, blotched with the browns of dead leaves drifting along the floor. They were covered over all of a sudden by a darkness the jungle canopy had not been able to create, the sky blocked by the opaque heads and caps of the fungi, for they were in a forest made of mushrooms. And the mushrooms theselves were huge, and they swept out like fans at heights of twenty feet, shrouding the planet's surface in shadow and making it impossible to see far once they got under shelter. They grew close together, opening up and pushing one another aside to reach the sky. No doubt about it, this was where the infection was originating; the mushrooms were identical to those which grew out of the zombified victims they had been encountering during their endeavours. She couldn't deny it was beautiful, however - in a morbid sense - because it certainly was, a fantastic sight, and Clara was sure that it marked the halfway point of their journey, and that notion improved her spirits slightly.

"_Wow_," breathed Zachary, who may not have seen many sights such as these. Distantly, Clara remembered Oswin mentioning the 'rings of Saturn at sunset' a while ago. But if one saw that sight many times, she was sure the novelty would wear off. Seeing the Northern Lights could well seem disappointing for those people living in the Arctic Circle.

"Yeah," Jack said, "But this isn't the source. The source will be in the middle. So we go straight."

"Good luck with that," Clara joked at him.

"You too," he responded with a wink, "Anyway, we have a compass. So long as we don't get too held up by whatever's hiding in here, we'll be back for breakfast."

"Breakfast sounds amazing right now..." Clara groaned, wishing she could have proper food. Honestly, she didn't know how these expeditionaries all coped with being out exploring unknown terrain for months on end, she could scarcely manage two days of it.

Jack lead the way into the fungal maze, and Clara drifted close by his side, being as he and Eyeball were the two in possession of the torches (and Jack was the more attractive option being as Eyeball had lost her pickaxe, but his machete was still tight in his hand). Within, it was considerably dark and gloomy, and the plants themselves were emitting folds of heat around them. It was grim, as well, and the reality of the fungi forced up a curious array of emotions within Clara; she was in awe at the deadly nest they were creeping through, while simultaneously angry at the amount of death these mushrooms were causing the greater population of Eslilia. That thought, however, struck a certain chord of confusion.

"If the mushrooms grow naturally, why do they attack everything?" Clara asked, "...Because, _all_ the lifeforms here are threatened by this plague, right?"

"That's a good point," Jack said, "If the fungus was some sort of immune system, wouldn't it only attack things not native to the planet?"

"Yeah, exactly, so it's not native, but it's recent, and it's killing everything."

"I think we've made a mistake," Jack stopped walking and breathed, "This isn't a plague to immunise people against. This is a fully-mobilised army, and it's going to take over the planet." Nobody was moving now. They were all standing still, in the gloom and the awful heat, sweltering and scared.

"So it can't be cured that way," said Clara.

"It needs a herbicide," Eyeball breathed, "Something to attack the infection, and kill it. Something that can be released across the planet without damaging the ecosystem."

"Yeah," said Clara, "Which _we_ can't do, we have to get samples."

"Good call," Jack said.

And then he swung his machete into the stalk of the nearest mushroom (a stalk that was about eight feet in diameter), and there was a high-pitched wail that completely deafened Clara and brought her hands to her head and her body to its knees in some attempt to drown out the screech.

"WAY TO GO, JACK!" Eyeball yelled over the siren as Jack fought frivolously to free his machete, but he'd swung too had and wedged it too deep in the peach-coloured stem. Then there was an odd noise like hissing, and the sirens grew more and more and more intense as all the mushrooms began simultaneously letting off this operatic call to arms. The source of the hiss was the most fatal thing of all though, as it signalled the release of the spores out of the underside of the mushroom's cap, clusters of them like fat dust drifting through the air, directed by some unseen hand at the travellers. Telekinesis could only hold them back so far, but Clara brought up an invisible shield of it around them so that they were protected from the blots.

"Jack, what are you-!?" Clara demanded, but she stopped talking as he wrenched a sickly-looking chunk of stem right out with his hands.

"It's a present for your sister," Jack grinned, and then they were running, Eyeball with the only weapon, stumbling through a dark maze of shrieking trying to find jungle again. But jungle was even more difficult to run through.

"We can't go back through the ship - the dead around it will be reanimating because you tripped the alarm system or whatever it is," Eyeball advised them (mainly Jack), "We have to find another way."

"Sure there's another way," Jack panted, "Hold this," he tossed the mushroom flesh to Clara, who shrieked at the squishy, damp warmness off it, but didn't drop it. It was too valuable to drop. He was drawing his compass back out again, trying to read it as they hurtled through the screams. "We go East, we meet the river. This way."

All of a sudden, Jack veered off left and they all struggled to follow him, torch beams flailing around wildly and hardly helping to guide them by that point.

"What about the Ceposea cure!?" Zachary demanded, "We never found it!"

"We'll pass the grove once we get to the river!" Jack called back to him, "And it's not the end of the world anyway, your sister found the cure here because we're here. Ceposea doesn't originate from Eslilia, Oswald."

"My surname is Cohen!" Zachary shouted furiously at Jack.

"Whatever!" Jack obviously didn't care for this little bit of information. Clara glanced back briefly out of panic, and tried to speed up running even more when she saw the swarm of spores gathering behind them so thick they looked like a dense, yellow wall.

Finally they escaped the mushrooms though, broke through the giant trunks and back into the greenery of the jungle and the trees, where it was thankfully cooler. It wasn't good at all, however - they might be getting further away from the fungal field, but the spores weren't hindered by the dense woods at all, like the four of them were. They weren't safe, and Clara didn't know how long she could keep running and navigating the forest, phasing through branches here and there where she could (where she couldn't, the sharp bits of wood sliced at her legs and arms and stung and bled), creating the forcefield and their only line of defence from the airborne attackers at the same time. She was exhausted, exerting so much energy, aching all over in spite of the nanogenes. She didn't know how far the river was at all, she could only hear the defeaning (but distancing) shrieks behind her and her heartbeat in her ears and her own painful breathing.

Trees thinned out and the ground gave way to marshes and mud, liquid sucking their feet so they were loping like injured mongrels to try and get away from the gaining spores. Behind her, she saw the yellow wall break through the trees, trillions of spores all after them after Jack had stupidly tried to stab one. She didn't know if this was all more frightening than the space worm of the previous day.

She couldn't hear anything over herself and her panic, not even the voices of her comrades as they fled, which was probably why she had no warning when she fell seemingly into space.

But it wasn't into space. She was blinded by some kind of terror that had stopped her from noticing what was right in front of her: the river. Water came to meet her and she crashed through into it, far deeper at that point than it was on the lower level. She sank for a moment, but managed to force her way towards light and the surface. She broke through and hacked coughs, trying to get her breath back while clinging onto the chunk of mushroom she'd been trusted with. Somebody grabbed her arm, and upon blinking she saw it was Jack, who had a hold of the river bank.

"Where're the others!?" Clara shouted to him over the gushing of the water. He said nothing, but a second later the heads of Zachary and Eyeball emerged in the currents, choking and bedraggled, but alive for now. They managed to grab hold of some dangerous-looking rocks sticking up out of the middle of the river bed to keep from behind dragged off by the force of the river.

"Duck your head when the spores come! Wait for them to pass!" Jack yelled orders to the three of them. Clara didn't want to duck her head under the water at all - even though it was obviously a lot cleaner that the worm excrement she'd had to hide in yesterday - but when the yellow swarm appeared from the leaves and the swamp, and Jack heaved a lungful of air and was lost from sight, she was left with no choice.

She took a deep breath, and submerged herself, pushing down to stay away from the surface while trying to squint through the muck that hurt her eyes when she opened them to see if the cloud passed over them. Everything was green for a few more seconds, but then mustard clouded over the water, and she was kicking and struggling even more to stay down and out of their way.

The yellow spores were in so huge a volume, Clara didn't know if they were passing along or cleverly waiting for the humans to be forced to stick their heads up. Of course, Clara and Jack could probably fight through it long enough to survive whatever happened, it was Eyeball and Zachary who were in the most danger. How long could they hold their breath?

Clara didn't have a grip on the river bank, or anything holding her still apart from Jack, who she was clinging to desperately with one hand. A log, or some form of darkish debris, hurtled out of nowhere at that second and crashed straight into Jack's arm and he was wrenched so hard he let her go, just as the thing was knocked by the force of the water so it was about to smash her skull. Before it could, she was adrift in the water, scrambling one-armedly for anything to grab, trying to eacape the log coming one way, the water going another, while keeping below the waterline and away from the spores. She was going too quickly though, she couldn't see anything and when the log finally crashed into her back it knocked all the air out of her in a gasp nobody could hear, water taking place of oxygen in her lungs as she tried to keep her mouth shut against the torrents.

She was flailing wildly, finding nothing to grab, things knocking into her as she blindly progressed down the river, hearing it cascading around her ears while she drowned. She didn't know how well nanogenes worked underwater. Briefly, she kicked the ground, but this just served to push her faster. She thought she was probably away from the spores now, and tried to scrabble to get to air and vomit out all the river water she'd consumed, but she was just too weak to do anything, she didn't even know what way was up.

As she thought the end was near though, she was suddenly not in the river. She was soaked all over, and could hear noise like steam and crashing waves, but there was nothing to grab, and she could feel a breeze on her skin.

Clara was falling.

She had reached the waterfall.

She was half-flying through the air too quickly to do anything to save herself, and all-too-fast she crashed down onto stones and hard surfaces, rolling sideways, broken and bloodied, in the shallow pool beneath the water.

The river had launched her from the cliff summit fast enough that she was thrown a little out of reach of the crashing rain. She was face-up, had access to air finally as water sloshed over her, and she didn't know how much of her was injured and how much was fine. The fact she still had the lump of mushroom, be it a little mushy in places, was some consolation though.

Somehow, she summoned the strength to crawl over, her head ringing, to some darker area she hoped was the treeline and the edge if the river. Thank god it was, and she felt mud and earth under her hands, dredging herself to freedom. Then she tossed the mushroom away a few feet, forced herself onto her hands and knees, and retched, bringing up what she thought at the time to be gallons of putrid, grey water. She collapsed into the pool of her own sludge, breathing heavily.

Footsteps sounded next to her, squelching in the dirt, then an unpleasant, squishy sound when some larger weight threw itself down nearby. Clara had her eyes closed though, relishing in the fact she was alive and near to where she'd been the day before. If they didn't get back today, they'd definitely get back tomorrow. Anywhere was better than Eslilia.

"Which one are you?" came the dishevelled voice of Zachary.

"Clara," she answered hoarsely, "Where're the others?"

"Not here."


	40. I Can't Do The One-Two Step

_Oswin_

_I Can't Do The One-Two Step_

The first three days after that particular episode with the washing machine - the first three days after the vacation of the entire house - were awkward, to sum them up. Oswin spent most of them slouched against the back of the door and trying to hear anything through the metal, though her efforts were always futile because it was too thick for sound to pass through with any noticeable effect. She didn't understand why Flek remained at the foot of the attic stairs, when she could easily be down in the living room where she had view of the flight of stairs leading up to the first floor, as it was just behind the holobox, because that would keep Oswin 'in check' just as easily as staying _right outside _her bedroom would. _And_ it would give Oswin more privacy, and ability to go to the toilet or shower without being spied on. What was Flek even doing on her own down there? It was beyond Oswin, who was still trying to convince herself she was completely contented chasing bubblegum-coloured cans of cream soda around in her dreams.

The worst part of it all had been that Oswin was so undeniably distracted by the mere presence of the girl on the floor below, at one early instance where she decided to shower, she'd forgotten to take clothes of her own with her. And had then bumped straight into Flek in just a towel before managing to flee back to her own room with knuckles the colour of the bones underneath she'd been holding the towel that tightly. At least she hadn't slipped - that was some kind of meek consolation, she supposed. But she hadn't left her room at all until she'd had to ask for something to eat the following afternoon (and even then she'd only asked through a thin crack in the door and hadn't even managed to open it fully, just enough to be heard).

She didn't know if she wanted Flek to leave or not, in some way she was refreshing from the misogynistic company usually lurking outside Oswin's bedroom. But then, Oswin always had some vague idea in her head that if she just retreated further into her antisocial habits for a little while longer, everything would somehow be resolved, with no action on her part at all. It would just end or something. The Cluster Spores would decide to completely leave Horizon and free Oswin from her deal with them, and she wouldn't need a monitor anymore. She'd be free from them ('them' more specifically meant 'Flek's influence', which held far more power over her than the Cluster Spores ever had in truth).

It was on the fourth day though, that something snapped with Oswin. The only thing standing between her and free roam of the house was a girl who was apparently completely smitten by her, and could thusly be easily coaxed into giving Oswin more freedom than she usually had while the rest of the family were out. She had not been able to watch the holobox in the living room for years, or lounge in the dining room, or the kitchen, or the other living room, or the game room. All these places, she realised, were suddenly available to her as more spots to brood sulkily upon girls she'd decided she couldn't do anything with.

Flek jumped when Oswin opened the door (Flek _always_ jumped when Oswin opened the door), and stood up from where she'd been lounging like a soldier to attention, which always unnerved Oswin. She didn't like the idea of the looming war on Horizon ("This was like, just a few months before the Dust War properly broke out," Oswin added to Eleven as a side note).

"Can I come out?" Oswin finally brought herself to ask. Asking for permission from her 'guard'. Honestly, it almost felt degrading. She should be glad, however, that it _was_ Flek as her guard, because she trusted the gawky gay doctor a lot more than she trusted any of those dutiful, sexist _men_ she had been saddled with beforehand.

"C-come out of where..?" Flek asked. Well, she kind of stammered the beginning, then said the rest of the sentence all-too-quickly, as though to compensate.

"My room," Oswin said, "Where else would I be-?"

"I don't know, doesn't matter," Flek cut across her and didn't let her finish. There was a pause, and Oswin was beginning to regret this endeavour. She thought it was hardly likely to go well - what if Flek followed her? What if they had to be in the same room together, without the handy door cutting through the possibilities of them ever conversing? It was starting to seem like a dreadful idea.

"I just mean, I'm never allowed out, and now the house is empty so I won't be in anyone's way, and my mother won't know I've been out," Oswin said, trying to make her case as concise and coherent as possible. Flek looked off to the side in thought, and Oswin couldn't help but watch her as she did, and then continue staring when she ran a hand through her hair and messed it up, then absently fixed it back with one hand, the other hand on her hip.

"I guess," Flek shrugged, looking at Oswin when she'd decided and blushing when she met Oswin's wide eyes. "...Do you stare at all your guards like that?"

"...Yes," Oswin lied, "I... Was... Reading body language... I always do it... I've had some creepy, gross guards over the past. Not you though, you're not creepy. Or gross. One of them stank of feet. Not thaf you stink of feet, you smell like cream soda."

"...I smell like cream soda..?"

"...I sniff all my guards..." she said, "Can I leave then? I've been stuck in that room for like, four years, ever since... Ever since some stuff. Some... Traumatic stuff."

* * *

"'Traumatic stuff'?" Eleven asked, clearly wondering what traumatic things happened to Oswin before she lost her leg and before the beginning of the war. Specifically when she was seventeen.

"That's what I told her," Oswin affirmed, saying nothing else and trying to figure out how to resume her story, but Eleven was looking at her expectantly, as though she was going to share this 'traumatic stuff' with him. She sighed and relented. He'd not stop asking if she didn't. "Okay, _maybe_ it wasn't anything traumatic, _maybe_ after some stuff with Nina my mother took extra measures to keep me locked in the house, alright?"

"Why keep that from Flek?"

"I just didn't want to have to explain anything about my ex-girlfriend to her right then. It's not like it's a secret _anymore_," Oswin shook her head, "Moving on..."

* * *

She was not lucky enough to be freed from the presence of the girl she was fiercely crushing on by emptying her room, oh no - Flek wanted to follow her around to make sure she wasn't getting up to anything that would leave evidence of Flek neglecting her duties. She had been easier to persuade than Oswin had thought, however, a lot easier. She'd thought there would have been _some_ kind of argument at least, from Flek not wanting to do bad by her employers, be they Oswin's parents or the Cluster Spores. If 'employers' was the right word; she had no idea if Flek was getting paid or anything.

"...You know you don't really have to follow me around..." Oswin said slowly, trying not to sound like she wanted Flek to leave or something.

"Oh no, you still have to suffer with my company. I was given a job, and I'll do it," Flek said firmly. That was the least amount of fumbling Oswin had ever seen Flek say anything with, and it was surreal, in all honesty. She was too used to mistakes and apologies.

"I'm not _suffering_," Oswin said, which was really a lie, because she was definitely suffering. Though not in the way that Flek was apparently thinking - she was suffering by having to be consciously and constantly repressing the urge to kiss her, which had only gotten worse lately, due to the aloneness of them both. "...But really," Oswin tried again, "I'm not going to hurt myself or something."

"Even if you did, I'm a doctor," Flek said. Now, Oswin already knew that about her in so many words, and normally she didn't think she would find the fact someone had medical knowledge attractive, but god help her she was so enamoured she completely did and she nearly tripped up (which unfortunately, Flek noticed...) "Are you okay?" she asked quite urgently. It had only been a stumble. Oswin didn't know why she was so worked up about it.

"...Yeah," Oswin said.

"See? Maybe you _will_ hurt yourself," Flek shrugged. _Hurt myself because of you being so damn distracting and hot, more like_, Oswin grumbled internally. She wouldn't have tripped if Flek was absent.

The day did not pass pleasantly. Oswin spent most of it blinding herself with pointless daytime shows being projected in front of her by the holobox in the living room, curled up on her own on the sofa with Flek out of sight (but not out of mind) on an armchair somewhere to her left. Eventually, Flek started asking if Oswin was hungry though, and Oswin was most definitely _not_ hungry, she had an annoying clenching in her stomach that prevented her from consuming anything edible. This feeling was only exacerbated by the proximity of the girl to which it was a symptom of, and Oswin wondered bitterly if Flek's fancy doctorates could cure infatuation and butterflies. She also wondered if ripping out her own internal organs might help, mainly her heart and her entire digestive system.

("Exactly how much of this story is just you brooding?" Eleven asked. "Can you _please_ have some patience? I've already been skipping bits, you're not helping.")

"It's getting late, are you sure you're not hungry?" Flek asked for the umpteenth time.

"Yes," Oswin answered through gritted teeth, "I'm sure." She was getting annoyed now, at her own feelings _and_ at Flek's constant, persistent existence in her house. Maybe she really did want the girl to leave, it would make her life a whole lot easier.

By that point, Oswin was so defocused she could barely watch the screen, so she resolved to flicking over to one of the radio channels and rolling over onto her back so she could just listen to something - _anything _\- to possibly take her mind of her darn gayness for at least five minutes. ("I swear," Oswin commented, "Having feelings for someone of the same gender is so much more stressful than the opposite one.")

"Ooh, I love this song," Flek said, and Oswin opened one of her closed eyes and frowned up at the ceiling.

"It's not a song, it's an aria."

"It's the same thing," Flek said.

"It isn't the same thing at all, this is part of an opera from three millennia ago, not a song," Oswin said.

"You like opera..?" Flek asked incredulously, and Oswin shuffled and looked over the arm of the sofa at Flek, who was looking right back with one of her eyebrows raised over those entrancing green eyes of hers Oswin hated so much.

"I like a lot of things," Oswin muttered.

"Oh yeah? What else?" Flek challenged, smirking, as she'd apparently plucked up the courage to speak properly to Oswin. And successfully 'speaking' was only a stone's throw from successfully 'flirting'. Oswin went red, and hid herself again like she had been before. She heard Flek stand up. "I bet you can dance to it," she said, and by where her voice was coming from, Oswin guessed she was leaning on the arm of the very sofa Oswin had been using as a safe nest free from girls aside from her, barely a foot away. How easy it would be to sit up and kiss her.

"You can't dance to opera," Oswin said, clenching her fist, "Especially not when you don't even know what opera it is."

"Well then, tell me all about your love of opera, _genius_," Flek teased.

"It's from Carmen, this specific aria is called _L'amour est un oiseau rebelle_," Oswin told her coolly.

"How come you can't dance to it?"

"Because it's an _opera_!" Oswin was definitely annoying. She could hear Flek tapping her fingers to the music on the sofa right behind her head. She could even smell cream soda, and it was all very overcoming and she just curled up into herself even more. "It's the same reason you don't sing to a waltz."

"Why can't you sing to a waltz?"

"Because two plus two equals four!"

"Maybe it equals five."

"You're incorrigible," Oswin said.

"Does that mean you won't dance with me?" Oswin was silent. She didn't think that dancing with Flek was a remotely good idea, firstly because she couldn't dance, and secondly because dancing involved touching, and she didn't think she could emotionally deal with touching Flek at all in any way.

"Isn't that unprofessional?"

"I'm just supposed to stop you leaving the house and getting into trouble," Flek said, and then she sighed, and Oswin felt her breath on the back of her head, which finally forced her hand.

"Okay, fine," Oswin said, getting defiantly to her feet, Flek copying her and ceasing to lean over the back of the sofa and drawing herself to her full height (full height being only two or three inches taller than Oswin though). She looked taken aback by Oswin's agreement to this proposal though, "But I can't dance. I have never danced. Plus, there are no specific steps for this, _because it is an aria_."

"I didn't think you'd get so mad about it," Flek was laughing.

"I'm not mad about anything." _I'm mad about you_, was what she thought but didn't say.

"I can't dance either, I just wanted to see if you'd do it," she said, and Oswin scowled and went red, mouthing profanities she couldn't bring herself to say to Flek outloud (who was now laughing). "So. You're into opera?"

"Yes. We already established that. The genius has interests," Oswin crossed her arms and remained stood rigidly, but Flek didn't say anything else, just stood about two feet away from her. "What?"

Flek looked about to speak for a moment, but she bit her lip and looked away to the side, Oswin watching her intently. Then some kind of crescendo poured forth from the holobox and Oswin turned to find the remote, wincing at the sudden loudness. She found it on the sofa eventually, and just gave up and switched off the holobox completely. She'd had enough of it for one day anyway, there were better distractions around the house.

Oswin tossed the remote back down onto the sofa, and turned back to Flek. And then completely out nowhere, soft hands were on her face and soft lips were on hers and she were being kissed by a girl who tasted just as sweet as she smelt, left completely dumbstruck.

"...I'm sorry..." Flek apologised when she finally stopped kissing her, "I shouldn't've-"

"You really should've," Oswin said, pulling them right back together.

* * *

"I didn't even know humans could could get _that_ sexually frustrated," Eleven said, "You could cut the tension with a knife." Oswin didn't say anything. She'd finished the story now. "So. Carmen?"

"Yeah, what about it?"

"It's what you were broadcasting on the Dalek Asylum," Eleven reminded her. Not that she needed reminding. She was completely aware.

"I know. I was hoping the Spores might end up hearing it and come rescue me. But instead I got you," she said, "Not that they'd've been able to rescue me - since I was a Dalek and everything."

"Well, you certainly told it well," the Doctor said, "Are you sure there's not anymore?"

"There's a lot more. Mostly sex. I take it you don't want to hear that?" Oswin said. He went a little pale and shook his head, and she smiled sadly, "Thought so. Anyway. We'd better check on her, she'll wake up soon."


	41. Oh Brother I

_Clara_

_Oh Brother I_

Something hit her on the back of the head, something small and hard. It twinged where it had struck, and brought her out of some concussed stupor she'd sunk into. It felt like someone had thrown a little rock at her, so she pushed herself up onto her knees and looked around, squinting. It wasn't dark, and she could hear the waterfall behind her, and see Zachary dead to the world a few feet away (she had to watch him for a few seconds to see that he was breathing).

"Hey!" someone shouted from far away. Clara turned to the source of this voice, and frowned into the greenish sun and sky. She could make out two silhouettes, one of them waving quite wildly, "Clara!" She heard the American accent on her name.

"Jack?" she called up as loudly as she could, and then she coughed afterwards and spat another trickle of river water into the pool she hadn't noticed she'd fallen asleep in. She wiped a dirty hand on her face to try and get rid of it, but it was sticky across the whole right side, and her hair was all clumped together and disgusting. She gave up.

"We're both okay, how 'bout you?" Jack asked.

"Yep," she gave a thumbs up, in case he couldn't hear her. Everytime she tried to speak she coughed again.

"The grove with the Ceposea cure is up here," Jack told her, "We're gonna go get it. The spores have gone. You two sit tight, we'll be back!" And then the two dark shapes vanished from the edge of the cliff, leaving Clara and the sleeping Zachary alone. A smell reached her nose, and she thought that when she was in the water she mighed have weed herself. Ordinarily enough, she may have tried to have some sort of shower underneath the falls, but she was sick of water after nearly drowning just a short while ago. She'd rather stink.

"You lead such a dignified life, Clara," Clara told herself with a sigh. She glanced down at herself to see if the river had washed any of the dirt from her. She was looking a _little_ cleaner, she supposed, but still layered with grime, the glowing white worm dung still staining her clothes, which were now torn from running through branches. She could see the marks of where her wounds had been by the dried blood they'd left behind on her skin, and then she pressed her face into her hands and breathed deeply. She debated trying to contact Oswin, but decided against it eventually.

She could really relax, in all honesty. Until Jack and Eyeball returned, she had nothing to do - maybe she'd go back to sleep? She was starving though, and she knew that there were some sort of untainted creatures in the river somewhere. She didn't have anything to cook with though, which put a dampener on her plans, and even if she _had_ had a lighter on her it wouldn't have worked at all any more. Thinking of things not working, she pulled the broken walkie-talkie out of her pocket and dropped it on the ground now that it was useless. When would Zachary wake up so that she'd have some company? Even if that company was bitter and sullen and looked at her like she was some kind of criminal?

Clara staggered to her feet, accidentally putting her hand in the sicked-up water when she did. Cringing, she wiped her hand on a treetrunk and stared around to look for the precious chunk of mushroom. She spotted it quickly and shuffled over, picking it up so she could keep watch over it, hoping it wasn't some sort of spore tracker. Maybe she ought to bury it?

"That's a stupid idea..." she told herself. She sat back down against another tree trunk, dropped her hand down next to her and keeping the soft flesh gripped tightly between her fingers, stretching out her legs in front of her.

"Where are the others?" Zachary asked her. She jerked when he spoke, unaware she'd even gone to sleep. But she must have, and she was stiff and aching, trying to sit up and rub her back where it was sore from the treetrunk. She still had the mushroom.

"Huh?" she asked groggily.

"The others?" he reiterated, "Where are they?"

"Finding the Ceposea plant, they didn't get washed over the cliff," Clara said, "They told us to wait here." Zachary didn't seem happy about that. He was standing nearby, so Clara supposed he couldn't be too badly injured by his voyage over the waterfall.

"Okay. Good," he started to walk around, pacing. Clara thought she paid too much notice to when people paced a lot, "We can go back soon."

"Go back where? This planet is hell," Clara groaned, "_I_ have the TARDIS. You'll still be on Eslilia."

"I liked it when I could stay indoors," he said to her darkly, "The people are good, and there aren't enough of those at home."

"What happened to you?" Clara asked him, "Your sister doesn't speak about her life, or anybody in it. Not unless she has to."

"We have that in common," Zachary told her simply, "She isn't the only one who doesn't have a place on Horizon anymore. Guess I wasn't lucky enough to die, it'd make leaving so much easier." Clara decided then that she did not like Zachary one bit.

"She didn't have to die to leave," Clara argued, "She left on her own. She left because it would be better. Dying was not her intention."

"But staying away was, and in death she has achieved that," he said grimly, throwing himself to the ground. Clara didn't bother to tell him he was in her dried up vomit pool. She also didn't bother to argue with him about his sister. Arguing about Oswin was a huge and exhaustive topic, and this brother was a self-obsessed bigot. She'd do better to get the truth about Zachary from Oswin.

"Whatever. I hope hiding here is some kind of penance. Is that why you came out to see these zombies? To 'suffer'? Putting _yourself_ through hell doesn't erase the memories of other people. It's not going to be a consolation to your wife or your daughter that you came to the jungle and fell over a waterfall like a drowned rat," Clara said, meeting his eyes when she spoke.

"Don't you dare talk about Elanor and Sofia like-"

"Boo-hoo," Clara said coolly, "Zach, has anyone ever told you to just get over yourself? Stop blaming others for what _you've _done? Aren't _you_ the one who pushed everyone away?"

"What do you want, huh? Want me to cry?"

"I don't want anything. But I think people are scared of you, and I don't want to find out why. But let's just get one thing straight..." Clara got to her feet, "Oswin stopped being _your_ sister the day she died, and that was when she started being mine, and I plan to look out for her the way that none of you lot ever have."

"You don't have any right to call yourself her sister!" he shouted.

"Oh really? Because I think I have _every _right. I'm the one who's always there for her now, the one who cares, the one who doesn't just ring her up when I need a favour, when I need to say 'sorry' and repent for all my sins. You're not looking for the forgiveness of these people - of Oswin, or Frank, or Elanor - you're looking for all your guilt to just go away without doing any work towards it."

"_Always there for her_!? You are the reason that she's dead!"

"_I_ am the reason she was even alive in the first place! Why do you even care so much what happened to her? You didn't care when she was alive."

"I cared-"

"About yourself! You just abandon everybody, don't you? First your wife and daughter, then your sister, then you abandon your entire home planet and come here for redemption. I guess the booze didn't make you forget everything you wanted to, hmm? And this will?" Clara challenged. And then he punched a tree, and cursed and collapsed when his knuckles split and bled on the bark.

"Clara!" Jack's accent returned to her ears. She supposed she must have really been askeep for a while.

"Yep?" Clara called back, eyeing Zachary carefully as she walked over to the base of the cliff, where she saw Jack and Eyeball standing on the edge by the waterfall.

"Catch this rope and tie it down! We can use it to abseil," Jack told her, then he threw the rope down onto the ground below, and Clara obliged.


	42. I Fell Over

_Eleven_

_I Fell Over_

Oswin was tending to Flek right then, with him sitting in the nearby chair, observing and musing upon when his wife might return from her adventure. Admittedly, he had been initially worried for the safety of Adam and Oswin's relationship, with the emergence of Flek coming back out of the woodwork. But after hearing Oswin's story about the frankly heinous amounts of tension there had been between the both of them, he didn't think there was anything in them reuniting. Plus, there was an age gap now of what Eleven guessed was fifteen years. He had other things to be fretting about than the relationships of his sister-in-law.

It was getting late, on the second day of their Eslilia holiday, and he was worried. He didn't know how far away these plants were, through zombie-infested jungles, but he wished for news. Neither Jack nor Clara had called anyone, and there had been no contact from Zachary, either. He supposed if anything dreadful were happening to Clara, Oswin would have heard about it. But that didn't mean anything for the other three. He was still itchy all over too, his rash wasn't going anywhere until they escaped the planet once and for all - though, the scenery was quite nice. He wondered if Clara might ever want to come back one day...

There was a quiet, beeping from overhead, coming from somewhere within Flek's isolated sickroom. Eleven hadn't heard it before, and for a moment he thought it might mean she'd had some kind of turn for the worse.

"It's just the alarm," Flek answered after a moment, "Means someone's been spotted. Probably another zombie from the scouts we sent out last week."

"Fun times," said Oswin dryly, "I hate zombies. Did I ever tell you about the time a zombie broke my left ankle?"

"You don't have a left ankle," Flek commented quietly with a smile.

"Carry on insulting the disabled, why don't you. It was very painful, I'll have you know, the bone stuck out and everything," Oswin was telling her. Eleven had heard that story too many times for it to be of interest to him anymore, instead he wondered if he might snatch a nap while the undead were fought off outside, and shut his eyes, sinking down in his chair.

He did not 'snatch a nap', however. He did absolutely nothing of the sort. He kept his eyes closed and hisself relaxed until Oswin made a start nearby, and exclaimed, "Clara!" at which point he nearly fell of his chair trying to get to his feet and open the door into the rest of the discarded medical ship.

Oswin hadn't been lying or seeing things, either, because there was Clara, and the other three, and they were all completely filthy. And Jack wasn't wearing a shirt.

"Do not touch me!" Clara ordered, stepping back and holding up her hands to both her sister and her husband, one of which was holding a big lump of something orange only slightly smaller than a melon. Zachary looked in a foul mood, but both Eyeball and Jack seemed quite happy. Compared with the others, at least. "You do not want to know what I am covered in."

"What's the white stuff? Clara, did someone cum on you?" Oswin asked, and Eleven started objecting to this straight away (though Flek, who had managed to shuffle over from her bed to see this reunion, laughed).

"Yep," said Jack slyly, and then he winked at Eleven. Whether or not the Doctor went scarlet with rage, he didn't know, his inflamed, irritated skin probably hid it.

"No," Clara answered begrudgingly, "A worm shat on me. It had glowing white poo. A lot of it's just mud though, and then some blood, and some pee, probably other forms of faecal matter, I'm not sure. Dirty water, some vomit I think, all the bodily fluids really... Oh, but we got you a present," she turned to Oswin and handed her the orange thing.

"And this is what, exactly..?" Oswin eyed it carefully, not taking it.

"Jack stabbed a mushroom and ripped this out of it, it's mushroom flesh. I think flesh. I don't know," Clara said.

"The thing is, the mushrooms are an invading army trying to take over the planet, and you don't need an immunisation against an infectious plague. We need a herbicide," Jack said, "Figured you could use this to make one."

"Brilliant. More killing. Exactly the thing I swore I wouldn't do anymore just two days ago," Oswin complained.

"Oswin, I got my fingers smashed apart by a meat tenderiser to get you this," Clara said, "And then we all nearly drowned in this river that threw us over the edge of a cliff. I've spent like, four hours today asleep in my own sick."

"Right, fine, okay, fine," Oswin muttered.

"Don't worry about distributing this herbicide," Flek then said to Oswin, "I'll take care of it."

"Yeah... Speaking of care, what about the Ceposea plant?" Oswin asked then, "Actually, wait, how big was this worm that shit on you?"

"What? I don't know, I wasn't looking, I was hiding in a big, sort of, pool. Well, worm-toilet really. I'm going to shower so much when we get back," Clara said.

"Good, you really..." Eleven began, but she met his eyes threateningly, "Smell disgusting." He didn't bother to change his words.

"I love you too," she said, and he grinned a little when she rolled her eyes.

"Amazing, well now we all know that Clara and her husband love each other, we can all move on, because I really need the TARDIS and Helix to synthesise any of these," Oswin talked over them, "Ceposea plant?"

"Here," Jack said, sticking a hand in his pocket and dragging out a clump of green stuff with some flowers on it. Oswin beamed though, so the Doctor assumed the deed was done.

"Why don't you have a shirt on?" Eleven asked him.

"I burnt it," Jack answered, and Clara scoffed.

"He made it into a torch, then we lost the torch when the worm kidnapped and ate us," she explained.

"_Ate_ you!?"

"Yep. Ate. Me and Jack. Pooped us out. Stuck us to the ceiling with its poo. Then we found out it has flammable spit so we set it on fire," Clara explained.

"Clara! You killed an innocent-"

"It ate me, shat me out, then shat on my head, then tried to feed those two-" she waved a hand at Eyeball and Zachary "-to it's young."

"Watch your language."

"No. My mouth is full of shit, and so are the words that come out of it, until I'm clean and rested again," Clara said.

"Where did you get a meat tenderiser from in the jungle?" Oswin asked distantly, though she was fidgeting with-

"When did you steal my screwdriver!?" Eleven exclaimed. She scowled at him.

"I'm busy, genius at work, shush."

"In the kitchen of a crashed spaceship," Clara answered, "She hit me with it."

"It was an accident," Eyeball defended herself. Oswin glanced between Eyeball and Clara with blatant suspicion. 'Say nothing, I'll tell you whatever you want later.' Oswin met Clara's eyes, but said nothing, thankfully.

"Can we leave then?" Jack asked, "I might like adventures, but I like cleanliness as well."

"Yeah, but I think the TARDIS navigation systems might be broken. I heard that the other day they showed up three years late or something, and _we_ turned up six months late, so I don't..." Oswin trailed off when they heard the familiar thrumming through the air and a breeze around them.

"Did anybody call the TARDIS?" Eleven asked, looking at the others.

"Don't look at me," Clara said, "I broke my phone, dropped it like ten feet onto the ground and it smashed."

"See!" Oswin exclaimed, "I told you the navigation systems were broken. Do you know how much effort it took to fix the mess _you'd_ made of them?" she challenged Eleven directly, and he just pouted and tried to ignore her criticising him.

"_My_ TARDIS," he grumbled. And it really was, and it had just emerged out of nowhere in the room with them, blue and everything. They all stared at it like it was some imposter, and then the door opened and Martha looked out.

"Are you lot come... Bloody hell, what's happened to you!?" she was looking at Jack and Clara more than the others, then she noticed Eleven's own grizzly rash that was acting up again while he was exposed to the air on the planet.

"Fell over," Clara answered flatly. Martha waited to see if anyone was going to elaborate, but no-one did.

"...Right... Why do you all look so spooked?"

"We never called the TARDIS to come here," Oswin told her.

"Yeah _you_ did, about five minutes ago," Martha said.

"I think I call the TARDIS in the future and it got here early because the navigation system was broken," Oswin thought aloud, though her thought was probably correct.

"Whatever, look, can't stay here for long, it's all kicking off," Martha began quickly, "You all need to do what you have to do, and _quickly_."

"We have to stay, or -" Oswin began.

"I don't care about 'or', it's a time machine and Rose and Tentoo are shouting it down, and somebody needs to occupy Ten and keep him away from them, come on, figure out the navigation system _later_," Martha said, vanishing back inside.

"I'll be back," Oswin promised Flek, "In ten minutes. Time machine." Eleven thought that was hardly a goodbye, but Oswin followed Martha anyway. He supposed she wouldn't forget to return, there wasn't a chance of that.

"Wait, what about me?" Eyeball asked, "I have to stay here."

"Okay, I'll figure something out, but right now, yes," Clara told her sternly, sounding irritated. Had she been asking to join them on the TARDIS? Eleven hoped she hadn't promised anything. Nevertheless, Clara left at that point, and he followed. Nobody said goodbye to Zachary.

* * *

_Clara_

She waa standing by in a towel in the bathroom running a bath. She'd just showered, but she still felt completely filthy, and she thought a bath was really the thing that she needed.

Tentoo and Rose _had_ been shouting in Nerve Centre when they'd gotten back. Although at the sight of Jack and herself, utterly disgusting and probably trailing all sorts of crud in with them, everything seemed to stop. Including their fight. Rose had taken that opportunity to storm off and ask Oswin if she could sleep in her bedroom again (for the second night in a row, since they'd thankfully managed to arrive back in the evening of the same day they left), and had gone into her room before Oswin even had a chance to answer.

The Doctor knocked on the door.

"What are you doing in there? _I _need to shower too, Clara," he called through the wood.

"I'm drawing a bath," she answered, "I don't feel clean enough yet. You can come in if you want." He did, standing in the doorway and watching her eye the bubbles to see if she needed to pour in more bubblebath or not. "You can have your shower once I finish running the bath."

"What, at the same time?"

"Sweetheart, yes, 'at the same time.' Seriously, you're awkward about that? How many times have we slept together, hmm?" she asked him.

"I don't keep count."

"Of course you don't," she said, though she didn't believe him.

"I've been thinking," Clara said about fifteen minutes later, when she was immersed in the warm water and her husband was midway into his shower, having to apply some strange antihistamine lotion he'd been prescribed by her sister, "About some stuff."

"Stuff?" he asked, leaning a head around the door.

"Yes. Stuff," she answered again, watching the bubbles, deep in thought.

"What kind of 'stuff'?"

"I think I might go away for a while. A break. Wait for this stuff between Tentoo and Rose to be over with," she sighed.

"Where to? Shall we go to Paris again? Maybe this time we can actually leave our bedroom," he joked, "There's this excellent cloud resort above Venus, I-"

"No, Chin," she cut across him, "Not with you. With my sister. I think she needs a break, after all the stuff with her leg, and now with Zachary, that Prank War excursion... I think that both of us do. For a few days. Honestly, I can't really stand to be away from you for more than that."

"...Have you talked to her about this?" he asked, and she couldn't read his tone.

"Not yet, no. I think it'll be good. There's a lot of stuff happening on here with the others, and if I stay I'm gonna get dragged into it. Because that's what girls are like. They gossip. They like to tell everyone everything," Clara said.

"I've noticed, I've never lived with so many women before," he muttered, "Well I'm not going to stop you, if you need time away from the TARDIS."

"Good... I'll talk to Oswin when I finish having my bath, but, I still think I am disgusting. You know, as awful as the last two days have been, I really was glad to get out of all this chaos on here," she told him.

"Oh, so was I, it was refreshing."

"Rose is a loose cannon right now, and I don't think anything good is going to come out of this."

"Probably not... But I... We aren't in a place to say much."

"Chin, she cheated. It doesn't matter who was a Time Lord, she _cheated_. It's just like if you slept with an Echo, and you wouldn't do that. Or if I slept with that Flesh doppelgänger of yours. Don't defend her, she is wrong, just because you have a history," Clara said.

"You're awfully glum," he said, "Are you alright?"

"I'm fine. I'm stressed. I need to relax. That's why I'm going away," she said.

"Clara, you're being distant."

"I know, I'm sorry."

"Did something happen? Today, or yesterday?"

"...Yes," she answered eventually, "But I don't want to talk about it right now. I'll talk to Oswin about it. You don't have to worry."

* * *

Clara knocked on Adam Mitchell's door, assuming that was where she'd find her sister since Rose was occupying _her_ room. Hopefully nobody else would come into the hallway, it was getting late and everyone was tired from either 'Man Day' (which Clara had completely forgotten about), Eslilia or from having to hang around Rose all day (according to Amy, she'd been trying to force everyone to take her side, which was the wrong side in Clara's mind and she was glad she'd been away).

"Adam's in..." Oswin began when she opened the door, "Oh, hi. What do you want Mitchell for, O Clean Sister of Mine?"

"I don't," Clara said, froming at the strange nickname. Oswin leant on the doorframe, "I'm looking for you. To talk to you. Where's Adam, then?"

"Shower. They went paintballing or something, I don't know, he's dirty and in pain. Just like you. Guess I have a type," Oswin joked.

"Ha, ha. So you're feeling better? After everything that's happened this week?"

"If you must know, I feel like I'm dying all over again, but this time on the inside," she said while smiling, "But life must go on. Afterlife, I mean. Did you invite Eyeball onto the TARDIS?"

"What? No. She kept trying to blag her way on board, probably still is," Clara said, "She will not be joining us, don't worry. But by the way, your brother is an arsehole."

"I know that already, I did live with him for twenty years, the prick," Oswin grumbled, "What do you want then? To talk? About what?"

"I'm having a really awful time right now, but I don't want to talk about it, but I think I need a break from the TARDIS for a few days. Somewhere relaxing and boring and quiet where nothing ever happens. And I think you'd benefit from it. And part of me genuinely believes that you will, and then another part of me thinks that _I'll _only benefit from it if you come as well," Clara said.

"...You want to go on holiday..?"

"For a few days. A week tops. To get away from all this on here - from Rose, and from Jenny, and from River, and..." Clara trailed off.

"...Clara, are you alright? Did something happen to you on Eslilia?" Oswin asked, and then tears formed in Clara's eyes and she hid her face, glad that the hall had stayed empty. "Oh my god, are you okay?"

"I killed someone, kind of, and I can't deal with that with the Doctor on this ship, because I don't want to talk to him about it, I want to talk to you about it, but not on the TARDIS," Clara managed to keep collected while she spoke.

"Of course I'll come with you," Oswin hugged her, "You're right about me needing to get away as well. Come on, I'll leave a note for Mitchell, and we can go to the old H&amp;T offices and talk about this trip, alright?"

**AN: No, I am not going to be writing another Lost Echosodes about whatever Closwin are doing. This last storyline was so Closwin because I knew I was gonna be doing this so that I HAVE to write in other characters, and have to stay away from the Twins. At any rate, by this point them having a relaxing break really is the most interesting and unbelievable thing that could happen to them. And it IS what will happen, which is why I'm not writing it. Just assume they're at a spa or whatever. Swimming. Drinking cocktails by a swimming pool. Monotonous, boring things.**


	43. I Hear You Knocking

_DAY SEVENTY-NINE_

_Eleven_

_I Hear You Knocking_

It eased his burden a little that Clara had promised to go somewhere with room service, but she had left very early that morning so as to avoid getting involved in the business of Rose whenever she woke up and decided to vacate Oswin's bedroom. And he was _still_ trying to avoid Rose, so he was sat on one of the chairs in his own room wondering what to do to keep himself occupied for the next however many days. What did he usually do when he didn't have a companion? Well, usually he would spend a lot of time in the library reading books. But he _did _have companions and people to look after, and just because he didn't _want_ to get involved didn't mean he wouldn't _need_ to. It wasn't like Ten was going to be any good at calming Rose down, and he didn't want to entertain the thought of Tentoo, or Nine. The latter of which was probably far too busy with his new 'friend' anyway, he thought, annoyed.

He heard shouting from the hall then, distinctly Rose and one of the two clones, breaking through the door and the soundproofing and making him wince. He didn't know what they were shouting about, he couldn't understand words, but according to the Ponds it had been like this for all of yesterday and the night before. He'd been glad of an escape, as the yells made their way towards the main room.

Somebody knocked on the door, and he paused, hoping it wasn't anyone to do with the constant fighting. He didn't know who'd be wanting to speak to him though - maybe it was Amy? He sighed and got to his feet, forced to be polite now Clara wasn't there to argue about opening the door with. He was surprised to find Adam Mitchell waiting for him.

"...Yes..?" the Doctor asked him.

"Can I borrow your coffee machine? They're fighting in the main room, and I'm thirsty," Mitchell said. Eleven glanced back to see if there were any mugs to spare (he didn't know when or who had last washed up). There were one or two clean ones, he saw. And he had nothing against Mitchell, so he just sighed and stepped back and let him in, keeping an eye out for any clothes or dirt on the floor. Unfortunately, he had been lazy, and there were a lot of clothes. Some of them Clara's. Mitchell didn't give them a second look though, as Eleven closed the door.

"What are they fighting about?" he asked.

"The same as usual," Adam said, "Leaving or staying. Urgh."

"Have you slept..?" Eleven asked him, seeing how tired he was as he sorted out the coffee.

"Not really," Adam said, "I just need some coffee. I'll sleep eventually." Eleven couldn't be bothered saying anything more to him about his sleeping pattern, it wasn't his job to make sure Adam Mitchell was well-rested. His exhaustion was probably more down to lack of girlfriend than anything else, unless Rose had been shouting loud enough for everybody to hear (she _was_ in the room next door to him, in Oswin's bed).

Shouting returned outside while Mitchell poured his coffee.

"I wish they'd just decide," Eleven muttered, "Nobody is any good after all this shouting. If Clara and I were going to split up, I'd hope it wouldn't come down to this... Do you think they've spoken properly?"

"Honestly? No. But it's not a very complicated argument. He wants to take her off the TARDIS to stop her getting with the Doctor, but she doesn't want to leave because she wants to get back with the Doctor. That's what I gathered from Oswin, anyway," he poured the coffee.

"That's the gist, I suppose. Morality has gone out of the window," Eleven sighed, and then there was another knock on the door and he was forced to answer that, too. How many people were showing up at his door now?

This time, it was Luke, who he hadn't really spoken to at all since he'd arrived.

"...Hello? Yes?" Eleven asked, trying to smile and be polite.

"Oh, sorry, are you busy?" Luke asked, implying that Eleven had clearly failed at looking polite.

"No, no! Not at all. I'm incredibly _not_ busy, I have nothing to do," the Doctor said, grinning, "What's on your mind?"

"I heard you have tea and coffee?" Eleven's smile faltered.

"...Yes, yes. How does everyone know about this?" he stood back and let Luke in, "Excuse the mess. I really ought to clean up while Clara's gone." Luke spotted the coffee machine straight away and Eleven closed the door behind him. Or at least, he _tried_ to close the door behind him, somebody stopped him from the other side.

"What was that about coffee?" it was Amy, and behind her was Martha. They'd probably been gossiping about Rose again. Or hiding from her. Quite possibly both.

"Well there aren't any more clean mugs," said Eleven, which was true, "I'm behind on the washing up and all the other cleaning."

"We'll clean for you," Martha offered, and then Amy scowled at her over her shoulder.

"Sorry?" Eleven asked.

"Look," said Amy, "We just really want to avoid Rose today. And this room is so gross it'd take a whole day to clean." They barged past him, completely ignoring his protests. The room really wasn't that big at all, certainly not for five people (and it also wasn't _that_ dirty).

"I'm glad to see Rose has such caring friends," Eleven muttered.

"As if you can talk - hasn't Clara run away because of this?" Martha challenged him.

"Only for a few days. And there are other reasons. And _I_ can still talk, I don't control her," he argued. They weren't even cleaning.

"Is it always like this on here?" Luke asked.

"Nope," said Amy, "It's been getting worse. With Jack and Jenny, Rose, then River and the Ninth Doctor." Eleven didn't offer any sort of opinion on the last matter. He thought they weren't causing much chaos overall though, perhaps just through various stories that had been related to him concerning his sister-in-law (mainly the entire episode involving her posthumous amputation). "I don't mean to sound rude, but why are you here?"

"That _is_ rude," Martha whispered to her. It was strange now that all the girls were apparently friends with each other.

"The Tenth Doctor wanted to fix K-9, but I thought he'd just steal him so I came on board to make sure he didn't," Luke explained (Eleven hadn't known this, either), "And to help Oswin with that AI."

"Oh, Helix? I was wondering what she was doing with that," Eleven said, "Well, I apologise on his behalf for how 'busy' he is right now."

"Busy being pathetic," Amy muttered. Martha whispered something incoherent apparently in Ten's defence. Eleven hadn't spoken to Ten for days. He didn't want to.

There was another knock on the door, only this entrant didn't wait for Eleven to open it for them (he was a little glad of that). He didn't know how glad, however, he was to see Jenny. Though as long as neither of the Twins were their or Jack, she would probably be entirely reasonable.

"Are we all hiding in here?" she whispered.

"Yes," Amy answered.

"What? No, you can't-" Eleven began to object, but they all heard the door to wherever Rose and Tentoo were at that moment open (as signalled by the yelling) and Jenny cut and ducked straight into the room, slamming the door shut behind her.

"Where's Clara's stash?" Jenny asked.

"Stash? Stash of what?" Eleven asked.

"Stash of cigarettes and alcohol," Jenny elaborated, and he gasped, completely affronted.

"I'm not telling you! But speaking of that stash, I should throw it out while she's not here..."

"Can you throw it out in my room?" Jenny asked. He gave her a stern look for a moment, crossing his arms and trying to be paternal.

"No."

There was a fifth knock on the door then, and Eleven groaned and walked over to it. And then he was dumbstruck and mildly terrified when Rose was on the other side.

"Can I come in? I have to ask for some advice," Rose said. There was silence in the room behind the Doctor.

"...Sorry! We were just going out," Eleven said hastily, pulling his dressing gown from the back of the door, "All of us. About to leave."

"All of you?" Rose asked, looking at Martha, who was distinctly avoiding her gaze.

"Yes! All of us," repated Eleven, "Going out. Outside."

"We were," Amy added, "Been planning this for ages. We're going to a... Nut factory."

"I'm allergic to nuts," Rose said.

"Such a shame you can't come!" Mitchell joined in the rouse.

"You're all in pyjamas!" Rose argued.

"It's pyjama day!" said Eleven, "All nut factories have a pyjama day," he pushed past her out of the room, the others following him, "Honestly. It's common knowledge." The six of them were all heading towards Nerve Centre now, most of them without shoes, Amy being the only one sensible enough to wear slippers.

"Don't nuts grow!?" Rose called after them.

"They grow in factories," Luke said, "It's true. I study nuts at Oxford." And then they had escaped her.

"Are we actually going to a nut factory?" Martha asked.

"What!? Martha Jones! Nut factories do not exist," Eleven told her, "No. I think I'll just set the TARDIS off going anywhere. Somewhere obscure where they won't follow us..."


	44. There's Always A Lighthouse

_Martha_

_There's Always A Lighthouse_

Nestled fittingly in the belly of a valley lined with fells and lush green hills was a crisp, grey lake. It sparkled in the white sunlight being filtered through darkening clouds, the sky being reflected calmly back at itself in the waters. At the foot of the fells were evergreen trees, dark in colour and surrounding the picture so as to protect it from the traffic of the rest of the world and the impetuous industry threatening its cultivation. The day was crisp, there were flecks of frost on the blades of grass and the stones on the thin dirt road spanning from the valley's entrance to the opposite side of the lake were freezing cold. At this other side, opposing the thin gap between the hills marking the sole route of passage to this body of water, a lighthouse was situated peacefully on a little crest of rock that crept out a way into the water like a promenade, flattened artificially to make a walkway to the tall, narrow fortress.

It was very pretty, but it was definitely some autumnal stretch of the year, maybe venturing into early spring, so the temperatures were cold around the still lake. It was all very still and very quiet, also, not even the sound of birdsong gracing their ears. It was utterly desolate, the lighthouse being the sole evidence of civilisation, though Martha thought that if it _was_ full of people, it would be quite a shame to ruin the landscape with even more human-shaped scars, and she would have liked it less.

"Well, isn't this nice and refreshing!" Eleven called out, and his voice echoed against the hills, prompting him to lower it. He hadn't any shoes on, and unlike the others, no socks, either. Yet this didn't seem to bother the Time Lord one jot, he pranced about on the pebbles of the dirt road, spinning to get a view of his surroundings, as though the floor was made of pillows. "A lake and a lighthouse! All very human. That symbol of isolation to your species over there - isn't it odd how much you all advocate for masses of friends and then have postcards with big empty spaces painted on them?"

"It's just a postcard," Amy told him, taking the primary role of companion-to-the-Doctor that day, "You have postcards of cities, too."

"Well yes I suppose so, but that's the picture that fits with the image of humanity, lively cities. And then the opposite is so much... Cleaner. Smell how clean the air is here!" he span around again. Everybody was watching him; he seemed awfully happy to be at a lake. "Anyway, the TARDIS brought us here for a reason." He walked off without a word of instruction to any of them. Amy was the one who followed immediately, and then the others all got the idea and trailed behind the other two as an odd clump.

"I've always liked lakes. Lakes are good," the Doctor was saying, "Nothing ever goes wrong at a lake. What harm can a still body of water do? It's not even running."

"It lets vampires across," Adam commented dryly, trying to amuse himself with vague quips.

"Good for the vampires though. You're all very bigoted, aren't you? Humans, I mean. Not you lot. Well, yes you lot, I suppose, you _are_ humans. Can't help being ignorant. You have a tendency to mess everything up," he was smiling as he brashly insulted them, all except Jenny, who just thought this quite funny since she wasn't a human. "You just want to stop the vampires getting food. I'm sure cows share the same inhibitions towards people, and at least vampires don't systematically slaughter you."

"This is pleasant," Martha said sarcastically, in reference to his queer and insulting statements.

"Sorry," said Eleven. He was leading them to the lighthouse at the edge of the lake. Martha held her arms around her and tiptoed over the dirt and the pebbles, occasionally drifting to the grassy banks on either side.

Just as the Doctor had been spewing peculiar, freshwater-orientated propaganda at the lot of them, the stillness of the lake was ruptured by some huge, dirty bubbles that rose to the surface and popped with a deeper noise than usual, splattering some darkish liquid - like oil - across the surface a little. But the bubbles only increased, like a simmering pot, and they all paused to watch as something metal and curved then rose with a creak through the surface of the water and rolled a little, bobbing and pointing a glassy eye to the sun.

"What is that?" Amy asked.

"I think it's a bathysphere or something," Luke said. Martha thought he must be correct upon that suggestion, a stained, circular porthole with thick, rusted rivets around its circumference reflecting the clouds darkly, like a mucky mirror.

"Well! This lake just gets more and more fascinating! A bathysphere! What next - an underwater city?" he was bouncing on his feet as he walked away from the rusty orb floating a good few metres off from the shoreline.

"Oh, god I hope not..." Martha groaned, memories of Atlantis still forming the threads of most of her nightmares. Mitchell didn't seem too thrilled by that suggestion, either. Even more so than her, and he kept casting weary and worried glances at the lighthouse, before pulling out his phone and texting whoever.

They worked ther way towards the lighthouse, Martha sure that by now she had cut her feet on multiple occasions on the small-but-sharp stones littering the path, but finally they got to the raised, wooden walkway that lead directly to the lighthouse. The walkway was old and bloated from the water, permanently damp from the spray that got up in storms with rusty nails sticking up making it into a creaky minefield. At least they wouldn't plunge down into the depths of the lake if it broke, since there was the rocky outcrop just inches below this bridge.

"I don't like this, maybe we should leave?" Adam suggested, trailing at the back of the group.

"Rubbish, it's perfectly safe, I'm sure! I never back down from an adventure," Eleven declared happily, going and knocking loudly on the door.

"What's with you?" Martha whispered to him, "Do you have a phobia of lighthouses?" He ignored that and stayed still with his grim expression as they waited for some form of attendant to allow them in. "Fine, don't talk, but don't complain that you have no friends."

"I do have friends!" he argued with her.

"You have one friend, and she's not here," Martha said to him, and he narrowed his eyes before turning away quite pettily.

"The route down to Atlantis was in a lighthouse. I... Found it out. When we were there. There were notes about in oxygen synthesis..." he said shadily.

"And by 'oxygen synthesis' you mean the giant garden you blagged your way into, while Mickey became ninety-percent swellings and beestings and I almost got murdered by a psycho-surgeon?" Martha suggested resentfully, raising an eyebrow at him.

"That's not the point. The point is that bathyspheres and lighthouses and weird lakes make me nervous."

"I wonder why you don't have more girls swooning at your bravery..." Martha said quietly, but then they were stopped by a rather disjointed sound, that of a sonic screwdriver, though it didn't sound too healthy.

"Damn spare," Eleven complained.

"Why do you have a spare?" Amy asked him.

"Because I need one these days," he said.

"Clara steals his screwdriver all the time," Jenny explained to Amy, who nodded and seemed quite amused by this revelation.

"Yes," the Doctor confirmed this bitterly, "She does. This is the one I keep in my dressing gown since she's stolen it _again_. I don't know how she does it."

"You do have a very short attention span," Amy told him. He said nothing, fumbling with the lock and hitting the screwdriver on his leg everytime it stuttered out. "Doctor?"

"Hmm? Sorry? Were you saying something? I wasn't paying attention," he said.

"Are you being serious?" Amy questioned.

"I'm always serious. Except for usually. Usually I'm not. But I always am," he told her, speaking in tongues that didn't make the slightest bit of sense. Finally, Martha heard the door click and it swung open, revealing darkness on the interior of the place. "Ooh, fun! I love the dark!" he vanished inside. A second later he rethrned to the doorway though and said seriously, "Unless the dark has vashta nerada. Then I don't like it. Remember that." He left again.

Following Mitchell's strange words of warning, Martha was reserved about following anybody into the annals of some abandoned lighthouse. But then she thought, lighthouses weren't very big, and there were so many of them it was unlikely anything too horrific would happen. (However, she made a firm decision in her head as she entered the tower, that if any submerged skyscrapers threatened to exist in any way, she would leave.)

She stood still at the foot of the spiral staircase as the Eleventh Doctor, followed by Jenny and Luke (those bearing no inhibitions about underwater depths, especially not Eleven, who'd been married under the sea). Humorously, Martha wondered with a faint smile if Clara could stand to look at her own wedding album anymore.

"Guess what's up there?" Eleven grinned when he returned to ground-level, jumping the last few steps and coming to stoop a little in front of Martha, Adam and Amy, the former two of which were shorter than him. "Nothing," he said without waiting for an answer.

"Nothing?" Amy asked, he shook his head, "Not even a lightbulb?" Eleven stood up then and gawped at her like she'd offended him.

"Of course there's a lightbulb, Amelia! It's a _light_house. Without the lightbulb it would just be house!" he argued, "And houses are nothing by comparison to _light_houses." He resumed uttering crudities which made no sense. "Anyway, the interesting thing is what's down here underneath that bed in the corner." He turned halfway and looked at the little cot with a mattress barely big enough to fit an adult, bare except for a grimy mattress.

"Why? What's underneath it?" Amy asked as Luke and Jenny returned also.

"A trapdoor. Saw it when we came in. A shame none of you spotted it," he brushed past them all and picked up the bed at one end, dragging it around the wall (with Jenny's help) until a circular trap door with a wheel on it looking more like a vault than an entrance revealed itself. "Shall we?"


	45. Your Move, Creep

_Eleven_

_Your Move, Creep_

He jumped past the last few rungs of the ladder attached to the little porthole-like entrance on the surface in the base of the lighthouse, landing on hard ground and backing up to look around. Truthfully, however, there wasn't an awful lot to look at. The corridor was completely square – wide and tall to the same measurements – and it was made of dark grey concrete, stretching down ahead of him until he could see the wall, where the passageway split into a hard left and a hard right, then a third choice just cutting through the concrete and keeping them on their track straight-ahead. Other people followed him down into the ground as he walked over to the nearest light fitting, which was merely a lightbulb hanging from a wire which was stapled to the ceiling, passing from that bulb to the next one, and so on. The strangest thing of all though was the fact this lamp was turned on, which the Doctor presumed wouldn't be happening if this underground passage was completely deserted. Why would they leave the lights on? It couldn't be cheap, he noted.

"What is this place?" Martha asked behind him. He cast a glance at her. No-one else was too intrigued by the lights, not as he was. At least, not until they began to question _why_ the lights were interesting him so.

"Why're the lights all on?" Amy asked the Doctor, who smiled a little at the fact she'd spotted the same thing he had. He always liked it when his companions pointed these things out – it showed him that they were listening, and that they'd changed in some ways for the better since knowing him. It wasn't all cold-bloodedness they got, they learnt how to investigate.

"No idea," he told her with a grin, "Suppose I'll have to ask whoever's down here with us, hmm? Lights, bathysphere – anything else we want to know? How about the décor? It's ghastly down here. Needs some upholstery – soft furnishings, you know? Liven the place up." He started walking down the passage, ignoring the coldness of the concrete floor on his bare feet. Who needed shoes, anyway? He didn't. They just limited his touch sense considerably, censoring his toes. Should hands and feet not be treated equally? Why did the hands always get preference? Some poor hierarchical decisions there, he thought.

"It looks like one of those death tunnels in old hospitals, where they took the bodies so that nobody would see them," Mitchell mused. Everybody turned and gave him a concerned look. "What?"

"Very pleasant thought," the Doctor commented, then he turned away, "…I think this would be the _perfect_ place for an armchair."

"The middle of the hallway?" Jenny questioned him, and he gave her a firm, serious look.

"Yes," he said, "Where else? As far as I can see, there's not a fireplace. It needs a fireplace, too. I want to speak to the designer…" he marched off from them with this agenda in mind, listing his suggestions for improvement: A lick of paint, possibly some wallpaper. And a feature wall, couldn't go wrong with a feature wall. Or, every wall could be a completely _different _feature wall, full of cushy furniture. Yes, he thought, that would certainly do better than this horrid colouring they had now.

There was a creaking, mechanical noise coming from another area of the tunnel, somewhere ahead of them, clearly, since there had been no way back on the other side of the ladder. Only the way forwards. The Doctor thought he may have detected this sound coming from somewhere to the right of him, and hurried to the end of the corridor while the others hung back to where it split off, peering around the corner to try and spy whatever was there. Yet, he was just faced with another empty stretch of door-less, windowless corridor. _First turn, right_, he made a note in his head in case they got lost, which seemed considerably likely given the identical maze-ness of this subterranean complex.

"What was that?" Amy called to him as he bent his head around the corner. Whatever it had been, it most definitely sounded mechanised in some way.

"Don't know," was his honest answer, keeping his gaze fixed on the drab, right-hand fork in the tunnel, "I want to find out though. Sounded interesting. Clearly, there's something going on."

"Can we not go back, get dressed, and then come back?" Martha then suggested, a little uneasily. She was lingering with Mitchell near the back of the group, and judging by how weary the latter looked of his surroundings, Eleven assumed he'd been saying some nice things about death-tunnels to her.

"No! It's pyjama day!" Eleven exclaimed, personally offended by this suggestion. How rude of her, trying to spoil his clever lie of pyjama day at the nut factory so that they could avoid Rose indefinitely.

"Do you want to risk Rose?" Amy threatened her, voicing the Doctor's thoughts, "She might corner you. Make you give her advice."

"Aren't you all friends?" Luke then spoke up quite loudly, over Martha's somewhat half-cooked, garbled response about her feet stinging from the rocks outside. Everyone silenced and looked at him for his input, in case it was worth listening to (input into Rose's situation was always welcome), "If you're all friends with her, why aren't any of you giving her advice?"

"It's complicated," Eleven said firmly, hoping that might quell the questions within Luke. Questions were not opinions, and outside questions would take a large amount of answering.

"Try me," said Luke, crossing arms. He apparently was not going to move until somebody gave him answers, so Eleven sighed, checked the corridor and spotted the giant robot heading towards them, and turned back to Luke to try and explain this situation.

"The thing is-" he began, and then his eyes widened and he cut himself off with a splutter, spinning back around flamboyantly to lean around the wall. Yes, he confirmed, there was most definitely some kind of giant robot clunking towards them, and that had also been the source of the earlier creaking sound.

"What? What is it?" Jenny asked, bouncing over when she noticed he'd obviously seen something interesting. The tunnels were huge, and this robot was definitely about seven feet tall and remarkably sturdy-looking, some medieval-esque armour covering its body-parts. It had only three limbs though, the whole right arm missing from its socket, and was accompanied by a whirring noise. From such a distance, Eleven couldn't see how it was running, but he did know it was shuffling considerably slowly towards them.

"A robot," said Eleven, and the whole group flocked down into the tunnel to get a glimpse of this creature, dwelling in sub-lake tunnels for some reason. It paused, and a light came from where, on a person, eyes would be. "It's scanning." It stopped scanning and stayed still for a moment.

Then in a hard-to-understand, metal voice it boomed: "KILL!" and resumed its slow journey towards them. Eleven heard running and looked at the others, who'd mostly (save Jenny and Luke) slipped off into the tunnel that carried on their own route straight ahead.

"Where are you going!?" Eleven called after them.

Amy turned, "Running away! It said it was gonna kill us!" That was true enough, Eleven thought, but as of that moment he didn't see it had a weapon, and it was dreadfully slow and a little rusty by appearance. But the other three were moving away from himself, very quickly by comparison.

"I don't know if it can do any harm," he called, "It's slow and it doesn't appear to have a weapon."

"Maybe it's hiding one!" Martha joined Amy in trying to make the peculiar robot seem like a deadly threat. But the Doctor's gut instinct was telling him there was more to what was happening than first seemed, and it wasn't approaching any faster. It would probably take five more minutes to get near them. They could outrun it crawling, if needs be.

"Fine, fine! I'll humour you!" the Doctor gave up, drawing his spare screwdriver (which was an old, damaged screwdriver of his) and pointing it around the corner at the offender. The other three saw this and stopped their rapid escaping. The robot then sparked and stuttered out lifelessly, the Doctor frowning.

"Did you break it?" Jenny asked him, watching the screwdriver for the same confused reason _he_ was watching it.

"No, I didn't do anything," he stood up and held the sonic to his eye for examination. Then he accidentally triggered it and it extended like a shot straight into his eye socket, "Ow!" he protested, holding his eye with his other hand and dropping the screwdriver where it clattered.

"Can't believe I'm related to you…" Jenny grumbled, picking up the screwdriver. Amusingly enough, she then ensued to follow directly in his footsteps (like father like daughter) and jab herself in the eye the exact same way he'd just done. He laughed at her and she growled.

"Time Lords," Amy said it like an insult, shaking her head at the both of them.

A figure appeared at the very end of the corridor, from the same direction the robot had just come from. As soon as he spotted the robot, he started to run towards it, until he spotted the six of them second.

"Who are you!?" he called, staying back.

"We're armed!" Jenny threatened brandishing the screwdriver.

"So'm I!" he stammered a little, fidgeting with his pocket, but then drawing out a revolver and brandishing it at them.


	46. Genius Envy

_Eleven_

_Genius Envy_

"We're not really armed!" Jenny called immediately upon assessing a threat considerably more legitimate than the rogue robot, dropping the screwdriver on the floor where it clattered. Eleven hoped it would hold out for the rest of the day, then when they got back he could build himself a new one and just let Clara keep his own, since she seemed to want it so badly. The young man, whoever he was, waved the gun wildly and they all ducked.

"Get back from the automaton!" he shouted. He was wearing a lab coat and he looked quite stressed, wild-eyed and staring at them as he edged closer with his revolver, "Get back – I'll shoot, I swear!" They were quite far away from the robot already, but as a gesture of good faith to this man, Eleven held out his arms to push the others back along with him, deciding that listening to the armed man would probably be the best course of action.

He rushed down to the robot – which he called the 'automaton' – and stood on tiptoes to try and see into its helmet, or head, whatever it was called. In doing so, he was so caught up in this that he dropped his revolver onto the ground, where it clattered, and Eleven recognised that sound as one of an empty, unloaded gun. So he had never really been threatening them…

"Broken, broken, broken… Never works, they never got it to work…" He kicked it, and it did nothing at all, but Eleven noticed him wince and try to resist gripping his toe in pain. Then he turned to look at the group of them, "Who are you!? How did you get down here!?" he demanded of them, "How did you get into the lighthouse!?" He glanced down at the gun on the floor and stooped to pick it up again, "Come on! Tell me!"

"Why've you got all the lights on?" the Doctor asked. He narrowed his eyes. "Well, doesn't it cost a lot? Doesn't it use up a lot of electricity?"

"This place runs off a private HEP plant in the lake," he said, "I own it. I can't charge myself for my own electricity." The Doctor thought that was interesting. Here was a man, some form of scientist, hiding out underground with an unloaded gun and a broken robot, who owned an eco-friendly power plant, and going by that, the entire lake.

"I'm the Doctor," Eleven announced, "I'm-"

"_The Doctor_!?" the young man exclaimed, and he dropped his gun again. It sounded like he knew who he was, which took Eleven by surprise and confused him even more, "You're the Doctor? Not – not _the_ Doctor? The Doctor with no other name?" Eleven had to admit, that sounded a lot like him, "The one who works with UNIT? Nixon's private UFO expert?"

"I wouldn't say I was his _private_ UFO expert – I wasn't on the payroll," Eleven muttered, but yes, it seemed this odd person knew exactly who he was, "How do you know that? How do you know me?" He had memories – recent ones – of going and trying to remove all information on him from existence. Clearly, it hadn't worked too well. Unless he'd missed a few bits.

"It's easy to find things out if you know what to look for," he said, walking past the automaton up to the group, leaving his empty revolver on the floor behind him, "Why are you here though? There's nothing here anymore. Hasn't been for over a century. Nobody's even been in this place until I bought the valley last year."

"You bought the whole valley?" Amy exclaimed, "Who are you? If you're that rich, why haven't I ever heard of you?"

"Shhh," Eleven said, waving a hand at her, "First things first: What year are we in?" he asked the mysterious rich scientist.

"2049," he answered.

"See, he probably hasn't been born to you," Eleven told her, and then he made a start, "You live in the 1930s anyway! Why would you have-!? Ugh!" he scoffed at her and shook his head.

"Is that Amelia Williams!?" the man asked, staring, slack-jawed, at Amy, who didn't seem too thrilled by that at all, "Who – who are the others? I might've… They might be famous…"

"Well, yes, this is Amy Pond-" the Doctor ignored her meek correction to 'Williams' in regards to her surname, as he always did, "This is Martha Jones, this is Jenny – my daughter – this is Luke Smith, and this is Adam Mitchell."

"Luke Smith and Adam Mitchell under the same roof!" he was apparently incredibly shocked by this, and the Doctor had no idea that either of them were worthy of quite that level of fame, "The pioneer of hologram technology and the Vanishing Genius!"

"Hang on," said Mitchell, "Which one's which?"

"You're the Vanishing Genius, in 20-"

"Yes, yes," Eleven spoke up, "Too much future-talk, I think, never good," he gave a stern look to Mitchell and Luke, the former of which seemed very interested in his apparent vanishing. Eleven thought that this 'vanishing' probably just meant one day he would decide to live full-time on the TARDIS and nothing more. Luke being a pioneer of hologram technology was a little more interesting though, and he made a few notes on that in the back of his mind, because he had a vague notion they concerned his sister-in-law in some way. "Anyway. Who are you?"

"Me? Don't you know me? Aren't I famous in the future?" he asked weakly, seeming upset by the fact the Doctor couldn't identify him merely by sight and the knowledge he owned a lake.

"Not currently. Please, enlighten us," he smiled. He was definitely interested.

"I'm Fritz Niehaus," he said, and the Doctor gasped. He knew who Fritz Niehaus was.

"You!?" he exclaimed.

"What? What, who is he?" Adam asked the Doctor, glancing back between Fritz and Eleven.

"He's the Earthling who invented teleportation," Eleven told Mitchell, "_Teleportation!_" Fritz Niehaus then beamed widely upon this revelation, that his name meant something to a twelve-hundred year old time-travelling alien from outer space, "Honestly, he's a genius, a human intellect like that is possibly only rivalled by your girlfriend's."

"She's smarter than you, does that mean he is too?" Mitchell asked a little challengingly, apparently trying to defend Oswin's honour, even though she wasn't there and probably knew exactly who Fritz was herself. Eleven just shrugged, not wanting to get into another debate with her about his intelligence.

"Hang on – is that a spoiler, or did he already invent it?" Luke then asked. Luke seemed a lot more interested and a lot less envious than Mitchell did. Such petty jealousy, the Doctor thought.

"I already did," Fritz answered for Eleven, seeming proud but humble at this. The Doctor then thought if he got to know Fritz, he would like him a great deal.

"Do you think you can tell us where we are?" Martha then asked, seeming a little bitter that she hadn't been recognised with has much vivacity as the others.

"Oh, right, this lake – it's called Lotus Cove, there's a big Second World War military, science research base under the lake. That's what this complex is. But it was a huge secret – the last owner of the land didn't know, they bought it for its potential as a power station. But they went bankrupt and put the land up for sale, and I bought it," said Fritz.

"There's only you down here? This is where you live?" Eleven asked. Fritz nodded. "In the lighthouse?"

"The lighthouse? Oh, no, there are officer's quarters I sleep in. This automaton is just one of the experiments they had down here, I was trying to get it working, but it kept trying to shoot me so I had to take its gun-arm off," Fritz said, which explained away why the robot only had one hand, "I don't think it's going to work now. I might shut its tesla core down completely and donate it to a museum."

"We saw a bathysphere rise to the surface up there," Mitchell then said, stopping the Doctor from asking more questions about the broken robot that was little more than a glorified wind-up toy to ask a proper question, "Do you know what that was?"

"The bathysphere?" Fritz asked with a frown, "I was fumbling with the emergency evacuation procedure – studying the alarm system – I think they had a large amount of bathyspheres down in one of the underground dry docks they used as escape pods. I suppose it must have released. I didn't notice."

"Why were you studying the alarm system? Seems a strange thing to look at," Luke asked him.

"Yes, yes," said Fritz, picking up the empty gun again and dropping it in his pocket, "We'll talk and walk. That is, if you like, Doctor. You're under no obligations to stay, I don't know what brought you here."

"There's always something!" the Doctor beamed, undeniably interested. Maybe the TARDIS had only brought them there just so he could meet Fritz Niehaus, the father of teleportation, the future-father of vertical propulsion aircraft. He was like the Twenty-First Century's answer to DaVinci – and Eleven had met DaVinci, they were good friends, right up until Leo stole the idea for the bicycle from him. As Eleven walked past Fritz, he slapped him on the back like a friend would, and the others all followed.

"The alarms, then?" Amy asked. Amy seemed to be enjoying the company of Fritz just like the Doctor was, and the others, too, even if Adam Mitchell was being moody and texting (probably texting his girlfriend to ask her opinions on this certain revolutionary scientist).

"They kept going off, no idea why. In the biology sector. I kept going to investigate, but I don't know if anything was out of the order. Until the alarms started up a few hours ago, I'd never been there to take an inventory," Fritz explained.

"Where are we going now? The alarm controls, the bathysphere bay or the biology labs?" Eleven asked him, interested, "Ooh, shall we all split up, hmm? Wouldn't that be fun?"

"Always with the splitting up – did Scooby-Doo teach you nothing?" Amy asked him sarcastically.

"Of course it did! It taught me that splitting up is the best way to lure out the monster. Now then, Amelia – you and I will go with Fritz here to see these bathyspheres, and you four should go to the biology labs. Whichever way they are. Are there signposts?" Eleven asked Fritz effervescently, bouncing on the balls of his bare feet.

"There's an electronic map I made a while ago, the first thing I did, using a geo-scanner and this map I already found…" Fritz said, pausing and rifling through his pocket (the one without the gun in it). He drew out what looked like a large phone, but it was very thin, and had a logo he recognised on the back of a few gears of varying size within a circle, the letter F in the middle; the logo of Niehaus Industries, his research company which also donated ten percent of its profits to charity every year (ten percent being billions). "I have a spare, you can take it," he held it out to whichever one of the other four wanted it. Luke stepped forwards and took it from him gratefully.

"Well, at least we're not having to deal with Rose, right?" Martha said, trying to stay bright and cheery in lieu of the news they were being made to go wander round an abandoned military base's biology labs looking for an alarm malfunction.

"Yes, yes," Eleven said to her, "Look on the bright side. None of that stuff."

"Is that Rose Tyler?" Fritz asked.

"How come he knows everybody except for me!?" Martha protested, "And also, are you sure the central heating down here isn't broken, too?"

"…Why?" Fritz asked her curiously. Apparently, he really _didn't_ know who Martha was, which saddened Eleven. He should have to tell him all about how wonderful she was, how she'd walked the Earth and stopped the Master and then helped save the planet from Daleks.

"Because it's boiling," she said.

"It's freezing," Adam told her.

"Says you, Mr Cryokinesis," she snapped.

"What was that about cryokinesis!?" Fritz exclaimed.

"Nothing, nothing, long story, irrelevant, top-secret UNIT business about thirty years ago, adrenaline fluctuations and whatnot. Don't look into that, Oswin would dislike it if you stole her research," Eleven was telling Fritz, "Go on, then, you lot. Off you pop, alarms to investigate, eh?" Eleven rounded the opposite corner to the other four, and vanished with Amy and Fritz.


	47. It's Getting Hot In Here

**AN: This is the chapter where 3D9C hit 1,000,000 and it freaked me out so much I went to great lengths to split it into 4D12C**

_Martha_

_It's Getting Hot In Here_

"What do you think about this guy?" Mitchell asked her as the four of them walked, following Luke's directions to some century-old bio labs, which she wasn't looking forward to seeing. Mitchell had his hands deeply-rooted in the pockets of his dressing gown, looking deep in thought about this or that. He didn't look at her when he spoke, though. She didn't reply, she was too busy focusing on the ungodly heat down in the tunnels. "Fritz Niehaus. Father of teleportation. Billionaire. Doesn't it seem too good to be true?"

"I think you have to let it go," Martha said firmly, "Stop being so jealous of people cleverer than you." She was so warm she hardly cared for what she was saying.

"I'm not-"

"You are," Luke cut over the top of him when he tried to protest his envy. Luke didn't say anything more, and Mitchell grimaced.

"...If you ever bothered to invent something of your own," Martha said to him, "But you don't. You just sit and play World of Warcraft." Luke and Jenny both snorted at that remark, which Martha knew to be true to some extent.

"I once heard that you didn't even make all your money legitimately," Jenny began, "Didn't you steal the software from Henry Van Statten?"

"Did you?" Martha asked him incredulously, "You knew Van Statten? Before he disappeared off the face of the Earth? UNIT had a lot of trouble with him a while ago, somebody who'd been working in Downing Street in 2005 sold a Slitheen hand to him. Opened up a whole world of misdemeanours. Do you know what happened to him?"

"To Van Statten? Of course. So do Rose, and the Ninth Doctor," Adam said, "A Dalek wreaked havoc on his whole facility and killed thousands, then felt remorse ans blew itself up. But they filled the whole place up with concrete."

"Was this before or after you had a door put in your head?" Martha joked, clicking her fingers. Yet nothing happened, and she frowned as Mitchell grinned smugly.

"Ha," was all he said.

"What did you do?" Jenny asked, "Did you get rid of it?"

"No, I had the trigger changed," he said.

"You mean you asked _Oswin_ to change the trigger?" Jenny raised her eyebrows, and sheepishly he admitted that yes, that was the truth. "Change it to what?"

"To an app on my phone, so now nobody can accidentally – or _purposely _– open it," he said. Martha was a little disappointed now there wasn't always that threat hanging over him, it would always be amusing to threaten to open his head. She didn't think that stealing his phone would be worth such short-lived and pathetic joy though. Especially since it was a little vindictive.

In light of this news, the conversation of Van Statten was dropped, not that anybody seemed to mind. Martha just wished that maybe the Doctor, or Rose, would have told her this story before so that she could go tell UNIT to stop their futile searching for a man who could well be dead. And even if he wasn't, he clearly didn't have the worrying power he used to do, at the height of his internet-monopoly.

She was then distracted by the vicious heat of the tunnels they were walking in. How were the others so well? They even looked cold, the way she saw Jenny holding her arms about her and Mitchell hunched over with his hands curled into fists in his pockets – even Luke was shivering occasionally. Yet Martha was swelteringly hot, it was completely unbearable. She was even sweating, and she knew it, and soon there would be icky sweat-stains marking her clothes. Conjuring the heat of Preyonov back into her mind, she thought this must be as bad as that was, if not worse, because at least in the desert she could seek shade. She had no clue where this abominable heat was coming from.

"Are you okay?" Adam asked her finally, watching her carefully to assess her response. It struck her all of a sudden that she had been breathing quite heavily – panting, even, "Why are you sweating? It's freezing cold."

"Again – coming from _you_?" she questioned bitterly. She was fine. She was just warm. It was warm in the tunnels. The heat must be broken, and Adam wasn't feeling the effects.

"I have my inhibitor on," he told her, "You know – so that my powers don't work?"

"He's right," said Jenny, who'd looked back now upon hearing this curious discussion, "You're actually really sweaty. It's really cold down here."

"Well _I'm_ not cold, _I_ am melting, okay?" Martha hissed in a raspy voice, she was feeling considerably dehydrated. She was parched – gasping for a glass of water. A whole lake above them, she thought resentfully; _water, water everywhere and not a drop to drink_. Ugh. The fact she was separated from the water by a good few metres of solid concrete didn't even seem to sway her from the notion it was somehow attainable.

"Maybe you should go back to the TARDIS?" Jenny suggested after a look to Adam Mitchell, which seemed to suggest that she should coax Martha into leaving this abominable hellhole of fire instead of him, since she wasn't listening to him.

"What? To Rose?" Rose still seemed like a punishment to her, even by comparison to the invisible flames that were attacking every inch of her.

"I'm sure you can avoid her by saying you're sick," said Adam.

"I'm not sick."

"You look sick," Jenny told her firmly.

"Are you a doctor now? Because _I_ am and _I _say _I_ am _fine_," Martha questioned, hoping she didn't get some sort of quip about Jenny's father in retaliation for this.

"I am," said Luke, handing Fritz's map to Jenny and walking over, frowning at her, looking slightly worried. She glared back, and tried to recoil when he reached up to put the back of his hand to her forehead and check her temperature as though she was a child. She didn't move in time, though in the end, _he_ was the one doing the recoiling. He hissed in pain and retracted his hand, waving it in the air as though it was damaged. "You burnt me!"

"How the hell did my _face_ burn you!?" Martha questioned him, "This is a practical joke, right!? You're just lying about how hot it is? It's _boiling_! I'm-" in a fit of peculiar illness, Martha coughed. When she did, she reflexively closed her eyes, though from behind her eyelids she did indeed see some kind of bright flicker of something. And then heard three gasps. "What?" she coughed a little, as though breathing in smoke.

"Martha, you just coughed fire," said Mitchell.

"Don't be stupid, how can someone-?" she coughed again, more violently, and saw this upstart of flame produce itself from her mouth first-hand that time, and then her eyes widened. "…Oh my…"

"You were in UNIT two days ago," Mitchell stated out of nowhere, "Right?" she nodded, "Can I see your arm?" Martha decided that, clearly, she was not being too good a judge of her own wellbeing at that moment in time, and now she appeared to be turning into a delusional dragon, so she finally relented to the less-qualified members of the party and held out her left arm, the one closest to Adam. She'd already rolled up her own sleeves earlier, in an attempt to cool down. "See that?" Mitchell said.

"What?" Luke and Jenny crowded around, and Martha tried to strain her head so that she could see whatever the two of them were looking at, "Oh…"

"It's a needle mark," said Adam.

"A..? A _needle mark_?"

"Yeah. It's a bit red, I think you've been itching it without noticing," he said, "Kind of recent-ish."

"'Kind of recent-ish'?" Luke questioned, and Mitchell scowled at him, "It was made in the last two days. When you were at UNIT."

"They were experimenting with the superhero serum, I think-" Mitchell was cut off when Martha coughed more fire, "…I think that they might have made a more concentrated solution that doesn't need the massive adrenaline boost to trigger it…"

"Hang on – _hang on_ – this… _This_ is a _superpower_!?" Martha exclaimed.

"A dangerous one!" Mitchell argued.

"I can breathe fire!?"

"No," said Luke, "Your whole core temperature has gone up to almost boiling. You should be long dead, and if you were still alive and still untampered you would be much hotter than you feel right now. It's more than fire breathing."

"It's probably, like, full-on pyrokinesis," said Mitchell, then he paused, seeming to think, "Here," he took off his own inhibitor, "I'm pretty sure I can resist freezing anything while we're down here." He held it out to her. "It's not too dangerous anyway, it's the initial boost that's dangerous."

"Just don't get excited," Jenny warned him as Martha clipped on the silver bracelet. However, something unprecedented happened. Something which did not happen with other superpowers. While the band was between her fingers, the heat from her skin was so powerful, the metal melted onto her. At least it didn't burn.

"Oh…" said Mitchell uselessly.

"Now we have _two_ uninhibited mutants," Jenny said sarcastically, "Good luck to us; that's all I can really say."

"Leave it to UNIT to illegally experiment on people," Martha muttered grimly, "And I used to be one of them and everything."


	48. The Department Of Mysteries

**AN: As of this chapter, Adwin have been canon for the same amount of time they haven't been, isn't that odd? ALSO. Nothing is decided yet - but what would be the general opinion on if I permanently add Luke to the crew or not? Thirdly, do you guys like the new covers I made? I have one for 3D9C, 4D12C and TLE, they're a set. ****_I'm_**** proud of them, at least, not they took much effort, they're painfully simple.**

_Martha_

_The Department Of Mysteries_

"When will people learn that silence is not consent?" Martha complained, "Just because I was unconscious... Unconscious becuase of _them_... And they stole Rose's inhibitor, she doesn't even have one anymore."

"Hold on, are you saying that on the TARDIS we currently have _no_ adrenaline inhibitors!?" Jenny exclaimed. Martha shrugged, and both girls looked to Mitchell.

"What?" he asked, "I don't know where she keeps her things!"

"She must have spares somewhere, she's resourceful like that," Jenny said knowingly. Mitchell and Martha both gave her confused looks. What did she know about what Oswin was like..?

"Have you checked in your room?" Martha asked.

"Well... Alright, no, maybe I've never searched my room for her stashing things. I'll check later. Maybe she'll send me blueprints or something..." he grumbled.

It was at this point that the conversation ended, because Luke cut over them all and declared they had arrived at the fabled biological labs. Not that they needed much indication, when there was a hissing noise like boiling water coming from the floor. They looked down. Martha had stepped in something weird, and it seemed to be evaporating under the heat of her foot.

"Are they footprints..?" Jenny ventured. There wasn't just one puddle of the strange, dark green substance (it was like sticky mud), but large ones, and widely spaced. The trail carried on around the other corner.

"Something must have escaped," Adam (unwelcomely) speculated.

"Great way to make us all feel better," Martha quiped. He scowled.

"Come on," Luke pushed open the door, but the whole room was so dark he took his phone out momentarily to use it as a torch. The other three copied - or, at least, tried to. Martha's phone melted into goop on the floor. She let the shiny liquid run off her fingers, then cursed.

Martha stayed near Mitchell, thinking he, of all of them, would be the most difficult to burn, creeping behind him and following the torchlight with her eyes to try and make shapes out of the shadows before the light passed. Luke and Jenny split off and cut around the right of the room, them the left, past what looked like large tanks. Very large tanks, four feet wide, eight feet long and six feet high, full of some translucent green liquid.

"Oh my god..." Mitchell breathed, and she looked around to see what he was seeing and jumped when something gleamed from within one of the tanks. A yellow blob or some form, embedded onto a large, suspended, dark mass.

"...Is that an eye..?" she asked him in a whisper.

"Think so," he confirmed, stepping closer.

"Don't go near it," Martha warned, "It might do something."

"It's not moving," Adam told her, reaching up a hand to tap the glass. It was too dark and the liquid in the tank (not to mention the glass itself) was too murky to make out what was lurking within, floating in the grime. He reached out, Martha held her breath, expecting it to all of a sudden rear around, smash through the glass and strangle him.

"Guys!" Jenny shouted exactly when Mitchell touched the glass, and they both jumped. Nothing moved though. Martha grimaced, annoyed she'd allowed herself to be frightened of a blackish blob in a tank. It was probably a fish. A crudely limbed, yellow-eyed fish, but a fish nonetheless. "Found something! C'mere!"

Martha started to walk off to the sound of Jenny and Luke's close-by, hushed conversation, but Mitchell remained momentarily.

"Come on, Darla," she hissed at him, "Pretty sure that's not Nemo in there."

"'Darla'?" he questioned, though he left the tank-thing along and joined her.

"Yeah - tapping on the glass. C'mon..." she motioned with her head, rendered unable to just drag him away. She was still baking hot, and even the filthy tank-water that probably wasn't even water looked appetising. Fear of the beast within was enough to outweigh her savage thirst - for the moment.

"What?" Adam asked Luke and Jenny when they arrived on the other side of the room.

Jenny just told them both to look, and held up her phone (Martha wondered if Jenny having a phone would perhaps influence the Doctor to invest in a handy mobile, since there was frequently nobody in the console room at all, save for Ten when he was brooding) up higher to illuminate the sight. But Martha hardly needed it when she heard her feet hissing again, and saw they were standing in a huge puddle of the slimey stuff, pooling on the floor below a shattered, empty tank.

"So something _did_ escape! I was right," he grinned.

"That isn't good news," Martha told him.

"I think it's great - do you think we get to go monster hunting?" Jenny mused aloud. Martha hoped not. _Martha_ had been hoping they'd be able to leave quickly and she could go take the TARDIS to the seaside in midwinter and have a nice swim in the saltwater. Maybe Fritz would know if it was safe to swim in the lake or not? Or drink the lake, even? It did look like a _very_ cold lake... And it couldn't be _too_ dangerous.

"What do we do now?" Luke asked. Martha assumed that this felt a lot more like the normal adventures to him, then the other day's fiasco with those werewolves, ending up kidnapped by UNIT. Not to mention all the rubbish with Ten and Rose.

"Either go find the others at this dry dock," Jenny began, "Or tell _them_ to come here."

"They should come here, the Doctor might know what these things are," Adam said, "Not to mention, the footprints lead the other way."

"I wonder why the lights are off in here but they're still on everywhere else?" Martha said, looking up, not that she could see anything - it really was awfully dark.

"I don't think this room has lightbulbs. Maybe the whatsits are light sensitive?" Adam said. Jenny was busy calling Amy to get her to come meet them at the lab full of what Martha guessed were the product of some kind of unorthodox experimentation. "I hope the torches didn't wake them up."

"...Just in case, maybe we ought to wait outside? Don't want to risk anymore of them waking up," Martha said quickly. She didn't want to stay in the weird room any longer than was necessary. She didn't even know how big it was.

"Good point..." agreed Luke, and they made their way out.

"I don't care that he's playing with the bathysphere claw," Jenny was saying down the line to Amy, "Tell him there are monsters frozen in tanks, Martha can breathe fire and there are creepy footprints." A few seconds after that, Martha thought that she (who wasn't even near Jenny) could hear the Eleventh Doctor exclaim something very excitedly to Amy, and so loud was this exclamation she jumped and glanced back into the room to make sure it hadn't woken up anymore of the comatose water-things.

"For the record," Adam whispered to Martha, "I've seen labs like that in Rapture before."

"What's Rapture? Isn't that what you call Atlantis? Why do you call it that anyway?" she questioned. She heard it referenced that way by him one too many times by now, and she and Mickey were always trying to figure out what he was talking about.

"Okay, basically, you know how in one universe, _our_ universe is a fictional TV show?" Mitchell said. She nodded, "Well 'Atlantis'" - he made speech marks with his fingers - "is a city in a videogame that is fictional in one dimension, but real in another. Called Rapture. That's how I knew to avoid the Farmer's Market and the Medical Pavilion and go to Arcadia."

"Arcadia?"

"Oxygen synthesis."

"-No we do not need a bathysphere claw on the TARDIS!" Jenny shouted.


	49. Busted Sub

**AN: Oh, what's that? A new perspective, that's what! Nobody has objections to Amy being added, right? She's probably gonna be out quite a lot this week, by the way, and so will Martha probably. No-one's against that, right? And yes I will try to write more of Mickey, Rory, River and Nine, despite the fact I really don't like Niver. I also do like sending Adam and Eleven out _without_ the Twins there to manipulate how they act, but then Adam may end up having some weird guardianship of Martha until she learns how to not burn stuff. Which is good because he's socialising with other people.**

_Amy_

_Busted Sub_

Amy felt, straight away, like she was third-wheeling. She wished the Doctor had dragged somebody else along with the three of them for other company (someone _not_ so completely smitten with Niehaus as he was), and truthfully she didn't know why she hadn't been instructed off with the others if what he really wanted in his life was some male company. She trailed, bored, behind the two of them, wondering if advising Rose was really as bad as everyone thought it would be. Even her surroundings weren't interesting enough to offer up something else to do, so she thought she'd listen to what Eleven was saying and poke holes in his stories, if there were any.

Surprisingly enough, after just a few minutes, narcissism got the better of the poor man, and he ended up erasing his companions from certain accounts.

"…And then I, and I alone, crawled up the lift shaft while fighting off diseased people _and_ Cassandra O'Brian," he was saying. Amy was sure that was wrong. Cassandra was the flap of skin, wasn't she? She could have sworn Rose had told her that story, and they'd both been there in the bit in the lift. Not to mention all the other instances previously.

"Wasn't Rose there?" she asked him.

"Hmm? Rose? Can't remember," said Eleven distantly, waving Amy away, "Oh – you should have heard about the time I single-handedly fought off Daleks in the Second World War, a whole century ago, wasn't it? Anyway – I was all alone-"

"Hang on, _I_ was there!" Amy objected.

"Were you?" Eleven glanced back and frowned at her, puzzled.

"Yes!" she argued, "Next thing you'll be telling the story of how you – 'all alone' – got married, and how you 'single-handedly' planned it and married 'yourself.'" Eleven pulled an upset face, like _he_ was offended by her picking up on his lies, and the fact he'd completely cut her out of the story of the Daleks. She'd been right there! She'd even stopped the bomb-professor blowing up, after all that nonsense to do with Dorabella. "Have I ever mentioned the time I _single-handedly_ figured out what the Pandorica was and saved myself and then blew up the universe twice and saved it?"

"I did that!" Eleven argued.

"No, I'm sure it was me."

"It wasn't!"

"I'd remember if you were there."

"I _was_ there! That was the day I discovered fezzes and you stole my fez and then River shot itWhich, by the way, I still haven't forgiven you for. I'm going to get a new fez," he stuck his tongue out.

"…No I don't remember. It was definitely all me. Blowing up the TARDIS twice, all that, like how it was predicted in that original Picasso."

"It was a Van Gogh and you know that full-well! You love Van Gogh – you bought him all those sunflowers so he'd paint that for you, and he kept flirting with you."

"Oh, _that_. You mean when I invented that amazing mirror device and backwards-ly fought off that massive, invisible monster all on my own without any help from anybody at all and nobody was there except me and Vincent? I don't remember telling you about that," she said, frowning.

"Amelia!" he exclaimed, "Be nice!"

"Then give your companions credit for what they did! Just to impress your new boyfriend."

"He is-"

"I'm gonna text your wife," Amy got out her phone to feign texting Clara, and he lunged for it, but thankfully he didn't have anything over her height-wise, and she could very easily dodge and evade him, making him show himself up in front of his new bestie, "I'm gonna tell her all sorts – I'll tell her you were telling Fritz all about the time you went to Los Angeles to buy yourself some wedding rings for no apparent reason and then rescued yourself from a precinct and clubbed an alien to death with a saxophone without the slightest bit of help."

"That didn't happen! It didn't die! Give me the phone!" he whined.

"Doctor?" Fritz interrupted, when the Doctor was halfway trying to crawl over Amy's back to get the phone, and she was trying to throw him off because he was heavy and she didn't want him to crush her if he knocked her over. He dropped back to the ground and made a move to straighten his bow tie, before realising he wasn't wearing a bow tie, he was in pyjamas and a dressing gown because they'd left so quickly. He ended up doing a weird mime around his neck and waving his hands weirdly, before clapping.

"Yes?" he asked, trying to look like he _hadn't_ just been fighting with Amy trying to grab her mobile to stop her grassing him up to his wife.

"…How old are you?" Fritz asked. Eleven's face fell, and Amy laughed. The Doctor shot her a glare.

"I am over 1200 years old," he straightened up and crossed his arms, Amy still laughing, "Be quiet, Amelia!"

"No way," she said, "Looks like there's trouble in paradise, hmm?"

"We're here," Fritz said, motioning to a door on his right and on their left, from where he was facing them. He went into the room, Eleven thoroughly embarrassed outside, and Amy followed second, waving the phone triumphantly past the Doctor's face as she did so. He made a final grab for it, just out of spite, but he missed again and she snickered, putting it in her pocket and keeping her hand around it so that the Time Lord's sticky fingers couldn't go stealing it while she was busy.

The bathysphere bay wasn't as large as she was expecting. There were nine bathyspheres in all, though there were spaces for ten of them, small, circular holes in the floor to house them as they bobbed up and down in the lake water, ready to be deployed.

"How many people were they planning to evacuate with only ten bathyspheres?" she asked of either Fritz or the Doctor, whichever of them answered first.

"Probably only the most important people, I imagine," answered the Doctor begrudgingly, like he was irritated at having to speak to her (all the funnier she found it), but he wanted to answer her question, nonetheless, "Ten bathyspheres? They can fit four, maybe five people? That's probably all the officials in these ten alone. Now – what set off this one?"

"Malfunction, probably," Fritz sighed wearily, "But not one that I can find. Not that these controls work too well." He guided the Doctor and Amy over to a control booth on the higher level the door lead onto (there were stairs on the left leading to the bathyspheres, but they'd headed right), leaving the door hanging open behind them.

"Ooh, what's that crane?" Eleven said, pointing at a large, rusty piece of machinery sticking out across the bathyspheres, elongated out to the middle. It was rusting, but looked like it had once been coloured in hazardous, yellow paint.

"Just the bathysphere claw, used to lift them out of the water for maintenance," Fritz answered casually, with a shrug. But Eleven beamed.

"A claw!? Brilliant! Can I have a go!?" he begged, which took Fritz by surprise. Eleven probably wasn't coming across as the 'man of legend' Fritz clearly thought he was.

"If you want him to be sensible," Amy added around the Doctor's shoulder, "You'll have to wait for something dramatic and serious to happen. He's a child."

"I am not a child, now let me play with the crane-thingy. It might help." Amy sighed and stepped back, Fritz waving a hand in the general direction of a separate panel with a joystick and a couple of buttons: crane controls. She resigned to watch him fidget with a while, until her phone rang.

"Jenny?" she asked.

"_Yes, hi, we have a bit of a situation down here in these labs_."

"Situation? What kind of situation?"

"_An important situation – and you all need to come right now,_" Jenny said, but Amy was momentarily distracted by the bathysphere claw screeching loudly as the Doctor moved it.

"Hang on, let me put you on speaker, can't really hear with _all this noise_," she said the last three words loudly and at Eleven directly, but she was ignored, "Ugh. Is it important? He's busy, playing with this bathysphere claw."

"_I don't care that he's playing with the bathysphere claw! Tell him there are monsters frozen in tanks, Martha can breathe fire and there are creepy footprints!_"

"Monsters!?" the Doctor all of a sudden exclaimed very loudly, over the wail of the claw he was messing with. He turned to face her and turned the joystick with him, sending the claw spinning dangerously right into the wall, where it bashed loudly and she winced. Fritz seemed horrified by this destruction of probably a priceless piece of century-old machinery, but Eleven was just staring at Amy and waiting for her to say something.

"Yes," said Amy, "And footprints and fire-breathing, apparently."

"Well then we have to go!" he declared, finally relinquishing the claw so that Fritz could hurry to turn it off and try and right whatever damage he'd caused, "Nothing here anyway, except the bathysphere claw. Do you think we ought to get a bathysphere claw on the TARDIS?" he was saying as they walked out of the room, Fritz hastening to catch up now that things were actually happening.

"_No we do not need a bathysphere claw on the TARDIS!_" Jenny shouted down the line, "_Just come on!_" Then she hung up.


	50. The Thing From The Deep!

_Amy_

_The Thing From The Deep!_

"Yes..." Eleven mused with his clever-voice, on his hands and knees with his face as close to the mushy footprints on the floor as he could stick it without getting a dirty nose, "I would say..." he sat back onto his feet and, with a flourish, brought out his battered, slightly mangled old screwdriver and sonicked the footprints, then drew the screwdriver up to his eye, "That these are... Definitely... Footprints," he said assuredly, jumping back to his feet. "Probably made by something large. A thing. A large thing. Tall, probably. I'd say."

"Anything else? Because you've been so helpful already," Martha said in a growl, and then she coughed another fireball and Amy (who hadn't been witness to this anomaly yet) jumped.

"It probably has feet. It's highly likely it has feet, of some description, probably two. Though it could be walking using only two legs, or maybe it only has one and it's hopping?" Eleven suggested, going as far as to hop himself.

"Can things with one leg even hop like that? The spacing's a bit odd," said Luke.

"Call your girlfriend," Martha said to Adam, who gawped at her.

"You want me to call my girlfriend and ask her how far she can hop!?" Martha nodded. "I'm not doing that. It doesn't even have one leg! We saw them!"

"Well, this thing - we'll call it _the_ Thing, I like that, very clever, isn't it? 'The Thing,'" Eleven said to Fritz, grinning, "Sounds like a film. They should make a film of this. Does anyone have the number for Hollywood? You know who I'm friends with? Tarantino. He'd make The Thing."

"There's already a film called that," Mitchell sighed, "It's about an alien parasite in Antarctica."

"Stop talking about your friend Tarantula-" Jenny began.

"Tarantino," Mitchell corrected her.

"Whatever, not like anybody's ever heard of him," Jenny grumbled, but before she could carry on, Eleven cut her off.

"You've never heard of Quentin Tarantino!?" he gasped.

"No. Why? Who is he?"

"A director!" Eleven exclaimed.

"So?"

"He is quite famous," Amy added to Jenny, "Like, really famous."

"What films has he directed?" Jenny challenged.

"Well, The Thing, for-"

"The Thing is not a film!" Amy snapped at him, then when Mitchell looked like he was about to start she righted herself, "I mean, it is a film, but not a film directed by Tarantino!"

"Name _one_," Jenny crossed her arms.

"Alright, Pulp Fiction," said Mitchell. She frowned. "You've never seen Pulp Fiction? With John Travolta and Uma Thurman?"

"Who?"

"What about Kill Bill? Or Kill Bill 2? Or True Romance?" Amy suggested to no avail.

"Inglorious Basterds? Reservoir Dogs?" Mitchell carried on. Still nothing. "You know _none_ of these films? You are so uncultured." And then, before anyone could tell Adam to shut up (Luke, specifically, looked in danger of doing so), he just crossed his arms and did so himself. Which was a change from the norm on the TARDIS, where people just talked until they were made to be quiet for whatever reason.

"...Yeah..." Fritz cleared his throat and ended the argument on Jenny's lack of film knowledge, "About this... Creature. Do you have anything solid about what it is?"

"It's likely its come from nearby," Eleven then said, nodding to himself, "Close, probably."

"What gave it away? The fading footprints coming from this room right here full of tanks of other weird monsters?" Martha said dryly.

"There are _others_!?" Eleven darted off into the room full tanks of creatures, Amy following him, because she had yet to see these beasts. She couldn't see a lot before she turned her phone light on, leaning right up to the tank so close her nose was touching it. Then she switched on her torch and jumped back when a blank, yellow eye stared back at her out of the green goopy stuff. It was scarcely more than a shadow though, and she crept out of the room as quickly as she could. So _that _was what this Thing looked like.

"When did my life turn into Scooby-Doo?" Amy mumbled when she returned from the room with her arms crossed, unhappy that in the dark she'd stepped in the sludgy footprints, and now her socks were soggy. She sighed, "At least I'd be Daphne..."

"If you're Daphne, who's Velma?" Mitchell joked.

"You," said Amy simply. He stopped his cocky grin, "What? You have the same glasses."

"We do not-"

"Yeah you do," Luke added. Mitchell shut up.

"Okay, so," the Doctor said when he returned to the corridor, rubbing his hands together and hunching in that strange way he always did when he was thinking (Amy wondered if he had back problems after 300 years of his Eleventh incarnation bending like that), "Good news: they definitely have two feet!"

"Yay," Martha said flatly, in the dryest, most disinterested and sarcastic tone she could muster. Eleven gave her a slightly upset look and Amy laughed.

"So hold off on calling your girlfriend to ask her about how far she can hop," Eleven added to Adam, because apparently he'd overheard that tidbit of Martha's. Adam said nothing, just glared into space.

"Right. So. Where does this corridor go, then? If we're going to follow the footsteps?" Eleven started walking in that direction.

"It goes back to the bathysphere bay," Fritz said.

"...But we just came from the bathysphere bay over there," Eleven frowned.

"There're multiple ways to get there - it _is_ the emergency escape route. I was trying to tell you there was a faster way..." Fritz said apologetically. Amy made an incoherent growling noise.

"Bit of walking never did anyone any harm! Come on, then! This way!" Eleven just walked off heartily, glad of the walk. Amy was irritated he hadn't given Fritz a chance to tell them of the shortcut back to the bathyspheres. "So! I suppose we've found out what happened to the bathysphere? The Thing stole it."

"Seriously? A weird underground experiment that just happens to know how to operate a bathysphere..?" Amy suggested with a frown.

"Well, I don't really want to sound like a pessimist, but we don't have any idea what those Things really are. They looked worryingly humanoid, though..." said the Doctor, uneasily, giving a shifty look at the walls around him (the same dull, steel-coloured walls made of concrete as he'd been seeing for their whole trip so far into the lake complex). That made Amy think - because he was right. They'd looked quite human, and the thoughts going through her mind she could barely string into sentences, let alone speak aloud, were making her feel a little ill. She didn't want to entertain those possibilities one jot.

Unfortunately, it wasn't long until the green slime was wiped clean from the feet of whatever had passed through the passageways before them, so the trail was lost after a good couple of metres. Though, from the events of the day, it was clear that the Thing - whatever it truly was - had managed to steal the missing bathysphere and pilot it to the surface of the lake, and that by now, it could have gotten anywhere within the valley, even outside of it. This had borne the whole new problem of containment, and keeping the Thing away from the greater population of Earth so that nobody else saw it.

All the Doctor said, as they stood on the balcony overlooking the bathyspheres, was that it needed to be found and kept in the valley, and then they'd take it from there.


	51. Going Up, Going Down

**AN: Do any of you remember back in Chapter 20 when I was like, "Don't worry! I won't end the fic after the Master! No intentions of ending it yet!" Well I don't think any of us really knew what "yet" meant. And here I am, with a creation that should appear in children's nightmares.**

_Eleven_

_Going Up, Going Down_

They had split off into two parties; the first of these had gone towards the surface to search around for any signs of the Thing (he was still proud of him dubbing the beast that, he thought it was ingenious), while the second were currently gathered in a cramped, sweaty bathysphere, Fritz controlling it as they prowled through the lake. Eleven had asked if _he_ was allowed control of the vessel, but after an awkward few moments of Fritz fumbling his words, Jenny had stepped up and told him he wasn't allowed because he – in her words – 'was an idiot.' So now he had his face pressed against one of two portholes, trying to see anything through the layers of grime on the glass in the nearly-black water. Suffice it to say, as of yet, he'd not spotted as much as a big of algae.

"What are you looking for?" Jenny asked him. She was sat on the thin bench that snaked around the back of the bathysphere next to him, watching him breathe on the glass and then rub out the condensed water with his nose every few seconds. He looked around and saw her staring at him like he had some sort of problem.

"The Thing," he answered, going straight back to the window afterwards. Jenny was the only one paying him any attention, Luke was asking Fritz about the intricacies of teleportation matrixes, trying to pry a demonstration of this technology from Fritz (who had said he used it to get in and out of the base without needed to trek all the way back up through the lighthouse).

"You're not gonna see it," Jenny said, "I bet it can't even swim. If it could swim, it wouldn't have needed to steal the bathysphere."

"_I_ can swim and _I've_ stolen a bathysphere, your point is redundant," he told her, annoyed at her picking on everything he was doing like she had a right to. She was _his_ daughter, she wasn't supposed to go finding flaws with the way he did things.

"I'm just saying that it's a bit pointless us doing this – we should've gone with the other three," Jenny shrugged. The Doctor moved away from the window and looked at her for a moment.

"I've done things my way for the last 1200 years, and not once has anything gone wrong because of it, okay?" he said, trying to sound assertive and in-control.

She quirked an eyebrow though, and said, "You've died over ten times. I think maybe you don't have as much common sense as you think. I mean, I'm a-sixth of your age, and I've only died once. And that was _your_ fault, really."

"It wasn't even me, it was the other one!" Eleven argued. He didn't want to talk about people dying under his watch, including himself. That was a lot of people – thankfully, Jenny didn't have a detailed list of all those names, not like he did, "Don't blame me for the faults of my predecessors, Jenny." He crossed his arms like a child.

"I'm glad I don't have enough Time Lord in me to completely change when I regenerate," she muttered, and he scowled at his feet, not thinking there was anything the slightest bit amusing about rubbing his nose on the dirty window anymore, "It means I don't really have past-lives, or other-selves."

"You should try telling Jack you don't have any other-selves, hmm?" he dug at her. They were still being ignored by Fritz and Luke. Jenny said nothing, just stayed quiet, and he immediately regretted what he'd said. Close-quarters with fifteen other people were doing his moral compass no good, clearly. "Sorry, I shouldn't've-"

"Doesn't matter. I'm over him," she said curtly. He didn't believe her at all.

"It's not even been two weeks," the Doctor reminded her.

"_I'm over him_," she repeated, and then she crossed her arms the same way as him, and they sat in an identical fashion after they'd both put the other in a bad mood. He looked out of the window. He still couldn't see anything.

* * *

_Amy_

She was glad she didn't have to deal with the sticky, claustrophobia of the bathysphere and she'd managed to go with Martha and Adam back to the surface, even if it had been a long walk through the grey corridors back up to the lighthouse, and it was bitterly cold outside (the fells rising and falling around the lake kept most of the wind out, however, which was something). She didn't want to have to spend any more time with the Doctor and Fritz in the same room as each other than she had to.

"Geniuses, ugh," Amy said as they walked, slowly, around the lake path. Thank god she'd worn slippers – she'd been the only one sensible enough to, "Hate hanging around with them sometimes."

"Oh, thanks," said Adam dryly.

"Oh, sorry!" she apologised quickly. She'd totally forgotten that Adam Mitchell was classed as one of those individuals with above-average intelligence, "You're not… You're not _that_ much of a genius though, right? As geniuses go?"

"I have an IQ of two-hundred-and-thirty!" he protested, "The average is one-hundred. That's, like, quite genius. You know I used to have to do the bullies' homework? That was _my_ job."

"Flaunt what you're proud of," Martha muttered next to him, "Is it summer? It's really hot out here… Like, boiling hot. What country are we in? It must be right on the equator…" Amy had no idea what country they were in, she just supposed it was somewhere in Europe. Despite that, however, she was absolutely sure they weren't anywhere near the equator.

"Well, whatever, I'm a millionaire, they're not," Mitchell grumbled, "And neither are you two, so."

"Selling stolen software," Martha reminded him.

"…Okay, but without my high IQ, Van Statten would never have hired me in the first place. I lived underground in a base just like that one for a good couple of years, you know," he said, "My intelligence still got me my money. Just, you know, illegally. I never said I earned it legally."

"And this is why I don't like hanging around with you lot," Amy snapped at him, like he was a member of some weird cult. Which couldn't possibly be true, being as he'd been isolated by the Luke, Fritz, Jenny and the Doctor completely. Though maybe his role as Martha's new air conditioning system meant he'd isolated _himself_. "Why doesn't Luke like you?"

"It's just my personality in general," Mitchell told her, "I've never done anything to him. I never did anything to _any_ of them."

"…They _all_ dislike you?" Amy continued, "That Bannerman Road lot?"

"Yes. All of them. Most of you. Most of everyone. I lead an enjoyable life, in case you couldn't tell," he told her sardonically, "You know, being forgotten about and everything."

"You sound like Rory."  
"You sound like Mickey."

Amy and Martha spoke at the same time. Adam didn't seem to think much of it. Amy cast a glance around at the lake again. It was very scenic, and she briefly wondered what it would be like to be a normal person whose priority would be taking a few nice photos, not looking out for an escaped experiment from an underground military base that had been shut for a century. For a second she thought she should possibly try and take a picture, and even reached into her pocket for her phone. When she did, however, it started to ring and she jumped.

"Who is it?" Martha asked. She'd come back to herself a little since they'd got outside into the chilly air by the lake, but she kept eyeing the water dangerously, like she was planning on jumping into it.

"It's…" Amy began, expecting to say Jenny or something, and the other four had found something, "It's… Rose… Uh-oh, I have about thirty texts from her asking to call because you're not answering."

"My phone's melted," Martha told her.

"…Right. Do I answer it?"

"She's just gonna think people are avoiding her if you don't," Martha said.

"People _are_ avoiding her," said Adam, "Thank god I don't speak to Rose. I'd hate to have to be a confidant." Amy didn't really know what to do. She couldn't turn her phone off, something important might happen elsewhere, but if she just declined the call, Rose would just ring back. Or she'd try Jenny, and eventually she _would_ try Adam, and probably just ask him to put Martha or herself on the phone. She braced herself.

"…Hello?" she answered, wincing pre-emptively as she waited for Rose to tell her whatever she needed to. Maybe it would be about picking up some milk on the way back? Then Amy could just say, "_Sorry, we're nowhere near a shop_," and hang up.

"_I don't know what I should do anymore!_" Rose wailed. She'd done it. Rose Tyler had finally succeeded in cornering someone so they _had_ to speak to her, "_Nobody will talk to me or come to the door, and you're the only person who's actually answered the phone. Aren't you with Martha? Why won't she take my calls?_"

"Her phone melted," Amy replied truthfully, "Have you spoken to Donna? I heard Donna say that if you asked her for help, she'd have some really enlightening stuff to say. Didn't tell any of us what it was though. Probably didn't want anybody stealing the thunder for her _amazing_ advice." She glanced over at Mitchell and Martha, who were both giving her judgemental, slightly puzzled looks. "_What_?" she mouthed, then she turned away from them.

"_Donna's visiting home_."

"Is she? What about-"

"_Donna's visiting home, you six are out, Clara and Oswin have gone on holiday, River and the Ninth Doctor are on a date, Mickey and Rory are both pretending they have the TV on too loud to hear me, Jack's dragged the Tenth Doctor out somewhere and I don't care where Tentoo's got to_," Rose said. Everyone really was avoiding her, severely and to great effect, "_What should I do_?"

"Do about what..?" Amy asked, "…It sounds like you think everybody's avoiding you."

"_They are!_"

"No, no! They won't be! Why don't you try Mickey and Rory again? We're busy over-"

"_DON'T hang up!_" Rose sounded angry, "_You're doing it too! Why won't anybody just talk to me!? When I come into a room, everybody else leaves! I don't have an inhibitor, you know, I could just find where you've REALLY gone to, because I don't believe for one second you're all out at a bloody nut factory!_"

"And maybe _I_ don't believe for one second that _you're_ allergic to nuts, but that doesn't mean I'm going to throw them at your face! Can't you figure out what to do for yourself!? Can't the time vortex tell you!?"

"_I just want somebody – anybody – to give me five minutes of their time!_"

"I'm really busy! We're all busy, there's a situation involving a… A lake monster. Just…. Just do whatever makes you happy!" Amy hung up the phone and set it to Do Not Disturb.

"What did you go giving her advice for!?" Martha demanded.

"She wouldn't go away! It wasn't even helpful advice!"

"You just told her to dump Tentoo and go back to Ten and not care about either of their feelings!" Martha told her.

"No, I… Bloody hell… Well, Ten's out with Jack. I'll just text Jack and warn him so he can… Do whatever he sees fit…"

"Don't do that!" Martha hissed, "Jack's… You know, one of those… An enabler. He's an enabler. He disagrees with us. He doesn't think she's wrecking any lives. Okay, nobody talk to her at all now until this blows over."

Before the argument could continue, a metal clang rang out, though it was muffled as though it had come from within the lake itself. The three of them all looked around, and saw they were very close to where the TARDIS had materialised. In the lake, bubbles were rising and popping on the surface, full of grime and dirt that had been dredged up by the lake floor being disturbed by all the goings on at the base. The clang had been something banging into the first bathysphere that had risen, the first bathysphere which was now sitting with its door to the sky, open and empty. Then, almost rolling past it, the new bathysphere emerged to the surface. The door opened, and Eleven climbed up, beaming.

"Hello! Fritz let me pilot the sphere for a moment!" he declared happily.

"That'll be why you crashed?" Amy joked with him.

"Didn't crash. Meant to do that."

"You meant to crash?"

"Quiet, Pond. Have you found anything?" he asked, and Amy shook her head in response, "Well then! I suppose-" All of a sudden, the bathysphere jerked harshly, and this, in turn, threw the Doctor forwards and into the freezing lake.

"…Sorry!" a voice (Jenny's) called up from within the vessel, "We just hit some turbulence."

"You d-don't g-get t-t-turbulence in wat-t-ter!" Eleven stuttered when he thrashed his way (he would have called it swimming) to the surface and started to drag himself towards the bank.

"Turbulence," Jenny appeared out of the door, leaning on it with her arms crossed, "It was turbulence. I swear."


	52. Just Friends

_Amy_

_Just Friends_

Martha had been watching the water quite longingly as the other four members of the group were forced – due to an injury the bathysphere sustained when the Doctor crashed it into the other one – to swim to shore and clamber out, soaking wet and freezing cold. She'd even asked how cold exactly it was, and then stared at it. At that moment, Amy decided that she was going to walk next to Adam Mitchell instead of next to Martha (still keeping away from the geniuses, who were still discussing Fritz's various inventions), though in the end it ended up being a choice between the girl who was unwittingly radiating heat, and the boy who was purposely radiating cold to try and cool down the girl radiating heat, and it wasn't even working very well. So she walked, without a conversation to join in with, shivering, keeping her eyes on the snowy caps of the green-furred mountains.

"Hang on…" Amy slowed for a moment, speaking just loud enough that she caught the attention of the other six, though they all kept walking rather than stopping, "How, exactly, are you planning on catching this thing..? I saw the others, they were huge!" There was a pause. It seemed that, when duty called, all those above-average-IQ-folk seemingly 'forgot' their above average IQ, and forgot that they were more than capable of coming up with a solution. Instead, all heads turned to the Doctor, who had been looking pointedly at nobody at all in the hope the eyes passed over him harmlessly and he might turn invisible.

"Well it's clearly intelligent," he said assuredly, nodding as he spoke to make it look like he'd already thought of this plan and it wasn't an on-the-fly imagining, "Of course it must be, it broke out of that tank and then stole the bathysphere and piloted it to shore." On the word 'bathysphere,' the Doctor shivered.

"Yeah, but that doesn't mean it's going to be reasonable," Amy argued, trying to get any semblance of a sure-thing out of the man, as he shuffled in his filthy dressing gown, "What if it attacks us? I think I saw them have claws."

"That's an easy problem to solve," said Adam, "Martha could just set it on fire."

"That's not how we like to do things around here," Eleven said to him coolly, with a note of annoyance. Luke looked annoyed at Adam Mitchell too, but then, Amy had noticed that Luke looked annoyed by everything Adam ever said. They must just clash.

"Well what else is anybody going to do if it attacks us?" Adam asked, raising an eyebrow, like he already knew solutions to this problem were thin on the ground. By this point, the whole group had stopped moving, and were gathered in an almost-circle. Truthfully, Amy didn't know what she'd do if the Thing got her. Try and find a stick to hit it with, probably. She tried to cling onto the hope it was friendly, and could maybe speak, and if it could speak it could listen to a logical argument of why it shouldn't kill anybody.

"…You can freeze it," the Doctor decided, "Cryogenically."

"Yeah? Then what? Keep the violent monster frozen forever..?"

"Well it can't be _that_ violent, it's run off and now it's hiding trying to escape. I just have to talk to it… In its own amphibious language. I speak frog, can't be much different," Eleven shrugged.

"I don't know how to cryogenically freeze things, or freeze anything, I just emit cold," Adam said defensively, apparently not fond of the scrutiny he was now getting for question the Doctor's tactics. Although, before he'd spoken up, the Doctor hadn't had any tactic other than trying to speak to the weird, decades old mutant.

"That's a lie, you froze our whole bus last week, and that was in the middle of the desert," Jenny pointed out.

"Hey, yeah," Amy backed her up, "It was boiling on there for the rest of the day." The men in the group gave her confused looks at that moment, so she was forced to add, "Him freezing the bus completely broke our air conditioner until Jenny fixed it after nicking a screwdriver."

"It's true," Jenny added.

"…Not _cryogenically _though, it was a bus! It didn't need to stay alive. And see, like she said, I broke it," Adam said, "You can't rely on _me_ to stop this Thing, I have no experience!"

"You're probably inexperienced at lots of things you'd love to happen," Martha added a little snidely. Clearly, she was coming back to herself marginally in the cold air of the mountains and Mitchell's presence. Mitchell then glowered.

"Why does everybody think I'm a virgin?" he questioned, since that had obviously been what Martha was trying to get at, be it a little clunkily. The Doctor had not understood though, and made a strange face when the topic was broached.

"Aren't you?" Amy asked with notable surprise she had not done well at hiding.

"Oh my god – _no_, okay? No, I'm not. What about me comes across as that tragic? I'm not, okay? You do all know that Rose _totally_ fancied me?"

"You slept with Rose!?" Jenny exclaimed, jumping instantly to the worst, most scandalous conclusion of all.

"N-No! That – _that_ did _not_ happen! She was too into him," Adam waved a hand at Eleven.

"The _Eleventh_ Doctor!? Jesus, how recent was this?" Jenny asked him.

"NO! The Ninth! Just the Doctor in general I meant! To Rose it would've been about eight years ago or something! Can we just all not discuss my sex life? Please?"

"…Yeah, fine," said Jenny, "Our girlfriend wouldn't like that, I guess." Everybody turned to stare at Jenny. Amy might not normally talk to Adam Mitchell, or his girlfriend, for that matter, but she would've thought that if there was some polyamorous relationship going on that the others might have perhaps heard about it, especially since Jenny couldn't keep her mouth shut. And judging by Adam's shocked and irrevocable confusion, he didn't know anything about this either.

"…What do you mean 'our' girlfriend..?" Mitchell asked. Everyone was listening intently now. They might all pretend to be adults above gossip, but when each of them was graced with the Peter Pan ideals of running away to whimsical worlds, they all had a mentality of never growing up. Meaning that they still cared far too much about things that were nothing to do with them.

"You know, Oswin," said Jenny.

"…I think Clara might have told me if this was something that was actually going on," Eleven said with a frown, "How far have your delusions gone, Jenny?" he asked incredulously.

"What delusions?" Jenny asked.

"…Are you genuinely convinced that you date Oswin..?" Adam asked her slowly. Adam Mitchell and the Doctor both had rather personal interests in this matter. Amy knew that for all Eleven's peculiar spite towards Soufflé Girl, he'd feel a right to know if something like _this_ were going on. Plus, Jenny _was_ his daughter.

"We both do," said Jenny. Adam stared.

"…I'm pretty sure you don't," said Adam, "I don't know when you'd find the time, she's always either with me or with her sister. And she's spent the last two days with him." He nodded at Eleven, "…I'm gonna call Clara, hold on…"

"Why Clara?" asked Martha.

"Because Clara's the one who'll give him a sensible answer," Eleven answered for Adam as he got his phone out, "She's the adult." Amy could tell that neither Fritz nor Luke cared particularly, but she and Martha (who did) overruled this significantly.

"Clara doesn't know about it," Jenny said.

"Clara knows about everything to do with Oswin," Eleven told her, as though somehow Jenny claiming his wife didn't know about something which was probably non-existent was offending him. Jenny didn't pay him the slightest bit of attention, "Honestly, I wish you'd never broken up with Jack at this point."

"Hello?" Adam then said, taking a few steps away, though Martha, Eleven and Amy all shuffled to follow him and try to listen in (Jenny was too assured that she was right to move, and Fritz and Luke had now started talking about something else to do with technology), "No, I didn't call the wrong twin, I called the sensible one who doesn't take pleasure in torturing me…"

"_Torturing? That's not something to do with your sex life, is it?_" Clara asked when Amy had jabbed Mitchell in the side hard enough that he relented and put his phone on speaker. If it _was_ Clara, that joke seemed a bit too risqué for her. Or did it? Amy, admittedly, didn't know.

"I wish everyone would stop talking about my sex life," Adam grumbled.

"_Um, what..?_"

"You know how Oswin's convinced that Jenny has a crush on you two? Sort of?"

Clara sighed, but said, "_Yes?_"

"Jenny thinks she goes out with Oswin. She's like, convinced," Adam said, "Seriously. And she said you don't know about it."

"_I know about everything to do with Oswin,_" Clara said, practically repeating what her husband had said just moments before. In fact, Eleven smiled proudly, and Amy shook her head at him, "_I'm pretty sure she isn't dating Jenny. I'll ask her, hang on…_" there was a noise that sounded like Clara had put the phone down so that they couldn't hear whatever conversation was about to ensue. They were always so private about the truth of their friendship (if it could be considered something so comparably meagre as just a 'friendship' by this point).

"_Mitchell, WHY do you think I'm going out with Jenny!?_" Adam immediately turned the phone _off_ speaker when his real girlfriend and not his girlfriend's twin picked up.

"Because she said she was! … No, I did not believe her… I wanted to make sure! … No! … Maybe you'd best tell her that you don't go out with her, then! … Because I'm sure she'll listen to her _girlfriend_ more than she'll listen to me… No it doesn't…"

There was, at that point, a loud, gurgle-like noise which rushed through the air around them, echoing from somewhere close-by through the mountainous valley.

"…Does that mean we can all move on from this argument?" Luke asked after a brief pause after the noise, which was undoubtedly made by the Thing, whatever it was, and it was lurking nearby.

"…I have to go," Adam said, and then he hung up on her without even saying goodbye. _Weirdos_, Amy thought. She decided she was going to disengage herself from whatever was going on with Jenny's psyche and Adam's girlfriend from then on, because getting involved in the politics of the Twins was definitely not a good idea. Anyway, there was a monster to hunt.

**AN: The remark about "_our_ girlfriend" has been planned for a while in my head to take place on this day, just so people know it's not because I miss writing Closwin. I mean, I'm still writing little bits of what they're doing solely for my own amusement. But speaking of Clara and Oswin, someone mentioned wanting to read the heart-to-heart about Clara and that zombie? I wasn't gonna do that, but if people want to read that then I will, otherwise I can live without it making an appearance here.**


	53. How To Catch A Monster

**AN: Dark chapter here, suicide trigger warning. Some of that dark-Eleven there isn't nearly enough of making an appearance.**

_Amy_

_How To Catch A Monster_

The mood had dulled to one of sinister uneasiness, everybody looking about them to spot anything out of the ordinary, anything off-colour or a smidgen of movement between the trees. But the woods around the lake climbing the sides of the mountain were dense and dark within, so it was proving difficult to see if things were amiss or not. Adam Mitchell looked the tensest of all the group though, considering he and his cryokinesis were supposedly the only things standing between them and a messy end at the claws of the Thing – unless Martha gathered herself.

"…Where did that come from?" Amy whispered. Martha was, as predicted, still out of it, and the geniuses weren't speaking. Probably thinking, then they could share their thoughts and boast about their intelligences to one another while she looked for an escape route from the soiree she'd just made up…

"I don't know," said Eleven, 'helpfully.' The Doctor then proved himself to be either an idiot, or completely confident in his own ideas, because he simply smiled to himself, and then marched off into the woods without a word. Seconds went by and nobody followed, until Amy decided that the man was quite probably the first of her assumptions, and that if nobody else was going to make sure he didn't wind up in trouble somewhere, she most definitely had to.

"Doctor, hang on!" she called, stumbling over a branch to follow him and leave the rest of the group behind.

"Come along, Pond," she heard him say, and switched directions to follow his voice, catching up with him a moment later, "Fritz and Luke are very closed-minded about this," he then told her, very quietly. She thought he looked odd without his tweed. For all the years and years (decades, probably) she'd spent travelling with him, he never seemed to be out of his daily, formal attire. He always got changed from his pyjamas before coming to drag she and Rory out.

"Really?" she asked, picking up on his disapproval of their behaviour. And she'd thought they'd all been getting along splendidly.

"Yes, they both seem to be rather ignoring the evidence that this Thing is an intelligent lifeform, whatever it is," Eleven said, holding his screwdriver out in front of himself for a reason Amy couldn't fathom, like it was a torch emitting absolutely no light (she didn't even think it was switched on). "But it piloted the bathysphere, so of course it is."

"You don't have any idea what it is?"

"Oh, I have a few, but none of them pleasant," he said darkly. Amy cared to glance back and saw they weren't being followed by the other members of the group. No doubt they all thought the Doctor had better have stayed out there with them, and then there was also the very real danger that Martha Jones might start a forest fire.

"Brainstorm," Amy tried to coax him.

"Whatever they are in that base, they're experiments. Grim ones, probably, and unethical I'd wager. There must be some reason they were all left behind when the base was abandoned," Eleven said, "I don't think they're alien. I think they're strictly of Earth-origin."

"They didn't look like anything I've ever seen before. Except… I'm sure the hands were webbed, like frogs or something, and they had massive eyes," Amy said, frowning as she tried to remember exactly what she'd seen in the base's tanks about an hour previously.

"They had gills, as well," said the Doctor quietly, "Amphibious, I think. Isn't that odd? An amphibian in a bathysphere? Could've just swum. Hmm. I'll have to ask it. I hope it can speak…" he got momentarily lost musing upon the linguistic capabilities of mutant lake-people he'd found in a desolate military base, but a noise like a twig snapping brought him back, and they both froze. Surely, another member of the group would have announced themselves? Amy couldn't help but think they'd have done better to bring something with them, like tranquilisers, or a net, perhaps.

"Was that you?" Amy breathed in Eleven's ear, but he looked at her seriously.

"No," he answered, "Was it you?"

"If it was me I wouldn't've asked if it was you!" she hissed. He nodded slightly, acknowledging this as a legitimate (and obvious) explanation.

"Suppose not," he said. She glared at him, but he ignored this, crouching a little to try and see through the trees to spot the source of the breaking twig, but he didn't have to look for very long.

The Thing lunged from the darkness, dark green and shiny with a glistening coat of watery slime and mud. It had long, webbed, but clawless fingers, and the same with the feet, except there were less than ten fingers and less than ten toes, little stumps where she assumed they'd once been. It seemed almost scaly, but moist all over like it was secreting a fluid onto its skin. Its four limbs took on a defiantly human-shape, though extra, fishlike flaps of skin hung from the elbows and the knees and the shoulders, like fins. Then there was its face, which was very dark green, gnarled and square like it had been wrought from stone with a pickaxe, and two huge, bloated, yellow eyes like – as Amy had said – a frog. Four slits cut down either side of its swollen neck, bulging at the sides and growing and shrinking as the seconds passed by and it loped towards them with a gurgling breath emanating from the wide, wet mouth rather than the gills.

Amy shrieked and Eleven jumped back from the fiend as it emerged, hanging its hands low to the ground like they were too heavy for it, though it was hardly apelike in the rest of its movements. Its pupils were dark and huge and facing horizontally in opposite directions, moving independently like a chameleon or some other lizard.

"Stay back! We're armed!" Amy shouted, leaning over the Doctor to grab hold of his hand and forcing him to unwillingly brandish the sonic screwdriver in the direction of the Thing, which was all-too human for her liking in the way it was built, like someone had taken a man, painted him green and bashed him up a bit. It cowered from the sonic when Amy made it buzz.

"Amy, no!" Eleven snatched his hand away from her, putting the sonic in his pocket and shaking his head ashamedly at her, "Sorry about her. I'm the Doctor, I'm here to help, and to listen to you," he smiled at it, like it understood facial expressions or something. Amy did nothing, she was disinclined to let it touch her. It made a noise that was half a croak, like someone with a mucus cough doing an impression of a frog.

Amy stayed still, but the Doctor stepped closer, staying crouched like the Thing was so they were on the same level, approaching with his hands open in surrender to show he meant no harm.

"Hello," he said politely, like he was addressing a child, "Who are you? Do you have a name?" The Thing said nothing, "Can you talk?" It made another gurgled-croak noise. "Ah-ha, see, Amy? He understands me. I said he was intelligent. Now, what sort of alien would know the language?"

"Isn't it the translation matrix..?" Amy asked.

"No, he knows what we're saying. I'm not going to hurt you, I'm a friend. A Doctor," Eleven repeated, trying to be friendly, "And _you_… You weren't grown in that tank, were you?" To Amy's surprise, the Thing shook its head, and Eleven's smile faded with sadness and pity.

"What?" Amy asked him.

"He was human," Eleven said, "He still is, in his head."

"You mean, they were experimenting on _people_?" Amy said, feeling sick. What suffering had the poor man gone through to get like this? And then to try and make his escape, only to be hindered by a lack of communicative skills and an impossible new body.

"Yes," said Eleven, "As I suspected. I saw some files on the floor of that lab, didn't want to mention anything to Fritz, he's one of those people who would put scientific pursuits in front of humanity. Probably wouldn't mean to, but-"

"Like Frankenstein?" Amy suggested.

"Exactly, like Frankenstein," Eleven seemed pleased, "I love companions who read. You're even better, a companion who _writes_ as well. Anyway, this is all very tragic. Those files weren't in good shape after being stepped on by our friend here-" the Thing was listening intently, it seemed, and made no motion to try and leave their company, "-I only managed to catch a few words. Mainly 'soldier' and 'amphibious.'"

"They were trying to create super-soldiers?"

"Undoubtedly," said Eleven with a sigh, "War. Dreadful business, things like this always end up happening. It's interesting how they managed to keep them alive for this long though, unattended. I should think Fritz will be examining the biogel at some point, perhaps it'll help him cure all those diseases?"

"That's something good…" Amy muttered half-heartedly. She felt too sorry for the poor man – whose name she wished she knew so she didn't have to keep saying 'the Thing' – trapped in a fish tank for a century, only to awaken to this further torture. "But what do we do?"

The Doctor sighed.

"I'm not sure. I… I'm sorry," he said to the Thing, turning his attentions back to the rogue science experiment, "I don't think this is a reversible process. I'm so sorry… Are you in pain?" The Thing nodded, and Amy saw sorrow shine through its grizzled, mutated features. The Doctor sighed painfully and rubbed his face once, straightening back up and thinking. "You see the fingers and the toes?"

"Yes."

"It's physical degradation," Eleven said quietly, like he didn't want the Thing to hear but knew he had to let it, "He can't survive outside the tank. None of them can. I suppose that's why they were left here. A failed experiment."

"God…" Amy breathed, feeling ill, "This is awful. What do.. What do we do?" The Doctor said nothing, looking over her head instead of into her eyes, and then looking down at the floor at the feet of the Thing.

The Thing made another crude noise, drawing their attention to it once again. Once it was sure they were watching, it made a move to lift its right hand, pointing its middle finger and the stub where its index finger used to be at its temples, like a gun.

"He wants to die," Eleven told Amy.

"I got that part…" she said in little more than a whisper, "What do we do?"

"The right thing," said the Doctor with darkness in his tone and in his cool eyes that appeared to be looking _through_ rather than looking _at_ anything. Amy looked at him as though to say, 'Which is?' and he breathed deeply again before speaking, "Make it painless."


	54. Finally I

_Amy_

_Finally I_

The returning group were sombre and sad. The outing had not been the escape they had hoped for, it had been treacherously cold and morally unpleasant. In the end, Fritz had been the one who, in the name of science, put an end to the poor creature they'd found. His revolver was never loaded, but he still kept the bullets on him. Amy remembered seeing the birds flee from the nearby trees when the bang had sounded, she hadn't been able to look. And then they had left, the Doctor promising that Fritz could have a trip in the TARIDS 'another time,' when he came back to check the mess at the base had all been sorted in 'a while.' It sounded vague, but Amy was sure Eleven wouldn't be able to keep away from him forever (everything up to forever was a different matter, however).

Luke retreated either to his room (well, the guest room, which wasn't in the Bedroom Circle, it was in the hallway afterwards) or to find the Tenth Doctor wherever he was to carry on pestering him to get K-9 fixed so he could leave the TARDIS now he'd seen the ugly side of time travel. Amy remained in Nerve Centre with the Doctor and Jenny, while Adam Mitchell and Martha were off with Nine (the only available Doctor, it seemed) trying to figure out what to do about the fact she couldn't touch anything without either melting or burning it (except for one of the sofa cushions, she'd gone to lean on it without thinking and outright set it on fire, though Adam had put it out).

The room was quite sparse. More than usual. Rory and Mickey were still hiding from Tentoo in another room Amy had never asked the location of, and Jack was in the console room giving the navigation system a once-over after it had been playing up severely for the last three days; whenever anybody tried to input a specific date it overshot significantly. Rose and Tentoo were nowhere to be found as nobody was looking for them, which left River and Donna sat on the other table to herself, Eleven and Jenny, not talking about an awful lot. It was quiet, and nobody was in a particularly good mood.

But of course, on board the TARDIS, nothing could last. It was when Donna had just broached the idea of making a round of tea for everybody, and was about to go into the kitchen to do exactly that, that shouting could be heard coming from the Bedroom Circle. The same shouting they'd all been so sickeningly suffering through for days now. It was Rose and her husband, yet again, arguing about nothing to get away from the real issue.

"I said _don't_ wash what was in the basket!" Rose shouted at Tentoo, finally coming through into the room as its inhabitants all muttered vague curses about the fact they now had to be subjected to this, since avoidance tactics couldn't work forever.

"You did not!" Tentoo yelled right back at her, following her around into the kitchen. Amy stared at the bright white surface of the table in front of her, the gleaming cleanliness of it marred with mug-stains from the Time Lords, all of whom were too ignorant to use a coaster. "You told me, specifically, to wash it."

"There were colours _and_ whites in there! My towels will all be ruined and it's _your fault_! And you lot – hope you had fun in your nut factory, hmm!?" she rounded mainly on Jenny, who hadn't done anything at all. Thankfully this wasn't one of those times where Jenny did completely the wrong thing for the situation, and she glowered at the table and ignored Rose. "Ignoring me still? All of you?" Amy would have liked to say 'no,' but a), that was a lie, and b), if she said that, she'd have to talk to Rose about these matters. And she didn't want to. So she carried on staring at coffee stains.

"Well why would they want to talk to you when you're being like this!?" Tentoo demanded of her.

"I'm not being 'like' anything! It's all you, you're an idiot!"

"Oh, I'm an idiot, she says! Well _you're_ the one who married this 'idiot', aren't you? And not just an idiot – all the other bloody things you've been calling me for days! You think I don't know you were lying about what happened when I wasn't here!?" _Oh, god_, Amy thought, _he's talking about her sharing a bed with Ten at the Maitlands'_… Or, it was more than just 'sharing a bed' to Amy's best understanding. "But I suppose I am an idiot, for believing you for so long!"

"'Married'!? Yeah, sure! Barely! We were on a beach! The bloody priest probably wasn't ordained!"

"We got married there for sentimentality!"

"Some sentiment it was – the beach where I got completely _abandoned_!?"

"You're abandoning yourself right now!"

"_Abandoning myself_!? That's rich, coming from you! Self-pity is the only thing you've bloody got going for you at this point, how's that for abandoning yourself!?"

"Oh, and _he_ hasn't been pitying himself for weeks – no, months – _no_, YEARS!? Hasn't he!?" And now Ten, who wasn't even in the room, had been brought into it.

"Well I've been pitying myself for all the years I've had to spend with you!" There was silence, and Rose should do best to apologise and stop talking right there and do what she was obviously going to in a quieter, more subdued way. But 'quiet' and 'subdued' were not words that Rose Tyler cared to know the meaning of. "I was _forced_! But I don't know what's forcing me anymore!" Out of her back pocket she took her wedding ring, which she'd removed days ago. "Well you know what!? This ring is just a cage, _your_ cage, and I don't want to be in it anymore! Have it back!" She threw the ring at Tentoo.

"I… Rose…" he choked. No more fight left in him now she'd done that, Amy observed, "N-no, _no_, I don't mean that! You don't mean that! Put the ring back on, let's talk-" he stooped and picked it up, holding the golden band out to her in his palm.

"I'm done talking! I hate every second I've spent with you, when…." She stopped herself.

"'When' what? When you could've been with _him_!?" Anger returned to Tentoo.

"It's not about him!"

"OF COURSE IT'S ABOUT HIM!"

"IT'S ABOUT _YOU_!"

"I HAVEN'T DONE ANYTHING WRONG!"

They'd finally gotten down to the meat of the issue, which was that all their problems came from the presence of Ten. Amy didn't believe for one second that Rose had been having an awful time with Tentoo for the last four years, she thought that Rose was lying about that just to make Tentoo leave and get out of her sight, which was clearly where this was going. She didn't care how many tears Rose shed, she was being selfish and Amy didn't want to be anywhere near the fallout.

"JUST GET OUT!"

"Get out where!? I live here too!"

"Go back home! Go back to mum and dad and Tony, go on! Where you want to be!"

"I do not-"

"You're the one who keeps trying to convince me to go home, but I don't want to go home."

"_I_ don't want to go home without _you_," he pleaded.

"Get out or I swear to god, I'll make you," Rose threatened, and Amy saw her eyes glow gold, and saw the colour of them reflected back in Tentoo's tears.

"Come over and make me then," he was trying not to break down into sobs, "Come on."

"I don't have to go over there to do it. Leave on your own or you'll be standing on that same beach, all alone, without me, or anyone, completely alone. And you've _never_ been alone."

"I was alone for centuries!"

"No you weren't!" Rose shrieked, "You were never alone! You've never had to be! That was _him_, that was the Doctor, and you are. Not. The. Doctor!" she shouted, and then Tentoo froze unnaturally, and very slowly (or at least, it looked slow), from the feet up, he disintegrated into the golden particles of the time vortex, fading into oblivion. And then Rose halfway cried and halfway screamed and collapsed to her knees on the floor, and Donna was the first one who felt she just _had_ to go and comfort her.

"Should I go?" Eleven whispered to Amy urgently, "Should I help?"

"No," she said eventually. She didn't think sending a Time Lord over there was worth the risk, "Go get Jack, she'll talk to Jack." Eleven, wanting to do anything useful but undamaging, obeyed Amy's advice and slipped off to the left in the opposite direction of Rose, towards the console room. Amy didn't know if Rose teleporting Tentoo back home would even be better in the long-run, she would have to wait to make that judgment. But right then, she decided that the best course of action would be to go deliver the news to the other members of the crew, and find Rory, and then resign herself to her bedroom for the rest of the evening.


	55. A New Hope

**AN: I know, I said May 20th, but I have some mental health reasons to return. Also, I still waste hours doing things without this fic to write, like, I've watched so much Ghost Whisperer you don't even know tbh. I'm gonna be more relaxed with updates til the 20th though - it took me three days to write this one. Basically, the fic is back, yay! But here, starting with a bang.**

_DAY EIGHTY_

_Eleven_

_A New Hope_

"Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit!"

"You broke it!"

"_You_ broke it!"

"I did not! It was your idea!"

"It was not!"

"_You're_ the one wearing the Storm Trooper helmet!"

"It's a _Clone_ Trooper and that was your idea too just because it didn't fit you!"

"You obviously have an abnormally small head!"

"Like who!? Your wife!?"

"_Your _girlfriend!"

"I'm sure they have the same sized heads!"

Adam Mitchell and the Eleventh Doctor were stood at odds in the latter's bedroom, staring at the smashed pieces of a replica lightsaber on the floor. The _other_ replica lightsaber was still held in Eleven's hand, as they stared at the mess on the floor. Then Eleven saw Adam take his phone out.

"What are you doing?" he asked sharply.

"Calling Oswin!"

"Why!?"

"To ask her what to do!"

"Don't call her! She'll tell Clara! If Clara finds out one of her lightsabers is broken she'll never forgive me!" Eleven pleaded, but Adam did not relent, so the Doctor was left with no other choice but to make a lunge for the phone straight out of his hand. And that was when it clattered to the floor, and before either of them could grab for it, it rang. "Who is it!?" Eleven demanded.

"Oswin," Adam said.

"Why is she calling you!?"

"...Because I'm her boyfriend, probably," Adam stooped to get the phone.

"Don't answer!"

"She'll be suspicious if I don't answer!"

"Well it's the morning - you might still be asleep!" Eleven spluttered defensively.

"I have to answer!"

"No, you-"

"Hello?" Adam completely ignored Eleven, who silenced immediately, flailing his arm and the other lightsaber in quiet protest, "Me? I'm fine... How's your sister?"

"Don't ask that!" the Doctor hissed, then he pulled out his sonic screwdriver and zapped Adam's phone so it was forced to go on speaker and he couldn't switch it off.

"_Why?_"

"...The Doctor wants to know."

"_You're with the Doctor?_"

"I... No. No, I'm not, I just thought I'd check on his behalf. Because he's probably wondering. Just routine checking-up on Clara..." The Doctor was staring slack-jawed at the idiot.

"_So are you busy, or?_"

The Doctor mouthed, "_Yes_," trying to give him dark, threatening eyes.

"...Yes," Adam said, "...Very busy... I'm in the shower."

"_...So am I just meant to assume there's a really good reason you're lying to me?_"

"...It'd be really good of you if you would do that, yeah," Adam said, and then Eleven had had enough and he grabbed the phone finally.

"Boyfriendy has to go now, urgent business, sorry," and he hung up on his sister-in-law, and then sonicked the phone again, and it sparked and died.

"Why'd you do that!? _She_ called _me_, what if it was important!?"

"_This_ is important! You have to fix it."

"Fix it with what!? Sellotape!?"

"No! Buy a new one! You're a millionaire! _I _can't do it, I have no money and I wouldn't get the right one!" Eleven argued.

"Okay, so, it was _your_ idea for me to come in here to hide from whatever's going on with Rose with you, it was _your_ idea to play with Clara's lightsabers, but _I_ have to clean up your mess!?" Adam argued.

"Yes, exactly! It was _your_ lightsaber that broke anyway," Eleven said, "And I have things to do. Important, Time Lord things."

"You're not even coming!?"

"No! Why should I!?" Adam Mitchell stared at him, "I have to spend today distracting the Tenth Doctor," said Eleven, "Which is far more important than-"

"Than your head on a spike when Clara finds out about this?" Mitchell challenged. Eleven narrowed his eyes. "Fine, fine, I'll clean up _your_ mess. Aren't Time Lords supposed to be noble or something?" He dropped the other lightsaber (Eleven winced), and the Clone Trooper helmet, and went towards the door, leaving.

* * *

_Adam_

He was sat, half an hour later, at his computer trawling eBay and other auction sites for a lightsaber as far identical to the one Clara had as possible, and having no luck. In the back of his mind, he was also wondering what he was going to do about his phone and the fact it was now completely fried inside. Absently, he drank some of the coffee on the desk next to him and wondered why Oswin had called him.

Someone knocked on the door and he looked over, and heard a curse word distantly. Frowning, he got up and went and opened it, and found Martha standing there, staring at some scorch marks on his door.

"Nice," he said, "I was getting bored of plain grey."

"Funny," she said dryly. He leant on the door.

"What is it? Have you set something other than my door on fire?" he asked.

"No," she said, looking displeased at his assumption she'd been involved in any wrongdoings, "I want to go out."

"Well, you're married, and I have a girlfriend," he shrugged.

"And you're a cocky twat."

"I do my best." Martha scowled at him for a moment.

"I want to go out, so you have to come too because you didn't find any hidden adrenaline inhibitors last night, and Jack's still trying to decript the short hand on the blueprints," she said.

"Out where? I'm busy."

"Doing what? Getting into bidding wars over nerd memorabilia?" Martha challenged, and he faltered for a moment, "Oh my god, seriously!?"

"The Doctor broke one of his wife's lightsabers and he's making me buy a replacement because it's apparently my fault because it was the one I was holding that broke," he tried (pathetically) to defend himself.

"Why were you having... Sorry, you were honestly having a lightsaber fight with the Eleventh Doctor?" she questioned.

"It was his idea! And now I have to spend money to buy a new one of the damn things," Adam complained, "And it has to be identical. And she doesn't have the box in there. Do you know how many generations of replica lightsabers there have been from the last forty years?"

"No, and I don't want to. I _do_ want to go out though, which means you have to come too," she said.

"...With who?" he asked carefully.

"With some people."

"The TARDIS has a lot of people on it, Martha," he said, and he was entirely aware she thought he was a dick. Everyone seemed to think that about him.

"...The Ninth Doctor-"

"Oh, no. I am not going anywhere with him," Adam protested.

"-And River-"

"You want me to go hang around with the person who basically cut off my girlfriend's leg for a joke?"

"-And Mickey and Donna."

"No! I'm tired enough after yesterday."

"Either you come out, or I'll convince Clara it's all your fault about the lightsaber," Martha said, "And I'll make Jenny mad at you. I don't know how yet, but I will..."

"Blackmail. Great. _Great_. And I get nothing out of this," he grumbled, going to find his shoes, "Are you sure you even _should_ be going out? You could set someone on fire. And we don't even know what your _other_ power is yet."

"Well what's your other power?" Martha asked him.

"...Mine?" She nodded, as he looked around for a jacket, "Er, I don't know. I mean, it's... Ironic. I think I see auras? Or, emotions? I don't have a lot of experience with it. _Plus_, I got the adrenaline inhibitor before I got the colourblind glasses, so I can't even be sure who was what colour, or even what any of them mean. Are we going?" He walked past her, closing the door so that Martha didn't melt it or something. She followed him. "As if making me replace the lightsaber wasn't enough, he broke my phone too."

"So buy a new one," Martha said, having no pity for him and his broken phone, clearly, "Buy me one too, while you're at it."

"Living here's gonna make me bloody bankrupt..." he complained.

"Oh great, bring the idiot along why don't you?" Nine snapped at Martha when she brought Adam into the console room.

"Look what the cat dragged in," River trilled nearby. Nine ignored her comment, busy glaring at Martha.

"What? He's the only way I won't burn stuff, get over it," Martha said to Nine. She went to stand with Mickey, who was watching Nine with an expression Adam Mitchell couldn't place. Adam himself just stayed still, trying to keep in good spirits, even though he seemed to be having a thoroughly bad day.

"Could be worse," Donna said quietly, coming over to him, "You could be on Rose-duty, like Amy. Or Ten-duty, like Jenny. Keeping them apart."

"No, instead I'm with the leg-amputators. What fun," he muttered, then, "...Hey, can I borrow your phone? I have to text the leg-amputee and tell her her brother-in-law broke my mobile."

**AN: FYI, I'm gonna refrain from Adam Mitchell's perspective as much as possible. I really didn't want to write it, but it works best with what was in my head and I didn't want to translate it to Martha.**


	56. Revenge Of The Larpers

_Martha_

_Revenge Of The Larpers_

"This is ridiculous," Mickey said when they stepped out of the TARDIS. And she couldn't help but agree.

"Where..?" Donna asked, trailing off her sentence. Nine seemed thoroughly amused by these surroundings, but Martha couldn't help but think they made their mission a whole lot more difficult.

"It's a convention," said Adam Mitchell, "A sci-fi convention... I wonder if they sell replica lightsabers..." he looked around. Their apparition went entirely unnoticed in the crowds of people, the thrumming of the TARDIS drowned out by talking and queer sound effects, like lasers and kabooms. Hundreds of people milling about, pushing past each other and laughing, dressed as aliens Martha - who'd never been too into science-fiction, she was more Harry Potter - couldn't recognise at all.

"What do you want a lightsaber for?" Donna asked him.

"...Just... To complete my collection. Of lightsabers. Darth Sidius's is really rare," he told Donna, who rolled her eyes and so obviously didn't care about Adam's imaginary lightsaber collection. Well, Martha thought, it might not really be imaginary. He could have a room _full_ of geek crap in his house for all she knew.

"You need to get a life," Nine said callously.

"So what are we looking for? Some kind of description would be useful?" Mickey asked the Doctor, who was staring around at the people, a little rudely.

"No idea. Just a distress signal, probably a spaceship," Nine said, "Maybe not though."

"Spaceships are big, won't be too hard..." Donna mused.

"Might not be," said River, "There's a whole alien race in this tiny little nebula a few lightyears away from the Spiral Cloud. Battle cruisers the size of baked beans."

"Thanks. Really helpful," Mickey said dryly, and she shrugged, "Could be anything then."

"Yep," Nine grinned, "Better split up. We'll go this way, you three go that way." The groups the Doctor designated meant he swaggered off with Donna and his new girlfriend - or whatever River was, leaving Mickey, Martha and Mitchell together, which was probably for the best. Minimal fighting, and Martha wouldn't melt. She was hot enough with hundreds of people around anyway, it was like being on the SS Pentallian all over again, hurtling towards an angry sun.

"Whatever it is must be emitting some pretty powerful signals to reach the TARDIS," Mickey said, looking around, accidentally coming face to face with something unpleasant looking, which Martha really hoped was a highly detailed prosthetic, otherwise Earth had been invaded.

"He didn't even tell us what planet we're on, or when we are," Martha said quietly.

"Earth, present day. Or a little ahead," Adam said, and Mickey and Martha both gave him puzzled looks, "What? You can tell by what the cosplayers are dressed as. That guy back there was clearly a Krogan. Specifically a Mass Effect 3 Krogan - you can tell by the fingers."

"...Lucky to have you here, aren't we?" Mickey said with a faint smile, but still with those traces of prejudice against the boy that were oh-so-hard to shake.

"Probably, yeah. I know what most of this stuff is," he said, "I even know what convention this is." They both looked at him expectantly, "What? ...Oh, right, it's called Carnage Con, I don't know why, I never asked Eugene."

"Who's Eugene?" Mickey asked.

"One of the organisers."

"...You know the organisers?"

"...Yes... But I'm not one of them, okay?"

"Alright, alright," Martha said when he got overly defensive about what he did in his freetime, "What do you mean you know 'most' of this stuff? Not all of it?"

"No, which implies we're probably a couple of years in the future. Maybe just one," Adam said, "New games and films released, some stuff _clearly_ from the seventh Star Wars." Martha couldn't identify anything she was seeing.

"So you know if anything's out of place or not?" Mickey asked.

"Probably," said Adam, "Eidetic memory and stuff. Remember everything."

"I'd've loved an eidetic memory going through medical school," Martha commented, "Anyway, powerful signals?" she reminded Mickey of what he'd been saying.

"Yeah - maybe there's some kind of interference being caused? It'd make it easier to get a location," Mickey said, "We never have enough scanning devices. By this point, everyone should just get some set of equipment," said Mickey, "TARDIS key, sonic screwdriver, psychic paper, scanner. They have specialist equipment at UNIT and Torchwood. Why don't we have any?"

"Oh, I think the timey-wimey detector's very specialist," said Martha, "It can boil an egg at thirty paces."

"What happens if you go near a chicken..?" Adam asked.

"...It's messy," she answered, and he cringed a little. Martha remembered one shopping trip in 1969 very specifically - she'd had to spent almost their whole budget on the eggs that had been exploding down the aisle, "Can't you invent something?"

"Me?" Adam asked, "Something? Like what? _With_ what? This stuff's not technology, it's just plastic and paint."

"... You might be useful in another way though," Mickey said carefully, crossing his arms, stopping in a gap between two booths, watching Adam, who shifted uncomfortably.

"...Like..?" he asked uneasily.

"Well, you know the organisers," Mickey said, "You could get us into see CCTV footage. It's a start, look for any suspicious characters..." As he said 'suspicious characters' his eyes wandered to what Martha knew was definitely a Klingon, who then grunted and said something she couldn't understand, "Alright, mate!" Mickey shouted angrily at him, then turned to Adam, "What did it say?"

"What makes you think I speak Klingon?" Adam asked, laughing pitifully. He caught a look from Martha, who raised an eyebrow, and then sighed, "...She just called you a generic, homophobic slur."

"'She'?" Martha questioned.

"Yeah, just... Don't ask... Do I really have to go find-?"

"Yes," said Martha, "What are you so worried about?"

"It's just... Well... We..."

"Adam Mitchell!" somebody shouted.

"Shit," Adam muttered, "Okay, um, he's kind of..."

"A weirdo?" Mickey suggested.

"A larper," Adam said.

"Is that a generic, homophobic slur?" Martha asked.

"No! It's... You'll see..."

And then a bunch of people dressed as what Martha thought were knights and wizards came out of the crowd and accosted Adam like he was one of their own, and he was looking thoroughly awkward and out of place.

"You've been off the grid for years! Why didn't you tell me you were coming here?" the leader asked, presumably this Eugene Adam spoke of.

"It was impromptu," he said quickly.

"Clearly! You don't even have a cosplay. After that Batman costume of 2011, I-"

"Yeah, yeah, yeah, I remember," Adam said.

"Oh, please, tell us more," Martha grinned, talking to Eugene, "Adam never tells us about his hobbies."

"Didn't he show you the photos?" Eugene asked.

"There are photos!?" Mickey exclaimed.

"No! Look, the thing is-" Adam began.

"What've you been doing all these years then?" Eugene interrupted him.

"I really don't see how that-"

"Still UFO hunting?" he snorted, and then his posse of medieval cronies all made weird bleeping noises, and Martha wondered if these people were friends of Adam's or not, "Still looking for aliens?" Adam shrugged.

"Why are you dressed as wizards at a sci-fi con?" he asked.

"We're the Intergalactic League of Sorcerers, actually," said Eugene, and Adam snorted, "From my book."

"What book?"

"_The Intergalactic League of Sorcerers_," he said.

"Yeah, well, you-" Martha didn't know what Adam had been about to say, because at that point she pulled her old UNIT ID badge out of her pocket and stepped in front of him.

"I'm Dr Martha Jones, here from UNIT to carry out some investigations," she said, and then they burst out laughing.

"UNIT? Don't they look for aliens too? You believe this guy and his abduction story?" Eugene said, pointing a thumb at Adam, "Blue box and a doctor? Was this 'doctor' you?"

"That's not important," said Martha.

"Looking for aliens at a sci-fi convention? Who tipped you off, Han Solo?" His gang of geeks laughed, until Martha reached back and pulled a glock out from where it had been hidden in her belt and under her jacket.

"I have a gun, I will shoot you," she threatened. The gun wasn't loaded, she didn't even have any ammo on her, but it was easy enough to threaten him when he was being so obnoxious. It was useful having a firearm sometimes, and thank god Eugene decided not to question if it was real, his group all ducking away, "You're an organiser, and we need to see all of your security footage from the last week."

"...Okay..." Eugene the Dork muttered, waving away his cronies (a marauding gang of wizard bullies was the last thing Martha had expected that morning) and then mumbling them to follow him as Martha stowed the gun away, hoping people would assume it was a prop and wouldn't call the police.

"Thought you said he was your friend?" Mickey muttered to Adam when they walked.

"No, I just said I know him, we went to Harvard together," Adam said, "He always hated me because I went to college about three years early and was the only person cleverer than him in the class."

"You went to _Harvard_?" Martha hissed.

"Yes, it's where Van Statten sort of, found me. Long story..."


	57. Jabba's Palace

_Nine_

_Jabba's Palace_

"Excuse me, have you seen anything weird lately?"

Nine, yet again, had his faced laughed in by somebody dressed like the back end of a Judoon, who shook their anus-mouth at him and sauntered away.

"Unbelievable, these people have no manners," he shook his head, "I'd ask if there was something funny about my face, but not even a mother could love that rear-end over there."

"Well that's what happens when you ask a bunch of people dressed like aliens if they've seen anything weird," Donna said.

"She's right, the weirdest thing this lot have ever seen is someone with a girlfriend," River said.

"A lot of prejudice against people obsessed with aliens, eh?" Nine said to River, only half-jokingly. She raised an eyebrow, scoffed and looked away, "I suppose you don't have a girlfriend, either."

"Alright then, asking people isn't getting us anywhere, what do we do next?" Donna interrupted.

"Well we're looking for a spaceship," said Nine, "Probably small, like I said earlier. Doesn't matter how small though, human spaceships shatter that silence up there, but a Goflie spaceship _explodes_ it, almost a million times bigger than your biggest battle cruiser."

"So..?" Donna prompted.

"Our spaceships are small to them but still pack plenty of punch. Just because this one's small to _us_ doesn't mean it won't leave residue, traces, anything out of the ordinary. You know, like heat signatures, electrical interference," he said.

"I remember Rose telling me a story like that before, something to do with the 2012 Olympics," Donna mused. Nine hadn't heard that story, so assumed resentfully that it was after his time.

"Just look out for anything odd," he said, then they both gave him looks, "You know what I mean! Years of travelling anywhere and anywhen and you can't spot a mask and a bit of plastic compared to an ugly mug and a blaster? Did either of you learn anything travelling with me?"

"Bloody hell, and I thought the Tenth one was rude," Donna muttered.

"You haven't-" Nine began, and then a scream tore through the air. A real scream, of genuine fear, and he was instantly alert, "Scream like that? That's what I call 'odd'. Come on!" He ran off, not looking if they were following. Everyone was screaming now, people running towards him so he had to fight through to get to the source. The only other thing he could hear was one word: Murder. And it was being shouted incessently, repeated by anybody who heard it, but murder how?

He seemed to burst out of the crowd into trickles of people, dotted about and debating if they should leave or go get a glimpse of whatever was going on. Convention security (though Nine didn't know why a convention would need security) came from the sides to stop him, and he found his psychic paper inhis pocket and held it up.

"Special investigators with the military," he said, "Want us to have a look? Even if you say no, I'm going to anyway."

"More?" a guard asked the one closest to Nine.

"What do you mean 'more'?"

"Some woman, Jones, wanted the secuirty office unlocking," he said, clearly deeming the 'ID' to be legitimate.

"Dr Jones is with us, part of our party. Sorry, can't tell you what we're up to, but I've heard some people shouting murder, want to tell me anything about that?" Nine put the psychic paper away and crossed his arms, "Also, if you could keep the police out, tell them UNIT are handling this."

"UNIT?" asked the guard.

"The military," Nine answered, "Under my orders, keep the police out, if they have any problems they can take it up with UNIT. I'm the Doctor, by the way, this is River, this is Donna, who are you?"

"Erm, Joe," answered the guard.

"Nice to meet you, Joe, show us this murder."

And it certainly looked like murder, of some kind, but Nine didn't know who would be charged.

"That's grim," Donna said, "What happened to her?" The skimpy outfit the girl was wearing wasn't doing any good hiding the gaping hole in the middle of her chest, a little below her neck. The guards were all facing away from the brutal scene, none of them wanting to look. The hole was almost a perfect circle, and about the size of his fist, and the skin on the surface was split, like something had burst out of her. And furthermore, the edges and the seared flesh inside looked almost burned, and it certainly smelt it.

"Don't know," Nine said, "Wonder who she is, no ID."

"Princess Leia as far as I can tell," River said, and Nine and Donna stared at her, "What? Well, she is!"

"The sensitivity is killing me," said Donna disapprovingly.

"...Well, she is..." River repeated herself quietly.

"Doctor?" Donna asked, "Must have been something large-ish, right? Apple-sized?"

"Don't know. Look at the skin, it's like when you stab a piece of paper with pencil and it splits. Only she wasn't stabbed, there's no back wound, all the blood comes from the front. You can't see all the way through," he said, "So something was inside her and it came out..." He then took out his screwdriver, ignoring what Donna was mumbling about Alien, and scanned the hole, "Ah-ha!"

"What is it?" River asked.

"Massive heat readings, and fuel traces," he said.

"Fuel traces?" asked Donna.

"Yep!" he stood up from where he'd been crouched next to the dead girl, "We just missed our spaceship. A murdering spaceship, too."

"_That_ big? How'd it get inside her?"

"Maybe not," Nine said, "Like I said, spaceships generate a lot of power. Meteors make big craters. It's probably a lot smaller than that hole. For my money, I'd say she swallowed it by accident."

"And it broke out of her, so that means there are lifeforms on it. It's a populated spaceship with an arrest warrant," River said, "But how do we find it now? If it can fly out of her, it can fly out of the hall, it could be miles away."

"Exacty, could've left ages ago," said Nine, "But they haven't. They need something in here. We just need to find out what. And now a girl's dead, so this is more than a simple distress signal. Somethng bigger going on."

"Well maybe Martha found something on the CCTV?" Donna suggested.

"No point meeting back up, just tell her to call you if she finds something," Nine said.

"She melted her phone."

"_Melted_ it? How?"

"Pyre... Pyro... Um... Fire control powers," Donna said after thinking, and not being bothered enough to remember the word.

"Pyrokinesis?" Nine asked increduclously.

"That's it, yep," Donna confirmed, nodding. Every few seconds she would glance at the dead girl on the floor and then look away again at the sight of the gaping hole in her chest serving as the universe's goriest launchpad.

"Has that Dalek been messing with DNA again?" River asked coldly. Donna stared at her like she was personally offended.

"No," said Donna, shaking her head, "No, it was UNIT. Don't call her that. Everyone has a past, alright?" River then rolled her eyes, not caring one bit, flashing them at Nine as though to ask for his support, which he didn't give.

"...Tell that idiot boy then," Nine suggested to quell the tension.

"The Eleventh Doctor broke his phone this morning," Donna said.

"Does anyone have a phone anymore!?"

"I'll tell Mickey! No need to shout! You've destoryed plenty of phones in your time anyway," she said, remarking on the fact that over two and half months ago he'd melted all the mobiles for a reason he couldn't even remember. Donna huffed and then took her phone out, presumably to text.

"Well then sweetie," said River, and he looked over, "What's the next step?"

"Place is empty now," he said, "If anyone knew her, they'll probably have stuck around somewhere. We'll look for people who have stayed, talk to them."

"Ask them if they've seen anything weird?" Donna suggested, and he scowled at her.

"Ha, ha, very funny," he said.

"Ooh, excuse me, have you seen anything odd lately? Something like a spaceship the size of a bean exploding out of a woman's chest?" Donna said in a voice like she was asking someone how much sugar they had in their coffee. River snickered.

"That's disrespectful! You're as bad as her, all this Princess Leia talk," Nine waved a hand at River.

"She's dressed as Princess Leia! Have you never seen Star Wars?" she questioned.

"Your bedside manner is terrible. Trust me, I'm a doctor. Let's go look, keep an eye out for any... You know."

"What? Chewbaccas?" Donna asked.

"Well if she came in a group maybe they synchronised outfits!?" he protested, thinking his idea was perfectly logical, as apparently humorous as it was.

"Han Solo and Luke Skywalker better look out, the Doctor's on the case. Unless it was C-3PO? I mean, it's always the butler."


	58. The Woman Who Swallowed A Fly

_Martha_

_The Woman Who Swallowed A Fly_

She and Mickey were standing either side of Adam Mitchell, who was trawling through the security footage of the convention trying to spot anything out of the ordinary. Unfortunately, more or less everything was out of the ordinary at this place, and Martha didn't know what to look for. And then screams started outside and they looked to the closed door, as though blue wood would somehow be helpful in their plight.

"What the hell's going on?" Mickey asked, glancing back at the CCTV as Adam Mitchell switched it back to a live feed and they saw crowds of people running for the exits. "We should go see," Mickey started to leave, but Martha grabbed his arm.

"No, the Doctor's out there, he'll find out what's going on, we can watch from here," Martha told him.

"The Doctor's running towards the screams, so it's probably nothing to do with him," Adam said, flicking one of the three monitors through different screens until finding one with a woman on them, wearing what looked, on the black and white widescreen, like a bikini, lying flat on her back in a cleared space.

"What's that on her chest?" Mickey asked.

"Looking at her chest, are you?" Martha joked, but her attentions were drawn by the dark, fist-sized circle as well.

"I'll have you know that's Princess Leia Organa of Alderaan," Adam told them both. Martha could see the resemblance now he said that, but she was still watching the hole.

"Oh my god, I think it's a wound," Martha breathed, "Can you zoom in?"

"Oh her chest?"

"Yes, to see if she's dead, god you're juvenile sometimes," Martha muttered.

"Adam's used to staring at women's chests on computer screens anyway," Eugene, who was loitering behind the three of them as though to keep an eye on them, remarked.

"What's that supposed to mean?" Mickey retorted. Mickey, like Martha, probably knew _exactly_ what it meant, but although Mickey was a lot less inclined than Martha to defend Adam Mitchell, he still had his loyalty to the TARDIS crew - no matter which member they were.

"It means he could never get a girlfriend," said Eugene.

"What? And you could?" Mickey snorted bitterly. Martha knew that after Rose had left with the Doctor, Mickey had succumbed to nerd culture and fallen into the depths of science-fiction on his quest to find the Time Lord, so his 'prejudices' against Eugene (and even Adam) were most definitely _mock_ prejudices, and if they weren't he was being criminally hypocritical.

"_My wife_," Eugene began smugly, "Is out there on the floor cosplaying Xena."

"Just because Adam can't get a girlfriend doesn't-"

"Adam literally has a girlfriend," Adam cut across Mickey in his own defence, "A ridiculously hot girlfriend as well." Martha had no opinion on that remark.

"She here?" Eugene asked.

"No, she's away on holiday with her identical twin sister."

"You're telling me you have a super-hot girlfriend who is one of twins? _You_? Mary Mitchell?"

"Sorry - 'Mary'?" Martha asked.

"As in the Virgin Mary, because neither of them have ever been laid," said Eugene. Martha thought this was pathetic. Two grown men having a competition into who has the most attractive significant other while one of them makes virgin jokes.

"Just because Adam's never been-"

"I have!" again, he stopped Mickey talking with his protests, "Why does everybody think that!? What is it about me that gives off a virginal vibe!?" There was silence.

"...So if this 'girlfriend'-" he did air quotations "-exists, call her."

"I can't call her, her brother-in-law broke my phone this morning to prevent me talking to her. Mickey can-"

"I don't even have her number," Mickey shrugged.

"...Oh look, the Doctor's at the crime scene," Martha said loudly to try and diffuse the situation. The Doctor _was_ at the crime scene, poring over the crude wound in the woman's body and looking back and possibly shouting at Donna and River every few seconds, neither of whom were venturing too close, "They better tell us what they find..."

"Rewind the footage," Mickey said to Adam, leaning down so they were about the same distance from the screens. Martha was the one who stood by patiently - and also because she didn't want to accidentally melt the CCTV footage. _That_ would be awful.

Adam did rewind it, and the Doctor vanished and people came flooding back in reverse, until the girl rose forwards to her feet like the undead and the wound in her chest healed itself.

"Wait, what made that wound?" Mickey asked, frowning the same way as Martha. Nobody had stabbed or shot the girl, it was like the hole in her chest came from nowhere, right after she took a swig of what looked like ordinary pop.

"I, um..." Adam had no answer.

"Can you slow it down?" Martha asked, and Eugene butted in.

"No, this system doesn't do slow-mo," he drawled, like he was finding great pleasure in hindering what had just become a murder investigation.

"It does for me," Adam muttered, doing something to it and typing out reams of code Martha didn't bother to try and follow. A moment later, they were watching again, and that was when they saw it. A tiny, dark splotch, shooting out of the woman's oesophagus.

"I think that's our spaceship," Martha said.

"Load of good that does us, it looks like a fly," Mickey grumbled.

"Hang on, I'll try and track it, see if it lands anywhere..." Adam muttered, and he started flicking through frozen screens again looking for black dots.

"Wait, spaceship?" Eugene asked.

"A spaceship that just killed a woman," said Martha, "This is why we're here, we've been tracing it."

"Can't you just 'trace it' again and find out where it is? I'm gonna lost my reputation here if this isn't a hoax..." he said slowly, "And wait, you work for UNIT?" he asked Adam.

"...Yep," he lied, "We're the best of the best. Top secret."

"Our tracing equipment is back at base," said Martha.

"This is why we need better equipment," Mickey repeated what he'd said earlier, "I'm gonna have a word with the Doctor. Whichever's the least preoccupied."

"They're _all_ preoccupied," said Adam, "We'd all be best if we got Jack and Luke to make stuff. And also me. Oswin when she gets back. Go over their heads."

"Imagine if we all had sonic devices," Martha said.

"And scanners," Mickey added. _Especially_ scanners, she thought to herself, "Find anything yet?"

"Eh, sort of, not quite," Adam answered, but he did appear to be making progress watching the footage back slowly.

"So what is it that you people do?" Eugene asked, "Have you broken out of some asylum? Aliens don't exist, and neither do tiny spaceships. It's probably a fly."

"A fly that punched a hole in a woman the size of an orange?" Martha questioned.

"How'd it even do that?" Mickey asked.

"She drank before she died, it was probably in the glass," Martha said, "But if it broke out like that, it's probably manned."

"Or alien-ned?" Eugene suggested.

"Shut up, Eugene," Adam snapped coldly, "If it has people on it piloting it, why is it here? Why wouldn't it leave?"

"It wants something," Mickey said, "But what would a spaceship want?"

"Fuel," said Martha, "Maybe they thought that drink was fuel? Why else would they land in it?"

"That's if their goal is to escape," Adam shrugged, "Might not be. Didn't the Doctor say it was a distress signal?"

"Yeah," Martha confirmed.

"...Maybe it's a rescue mission. Maybe there are two spaceships?" Adam suggested.

"Two of them? Bloody hell, we've got enough trouble with one," she grumbled, "Don't you think it'd be useful if we had a car on the... I mean, back at base?" she changed what she was talking about halfway through.

"I have a car back at base," Adam said.

"Do you?" Mickey asked, and Martha prayed they weren't going to start talking about cars around her while they were supposed to be alien hunting.

"Yeah, it has a teleportation matrix so it can move on and off," he said, "...You should get another car though, with like, more stuff in than luxury seats and a plasma screen."

"Your car has a plasma screen!?" Martha exclaimed.

"I'm a millionaire! Why _wouldn't _my car have a plasma screen? Anyway, I've found where it's gone, it's gone to that back room over there, it says 3B on the door," Adam said, getting off the subject of his fortune.

"That's auction storage," Eugene said.

"We're gonna need access to auction storage," Martha said, "Adam, wipe the CCTV."

"You can't wipe that! That's evidence! How much jurisdiction do you even have!?" Eugene demanded.

"As much as we need, and you're just the one renting out this hall. This can't be seen by anyone else. If you try to tell anyone, they won't believe you," Martha said.

"Call the police and let them look at the body, best get it cleared up quickly," Mickey added coolly.

"We'd better meet them at the doors," Martha said to him, "Explain what's going on." Mickey's phone rang at that moment, and he muttered that it was Donna, and answered.

"Yep?" he said, putting the phone on speaker.

"_Did you lot find anything on the cameras?_" Donna asked.

"Yeah, we think there are two ships and this is a rescue mission. The girl accidentally swallowed the ship," Mickey said.

"_The Doctor thinks she did the same_," Donna said.

"We're calling the police to get the body moved, we're gonna meet them," Mickey explained, "You three should head to room 3B near the back of the hall, should be auction storage, that's where the ship went."

"_Did you get a good look at it?_"

"No," Adam said, "It was too small, just looked like a black dot... The footage is wiped," he added quietly to Martha, who nodded. Then he started scribbling something on a notepad next to him.

"_Thank god you've got something, we've been looking for Chewbacca for the last ten minutes_," Donna grumbled, then she hung up.

"Alright Eugene," said Martha, turning to him, "This is government business. You tell anyone, not only will they not believe you, but you'll get yourself killed, and anyone you tell." She and Mickey both left, but when Adam hung back a moment, they had to pause.

"By the way," he said, handing Eugene the sheet he'd been writing on, "You can call my girlfriend and ask her if she exists if you want." _Then_ he left.

"You are such a baby," Mickey said, shaking his head.

"What? I'm sick of being called 'Mary Mitchell' after all this time."


	59. Girls Just Wanna Have Fun

_Nine_

_Girls Just Wanna Have Fun_

"What are they calling the police here for? No need to call those idiots, they'll probably step on the spaceship, and what then?" Nine asked no-one in particular, swaggering on through the abandoned convention centre pointedly examining every door he went past and getting distracted by every fly buzzing around.

"Wouldn't it technically make our job easier, sweetie?" River asked him.

"You people and 'easy'. No sense of fun anymore…" he grumbled.

"A girl's dead and you're talking about fun?" Donna questioned incredulously, with a hint of ashamed disbelief perhaps that made him roll his eyes, though neither of the women could see his face.

"Catching murderers is always fun," he told them, trying to see if a door had '3B' on it, but this was room 4A, "It's part of the honour. Anyway, I'm sure it was manslaughter; if she accidentally swallowed it they were only protecting themselves from a stomach acid bath. And I know from experience that that's not pleasant."

"Eugh," muttered Donna in response to that, and he supposed she'd cringed or something.

Finally, they found 3B, and Nine suffered a moment of brief embarrassment when he tried to push the door open, decided it was locked and sonicked it. However, the door _still_ wouldn't open it when he pushed it. Donna then pointed out it was a _pull_ door, and he was too used to the TARDIS opening the wrong way to the sign. So, when he tried to pull it, he discovered that in his earlier endeavours with the sonic screwdriver, he had succeeded in locking the door, which had already been opening. For the last time he struggled with it, taking out the screwdriver and sonicking it _again, _and then when he tried to pull it he somehow missed the handle.

"_I'll_ do it," Donna said exasperatedly, opening the door perfectly the first time.

"Probably faulty," Nine muttered, going in as Donna politely held it open for him, casting a smirk River's way, both of them silently mocking him.

"Oh, obviously," River said, "_Faulty_."

"Yeah, it's not the only thing," Donna snickered, clearly referring to Nine. Bitterly, he stared around the room for a few moments, so caught up in his resent for what had just happened that it took him a couple of seconds to realise that the room was pitch black and there weren't any lights on.

Behind him, River sighed, and he head a metallic click, and then the sounds of lightbulbs humming as, in large sections, the storage room's lights switched themselves on and illuminated towering shelves, full of what Nine could only describe as junk. All of it useless (some of it broken) science-fiction memorabilia, and by god there was a lot of it. Taking a few steps back, he could see the centre's usual storage a few shelves down, most of it consisting of plastic tarps and mops and other cleaning supplies. But until then, they were in a warehouse of bits of plastic covered in silver paint, the shape being the only difference in all of it, and he was no connoisseur of geek culture.

"Well, this looks fun," Donna sighed, staring around, "By fun, I mean rubbish. I used to do fun stuff. Meeting Agatha Christie, _that_ was fun, even though there was a giant wasp. But this?"

"I didn't know we'd be crawling around backrooms looking for bean-ships, did I?" Nine retaliated, "All of you blaming the messenger."

"But you're not the messenger," said Donna, "_You're_ the driver."

"He's tried his best," River chastised her.

"Well then his best is shi-"

"Shush! Both of you!" Nine shouted, not wanting an argument between Donna and River on his hands, especially not one revolving around him and his 'apparently' pathetic efforts to go somewhere interesting for the day, "Maybe you all ought to just change what you think is fun, hmm?"

"Donna just means this isn't what she had in mind this morning when you said it would be 'an adventure the likes of which none of you have ever seen,'" River said. Annoyingly enough, she was quoting him to the letter, except he may have said it was a 'fantastic adventure' the likes of which none of them had ever seen (he was definitely an adjective-man).

"_Donna_ can speak for herself," Donna said.

"Well maybe Donna should speak for herself more," River said. If there was one thing Nine wouldn't tell Donna Noble to do, it was to speak _more_. She spoke enough already, and it was always loud and aggressive unless they were in some dire circumstances were empathy was needed – in which case he'd seen her be surprisingly compassionate. But, surprisingly enough, there wasn't any compassion here at all, Donna was just irritated that River was daring to put words in her mouth.

"Can we maybe get back to looking for this spaceship?" Nine, again, felt he had to interrupt. Donna and River had been glaring at each other up until then, at which point they both turned their angry eyes on him, and he felt thoroughly exposed to the both of them, "Come on, there's a woman dead out there, and here you two are bickering about-"

"You?" River suggested.

"I… Yes! Apparently! Just because I'm used to women fighting over me-"

"You wish," Donna snarked, and he grimaced, "Just as bad as Jack sometimes."

"Oh please, nobody's as bad as Jack," River said smoothly.

"Well at least Jack's telling the truth about women fighting over him," Donna retorted to River.

"Why wouldn't women be fighting over _my_ boyfriend?" There was quiet in the room then.

The statement which seemed to shock Donna for whatever reason (probably because she had never heard the official announcement) served a good purpose though, it seemed, because in the quiet where he heard his heart beats in his ears, he heard something else. A bleeping sound. He frowned.

"Well, I-" Donna began.

"Shush," Nine said.

"Alright, I'm getting really sick of you telling me to-"

"Shut up!" he shouted, "I mean it! I can hear something!"

"Is it your own ego?" she kept talking, and he glared at her, "…Fine, sorry…" And she finally quieted.

"Thank you," he sighed, shaking his head. Why was that so difficult? Why didn't Donna ever learn to be quiet once in a while? _Eugh, cockneys_, he thought to himself, shaking his head. Northern prejudices were nothing compared to the judgements faced by people from East London.

In the silence, the bleeping noise continued steadily. It was very quiet, so quiet that Donna was struggling to hear anything and kept making irritated, grunting sounds (which definitely did not help). He put a finger to his lips (and Donna sighed, getting more and more annoyed by him in general), and started walking, following his ears towards the sound.

"I can't hear anything," Donna complained.

"It's because you're a human – _I _have the hearing of a dog."

"Scent of one, too," she muttered.

"What's that supposed to mean!?"

"Have you ever heard of deodorant?"

"Petty human invention," he said, and then he heard her stop walking, and turned back, "What?"

"That's rank," she commented, and he scoffed and went on his way walking again. It _was_ a petty human invention – other species were proud of their body odour, including Time Lords. Though, he thought proudly, Time Lords didn't have BO like humans, and he thought that if he stank like them he might need a roll on, too. He'd hate to smell like a human.

Soon enough, the beeping was accompanied by a flashing, blue light.

"It's like the loose screw in the Iron Giant," Donna said.

"More unnecessary comments," Nine retorted. Donna grunted, sick of him. He found it finally though, and it wasn't the size of a fly, it was larger, which lead Nine to think this was the ship in distress rather than the rescuing party. It was about half the size of a banana, considerably bigger than the other. Maybe it was some kind of cruise ship? "Fantastic," he said, "Now all we have to do is make contact with them. Can I borrow a phone?"


	60. Hometown Heroes, National Nobodies

**AN: So yeah this was a short storyline firstly because I didn't really know how to extend it, (and I didn't even get to do what I originally wanted to do), and also because I'm gonna do a couple of chapters back on the TARDIS in the evening instead of just the usual one.**

_Martha_

_Hometown Heroes, National Nobodies_

"Alright, who're you then?" the first police constable Martha came across asked. He was tall, gangly, rude, and sounded like he was from the West Country. A terrible combination.

"Dr Martha Jones, UNIT," she said, flashing her ID badge again. And to think that morning she'd been seriously debating if she'd really _need_ to pretend to still be a part of UNIT, and she'd nearly left the piece of coloured plastic behind on the desk. She'd not been on the fence about the handgun though. She _always _brought the gun out, unbeknownst to the Doctor, who wasn't used to checking his companions for firearms. The three of them were much too busy these days to do that anyway, because Martha was convinced that she wasn't the only one to be carrying weapons around. She knew for a fact Mickey also had a gun (there were always so many jokes of, "_Is that a gun in your pants or are you just pleased to see me?_" between them, even after years of being together), and would bet money that Jenny and Jack both carried blasters around with them.

"UNIT?" asked the PC.

"Special task force, yep," Mickey confirmed, "Investigating this death."

"So what're we out here for?" he asked bitterly.

"Clean up the body," Martha said, "Like he said, special task force. We don't bring body bags or hearses out with us, there weren't supposed to be any fatalities."

"Just get the police out to clean up, why don't you? Bloody rude, more than anything. I got called out of bed for this; murder at a sci-fi convention, and then bloody UNIT!" he protested.

"UNIT?" some other officer asked.

"Aye," he called over.

"Somebody ought to tell 'em the aliens in there aren't real!" she shouted, to the chortles of the other officers milling about with their high-vis jackets and checkered ties.

"Your jokes are wasting valuable police time," Martha snapped coolly.

"_You're _wasting valuable police time!" the PC complained, and then the female officer who he'd been calling over to before sauntered over with a coffee in her hand.

"He's right, I heard there was mugging down on Loftus Avenue, I could be over there instead. Chippie down there," she said matter-of-factly. So that was all the police these days cared about? Fish and chips? Although in all honestly, fish and chips sounded grand at that moment, and Martha wondered where the nearest one was. Thank god they were in Britain, because in Britain you were never more than five minutes away from the stink of batter and vinegar.

"Stop messing about and get to it, she's in there," Martha nodded back to the convention hall.

"Who's the victim? Princess Leia?" the woman snorted, and a couple of other constables who were listening laughed too, and Martha rolled her eyes.

"She is, actually. Or dressed like her anyway. She's also been murdered, so pay a bit of respect, you're not paid to judge her hobbies, are you? Go move the body, and we'll find who did it," Martha said.

"Reckon my flatmate's got a Star Trek edition of Cluedo back home," the girl carried on making jokes. This was just reminding Martha why UNIT and Torchwood were needed to investigate extra-terrestrials – it was because the police were useless.

"You can't get a Star Trek edition of Cluedo," Adam Mitchell pointed out, and the girl gave him a once-over.

"Who's he? UNIT's nerd-in-residence?" Both officers burst out laughing, and Martha groaned, resolving to say nothing more until they stopped. Thankfully, it seemed neither of them could think of anything else remotely funny to say, and after a few minutes the police were filing into the convention hall to find this body.

"Complete idiots…" Martha muttered once all the PCs were out of earshot, shaking her head, "And I reckon that bloke was from the West Country. Don't trust him to his job properly."

"…What?" Adam asked.

"The West Country. Do you reckon he can take notes properly with six fingers?"

"…_I'm_ from the West Country," Adam said.

"Are you!?" Martha exclaimed.

"Yes! Devon!"

"Do you have six fingers?" Mickey asked.

"No I do not! And before you ask, I do have five toes."

"Only five?" Martha asked, "Because I'm a doctor, and-"

"Five on each foot, ten total, I'm a boy genius, I can count," Adam said. Apparently the fact his girlfriend wasn't skulking around and that there were no Time Lords in the vicinity gave him bragging rights for his intelligence. Normally he was so overshadowed he wouldn't dare boast about his intellect. "There isn't any incest in the West Country."

"Are you sure?" Martha asked.

"I'm as sure of that as I'm sure neither of you two talk in cockney rhyming slang," he muttered, crossing his arms, "…So shouldn't we go help the others in auction storage now..?"

No sooner had Adam said that did Martha hear loud shouting coming from behind them somewhere, and the three of them wheeled around to see Nine storming over, waving something small and silver in his hand with a flashing blue light on top of it, followed by a rather apathetic River but a clearly fuming Donna Noble, her face red as her hair.

"This _idiot_," Donna began loudly, "_Has broken my phone_!" Another broken phone!? That was the third one in a week, three of them now needing replacements.

"I needed it to transmit a signal to the rescue party," Nine argued with her, "The rescue party who should be showing up any minute so that I can capture both of these and take them home on the TARDIS. In about half a century, the humans call this lot 'Minioids.' Mainly because humans can't physically say the name of them – got a lot of clicks and hisses in their language. It's like if ants were beatboxers."

"Okay, sweetie…" River said a little wearily and sarcastically. Nine was beaming to himself and not really paying her a lot of attention, which Martha thought was amusing given the fact they were apparently dating. She caught an eye-roll from Donna, who then nodded her head towards River and Nine (she was a little behind the both of them), then she mimed moving her hand across her neck as though to cut her own throat. What had the pair of them been up to to annoy Donna so much?

"Any lightsabers in auction storage..?" Adam asked.

"Yeah," Donna answered him, "I'd've got one for you, but I don't know whose you're looking for." Fair enough, thought Martha. It was the thought that counted. And it also wasn't the risk of buying totally the wrong one – if that happened, for all she knew, Adam might only have a handful of days left to live.

"Ugh," Adam groaned, apparently thinking, "If this is all over-" (at this point, it seemed to be, as Nine jumped to try and catch the other spaceship as it flitted about his head like a shiny wasp) "-I'd better go look…"

"If I come with you, will you buy me a phone?" Martha asked him hopefully as he started to walk off. He stopped, turned, looked at her flatly for a few moments. "…Please?"

"…Alright, fine, _fine_. I'm going to use up all my fortune buying replacements for broken crap living on the TARDIS," he grumbled.

"Can I come too?" Donna then asked, "If you buy me a new phone as well? Since you need to get her and you a phone _anyway_…"

"Oh my god! Alright! Since I'm apparently the phone pimp of the TARDIS!" _What?_, Martha thought, thinking him a weirdo for saying that, "Honestly, are any of you aware that you literally live inside of a phone box?"

"It's a rubbish phone box though," said Donna.

"Oi!" Nine objected, finally catching the rogue rescue ship. Hopefully it wouldn't launch itself through the back of his hand onto the stratosphere.

"Shut up!" Donna shouted at him, making Martha wince, "Play with your bloody spaceship, we're leaving." And with that she marched off, leaving Adam and Martha obliged to follow her lead to room 3B.

"Martha, you know it's date night?" Mickey called after her.

"Of course I do, I never forget," she turned and looked back, "I'll see you tonight," she blew him a kiss jokingly, and he laughed, and then his smile vanished when he realised he'd gotten himself stuck in the presence of Nine and River with no way to escape until they went back to the TARDIS (though it was his lucky day, the TARDIS hadn't moved from where they'd landed it).


	61. Riches Beyond Measure

_Martha_

_Riches Beyond Measure_

"Can you give us any clues of what to look for?" Martha asked Adam pleadingly. Even with the lights on, auction storage was dark, the air thick with dust and muck. Donna kept complaining it was cold, too, though Martha was hard done by to accurately tell the temperature anymore, when everywhere felt like the Sahara at noon. Of course, it was physically impossible for someone 'normal' to be that hot all the time without suffering some serious affliction causing an inability to function, but Martha was roasting hot as though in a fire.

"No, they all look the same if you don't know what you're looking for," Adam said, "I'd get a photo on my phone, but..."

"Ha, ha," said Donna dryly.

"Just turn them on and let me know if it's green, then I'll check if it's the right model," he said, "It's a good thing I have a good memory, isn't it?"

"Why can't the Doctor buy replacements for things of Clara's he breaks, anyway?" Donna asked.

"Probably the same reason neither of you two can buy replacements of things you break. Like phones," he retorted, and Donna was left without an argument and a shameful air of hypocrisy about her. Martha had said nothing, and was accordingly innocent in these affairs.

"Why were you in his room playing with toys in the first place?" Donna questioned after a pause filled with more looking for lightsabers. Of the three that Martha had come across already, two had broken hilts and didn't work, and one of them was red.

"It was his idea, to get away from Rose," said Adam. Martha sighed internally. Almost a full day without the topic of Rose Tyler being broached, but it seemed the spell was broken as the conversation turned to avoidance tactics, "Speaking of which, what happened last night? The Doctor wouldn't tell me."

"It was bloody horrendous," Donna said, "For a moment, everyone thought she wiped him from history."

"Rose told me she didn't," Martha said. True enough, Rose had paid her a brief yet teary visit the night before. Martha had managed to convince Mickey to answer the door though and make Rose go away by saying they were busy trying to stop Martha inadvertently burning everything, which was still mostly true. She'd overheard the conversation thought. "She didn't wipe him, she sent him back home with no way to get back."

"I don't know if exile is worse than erasure," Adam said, "Especially since he knows Ten's still here vying for her... Ah-ha, I think I might've found it..."

* * *

"The Tenth Doctor isn't thinking straight," Donna said a while later, when they were loitering in a Phones 4 U waiting for new phones to be brought from the back, courtesy of Adam Mitchell.

"Neither of them are," said Martha.

"I don't get it, what do you all have against them doing what makes _them_ happy?" Adam questioned.

"Oh, you're a man, you don't understand. It's unhealthy," Martha said.

"Exactly," agreed Donna, "That obsession he has with her. He _knows_ there's more to life than a girl."

"Adam has an equally unhealthy infatuation with a girl anyway," Martha said slyly, and Adam sighed, no longer willing to speak out in argument with the girls on what they thought was correct, "We're just trying to get them to move on."

"They don't _need_ to move on, it's like you're forcing a break-up just because the couple annoy you," Adam snapped.

"They _do_ annoy us," said Donna.

"Exactly!" he exclaimed, utterly lost about what was happening, "Can't you just let them be?"

"We have been letting them be! Nobody offers any opinion on what's going on. The biggest intervention is just trying to keep them away from each other," Martha said, "We voice our opinions to each other and each other only."

"Have you ever heard of sins by omission rather than commission? It means not doing something is just as damaging and risky as actually doing it," Adam said.

"So if you care so much, _you _do something," Donna said with a shrug, "_We're _staying out of it. We just want something to talk about."

"She's right, this is even more entertaining than listening to the chav-gossip in A&amp;E. We had this woman once who broke her leg because her boyfriend got angry and pushed a wheelie bin at her and it crushed her fibulus," Martha said. Adam and Donna both stared at her. "What? None of you lot know what goes on during night shifts in the ER."

"And you don't know what happens late at night in the stationary cupboards of big offices. There are benefits of being a doctor _and_ a temp," Donna said.

"I think being a millionaire comes with the most benefits myself..." said Adam slyly, dampening the mood instantly with his boastfulness.

* * *

They were sat on the typical shiny, silver tables and rickety silver chairs outside the first chip shop they'd found to satisfy Martha's craving. It was cold, but inside had standing room only, and they needed to sit somewhere to give Adam time to add strings of phone numbers into the contacts of the three new mobiles from that memory of his.

"Rose really needs to get out somewhere," Martha said eventually, bringing the subject up _again_ as she picked up a chip damp with a thick lathering of vinegar, almost cringing when she tasted it and wishing she'd dolled it out more equally.

"You take her out then," Donna shrugged.

"We could have a girls' night?" Martha suggested. Donna stared at her flatly for a few moments.

"No," she said firmly, and Martha sighed, and then got another idea of what to talk about as Adam busied himself. Martha thought he'd probably never been out anywhere with two girls before in his life - or at least not two girls who _weren't_ related to him.

"What were River and the Ninth Doctor doing today?" Martha asked, preparing to hear the worst. Donna dropped her plastic fork onto her chips.

"Oh. My. God," she began, Martha already amused, "They're the worst. They don't even remotely act like a couple, she spent the whole time taking the piss out of him and he was retaliating."

"Maybe we're all wrong and they don't go out?" Adam suggested boredly, only half paying attention to what Donna and Martha were talking about.

"They do, because she called him her boyfriend," Donna relayed to them, and then she dry retched for dramatic effect and Martha snorted.

"Seriously?" she asked, and Donna nodded, "God, that's weird. I just... They're... It's weird though... But... No, it is..."

"I know what you mean," said Donna, "I'll tell you what though, I am _never_ going anywhere with him again. Can't stand him. Complete idiot. And he's so... You know, humanist."

"What's 'humanist'?" asked Adam.

"Like racist, but for the whole species," Donna told him, and he stared at her incredulously with an eyebrow raised, "What!? He is! Told me humans were all weird for using deodorant." Donna picked her fork back up then, and returned to her chips, eating them far faster than Martha. "And you know what," she added pointedly to Adam, "You're not the only millionaire."

"Huh?" he asked.

"I won the bloody lottery."

"If you won the lottery why couldn't you buy your own damn phone!?" he exclaimed.

"...Alright, fine, I'll pay you back," she finally agreed, and he seemed satisfied enough, "I just didn't bring my card with me." Adam turned to Martha.

"...Well don't look at me! I'M not secretly rich," she protested, and he scoffed, and went back to adding mobile contacts as she shook her head and tried to ignore the specks of water appearing on the table and the pavement as it started to rain.

"We should go back," Donna suggested, "I didn't bring a coat."

* * *

"I _will_ take her out tomorrow," said Martha eventually, putting herself in Rose Tyler's firing line, "We'll go... I don't know... Shopping."

"If you dare ask to borrow my card-" Adam began.

"Shut up," she said over him, "Of course I won't. It'll be therapeutic anyway. Just to keep her away from the Doctor."

"They live together, you can't keep them split forever," Adam said, "Whatever's meant to happen will happen, especially if one of them has the power to control the universe. Speaking of powers, how come you didn't set fire to your bed last night?"

"The TARDIS converted the bathroom into a freezer for me," Martha admitted, "I slept in there." It had been uncomfortable, and Mickey had complained the next morning that he'd been frozen, even though he was in the fully-heated other room. He was happy enough having full possession of the bed, at any rate. "Anyway, I'm getting better with it."

"Guess you don't have a choice," Adam shrugged, "Hopefully your next power won't be nearly as damaging."

"Very funny," Martha said. By now, they'd finally made it through the light drizzle (though there were heavy, dark storm clouds hovering bulbously in the sky) back to the familiar blue box. Once upon a time, the TARDIS had contained wonderment beyond her wildest dreams. _Now_ the TARDIS contained almost a dozen other people, including one very angry blonde girl causing everyone else to go into hiding. Everyone but Martha, who had bravely volunteered herself into Rose's company. It wasn't even tomorrow yet, and she was already severely regretting that decision...


	62. Something Old

_Something Old_

It was going to be the best day of her life. Since she was a young girl, she'd submitted to the feminine cliché of daydreaming about her wedding day, however much she wished to lie and say she'd not given it one bit of thought. Of course, she had originally wanted a church affair. She wanted it to be small, intimate and religious. But then she'd grown to scarcely care for that, and to make too many acquaintances to fit in the pews. She'd always wanted lilies in her bouquet though, and that had remained the same. As had her dream of a five-tier chocolate cake, of silver seat covers and of three-inch heels. All white flowers, everything as snowy as the dress she was wearing, everything perfect.

She was in the bridal suite of the Sedgewick Hotel, watching the minutes tick down nervously. When the clock struck two, Miss Emily Croft would finally become Mrs Dale Bates, after four long years of happiness. She'd waited so long to get married, so long for the day of celebration, the honeymoon, the anniversaries, the gifts, the _love_. Everything good came out in people at weddings, she believed, everyone was happy and utterly carefree. It was a day off from the world and everything going on, and she was more than glad to provide people with that sort of escape, what with the Irish Republican Army ending the ceasefire of seventeen long months and the bombings lately. It was a frightening atmosphere, and this wedding of hers was a little pocket of peace in the midst of it all. At least, she thought so.

Her mother and her bridesmaids were, for the second time only, admiring her in her gown as she turned this way and that, casting glances over her shoulder and catching her own blue eyes in the mirror, the clear, crisp sky reflected back at her and making her irises positively glow. The gardens outside were green, lush and languid; picturesque and gorgeous. High bushes and nearly clipped trees, the vivid green of the hotel grounds clashing with the sky. She took a breath, and paused. Everything was so quiet. Just the tweeting of birds and the whispers of compliments between her comrades, not even a breeze rustling the leaves outside.

There was a crash.

The door was kicked down forcefully, shouting cracked the air and ripped the calmness apart like a chainsaw, shredding her relaxation and throwing her into fits of panic. She heard her mother scream, Emily herself backing away and knocking into the full-body mirror, which toppled in the chaos and shattered to dozens of glittery pieces on the cushy, patterned carpet. Four men had burst in, only one of them in suits and two of them waving guns wildly.

"Is she here!?" one of them, an American with a huge military-style coat, demanded, waving his gun. None of the three bridesmaids answered, and Emily's mother was crying and cowering in a corner, "Go check," he ordered some pasty blondish fellow next to him, who darted away, "She here!?"

"W-who!?" Cheryl, the chief bridesmaid, whimpered, holding her hands above her head.

"The bride," said the American.

"What? I… _I'm_ the bride – I don't understand – why do you have guns!? Why are you at my wedding!? This is supposed to be my perfect day!" she wailed. She'd been unusually calm for a bride on the morning of her wedding – in fact the hairdresser who had already been and gone had commented on it and her lack of fretting.

"The _other_ bride," he said, as if that made it any clearer to Emily, who was still thoroughly confused and genuinely, undeniably _terrified_.

"What!?"

"You're scaring her!" the only man in a suit – though the suit was bright blue, pinstriped, and the Converse on his feet were _hardly_ 'smart shoes' – spoke against the American, this one sounding like he was possibly from London. If so, what was he doing in Birmingham at the wedding of a girl he'd never met?

"No-one here," said the man the American had sent to 'check', whatever that meant.

"You sure?" the American asked, and received a nod.

"I wish you'd put that gun away," the man in the suit groaned, running a hand through his messy, gelled hair and looking displeased by the behaviour of the American.

"I don't understand – who are you!?" Emily asked again, frightened and shaking like a leaf.

"I'm the Doctor," the man in the suit said, "And there's an alien at your wedding."

* * *

_Four Hours Earlier…_

_DAY EIGHTY-ONE_

_Ten_

_Rose, Rose, Rose_, he thought to himself. Rose was all he thought of. She was all he wanted to think of, ever since the vanishing of Tentoo two nights ago. Now, 24/7, Rose Tyler was running through his mind. Jack was saying something to him, but he couldn't hear what it was. He was sitting on the stairs in the console room with his chin resting on his hands, staring emptily ahead at a spot on the floor which was burning into his eyes it had been that long since he blinked.

"…Doctor?" Jack asked, and when he waved a hand in front of Ten's eyes, Ten finally blinked, and glanced over.

"Hmm?" Ten asked, like he'd just been awoken from some deep slumber.

"Oh, I was just wondering if you'd noticed Rose over there," Jack said, nodding somewhere behind Ten. The Doctor instantly turned his head so quickly he thought if he was a human he might've given himself whiplash, but to his great disappointment, there was no beautiful blonde girl waiting for him at the top of the stairs. There was nothing. Jack sighed. "You wanna talk about it?" Ten gave him a suspicious look, "Hey, I have a lot of life experiences you could learn from. You're not the only one who's lived a while." He was joking, but Ten was too lethargic to laugh.

"Nothing to say," Ten said, "I know what everyone thinks. I have an 'unhealthy infatuation,'" he quoted something Donna had once said to him. Well, not once, multiple times she had told him that same thing, and that he needed to get over Rose Tyler. Well, he'd tried. For years. Years, and years. He'd given her a new husband and gone on his way, believing himself to be content. But he wasn't content, he'd never been fully content again, always so hollow and looking for ways to challenge the universe for taking this girl away from him.

"Some call in unhealthy, others call it love," Jack said, "A couple call it 'fate,' or 'destiny.'"

"Or bad luck," Ten sighed.

"Yep, and that," Jack agreed, "You want Rose back, I want your daughter back – the two of us make quite a rag-tag team of-"

"Bitter exes," Ten finished for him, feeling dilapidated.

"I guess you could say that. I mean, you could also say it was true love or something tacky."

"Semantics," Ten sighed, "Meaningless semantics. If I wanted wordplay, I would visit Shakespeare, Jack, not you. And I'd appreciate you not comparing me with my own daughter, who you cheated on."

"First of all, you can't have sex with holograms, that's how it works, okay? They don't have the parts. So I didn't sleep with that hologram of your daughter, so get off your high horse," Jack snapped, annoyed. Admittedly, this was news to Ten, who'd truthfully not given much thought to the logistics of intercourse with images. In retrospect, it seemed highly logical that one couldn't fornicate with one, however. "You oughta talk about it. You don't have to bottle up all your feelings anymore, y'know."

"'Anymore'?" Ten questioned, "_Anymore_ since when? Since this Dimension Crash eleven weeks ago? I don't see how being forced to live with you lot changes anything – I'm still me, I can still do what I want, and I don't have to listen to any humans. Especially not you."

"Oh, charming. I don't know how it changes anything either, but you gotta admit, it does. Everything's different now and you know it. It's a change in social dynamic – a change in social dynamic that could grant _you_ your happily-ever-after," Jack said, then there was a pause, and he shrugged, and leant back on the stairs disinterestedly, like he was about to yawn, "But don't listen to me."

"You're telling me one thing, Donna's telling me another, and nobody else will speak to me at all," Ten said grumpily, and Jack sighed.

"Well I can't-" whatever Jack had been about to say was cut off by some flashes of lights and a very faint bleeping sound, which meant to Ten that the TARDIS was addressing him and trying to get his attention. He frowned and stood up from his moping sport on the stairs leading up to lab, thinking that maybe he could ward away his sorrows and woes with adventure-shaped distractions.

He half-jogged around the console to the screen, where there was a newspaper article up for him to read, courtesy of the time machine herself. An article from some paper attached to an outlying village of Birmingham, called Warcester. To his horror, it had a dreadful headline: **_SEDGEWICK SLAUGHTER: 150 DEAD IN VICIOUS RAMPAGE_**. As he skimmed through the rest of it, he saw that the date was set at Saturday, February 17th, 1996, and the titular massacre had happened the day before, the 16th. From what he could gather, an unknown assailant had appeared at a hotel called the Sedgewick Hotel in the village, and murdered every single guest at a wedding taking place that day, leaving only the hotel staff alive, though apparently none of them remembered a thing (there was also a banner running across the top of the page advertising an interview with Jason Orange from Take That, who had apparently split up the Tuesday preceding this issue).

It was at this moment, as Jack read the same thing over Ten's shoulder, the Doctor got a rush of energy that felt like golden sparks flying behind his eyes, illuminating internal galaxies spanning trillions of miles and millennia in every direction, planets turning, time moving, wheels spinning, and he realised.

"It's in flux," he said to Jack, "This massacre, it's in flux."

"…So we can change it? Thought you didn't like changing history?"

"Changing anything is changing history depending on where you stand, Jack. If you lot were from the Sixties, I'd be running an editorial on their future. But this, _this_ moment," he was practically grinning, "Is in flux. It isn't set in stone. And look, read the description of the injuries – bodies ripped open, organs turned to mush? That's not human."

"An alien mass-murderer at a wedding in Birmingham?" Jack asked incredulously, though he had a wry look in his eye, "Well, sounds like a good day out as far as I'm concerned."

"What sounds like a good day out?"

Ten looked up and saw Jenny standing in the doorway, loitering with Donna, both of them having just entered from the main room Martha had dubbed Nerve Centre, for some reason. They both looked intrigued by whatever Jack and the Doctor had been discussing, though Ten had, admittedly, been hoping for a small party that day. Maybe he could keep the group to a minimum…

"_Sedgewick Slaughter: 150 Dead in Vicious Rampage_," Jack read the headline of the paper aloud, "The Doctor thinks an alien did it, and he also says it's in flux, so we can stop it. Save a couple hundred innocent wedding guests."

"We were just looking for something to do today, a wedding massacre sounds perfect," Jenny said, "Doesn't it?" she sought for Donna's agreement. Donna looked at her like she was crazy, however.

"If you say so, love," she muttered, rolling her eyes at Jenny. Jenny was still beaming though, oblivious to all the sarcasm directed her way by members of the TARDIS crew.

"I don't mind," Jack said quickly, his eyes trained on Jenny, though Jenny seemed to be purposely ignoring him. Ten glanced between them for a moment, but dared think maybe Jenny had finally come to her senses and was listening to Ten about her disapproval of her choice in man – though, he supposed he didn't have too much say in it. Regardless, he was her father, she should listen to everything he said, no matter how hypocritical.

"…Right, well, if we just-"

"Mickey and Rory mentioned something, too," Donna cut over Ten, "…Something about wanting to come out… Get some fresh air… Away from here…"

"…Alright, _fine_, but that's _it, _nobody else," _except Rose_, he wanted to add. But he didn't add that. No matter what he wanted from her, it would just be stressful having her join them that day. Though the stress, for some reason, almost added an appeal to the Doctor...

"Time to crash some weddings," Jack said.

"I'll go get changed," Donna said.

"What's wrong with what you're wearing now!?" Ten, who was eager to leave, asked her. Jenny had already left to summon Mickey and Rory.

"It's pyjamas. You can't wear _pyjamas_ to a _wedding_," Donna said gruffly, like he was a complete idiot.

"Just make sure you wear something with pockets," Ten joked, and she glowered at him, which just amused him more, but she was still his best friend in spite of everything going on, and she couldn't stay faux-angry at him for long. A few seconds later she'd burst out laughing, and Jack was thoroughly confused.

"I'd better go tell your daughter to wear a dress," Donna said eventually, and then she left.


	63. Something New

**AN: You know what'd be cool and super-appreciated? If you guys would review and tell me your favourite storylines from 3D9C/4D12C. A) because I'm just generally curious which parts get the best reception, and B) because if I know which bits people love, I can make future storylines more like those ones and take from them. Alternatively, you can tell me which bits you absolutely hate and why, and I can steer away from doing stuff like that. It'd be nice and all, and would help my writing improve, so you'd really all be reaping the benefits over future chapters.**

_Ten_

_Something New_

The TARDIS's thrumming sang along happily to the birdsong of the gardens of the Sedgewick, accompanying the peace rather than breaking it, and summoning a gentle breeze with its arrival. To say it was February, it wasn't nearly as brisk as Ten had assumed it would be when he stepped out into the vast gardens of the hotel, the ship nestled in between two tall, ornamental hedges, clipped to look like the swirls one found in ice-cream cones. The sky was blue and the clouds were too lazy to show themselves, whispers of the birds becoming the only noises along with the grasshoppers and the buzzing of an insect every now and then.

"Bit warm," Donna commented, second out of the TARDIS. The other four sauntered out into the late-winter heatwave. It was more like summer.

"Sometimes it snows in May," Ten shrugged, "Guess it can be twenty degrees in February. Nice day though, isn't it? Aren't we lucky?"

"Nice day for a killing spree," Jack commented, a little unnecessarily in Ten's opinion. He gave him a disapproving look. "C'mon, if I was gonna kill people I'd pick a day like today."

"Charming," Ten grumbled. This was the man still after his daughter's affections, even though Jenny seemed hell-bent on ignoring Jack as absolutely as she could, but out of maturity or _im_maturity, the Doctor really had no idea. He was beyond trying to deduce Jenny's thoughts - they always seemed utterly ridiculous.

"Well it's 9AM now," Jenny said, utilising those Time Lord abilities she inherited, "What time's this massacre?"

"The paper said the wedding was set for two in the afternoon," Jack answered her immediately, "Y'know, I was at a wedding like this once. There was an alien there, too."

"Really? How'd that go?" Rory asked him.

"Better than expected."

"Amy made a massive scene at our wedding until the Doctor showed up," Rory said, "And then he did some bad dancing. That always seems to be the bit everyone remembers..."

"Bad dancing? Me?" Ten exclaimed, genuinely offended by Eleven's supposed lack of coordination, "I was taught to dance by Estelle Gordon, I'll have you know."

"Who's she?" Mickey asked.

"She's not around until the thirtieth century. Very good dancer. On Strictly, her partners always win," Ten explained. They were walking, all of them dressed appropriately for a wedding in suits and skirts and whatnot (save Jack, who was, as always, sporting his military look), towards the large hotel which had clearly once been one of those manor houses of Britain - Georgian remnants of the bourgeoisie of the past.

"They still have Strictly Come Dancing in the thirtieth century!?" Donna seemed shocked by this.

"Yeah, course," Ten told her with a slight shake of his head.

"Do they still have Bruce Forsyth presenting it as a frozen head in a jar? Like Futurama?" Mickey joked, and there was a smattering of laughter from the rest of the group.

"Unfortunately, no. In my opinion it lost its touch after the first... Five years anyway. Never been much of a fan," Ten said, "Not until Martha."

"_Don't_ get me started on Martha and Strictly," Mickey said, "Every week. 'Do you want to go stop these Slitheen attacks?' - 'No, I have to see what Tess Daley's wearing.' Someone nearly died that week." Married life with Mickey Smith and Martha Jones sounded highly amusing, and definitely worth asking more questions about later, since he never had.

"Ah-ha," Jack said, stopping the conversation in its tracks. He had slowed and stopped, and Ten, upon following his gaze, spied what was apparently so interesting: It was two men hauling boxes of flowers out of the back of a van, under strict direction of a tall, severe looking woman.

"...Late!" she shouted, the last word of a sentence that had become louder at the end, allowing them to hear her, "Haven't even had a chance to introduce myself to the bride yet!"

"You hear that?" Jack said, "Those flower-boys are our way in." He pulled a cloth and a bottle from his pocket, much to the Doctor's shock and annoyance.

"What is that!?" he exclaimed.

"Chloroform," Jack shrugged, as though carrying chloroform around was an entirely normal thing to do, "Never leave home without it. I'll get the woman, someone else knock out the guys."

"What!? No, nobody is knocking _anybody-_"

"I'll do it," Jenny instantly volunteered herself. She always did when violence was involved, all that mental conditioning she had to be a soldier, and now it just manifested itself as a desire to punch things at every opportunity.

The remaining four stayed half-hidden behind a one of the tall, decorative bushes, and Ten would have loved to be able to admire the topiary at that moment, instead of having to keep an eye on Jack and Jenny. Jenny hung back a few moments as Jack, wet cloth behind his back, swaggered over to the woman in charge. Ten couldn't hear what was being said, but as soon as she looked at Jack, he seemed to have some kind of effect on her (the effect he seemed to have on all new people, not in the least just women). As soon as she let her guard down, he'd drugged her and caught her as she fell. The two men noticed this, and as one of them pelted for Jack, Jenny slugged the other and he crumped to the floor, Jack tripping the first one and kicking him in the face brutishly. And so they were left with three unconscious bodies to hide.

"This is reckless!" Ten exclaimed. Rory seemed to feel it was his duty to check the wellbeing of each of these people, going to crouch and see to them all individually.

"What?"

"_I'm_ the Doctor, _I'm _the Time Lord, _I'm_ in charge!" Ten argued.

"Then find some other way into the wedding," Jenny told him with a shrug. What was going on between those two!? Half an hour ago they'd been bitterly separated lovers, and now they were tag-teaming and punching out delivery men?

"Fine! You know what, I will! My methods are far better and more succesful _and_ less damaging than Torchwood's anyway," Ten declared.

"Oh yeah? You want a little friendly competition?" Jack came right up to ten, raising his eyebrows and crossing his arms, "I can do that, been doing it for years when you don't show up."

"We play by my rules-"

"Play by whatever rules you want, I work _my_ way and you work yours," Jack said.

"Fine," said Ten, not even stopping to decide if this was even a remotely sensible idea or not.

"You dislocated this bloke's jaw," Rory called to Jack, examining the man he'd kicked.

"Only dislocated? That's disappointing. Jaw, too. I was aiming to break his nose, put him in a stupor," Jack sighed, quite possibly only to anger Ten even more with his offhanded violence. "Well, guess I'll be taking these flowers in, then?"

"Yep, all on your own," Ten said, "Come on, Jenny," he ordered her.

"What? No, I'm staying here. I didn't bruise my knuckle just now for nothing, dad," she said to him.

"I - what!? But-!? With-!?" he cast a glance to Jack.

"I'm a mature adult, I think I can stomach to be around him," Jenny said. 'Mature adult'? No way. In no universe was that girl a _mature adult_. She was a teenager fawning over a boy and trying to rebel against her father by picking the _worst boy possible_.

"I'm gonna go with them," said Mickey, also deciding to leave Ten, "I'm just... More used to fighting aliens their way."

"What!? Oh, come on! Donna!?" he turned pleadingly to her.

"What? I'm not going with them, knocking people out is hardly a way to treat wedding guests," Donna said, "If this can be sorted and this girl's wedding can still be saved, it won't be with them."

"Thank you! Some bloody common sense!" Ten praised her, "What about you, Rory?"

"Well, I'm not one for violence. It's kind of in the job-title, really," he said, standing up after finishing his medical once-overs of Jack's victims.

"Then I guess it's we three versus you three, may the most handsome man win," Jack said, winking at Ten, who glowered, displeased with the whole situation. But he'd be damned if he was going to let Jack Harkness destroy a poor girl's wedding.


	64. Something Borrowed

**AN: Updates are slow because I am busy and have exams. I write when I have time. Unfortunately, I don't have much time. But hey, new perspective! Isn't that exciting?**

_Jack_

_Something Borrowed_

"Well, they can't say we don't have any wedding gifts," Jack said, commenting on the huge box of flowers he was carrying, under the direction of a witch-like woman who he could only assume was a mother-in-law of one side of the marriage, who was telling him where to put the boxes. Mainly, that comprised of dumping the dirty things on the tables for the reception, which had yet to be set (thank god - he wouldn't dare ruin a tablecloth with mud and dirt - or should he say he shouldn't _soil_ the tablecloth?), and going back for more. He had to say, he, Jenny and Mickey were doing a marvellous job of moving boxes. He ought to go into the haulage industry - _Captain Jack Harkness, truck extraordinaire._ The Doctor would be proud.

"I don't think these count, since they did buy them themselves," Jenny said.

"Actually the family of the bride pay for the wedding," Mickey told her, "At least, in this century they do. It's tradition." Jack knew Jenny had, unlike him, never been married before. Perhaps why she'd so eagerly accepted that haphazard proposal of his two weeks ago (or thereabouts) - she wanted to see what all the fuss was about, probably.

"What? How come?" Jenny asked, her naïvety surprising Jack as it always did. She was 207 and she didn't know a thing.

"I don't know, tradition," Mickey said, "Something to do with dowries probably. It's awful trying to pay for a wedding with alien-fighting money anyway."

"Torchwood pays high," Jack interjected, pointing out this fact. Torchwood did pay high, not that he knew where the money came from. It had been set up by the Royal Family, but the Royal Family didn't have any money anymore. Posh yet poor.

"Yeah, lucky you," Mickey snarked, "Me and Martha don't work for Torchwood. There's not much money in Slitheen-wrangling." Jack laughed at the picture of 'Slitheen-wrangling' he had in his head, which consisted of Mickey on a horse with a stetson and a lasso, firing vinegar-filled pellets out of a revolver.

Just then, a man in a suit appeared, only partially dressed with his shirt untucked, and nearly screamed at the sight of the bare tables with muck and lilies on top of them.

"No, no, no, no, no!" he protested, wildly gesticulating at ths flowers yet apparently unable to string and semblance of a proper sentence together (aside from the word 'no').

"Who're you?" Mickey asked him, watching the crazed man try to figure out what to do. Jack was watching him with some amusement.

"Who am _I_?" he said to Mickey, his face an ill-pallor and his mouth quivering, along with every other muscle in his body, it seemed. He was a shaky mess. "_I'm _Dale Bates." Neither Mickey, Jack, nor Jenny, said anything in response to that. Jack didn't know who 'Dale Bates' was, but as they were looking for a murderer, the man having some kind of nervous disposition and looked just as guilty of mass murderer as the assumed mother-in-law (in Jack's eyes, mothers-in-law always seemed to be perpetually guilty about something. His experiences with them had forged that opinion). "The groom!" he exclaimed. _Oh_.

"Bates, yeah! Gotcha," Jack nodded, "Read the letter wrong - thought it said 'Dan Butts'. I thought, _what an unfortunate name_. We're here with your flowers."

"I can bloody see that!" the Brummie accent of the man was strong, "Mud on the table! There are barely two hours to the wedding, it's at two!"

"It's only nine now," Jenny said with a pointed frown, clearly wondering more if she herself couldn't add properly, rather than why the groom was under the impression he was getting married in an hour. Five hours was _more_ than enough time to lay some cutlery out and move some flowers, Jack thought. Hell, he'd _single-handedly_ arranged the wedding of Whoufflé. Well - Rose, Tentoo, Jenny, Amy, Rory, Donna and quite possibly everyone else on the TARDIS would disagree. But it was definitely him - plus, he'd been the minister. Dressed as Elvis.

"Where the hell is Miss Dubois!?" Bates exclaimed, "The woman in charge of the flowers!?"

"That's me," said Jenny quickly, "I'm Miss Dubois. Jenny Dubois." Oh, well, not _that_ quickly, since she'd gone and used her own name. They probably should've learnt the names of the people they'd pummelled outside, who were now tied up and gagged in the back of their own delivery van.

"She's called Eve!"

"Jenny's short for Eve," Jenny said coolly, doing an innocent stare of ignorance, shoulders half-shrugging to challenge him, "You look a bit unwell, sir. You should lie down, maybe?"

"_Lie down!?_" Bates yelled. Jenny's tact to take his mind of her so-obviously-fake alias by telling him to nap was working, "I haven't slept a wink all night! You really think I could go sleep now!? _Now_ of all times!? I haven't even checked on the kitchens yet!"

"Is it your job to check on the kitchens..?" Mickey asked carefully, "I'm sure they can do their job fine."

"I'm paying them enough to have a right to check on dinner! We're sitting down at quarter past three, that only leaves-"

"Six hours," Jenny said.

"Reckon you need to calm down, I wasn't like this at all on my wedding day. Martha was _very _stressed though," Mickey said. Fitting with his early notion of 'Slitheen-wrangling', Jack then couldn't help but picture Martha dressed as a southern belle with Mickey dressed as a cowboy, a random cactus in the background and a tumbleweed drifting across the aisle as she walked down it to saloon music.

"Then you _clearly _didn't care about your wife as much as I care about my Emily. It's her perfect day, and if I don't make it so, our marriage will end before it starts! Fix these flowers, _now_! They go in the vases, along the far edge of the top table, and the rest of them are meant to go in the service room! It's a mess!" Bates shrieked his words, and then padded off, desperately trying to fix a button in his shirt which was in the wrong hole and nearly tripping over some poor toddler in the lobby.

"Talk about groomzilla," Jack scoffed after him, "Wedding planning isn't nearly as stessful as he thinks. I've planned loads."

"Were you dressed as Elvis for all of them?" Mickey questioned. As of yet, none of them had attempted to move the flower boxes. Jack didn't know if they were just meant to be delivering the flowers, or if they also ought to arrange them properly.

"That was one time," Jack said.

"The ceremony probably wasn't even legal," Mickey commented.

"Hey! I told you, I'm a properly ordained minister. I'm completely allowed to marry people," Jack said, "It happened on a wild weekend in the Starlight District."

"What's the Starlight District?" Mickey asked, "Also, what're we doing with these flowers?"

"It's space Vegas," Jenny answered him, "It's in Andromeda, built in the Forty-Ninth Century." Jenny knew this because she and Jack had been before - he'd taken her one night when everyone else had been asleep.

"Y'know, since all these people are supposed to die in a couple of hours, I think flowers might be the least of their worries," Jack said, "Anyway, I'm sure whatserface won't dump him because the table was scuffed."

"You never know," Jenny said, with an air of sadness. Quite why, Jack didn't know. He'd barely spoken to her all day, despite his constant searching for any opportunity to. If _she'd_ been the dumpee, he could understand her dejectedness. However, _he_ had been the one dumped, and by his fiancé, no less, so why she was apparently complaining about break-ups was beyond him. She'd never mentioned exes before. Well, not any that had been part of a real relationship (secretly, Jack often wondered of the libido of the Doctor - how he always seemed to act like he didn't have one at all, though the behaviour of his daughter certainly seemed to disagree (well, so did the behaviour of Eleven most of the time)).

"We should look for this alien then," Mickey interrupted the silence, "Can't be too hard to spot someone capable of turning organs to mulch."

"Plenty of species look human," Jenny said, "You'd never know I was an alien."

"You drink ketchup - that's inhuman," Mickey said, and she rolled her eyes, annoyed at this truth.

"C'mon then. If the staff were left alive, what's say we figure out why?" Jack proposed.


	65. Something Blue

_Ten_

_Something Blue_

He didn't think for one second Jack Harkness was going to beat him at solving a mystery surrounding an alien. Admittedly, a competition revolving around the massacre of over a hundred people was a little immature, but it was all friendly - and who knew, they might be more efficient split into two groups both 'working the case' (as it were) from different angles. Ten thought it might turn out to be as beneficial as a working-class housing estate.

He, Rory and Donna prowled the edge of the grounds, sticking close to the hedges to keep out of the way of the wedding preparations. By the staff, they'd probably be mistaken as guests. By the guests... Well, maybe he'dbe mistaken as one of the waitstaff if he was very lucky, and Donna could pass herself off as someone official like a wedding planner, or hotel manager, perhaps. Rory was nondescript enough to pretend to be some distant relative of the bride or groom (unless of course, they bumped into the _actual_ bride of groom).

"Keep a lookout for anyone suspicious," Ten said. Probably unnecessary advice, but the silence between the three of them had been irritating him and causing his thoughts to stray, and he was keen to break it - even if that meant eliciting a sarcastic remark from Donna.

"Oh, _really_?" Donna drawled, "Because I hadn't been doing _that _already." Rory laughed, but nobody had anything more to add. And so, the Tenth Doctor, despite his best efforts (well, maybe not his _best_), ended up thinking about Rose again. Why was everybody so hellbent on keeping them apart? It was just when he was attempting (a little pathetically) to see things from Donna's point of view, that he bumped straight into some poor girl.

Although, to be completely truthful, 'bumping straight into some poor girl' was not what had happened, as much as he wanted it to be, and Donna would probably be displeased (to put it lightly) if he said it was.

What had happened was a short, slim blonde had walked out from between the hedges in front of them, on a little dirt pathway snaking between the greenery, leading away towards a creek. Ten didn't know what the girl had been doing out there, all he knew was he walked smack-bang into her.

"Rose!?" he had then exclaimed. The girl, whose face he hadn't yet seen, only her form, turned to frown at him with blue eyes. Blue, not brown. And they looked considerably different now he actually saw. He was mortified, and embarked upon reams of apologies to the girl, saying he hadn't been looking properly and he'd simply mistaken her for someone else he thought might be there. Though befuddled, the girl - who seemed in a rush - accepted his apology.

"It's Emily, not Rose," she called back at him as she hurried away, desperate to get somewhere else. Ten watched her with a queer sense of longing. She appeared to be in pyjamas. He sighed.

"What the hell was that?" Donna asked him sharply, though thankfully she didn't shout at him.

"...I..." he stammered a little, "Um..." To cut a long story short, Donna had shouted at him again. Rory didn't look to be too involved in the business of Ten and Rose, or remotely interested as it were, and it was only when he pointed out an open, unstaffed door round one side of the large hotel that Donna's shouting was quelled.

Ten said nothing on the matter. He said nothing to defend himself. He said nothing to explain his mistake, or why he'd blurted out Rose's name. He wanted to stop thinking about her, he wanted that so much... Or did he? Try as he might, his thoughts always wandered. Wandered back to a blend of happy memories and optimistic what-ifs, of daydreams of the married life of Rose and Tentoo. Tentoo who was out of the picture. Tentoo who had been sent back home with no way to return. Tentoo who, like him for the last few years, was now spending his days picturing the woman he loved in the arms of doppelgänger, an imperfection-riddled clone.

Yet that wasn't true at all. The truth was that Ten was suffering immensely, inflicting the great torture on himself of abiding by the ideas of his companions. His companions who had lived thirty times less than he had, who thought social judgements were worth more than happiness. _They_ were the ones enforcing the restrictions... Even if Ten wanted to, by this point he couldn't remotely pinpoint when he'd lost his authority to a pack of humans he'd abducted. The TARDIS crew had no leader anymore, and if he had to pick someone to be its leader, it certainly wouldn't be him. It would be Jack, or Martha. People listened to Jack and Martha. _He_ listened to Jack and Martha.

Or not. No, not on this matter. On this, he listened to Donna and Jenny. If he was trying to be objective in the selection of his most trustworthy advisors, he should really stop listening to what his daughter said. His daughter had betrothed herself to Captain Jack Harkness after all, and that break-up had gone dreadfully. What kind of grown man took advice from a teenager? Donna... Well, fair enough, he trusted Donna a damn-sight more than Jenny. All Donna wanted was for him to heal, and he knew she wanted the best for him, but the question was did Donna Noble really know what was best for the Doctor? As for Jack and Martha, Martha hadn't said a word to him. She'd been too busy with Rose, the other half of the problem - first trying to distract her and keep her busy, and then trying to avoid her (though to his best knowledge, Martha was back to keeping Rose company that day). And as for Jack... Jack had lived for centuries. Jack might have lived for longer than him by this point, Ten really didn't know the Captain's age, not even well enough to make a rough estimate. Whenever Jack talked to him, it seemed to be about doing what made him happy and ignoring the others, and then it always quickly turned to his plight for Jenny's heart, and Ten switched off listening to him out of anguish.

And after all that, there was the matter of Whoufflé. He'd heard a couple of people mutter while they thought he wasn't listening that Whoufflé were setting a 'bad example'. That the obtrusive togetherness of them, coupled with the fact their relationship was (in spite of usual relationships aboard the TARDIS) actually healthy. Maybe they were a bad example. If Eleven could be with a human, why couldn't Ten? Fate had thrown him and Rose back together. What was the old saying? _Carpe diem_. 'Seize the day'. It had actually been him who'd coined that phrase in the first place - and why shouldn't he take his own advice?

It was then that he made the decision that by the end of that day, he was going to have found some way of talking to Rose Tyler. The only one who could sort all this out for him was her. Even if he ended up rejected and alone, that was better than this painful ambiguity.

"Doctor?" Donna asked.

"Hmm?" he turned to her, smiling weakly, trying to hide from her what thoughts he'd been immersed in. She'd probably guess it was something to do with Rose relatively easily (and she had, going by how judgemental of him she looked), but maybe not the extent of it. It was lucky no-one on the TARDIS had picked up telepathy.

"That woman over there," Rory said quietly, nodding behind Ten. Ten looked around and saw a woman loitering in the hall of the hotel, which had maintained a lot of its Georgian, stately-qualities and could still be a rich mansion. She seemed entirely ordinary to the Doctor, he didn't know why Rory had pointed her out.

"What about her?" Ten asked, turning back to the other two so that she didn't notice she were being stared at.

"Well she just walked past, and she looks exactly like the woman in this portrait," Rory said, motioning to a huge painting on the wall to Ten's right, which he hadn't even noticed before, he'd been that lost in his thoughts. He hadn't been paying enough attention when she'd apparently walked past - whoever she was - to remember her at all and say if the painting bore any likeness. The picture was dated 1752.

"Probably a distant relative," Ten waved Rory away, "It would have been a family home at one point, the family might still live here in some private rooms. It's a huge building, after all..."

"Well let's hope Jack knows what he's doing more than you do," Donna said dryly, irritated by how distant Ten was being.


	66. Room Service

_Jack_

_Room Service_

"Y'know what'd be a great thing to have on the TARDIS?" Jack asked no-one in particular. By this point, to avoid the scrutiny of Bates (who'd come back and yelled at them again not ten minutes later), they were prowling the upstairs halls and the rather illustrious rooms of the Sedgewick Hotel. Looking for what, precisely, Jack didn't know. It really was a lucky thing Jenny had a sonic screwdriver though.

"What?" Mickey asked him.

"Actual equipment."

"That's exactly what I was saying yesterday!" Mickey exclaimed, "It was fair enough when there'd only be two of us with the Doctor, but now we always get stuck without him and the psychic paper or the screwdriver."

"Um, we have a screwdriver," Jenny said, waving hers at him. Hers was sleek and silver, and seemed to work far better than the Doctor's did. The Doctor's never worked.

"I can't believe he stole my blaster," Jack complained. It had been a long while ago that Ten had done that, along with disabling the vortex manipualtor for the umpteenth time. Not that Jack really needed that anymore, but it was always good to have it handy. His sonic blaster would have made fighting mushroom people on Eslilia the other day much easier.

"Stole mine as well," Jenny grumbled, "And the laser tommy-gun." Jack, in the end, decided against pointing out to her that the reason the latter weapon had been taken off her was because she tried to shoot everyone with it and hold the TARDIS hostage. She'd killed him with it three times - it had been unpleasant, to say the least. To think that right now he'd do just about anything to win her back.

"You _were_ shooting people," Mickey said, meaning that Jack's fretting about if he should point out what Jenny had done was irrelevant.

"Not _many_ people though," Jenny said a little glumly. Jack, who'd been the only one of those people, was unamused. If she was going to kill people, she oughtn't be allowed a gun. Unless they deserved killing. But in Jack's own opinion, he didn't _quite_ deserve killing. Well, not for that. It was a null question anyway, because he couldn't even die. The conversation dropped for a while, until boredom convinced Mickey to drag it up again.

"I just think equipment would be great," he said, "I mean, you have _loads _of it at Torchwood, since you scavenge it."

"Dad doesn't scavenge anything," Jenny pointed out.

"Yeah, that's why we've got nothing," Mickey reiterated, "Because of your father. He's like a reverse-hoarder or something. Never picks up anything."

"Nope, not like me," Jack declared proudly, "Torchwood archives are full of stuff. But if I had to guess, Mickey Smith, I'd say you're trying to sort out a field trip to Cardiff."

"Maybe sober this time," Mickey added, confirming Jack's suspicions while referencing the wedding of Whoufflé. He really had been far too drunk. Everyone had. But that was the result of drinking too much of his own home-brewed moonshine ('_Jack's Juice_') - although, too much of Jack's moonshine was a capful, and they'd had a good few... Entire kegs of the stuff. It was a wonder nobody had liver disease by this point.

"Yeah, probably better to be sober while handling dangerous alien weaponry," said Jack, then he smirked a little, "Although, depends what _kind_ of 'dangerous alien weaponry' you're _handling_." Mickey groaned, unimpressed. "It got blown up though, the base."

"It did?" Mickey asked.

"Yep. During the 456."

"We live in a time machine," Jenny pointed out.

Before the debate on Torchwood could be continued, there was a wild shriek from the floor above. Instantly, the running started. Always with the dramatic running down corridors, running _towards_ things, running _away_ from things - he'd never thought something as energetic as running would become tedious to him, but being a time traveller always had downsides. One of them was how easy it now was to get bored by the seemingly mundane, even though perpetual normalcy was what knitted the lives of most Earthlings together.

They crashed through rooms on the next floor, it being impossible to pinpoint the exact location off of one single sound. The scream had most definitely been blood-curdling though, so when the three of them burst into the room of two guests who were, Jack guessed, honeymooning, he was a little surprised.

"Sorry, sorry!" he apologised loudly, relishing in the humour of the scenario. This sure would be an anecdote, he thought. The Doctor was missing out on walking in on a couple of newlyweds 'shagging', as the Brits say. Mickey and Jenny disappeared, mortified, quite quickly, wanting to escape the horror of the fiasco and find whoever'd been wailing their dying breath. "Ordinarily, I'd stay, but- Hey! Throwing shoes is not polite! I could report you two for being... Oh, _three, _I see? Well, this is some _very _bad behaviour, and _I_ for one-" Mickey dragged him away by the collar of this coat, "Hey, stop that, this is an antique. Took Ianto a lot of effort to find it!" Mickey very nearly slammed the door closed. He did catch, out of the corner of his eye, Jenny giggling though. He counted Jenny giggling as a victory, no matter how rude he'd been to the members of that little bedsheet gathering back there.

Finally, they found the correct room. They could tell it was the correct room by the fact the door was nearly ripped off the hinges, and there was the body of a woman in pyjamas on the floor. Oh, and there was another woman in a black dress tearing her insides to shred, which turned to purply-goop as she touched them.

"Get away from that body!" Mickey yelled, brandishing a handgun. Where the hell'd he get a handgun from!? The Doctor was so strict about weapons. That settled it, Jack thought, as soon as all this wedding-massacre business was through, he was arming the TARDIS crew. He didn't think goodwill, witty remarks and moving speeches would do an awful lot against a xenomorph, for instance, and any Time Lord would be hard done by to try and reason with the thing.

The woman hissed, turning to them, her face a distorted, elongated mess, almost like mandables were stretching beneath her cheeks and he eyes were significantly larger than her face. Her jaw was definitely out of place, too, making her whole face a good three inches longer than it should be, skin stretched taut and shiny over the malformed bones. And then she leapt away from the body like some kind of beast, and smashed her way out of the nearest window, scuttling down the side of the building.

"...Think we found our alien," Jack said grimly, going over to examine the body, knowing the woman was so quick on her feet and reptilian in her movement there was no way they'd be able to catch her. It was too high up to jump out of the window, anyway. Sure, Jack would revive and heal, but the time that took was more than enough for her to escape. Mickey dashed to the window though to glimpse her as she exited. "Dunno who she is. Reckon its one of the wedding party?"

"No way to tell," Jenny answered him. She was searching the room for something. As Jack examined the damage done to the body (from the neck to the pelvis it was torn open, right down the middle, the ribs broken and dragged apart to give the attacker access to the lungs and heart, which looked to be the first to go. It was all very dark in colour though, blues and purples, rather than reds), Jenny found a purse, and Mickey kept watch.

"She's gone. Bit weird to wear black to a wedding," Mickey commented.

"Not if she knows this wedding's gonna turn into a funeral, it's not," Jack said, "Looks like there's no oxygen in this pulp though, you see that?"

"I don't really want to," Mickey said.

"Well, too bad for you. But it's too dark, like the blood's all deoxygenated. Weird how she's been totally ripped apart though. There's something to do with the way she wants access to the organs. What's she doing? Eating them? Huh. There must be something significant about it though, since everyone was killed the same way. Simple massacre would have some variety. Wonder why it wasn't in any major papers, too. Only the local," Jack thought aloud. It was true enough that _The Warcester Herald_ was the only paper with a single story on the 'Sedgewick Slaughter', as it called it.

"Christine Kendall," Jenny said eventually, "That's who she is. Poor girl. Next of kin is John Kendall, husband I think. Someone'll have to tell him."

"Oh yeah? You gonna do it?" Jack asked. Nobody ever went around notifying the next of kin when these things happened.

"If I have to, sure, I'll tell the families," Jenny said stiffly, her reserve strong. Jack thought quite highly of her at that moment. She'd never really had to go tell families about murders before. He was almost proud.

"What do we do now?" Mickey asked.

"Well first of all," Jack straightened up, "You're gonna tell me how you kept that gun hidden from the Doctor."

"Martha and I were in the middle of a job when we were beamed aboard," Mickey explained, "We had them on us. Being as we weren't you, he never asked us to turn weapons over. It isn't actually loaded though - still frightened her a bit."

"Yeah, away from here where we could contain her," Jack criticised. Mickey glared.

"Contain her where? The en suite?" he argued. There was no point in a row though, what was done was done.

"Where are we again? Birmingham? Lucky thing is that I have a police contact in Birmingham, and happen to have a weapons cache somewhere. I'm gonna get us some guns delivered."


	67. Portrait Of A Lady

_Jack_

_Portrait Of A Lady_

Jack had decided, in his capacity as a protector, that he was going to return the three of them to the Tenth Doctor to reunite the group in face of this new monstrous alien. It was some spawn from god-knows-where, and he knew that there was little reasoning with it, and that Rory and Donna were both at risk if they put too much store in the Time Lord's goodwill and his reliance on the ability to negotiate and make some speech at it and make everything better. So, it was all apparently down to Jack to stop Ten from putting the other two at serious risk because he didn't know quite what they were up against. Jack would hate to see any of his friends torn open like that.

The heavy smell of flowers felt like it was weighing down the air as the warm day trundled languidly on. It drifted through all the corridors and haunted the building, Jack getting steadily sick of the fauna and the stench of a billion pale lilies as they searched the bottommost floor for the Doctor. After nearly half an hour of scouring the various rooms of the Sedgewick and bumping into numerous irritated staff members, they found Donna, Rory and Ten, the former two trailing behind the latter as he walked almost in a zigzag fashion, this way and that.

"Took us ages to find you," Jack called. They turned around, the three of them, and he was sure relief broke through on the faces of Donna and Rory. Ten turned slowly, spotted Jack, and frowned.

"Hmm?" he asked, clearly out of it in the midday heat. Jack still didn't understand why it was so hot for early February. He didn't remember any unnatural heat in Cardiff during the 1990s, but then, they weren't in Cardiff, they were almost in Birmingham, on the outskirts.

"Well, we thought that since we found the alien, we'd be good sports and come tell you guys," Jack shrugged, like it was no big deal, when in actuality it had been all-too arduous to slink around the downstairs rooms looking for the Doctor, when there was a murderer on the loose ripping bodies open and crawling out of windows.

"You found it!? Does that mean we can leave?" Donna asked hopefully. Jack wasn't too keen on staying, either.

"Ah, well, no," he admitted, "Well, we couldn't really stop her. Up in the suites there's a body, completely ripped open. Weird MO. Ribs torn apart to allow access to the organs, which are kind of melted and purple. Didn't smell too swell, either."

"Eurgh," said Donna.

"Yeah, well, before we could stop her, she wailed a little and jumped out of the window. Ran straight off. We didn't follow, there wouldn't've been any way to catch her," Jack explained.

"Well, what did she look like?" Rory asked, "Maybe we saw her?"

"Dark hair, really pale, black dress," Mickey said with a slight shrug, "Didn't get too good of a look." Rory seemed to be realising something, and Jack frowned as he watched him think.

"Okay, I think… Follow me," Rory said, and then he turned to go.

"Ugh, is this about that bloody painting again?" Donna complained, and Rory turned and scowled at her for diminishing his efforts. But he was strolling off quite quickly, and Jack hastened to follow, immediately curious about the painting, whatever it was. Ten was barely listening, only paying enough attention to acknowledge the movement of the group and force his feet to follow, though he was in some kind of hazardous daze at the moment. Thank god he _did_ come find the others, Jack thought, whatever was up with Ten he was in no fit state to be defending people against stomach-munching ETs.

Five minutes of following Rory (who seemed to know where he was going, at least) through the Sedgewick and ducking out of the way of the wedding guests – who were either arriving or meandering out of their rooms to secure themselves some food before the wedding that afternoon – later, they found themselves before a painting. And, to Jack's great surprise and mystification, it was almost certainly the very same woman who had been feasting on Christine Kendall's melted liver in the bedroom above. Only without the unnatural deformation of the jaw. She looked positively beautiful, whoever she was.

"It's dated 1752," Rory then said.

"Over two-hundred years ago?" Jack asked, a rhetorical question, because then he said "huh" to himself, and carried on thinking aloud, "Well, what would she still be doing here after two hundred years? And why would she be killing wedding guests?"

"Take the painting down, see if it says anything on the back?" Donna suggested in a very authoritative fashion. It took Jack, Mickey and Rory to oblige and lift it from the wall, considering it was huge, and they set it down on the floor, holding the sides of the frame, to see if there was anything written on the back.

"Lady Celeste of Ophays," Jack read aloud what it said in sloping, pencilled handwriting on the backing of the portrait.

"Ophays?" asked Ten, coming back to them a little, though he was looking almost elated. Jack was going to have to have a word with him about whoever (he was sure it was a 'who', and he was sure he knew which 'who' it was) he was dreaming about. "That's a star. Well, the system it's in is also name the Ophays System. It's in Perseus Cluster Three, sort of in the backwoods of the universe. You turn left at, um, the Feather Nebula. Earth don't know about Ophays for nearly ten-thousand years from now."

"Oh yeah? Who lives there?" Jack asked.

"Nobody," Ten answered, "Not now, anyway. The star's gravity was too strong – instead of an oval orbit, all the planetoids had spiral orbits. They were all evacuated before the sun destroyed them, but only the highest members of society left. Bumped into someone from that system a while ago. Not any murderer though, a Noli. They look a bit like fat moles."

"If only you'd been paying attention before. Now, someone here must know a thing or two about Lady Celeste…" Jack stared around. To his great luck indeed, some member of staff who looked like a bellhop had been staring at them from the end of the hallway with her mouth open, gawping a look of fear and suspicion. "Hey!" Jack called. She ran, predictably.

They gave chase, but thank god Jenny had the stamina of a horse (Jack knew a _lot_ about Jenny's stamina) and captured the weak girl – who was not a girl, but rather a particularly fragile woman – throwing her quite roughly against the wall.

"Who are you!? Why'd you run!?" Jenny demanded, and Jack couldn't say he thought too highly of her interrogation techniques. The woman began to cry.

"Jeez, I'll take over, c'mon, move," Jack ordered Jenny, who mumbled something to herself he didn't hear, but let the woman go. She collapsed in a heap on the floor, and the group moved to be circling her to stop her getting away again, except for Ten, who was giving looks of disapproval intermingled with vacancy from the corner. Jack crouched down to her level. "Who's the woman in the picture? Celeste of Ophays?"

"I can't… I can't say… Can't say anything… Not a thing… You ought to leave… Shouldn't be here…" she spluttered through her meek tears. She knew something, that was for sure, and she'd been sworn to secrecy. What kind of conspiracy about a two-hundred year old alien was this?

"Mickey?" Jack turned to him and held out his hand expectantly.

"What?" Mickey asked. Jack held out his hand more and gave him an urgent look, "Ugh, fine," Mickey grumbled, taking his gun out of the back of his jeans where he was keeping it.

"Is that a gun!?" Ten exclaimed.

"Yeah, now shut up," Jack called to him, taking the handgun, which was light and empty – but the woman didn't know that, "The thing is, we're just here to save a couple of lives. But if one-fifty costs you, because you don't wanna do your moral duty and save everybody here at this wedding, I guess I'll have to find someone else to 'persuade' to talk about the Lady."

"Okay, okay!" she whimpered – clearly, she'd never been threatened with a firearm before. Very few people in England had, and it often worked to Jack's advantage. Wasn't like the US where everyone and their mother was hiding a shotgun in their purse. "I don't know who she is! She owns the hotel or something!"

"Oh yeah? That all? Someone made you swear never to say who owned the hotel? C'mon, give me something more than that – what's your name?"

"Janice."

"Give me something more than that, Janice," said Jack, "I'd hate to send Jenny round to your parents' house and tell them you've had an accident." He held the gun closer to her and she wailed again.

"It's just our job to cover it up! Keep it out of the papers, okay!?"

"Keep what out?" Jack asked.

"The murders!" she hissed, "She destroys all the weddings here. Once you work here, you can't leave, or she'll kill you. Christine said she was gonna leave, but-"

"Christine Kendall?" Jenny asked, and Janice nodded, "Christine Kendall's dead, we saw this Lady Celeste eating her lungs in Room 214." Janice wailed again, clutching Jack's left arm (the one _not_ holding a gun to her head). He always seemed to have a comforting presence of some sort.

"She always goes for the bride first, calls _herself_ the bride, the 'true bride' or something, I don't know, I don't know! That's all I know! I swear!" Even if Jack didn't believe her (though, he did) she'd given them more than enough to go on. He passed the gun back to Mickey, who now had quite the task of keeping it out of reach of Ten. If only his guy-with-the-guns had actually been born yet, he really hadn't thought that part through earlier when he phoned the dead mobile number.

"Who's the bride at this wedding?" Jack asked her, "And what room's she in?"

"Emily Croft, she's in Room 119! I swear! Don't shoot me! She'll kill me like Chrissie if she knows I said anything, oh god, oh god!" she whined.

"119? Okay. C'mon. We'd better get there first, there's only an hour until the wedding now."


	68. Crashed The Wedding

_Jack_

_Crashed The Wedding_

Jack, brandishing Mickey's gun he'd reacquired, kicked down the door of Room 119 with a kind of noble violence he hadn't been able to portray lately, full of the adrenaline of 'aggressive helping'. The others clustered into the room behind him. In her wedding dress was a woman he assumed was Emily, blonde and terrified out of her mind all of a sudden, and then there were three identically-dressed girls he assumed were the bridesmaids, and then a much older bat-like creature he guessed was her mother.

"Is she here!?" he demanded in a roar, holding the gun out and switching it between the faces, aiming it at each one to show they were all equal targets. The mother cried and slipped off the bed onto the floor, and all of the bridesmaids and Emily herself stayed silent. He nearly sighed, but then waved the gun towards the bathroom and looked to Rory, who was nearest, "Go check," he ordered him, and then he snapped right back to aiming for Emily, "She here!?"

"W-who!?" one of the bridesmaids, the tallest, asked, holding her hands up in surrender.

"The bride," Jack said, already impressed by his own suave, professional air. This was what he'd been missing lately, the attitude of a _pro_, lost in presence of the Doctor, who disapproved highly of everything going on currently.

"What? I… _I'm_ the bride… I don't understand – why do you have guns!? Why are you at my wedding!? This is supposed to be my perfect day!" Emily wailed.

"The _other_ bride," Jack elaborated, as if that made it any clearer to Emily. He liked the mystery.

"What!?" she exclaimed.

"You're scaring her!" Ten objected, pushing past Mickey to get to Jack's side. Jenny was hanging in the room and surveying the faces carefully, and Donna was still in the hallway, wanting nothing to do with the fiasco in the bedroom.

"No-one here," Rory affirmed when he returned from his adventure to the bathroom.

"You sure?" Jack asked, and Rory nodded.

"I wish you'd put that gun away," Ten groaned, running a hand through his hair to try and distract himself from Jack's indelicate nature.

"I don't understand – who are you!?" Emily asked again.

"I'm the Doctor," said Ten, stepping past Jack and in front of the still-unloaded gun, taking leadership of the situation, which Jack didn't really mind. If he was finally going to pay attention, that was. "And there's an alien at your wedding."

"An _alien_?"

"Yeah, from space, she's already killed one woman. Room 214, name's Christine Kendall, used to work here. Got a husband called John, it's our job to tell him she's dead. Ripped her ribs open and tried to eat her insides, unpleasant. She's still there if you want to check, two floors up," Jack said, trying to purposely terrify them into believing him.

"You need to cancel your wedding," Jenny said, "You need to cancel your wedding and get everyone out of this hotel, or this alien is going to kill everybody. Starting with you. If you don't do it now, we're gonna start shooting off that gun until they run off anyway."

"Nobody's shooting anybody!" Ten argued, "But you do have to get everyone out of her. I'm sorry."

"In our capacity as a professional organisation," Jack said, "We'll make sure you get a free refund. Some nice lilies, too, if you're up for it. You'd better leave the dress though, so that she can't identify which one of you's the bride."

"But I… I can't! This is my perfect day! Dale, he – he won't – he'll never – I…"

"Do it," said the bridesmaid who had spoken earlier, "Seriously. This alien stuff is probably a load of shit, but they're crazy, Em. They'll shoot you themselves if you don't stop this."

"Well, she's kinda right, I suppose," Jack shrugged.

"Jack!" Ten protested. How long would it take the Doctor to figure out he was bluffing? He wasn't gonna shoot anybody, he just needed to scare them into leaving so they weren't massacred in… Fifty minutes now (he'd checked his watch).

"But the wedding-"

"_She's going to kill everybody_," Jenny said slowly and loudly, "_If you don't leave_. She's done it before, but the staff cover it up. Mass murder is bad for business, I guess."

Through some kind of miracle, twenty minutes later the cars in the parking lot were evacuating themselves with the guests in them. He guessed yelling and pointing guns at people worked to try and convince them to cancel their wedding, not to mention there had been some unmitigated disaster with the plumbing, all of which served to convince Emily and Dale that there was no option but to reschedule the wedding, and probably at a different venue. Jack didn't really know where he was going to get this refund for them from, though.

"That went better than expected," said Jack, standing in front of the window and watching Emily drive off. If the bride and groom were gone, so was the wedding, so Lady Celeste of Ophays had nobody to murder. Well, except for the six of them and all the staff, who were coming nowhere near the group. Maybe they'd heard about Christine and Janice. Not to mention the fact that they were 'armed'.

"You threatened to shoot them!" Ten argued.

"Take it easy, it's not even loaded. We don't have any ammo," Jack told Ten, "Just threatening them. What's worse, a little scare or getting filleted like a trout?" Ten glared at him. "Moving on," Jack ignored his disapproval, as usual, "What do we do now? If Lady Celeste only comes out to play when there's a wedding on the cards?" Nobody had any ideas.

"Can't we just go find her?" Donna suggested.

"That's suicide, it'd be better if we had some bait," Jack said.

"Maybe you shouldn't have evacuated that lot then," Donna shrugged.

"Hey, I'm not putting them at risk like that," Jack argued with her, and she sighed and understood his argument. She was probably just in a bad mood, sick of the sink of flowers, just like him, "I just wish we knew more about her… We really do have to lay a trap though."

"Like what? Cut the chandelier at the right moment? Hang a net from the rafters? Tripwire?" Ten suggested all of this sarcastically. In fairness, they were all ridiculous suggestions. They didn't have a way to cut the chandelier, they didn't have a net _or_ any rope for a tripwire.

"I don't know. I'm thinking live bait though. We'd better stage a wedding," Jack said. It really seemed the only logical idea, "Hey, Jenny, do you think that wedding dress Emily left behind is your size?"

"NO!" Ten yelled, "NO, NO, NO! I won't have it! _NO_!"

"What!? It has to be a bride or she won't come, and Donna's married, only one single woman here," Jack shrugged like he hadn't been thinking through this plan ever since he realised Lady Celeste of Ophays was after brides and weddings, "And those two are married, and you're her dad."

"Yes! Yes I am! And I do not give my permission for this… This… _Thing!_"

"You have no right to do that, I've lived without a dad for 207 years. Plus, it's not even real, it's to stop this psycho-alien murdering anybody else," Jenny interrupted, "…And I'm pretty sure the dress _was_ my size." Donna burst out laughing.

"Sorry, it's just… Never mind… You trying to control your daughter's relationships when you're so, you know, yourself," Donna was saying to Ten, who was utterly offended.

"I will not have Captain Jack Harkness for a son-in-law!"

But it was too late. The only possible thing to do was, as Jack saw it, hold a pseudo-wedding between himself and Jenny. And why not? If they were both up for it. He was sure a wedding was a great opportunity for reconciliations and love declarations, in any case…


	69. I Do

_Jack_

_I Do_

Bushels of lilies gathered from the dining room with its stepping-stone tables burst out from the crevices of the service hall. They lined the walls and sprang from the windows like a silver invasion of sorts, choking the air with perfume. With cool light streaming through pale petals and blinds, the room was aglow with an ethereal jubilance that felt half-stolen, and it was as though he were in the closest thing he would ever find to heaven on Earth, what with the cliché whiteness of everything. There were white rose petals scattered on the floor. Ten was eyeing them from the opposite end of the room to Jack, who had Rory by his side.

"This is sort of ridiculous, don't you think? Staging a wedding?" Rory asked Jack carefully. Rory was wearing as much black as he'd been able to find in order to keep up appearances and transform himself into the closest thing to a vicar they could manage at such short, fatal notice.

"We've done more ridiculous things," Mickey said to him when Jack didn't answer – he was looking at the champagne bottle on the nearest chair, where it sat, keeping pride of place for his plan later. None of the staff had bothered them at all. Perhaps they were quietly hoping the mystery guests succeeded in their coup d'état.

"We've done more ridiculous things _at_ weddings," Jack added, "I think that marrying my fiancée is far less ridiculous than messy twister. Whose idea was that, anyway?"

"Yours," Mickey reminded him. Was it? Honestly, he didn't remember, he'd been substantially drunk. Something about painting Cardiff blue sprang to his memory, also, "And she's your _ex_ -fiancée. And it's a fake wedding. Rory's not a vicar."

"He's right, I'm not," Rory added, just in case anyone was under that illusion. Jack didn't know why they would be, but right then he felt nearly as preoccupied with women in their various forms as the Doctor down at the other end of the aisle. It had taken Donna a lot of persuasion and talk of the genocide of future wedding-goers to convince him that he really did have to walk Jenny down the aisle, above the rose petals and everything.

"Emily and Dale sure know how to plan a wedding, huh?" Jack said, "Makes our efforts look like a shambles."

"It _was_ a shambles," Rory said with a sigh, "It's embarrassing to think of how much of a shambles it was. I really don't see why you and Rose couldn't just let them be, in all honesty."

"H&amp;T was a different time," Jack said firmly, far more nervous at this wedding than at any of the other weddings he'd ended up randomly involved in, "You Cultists don't understand." Mickey rolled his eyes, unimpressed by this mention of the feuds that were supposed to have ended weeks ago by this point. Jack was just bringing up anything to distract himself, really. He was more worried about this fake-matrimony with the Doctor's daughter than killing any alien fiends. "Hey, Doc, do we have any kind of bridal march?"

"Don't push your luck," Ten answered darkly, and then he went back to his brooding with his arms crossed. Oh well, Jack thought, silence was golden.

"You probably shouldn't be looking at the door," Rory then advised Jack, "It's bad luck. Also, if she had to put on that dress, why didn't you go put on a suit?"

"I look good in vintage military. It's my thing," Jack told him officially, with a wink.

"Fine, fine," Rory muttered, beyond reasoning with Jack Harkness.

"This is insufferable," Ten mumbled, "I'm off to find them." He disappeared.

"Okay, what's been up with him all day?" Rory asked as soon as he left.

"Four letters, the first one's 'R'," Mickey said. Rory was, for a moment, understandably confused, being as his name was four letters long and began with R. So Mickey dropped the second hint, "It's also a flower."

"What's he like when he _isn't_ brooding? I've never known him not to be, except at the very beginning. And even then there was always something else there that made him just… I dunno, sad, I guess," Rory said.

"Yeah, that 'something else' is called Tentoo," said Jack, "And he knew full-well it was immoral to be with her then."

"But now?" Rory prompted.

"Well _now_ Tentoo's gone," Jack said quietly, in case Ten should be eavesdropping, "I think he's made up his mind and wants to leave as fast as possible. It's not up to anybody else on the TARDIS to tell him what to do, anyway."

"Probably be best to just forget about it and ignore it," Mickey shrugged.

Conversation was cut short when Ten shouted something from the hall. It was unintelligible, but the three men took it to mean that Jenny and Donna were finally on their way (it had been an hour), with meant Mickey hissed at Jack to look away, and kicked him in the shin until he did as he was told. So, he ended up staring at the wall.

"Somebody sing something, will you?" Jack requested.

"Nobody has to sing anything," Jenny said. It struck him that Jenny probably thought silent arrivals were far less awkward than he did, being as she had hardly any experience with human weddings.

It seemed to take an age until Jack was allowed to look around and actually face his pretend-bride, and though she was his pretend-bride, she wasn't his pretend love. He felt like he'd been punched in the mouth when he saw how stunning she was in the stolen dress that didn't _quite_ fit, it was too small – not that Jack had any objections to tight clothes all of a sudden, oh no. She wasn't really looking at him though, and despite the fact she was _slightly _pink at the whole situation to begin with, she was more focused on casting shifty glances around for Lady Celeste, wherever she may be lurking.

"Maybe the Bridal March lures her out?" Jack suggested.

"Oh, shut up about that," Rory said. To 'enhance the illusion' he took hold of Jenny's hands, even though this was an utter lie, and he just missed her, quite severely. He was in danger of becoming like Ten at some point if he let himself continue without winning her affections back. "Right, um…" said Rory awkwardly, when nobody arrived, "…If you'd all take a seat..?" It was clear he didn't know what he was saying. Nevertheless, Donna, Ten and Mickey sat down, all of them with champagne bottles under their chairs and corkscrews.

"Well then," Jack said to Rory, prompting him to continue. Thank god there were only six of them in the room, it certainly was a sight.

"…We are gathered here today… To celebrate the joining of these two, um… Persons… In holy matrimony… Before witnesses and God… Erm… And also Christ, don't forget him, good old… Jesus… Um… Oh, do you, erm, _Doctor_, allow your daughter to marry this man..?" Ten said nothing for a moment.

"Dad!" Jenny hissed.

"If I have to," Ten muttered glumly, crossing his arms like a child and scowling at the flowers on the wall. He grumbled something to Donna about the smell of the flowers, and she told him to be quiet after elbowing him in the ribs.

"Before I begin, if anyone has a reason why these two shall not be wed, speak now or forever hold your-" There was a visceral roar noise and Lady Celeste of Ophays, in her funeral-black with her pasty skin making her look like she belonged in a coffin rather than a wedding ceremony, crashed through the ceiling.

"Someone knows how to make an entrance," Ten commented, and the three of them sprang to their feet, grabbing the champagne bottles, and Rory picked a fourth up from beside him and stepped around Jack and Jenny to face Celeste. But Jack ignored his bottle and the intruder, he instead knelt down to Jenny's eye level and took her face in his hands, and she seemed utterly bemused by that.

"I love you," he said to her, "Marry me. Right now."

"I – what!? Jack!?" she exclaimed.

"Marry me," he implored in a whisper.

"Yes, yes!" she said, which genuinely did surprise him, "I'll-" she didn't actually answer, she instead kissed him. While the commotion with Celeste continued they spoke quickly, ignored and uninterrupted by the objectors in the room. Ten was threatening to shoot the alien with the champagne cork – as was the plan – since they had no other conceivable weapons.

"We don't have much time - Do you, Jenny, um, damn, you don't have a last name…"

"Doesn't matter," she said.

"Okay, do you, Jenny, take me, Captain Jack Harkness, to be your lawfully wedded husband?"

"I do-"

"To have and to hold, in sickness and… Well, skip that bit… Til death… Skip that bit too… Erm, to cherish forever?"

"I do! Obviously! Do you, Captain-"

"I sure do take you," he grinned, not letting her finish the sentence.

"Then I declare us man and wife," she kissed him again.

"And that's why – Oi! What're you two doing!?" Ten demanded, seeing what was happening finally. All too late for him to put a halt to any proceedings, "Stop that!"

"We're just getting married," Jenny answered (eventually).

"You can't get married, we don't have a vicar."

"_I'm_ ordained, remember?" said Jack.

"You can't be your own vicar," Rory told him.

"I can do what I want, and now we're married," Jack declared. They all stared at him.

"Are you going to deal with her or not..?" Jenny asked eventually. Lady Celeste hadn't actually moved, "It's all legally binding."

"It's not at all! And she can wait, I'm sure!" Ten said, "I can't believe you would orchestrate this whole thing just so-" Donna's guffawing cut him off.

"Shut up, will you?" Jack said to ten, letting go of his new wife's hands and going to grab his own bottle of champagne, "Now, I'm gonna shoot you in the face with this cork if you don't tell us what the hell you're doing here." It hissed at him. Could it even speak?

"It's MY wedding," it snarled eventually.

"Oh yeah? Who're you marrying?" Jack asked, and it roared.

"When my betrothed arrives-"

"Where's your betrothed that it's taking him over two-hundred years to get here, huh? We saw your painting, 1752."

"That's nothing! I've been here since the fall of Rome," she said, "Since the end of your Pharaohs. After my home was evacuated, and my dearest was going to be on the next shuttle, they told him."

"Well, he's not here. He's probably never coming, since your planet got sucked into the sun, didn't it? They only evacuated the most important," Jack said.

"Nobody deserves love if I can't have it," she told them. Okay, so she'd been – in simplest terms – abandoned at the altar back home. And now she was taking it out on every innocent wedding party she came across, bitterly murdering everyone with a shred of happiness. "Including _you_!" she made a dash at him and he ripped the cork from the bottle, except it missed and smacked into the ceiling, bouncing away uselessly. He wasn't looking forward to the pain of being gutted one-bit, and braced himself, when out of nowhere Jenny thwacked Lady Celeste of Ophays over the head with another bottle, knocking her in a heap to the floor. Then, while Jack was temporarily confused, she took the bottle from his hand, and smashed her again.

"That should do it," Jenny said, "Now, where were we?" She wrapped herself back around Jack, much to Ten's discomfort, and Jack had little motivation to do anything except kiss her back. After all, he thought, they _were_ newlyweds now.


	70. Name Dropping

_Amy_

_Name Dropping_

"Wait, wait, wait," Amy said over the hisses and whispers of the gaggle crowding Donna to get in on the latest shred of gossip on the TARDIS, "They got _married_?" Everyone was quiet for a moment in anticipation of Donna's answer.

"Yes! That's what I keep bloody saying, married. Ma-rried. _Married_," she repeated the word, "I don't know where they've gone though, they said something about taking her ship."

"_Legally _married?" Martha questioned, and Donna snorted.

"God no, course not. He married them himself or something, kept saying he could be his own vicar and he's ordained," Donna explained, drinking the tea Amy had made for her to try and tempt her into telling the story. Not that Donna needed much tempting, they were always desperate for things to talk about. With Ten and Rose consuming the last week, the new Harknesses were a wonderful topic of conversation.

"I still don't believe he's ordained," Amy said, and Martha, Adam and Eleven all murmured agreement.

Eleven added, "I swear my wedding wasn't legal."

"Which one?" Amy sniggered. He sighed sadly and shrugged.

"Probably none of them, to be honest," he said to her, "I'll have to go to extra effort with the next one with the legislature and all."

"'Next one'?" Donna and Amy both exclaimed.

"Oh, it won't be for a long while, don't all get in a tizzy about it," Eleven said, irritated, "We'll have an actual wedding one day, I promised. Anyway, back to this Harkness thing."

"I suppose she has a surname now, doesn't she?" Amy mused.

"She doesn't have to take his name," Martha said, and Donna agreed with her, so Amy scoffed.

"Oh, you two and your hyphens. Smith-Jones and Temple-Noble. You lot make me look bad for changing my name to Williams," Amy complained, and Martha rolled her eyes. Donna drank more tea, and Eleven stared at her like he'd been slapped.

"_You changed your name_!? But - but Pond!"

"Oh my god, not this again. I tell you everytime you say 'Pond' and you _always_ get offended and then forget within ten minutes," Amy said, but he kept acting like he'd never heard it before. God, the Doctor was infuriating sometimes - why was he so obsessed with name 'Pond' anyway? She'd really never understood it. He never fawned over 'Jones,' 'Smith,' or 'Mitchell' - though, they _were_ thoroughly common names. "I'm sure she'll be called Jenny Harkness."

"The thought makes me cringe. To think, _my _daughter," said Eleven, shaking his head at the notion, "Running off with the likes of _him_." Amy thought he was being pathetic. Captain Jack was quite obviously no angel, with some myriad of grey-morality scarring his history and a whole host of trauma and infidelity, but neither was Jenny. Amy knew Jenny could shoot someone as soon as look at them, it was only through learning social conventions that she didn't. She'd seen the girl be empathy-less before. Even the Doctor wasn't free from the family-darkness, and now he had a brand new, shiny son-in-law to add to his family tree. She wondered if his parents - whoever they'd been - would be proud of him, and their grand-daughter, too, for that matter.

"Oh, you're being a baby," Amy said. He was displeased that nobody was giving him sympathy. Anyway, why _wouldn't _his daughter decide to run off with some gorgeous, rugged, immortal alien-fighter?

"Have you ever heard that thing people say - that girls marry men like their father?" Adam suggested with a faint smirk. The three girls laughed, but Eleven seemed mortified.

"How dare you, Adam Mitchell. I ought to kick you off this TARDIS again," Eleven threatened.

"Why would you kick me off but not Jack!?" Adam exclaimed.

"Jenny wouldn't have it, she'd leave with him, and I like having her where I can keep an eye on her," Eleven said. Amy wanted to know exactly how much experience he had with rebellious 'teenage' daughters.

"Some of us here actually like Jack, you know," Martha said, "He runs Torchwood effectively enough. I mean, maybe he _does_ sleep with all his employees, but they do their job. And it's not like you're innocent of shagging."

"Oi!" Eleven objected, "She's my wife!"

"Like that matters - marriage doesn't mean you shouldn't keep a lid on it sometimes," Martha said, and Amy thought she might be purposely trying to offend him. It was definitely working, he was turning scarlet and crossing his arms awkwardly.

"She _is_ right," Amy agreed (well, she WAS right).

"Says you and Rory," Eleven snarked back in retaliation, "How many times did I walk in on you two?"

"It's not _our_ fault you don't know what it means when there's a tie on the door," Amy said, "_Or _how to knock."

"Knocking is for humans. And how was I supposed to know the tie meant anything when it was _always _there? Filthy. I don't know why you never locked the door," Eleven seemed ghastly offended, and Amy was more offended by him crassly commenting on _her_ bedroom habits when he was no bastion of chastity himself.

"We did! You sonicked it!" Amy argued.

"Sometimes I am so glad I don't have to worry about all that stuff on here," Donna piped up, finally making Eleven and Amy stop bickering about sex, "Anyway, how's Rose been today? Didn't you say you were gonna take her out somewhere?"

"I did," Martha confirmed when Donna addressed this. Without Rose, or the constant risk of her coming in and asking for things at any possible moment, onboard, it had been a stress-free day for Amy on the TARDIS. "She's less upset than I thought. I mean, she's still _quite_ upset, but it was like something was distracting her all day. She ate a lot of food."

"Distracting? Oh, great," Donna muttered, "That's all we've had from the Tenth Doctor all day, he barely knows what's going on. Useless. _That_ was why we had to use Jack's plan. I never actually thought it was just a trick so he could marry her."

"What _was_ his plan?" Adam asked.

"Something about a fake wedding luring out some alien bride from Ophays. I mean, it _did_ work, err, technically..." Donna said, "Then Jenny glassed it anyway."

"What a great plan," said Eleven sarcastically, "Speaking of the Tenth Doctor, where is he?" he changed the subject from his daughter's wedding. He didn't seem to want anything to do with at all. Amy then decided she was hungry, and went to look through the fridge.

"God knows," said Donna, "Went off through some other door when we get back. I don't want to know what he's doing anymore."

"Someone really should clear all the off-milk out of the fridge, you know," Amy said, looking at the wide range of milk bottles they had, from a range of centuries. Some old-fashioned glass bottles, and some funny-shaped can. _Canned _milk. The future was weird.

"Oh, be my guest," said Eleven dryly, "Never used to have this problem, you know. You lot go through milk like the cows are dying out. Which would never happen, since the human race seem to think cows are more important than rainforests and oxygen. Thankfully you're much more considerate with the alien jungles you colonise, though the imperialistic tendancies of your species tend to fall into xenophobia more than anything. Awful lot of wars over trees."

"And the superiority complex of _your_ species," Amy said.

"That's racist," Eleven muttered.

"_You're _racist," she accused.

"I shan't hear anymore of this. I rather think I might go read and get away from all this. You know, I often imagine that this is what high school must be like on your planet. You get so much amusement from what other people are doing," he started to walk off.

"Because other people's problems aren't yours. Nobody wants to talk about their own problems," Amy called after him, but he was gone, "I might go, too. I think Rory's just showering - he stunk of flowers. I wish _I'd _decided to go on holiday for a few days..."


	71. Aba Daba Honeymoon I

**AN: My exams are finally over! Yay! More writing! Err, also, I may have decided to save my originally intended storyline for tomorrow for much later so I can have Adwin in it, so if anyone has some quick, vague suggestion for a proper storyline that'd be swell.**

_DAY EIGHTY-TWO_

_Eleven_

_Aba Daba Honeymoon I_

Through the night, there had been a queer sense of easiness and rest throughout the TARDIS. It was like a whole variety of things were coming together and sorting themselves out. He may thoroughly disapprove of his new son-in-law (the sheer thought made him cringe), but at least the reunion of Jack and Jenny put an end to the strife between them. Jack and Jenny _not_ together was full of mutual, pathetic pining after one another. Ir was better for everyone that they were (he had also, admittedly, enjoyed himself quite a bit the night before when he'd made a trip out to the console room to call Clara and tell her all about her new relative - she had not been happy about being a mother-in-law at twenty-four).

He had worn away the sleepy hours reading, mainly, always relishing in the fact he would never run out of books. Books were the art that never died. It was a wonder where the human race found so many trees. He was reading some poignant number about long-lost love that morning, not paying much attention to the title _or_ the plotline in all fairness, when he decided that eight o'clock was early enough for him to slip out into Nerve Centre and loiter there until he figured out what people were doing.

When he arrived, it was empty. Jack and Jenny had taken the latter's ship out the night before for a 'brief honeymoon', as they said. How brief, Eleven didn't know, but he assumed that - due to the time-machine nature of the Messaline spaceship - they'd be back soon anyway. Which was a shame, because he wasn't _too_ inclined to see either of them. Maybe they'd get the time circuits mixed up and it would take them a few weeks to return.

He was surprised when the first person to awaken was Adam Mitchell, who he'd found himself spending a peculiar amount of time with lately. The boy, perhaps more lonely than the Doctor, as he was surrounded by bodies rather than empty friends, didn't really indicate he'd seen him, and went over to the kettle straight away. Eleven was slumped in the kitchen on the bar-like stretch of countertop with the rectangular window cut into it, one of his arms hanging lazily over the edge into the next room.

"Morning," Eleven said quite flatly. Adam Mitchell made a noise, looking for mugs, and Eleven looked at him, wondering if tiredness was making him impudent rather than a lack of manners.

"Huh?" Adam asked when he saw Eleven looking at him, "What? Do you want a coffee or something?"

"You're having coffee?" the Doctor questioned. Pardon him to say, but Adam didn't half look unwell. He was sort of grey, and his eyes were purple circles deepset into his face. He frowned at Eleven.

"Yeah, why?"

"Well, maybe you should go back to bed? It's early, after all, you look-"

"I'm not tired," he said abruptly, "I'll be fine, just want some coffee." Eleven didn't bother to question him, but he decided an eye ought to be kept on him - perhaps Eleven could discover what was troubling him so much, other than Oswin's absence. He was sure he spent hours on a night on the phone to the girl, anyway. He'd been on the phone to her last night when Eleven was speaking to Clara, not that he knew what they'd been talking about.

"No, I don't want any, thank you," Eleven said, being polite. He never had to be extra-polite before, he could say what he liked. Now he had a dozen Earthlings jumping down his throat whenever he was even a tiny bit rude - human customs really were exhaustive.

"Are you making coffee?" Amy came through, yawning, bleary eyed and wearing pyjamas. So many tired humans in pyjamas these days, like he was running a youth hostel or something ludicrous.

"He was, yes," Eleven answered for Adam, who squinted in thought for a moment as he held a spoon upside-down in his hand, "Anyway, what's on the agenda for today, eh?"

"Rory's sleeping," Amy answered, "_I've_ been inside for two days though, and I'm bored."

"We'll just have to go out somewhere, then, won't we, Pond?" Eleven asked, grinning.

"Of course, Doctor," Amy said, then she looked at Adam, "Do you want a hand with that?" He didn't appear to know what to do with the kettle now the water had boiled.

"No, I just forgot to fill it enough," he said defensively.

"You'll break it doing that, then the poor old TARDIS will have to get us a new one," Eleven said, "Perhaps one big enough to do a full round of sixteen cups of tea."

"Fifteen now, isn't it? Now Tentoo's left," Amy said.

"No, Luke's still here," said Eleven. Luke Smith _was_ still there. Apparently, things kept getting in Ten's way, stopping him from fixing K-9. What Ten had been up to for the last week was beyond Eleven. There had been a brief spell of friendship between them during the Second Prank War, but he was being far too distant for anyone to speak to him lately. Most people had given up - including himself. Last he heard though, Donna was still soldiering on. He'd really like to stay out of all that nonsense.

"_Still_? Doing what? I've barely seen him," Amy asked.

"He hates me," Adam said bluntly, "He said I'm a twat. To my face. _He's _the twat."

"Fascinating," said Eleven. Adam Mitchell was a curious thing, but he was almost instantly dislikable. It took some effort of spending extensive time with him for him to become somewhat amiable, and it wasn't surprising at all that Luke would be less than warm towards him. He was an 'acquired taste' as far as humans went. Amy was disinterested. "Invite him out?" the Doctor suggested, and Adam groaned.

"Don't a baby, Luke's nice," Amy said to him. Clearly, Amy hadn't warmed to Adam yet, and probably agreed with the general consensus of the crew that he was, in his own words, a 'twat' (not that Eleven would ever be so vulgar).

"Hey, hey! Mornin' all!" crooned a US accent that made Eleven jump he'd been so hell-bent on keeping it away from his ears for the time being. He turned sour eyes on Jack Harkness, swaggering, fully-dressed and on a mission, into the room. Eleven didn't spot a wedding ring on his finger, and looked rather smugly at the silver band on his own left hand. There was no 'wife' with Jack, thank god. Eleven didn't think he could stand both of them in the same room. "Wow, it's been a while, huh?"

"Has it?" Eleven asked.

"I saw you yesterday," Amy told him.

"_Yesterday_? Didn't think the wife's coordinates would be so spot on. She's sure something, that daughter of yours," Jack said wistfully, shaking his head a little and leaning on the bar next to Eleven, who promptly stood up and went to lean next to Adam and the kettle to get away from him.

"Oh, please don't call her 'the wife'," Eleven groaned.

"How long have you been gone?" Amy asked curiously.

"Oh, a good couple'a... Hours, I'd say." He was clearly lying, but Eleven - and nobody else for that matter - didn't want to know the truth about how long his fake-honeymoon with his fake-wife had been after his fake-wedding.

"Sure," Adam muttered.

"What are you up to today, then?" Amy asked, eyeing him and clearly wondering why he was dressed and ready to leave.

"Don't ask him that, I don't want to be stuck with his company," Eleven muttered.

"Charming, _dad_." Eleven thought he might cry. "Martha and I were gonna head to Cardiff, actually, take some stuff from the Torchwood vaults. Useful equipment."

"What do you need equipment for?"

"They've been on about this since the other day," Adam said, "Guns, probably."

"Okay, maybe there'll be some guns," Jack said, "But I'm mainly interested in the scanning devices we have there, trackers and such."

"I will not have guns on my TARDIS!" Eleven argued, "I won't!"

"What was that?" Martha asked when she came through, and to his shock and horror she was fidgeting with a handgun. A handgun! On _his _TARDIS!

"I said NO GUNS! Martha!"

"I don't have any ammo, calm down," she said, vaguely patronisingly. He huffed, furious that weapons had slipped his notice. And he always tried to be so careful! "We need them!"

"It's true," said Jack, "The woman last- er, yesterday - she ripped whole bodies open. The wife smashed a bottle on her head."

"Don't call her-"

"The wife?" Jack suggested.

"Yes! It's objectification."

"How about 'my other half'?"

"No!" Eleven protested.

"You _did_ give me your blessing."

"I withdraw my blessing! It was months ago! I was preoccupied! Clara was dead!"

"Hey, Doc, since I can call you 'dad', does that mean I can call Clara 'mom'?"

"You can't call either of us either of those things, I ought to have the both of you kicked off of the TARDIS!"

"Ah, you said last night you wouldn't," Amy interrupted the 'family argument', as Jack would say.

"Amelia!" he exclaimed in anguish. Amy just thought it was funny.

"Hey - how's about you let us bring what we like back from Torchwood, and I'll stop calling Jenny 'the wife', I'll stop calling you 'dad', and I'll never call Clara 'mom'?" Jack proposed. Eleven narrowed his eyes and thought. Jack had probably been annoying him so much for the sole purpose of setting up this deal (a deal with as little sanctity as the man's marriage).

"Fine," said Eleven resentfully, after some thought, "But I'm coming to supervise. Amy's coming too. I think. Aren't you?" he asked her, and she nodded.

"Sure. Let me get dressed," she left, without the coffee she had come to get, because Adam appeared very confused, and now desperately interested in the conversation. Eleven called after her to invite Luke while she did. If he was stuck on the TARDIS, the least they could do was offer him some company, since Ten was being lazy (Eleven would fix K-9 himself, if it weren't for the fact he could use the excuse of it being Ten's job to keep the dog around for longer - he _had_ missed that dog severely).

"Did you say Torchwood? You're visiting Torchwood? Cardiff branch?" Adam asked.

"Yeah, why?" Jack asked.

"I really think I should make sure Martha's safe," said Adma quickly, "Pyrokinesis can be very dangerous. Don't want her to melt any of your space-stuff."

"Oh, I'm sure I'll be fine," said Martha.

"No, no," he continued, "I think I should come. To make sure. Just to keep everyone safe, you know?"

"...What do you want?" Jack asked him. Eleven was wondering the same thing.

"Well, it's just, Oswin might want some specific stuff. She's been saying about scavenging technolgy lately. I'll just get some stuff if she wants any," Adam said.

"Good point - you stay here. Believe it or not, I have your girlfriend's phone number. I'll call and see what she wants, how 'bout that?" Jack said, watching Adam to see what he did. This suggestion was clearly a ploy to see what Mitchell really wanted. "Unless there's some other reason you wanna come?"

"...Alright, I might've heard of Torchwood, through the internet. And it's like, totally awesome, and I really wanna see your base and your stuff, okay?" Adam said quickly, like speed would avoid judgement. Eleven rolled his eyes, annoyed that violence was more impressive than common tact.

"Got ourselves a superfan, Martha. That's just what I want after my honeymoon," Jack said.

"Could you just not mention your wedding to Jenny or your marriage at all, please?" Eleven asked, feeling as though he were physically in pain every time Jack mentioned the unholy union.

"Fine."

"So, can I come?" Adam asked eagerly.

"I guess, but don't break anything," Jack said.

"I won't! I won't touch anything, I swear."


	72. Trouble On The Homefront I

_Eleven_

_Trouble On The Homefront I_

It was a brisk day, the TARDIS not quite materialising where it should have, leaving them about ten minutes away from the Rift and having to walk through gust after gust of wind and the grey threat of a storm overhead. Eleven, as always, walked like the weather had no effect on him, perfectly happy to go against the chilling breeze while the others held their arms around themselves to keep warm. Luke had joined them by this point. Jack and Martha were walking ahead, those two who knew the way, while the other four followed in a straight line with Adam Mitchell on the far right, by Eleven, and Luke on the far left, leaving Amy in the middle by his side.

"Is anyone going to fix K-9 anytime soon?" Luke asked eventually, leaving Eleven to try and dodge the question. He'd love to take K-9 back with them on the TARDIS, and didn't think he should be trusted with the job of fixing the dog. He'd put it off as much as Ten.

"God knows," Amy said, "It takes weeks to get anything done on the TARDIS. Still, it's not so bad, really?"

"It is sometimes," Luke said, "Maybe not if I was out everyday, but, I'm not," he complained. Eleven thought, maybe he should be grateful? Not everyone got offered to travel through time and space. Though, with the amount of people on board the TARDIS, he sometimes thought they did...

"Nobody's out everyday," said Amy, "We've tried going out with all of us before. Over a dozen people trying to investigate something never goes well. No discretion."

"There's barely discretion with six," Luke commented. Adam seemed thoroughly irritated by Luke's ungrateful comments - so was the mentality of someone who'd already been kicked off once, and was lucky to get any semblance of a second chance.

"Quiet today," Jack said, "Haven't seen anyone."

"No, we haven't, have we?" Eleven confirmed, looking around. It was empty. Nobody was anywhere, "Maybe it's Sunday."

"No, it's Friday," said Jack, "Friday the 14th of March, 2008. Unless your navigation system's still broken? Should be almost nine o'clock, too. Rush hour. And Cardiff is empty, and... Quiet."

"You probably just can't hear anything over this bloody wind," Amy said to him, which was true enough, the wind was atrocious. It was roaring, and made Eleven's ears cold. And the Doctor really did value his ears.

"Why so specific with the date?" Amy asked Jack.

"The base should be empty, that's why," Jack answered, "Something called me away for a couple of days, and I ordered the others to stay out of here while I was gone. Personal errand." Nobody asked Jack about his 'personal errand', the Doctor didn't want to know anymore about Jack's past than he already did, which was scarcely anything, and that was how he liked it. He knew enough about Jack's future to balance it out.

"Oh, good, we won't run into your little gang then," Eleven said dryly.

"Hey, it's not a gang, they're my team. You make it sound like were a group of hoodlums the terrorising the Welsh valleys. And I've met hoodlums terrorising the Welsh valleys, and boy are we different," Jack said, then he turned back and, looking mainly at the members of the group who _weren't_ the Doctor, said, "They were cannibals. It was nasty stuff."

"Sounds it," said Amy. Jack appeared haunted by whatever he was remembering, so Eleven didn't pursue him with any questions. Finally they were passing by Roald Dahl Plass on their way to Cardiff Bay.

"Best if we use the main entrance, rather than the lift..." Jack muttered to himself, mainly, though Eleven didn't know what he meant. He'd never been to Torchwood. He was, in all honesty, a _little _excited to see inside Jack's secret base. But only a little. He was still harbouring a grudge against the Captain. "Well that's odd," Jack said when they were outside of a door labelled Tourist Information. There was some plant outside he found interesting.

"It's just a weed," Amy said, then Martha opened the door. The weed failed to capture Eleven's attention, and he followed the others inside what really was a tiny information booth.

"Well, I have to say this is impressive," Eleven said sardonically, crossing his arms and looking around.

"Very funny, ha ha," Jack said dryly. Eleven fake-smiled at him for a moment, then went back to being sulky, as he had been all day so far. He wished the peace of the night and the comfort of his books would come back. Or possibly his wife. Either of them. In fact, he really should find out when Clara was planning on coming back. Jack leant over the desk and pressed a button, and the door slid open to greet them. "Impressed yet?"

"Oh, yes, very, what do you call that? A door? I've never seen one before. Connected to a button? This is technology beyond me," said the Doctor boredly.

"Yeah, yeah, yeah, laugh it up, Chin Boy," Jack said. Eleven was annoyed. Only his sister-in-law called him 'Chin Boy', not even Clara. Clara just said 'Chin'. He grimaced, but decided against arguing with Jack, following him through the new door in the wall and through into a huge room.

Yes, perhaps it was impressive. It was tall, reaching all the way up to the surface like a cavern, with white-tiled walls and grey, rugged steps. Full of computers and different levels, the staircase above the door twisted up to a briefing room, and to the left were screens and an office. Then in the centre was some sort of huge column, presumably something to do with the Rift cutting right below Cardiff. He ought to have made sure the TARDIS landed right above, where she could recharge. Perhaps it would sort out the recent navigational problems.

Jack was wrong though. It wasn't empty. There were four people there, two of whom Eleven recognised as Gwen Cooper and Ianto Jones. So far though, there was only one Jack Harkness. He didn't think he could stand two of them.

"Ah, crap, I..." Jack fumbled. The four members of Torchwood stared at the six newcomers, only two of them familiar (Jack and Martha).

"Thought you said it'd be empty?" Martha whispered. Jack said nothing.

"Jack? Who are they? Why are you back? You said you'd be gone until next Wednesday," Gwen asked, not liking the other four.

"I... I told you all to stay out of here while I was gone," Jack said, a little stiffly, trying to improvise.

"Seriously, who're they? Apart from Martha, we know Martha," said the second man, who Eleven didn't know. But he wasn't Welsh, that was for sure, he was a Londoner. He winked at Martha, who didn't really seem too impressed. He had a bandage around his hand - Eleven wondered what had happened.

"Well, I for one really think you should tell the whole truth about what's happening right now," Eleven said a little smugly, glad that Jack was having trouble with his team, almost. Served him right for marrying into his family, the scumbag. Jack said nothing, still, he was staring at the faces as though he hadn't seen them for a long while. "...I suppose I'll do it, shall I? Always me, isn't it?"

"Oh, shut up," said Amy. The Doctor ignored her.

"I'm the Doctor," Eleven announced proudly, "We're-"

"We're visiting to look at some specialist equipment," Martha cut over him, "In the TARDIS. We're from the future, about five years. We thought it'd be empty. This Jack isn't the same Jack who left you the other day, and I'm a future Martha. A _married_ Martha, Owen."

"So they're not the new-us or anything?" Ianto asked carefully, "You don't replace us on the weekends?"

"No!" Jack objected, "Never. Look, Martha's telling the truth. Introductions are in order, I suppose? This is the _Eleventh_ Doctor, the... Well, hey, he's not even the latest anymore. He's a newer regeneration-"

"Which one did you say the pretty one was?" Ianto asked.

"Ah, the Tenth," Jack answered, "Eleveny's pretty too, though, aren't you?" he smirked.

"I hate you," said the Doctor, "I really do."

"Anyway, this is Amy Pond, Adam Mitchell and Luke Smith. They're not the new Torchwood, they're members of the TARDIS crew who came along because they're bored," Jack said.

"Bored? On the TARDIS?" asked Owen incredulously, "Doesn't it go anywhere in time and space?"

"Yes, when it's not broken," Martha said.

"She's not broken! She's just... In a bad mood. Probably," Eleven argued on the TARDIS's behalf. He got a look from the others. "What!?"

"_You're _the one in a bad mood," said Amy.

"Yeah, yeah," Jack quieted them, assuming his usual leadership role, "Anyway, this is Gwen Cooper, Ianto Jones, Owen Harper-"

"_Dr _Owen Harper," Owen corrected him.

"Don't flirt with the married women, Owen," Jack said.

"Who says I'm flirting with women?" he winked at Eleven. What was with these people? It was like Jack had raised a mini-army of clones of himself.

"_Anyway_, Ianto's the guy who cleans up our crap - couldn't do the job without him," Jack shot him a smile, "Owen's the medical officer, and that's Toshiko Sato, the resident genius."

"What about me?" Gwen asked.

"You're indescribable," Jack told her simply, "But on a serious note, I thought I locked this door when I went out? Huh?"

"We needed to get in. Didn't you notice?" Ianto asked Jack, who frowned. Notice what? "Clearly not."

"We just got here," answered Martha, "Is something going on?"

"Yep, something is," Gwen answered, "It's silent up there. No cars, no people, no nothing. Not after last night. A weird meteor shower. We were all down here monitoring it, and now... Nothing."

"How can there be nothing?" Jack asked.

"Satellite weapons," Ianto said.

"It won't be satellite weapons, they're too traceable," Toshiko told him, not that he seemed to be dissuaded.

"Are you saying everyone in Cardiff has vanished?" Eleven asked, instantly interested.

"No," said Gwen, "The world."

"Every news channel is dead, there's nothing," Toshiko told them, "Even the emergency channel."

"Strange meteor shower, and everybody disappears?" Eleven asked, finally amused, "Well, this certainly sounds fun."


	73. Jack's Doctor

_Eleven_

_Jack's Doctor_

It seemed ridiculous, frankly, that everybody on Earth could simultaneously vanish _except _for Torchwood. An empty planet would make far more sense than a deserted metropolis with some far-too-coincidental dregs of alien-fighter jetsam. And so it was he, in his Time Lord genius, who suggested to Toshiko that the security cameras be checked as soon as possible. It seemed that the priority was not CCTV, but rather the news channels broadcasting nothing but coloured bars and a static ringing sound.

As he leaned on the back of the chair, shamelessly intruding on Jack's little gang underneath Cardiff Bay in an abandoned tube station, he began to get heckled with questions. Martha had been catching up with Owen, Jack had been in some stupor in a corner thinking over something that appeared relatively serious, Adam was in a different corner on his phone, and Luke and Amy were discussing something else, out of Eleven's earshot.

"So, _you're _the Doctor?" Ianto asked Eleven. Eleven looked at him out of the corner of his eye, before turning round (as Toshiko skimmed through blank image after blank image) and puffing out his chest proudly.

"Yes, yes I am," he said.

"I never thought Jack's Doctor would wear tweed," Ianto commented. Oh, like Ianto Jones was some fashionista? Why on Earth should Eleven listen to anything he said on clothes? Aside from the impeccably clean, well-tailored suit he was wearing. And more than that, he was _not_ 'Jack's Doctor'. Which he said very angrily, a moment later.

"I've never been so offended," Eleven shook his head, crossing his arms. At the next possible opportunity, he was going to get away from Jack Harkness and _stay_ away from Jack Harkness until he simply couldn't avoid him any longer. Which would hopefully be centuries.

"Why? What's Jack done?" Gwen asked.

"It's more of a matter of who Jack's done," Martha said with a sigh, as though she thought Eleven was being pathetic.

"Well excuse me for making a big deal out of the fact my own daughter has eloped with a man who already cheated on her once with a hologram of herself," Eleven shouted pompously, trying to paint Jack as some heinous villain to his own friends. His friends probably knew him better than Eleven did though, at this point.

"Eloped?"

"Cheated?"

"Hologram?"

"Daughter?"

The four members of Torchwood each asked one of these words, and eight eyes turned from the Doctor to Jack, who was clearly annoyed by Eleven's constant whinging. Not that the Doctor cared. He was going to whinge all he liked.

"Yes!" he confirmed.

"Oh, come on, it wasn't like we weren't engaged."

"You weren't! I mean, first of all you proposed with a hula hoop of all things - and even I would only stoop as low as a haribo, and in fact, the last engagement ring I bought was just that: a ring! Second of all, you weren't engaged, because she dumped you, because you cheated on her with a hologram of herself!" Eleven argued.

"That was ages ago!"

"It was two weeks ago! _Two weeks_!"

"As if you're guilt-free when it comes to the hologram dilemma. The clone conundrum. Whatever you wanna call it," Jack shrugged, and Eleven went red with rage.

"Are you insinuating I'm somehow in danger of sleeping with my sister-in-law!? She's my _sister-in-law_! Not to mention Adam's girlfriend, and I'm sure he doesn't appreciate this either," Eleven waved a hand in the general vicinity of Adam Mitchell.

"Hang on, the Doctor has a sister-in-law? _The_ Doctor?" Gwen asked.

"Nevermind that, the Doctor has a _wife_?" Owen exclaimed in equal shock and amusement at this fight. What was so funny about Eleven getting angry about Jenny's wedding!? He decided, as soon as he could, he would sever communications with Jack. Unfortunately, not having the authority to kick him off the TARDIS anymore, he would still have to see him. He was sure Ten shared his rage.

"I could have a husband," Eleven snapped.

"Shall I tell Clara you said that?" Jack threatened.

"I did not just say that Clara was a man!"

"Ah, but you said it there," Amy pointed out.

"Can we all just stop fighting about this!?" Martha shouted, and there was quiet. She pointed at Eleven, "First of all, _you're_ being pathetic, your daughter is 207 years old and she can make her own choices of if she wants to marry Jack. Second of all-"

"You can't sleep with holograms," Jack interrupted, "So I did not sleep with that hologram. And it was designed to trick me, okay? And I don't think it's surprising that a girl with an IQ of 400 or something managed to trick me."

"Who has an IQ of 400?" Gwen asked.

"Oswin does," said Eleven.

"Who's that?"

"His sister-in-law," said Martha, taking control again. How was Martha so assertive, when he was so incapable of making anyone listen to him? "And it's not 400, it's 352. Anyway, as I was saying, _second_ of all, you have no control over what Jack can and can't do, either, so you should bloody well leave both of them alone. Not one person came up to you after _you_ eloped in Las Vegas of all places - I mean, at least Jack and Jenny were at a proper wedding venue - with a girl you'd never actually been with before then, while _drunk_, and said they disapproved, did they?"

"I distinctly remember you shooting Clara in the face with a paintball gun about a week later," Eleven pointed out.

"Well... Well that was because she was annoying, not because I didn't want her marrying _you_, of all people," Martha argued.

"And, to be fair, she _is_ really annoying," Amy added (unnecessarily, Eleven thought).

"But you're just as bad," Martha rounded on Jack now, who seemed thoroughly surprised at the change of pace, "You _know_ he doesn't like you mentioning it, which is fair enough to be honest, because he hasn't done anything to deserve you cramming this down his throat all the time. You're doing it on purpose to irritate him, there's no need for it, you never _used_ to do it, it's a new thing. If you carry on, you'll both be sent home. The four of us are more than capable of looking at a few gadgets if you're both being pathetic. Okay?"

"...Fine..." muttered Eleven. Jack, for a few moments, was silent.

"Jack?" Martha crossed her arms and prompted him.

"...I still don't see what I've done wrong!" he protested.

"If you're so obsessed with Jenny, you can just go back to the TARDIS, hmm?" Martha then pointed a tad aggressively, and sparks flew from her fingertips, which Jack saw, and finally decided to be the bigger person and do sonething sensible for once in his sorry existence.

"Okay! Okay, fine," Jack grumbled. It was entirely Jack's fault, in Eleven's opinion, but he was trying (and yes, adimittedly also failing) to be above such human squabbles.

"...I'm going to look around outside," Eleven decided eventually, "Amy?" he looked at her, and she nodded, deciding to come with him instead of sitting in Torchwood. After all, Torchwood was nothing to do with her. Before meeting Jack, she'd probably never heard of it. And even then, Jack hardly mentioned it - it likely held no interest to her.

"I'll come," Martha offered.

"Well then, so will I," Gwen said. So it wasn't just the TARDIS crew anymore, they were being joined by Gwen, and a moment later by Owen and his damaged hand, which made five of them venturing out to see what was going on. And then Luke offered, because he didn't want to be stuck underground with Adam Mitchell all day, so there were six total. Jack and Adam stayed back with Toshiko and Ianto, and would hopefully have plenty of fun looking for devices.

"Adam!" Eleven called when they were about to leave, "Stay in touch with Oswin in case she wants anything. And no guns. Remember that, that's the most important part. Forget about Oswin, actually, she doesn't matter. Just guns. No guns."

"I'm going to tell her you said that," Adam said. Great, the Doctor thought, now he'd have Oswin having a go at him for some petty, non-existent reason. Oh well, he should just make the most of the day they were having, and go investigate why everybody had vanished.


	74. First Encounter

_Eleven_

_First Encounter_

Torchwood were all wrong. Nobody had vanished at all. The footage Toshiko had been looking at had not been live, it had been from a few hours ago (she'd been scrubbing in reverse to see at what time they 'vanished'), and accordingly, it didn't reveal what had just started happening in the city.

People were shuffling in the streets. They had just begun to drag themselves out of houses and flats, dressed haphazardly in mismatched clothes. Many of them were hunched over and holding their arms out in front of them, waving them around and feeling along the walls, groping their way through Cardiff on the search for help, stumbling over cracks in the pavement, falling down steps and staggering aimlessly into the middle of the road to carry on their journey.

"Oh my god," said Gwen, "They're blind, they're all blind..." It was true, they were. Something had blinded everyone in Cardiff - although, according to Toshiko, the whole world was out. Nobody on Earth could see anything, except for Torchwood, but why?

"What's so special about you?" Eleven turned to Gwen and Owen, with narrowed eyes and a dark look. He didn't know why he was so suspicious of Torchwood, but he was, "Why wouldn't Torchwood be blind, too..? What's different? Why would this pick you four out to keep seeing?"

"It's some sort of ridiculous coincidence," said Owen, though he was clearly uneasy.

"Excuse me," Eleven heard Amy say from nearby, and he turned to see her addressing one of the blind people. The group quickly clustered around to see what she could figure out from the man, "Do you-"

"See? Can you see?" he asked her, and then he flailed and managed to grab a hold of her, "You can see!?"

"I - what!? Yes, yes, I can-" she answered, confused and attacked by the man who started, a few seconds later, begging her to find him some food because he was starving.

"Someone can see?" someone else heard the commotion, which tipped off another, and another, and soon there was a rabid chanting through the people on the street to go for the girl who was sighted. Owen forced the man off Amy, where he fell to the floor. But they were gathering like a mob, crowding and shouting, bumping into one another and feeling their way towards the group.

"Shit, we should get out of here," cursed Gwen, backing off.

"Is that another?" asked a woman. Now they knew there were two people who were sighted in their midst, and Eleven decided they would definitely be in danger if they stuck around for too long. They drifted away as quickly and quietly as possible, all of them now wise enough not to say a word, getting away from the crowd of blind people, haunted by the image of so many groping figures.

Once they were thoroughly alone and further away from any residential areas, Eleven deemed it safe to speak again.

"This happened during the night," he said, "See how there are barely any cars on the street? It's empty. What happened last night?"

"Just the meteor shower," answered Owen. Yes, Eleven thought, he remembered somebody mentioning the meteor shower to him earlier...

"The meteor shower?" Martha asked.

"Well, they _said_ it was a meteor shower, but there was no meteor shower scheduled. We went down to the base to check it out," Owen explained.

"...All four of you..?" Eleven asked, and Owen nodded, "...So you didn't see the meteor shower? None of you?"

"We saw it on TV, but not in person," said Gwen, "It was like green lights in the sky, it lasted for almost half an hour, just lights. We thought it might be an alien fleet or something-"

"Alien fleet wouldn't announce themselves like that... So they get shown something beautiful, and then it's all taken away?" Eleven wondered, trying to think of their next move. The city was blind, so where were they to go now? How would you investigate mass blindness and a mysterious meteor shower? He would, of course, love to take the TARDIS back and watch it for himself, but didn't want to go to the risk of making himself blind, too - though who knew if it affected other species or just humans? "Anything else weird lately?"

"Well, there's the plants," said Owen.

"...Plants..?" asked Martha, "Like the one outside Torchwood? By the door? That weird-looking thing Jack pointed out?"

"That one's only small," said Gwen, "There are way bigger ones. They just started appearing, two days ago, everywhere."

"Show me these plants," requested Eleven.

"There's one over there," Gwen pointed after a moment of glancing around the area. The Doctor followed her gaze and spotted it, in an alleyway and sandwiched between two wheelie bins by a block of flats. Gwen noticed it because it was so tall. It must have been over six foot, green and stuck in the grotty, urban corner like a bad bit of photoshop, like it had been cut out of a comic book and glued onto a photograph.

He was awestruck, it was like nothing he'd ever seen. Tall, with a head like an emerald flower, long, green tendrils falling down out of the head like tentacles. Somehow, it had burrowed itself into the ground, through the concrete floor, and was standing there looking quite benign, if it weren't for the fact it definitely wasn't supposed to be there. He got the feeling it knew he was there, somehow, like it was listening. It was definitely not from Earth, but he didn't think he'd seen anything like it across the whole universe, either. Nor a story as such, of plants appearing out of nowhere and planting themselves in impossible locations.

"Wow! Well, this is beautiful, isn't it?" Eleven walked over to it.

"Careful," cautioned Owen, "They sting. There's venom on those vine-things. The papers haven't come up with a name for them yet." As he warned Eleven, the thing reared up all of a sudden. The vines in its head swung as it threw itself forwards, lashing out straight for the Doctor. As he was sure it would smack him squarely in the face, there was a burst of light and heat and the tentacle-thing fell, severed, to the floor. Martha had shot it off with a blast of fire.

"How the hell did you do that!?" Owen demanded of her, he and Gwen utterly shocked. Eleven ignored Luke explaining about the superheroes who run rampant for a few weeks in the backend of 2013, crouching down to examine the stinger on the end of the vine. He dabbed his fingers on the tip of it, licking them. He cringed.

"Eugh! That is not nice. Acidic. Dreadfully low pH - I've possibly just done some serious damage to my tongue," Eleven straightened up and stepped back, watching the plant-thing, "I've got it! We'll call it a 'stinger'. Because it stings. Good, eh? What do you think, Pond?"

"I think that for someone who married an English teacher you have a surprisingly childish vocabulary," said Amy, and his face fell.

"Well _I_ like 'stinger'... And you don't have any other names," he muttered, "Hang on, you knew they sting," he suddenly snapped all of his attention to Owen, "So there are victims - where?"

"Hospital," he answered, "It's been overrun lately, people getting too close to them. Probably another reason why it's so empty, everyone was warned to stay indoors while UNIT look into it."

"Why weren't you lot looking into it?" Eleven asked.

"Because we were told to stay away until Jack got back," Gwen said, "We did only last a day, though. Rhys found one on the windowsill yesterday."

"Take me to the hospital, I need to see the effect of these stingers. Anything else you've forgotten? Apart from the meteor shower, the blind city, and the killer plants that are somehow connected?"

"Jack never said you'd be so patronising," Gwen muttered, crossing her arms and not looking at him.

"I'm not patronising! Honestly, I can't do anything right these days, can I?" he grumbled. Finally, Owen offered to lead the way to the nearest hospital, leaving Eleven feeling like a victim in his own home.

"This reminds me of something that happened in London once," Luke spoke up as they walked, all of them keeping a keen eye out for blind people, flashing lights and green stems, "These Blathereen - Raxacoricofallapatorians - came and offered mum this Rackweed as a gesture of good faith to cure our world hunger, because it could grow anywhere. They were tiny, but they shot out killer spores, loads of people died. We had to use a city-wide frequency-emission to get rid of them, killed them all. The Blathereen wanted to use Earth as their own personal Rackweed farm to get rich."

"The, um, stingers - they grow anywhere, too," Owen said, adopting Eleven's name for them, if somewhat begrudgingly, "Not sure how."

"Well, hopefully we'll find out," said the Doctor.


	75. Jenny's Girlfriends

**AN: Okay, people said they were missing Closwin, so here, even though I was trying to keep them out of it as much as possible right now because I thought everybody was sick of them. Plus, they're also not gonna be out together for a good while after they get back, either, so. It's not going to suddenly launch into Closwin again. The fic is too biased towards them already for that.**

_Jack_

_Jenny's Girlfriends_

He was a little annoyed that he was having to be the more realistic member of the TARDIS crew right then and actually get on with their scavenging task, rather than heading topside to investigate the mysterious disappearance of the human race (or whatever was happening), but apparently Martha was the new boss of the TARDIS, and he didn't fancy being set on fire. Toshiko was still scrubbing files in the other room; Jack, Adam Mitchell and Ianto were in the archives looking for anything that might be useful.

"You're not really gonna stop me from taking guns, are you?" he asked Adam, wondering if perhaps he should lock him in the cells with the weevils. Adam merely shrugged, however. He'd been awfully preoccupied with his phone – and it wasn't tricky to guess who he was texting.

"I don't really care," he said with a sigh, "I mean, it's not like you'd shoot anyone if you didn't need to." He was being entirely more logical than the Doctor ever was towards guns. It was like the Time Lord had never been in a life or death situation he couldn't talk himself out of before. Jack had been shot first enough times to know when he should and shouldn't pull the trigger, though, and he was nearly insulted that the Doctor (_all_ of him) thought he couldn't be trusted.

"Why is he so against guns, anyway?" Ianto asked Jack.

"Hates violence. The most annoying pacifist I've ever met," Jack said glumly, "You guys are so lucky you've got me for a leader and not some old-fashioned Time Lord. He'll try and talk his way out of anything – hell, he'd probably try and reason with a bullet. Hey, Adam, didn't he have some kind of huge vendetta against that guy Clara was seeing? Donnie Blue? Daniel Red?"

"Danny Pink?"

"Yeah, that's the guy – with the boring personality and the non-descript face?" Adam nodded, "Hated him. Ex-soldier."

"I think it was only the Twelfth one who hated him, you know," said Adam Mitchell, "I mean, for that reason, that is. The Eleventh one probably hated him because he was sleeping with his wife. Ten just thought he was a dick, mostly."

"Wait, wait," Ianto frowned, "Explain the circumstances of how there's more than one Doctor at a time..?" Jack paused, trying to figure out how to word the specifics of the Dimension Crash when it seemed nobody really understood it yet. No-one had been trying until a few months ago, anyway. "Isn't that a paradox?"

"It's something to do with doors…" Adam said vaguely, clearly thinking, "Oswin's explained it to me before… Different universes, I don't know… Shall I call her and ask?"

"Who is this girl with the ridiculous IQ you keep talking about?" Ianto asked. It was true, Oswin had been mentioned in passing a good few times by this point, "The Doctor's sister-in-law?"

"She's from the future," answered Jack, "Literally the smartest human who ever existed. Her identical twin sister, Clara, married the Eleventh Doctor out there. She got converted into a Dalek and died tragically on the Dalek Asylum, and now she's a hologram. And Adam Mitchell's girlfriend, somehow," he added the last part in a whisper.

"What do you mean 'somehow'?" Adam asked, clearly hurt and offended, "_I_ seduced her."

"Yeah, _somehow_," Jack said, grinning a little. Adam shook his head, "Call her, then. I haven't spoken to her for… Feels like months. Not since I met that ex-girlfriend of hers. The pretty one, with the pink hair." Adam was annoyed at Jack's mention of Flek, but what was Jack supposed to say? That Flek _wasn't_ pretty, when she most definitely was? A big step-up from Adam Mitchell, in his opinion. But he didn't know the ins-and-outs of their relationship (as much as he'd _love_ to). Shaking his head a little, he was apparently calling her, and had the phone to his ear. And then Jack grabbed it off of him just as she answered, much to his displeasure.

"_Hi! Have you-_"

"Hey, sweetcheeks, it's not your boyfriend. Unless you want it to be, then sure," Jack said, trying to annoy her on purpose and giving Adam a cocky grin – Adam who was most _definitely_ not amused by Jack blatantly flirting with his girlfriend right in front of him. Toshiko came in then, quite possibly with something to tell them by way of update or advice on what to take.

"_Your new wife's already in love with me, I don't need you trying to get into my pants, too, Jack_," Oswin said dryly. And somehow, Oswin had succeeded in making Captain Jack Harkness the irritated one, and by the fact he didn't instantly reply she said, "_Ooh, did I get to you? Shall I text Jenny and tell her she has competition – maybe she'll shoot you again?"_ Ianto, Tosh and Adam all of a sudden thought this was hilarious. She was quite possibly _not_ what Ianto had been expecting the smartest girl in the universe to be like. "_Anyway, what do you want? It better be important, you interrupted Clara and I._"

"Interrupted Clara and you _what_..?" Jack asked carefully.

"_Wouldn't you like to know?_" she said. He grimaced, thinking they might be doing something, er, 'interesting'. Well, Jack's definition of 'interesting', "_Aren't you supposed to be busy getting weapons from Torchwood or something anyway?_"

"We are," said Jack, as Ianto told Tosh quietly who they were on the phone to, which caused her to be immediately interested, "And Ianto here was just wondering how it happens that we have three Doctors together in the same place without the universe imploding."

"_So, what? You called me? Am I just your nerd-servant or something? What about Mitchell? Surely he knows? Is he even there or have you locked him up? You better not've locked him up_," she threatened.

"I'm not locked up," Adam told her.

"_Oh, good._"

"But I have no idea about the Dimension Crash, or those doors, or whatever else," he continued, and she sighed down the phone.

"_Well you know I haven't done enough research into it as I'd like, what with you lot hijacking the TARDIS all the time and never letting me take it to monitor the Doors we find. And then when that lot went to Wonderland or whatever and never even told me – and then he called me a Dalek and threatened to kick me off the TARDIS, what a wanker. Anyway._

_"__Basically there are an infinite number of parallel worlds, and the barriers between them all are breaking down and leaving 'Doors', which in OUR universe is completely against the laws of physics. But there are infinitesimal numbers of universes where the laws of physics are completely different and paradoxes, like multiple versions of the same person, don't have the same effect. OUR universe – that is to say, the original one, I don't have the available equipment to tell if the one we're currently in is that one – is not the dominant universe. The chaos of the laws of physics of every single universe mixing together is impossible for the collective multiverse to handle and would cause the end of existence across every alternate plane. ONE universe is the dominant universe, and that means the universe with the most lax laws of physics so that it allows everything to exist harmoniously on a metaphysical level, though unfortunately not on an interpersonal level. The 'paradoxes' we know aren't paradoxes anymore, because the rules of reality have been overwritten in the least damaging way possible so that existence doesn't destroy itself. I don't know what caused it, but we can easily assume it might not be anything to do with any of us or anything in any universe we've ever visited or ever will. Of course, what with time being simultaneous rather than linear, that means the Doors spread through all of time and space, meaning that it's safe to also assume that this might never end. 'This' might have been going on forever already, and it's just that the TARDIS has coincidentally picked now to pass through, maybe, one specific Door that caused the Dimension Crash to begin with. But I can't tell without the necessary equipment, and how do you measure time but with a clock? And time doesn't even exist, so, it's kind of impossible right now. I mean, I'm sure I'll figure it out eventually, if the Doctor would ever let me utilise the TARDIS systems. Not that it's priority_," she seemed to finally finish her speech about the ways of the universe.

"So, wait," Ianto began, addressing Oswin presumably, "These 'Doors', are they like the Rift?"

"_Um, from a base-simplistic perspective, they're both windows through to other places, but the key difference being that the Rift exists in one specific universe. Or I mean, it could exist in any number of parallel universes, but the Rifts in different universes are just features of the landscape, I guess, rather than being remotely interconnected. It's a channel through time, but in a different manner, so it's not too similar in all honesty. But you know, it's the same premise, it'll just always lead to the same universe that it's in, rather than a completely new one. Any equipment you might have down there to measure fluctuations in the Rift might be moderately useful, though, if you have schematics?_"

"Um, yes, we should do somewhere, I think…" Toshiko said, who, like Ianto, and even Adam (and Jack himself) was a little awestruck. For the smartest girl in the universe, it was exceedingly rare that Jack ever witnessed her saying something legitimately clever.

"_Who was that? Was that a girl? Is she cute_?" Oswin asked instantly after hearing Toshiko speak, Toshiko who was very taken aback by being flirted at over the phone by some genius who was supposedly not even single. Adam just looked exasperated, as though he was used to this sort of behaviour. Probably was.

"How do you go from 'genius' to 'horny' in a matter of nanoseconds?" Jack asked jokingly.

"_Have you mentioned to your friends at Torchwood that I'm gorgeous? I think you should tell them that. I'm crazily attractive. Ask Adam._"

"_Have you ever actually met someone you HAVEN'T thought about shagging?_" said… Um… Jack didn't know. Oswin? Or had Clara just joined the conversation..? There appeared to be mass confusion now – was Oswin obnoxious enough to randomly start talking about herself in the third person in the middle of a sentence? Nobody said anything, at any rate.

"_Of course I have_!" exclaimed one of them, Oswin, presumably.

"_Who_?" 'Clara' asked, and there was silence down the line for a good few moments. Nearing on twenty seconds of nothing.

"_There are a few, I'm just forgetting_," said 'Oswin' eventually.

"_I thought you had an eidetic memory?_" Clara challenged. Definitely Clara, since she was the one who didn't claim to remember everything.

"_I do! I just… You know, I'm really busy right now, so I'll get back to you on that later, Clars_," Oswin said.

"What's going on..?" Ianto asked, confused.

"Oh, they're always like this," Adam told him, "You're just lucky you don't have to date one of them. I swear sometimes the other one answers the phone and lies." Jack didn't know what the Twins were arguing about.

"Yeah, okay, you two," he said, "Well, thanks for your help, I'm gonna go now… I'm hanging up…" they were still fighting, so he just hung up anyway, and finally gave Adam back his phone, who took it with a begrudging fake-smile. "…I've missed them."

"You all live with that every day?" Tosh asked.

"They're… You get used to it. It's not so bad when you know which one of them is talking," said Adam, "It's hard to tell over the phone. It's easy in real life – Oswin only has one leg, and Clara's got a wedding ring."

"It's the narcissism that gets to everyone more than anything," sighed Jack, and then he got a text through on his own phone. He checked it. It was from Oswin, and it read: _Hanging up is rude. I'm going to flirt with your wife now_. Great, he thought. Just great. He really shouldn't've bothered calling them…


	76. The Beast Below

_Eleven_

_The Beast Below_

They split up into pairs to search the hospital. He was with Amy, as they prowled the corridors trying to be as quiet as possible, though every now and then his shoes would squeak and there would be shouts from within the rooms and the wards, where people had yet to dare to leave their beds and venture out into the groping city with the rest of the sightless hoards. The building was huge, though, and for whatever reason the others had deemed it necessary to send Eleven and Amy down to search the lower floors (he'd had a large argument about that, demanding that he be allowed to see the living victims of the space-plants, and then he'd been told by Martha that it would be better if he went and found bodies to look at instead (and then there was a remark about him having terrible bedside manner - which he thoroughly disagreed with)), with the morgue and storage and such, which appeared to be very empty upon initial inspection, and also dark, and there was - in addition to all that - a pungent stink wafting through the basement-level of the hospital.

He ignored the smell, however, instead following signs to the morgue. If there were fatalities involved, he very nearly agreed that it _would_ be better to see those taken by the venom of the stinger-stings. At any rate, there'd be little difference between interviewing a blind person (when all they could probably tell you was that a plant had smacked at them) than a dead one in that scenario, and at least the dead people couldn't shout and alert feeling masses of blind-folk to his presence. He didn't fancy running away from them through a hospital. It was better they were on the uninhabited floor below.

The morgue was freezing cold, as expected. Thankfully for Eleven, there was a body bag out on the table waiting to be put away. Whatever this thing that was happening was, it was taking innocent lives, and he didn't like innocent lives being taken.

He slowly unzipped the body bag and was faced with the recently dead corpse of a young woman, though it would be hard for her to be recognised by anybody, as her eyes were completely swollen still. Red, burned and scarred with tiny welts and pustules, her eyelids were stuck closed by some sort of crusty secretion.

"What's wrong with her face..?" Amy asked.

"I assume that's what the stings do to people... The eyes, isn't that strange? It went for my head, too..." he said thoughtfully. And then, shamelessly, he tried to pry open one of her eyelids.

"Oh, I forgot how disgusting you were..." Amy shook her head at him, but he ignored her, succeeding in his task and seeing her eyes completely bloodshot and scarlet, and her pupils a milky-white.

"She was blinded, completely," he said.

"But none of the other blind people have injuries like that," Amy pointed out.

"Yes, that's true, but I don't think this can be ignored... It's an odd coincidence. How would the plants know to blind people?" Eleven asked. Amy frowned, thinking, and then headed over to the freezers to read the names off of then.

"There must be a sheet somewhere in here that says what all these people died of," Amy said. Eleven decided to look for such a sheet, and quickly happened across a clipboard on a desk.

"Hmm... Number 15..." Amy's hand went to the 15th door on the wall to open it, "No, sorry! Car crash, wouldn't open that, nasty by the looks of things. Unidentified. Ah, here we go, sting victims are... Number 1, 2, 3, 4... 6, 7, 8... 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 17, 18 and 20." There were only twenty freezers in the morgue to begin with, and fifteen of them contained sting victims. "Look, all the same," Amy came to read the sheets on the clipboard, "Lesions to face and head, severe eye damage, swellings... The next one: Lesions to face and head, severe eye damage, and-"

"All of them, every one, stung in the eyes," Amy said, "Okay, maybe it _isn't _a coincidence... Why would plants want to blind everyone on Earth?"

"You saw how easy it was for Martha to shoot that one," he told her, "Imagine how easy it would be if she was blind?"

"It wouldn't be..."

"Exactly. These Stingers, whatever they are, they're tying to level the playing field. And they're clever," he said, "Clever plants. Somehow got lights in the sky... But I've never seen them before. They really ought to be studied. We should go, though..." So they did, they left the morgue, though Amy insisted on bringing the report sheets on the cadavers with them.

"Doctor, what's that smell?" Amy asked him quietly as they walked. He wondered if perhaps, alone with her, he might be able to claw back some respect. Maybe he'd becoming the highest-ranking Doctor? After all, Tentoo was gone forever, Nine was universally hated after the last camping debacle, and people were steadily losing whatever faith they'd had in Ten now he appeared to be some vacant husk of Rose-oriented fantasies.

"I'm not sure," he said. He wasn't. It smelled a little rotten.

"It's not... You know, bodies? Is it?" she asked, and he saw her face, and knew that Amy really didn't want to breathing in the rancid stench of rotting morgue-bodies. Luckily for her, he didn't think it was, so he told her that.

"It does smell strange though..." he added, "Sort of like sweat, but mixed with... Grass? Sort of a garden scent? Musky." He sniffed, and then changed direction from where they'd been headed to duck left into a corridor that went downwards.

"What are you doing!? Don't go _towards_ the weird smell!" Amy hissed.

"Come along, Pond," he beckoned her to follow, "It's only a funny smell, a funny smell can't hurt you!"

"I'm sure that mustard gas has a funny smell, too, you know! In fact, it does!" she argued. He crossed his arms and stood in the corridor for a few moments, waiting for curiosity to get the best of her so that she'd follow. That didn't take long, as it happened, within two minutes they were creeping on tiptoes towards an old lift, a lift presumably leading to the sub-basement, where the generators and such were situated. As they walked, the odd aroma got stronger and stronger, and the garden-esque smell mixed with the rotten one filled his nose. It was definitely coming from below, he noted, as they stood outside of the elevator shaft.

"There's something down there. I can smell it. I mean - figuratively, I can smell it. Well, also literally. Both. It's like I'm _doubly _sure there's something down there. Which there is," he told her.

"Yeah, but we have no idea what," said Amy, "It could be anything."

"Yes!" he beamed, "That's the best part!" He sonicked the lift open and they stepped inside as he jammed the button to take them to the lowest level possible, which set the lift going at a shockingly slow rate, like something was preventing it from moving properly. "I just don't understand how these plants suddenly arrived, or where they came from..."

"Maybe they're just from a planet you haven't visited?" she suggested.

"No, they can't be... Unless some other species brought them here to take over the planet, but I don't think that's what they are. And plants can't build a spaceship, they must be something else..." he really didn't have a clue at that junction.

The lift stopped for a moment all of a sudden after a jerk, and they stood.

"This was probably a terrible idea," she hissed.

"No! I'm sure it's-" '_Fine_' was what he would have said next, had the lift not given way completely, and sent them crashing down through many more levels than he thought remotely possible in the sub-basement of a Welsh hospital...


	77. Somewhere That's Green

_Martha_

_Somewhere That's Green_

"Can anyone get a hold of Amy?" Martha asked for a the third time, as she tried to ring Amy again, just for the phone to completely ring out and go to voice mail.

"Maybe we should look for them?" Gwen suggested. The other four had reunited in reception by this point, next to the hospital doors. They'd figured out by this point that the plants always aimed for the eyes when they struck, and therefore guessed there was definitely a link between the lights in the sky and the plants that had learnt exactly where to strike a human to hinder them significantly.

She was just about to agree with Gwen and say they go looking for the Doctor and Amy - after all, what kind of trouble could they get up to in a morgue? - when Luke started ranting about the windows.

"Hmm? What?" Martha asked, looking over as Amy's mobile rang out for the fifth time (it was even more worrisome since Amy's phone, like Martha's, was meant to have signal anywhere in the universe). He was stood on a bench in a waiting area nearby to peer out of the thin windows at the top of the walls. Martha couldn't see a lot from where she was standing, and doubted that even if she also stood on the benches that she'd be able to see an awful lot. The doors were plain white though, no glass in them at all.

"What is it?" Owen went over, and Martha and Gwen followed.

"It's just green, everywhere," Luke said, "Like leaves or something..." he jumped down from his perch and dashed over to the door, pulling it open to reveal leaves and roots and vines _covering _the streets outside, roots bursting forth out of sewer grates and drains, spilling into the street and stretching up buildings, and on them were the poisonous heads of the Stingers.

"Oh my god... We can't even have been in there an hour..." Gwen breathed, "We should be quiet, if we don't speak, maybe they don't know we're a threat?" she said after closing the door. Martha got the distinct feeling that the plants were listening to them, somehow, despite a lack of obvious ears.

"They can't hear," said Owen.

"They can communicate somehow, and learn. They must have some way to sense the area, so Gwen's right. We should shut up, and walk slowly, and get back to Torchwood," Martha said.

"The Doctor said the plants were like nothing he'd ever seen," Luke said, "Someone should analayse them."

"Right. I'll text Tosh and warn her not to call us, and tell her to take that tiny Stinger outside the door and test it," Owen said, and so their tedious, treacherous journey through the plant-infested streets of Cardiff began.

People were tripping over roots every which way, unable to see them to avoid them like the four of them were. They had to dodge the blind people and the killer plants, having no idea if they were being remotely successful at tricking the Stingers into thinking they were blind like the rest or not.

* * *

__Jack__

"Are you sure?" he asked Tosh, when she'd finally delivered the message she'd come into the archives to give in the first place, before getting side-tracked by Oswin flirting at her.

"Yes, I'm sure, right when the plants started arriving, there was a spike in Rift activity. I would have found it the day they got here, but we weren't allowed in the base under your orders," Toshiko said, and Jack was mildly annoyed at his past-self unknowingly making life difficult.

"So the plants came through the Rift? And distributed themselves worldwide, somehow?" Jack said.

"It looks that way now," she said, and then she got a text through, "It's Gwen, she says... Plants have taken over the city!?"

"Hang on, what? Plants? The whole city?" Ianto asked while he and Adam Mitchell tried to figure out what some random bit of alien technology was.

"She says go analyse a sample of the one by the door, and not to call them," Toshiko finished paraphrasing Gwen's words.

"Well, I gotta say this is more than I bargained for," Jack said, picking up a blaster from the side (ah, how he loved to be armed against the various alien threats he went up against on a daily basis) and taking it off with him.

"Where're you going, Jack? Those plants sting, you know," Ianto called, "I've heard it's unpleasant."

"I'll be fine. C'mon, Adam, it might've grown in the last few hours, since apparently we've let Audrey II take over Cardiff," Jack joked.

"Didn't think musical theatre was really your forté," Ianto said as Adam put his jacket back on to follow Jack, seeming quite happy about being actually invited somewhere. In actuality, Jack needed to keep the members of Torchwood safe for the time being, since by next Wednesday, they were all still supposed to be present, correct, and healthy. And he didn't want to fight stinging plant monsters on his own.

"Well then you don't know me as well as I thought," Jack said, winking at Ianto as he strode out of the building with his gun, ready to tackle any giant beasties lurking by the door. "So, boy genius, any ideas about what might be going on?"

"Me? You're asking _me_?" Adam seemed shocked, "Nobody ever asks me anything."

"What's the problem? Need to call your girlfriend and ask _her_ if you have any ideas?" Jack said snidely. Adam Mitchell was unimpressed, but by that point Jack was holding the door open for him, and his attention was drawn to whatever was outside.

"Holy... That's a lot of plants..."

Jack looked out of Adam's shoulder and saw that he was right - that was, most definitely, a _lot _of plants. Vines and roots were falling down from the higher level to the left and spilling down into the sea, making the passage down to Torchwood almost impassable, blocked by leafy bouncers. The plant by the door had only grown a few inches to Jack's best recollection, however, which really was lucky for them. It was about a foot tall. Adam stepped away from it and stood on a root, which twitched.

Out of nowhere something splashed straight out of the water and knotted itself around Adam's right foot, who was wrenched backwards instantly. He was dragged towards the water with Jack unable to grab his hand and fight against the plant, but Adam Mitchell waved a hand and shot a blast of something white out of his fingers at the water and it froze just as he slammed into it, the root stuck fast in ice and writhing around. Then Jack shot it at the bast and severed it. It flailed for a moment more as Adam got to his feet, and then crashed and died.

"Don't step on the roots, I guess," Jack said, crouching down to offer a hand to Adam Mitchell, who took it, and Jack helped him climb back up onto the decking. "Cryokinesis sure comes in handy sometimes, I guess?"

"Oh, yeah, sure, when I get attacked by demon plants. Are you gonna grab that?" Adam asked, pointing at the little Stinger by the door. But the little Stinger by the door was gone. "Wait... Where'd it... Ow!" he shouted, and then kicked his foot wildly (his right foot again). The Stinger had latched its roots around him and slashed through his jeans at his ankle with some kind of tiny stinging-tendril, the fabric almost burned. Jack dove down and grabbed it around the head with a clenched fist, dragging it off of Adam, its roots flailing wildly. It was somehow still living without any connection to the ground, trying to smack its way free.

"That is some plant," said Jack as it ceased its writhing eventually. He wasn't going to let it go anywhere. He didn't even know if it really was dead or if it was just trying to fool him. If he had to, he'd say it was some kind of intelligent life.

"Yeah, tell me about it. Can we go back in now? That thing really hurt," Adam winced, looking down at his foot, which looked kind of twisted. When he tried to put weight on it, he stumbled, "Ow. Great."

"C'mon," said Jack, offering himself as a crutch for Adam. How'd he manage to injure himself so badly after barely five minutes out in the daylight? He was something spectacular, that was for sure.


	78. Pretty Poison

_Martha_

_Pretty Poison_

"Yep," Martha said, examining Adam's foot now he had it propped up on the table for her to inspect, Owen standing nosily by to check her diagnoses and examine the effects of the sting he'd suffered in his oh-so-brief trip into the sun that afternoon, "It's sprained. You said a root attacked you?"

"Yes, a root, Jack saw it," Adam said defensively, like she was accusing him of making it up. Why on Earth would she accuse him of that, when she'd been faced by full-grown Stingers earlier on that day?

"You are not to walk on that," Martha advised, "I'm sure we can fix it back on the TARDIS, but for now, stay here." He didn't seem too bothered by getting out of fighting the plants, but Martha had more important things to do than asked Adam Mitchell how he was feeling. His girlfriend could do that.

"Any news on that plant?" Jack called over to Luke and Toshiko, who were trying to figure out where the weird plant had come from, to see if it matched any known planets or species.

"You won't believe this," began Toshiko, "But it might not be to do with the Rift. Not entirely, anyway."

"Then what is it?" Jack asked, going over.

"Seems like it's originally Earth in origin - at its base, its some kind of hybrid of a Venus Flytrap and a Nepenthes Alata. Both carnivorous, and both from Earth," Toshiko explained.

"From _Earth_?" Jack frowned.

"Yes, like they've been genetically spliced. Definitely not natural, someone did this, this was someone's plan," she said.

"But what's more interesting is that this plant is supposedly two weeks old," said Luke, "But there weren't any plants two weeks ago. It looks like something to do with the Rift has caused them to mutate, that's why the activity spikes link in."

"Hold on," Adam said, sitting up a little as best he could, "When I stood on the root, the _other_ plant started to... Um..."

"It ran away," Jack supplied, "On its roots."

"Yeah," said Adam, like his was desperately trying not to come across as crazy, "And they learn, right? So they must have some way tocommunicate, all of them?"

"A hive mind," said Toshiko, "I hive mind has to have a leader, some kind of driving force, someone in charge."

"Did you say all the plants in the city seem to be coming up from the sewers?" Jack turned to Martha and asked her, and she nodded.

"Yeah."

"Then this leader, this mother, it must be underground somewhere, taking over from below. We've seen how quickly it grows-"

"Oh my god," Martha exclaimed, mortified, "Amy and the Doctor, they went to the basement of the hospital, the lowest levels - what if they found something!?"

"Then it's best you didn't follow them. Now we have a better idea of what we're dealing with here," said Jack to her, and then he turned back to the rest of the group as Martha tried to stop herself wondering if some terrible fate had become Amy and Eleven in the bowels of the city, "I think it's fair to say that Cardiff is the _root_ of the problem-"

"Oh, have a little heart," Ianto said.

"What? Just trying to lighten the mood. Anyway, I'm sure that if we take out the mother plant under the city, that the rest of them will die. Simply enough," he shrugged.

"Oh, sure..." muttered Martha, annoyed that he was making jokes. Amy and Eleven could be dead, and Jack was making jokes.

"But what about the lights in the sky? What caused those?" Luke asked.

"The same people who created the plants," said Jack, "Could be anyone though. Anyone who launched the seeds from space so they covered the whole planet."

"Biologically, the flashing lights won't have anything in common with the plants," said Tosh, "They'll be designed to create blindness to give the plants the advantage they'd need to take over."

"Launched from space by what?" Ianto asked.

"Satellite," said Adam, "It'll be some kind of satellite weapon. Maybe it took them these last two days to bring it back to Earth, fix it to cause the lightshow, and send it back up to position?"

"Satellite, good. Tosh, get on that, see if there's any traces of a satellite," Jack ordered, and she nodded.

"Who could have done this? The government?" Luke wondered.

"No, no," said Jack, "No government would want to blind everyone on Earth, they couldn't prevent it from affecting their own people. Some kind of terrorist group, maybe. Anyone with enough money and a fancy enough lab."

"Maybe it was Poison Ivy," Adam Mitchell muttered, and Martha could have sworn she heard Luke scoff quietly and say something along the lines of "_Not even funny_," though Adam didn't hear (probably for the best, since he appeared to be having a bad run of it lately). Martha didn't think he was really trying to be funny though.

"Company like that could wipe all traces of themselves," Jack said, "They could be based anywhere in the world, we might never-"

"Found them," said Toshiko.

"Who are they?" Martha asked.

"A group of activists, I think. There are UFO sightings that match the times the satellite would have to be launched, in a location where it would be possible. This group of environmentalists advertised meet-ups on their website for both times, in that place," Tosh explained.

"That place being..?" Jack prompted.

"An old cottage out of the view of any main roads. There's an abandoned substation next to it - if they're clever enough to create this mutation-" she nodded at the plant which was now in a sealed box on the table "-then they're probably managing to get huge amounts of power off the grid through the substation."

"Yeah, but _where_?" Jack asked.

"A small valley about fifteen minutes outside of Cardiff," she said.

"You're _kidding_?" Martha asked, and Tosh shook her head.

"The reason for the coincidence is probably because of the satellite - I have scans of it from UNIT's databases who identified it as extraterrestrial in origin. It probably came through the Rift a while ago and landed out there, just like the mutagen agent that found its way into the sewers to make the plants evolve," Toshiko continued explaining. That made sense, Martha thought, more sense than it being some 'wild coincidence'.

"But the lights, what _were_ they?" Ianto pressed.

"I suppose it must be some form of intense ultraviolet light," said Luke, "Like staring into the sun too long, but if you stared into it for ages and you were a lot closer. People didn't get ill effects right away, it took a few hours, but it probably permanently damaged the eyes and the retina. Whoever these people are, they _really_ want the plants to take over."

"Can it be reversed?" Jack asked.

"Maybe, but I can't think of any way to do it," Tosh said, and Luke seemed short on answers, too.

"We need the Doctor," said Martha.

"Yep, that seems about right," Jack agreed, "Okay, we need to be in two teams. Martha, you're a human flamethrower. You'd better head down to get the Doctor and stop this mother plant. Gwen, you and I will go too. You four had better see if you can get the SUV out of the city and away to find these eco-freaks and stop them from doing anything else. We'll bring the Doctor back here where hopefully he'll think of a solution. You four have to recover the satellite and stamp out whatever else they've got out there, because I'm guessing it's a base."

"We found some flamethrowers in the archives earlier," said Ianto, "Three, I think."

"Perfect, you four take one in the SUV, Gwen and I will take the other two," Jack finished briefing them with his plan, "Oh, and somebody get Adam Mitchell a walking stick or something?"


	79. Concrete Jungle

_Jack_

_Concrete Jungle_

It was a very rudimentary system they used to lower themselves through the elevator shaft on the absolute lowest level of the hospital, straight down to what had once been mass storage space for gurneys and wheelchairs and those sorts of things. The three of them fell past the entrance onto that level, though, seeing it infested by plant roots coming up from below the floor. No doubt there was some form of nest that had been allowed to grow, unchecked, in the underbelly of Cardiff in whatever old tunnel system lurked. The roots had broken through the foundations and the concrete of the hospital to infiltrate it, and by the time they'd returned there later on in the day, it was undoubtedly teeming with plant-life like an urban greenhouse. Martha lead the way through the streets and the hospital corridors, somehow overrun when barely two hours prior they'd been void of anything green (other than the sick-folk, if he liked), burning a few of the 'Stingers' as she went, leaving himself and Gwen with plenty of flamethrower fuel to thwart the weeds in the catacombs.

But, as aforementioned, the abseiling system they'd put in place to get down to the lowest level of the city was basic, at best. The last person down – who had been Jack himself – had tired the weak sort of rope they'd found around a plant root, which had started to furiously object when he threw his weight onto it (he'd been the one holding the rope for Gwen and Martha, as he suspected exactly that would happen). To cut a long story short, Jack gasped back into life after blacking out for a few moments, flat on his back with his head smarting a little. It appeared that he'd fallen to his death. What a hindrance.

"What happened!?" Martha came to check him over, hissing her question, instinctively wanting to check if the Immortal Man was okay.

"Plant fought back," he grumbled, wiping dust off of himself and breathing a sigh of relief when he felt the flamethrower tank was intact and not leaking, if a little dented. It hadn't been a far distance he'd fallen, not particularly, but it seemed he'd somewhat landed on his head and that had cricked his neck. The angle more than anything had caused his demise, as he clambered down from on top of the smashed-to-pieces lift, the cable completely severed and hanging thirty feet above it. It wasn't _too_ badly damaged though, which was surprising, but he guessed the plant roots below it crawling up the shaft walls had broken its fall. At any rate, there were no dead bodies to be found in the wreckage.

He took a torch out of his pocket, and Martha held a ball of fire in her hand like a torch, which was a neat trick in Jack's opinion. He'd seen Rose do similar things with orbs of golden light before, though Rose's orbs definitely had a further field of illumination than Martha's. Jack's flashlight was definitely helpful, and Gwen was standing by, ready with her flamethrower, the most effective weapon against plants of any size (except for jumbo weed-killer).

But what was being lit up was something he'd never seen before. It was a nest, most definitely, the walls covered in roots and leaves, somehow flourishing without the aid of sunlight. And there was a smell, too, a terrible stink, like grass mixed with rotten meat. And then Jack remembered what Toshiko had said – a hybrid of a Venus Flytrap and a Nepenthes Alata.

"The plants," he breathed, not being able to shake the idea they were listening to him, "Toshiko said it was a cross between a Venus Flytrap and a Nepenthes Alata."

"But a Venus Flytrap is carnivorous," answered Gwen.

"Yeah, exactly. So is the other one."

"But what about the Doctor and Amy!? What if they've, you know… Been eaten!?" Martha hissed, getting a ghostly, worried look about her. Jack was feeling uneasy, too. He'd been eaten by a worm earlier that week, he didn't fancy becoming plant food, either.

"I shouldn't worry much about it," said Jack, thinking, "Even though these plants are giant, the mutation probably won't make them able to digest human flesh, um… Quickly. They're designed to trick insects, not people."

"What are you saying?" Gwen asked.

"I'm saying that, if the worst is true, we hopefully still have time to save them," said Jack.

"Venus Flytraps take days, I'm sure," said Martha, "But one of this size could take hours."

"On bugs, sure, but not people. People are different, and it's clearly done something with them or they'd be crushed at that lift. Probably wants them for food, and they got grabbed by those roots," Jack said, having to think through the worst case scenario as they tread through an environment that was smelly, horribly humid, and full of dark greens and the constant rustling of leaves and plants. It was near impossible to spot a Stinger at any sensible distance down there. Like the sightless people above, they were very nearly blind in the underground tunnels (which he was beginning to suspect the plants had dug by themselves in their rapid growth), and the plants had the advantage. "Hopefully, they haven't been stung…"

"Oh, great, so all that digestion shit is pointless, because they might have been stung and killed already," Gwen said bitterly.

"You don't know the Doctor, this isn't a way he'd die. Always likes to go out with a bang," Jack informed her, "Absorbing the whole time vortex into his head, consuming fatal amounts of radiation… I don't know how the Eleventh one dies to become the Twelfth, but I'm sure it's heroic…"

"Probably chokes himself with his own bow-tie," Martha muttered. Entirely probable, thought Jack, and so instead of answering her, he shut up. He didn't know why he decided they ought to be quiet, they were stepping over so many twitching plant-roots as they walked it was impossible that the green devils didn't know exactly where they were and how many there were already. Hopefully, the lack of eyes meant they didn't know about the flamethrowers, however. Unless, of course, in all the genius of their hive-mind, the ones the trio had already slaughtered had told them. Not that that would do much good. They'd still be flammable, however clever they were.

So, stay quiet they did, stopping talking so as to avoid more 'what ifs' of terrible situations, more than anything else, though they were still all _thinking_ about what on Earth they would do if it happened the Eleventh Doctor and Amelia Pond had both wound up thoroughly dead at the hands of Audrey II's cronies, not to mention gangs of malicious triffids.

It was ten minutes into their journey that a Stinger threw itself around the corner, head-first, flinging its tentacle-sting right at Jack, who set it on fire and burned it off right there in the air. It flailed around like it was in pain, and the mysterious rustling noise around them intensified, but then Martha sent her little fireball straight at it, which grew so that it wasn't little at all anymore, engulfing the plant and much of the surrounding flora on the walls so the caves became black and stank of burning. But it was burnt to a thin, dark crisp, lying pathetically on the floor. Jack kicked it.

"That's for sneaking up on us," he said, having an impulse to spit on it. Though, that he didn't do.

Four or five more similar encounters, leaving a path of plant-destruction and weed-killing behind them, brought them through the tunnels (sloping lower and lower down into the underworld) to a lightless mouth. Martha, the most dangerous of the lot of them, stepped through this doorway first, and gasped at the sight in front of her. When no immediate threat presented itself, and she beckoned a little, Jack and Gwen both stepped forward on either side of Martha, to see what she saw in the ginormous cavern that had opened up beneath the city. They had definitely found the mother-plant.

It didn't look at all like a Stinger, or any plant he'd seen, some huge, emerald mutant in the belly of an ancient cave system, splaying its massive roots on the ground, which crawled up the walls and passed through other, similar tunnels dotted around their level of the cavern. The roots, humungous, the largest of all almost two entire metres in diameter, were like a web, leading right down to the thing in the centre. He couldn't really describe it, but it looked more like one, massive 'head', and didn't have any long body like the Stingers loping through the city and, apparently, the rest of the planet. It was like a fatter Venus Flytrap, a bulbous sphere with cross-slits on top of it instead of just one, which – he guessed – would open with four flaps, so that it could devour whatever it had caught. If Amy and Eleven were to be anywhere, they were to be inside of that great thing.

"As the Doctor would say," Jack began, "Geronimo."

"I can't believe you just said that," Martha shook her head disapprovingly.

"Like father like son."


	80. Don't Feed The Plants

_Eleven_

_Don't Feed The Plants_

He felt slimy and soaked all over when he regained consciousness, having no idea at all what had happened to him after the lift had crashed down into the underworld, or wherever it had gone. All he knew was he'd been knocked straight out, and now somebody was dragging him out of somewhere dark, humid and stinking of rotten flesh and grass and he was covered in something vile. He coughed loudly and spat something putrid up, his hands on a surface that felt like wood and smelt of burning.

"You okay?" and American asked. Jack. Of course. It was Jack. Why couldn't it be someone else, "Hey, I just saved you from being eaten by some overgrown flower, so I think we're even, huh?" Eleven squinted in the dark as Jack hauled him to his feet, looking, bleary-eyed, around at his apparent saviours. Overgrown flower? What, he thought?

"...Amy... Where's Amy..?" he coughed, disliking the sticky, bitter taste in his mouth.

"She's safe, she's over here," called Martha, "But we have to get out, with all the plants dying now it's gonna collapse down here."

He barely knew what was happening as the very walls around them rumbled and started to crumble, the only light being some mysterious, orange flame with no obvious source to his confused eyes. Jack was supporting him as he dragged him along, the Doctor almost incapable of walking properly, feeling weakened and halfway dead, still with no idea what in the world had happened to Amy and himself. There was shouting from the others - three of them, he guessed - but his head was hurting too severely to pay mych attention to the tunnels crashing to pieces behind them as he was forcibly running to (what he hoped was) safety.

"Ah, crap, where is this?" Jack asked somebody. Eleven felt his eyes burning with bright light coming from somewhere - he could scarcely see at all, it was as though he was blind - and when Jack moved off to stop supporting him he wobbled and staggered forwards and hit his shoulder on a wall, and then somebody came to tend to him, he supposed, but he could hardly see a thing.

"Did you let one of them sting you?" Martha asked. It really was good having someone with medical training in his close circles, he decided.

"I can't remember," he said hoarsely, coughing, "What happened? I can't see." Well, he could see blobs, so his eyesight had not utterly failed him, "I just remember... The lift crashed."

"Yeah, the lift crashed and a plant from hell dragged the two of you through about a mile of underground tunnels and then tried to eat you - lucky we got there in time," Jack began, "It's not an alien, Tosh found out it's a hybrid of two carnivorous Earth plants. They got an alien sattelite through the Rift to dispense seeds, and the seeds mixed with some mutagen agent and sparked the growth of that hell-spawn we just burned to death. Killing that destroyed the link they all had and destroyed all the Stingers. If you could see, right now you'd be seeing miles of dying roots sucking themselves back into the sewers. And the best part? Everyone's blind, so no-one saw a thing."

"Oh, joy, the human race is blind, how convenient," he drawled, "Haven't fixed that yet, then?"

"Oh, don't be so bitter," Martha said, still examining his eyes, not that he could tell much aside from her fingers on his face.

"Well, I'm sorry, Martha, but my eyes are in quite a bit of pain right now and a cure for this would be quite welcome," he said.

"We were sort of hoping that _you_ could come up with a cure," said Gwen, taking him by surprise, because he hadn't known she was there, "The others have gone to recover the satellite from the activists in the valleys who released it - when they bring it back it needs something to be loaded into it to restore vision."

"Restore it!? I can't even restore my own! Not to mention I don't know how it was taken away in the first place!" he complained, "And where is Amelia?"

"She's still unconscious, but she'll be okay," said Martha. Good, he thought.

"It was taken by extreme ultra-violet lights. The lightshow was nothing too fancy, just dangerous. Intense sunrays," said Jack.

"You want me to _reverse physical damage_?" he asked, and nobody said anything for a second.

"Oh - yeah," said Jack.

"Sorry, we were nodding," Gwen added.

"...Well the cure won't work in the same way. These plants are adapted to be best for blindings - for all my complaining, I should think my eyes'll restore themselves sometime in the next half an hour. But that satellite, whatever it is, is going to need to be modified for liquid, and a lot of it. It has to rain the cure, get it into peoples eyes, like eyedrops, I imagine. If you'd just be so nice as to get me some Stinger venom, I'm sure I can do... Something..." he tried to sound confident. He wasn't particularly. "Oh, I'd like to be taken back to the base first, though."

"How much venom d'you need?" Jack asked.

"I don't know, a lot, probably. Milk the stings, or something," he shrugged.

"It's acidic!" Jack complained.

"Is it? I hadn't noticed, what with it _burning my eyes _and everything," he said sarcastically, "Honestly, I just need access to this venom and to your computers. And make sure Amelia is okay."

"She's fine," Martha assured him again.

"Well... Keep making sure. You can't be too careful," he said, "Which way is home, then?"

"The thing is, we couldn't get out the same way we came in," said Gwen, "So it's... Quite far from here, sorry."

"Oh, excellent. Oh, you know what else would help? Actual eyedrops. Can't raid any pharmacies, can you? Well, I'd hate for anyone to have bulglary on their conscience," he grumbled, as somebody took his arm and turnes him around to walk another direction (he suspected Martha). "Don't I feel my age for once?" Martha sighed, proving it _was_ her aiding him.

"Is he still in a bad mood?" Amy complained. He nearly wheeled around to find her, had Martha not kept such a firm grip on his arm.

"Amelia! Are you okay!?"

"Why is it so dark?" she asked.

"It's not, the sting blinded you," Jack answered.

"I'm sure we'll be able to fix it though," Martha said quickly, "The Doctor's working on it."

"Yes, yes, he is," said Eleven, "I don't know how though. I'm blind too."

"I _told_ you that going in that lift was a terrible idea," Amy snapped. He heard her getting to her feet, and somebody went to help her even more than the Doctor was being helped. He could see light and grey blobs, however, his eyesight had not been completely stolen, like Amy's.

"It wasn't any safer up here," Martha said, "Adam sprained his ankle when a root grabbed him and tried to drown him."

"What happened to us? Where am I? Am I outside?" Amy asked, to be given the same brief summary of burning the 'mother plant' to death that Eleven had been given. "It _ate _us!?"

"Hey, at least you didn't get fully digested and stuck to a wall. And at least it was a plant, not a giant worm," Jack said, "You don't wanna be worm food." No, Eleven supposed, he rather thought he didn't.


	81. Heart Of Ice

_Adam_

_Heart Of Ice_

He wasn't going to pretend that there wasn't a terrible pain in his right foot every time the SUV turned a corner, or every time Ianto broke too hard. Eventually, he gave up and froze a big ice-block around his ankle to keep it still, though in the end that just made it a more permanent hurt of displacement rather than one every few minutes - all coupled with painful throbs everytime his heart beat. He was actually glad that Oswin had a pair of crutches she'd left behind in his room - at the moment he had some shoddy stick he'd made himself out of ice, and it was taking constant attention to stop it from melting everywhere.

"I don't see why _I_ have to sit next to Ice-Boy," Luke complained, crossing his arms tightly around himself. Adam grimaced. 'Ice-Boy'? Really? "It's freezing here."

"Oh well," was all Adam said, resentfully. It wasn't like he was immune to the cold, either. Martha was practically dying the other day of phantom heatstroke when her pyrokinesis came to light, she had to be locked in a freezer overnight until she came to grips with it. He was hardly different, he'd nearly perished from pneumonia when they were in Atlantis. Maybe he'd slowly gain some form of immunity (though his hand on his ice-staff really was _very_ cold, but ar least his skin wasn't sticking to the surface).

They'd been in the car for nearly forty-five minutes, he was becoming in a worse and worse mood. He'd barely been sleeping, the only person who actually talked to him properly was gone for who knew how long, and he kept ending up bullied and injured. Getting annoyed - at what, he didn't quite know, possibly life in general - he ignored Luke Smith's disdainful huffs on his left and pulled out his phone.

_When are you coming back?_ he texted Oswin. She was clearly not busy at all, wherever she was, because she answered straight away. Not that her answer was remotely helpful: _IDK_. And then, a second later: _Why?_ Well, he asked himself, why?

_Because I miss you_, he replied. The truth, entirely. He did miss her, he missed her horribly. He'd never felt loneliness at night like he felt it now.

_Clara doesn't know either_, she responded. It was likely that Clara was the one in charge, wherever they were, and that it would be Clara's decision when they left. His phone went again, to: _I miss you too_. That was probably one of the nicest things the smartest girl in the universe had said to him.

_Do you have no idea?_

_A few more days. _Then: _Is something wrong?_

_No_, he lied.

_Are you sure?_ She didn't believe him. He send a smiley face, deciding to be pathetic. _Just a couple more days_, she responded to that. He put his phone away, not feeling comforted at all. Maybe he could cryogenically freeze himself until she got back...

The SUV jerked to a halt.

"We're here," Toshiko announced, her eyes glued to her laptop, which nobody else was allowed to touch. Just as well, he thought grimly, he might freeze it accidentally if he attempted to use it.

Last of all of them, Adam Mitchell limped out of the SUV with a tight grip on his cane, slumping into it and loping behind them like the invalid he was. They had to pause for a moment to let him catch up, Owen staying nearest, since he was apparently a patient of the good doctor there. Luke had gotten away from him at the first opportunity. What was it about him that he just seemed to piss everybody off with his mere presence? He thought he must be just as bad as Clara, who was, quite possibly, the most perpetually irritating person he'd ever met (and he didn't even know why, she just _was_).

They were heading towards an abandoned cottage, in the middle of nowhere, behind a moderately sized hill. There weren't any plants out there, nor any people, but if there _was_ anyone, they'd likely be inside, being as they were supposedly the ones behind the floral event.

When they got inside, there was nothing. He didn't try to search the cottage, he instead perched himself crudely on the arm of a rather dirty, moth-eaten sofa situated in the front room and let the others do it. It wasn't like they could blame him - he could barely walk right then. His ankle kept twinging, causing him to wince every couple of seconds as it smarted.

"Is this place empty?" Owen called through from one room into another.

"It shouldn't be," Tosh answered him, "There's a huge tunnel complex below..." There was silence for a few moments, Adam spending them glancing around for anything in the floor in the living room, with its sofa, rug, and single chair. _Maybe there's something under the rug?_ he wondered. With his ice-cane (he felt like a novelty Christmas character by this point) he tried to lift up the nearest corner of rug _not_ held down by the chair in one corner and the sofa down the side.

"There's something under the rug!" he told the others, getting crookedly to his feet and limping off the sofa as the other four came back into the room, "It looks like a trap door." They moved the sofa and the chair and Owen threw back the rug, to reveal the entrance they'd been looking for. When pulled up, it revealed a grey, metal staircase leading steeply down. _Great_, he thought, _stairs_. At least it wasn't plant-infested.

Torchwood lead the way with lights and firearms, and Adam followed as quickly as he could, assuming they were annoyed at his slow, broken pace.

"Hands in the air! All of you!" Owen, taking the lead, shouted. They'd come into a room that looked like some large storage space, maintenance of some kind, for the substation they were in. It had battery lanterns hanging from wire along the ceiling, a painted mural to do with trees on one wall, and about five mattresses on the floor. There were eight people in the room when they entered, clustered around something emitting a beeping sound on a table.

"Who are you!?" one of them demanded. They were definitely the cliché environmental activists, Adam mused, wearing browns and greens, dreadlocks and cultural appropriations, looking like they mightn't've washed for a good while.

"Torchwood," Ianto announced, "Here to take that satellite and fix the mess you've made."

"Mess!? We are cleansing the world of the plague of humanity!" the man speaking was clearly the leader, nobody else dared say a word, looking at him in awe. It was more of a cult than an organisation.

"You're killing innocent people," said Owen, "Millions of them are probably dead because of your mutant plants, unable to fight back."

"Their network is too strong, killing one only makes them stronger," he said on the plants.

"The 'network' is dead," Ianto said, "Kill the leader, kill them all."

"Do we have to do that here, too?" Owen said, "I hear there was a lot of fire involved." Nobody said anything.

"Give us the satellite," ordered Ianto.

"No," the leader said.

"You don't wanna be a murderer," Owen said calmly, "If you don't let us fix this, that's what you'll be. A handful of people on a blind planet. The plants are dead. Those people are going to starve to death."

"The blight of humanity must be cured," he continued on his blind soapbox.

"It'll be cures by nuclear disaster pretty quickly," said Adam, "Without anybody manning power stations. They'll all explode. Global Chernobyl." And then as an afterthought, he added, "Think of the trees." _Idiots thought nothing through_...

That statement, easily enough, caused almost immediate dissention in the ranks of the leader and in-fighting. Torchwood, Luke and Adam Mitchell observed as a loud argument started up and raged for about ten minutes - an argument which ended with a tiny girl decking the leader of the group and knocking him, unconscious, to the floor (Adam was impressed, _he_ couldn't deck someone). The satellite was handed over at fear of nuclear disaster - which was, in fairness, not remotely a lie at all.


	82. Eyesight To The Blind

_Eleven_

_Eyesight To The Blind_

The most gorgeous electric blue lights shimmered across the atmosphere like a billion stars made of sapphire in a trillion distant galaxies. They made ripples of colour in the orange sky, bathing everything in purple and causing the shadows to dance as they scattered themselves around the planet in the tail of the alien satellite that had released them. Eleven stood with his eyes to the fireworks, feeling like the glow was healing him long before indigo-flecked rain started to pour down from above. And then he was soaked. As he admired his medicinal handiwork, he heard Amy declare that she could see again nearby, being as the flashes above them and the rain coming now bore not just the antidote the the blindness that had struck the world, but the stings that had injured so many.

"It'll get into the water supply," the Doctor explained as he watched the rain fall, "Might make the water taste metallic for a few weeks, but by that point anyone who's indoors right now will be cured, as well. A shame it can't cure your foot - sorry about that," he apologised to Adam Mitchell next to him, who was wobbling on his staff made of ice (ingenious, really, the Doctor thought) and watching the stars with just as much wonderment as the other eight of them. "Did you manage to scavenge anything useful in the archives?"

"Hmm? Oh, yeah, there's loads of scanning equipment down there, and tracking devices," Adam said. Eleven's idea was that questioning Adam Mitchell whilst he was distracted by the light show above might make him slip up and mention any dangerous alien-weaponry Jack might have tried to blag on board the ship. Ought he do an inventory when they got back? Well, any weapons would definitely be hidden away from the main load of stuff they were bringing.

"You used to scavange all sorts when you were with Van Statten, didn't you?" Eleven remembered. Adam looked away from the sky to talk to him, the faint hissing of the rain ringing about them as it fell.

"Yeah, and then you told me it was all broken or crap," Adam reminded him.

"Ah, yes, I suppose I did used to be like that... Probably something to do with the eyes you were making at Rose, back when... Anyway," he cleared his throat, "I'm sure I'd say otherwise these days. I was very intent on killing that Dalek."

"I know. Maybe me hurting my ankle today is cosmic punishment for running faster than Rose that day," he suggested glumly, mostly to himself than the Doctor.

"I wouldn't go saying things like that around either of the other Doctors," Eleven advised him. _He_ might not be on the Rose-Train any longer, but Nine (despite his new '_girlfriend_') and Ten most definitely were. "Anyway!" he clapped his hands, "I'll go get the TARDIS. Good day's work, I think..." He sauntered off, leaving everyone outside the base to observe the human race being cured of mass loss-of-sight as a result of the Doctor's actions. Perhaps they'd trust him more now that he'd proven himself again.

* * *

Jack had taken it upon himself to invite the four members of Torchwood onto the TARDIS for a 'brief tour'. Eleven hoped it would be a brief tour, and he wasn't going to try and hide them in the old H&amp;T offices or something. You couldn't hide anything for long on the TARDIS anyway, Eleven thought. He'd hidden his relationship with Clara for the best part of nine hours, possibly less.

"They're not staying, are they?" Donna asked him quietly as he drank some tea.

"I hope not," he said. Torchwood seemed very excited about seeing inside of the TARDIS, even the entirely mundane main room. Jack should've just left them to get excited about the console room, he thought to himself.

"Have you seen the Tenth Doctor today?" Donna asked him then, taking him by surprise, "Or last night? He vanished and I've not seen him."

"Neither have I, I was reading all night and I've been out today," Eleven answered. Ten was probably just taking a very long walk through the infinite corridors of the TARDIS, "Well he better appear soon, else we'll have to look for him. And that could take... Weeks."

"Weeks!?" Donna exclaimed.

"Months, possibly. It's fine, the TARDIS will bring him back herself before then," Eleven said. He couldn't say he cared particularly what the Tenth Doctor was up to, he was busy trying to figure out what to do with his time when everyone else was asleep. Read Clara's books, possibly (she made notes in all of them, which was what interested him so much), when she wasn't around to stop him. His eyes found their way to his wedding ring for a few moments, until Martha sat down, exhausted. Amy had gone to bed already, and Adam had vanished off on his own very quickly.

"Where's Rose? I've been looking for her," Martha asked Donna, Eleven sandwiched between them with the former on his right and the latter on his left, pulling his elbows close to himself. It took a second for him to register Donna's silence as a result of what Martha had so casually asked. "What?" Martha frowned.

"Haven't seen the Tenth Doctor lately," Donna stated, and Eleven instantly saw what she was getting out.

"Stop with this!" he said quickly, "You're the worst of all of them, you know, following Adam and Oswin around, _and_ the Ninth Doctor and River." He made himself cringe a little as he said that, the thought made him queasy, "Enough relationship speculation. Nothing will come of it."

"...So you _haven't_ seen Rose?" Martha asked Donna to clarify, who shook her head.

"Nope."

"You're both ridiculous," he said to the pair of them, even though Martha hadn't really been doing much to endorse Donna's phantasms, "People deserve privacy. And you're making something out of nothing anyway." Thankfully, Donna did cease arguing with him. Honestly, the immaturity. "I don't see why the lot of you care so much anyway."

"Can't you see into his brain and find out what he's up to?" Donna asked Eleven when she got an 'idea' (he wouldn't call it as much). He stared at her incredulously.

"No, of course I can't do that! We exist as a paradox, we're not psychically linked, I have no clue what the man's up to!" Eleven exclaimed. What a ridiculous suggestion, "I'd trust you both to drop this, anyway! Asking questions will just cause heartache and you know it, Donna. And _you_," he turned to Martha, standing up, "Don't spread anymore rumours."

"I don't spread rumours!" Martha protested as the Doctor rinsed his mug in the sink (eugh, rinsing his mug was such a _human_ habit - but on the subject of human habits, he really did have to wash his bedsheets and possibly, finally, clean up his wife's clothes from the floor where she threw them because she was horrifically messy, to all her objections to the contrary).

"You do a bit," Donna said, which started a petty bit of bickering between the pair of them as the Doctor took his chances and slipped out of the room, dutifully going to pick bras up off the floor because Clara was too lazy to do it herself. It was this that got him wondering if he really had dignity anymore - and then he decided that even though she should learn to clean up her own messes, he was bored with nothing to do; she wasn't there; and it was his room as well (he wanted it to have _some_ level of cleanliness).


	83. A TARDIS Breakfast III

**AN: If anyone's wondering why I'm updating so much, it's because I have a week off school and literally nothing else to do. No exams, no homework, no job, nothing. Except write, of course. Also, to the person on guest who keeps asking about the missing crew: There is no missing crew. Tentoo is permanently written out and Closwin are away for a while, this has been addressed and established, everybody else is there on the TARDIS.**

_DAY EIGHTY-THREE_

_Martha_

_A TARDIS Breakfast III_

She was aching the next day after so much walking and running away from plants, and hadn't noticed the scratches and welts from the thorns and branches of the killer plants as they attacked her. But, she wasn't one for lie-ins (unlike her husband, who always slept til gone noon if he could get away with it - she'd left him snoring in bed that morning), so she'd shuffle-walked to Nerve Centre, and (surprisingly enough) found Rose and Jenny sat on the sofas.

"Oh, morning," she said to them. Jack was nowhere to be seen - he and his new wife weren't quite as attached-at-the-hip as Martha thought they would be. She yawned. They said the same to her, and she went and sat down with them, "So, I've heard Jack's side of the story..."

"Oh, god..." Jenny muttered when Martha started talking, rubbing her eyes.

"But what's _your _side?"

"It was just - a spur of the moment thing. Okay? And it's not like I _don't_ love him or anything. I don't want to talk about it," Jenny said. Martha didn't want to _hear_ about it, beyond that weak explanation. So she stopped asking questions about Jenny's elopement, she'd had quite enough of people eloping after the incident in Las Vegas months ago now.

"Where were you yesterday? I was looking for you," Martha asked Rose, curious. She was very interested to hear what Rose's answer was, after all the thoughts Donna had been putting in her head the night before.

"In the toilet," Rose answered.

"You were in the toilet _all day_?" Martha questioned. Truthfully, she had not checked Rose's bathroom to see if she was there. She'd called her name, and had gotten no response.

"Well I was sort of, drinking, the night before," Rose answered sheepishly, with a trace of shame, "I wasn't exactly conscious." That threw enough shadow onto Donna's theorising to make Martha drop the subject, she'd seen Rose drunk. If Rose had been drunk and had passed out at some stupid time in the morning and been asleep on a toilet rim all day, she could believe she hadn't heard her calling her name from the doorway. But then, she didn't seem particularly hungover, Martha noted.

"We were gonna go out today," said Jenny after a pause, "Do you want to come?"

"I don't know," shrugged Martha - she was, after all, very tired, and in some pain. She also thought she should possibly check Adam Mitchell's foot to see how it was doing (it wasn't a _bad_ sprain, but the sting he'd recieved was apparently making it hurt more - unless he was just being a baby and exaggerating. Nevertheless, it would only take a few days to heal. She thought that the Miracle Medicine needed to be saved for emergencies until its creator returned to make more), and more than that, she'd quite like a rest. She'd been out a lot lately.

Before she could give Jenny and Rose any kind of definitive answer, Donna entered, loudly complaining about not being able to get back to sleep for whatever reason and making a beeline for the kettle in the kitchen.

"And another thing!" Donna added to her rant that wasn't really to anyone, but more for herself, though the other three were left with no choice but to listen since she was shouting, "_Why _is this kitchen so awkward!? I just want to use the kettle, but I have to walk _around_ this weird wall to get in!?" She was just in a bad mood, clearly, "Eugh, I need to get out of here for a while..."

"Oh, the three of us were going out today anyway," Jenny announced, proposing she tag along.

"Erm, what? I never agreed to anything," Martha interjected.

"Oh, come on, it'll be fun," Rose said, in a far better mood than she had been as of late. It appeared Martha had no choice in the matter, she was being forced to go out.

"Fine, fine, I'll get dressed, then, shall I?" she muttered bitterly, excusing herself from the table as Donna finally registered Rose's presence and started questioning her and her whereabouts yesterday, getting the same grim story of drunkenness and toilet bowls. Before getting dressed, she cut towards Adam Mitchell's room, deciding not to neglect her duties as a doctor and see how his foot was doing. She ought to, anyway, he may have damaged a nerve or cut off a blood vessel in his battle with a root yesterday afternoon.

She knocked on the door, and got a muffled call in return allowing her to come in, so she did, and found him playing video games in the dark. Half past eight in the morning seemed a strange time to be playing video games in the dark, though. Why didn't his room have any windows? The whole thing was just dark.

"You should turn the lights on, you know," Martha advised, doing exactly that as she stepped over the threshold, "It's bad for your eyes."

"I'm colourblind anyway, what does it matter?" he complained, pausing whatever game he was numbing himself with and sitting up. "Why're you here? Coming to see my foot?"

"_Some_ people on this spaceship actually _are _good doctors, you know," she said, confirming his guess, going to sit on the bed to prod his ankle for a while and watch him wince and twitch.

"My foot's had more visitors than me, by this point," he grumbled, wincing, "Ow."

"Stop complaining. Have some painkillers, don't walk on it, it'll be alright in a few days," she said, the same diagnosis as yesterday. And then she ordered him to move his toes around in specific ways, and decided there was nothing the matter with his nerves, and then she left him alone in his dark bedrooms to wash her hands and get dressed properly.

When she returned to the console room a quarter of an hour later, she was immediately grabbed on the elbow by Jenny and pulled around into a corner, slightly disoriented.

"River and her boyfriend have hijacked our day," she hissed.

"First of all, it's _your_ day. Second? What boy-? ..._Oh,_ right..." it took her a moment to realise that by 'boyfriend' Jenny meant the Ninth Doctor. "So?"

"_So,_ the four of us are stuck with them. Apparently, we always 'need a Time Lord for supervision'. That's what Nine said. Then I said that _I_ was a Time Lord, and he was like 'a _proper_ Time Lord,'" Jenny complained, doing a bad Northern accent as she did her impression of her sort-of half-father.

"There were only three of us when I left," Martha pointed out, confused.

"Donna's coming now," Jenny explained.

"Will you get off of my arm..?" Martha asked slowly. Jenny still had a tight grip on her elbow (_very_ tight, she thought her fingers might be tingling and threatening numbness).

"Huh? Oh, whoops," said Jenny, finally freeing Martha, who stretched her fingers out and then clenched her fist, repeating this a few times to get feeling in her fingertips back.

"What are you bothered about anyway? I'm sure they can't be that bad. It's not like they're Whoufflé and you have to constantly stop them flirting and snogging in front of innocent bystanders," Martha said.

"They have a relationship built on mutual sullenness - they're so broody it's like hanging out with vampires," Jenny complained.

"Well Oswin's plenty broody and you don't complain about that," Martha sniped.

"Um, that's because Oswin's adorable," said Jenny offhandedly, like this was some given fact. At any rate, Martha managed to get out of Jenny's company and found Rose in the console room, sitting in one of the chairs as Nine and River paraded around the console making cheap remarks at each other and sounding more like nemeses than lovers, a distant look about her. She got out her phone.

_Jenny just told me you were adorable_, she sent to Oswin, humouring herself by causing petty conflict between Oswin and her stalker.

_I am adorable, have you not seen my dimples? I'm cute and tiny_. Martha was not quite prepared for vanity from either of the Twins, especially when neither of them were there. A moment later: _But Jenny's creepy_. Martha said nothing more to her, as Jenny herself followed her into the console room. The five of them were now just waiting on Donna.

And _then_ she got a text through from the other one, rolling her eyes, annoyed that she was now some bridge between the Twins and Jenny Harkness: _Does Jenny think I'M adorable?_ Clara asked.

"Clara wants to know if you think she's adorable too," Martha said to her boredly. Honestly, the narcissism of them both...

"I'd do any of them," Jenny said nonchalantly. That was far too much information. She just told Clara 'Yes', not needing to go into as much vulgarity as Jenny and her objectification of Echoes.


	84. Market Day

**AN: It's actually my birthday today, May 31st, I'm 17 now, if anyone's interested. To think, it's been nearly two whole years I've been writing this trash...**

_Martha_

_Market Day_

They walked out into a corridor. It was as dull as it sounded. A simple corridor, on board what she instantly recognised as a spaceship, since there was a hum reverberating through the metal and ringing gently about them, and a faint allusion to motion. But, whatever the ship was, the part they were in was empty and flat; no windows with pipes running along the tops and bottoms of the walls in the corners.

"Where are we?" Rose asked. Nine replied that he didn't know, and Rose muttered something cynical about him being 'helpful', so he scoffed and ambled to River's other side, away from her. Jenny took the lead though, the first to walk off with Martha close at her heels. There was a lit-up button by the door at the end of the corridor, glowing softly orange. When Jenny pressed it, the door hissed, the light turned blue, and then slid apart on diagonals to allow them passage into more bland corridors.

"Do you recognise the ship?" Martha asked her, since she was so desperate to be the leader and prove herself to the Ninth Doctor. She noticed Jenny didn't have a wedding ring on, though.

"Not really," said Jenny, after squinting around at the boring walls for a moment, like they held some secret. It was awfully quiet though, aside from the hum of far-off engines, and Martha got the urge to whisper as she spoke.

"Of course she wouldn't," Nine piped up from the back where he'd sunk away with River Song, minding their own business unless there was something snarky and resentful to be said. "She's a child."

"I'm 207!" Jenny protested.

"An infant, then," Nine made his insult worse, and Jenny was further offended. An excellent father he was, Martha mused. So full of care for his impromptu daughter.

They found something, finally. They found a huge, _huge_ room. They'd just emerged onto the floor level, belowa balcony, and it was completely full of what looked like stalls selling things that might be food, somewhere to someone. The group dispersed inadvertently to investigate the peculiar stands. The one Martha was closest to definitely appeared to be selling a sort of meat, and what might be a futuristic kind of fryer was spitting away in the back behind the counter. Yet, it was empty. The whole room was.

She lifted a flap in the desk and stepped inside, and (though her better judgement told her not to), prodded a bit of the strange meat that was shaped like a burger (it was strange because it was much more of a darkish grey than the browns, reds or pinks she was more accustomed to on Earth, leading her to think it wasn't any sort of livestock to be found in the Sol System), to see if it was hot. It wasn't _quite_ hot, but it was relatively warm, like everyone had cleared out in a hurry and not even bothered to take food or turn off the deep-fat fryers. Seeing a switch illuminated blue on the side of the fryer, the flipped it and it turned orange and the hissing of grease and oil quelled accordingly. She thought switching it off would be safer.

"This stall sells candles," Jenny, near Martha, called, "Some of them are still lit though."

"It's like everyone just vanished," Donna called, her voice echoing around the room. It was utterly vacant, void of life, nobody there.

"Nothing special," Nine then said, "Happens a lot. Temporal anomalies, portals through space and time. A ship passed through them, and it's gone forever. Or, the crew are. Some of them can only take living things. It's happened before."

"When?" asked Rose.

"1872, the Mary Celeste. Whole crew just vanished," the Doctor said, "Gone, completely. Like that Rift in Cardiff, picks up bits of flotsam in the universe and dumps them somewhere else. Someone once told me they thought they were cleaning."

"Who was that?" Donna snorted.

"The Eleventh Doctor. Not too good with metaphors, is he?" Nine shook his head, disapppinted in his future-self, apparently.

"I like his metaphors," said River offhandedly, like a compliment paid to her ex-husband in presence of her new boyfriend was normal. Nine said nothing, and Rose exchanged a look with Martha, the former of them rolling her eyes.

Then Rose mouthed, "_Text Clara_." Martha grimaced, but Rose kept motioning for her to do it, so - reluctantly - Martha texted Clara the details of what had just happened. Though when she got Clara's reply (whatever it was) a few minutes later, she didn't bother to check.

They continued quiet exploration of the silent room, Martha quite enjoying trying to figure out what things were with Rose, now that the two of them had reunited to rekindle the friendship that had spawned during the Second Prank War. Jenny was off with Donna, and Nine was (predictably) with River, though he looked like her comment about Eleven might have put him in a bad mood.

Nobody was to be found, though. Martha was wondering if it wasn't a weird temporal shift and actually everybody had needed to evacuate as a result of some dire emergency, like the halls were flooded with invisible radiation and they really oughtn't be there.

"That's a lot of guns," Jenny said from somewhere, and Martha and Rose (who'd been examining something that smelt like soap but looked like raw meat), looked over, across the way, where there certainly were a _lot _of guns. And some knives. And devices Martha didn't recognise at all, but assumed - through their positioning - that they were also deadly weapons of some description. Jenny glanced around, as though checking for something. The four of them were the only ones near, Martha hadn't a clue where Nine and River had got to.

Jenny jumped (unnecessarily) over the counter, knocking some of the stuff on the floor, and started picking up the guns to look at.

"What are you doing!?" Donna hissed.

"Duh, looking for guns," Jenny said.

"How about no!? Remember what happened the last time you had a gun!?" Martha exclaimed, remembering two weeks ago when she'd stolen a laser tommy-gun from a bunch of alien bootleggers, and had proceeded to threaten to shoot them all with it (except Jack, she hadn't threatened him about it, she'd just shot him anyway).

"I was mad! My fiancé cheated on me!" Jenny argued. Can't've been that bad if she married him a fortnight later, Martha thought to herself. "Anyway, Oswin wants-"

"Oh, here we go," Rose sighed. Jenny glared at her, but Rose was utterly unperturbed, crossing her arms.

"She just wants some technology scavenged," said Jenny coolly and curtly after a pause.

"Yeah, non-lethal technology," Martha said, which was completely true.

"It'll be-" To stop Jenny's argument, Rose clicked her fingers. For a second, Martha had no idea _what_ that was supposed to do - bursting into song at random moments wasn't particularly threatening - and then she saw all of the weapons in the stand (including the little pistol Jenny was toting) to dissolve into gold sparkles, ceasing to exist. "Oi! I bet some of that stuff was really cool!" Jenny did another ridiculously pointless vault (there was a door right next to her to get in and out) over the surface and landed lightly on her feet, going up Rose.

"What? What're you gonna do?" Rose challenged. Jenny, knowing Rose could quite easily manipulate the fabric of reality to do whatever she wanted, and could also throw her so hard she splatted on the wall like a fly, actually used her Time Lord intellect for once and resentfully stepped back from aggravating Rose. Martha doubted Rose would really do anything other than grass Jenny up to someone who actually had a chance of controlling her a little, but the passive threat seemed enough to stop Jenny in her tracks.

"Over here!" Nine called, breaking the little moment between the girls. They looked around to see where he was, though he was clearly in some other part of the room.

"Where are you?" Rose called.

"Round the corner." _So helpful_, thought Martha, not like there were dozens of corners in a maze of little shops, or anything, in the space bazaar. He wasn't far, though, they found him and River quick enough. "This is a black market," Nine announced darkly when they approached, "Back here, they've got organs. Human heart, Slitheen liver, I think these eyes might be Silurian."

"What, seriously!?" Martha was shocked.

"Explains all the guns," Rose added knowingly, "Probably illegal weaponry." Martha then really didn't want to know what the mysterious meat she'd found upon arrival was, at that moment. It might be someone she'd known.


	85. Octopussy

**AN: So, Mickey, Donna, Amy and Rory are the only four humans left without any superpowers - Clara, Rose, Adam and Martha all have them. So, does anyone have any objections if I figure some way to bestow the rest of them with a variety of powers (like, not all at once, slowly like I've been doing)? Because ****_I'm_**** not fussed either way, I just thought it might be interesting. Also, this is gonna be a short one.**

_Martha_

_Octopussy_

A deserted black market aboard an equally deserted spaceship was most definitely a conundrum. It was full of knitted suspicion and coincidence, both of them seeming plausible but neither feeling correct. Nine had then decided that splitting up would, for some reason, be greatly beneficial. Unlike usual, they weren't in two trios; Rose and Martha had instinctively paired up when this was suggested, as had River and Nine, and after Nine's rude comments about Jenny earlier, and the fact he just got on Donna's nerves, _Niver_ split off from the quartet, leaving the girls to roam free. Jenny seemed to see it as an opportunity to prove herself as an adept Time Lord. Martha couldn't help but think that she'd be a better Time Lord if she was less distracted thinking of girls 24/7.

"If we know why everyone on this ship vanished, what are we looking for?" Donna asked. They'd left the hall and were following some directions Rose was giving them with her time-vortex power, leading the way through identical corridors (save for some streaks of graffiti here and there).

"I suppose it's a scavenging mission," said Jenny.

"A bit ironic that when we intend to scavenge we end up fighting killer plants, and when we go looking for trouble we end up scavenging," Martha commented. Not that she was too fussed, she was very achy, and the constant heat of her body meant painkillers were destroyed if she tried to take any, having no effect at all.

"I was looking for something fun to do," Donna said.

"Well, scavenging technology's definitely fun," Jenny pointed out, "You never know what it does." Donna then went on to argue that, how on Earth was it fun when she didn't know anything about the things they were collecting? She might as well be picking up litter, for all the good it did her, she said. Martha thought she was going to jinx their good fortune to have a day off.

"...Where are we going?" Martha asked after there was silence for a short spell of time. Rose's eyes were faintly glowing pale gold, and she wasn't paying much attention. Martha nudged her, and she blinked, and her eyes went back to brown.

"Sorry?"

"I said, where are we going?" she reiterated.

"Living spaces," Rose answered, "They'll have all those bits of technology that make life way easier. Plus, I'm... Curious. I mean, the people living here might've all been criminals."

"A giant ship full of smugglers - it seems odd that _this_ ship would be the one to lose its occupants?" Jenny mused.

"Are the occupants more dangerous, or the supplies?" Martha challenged, "Besides, we don't know if the people were taken out of the ship, or the ship was taken away from around the people. Maybe in another part of the universe there's a bunch of frozen corpses of the people on this ship?"

"Isn't this a fun conversation..." Donna muttered.

Martha got a text.

Expecting it to be Clara, she sighed and dragged her phone out her pocket upside-down, flipping it around in her hand. But it wasn't Clara, it was Adam Mitchell: _What are the signs of heart attack?_ Martha just stared at her phone, and sent back three question marks, and asked who the hell was having a heart attack. _WHAT ARE THE SIGNS,_ demanded Adam, and Martha texted quickly some notes about sharp, shooting pains in the left arm. And then: _What if they don't have arms?_ Martha couldn't think of what to say, and then she got another text saying: _How much do you know about octopus anatomy?_

"Adam Mitchell just texted me and asked me to tell him symptoms for heart attacks on octopuses," Martha said, staring with incredulity at her phone. Adam wasn't typing.

"Is octupuses the plural?" Jenny asked.

"What? I don't know," Martha said defensively. Why did it matter what the plural of octopus was?

"Maybe it's octopi," said Donna, "You know, like genii."

"Geniuses is a word though," Rose pointed out.

"Yeah, I suppose..." Donna frowned.

"Clitori isn't a plural, it's clitorises," Jenny then said, which was information Martha didn't think she'd ever need to know. But now she was intrigued as to whether it really was octopi or octopuses, far more, it seemed, than why Adam Mitchell thought one of them was having a heart attack.

Being as she still had her phone out, she texted who she thought was the best person to ask: Clara Oswald (when she did, she got a glimpse of Clara's earlier reply she'd not seen, which said, _Is 'metaphors' a metaphor for penis?_, and she wondered, not for the first time, about the woman's real maturity level). _What's the plural of octopus_? Martha asked.

"I've asked Clara," announced Martha.

"What does she know?" Donna asked.

"She's an English teacher," reminded Martha, "I swear I'm right though, I don't think it's octopi."

"_I_ think it _is_," Donna stated adamantly. Rose said she really had no idea, and Jenny was suddenly inclined not to give her opinion until she had heard what Clara had to say. But Clara wasn't replying.

"...Can octop- I mean, can _they_, whatever the plural is, have a heart attack?" Donna then asked. Martha shrugged.

"I have no idea, I studied human biology, not marine biology. Sometimes extra-terrestrial biology," said Martha.

"Well then I can't see how Clara's any help, she's never studied marine biology," Rose said.

"She's studied plenty of extra-terrestrial biology, though," Donna snorted.

"Hey, that's my mother-in-law you're talking about," Jenny argued, though she clearly wasn't offended on Clara's behalf. At that crude, yet somehow true, remark, however, the three of them stopped their walking and paused (Jenny trailing off a few steps before realising no-one was following her), all trying to find a way to counter her statement. Martha's phone buzzed.

"Octopodes," Martha broke the silence with a frown, reading Clara's reply, "Never heard that before."

"Well, you learn something new everyday," Rose said, Martha assuming she hadn't heard the terminology before, either.

"...Ask her what the plural of 'moose' is," said Jenny, and the other three groaned.

"It's nobody-gives-a-damn, can we move on?" Donna grumbled, so they did, just as a banner appeared atop Martha's phone screen, reading: _It's gone blue, are they supposed to go blue?_ from Adam. She said she had no idea, and hoped to find out what he'd been up to with a high-cholesterol octopus all day.

"What about mouse? Is it like, meese? Or mouses?" Jenny wondered.

"It's none, it's _mice_," Martha said, Jenny really not doing well at proving herself to be a capable Time Lord. Though, she really had to question if the Doctor was a capable Time Lord as well. She recalled some stories of the Twelfth Doctor kidnapping a schoolgirl, and thought that that was a little creepy, so maybe they were putting too much faith in the man.

They continued to the living quarters, having to go up in a large, grinding elevator. If there was one scenario that Martha thought always conjured unease and awkwardness, it was being in a lift trilling an overly-perky ditty at a volume not loud enough to drown out the sound of other peoples' breathing. Even with the four of them being friends who talked everyday, she couldn't stand it. It was something awful about working in a hospital, in her opinion, when she was in a lift with a dreadfully injured person and their porters, wishing she could help instinctively, but knowing it would be handled and she'd been paged to go elsewhere as they wailed for aid.


	86. How Do You Like Your Toast?

**AN: So guys, in the last chapter I went and ran a cheeky editorial on that phone call and changed it so that it was Adam Mitchell calling Martha and not Amy, though he was still asking all the same questions about the ocotpus. You should all totally remember that conversation, just saying...**

_Martha_

_How Do You Like Your Toast?_

Conversation between them was relatively sparse. They had nothing strange to do with the Twins to talk about, and obviously gossiping about Rose and suspicions about her was off the table, since she was right there and being highly aloof. And then Jenny and Jack's 'union' was also a lost topic. Donna, however, finally steered them towards _something_ to talk about: Niver. The very couple she'd apparently snuck off to stalk in the woods a few weeks ago, and then accidentally caught Adam Mitchell and Oswin Oswald 'goat-wrangling' (whatever the hell goat-wrangling meant).

"How do you think he asked her out?" Donna mused, referring to Nine and River, "I can't imagine him doing anything like that."

"Never asked me out," said Rose, somewhat glumly, "I think he had a thing with some tree bird once, though, Jade or Jabe or something."

"_My_ father slept with a _bird_!?" Jenny exclaimed in shock. It took Martha a moment to realise what Jenny was thinking.

"No, it means woman," Martha shook her head, "'Some tree woman'."

"And I don't think he slept with her, I think she died," Rose said with a puzzled frown, "He wouldn't really talk about it afterwards. I was busy talking to a self-obsessed skin-tag."

"Talking to a what?" Jenny asked, and Martha was intrigued to as to what, exactly, a 'self-obsessed skin-tag' was. Rose's face spread in a smile, and then faded a little at the memory, and then turned slightly malicious.

"Have I never told you about Cassandra?" she asked, as though she were about to impart some great tale upon the three of them. They shook their heads. "Oh my god, I _have_ to tell you about Cassandra O'Brian..." Rose then told the tale of her very first real outing with the Doctor, where she'd watched the end of the world, with a slightly nostalgic and blunt air, being frosty in her telling of his behaviour. Her tone did a U-turn when she started on her second story, however, one of the first time she went out with the _Tenth_ Doctor. Rose got a sort of glow about her, nothing to do with her powers, and a glazy look of reminiscence and something else. After the grim body-swap, diseased-people recital, she spent the next few minutes grinning to herself.

Donna gave Martha a puzzled look, and then mouthed something Martha didn't catch at all while making eyes at Rose (Jenny wasn't paying attention, she was muttering to herself about plastic surgery, in lieu of Rose's story). Martha just shook her head an ignored her.

"How _do_ you think he asked her out, though?" Donna repeated her earlier point to steer them back to something they could actually talk about.

"I still can't even believe they're together, isn't it weird?" Martha said, "I mean, she was married to Eleven and everything. It's a bit weird to go out with another version, isn't it?"

"I don't think she's over him," Jenny said, "Eleven, I mean."

"Clearly not," said Donna, "I mean, I don't have _much_ sympathy for her, because she died. The Doctor - the Eleventh - really has every right to move on."

"Must hurt though, seeing him with someone else," said Rose.

"Of course it'll hurt," Martha said, getting some unwanted reminds of 'back in the day' when _she_ had unrequited feelings for the Doctor, the Tenth one, and the bitterness she felt when he fell for Nurse Redfern and everytime she mentioned Rose. She'd moved on though, she had Mickey now. In her opinion, River's new relationship wasn't moving on, though. "But it's like when someone dumps you so you date his brother to annoy him."

"Or her," Jenny interrupted, "Could be gay," she shrugged. Martha didn't really make an effort to amend herself, they just resumed the conversation.

"You never know," Rose began, "They might be really good together." Donna snorted.

"As if!" she exclaimed, "You didn't see them the other day, they barely looked at each other. It was just insults and cold shoulders, might've well have been bitter exes instead of a new couple."

"It could be worse, they could be making out in front of you all the time," Jenny said.

"Yeah. Whoufflé used to do that. The day they got together, I was just minding my own business and then I have to put up with that for ten straight minutes. And they wonder why they got caught so quickly..." Martha scoffed. Rose looked uncomfortable.

"They can't hate each other though, or they wouldn't be together at all," Jenny said, "It'll be some outcasts-sticking-together type thing."

"What do they _talk_ to each other about, though?" Donna continued.

"What does anyone talk about? Jack and I hardly ever talk," Jenny shrugged.

"Well doesn't _that_ sound like a healthy relationship," Martha commented.

"Say what you like, we've never had a fight," Jenny said.

"Except for when you broke up and killed him four times two weeks ago," Donna said.

"...I meant since we got married."

"You got married two days ago!" Martha exclaimed.

"To _you_, maybe."

"Wait - how long _was_ your honeymoon the other night..?" Rose rejoined the conversation. Jenny refused to answer, and by that point, Rose had finally identified a door in the endless corridors of the Living Quarters that was unlocked. That put an end to the gossiping that dominated the lives of most everyone aboard the TARDIS, because they now had things to be looking at.

For starters, the lights in the small apartment came on via a motion detector everytime someone passed from one room into another, and all of the appliances in the kitchen were controlled by a touchscreen pad on the wall, not dissimilar to the touchscreen pad on the wall of the TARDIS by the door out of Nerve Centre and back to the console room - though Martha didn't know what that panel was actually for, just that it was white and the screen glowed faintly blue, with nothing on it. _These_ panels were black with white text, sleek and fancy with a few icons she didn't recognise (thank god they had names below them, though the names weren't instantly English. As the translation matrix changed them, they warped from strange symbols she didn't recognise at all, making her wonder if the ship was even of Earth origin or if it belonged to another, similar species).

It was when she was skimming over the list of appliances with weird pictures - one of which she recognised as a kettle, but another was a water droplet she thought represented the sink, until she saw a picture of a tap head, throwing her back into confusion - that a voice spoke from behind her.

"_Hey - hey you_," it said, sounding like it was coming through a speaker. It was male and gruff, and she didn't recognise it. She turned to see who was there, expecting it to be a person, thus conjuring an actual mystery for them to be getting on with solving. But there wasn't anyone in the kitchen. "_You! Over there_!" the voice shouted again, making her jump.

"Err, sorry?" she asked.

"_Yeah, you, giantess right there. Want any toast?_" it asked. Martha frowned.

"Where are you..?"

"_You blind!? I'm on the goddamn counter, open your eyes!_" And then Martha realised. The toaster was talking to her. The toaster which had a light on the side that flashed on and off when it spoke.

"Those lights remind me of a Dalek," she said to it rudely. Well, it'd been rude to her - 'giantess', really? And there was no telling if the toaster even knew what a Dalek was.

"_A Dalek!? One of them freaks!? I tell ya what, if you're lookin' for a salt shaker you're lookin' in the wrong place, lady_," said the toaster, which sounded like it was straight out of Brooklyn, "_Now, ya want any damn toast or am I wasting my breath!?_"

"...No, thank you, I don't want any toast..."

"Martha - who're you talking to?" Rose asked, coming in, "Have you found-"

"_Ah, two of ya! What about you, blondie? Ya want any toast?_" the toaster asked.

"Nobody wants any toast," Martha told it sternly.

"_How about a crumpet? You Brits like crumpets, huh? Scones? That's what my programming says._"

"You don't toast scones," said Martha, "And no, I don't want a crumpet."

"_How 'bout some grilled cheese? Whaddaya call it over there - a toastie? I can do toasties, how about that? Sound good?_"

"No, stop asking-"

"_I can do waffles too._"

"Look here," Rose started, "Stop asking us if we want toast, we're not hungry."

"_You've always gotta be hungry for toast, a big girl like you_!" the toaster exclaimed.

"What did you just say!?" Rose demanded.

"_Said ya look plenty hungry to me._" Its lights flashed as it talked.

"You say that one more time and I'm throwing you out into space where there's no bread," she threatened.

"Rose, don't start on the toaster," Martha said.

"_I can put jam on your toast?_" the toaster suggested.

"Oh my god, nobody wants any bloody toast!" Martha exclaimed.

"_They don't want toast, they clearly want a nice, chilled drink_," said a second voice. The little lighted panel on the side of the fridge was flashing along with it, sounding like it was from the South of the USA, Texas or something.

"_Screw you, ya overgrown ice-box. The microwave makes colder drinks than you,_" the toaster snapped at the fridge.

"_This is nothing to do with me!_" the microwave on top of the fridge started to argue, too, with some posh English accent.

"_Look, you two just come over here and have some iced tea_," the fridge suggested.

"_They don't want iced tea, they want toast_," the toaster said.

"_Nobody wants toast from you_," the microwave butted in, "_You're a rubbish toaster._"

"_At least I ain't limey scum_."

"Well that's just racist," said Rose, "We're definitely not having toast now."

"_You deserve some hearty, American toast,_" the toaster said.

"_You're not even really American, you're a computer_," the fridge sighed. The appliance row continued on, and Martha and Rose finally snapped themselves out of being transfixed by the bickering of three AIs and managed to leave. When they left, they caught Donna ordering Jenny to go put something 'back in the bedroom,' as she'd said. It took Martha only a few short seconds to realise Donna was referring to what Jenny was waving at her.

"Is that a dildo!?" Rose gasped.

"Ew, get rid of it!" Martha ordered.

"Why? It's not dangerous," Jenny shrugged.

"It isn't yours! That's disgusting!" shouted Rose.

"That's what I've been trying to say," Donna said.

"We came here to scavenge technology," Jenny argued, "That's all I'm doing."

"Yeah, useful stuff! Not sex toys!" Martha exclaimed. Jenny looked genuinely upset and disheartened by the three of them yelling at her to get rid of the vibrator that did not belong to her.

"Are you sure? Cos they've got loads of stuff back there," Jenny said, glancing back at an open door leading into a darkened room. It took them a while, but they finally convinced her to put it back where she'd found it, despite her mutterings of, "_It's not like they need it anymore_..."


	87. Aiding The Outcasts

**AN: BTW, this chapter and the next one I did not write. Mainly because I hate Niver - or, well, River herself, more specifically. So I asked The Final Shadow (you know, the Wonderland guy) to write them. I'm basically a lazy bigot.**

_Nine_

_Aiding The Outcasts_

Their footsteps echoed loudly in the comparative silence of the ship as they walked down one of its large, pristine hallways towards what he presumed was one of the cargo bays. He'd needed to get away from them, his future selves companions, because whilst they were on the whole rather likeable people they could often become a bit much for him, and they clearly didn't have much love for the ninth incarnation of the Doctor anyway. It was bad enough being pulled out of his own time-frame into a TARDIS where he had none of the control that he was used to, but then also being surrounded by people that instantly had some form of distaste for him was just too much to put up with all the time. That was one of the reasons he tended to be such a recluse on the TARDIS, bar his occasional trips into the wider universe, he just didn't see the point of it any more.

River helped. He hazarded a small glance over at the woman in question, she'd stopped walking and was looking at a strange wrist-strap device on her hand. The ghost of a smile pulled at his lips, she helped, but he didn't know if she could be trusted yet. She was a part of his future, and thus knew things about his original timeline. The other two Doctor's may have forgotten that little detail, but he hadn't. The fact that they all existed at the same point in spacetime and the universe still hadn't ruptured was beyond him, what was just a bit more than a crush wouldn't make him risk it any more than he already had.

"Doctor, I asked if you knew what this thing was, looks Human to me but I can't figure out its function or when it was from," River asked, pulling him out of his gloomy thoughts and allowing him to briefly realise that he had been staring at the way her hair curled in such a way that could only be described as River Song. Her hands were placed firmly on her hips, she was staring at him with a hint of amusement across her features. He blushed, feeling like a small child who had gotten caught with their hand in a jar of biscuits just before dinner.

The Doctor cleared his throat and closed the gap between them, taking the device from her hands and taking care not to let their fingers brush as they sometimes did, that would make him lose his train of thought even faster than it usually did. The device was large and clunky, made of what seemed to be a lightweight metal shell with a series of three buttons lining the bottom of the device underneath a large screen. The writing above the button had long since faded, the only lettering visible being the letters O and Y embossed on the left of the device. He let out a long sigh, which got a small giggle from his female audience.

"What?" He barked out, looking up from the device into her blue-green eyes. She rolled them, a small smile on her face.

"You don't know what it is either, clearly."

He let out a long blow of air that came out sounding, much to River's amusement, a rather wet raspberry. "I know exactly what it is," he stated, running his fingers around the inside of the metal clamp that would lock the device to the wearers arm, he smiled when he found what he was looking for.

"And what's that then?" River asked teasingly, leaning up against the thin metal wall of the stall that she had plucked the device from.

"Well, it's a biometric vitals monitor of some… kind…" he trailed off lamely, twisting the device in his hands. He didn't know exactly what it was, the design was completely foreign to him, as was the metal it was made of. He shot River his trademark manic grin, "No idea."

She laughed, shaking her head, before bringing him in for a hug. The Ninth Doctor froze, as he always did when she showed affection to him, before slowly letting his arms wrap around her. The two stayed there for a few minutes, holding eachother in the depths of a long since abandoned spacecraft.

"Why me?" the Doctor eventually mumbled into her hair. It was a question that had plagued him since their trip to Wonderland, and even more so since the camping trip where they shared their first kiss. She pulled away, her eyes searching his briefly, full with pity. Her hand came up to rest on his face, her smile sad, he covered her hand with his and gently pulled it away. "Is it just because I'm another Doctor?" He mumbled sadly. "Because Eleven has Clara and Ten has…" He stumbled, looking away from her eyes before harshly murmuring the name "Rose."

River was still for a moment, hurt flashing across her holographic features. She slapped him. The smack of hard light skin against the Doctor's stubbled cheek echoed loudly down the hall. He stared at her, his mouth partially open and his eyes wide with pain from the blow.

"Don't you dare," she seethed, "don't you dare think that is the reason I am standing with you on this ship right now."

He went to answer, but was silenced by a sharp glare.

"I was part Time Lord, you know, all the way up to the regenerating. I know what it's like to have to change my face, to change everything that I am and have only the memories travel over. I'm not with you because you're the Doctor, I'm with you right now because you're the Ninth Doctor, a separate man from all of the others, and that is exactly what I need right now. Fresh from the Time War, without anyone left and believing you are the last of your kind… because…" She petered out. Her voice had become almost synthetic as her emotions had built, as if her holographic processor couldn't handle the raw power of the emotions she was feeling.

"Because?" The Doctor pressed, concern wiping over his own previous sorrow.

"Because I lost everything too, Doctor. I lost my Parents to the weeping angels, I lost my life to the Library and I lost my husband to the pint sized timeline jumper. You understand me, and right now that's what I need," She finished off, leaning away from him and brushing her hair out of her face.

"You might get better," The Doctor sighed, "Then there'll be no need for Ol' big ears to stick around anymore." He smiled softly. They always broke his hearts in the end, River would be no different.

She shook her head. "Don't you get it yet?"

"Get what?" The Doctor asked, startled slightly when he moved her hand away from his. She shook her head, laughing slightly, the curls of her hair bouncing up and down lightly.

"Oh you silly Time Lord, maybe you are all the same after all," she grinned, leaning forward and placing a quick kiss on his lips. "Well come on then Time Boy, we've got science equipment to scavenge, and I want to talk to you about your daughter."


	88. Body Parts

_Nine_

_Body Parts_

He cut and ducked away from any conversation with River Song about Jenny _Harkness_ (the surname made him cringe) initially, dodging away from her and talking a little erratically about how interesting a certain corridor looked. Continuing his ranting about the type of paint they were using on the walls – though he was making it up as he went along, he didn't know anything about paint – he ended up dragging her through the various rooms of the storage bay, until she got tired of him and took hold of his hand to stop him going on.

"If you're not going to talk to me, then _who_ are you going to talk to, hmm?" she challenged, dropping his hand and crossing her arms sternly. Honestly, he thought, sometimes with the way she looked at him, you'd think he was a child. Maybe he was to her, considering she'd originally been with a version of him a good few centuries older, at one point. Though, as far as he was aware, it was complicated, and he'd never actually asked.

"Well… Well, what to do with that girl can I possibly want to talk about? She's nothing to do with me. Not even my daughter, she's the Tenth Doctor's daughter," Nine said resentfully. It was true, Jenny wasn't his problem at all.

"Yet you're still angry that she's married Jack," said River knowingly. How did she know that? How could she just _tell_? It was so odd, going out with someone who'd been married to another version of you for centuries, (apparently). Even though he was a different person, he supposed he must be more similar to his other selves than he'd like to think. That, or he was just far easier to read than he'd ever thought previously.

"Well if I'd never brought Jack on the TARDIS, he wouldn't have married her," Nine protested.

"Oh my – that's such a stupid thing to say."

"Blunt, aren't you?" he muttered. She gave him a look.

"Think of all the people who would have died without Jack, hmm? All the people apparently saved by Torchwood?"

"Hear that? _Apparently_. Could be lying. Not like I know anything about Torchwood, it's all new to me. After my time. That's Tenth Doctor territory there," he said resentfully. He really didn't want to be discussing the fruit of the loins of a future version of him. It was only so far on from that that he'd be complaining to her about the stupid hair of those incarnations, which was probably a bad move since she'd fallen in love with one of them. He had to remind himself that he wasn't the first Doctor for River. It gave him a sense of inadequacy he'd never really experience before – not _that_ sort of inadequate anyway. And here he was, obsessing over what a girl thought of him. Wasn't he pathetic?

"Ridiculous," River scoffed, and he thought for a moment that the occasional rudeness of her was exactly what he needed. He was about to go on some rant, the contents of which he actually didn't think through at all (he just supposed the right (or wrong) words would come to him when he needed them most), when River's eyes drifted around him to fix on something at the back of the storage room they were in, "Oh my god."

"What?" he asked, instantly urgent when he saw she was distressed. He wheeled around in a – perhaps – over-exaggerated manner to see what she was looking at.

"There." Though he couldn't see Song, he got the impression that she pointed at something. His eyes scanned thoroughly in the darkness of the room, and he wished he had a torch not for the first time. Though he saw what she saw eventually. A metal crate on the floor nearby, with a few more stacked precariously on top of it, was slightly open. And out of it was hanging a hand.

"That's not possible – the temporal shift, I don't…" he frowned.

"Unless they're dead," said River. That was true enough. If that in that crate was a dead body, it might not have been taken by the temporal anomaly that had stolen away the rest of the ship. He stepped towards it with his guard down, knowing it couldn't possibly be alive, whatever was going on. He could feel the energy of the temporal shift and anomaly anyway, feel the spots littered about the ship where the people had been when they'd vanished. There was no way that that _wasn't_ what had happened, so this was something else.

He reached down his hand, bending his knees a little, River edging up behind him to get close (but not too close), and he touched the skin of the arm hanging, and withdrew it immediately. It was smooth, definitely not coated in skin, but some other weird material, almost like silicone, but not quite. He managed to push the crate on top of the partially open one back far enough to see inside more, and working on a blind hunch, took hold of the weird hang (which _looked_ perfectly human and alive on first glance) and pulled. It came out easily, the elbow getting a little stuck, but then he saw that where there would be a shoulder, there was nothing. Nothing but a weird sort of attachment, like it was supposed to plug in to something else.

"Is there a light in here?" Nine asked River.

"I'll see," she said, moving away from his shoulder she'd been peering over to amble around the room in search of light, since it was so dark and the bright blue light of the sonic screwdriver really wouldn't help. And whatever the thing was in the crate, he didn't think zapping it would be a good idea, lest he cause it to 'activate' or something… She did manage to find a switch though, and cold light filled the room, letting him see into the crate.

"This is weird," he said, "It's limbs, body parts – I think there's a whole…"

"Whole what?" she prompted when he trailed off. He'd realised what it was.

"A whole body," he said, "I know what it is." He stood up, bringing the arm with him. Strange, it reminded him a lot of when he'd first met Rose and the disembodied arm of an Auton under the direction of the Nestene Consciousness had violently attacked him in her flat. Not that he'd tell River that. It wasn't an auton, anyway, so it was unrelated information. "It's a clone, kind of. The technology is dangerous and outlawed, people could make huge armies with them. Incredibly resilient, really. Even if one of them got blown up. Well, if ten got blown up, you could fix a new one up easily with the bits that remain. They're all linked, they knit together, like when nanogenes heal organic life. These are synthetic. Download a whole personality into the head of one of them."

"Well, I'm glad you know what _something_ is on this ship."

"Oi!" he turned to her – in his opinion, that was completely unwarranted! But then he saw she was laughing, and she'd been joking. Good, he thought, the hypocrite, she hadn't known what the other thing they'd found was, either. A futuristic armband, for all he knew. Maybe it beeped when the child started to drown… (what a morbid thought). "Best to just leave them here, where they can't be got at."

"Probably," said River, "Unless…"

"…What..?"

"I just… Have an idea."


	89. Think Fast

_Martha_

_Think Fast_

"What do you guys think this is, then?" Jenny asked, holding up the one device she'd swiped (that _wasn't _a sex toy). Over all, it had been a pretty pathetic haul for them. They were clearly terrible scavengers. At that moment, they were following Rose's directions back to where the TARDIS was supposed to be, Jenny making unnecessary comments every ten seconds. By god, she was irritating sometimes, Martha thought. Donna seemed to think she was great most of the time though, but Martha had always found her a little weird after that trip to Messaline. She _was _a lot like Ten, though, just bloodthirsty with the sex drive of a teenager, and lacking the knowledge to go with her desire to appear intelligent. Martha was sure she _was_ highly intelligent, she just hadn't ever learnt anything, even after 207 years.

The device Jenny was holding was quite strange, however. It was sort of a sphere, but a sphere with the middle completely gone and the sides morphed into two handles so it could be held, and in the middle of it was a glowing purple cylinder. And it was humming. They had no idea what it did.

"It gave me an electric shock when I picked it up," Jenny noted, "Like static, you know?" She held it up to the light above them and shook it quite violently. It buzzed a little. "Huh."

"Maybe it's a paperweight," Martha shrugged. It clearly wasn't, for starters they hadn't seen any paper at all in the apartment, and secondly it was about the size of a football.

"Catch!" she then called, and threw it up into the air. Whatever the hell it was, Martha was sure smashing it on the ground wasn't a remotely good thing to be doing with it. Jenny didn't throw it towards them at all though, she threw it up and over her head (and she was trailing at the back of the group). As she watched it fall, Rose ended up flitting straight through her in a blur of gold and short-range teleportation to catch it in her arms the way you would a basketball.

"Bloody hell! What's wrong with you!? _I'm _keeping hold of this thing, whatever it is," Rose said, wrapping her fingers tightly around one of the handles and letting it swing by her side when she walked, shaking her head disappointedly at Jenny, who was now annoyed that she'd had her only artefact of the day confiscated.

"Hope it's not a weapon," Martha commented. Rose lifted it up and squinted at it, and then flicked the cylinder in the middle with her finger. It did nothing. "What was that meant to do?" Rose just shrugged.

"It's probably nothing dangerous, otherwise why would someone have been keeping it under their bed?" Donna said, which was true, that _was_ where they'd found it.

"Maybe it makes you have good dreams?" Martha suggested, "Or... Like, you know those projectors that make stars in the sky? Maybe it does something like that."

"Dad'll probably know," Jenny said, "Speaking of dad..." Nine appeared, now that they were back in the large, black market hall they'd appeared in originally, with a sufficient hoard of gizmos. "Oooh, what did you find?"

"Nothing for you," said River from over his shoulder, which she was loitering horribly close to, breathing down his neck. Or she would be, if she possessed the ability to breathe, which holograms didn't, as far as Martha knew.

"...Well, do either of you know what this is?" Jenny said, grabbing the other handle of the device in Rose's hand and trying to wrench it from her grip, though Rose was taken by enough surprise to tighten her hold even more and pull it right back, hard enough to force it from Jenny's hands. And then she lost her own grip on it and more or less flung it at Martha, who caught it hard and was immediately winded.

"Oh my god, I'm so sorry, Martha!" Rose exclaimed, taking the thing back. Then Jenny _did_ manage to swipe it while Rose was distracted with Martha, who (in her shock), had slightly lose control of her pyrokinesis and left scorch marks on the silver shell casing of the thing.

"I'm fine," she coughed a little.

"No idea what it is," Nine said, and when Martha managed to straighten back up, she saw Jenny had passed it to him. River was leaning right over his shoulder to look at it - they were as sickeningly close as Martha would expect Whoufflé to be if _they_ were the ones examining a crude bit of technology, cheeks touching and everything. She gave Rose a look of discomfort, which was mutually returned. "What do you think?" he asked River, holding it up to her. She perched her chin on his shoulder and frowned.

"...You two do know the PDA rule applies to everyone and not just Whoufflé?" Martha said.

"We're not doing anything," they both said together, equally offended and irritated at Martha, talking down to her like she was less than them, which only served to anger her.

"_Sorry_," she said sarcastically, rolling her eyes. They didn't pay much attentiok to her attitude, however, and she crossed her arms.

"I think you're warming up," Rose said to her quietly.

"Huh? Oh, sorry," Martha said, realising she had been heating up. She struggled to bring herself back down to a normal temperature, rather than Johnny Storm temperature. Thinking of that, though, she wondered if she could fly like the Human Torch did...

"No idea what it is," River declared finally, "Maybe it's just a fancy lamp?" Nine frowned at it. It was a possibility, Martha supposed. Rose took it back then, though, not handling it carefully at all.

They walked back to the TARDIS at the opposite end of the hall (which hadn't been moved all day) with Jenny incessantly trying to demand of Nine to tell her what he'd found, not that he would. Great, thought Martha, the rest of the crew were apparently not going to be benefiting from what he'd found.

There was an argument going on when they got back into Nerve Centre, it seemed to be something to do with the obscene amount of off milk in the fridge and the fact there was no way - other than sniffing - to tell what went off when.

"We need some sort of scheme," Amy was saying loudly. Everyone was present in the room, by the time the six of them returned, including Luke. Thirteen whole people. Martha didn't think she'd _ever _seen it full before. "Oh, good, you lot are back. We're having a house meeting."

"It's not a house meeting!" Eleven protested, "You just got up and started shouting."

"Yes, because I just drank curdled milk and was nearly sick in the sink, so something needs to be done," Amy argued. She was right though, a good few times Martha had made rank tea by accident, until she'd gotten into the awful habit of having to sniff the milk, "Does nobody here know how many days it's been since the Dimension Crash?" Nobody spoke.

And then the holobox in the centre of the room that served as their television and media system switched itself on, projecting the number '83' into the air in front of them all.

"Thank you! Finally!" Amy thanked the TARDIS for her services, "Day Eighty-Three. I'm gonna clear out all of the milk, and go get more, and then we have to keep up with what day it is." The meeting was ended as Amy got off her soapbox and dragged her husband off with her (and then Donna volunteered she and Jenny to go with them, so Jenny gave her thingamajig to Martha to look after). Nine and River vanished with their haul shortly after, and Martha drifted over to the closest of the kidney-shaped tables to the kitchen, where Mickey was sat with Eleven and Adam Mitchell.

"Fun day?" Mickey asked her.

"Oh, yeah, sure," she said sarcastically, "Totally boring. When we go looking for trouble, we can't find it. It's ridiculous. All we found was this thing." She held up the device with one hand, dropping it on the table where it clanged.

"What is it?" Mickey frowned at it.

"No idea," Martha said, "At this point, if somebody told me it was a disco ball, I'd hardly be surprised." Eleven picked it up.

"It's glowing, isn't that good? I love things that glow," he beamed, so utterly amused by the most pointless things. Adam watched him with the same disbelief for how easily entertained he was as Martha and Mickey. And then the same disgust when, a moment later, Eleven licked the internal cylinder (the glowing bit). "Ow! It electrocuted me!"

"It does that," Martha told him flatly as he started at it with offence, forcing it into Adam's hands. Now that it had Time Lord spit on it, though, Adam didn't want anything to do with it, and pushed it away from him on the table so it wobbled. "Like static."

"Yes! Exactly! Static!" Eleven pointed in her face when she spoke, "Gold star for you. If I had any stars, which I don't. Well, not sticker-wise."

"...So you didn't find anything else? Just that thing?" Mickey inquired to break the weird atmosphere Eleven had just unknowingly created.

"Nine and River found some stuff, not that they're sharing," said Martha, rolling her eyes, "I had to remind them today that the PDA rule applies to everybody."

"What were they doing?" Adam asked, "Actually, I don't want to know..."

"Nothing, because I warned them. Well, she was like, leaning over his shoulder and-"

"Yes, yes, can we _not_ discuss my ex-wife and her new boyfriend, please?" Eleven requested.

"Ugh, fine," Martha said, then she turned to Mickey and said, "I'll tell you about it later."

"I'm not sure _I_ want to know, either..." he answered.

"What was with those weird texts you were sending me?" Martha turned to Adam ro ask, remembering the queer messages about the octopus from earlier. He frowned, and she turned to Mickey and explained, "I just got this random text through asking how to tell if an octopus is having a heart attack."

"That's weird," said Mickey.

"An octopus?" Adam asked, and Martha nodded, "I don't remember texting you at all today, let alone about an octopus having a heart attack..."

"Seriously, you did, look," Martha took out her phone and opened the conversation thread, showing him the very texts he was denying having sent. Eleven leaned over to read then, too, and when those two had done she showed them to her husband.

"Seriously, I didn't, look," Adam repeated her tone (annoyingly) and showed his own phone, where such texts really didn't exist. For a moment, there was confused silence.

"Oh!" Eleven seemed to realise something, "They're from the future. How weird."

"Wait - at some point in the future I'm gonna text Martha to ask the signs of an octopus having a heart attack..?" Adam asked incredulously.

"Yes, clearly. And now you've read it, it has to happen. Thank god it doesn't sound dangerous, I've had a lot of trouble with that particular temporal mechanic before," the Doctor's tone changed to a darker one part of the way through, and nobody asked hin about it.

"Well whatever this thing is, it's probably safer in the lab than here," Adam said eventually, motioning to the scavenged device, "I'd best take it there." He picked it up, along with his coffee, and vanished out of the room.

When he was gone, Martha said, "He is _not _looking healthy at all."

"Absence makes the heart grow fonder," Eleven commented generically, "But you're right. Oh well, I'm sure he'll sort himself out soon enough."


	90. A Shocking Intrusion

_Adam_

_A Shocking Intrusion_

_Do you seriously still not know when you're back?_ he texted Oswin. Probably the third time he'd asked her just that day, but he was running short on conversation topics. He was never an avid texter, and he wanted things to tell her when she got back that might surprise her. Yet again, she replied in he negative, and he sighed, trying to put his phone away while balancing his coffee, the weird device Martha had brought back, and trying to get out the keycard necessary to even get into Oswin's private laboratory, of which he had the only one.

It took him a moment of holding his phone awkwardly between his teeth and hanging the device over his arm like it was a handbag until he managed to unlock it, the panel by the door flashing green and beeping once. The door slid open, and went he went in, his mouth fell open, too, and his phone clattered on the floor, along with the weird, circular device, with a crash. And his mouth wasn't the only one that was open - as much as it pained him to say it, the mouths of Rose Tyler and the Tenth Doctor were _most definitely open_, because they were aggressively lip-locking against the large island of countertop stretching in the middle of the room.

"Holy shit," he said, staring. It was that, rather than his phone banging on the floor and quite possibly breaking for the second time that week (he'd never broken a phone before, and now it seemed he'd run into a spate of bad luck were mobiles were concerned), that made them release each other and look at him. They were not nearly as mortified as he thought they'd be at being caught, and caught in Oswin's lab, of all places. How had they even gotten in!? "What the hell!? You two-!? Since when!?"

"It's... It's a secret," said Rose.

"Well of course it's a secret, that's why I'm so damn surprised to find you fornicating in here," he exclaimed, "Speaking of _here_, why the hell are you in here anyway!?"

"I'm allowed!"

"Allowed since when!?"

"Since this is _my_ lab," Ten declared. Adam gawped.

"Why are you in his lab?" Rose asked. Rose, who had apparently never entered the sort-of-secret lab which most definitely belonged to Oswin Oswald, _not_ the Tenth Doctor. Over Rose's head, Ten was giving Adam a look that was clearly supposed to convince him to go along with this ruse, not reckoning Adam cared a damn sight mire about Oswin (his girlfriend) than Ten (some guy who used to fancy his girlfriend), and he knew for sure she wouldn't want those two _copulating _in her lab.

"It's Oswin's lab, you need a key to get in," Adam held up his keycard.

"I lost mine," Ten shrugged, "Because it's my lab."

"But this is where Helix is kept, and you didn't contribute anything to calibrating it," Adam nodded st the large, rounded screen on the wall with the flat baseline projecting onto it, indicating the AI was dormant until addressed.

"Why are _you _here?" Rose questioned him, repeating herself.

"I'm dropping off the thingy you lot brought back," he nodded at the thing, on the floor by his feet where he'd dropped it, "If it's your lab, why does it have '_Mitchell is a homo_' written in sharpie on that wall?" He pointed at some graffiti on the wall opposite Helix's screen, written large, bold and capitalised, "I suppose _you're _the one writing the homophobic slanders?"

"So you're offended by being called gay?" Ten did more than change his words, he more or less invented a false aspersion to make Adam out to be the bad party in the situation.

"Not at all," he said flatly, unamused, "I just don't see why you'd need to make a false comment about _my _sexuality and then feel so strongly about it you had to write it in all-caps on a wall."

"I have a lot of opinions - look, are you leaving? We're busy. Wanting privacy is hardly a crime."

"No, but perhaps wanton privacy is, hmm?" he said. Rose frowned. A genius pun, in his opinion, but possibly only a pun that Clara would completely appreciate... He thought he might have to remember to tell her about it when she and Oswin got back.

"What does 'wanton' mean?" she asked Ten in a whisper, and Adam scoffed.

"Sexually loose," he answered for Ten, who was trying to put it into politer terms for the girl, who then glared at Adam with blatant offence, "So then, I suppose you're also the one who drew the picture of the mermaid with giant boobs just over there?" Shamefully enough, such a drawing did exist, a crude manifestation of Oswin's lewd obsession with the things, done just before their Christmas trip.

"I... Yes," Ten lied.

"Go away!" Rose hissed. Did she honestly believe what Ten was saying?

"No I won't!" he protested, putting down his coffee and sensibly putting his keycard in his pocket where it couldn't be got at by any kleptomaniac Time Lords, then taking out his phone.

"Who - who're you calling?" Ten asked edgily.

"Guess," he said sardonically.

"_Hey_," Oswin answered him brightly, and he realised he desperately missed the sound of her voice, even though he'd only spoken to her two nights ago on the phone to tell her about the Harkness wedding, "_You alright? Anything wrong?_"

"Sort of, yes."

"_Did you finally figure out that masturbating DOESN'T count as losing your virginity?_" she asked in a voice far too serious, but quickly, "_No, really, what is it? You're okay, aren't you?_"

"The Tenth Doctor and Rose are together," said Adam, and Oswin said nothing, and he got the impression she was beckoning her sister over to hear this, "They're here with me right now, in your lab, where I just caught them making out."

"_How dare they! How did they get in!? Only me and you are allowed to make out in my lab,_" Oswin said, horribly offended by the notion of anyone except for the pair of them using her lab for untoward purposes - and a secret rendezvous spot was most definitely an 'untoward purpose'.

"Sonic screwdriver, I suppose," said Adam, "They won't even leave now I've pointed out your homophobic graffiti."

"_Um, it's not homophobic, it's a statement of fact._"

"It's not a fact!"

"_Get out of the closet already, Mitchell, I'm not your damn beard. And anyway, I'M a bisexual, so it's impossible for me to be homophobic,"_ she declared.

"That's literally not true and it makes no sense," he told her.

"_Whatever, get them out of my lab. There's some very sensitive equipment in there, I don't need and Time Lords cumming on it,_" she said. Honestly, the vulgarity of the girl was something he was still shocked by. She looked so innocent to be coming out with remarks like that on a constant basis.

"Oswin says get out," he related back to them.

"No!" they both exclaimed adamantly.

"They won't leave."

"_Babe, I have to go, we're watching these really intense episode of Come Dine With Me right now, and I know how you hate Come Dine With Me, after you tried to get out of watching a marathon of it that time in that simulation with the goat and all. I'm sure you'll think of some way to get rid of them - call me later_," she said, and then she hung up. Rude, he thought, it normally took a lot longer than that to get her off the phone. Not that he was trying to get her to leave, most of the time. Usually the opposite.

"Seriously, get out," he said, putting his phone in his pocket. As response to that, the two of them just went back to their violent lip-locking, making noises he really didn't want to hear, let alone describe, making him cringe, "Right! That's it!" If they weren't going to leave, there was no way in hell he was going to keep their secret. He marched furiously out of the lab and back into Nerve Centre, where Mickey, Martha and Eleven were still sitting together discussing whatever. "I have to tell you something," he leant on the table next to Martha, addressing her mainly.

"Okay..?" she asked slowly.

"Did you know that Ten and Rose are back together?" he said, and her mouth fell open, along with Mickey's and Eleven's.

"They're _what_? How do you know? Have you been talking to Donna?"

"..._No_, I just caught them in Oswin's lab grinding against one of the desks, and they won't leave. Even when I called her and _she_ told them to leave. He broke in, you need a key," Adam said.

"Holy shit," said Martha.

"That's what _I_ said. Could you come get rid of them?" Adam asked her.

"Me!? I don't want to talk to them! So she was lying about yesterday, she said she spent the whole day sleeping with a hangover!"

"When really, she was sleeping with _him_," Adam said, unnecessarily.

"But where? Her room was empty," Martha said.

"...Hang on... When you were looking for her yesterday, did you check Oswin's room..? Rose was sleeping there the other night," Adam said. Martha said nothing for a few moments, and then she just cursed again, "Wow, Oswin is _so_ not gonna be happy about them shagging in her bed..."

"Can't _you_ get rid of them!?"

"What am I gonna do? Freeze them together? I'm sure they'd love that," Adam said.

"That's why she was getting all weird when we were talking about hiding relationships earlier today, she's been hiding this. And she went all heart-eyes when she was talking about him," Martha said, "...Fine! _Fine_. I'll do it, and potentially ruin a friendship." Adam nearly repeated Oswin's remark about Ten potentially ruining sensitive bits of technology with his ejaculate, but actually thought himself more mature than that. Martha got up out of her seat and Adam followed after her, pointing the way to the lab, since Martha had actually never been, either. Rose and Ten were in very much the same compromising situation they'd been in when Adam Mitchell had caught them.

Ten minutes later, a very disgruntled Ten and Rose had finally left, when Martha had set Ten's hair on fire after they wouldn't listen to her (all that gel didn't half help, too) and evacuate on their own, Rose fawning over him on tiptoes and trying to pat it where it was still smoking a little, though the flames were out.

"Well, we're in for a world of trouble now..." Martha groaned. Adam agreed.


	91. The Breakfast Club

_DAY EIGHTY-FOUR_

_Rose_

_The Breakfast Club_

Her nose was filled with the fresh smell of bread, the aroma of bacon with the wafting scent of eggs, when she woke up. She felt more well-rested than she'd ever felt in her life, she thought at that moment, and the linen she was cocooned in was softer than anything she'd touched before, and she wanted to wrap herself in the silk and never leave the bed. With tiredness still sticking her eyelids together she tried to throw herself back into sleep and possibly cease to exist for a few more stolen hours of her life, but sometime later it became clear she wasn't getting back to sleep, and the longer she lay there the more and more awake she felt.

She yawned and stretched, toes skidding across the empty half of the bed on her left, her fingers hanging into the air on her right. Was the Doctor cooking? He had been there when she'd fallen asleep, the smell curling around her and into her nose and guiding her out of bed. When she opened her eyes, she didn't recognise the room. Gone were the crimson sheets of Oswin Oswald's four-poster bed, gone was the cinema screen, gone were the fast-food machines bearing gifts of popcorn, slush-puppies and milkshake. It was white and beige with pinewood furniture, a simple wardrobe and simple, light-brown curtains hanging simply down above a simple, cream carpet. The room looked like the inside of a coffee mug, and she could smell coffee creeping up from somewhere nearby. The curtains had already been open, wispy drapes letting sunlight pour through and make the room glow brightly. Rose was alone, though. Where had Ten got to? Where was she?

Slippers just her size were waiting by the door on a pinewood chair, sitting atop a folded, cotton dressing gown, white and clean like the pyjamas she was wearing now, pyjamas which were not hers, but fit perfectly. Her toes were chilly, so she slid on the soft slippers and pulled the dressing gown on. The door was pinewood, too. It reminded her of a B&amp;B.

She turned the doorknob, which was graciously unlocked, and peered into the hallway. The hallway was white, too, with sky-blue carpet and decorative photo-frames (made of pinewood) depicting typical beach landscapes and holiday resorts, a few of green patches of countryside with a smattering of cows or sheep, depending. Everything dull and inoffensive. There were a few other doors, one of them with a sign saying _Bathroom_, but she didn't need the bathroom. She ignored it and turned left, where there was a set of stairs, the outside wall of these stairs painted the same sky-blue as the carpet. She followed her nose and tiptoed down. Everything was much cleaner than she thought it possible for something to be, a level of hygiene previously unseen in her life. Her flat had always been full of cat hairs, even after the cat died. Jackie Tyler was never an avid vacuumer, and neither was her daughter.

The door saying _Dining Room_ was open and ajar, to this was the door Rose picked to enter. Before her, she was greeted with a perfectly set table with empty seats around it, enough room for eight people – ten if someone sat at either head – though she was the first who appeared, if any more were even coming. The door to what she presumed was the kitchen was closed, and she heard noises coming from it, and the delightful smell of breakfast food was floating through from there, too, filling the whole building. She slid out a chair on the far side of the table, two down from the nearest head and three down from the other, awkwardly in the middle, and glanced about for a menu. There was no menu. There wasn't anything. She hadn't seen a single person.

She spoke too soon, though. It was a few minutes after she'd sat down first of all, an early bird for once in her life, that somebody drifted out of the kitchen. A man in his late forties, she'd say, with dark grey hair with lighter grey flecks bristling around the edges. Dressed in white with black trousers, a plate in his hand.

"You're awake," he commented on Rose with a smile. Rose smiled back, and nodded. She didn't know who he was, she'd never seen him before in her life. His eyes were cool and blank, but his expression was warm enough, "Miss Tyler."

"It's…" Rose began. She was about to correct him to 'Mrs'. He realised this.

"We have it on good authority that you're a miss now, Miss Rose," he informed her, "Everything is to your satisfaction. I have your breakfast here." Rose said nothing. He was acting like he knew her, when really she didn't know anything. He seemed to float over to her with his plate in hand, and seemed to bow as he set it down on the placemat in front of her. Two slices of eggy bread, perfectly cooked. Rose's favourite. "Enjoy." The waiter, if that was what he was, floated away again, and vanished into the kitchen. She stared at the food, debating if she should eat it. She'd always been taught not to accept food from strangers.

The creak of the door from the hall to the dining room made her jump, and she looked up from her plate to see someone else coming through the door, someone else dressed in the same perfect, almost-new pyjamas as her, in exactly the right size, with identical slippers. A smile pulled at her face, even though it was only Adam Mitchell who had walked in. He seemed puzzled.

"Morning," said Rose, smiling like an idiot, but she didn't feel she could stop. Looking around the room, Adam Mitchell eventually decided that it was in his best interests to come and sit next to her. He sat on her right.

"…Morning…" he said eventually. He seemed very confused. Rose was confused, too, but it was really at the back of her mind. Even though Ten wasn't there, she felt more pleasant than she had done in a long time. More relaxed. "…Where are we?" Adam Mitchell asked. Rose shrugged.

"I don't know."

"But… But the last thing I remember was falling asleep in bed," said Adam, "And I've woken up here. In this…"

"I think it's a bed &amp; breakfast," Rose told him. She thought it was. He nodded, accepting this as an answer. Well, what else could it be? "I'm sorry about yesterday." Adam's brow furrowed, and he looked at her. "About, you know, the lab. I'm sorry."

"Oh, right. You should apologise to my girlfriend, not me," he told her, "Speaking of that…" he fumbled in the pocket of his dressing gown, and then in the pocket of the cotton bottoms he was wearing, pale and the same as Rose's. He found nothing. "Do you have your phone?" Before she could answer, the door to the kitchen opened again. Out floated the same man, with his grey hair, sinister eyes and ethereal qualities, yet still entirely warm and welcoming. Rose wondered if that was maybe a paradox.

The plate he brought now he brought to Adam Mitchell, and set it down. It was beans on toast, the toast all cut into halves and set about the plate like a diamond with the beans piled in the middle, segregated from the bread. Adam stared and made mute movements with his mouth.

"I trust you will enjoy, Mr Mitchell," the waiter said, "This is what you asked for." He vanished a moment later.

"…What does he mean, what I asked for?" Adam asked, "I didn't ask for anything. Beans on toast is my favourite. Do you like eggy bread?" he asked that after casting a glance at Rose's plate and her untouched French toast.

"It's… My favourite…" she said, mirroring what he'd said right before, "…Maybe we did ask for it, and we've had our memories wiped?"

"Why would we need our memories wiped?" he asked. She didn't know. She was trying to think, but it was hard. The smell of breakfast was no longer inviting, she felt like she was suffocating.

"The Doctor was there when I fell asleep," said Rose, "If I've gone, he'd know. He'd find me."

"Don't you know where we are? What about, you know, the time vortex?" Adam asked. Rose frowned. She wasn't getting any whispers from the vortex, from her power. All was silent, replaced by an irritating sound of leaves rustling in a gentle, country breeze coming through an open window on the right side of the room, drapes pulled so that light filled the room splendidly, but outdoors was invisible.

"Nothing," she said, "I'm getting nothing. My power doesn't work."

"Maybe we've died and gone to heaven…" Adam muttered, "Or hell. This place is weird. All the clothes fit exactly. Do you have your phone or not?" Until he asked that question, he was really talking more to himself than to Rose.

"No, it's nowhere." As Rose and Adam sat in thought together, saying little but not daring to eat the food (there always seemed to be a universal rule about not eating food given to you by weirdos in a B&amp;B you couldn't remember coming to), a third party appeared, a third one of them. Rory Williams. Identically dressed, clean and confused.

Without saying a word, he sat opposite Adam. Seconds later, a full English breakfast was brought out to him, complete with black pudding.

"Oh, this is my favourite," he said, "Amy never lets me have black pudding, says it stinks."

"It does stink," Rose said. She hated black pudding. Rory didn't care. The conversation repeated itself after Adam advised Rory not to eat the food, however hungry he was. They were all hungry. But they shouldn't eat the food, that much Rose knew. The last thing Rory remembered was falling asleep next to his wife, and then he was here, much like all of them.


	92. Countrycide

_Amy_

_Countrycide_

She woke up in a ditch, choking on the stench of smoke, sweat and petrol stuffing into her lungs. She rolled to her left and her face dragged on dirt, stinging as a rock grazed and sliced her cheek and heat soaked her skin and mixed with the sweat already there. She didn't know where she was or what she was doing, just that she was flooded with adrenaline and her hands were bleeding as she dragged herself to her feet and looked around. To her alarm, she saw she'd been splayed out in a ditch with a covering of dead weeds next to an upturned, burning four-by-four, its passenger window kicked out and shattered like glitter-shards onto the ground. Amy hadn't cut her face and hands on rocks, it had been glass.

Smoke rose from behind the four wheels and under the bonnet that was smushed and crushed like tinfoil, burning hot from the sun and the fire. She backed away, tripped, fell, shuffled back on the ground as the car crash spluttered, stuttered and hissed and the flames curled, glowed and roared. She rolled onto her front and kicked away, throwing herself to the ground as the thing went up, flaming metal gliding like shooting stars in the sky, only to land as black husks like the meteors from space in the grass a few hundred yards away.

When she got to her feet again, Amy heard voices. She rubbed her head, injured and dizzy, as her name was called nearby. The Tenth Doctor and Mickey Smith, looking just as battered and bloodied as her, were staggering over from nearby. They'd found each other first, both further from the crash site than Amy, who was feeling notably scorched. She could still smell petrol and smoke, and now hot rubber as the wheels melted in the car-shaped furnace.

"Are you okay!?" Mickey asked her, Ten coughing so hard Amy thought he might spit a lung out onto the ground.

"Fine," she managed to say eventually. Whether that was true, she couldn't tell, she was so hyper and agitated she hadn't checked for injuries yet. There was nothing obvious, though. She reiterated, "I'm fine. What about him?", nodding at Ten. He was still coughing. Mickey glanced at him, then shrugged at Amy, holding the Doctor upright.

"Do you know where we are? Do you know how we got here?" Mickey asked her. She had no clue. She'd gone to sleep with Rory there, as usual, and now she was awake and trying to escape from a car crash.

"No, I can't remember anything," she said, looking at the car wreck, "Why did the car crash? Who was driving?"

"You were closest," Mickey said, which was barely an answer, more of an affirmation that he didn't know what was happening, either. She nearly thought that it was a miracle to remember her own name, since she seemed to have suddenly forgotten so much. Maybe she'd hit her head in the crash? She rubbed her neck, and it twinged a little, adding weight to this theory. "Doctor, what about you?"

"No, nothing... I was... Nothing..." Ten seemed to have been about to say something, and then he quickly changed his mind.

"With Rose?" Mickey suggested with a small grin, and Amy made a start. _Rose_?

"Rose? What do you mean Rose? Why would he be with Rose?" she would prefer to ask obvious, worthless questions than figure out the truth for herself. The 'truth' (if her educated guess ended up being quite accurate and substantial) was too shocking for her to come up with on her own and not just assume it was a figment of her imagination.

"They're back together," Mickey answered.

"We're... We're not... We... Look, shut up, alright?" Ten had himself in too much of a state to defend himself, or lie. Amy was gobsmacked. Suddenly, she cared far more about the relationships of fellow crew-mates than about a universal bout of amnesia and a mysterious car crash. "We're in love."

"Right. Course you are. Well. What are we going to do about this car crash?" Amy asked the two men.

"I don't know, call the police?" Ten suggested halfheartedly. Amy shook her head at him for a moment, but then got an idea.

"Maybe a different _kind_ of police..." she muttered, with the TARDIS clearly in mind (it was a police telephone box, after all). She searched her pockets then, first her jacket, where her phone would usually be, and then the far-too-small back-pockets of her jeans. It was nowhere to be found. She even looked down at the floor where she'd been just a few minutes ago, and came up completely short. Nothing. "Why wouldn't I bring my phone? Why would I go out somewhere without my phone?"

"You humans are too dependent on phones," the Doctor mumbled.

"You live in a bloody phone box, hypocrite," Mickey snapped, and Ten scoffed.

"Can't call your new girlfriend without a phone," Amy commented, which made Ten go quite red, though with anger or embarrassment, Amy didn't know. "Mickey, have you got one?" Mickey checked his pockets too.

"No... That's weird..."

"Well we're clearly all very forgetful lately, aren't we?" said Ten.

"Ugh, you Time Lords are all useless after you find somebody to shag on a permanent basis," Amy said, and he didn't take kindly to that, either.

"Yeah, in Oswin's bed," Mickey added, and Amy frowned.

"Sorry?" she asked him.

"You know, because he and Rose... That's why Martha couldn't find them the other day, they were in Oswin's room," Mickey said, and Amy's jaw fell open and she gave Ten the most heinously judgemental look she could possibly muster.

"You couldn't be bothered walking to _your own _bedroom to shag!?"

"It was... It... Rose's room has bad memories for her!" he argued.

"Well what about yours!?"

"It... You know, it was a heat-of-the-moment type thing!" he tried (and failed, pathetically) to defend himself, but really, there wasn't much way for him to argue with her.

"Adam Mitchell caught them at it in Oswin's lab, too," Mickey added.

"Oh, the poor girl," Amy said, feeling sympathy for Oswin. She hoped Adam had told her so that she could wash the sheets (or force Ten and Rose to wash the sheets - Amy wouldn't put it past the hologram to do a thing like that) and hose down the surfaces. Hose them down with peroxide, ideally. Ignoring Ten's frantic blabbering in his own petty defence, she stared around at the horizon. "Mickey, is that a town?" Amy pointed. Around them, green grass of the countryside flourished and some hills rolled far away, but where they were was flat, and she could swear she saw a village squatting in the emerald ahead.

"Yeah, I think so," said Mickey. Good, thought Amy, if they could both see it, it probably wasn't a mirage.

"We should go towards it. They might have a phone. Or they might know what's happened," Amy said. Mickey agreed quickly, and Ten complained when theybl started to walk about nobody asking him _his_ opinion on if they should go towards the town or not, and then Mickey said if he didn't stop whining they'd leave him in the ditch full of broken glass and fire. He shut up then. Amy couldn't help but wonder how the car had come to crash when they were completely isolated - some crazy malfunction? There was something odd going on, something more than countryside amnesia, she just couldn't put her finger on it...


	93. Rose, Interrupted

_Rose_

_Rose, Interrupted_

They had been forced to eat the breakfast. The strange, ethereal waiter-type man had kept coming back and making comments getting increasingly more passive-aggressive with every visit. When Rose, volunteering first, consumed a few bites of the eggy bread, they all paused and waited a few minutes to see if she began exhibiting any strange behaviour. She felt fine, and according to Adam Mitchell and Rory, she remained herself. So, slowly and carefully, they'd eaten.

An hour later, they were sat in a different room of the place, which was looking less like a friendly, family-business and a lot more clinical. Rose saw that all the windows were bolted down tightly. Everything was a little _too_ clean, a little _too_ tidy, it didn't have any character, it was just hollow. They were watching a television, small and widescreen but not flat-screen. Old. There was only the three of them, and the only other person any of them had seen was the waiter bringing them food. It was a breakfast show on, something typical, a newsreel. They watched, bored, paying little attention to the headlines or the anchors.

"I don't understand why we can't remember," Rory said. This was the third time he had said this. Rose didn't understand either, nor did Adam. They both said this, for perhaps the third time, and then conversation between the three of them stopped for a few moments, until Rory decided to be brave – or possibly, his wife would say, suicidal – and asked Rose a personal question: "Are you really back with the Tenth Doctor?" Rose clenched her jaw in response and looked at Adam, who was staring at the TV and pretending not to be listening, though she knew by the way she saw his eye twitch that he most definitely was.

"Yes," she said through gritted teeth, looking at the floor a moment later. She didn't want any questions. She was sick of them already, and nobody had really asked her any at all. She would quite like for herself and Ten to be let alone. Completely alone. "What of it?"

"Nothing," said Rory. _It better be nothing_, she thought. Even without superpowers, she was more than threatening. There were still no whispers from the time vortex, or bouts of uncontrolled super-strength. "It's just-"

"I'd stop talking if I were you," Adam advised him, looking at Rose for a moment as he spoke, "You're digging your own grave, mate." Rory looked like he was about to say something else, but took Adam's advice, and sighed, slouching back in his chair. All of them turned back to the TV screen, and saw something genuinely interesting come up in the yellow banner at the bottom: **_KENT MANHUNT CONTINUES_**. A manhunt? In Kent?

"Turn it up," Rose said to Adam, who had the remote. He did, and the voices came into fuzzy clarity through the old speakers that were a nostalgic familiarity to the fancy, in-the-room, surround-sound audio of that damn holobox in the TARDIS. And Oswin's obscene cinema system was no different. This TV, small and pixelated with black bars rolling over the screen every few minutes, reminded her far more of home and safety than anything else lately.

The anchor was reporting on three suspects, descriptions as of yet unavailable, who were on the loose in the Kentish countryside. "_Dangerous criminals_," said the news anchor, along with, "_major crimes_" and "_assume to be armed_". It was these typical sentences (Rose assumed typical, at least, she'd never really seen a news report about dangerous, armed criminals on the loose before. He said a lot of cliché, empty sentences, warning them – in so many words – to merely be on the lookout for shady characters. Helpful, Rose thought sarcastically. Adam sighed, and turned the volume back down, when the item finished and they got a guest to come on who was some new star of a long-running sci-fi show as the brand new protagonist who changed every few years for whatever reason. Rose didn't really care.

The door behind them creaked open in the quiet, and the trio all turned around to see somebody else come in. A redheaded woman with a professional-looking bun and a white uniform, a lot like that of a nurse of some kind. She came in with three glasses of water on a tray.

"It's nine o'clock," she trilled. She had on cheap, red lipstick, and she'd got a bit of it on one of her front teeth as she smiled a broad, fake-smile. She was tired-looking and her nails were chipped and hadn't been done recently, like she didn't get paid an awful lot for whatever job she did, "You three know what that means, it's time for your water." Rose half expected her to have come in with bottles full of pills ready for the swallowing, and was even mildly surprised.

"Where are we?" Adam asked her, taking a risk, it seemed. She looked at him funnily.

"Longdale, of course," she said, and then she frowned knowingly, "Have you forgotten again?" Adam looked between Rory and Rose for a moment, and then decided to play along with her and tell her yes, he most definitely had forgotten, and he apologised very sincerely for his serial forgetfulness, "The village of Longdale. You're in Serenity Place. It's a home for the mentally ill."

"The… What?" asked Adam weakly.

"People who can't be rehabilitated. Just the three of you here. The Kent countryside was deemed the perfect place – city stress, they put it down to," the nurse, since Rose was now assuming that that was what she was, explained. Kent? They were in Kent? They were in some random mental home in the middle of a county where dangerous, armed criminals were currently on some sort of rampage!? "All of you are paranoid schizophrenics. Because of the similarity of your conditions, you've all been referred here. I'm sorry that you've forgotten again, Adam. Here's your water." She passed him a glass, and he took it and stared into the surface like it was going to tell him his future.

"What similarities?" Rose asked.

"Did you forget too? Honestly, I must talk to the doctor about the medication you're on… Oh, no, I shouldn't've said that, 'doctor' is one of your trigger words…" she seemed shocked at herself, "I'd better go…" she passed out the rest of the water and then left. Rose stared after her.

"…What was that all about?" Rory asked.

"She's trying to convince us we're delusional and we all collectively hallucinated the Doctor and we've been here for years with chronic amnesia or something," Adam said quickly, like he was deep in thought. Perhaps he was. "It's a cliché. Make us think we're crazy. You have to admit, this place is weird."

"Unless it's normal, and _we're_ weird?" Rose suggested. After all, she was sure she didn't have any superpowers. And she couldn't check through the contacts of her phone. She didn't have a phone.

"This reminds me of something that happened with me and Amy and the Doctor, when we first started travelling with him. It was to do with some weird, hallucinogenic stardust though. Or something. This bloke, the Dream Lord, made Amy pick between two realities, and only one of them was real. One was where we were happily married – it seemed like a pipedream back then – and she was pregnant, but all the old people in the town were actually monsters. And the other was where we were all on the TARDIS and there was a cold star slowly freezing us. It turned out they were both dreams though, and we imagined all of it," said Rory, "Whenever we heard birdsong, we swapped realities."

"Well I heard birdsong this morning and I didn't move anywhere," said Rose, "Is anyone else worried about those fugitives?"

"Kent's massive, there'll be nothing to worry about," Adam Mitchell said, "We should really focus on getting out of here. Which will be completely difficult, since the windows are nailed shut…"


	94. Banter With The Lads

_Amy_

_Banter With The Lads_

The three of them walked doggedly towards the town in the distance, away from the isolated car crash and through a relatively flat countryside. Ten was complaining and whining, complaining that he'd hurt his leg and couldn't walk fast and that the other two were going too quickly, complaining that the other two were ditzy enough to lose their phones so that he had no idea if Rose was okay. Rose, Rose, Rose, _Rose_. Amy might be friends with the girl, but she thought if Ten didn't shut up about her soon she might get almost as sick of her as she already was about him. And on top of that, it wasn't like the other two had nobody to be missing. Neither Mickey nor Amy knew where Martha and Rory were, respectively, and Amy thought maybe Ten should get his own damn phone instead of just relying on the others to call his stupid lover for him. He was as bad as Eleven - except Eleven actually had a healthy relationship and wasn't codependent to the point he ceased to function and curled up into a ball whenever Clara wasn't there. No, because he was _normal_ and _functioning_, like basically everyone else on the TARDIS. There were plenty of good examples, herself and Rory included. Yet Ten insisted on being infuriatingly infatuated.

"Longdale," Mickey read off the word written on a low-sitting sign with a decorative bed of flowers below it in a wave pattern, yellows and reds. "Never heard of it."

"It's just a small village. I grew up in Leadworth - have you heard of that?" Amy asked him.

"_I_ grew up in London," Mickey pointed out, which more or less meant no, he had not heard of Leadworth. Most people hadn't, it was tiny. "Why would I know the name of some random Scottish village anyway?" he asked when Amy had started walking towards the town, which was very cliché and had a lot of tiny cottages and corner shops and no big chainstores, except for a little Spar she spied. It reminded her of Emmerdale, and she waa never a fan of soaps.

"It's not in Scotland, it's where Rory's from," Amy informed him as he caught up with her, the both of them so irritated by Ten's perpetual complaining about his lack of Rose, they just blocked out the sound of him begging them to wait. _Should be less of an arse then_, Amy thought, with his unhealthy relationship.

"Then why do you have a Scottish accent?" Mickey asked.

"I moved down to Leadworth from Inverness when I was six, I just never lost it. I was very adamant about keeping it. To separate me from the English," she said to him with a cruel sort of smile, since it was a joke that offended Mickey, but she still thought it was funny.

"Oh, yeah, because you lot hate us," Mickey said.

"One day they'll hold a referendum, then you'll see," Amy said smugly, and he laughed.

"They did hold a referendum, and you stayed part of the UK. I think it was 55% in Britain's favour," Mickey told her, and her face fell. She'd honestly never been so ashamed of her heritage. Staying with the English. The nerve of it.

"Could you two stop making fun of each other? It's not good for morale," Ten called, finally managing to limp quick enough to catch up with them both. They turned and gave him similar, judging looks, as though it was an insult for him to so much as speak to them.

"It's just banter," said Mickey.

"Yeah," agreed Amy, "_Banter_."

"Sorry?" Ten frowned.

"You know, banter," said Mickey, "Bants. All that." Ten stared at them like they were speaking another language, and Amy was suddenly finding his lack of knowledge on the current slang of Britain highly amusing. Even she knew what Mickey was talking about, and she'd been living in 1930s New York for years.

She stage-whispered to Mickey, "_He's not a true ledge_." Mickey thought this was hilarious, and so did Amy, and they both ended up laughing.

"What the hell are you two talking about!?" Ten asked in the higher-pitched voice he did whenever he was frustrated.

"He didn't get invited to the bantomime," Mickey said.

"He's not a bantersaurus."

"Definitely not the Archbishop of Banterbury."

"Not ledges like us."

Ten then shouted, "Well this might be the most annoying conversation I have ever heard," shuffling past them.

"I think you'll find the most annoying conversation ever heard was the one-sided conversation you were having ten minutes ago where you pined after Rose Tyler," Amy pointed out.

"Neither of you understand," he said darkly, doing his Last-Of-The-Time-Lords voice. But strangely enough, Amy wasn't nearly so threatened by it anymore. Not like she used to be, when Eleven would go all broody and serious. It was more of a joke those days.

"Keep that up and you won't be invited out for a cheeky Nandos," Amy said.

"What!?"

Mickey tutted at Ten, and then said to Amy only, "Sounds top, mate."

"Top bants," she said back.

"Are you two flirting?" Ten asked, as a last-resort assumption, since he had no idea what was happening. They both gawped at him. They were both married. _Happily _married.

"No!" they both exclaimed in horror. Amy then said, "It's banter."

"But what _is_ banter!?"

"You know," said Mickey, "Banter. With the lads."

"She's not a 'lad', _she_ is a girl," Ten pointed out.

"It's gender-neutral these days. Just because _you're _not one of the lads," Amy told him, which just seemed to confuse him more. And she was _loving_ confusing him. Finally, the banter-fest ended with the three of them actually, finally, entering the little village of Longdale and going to look around.

At the first bench they got to in the idyllic little town, Mickey suggested that Ten sit down and rest his leg while he and Amy headed off to find a shop. When, two to one, it was decided that he most definitely SHOULD stay sat down and rest his really _very_ injured leg (they were laying it on quite thick to get themselves shot of his company), Mickey and Amy escaped quite gladly, and headed towards the aforementioned Spar.

"Have you noticed there always seems to be a Spar in these remote country places?" Amy said Mickey, who stared at her for a moment.

"No..?" he said uncertainly, "Well, I don't really go out to the countryside."

"There's always a Spar. We went to some random village in Norfolk once, and it was the only shop. That and the off-license, of course," Amy said, "Is he annoying just me or both of us?"

"Both," Mickey answered, "I seriously want to punch him or something. Wish he'd shut up about her. Nobody else goes on like that, not even the Doctor. The Eleventh one, I mean." That was true. The amount of public-canoodling that went on in Eleven's relationship meant it was actually quite surprising that they weren't having to constantly suffer through 1001 Facts You Probably Don't Need To Know About Clara Oswald. Not like with Ten. Rose's favourite smell was chips, apparently. Did she care that Rose Tyler's favourite smell was chips? No. Not at all. She wasn't tailor-making Rose perfume, she wasn't buying her some weird bottle of Oust, nor was she going to sit a quiz on the girl anytime soon, so she didn't care. Not one bit.

They were waiting at the empty counter of the Spar for whoever was working to come out from the back, where Amy could hear them shuffling about with carrier bags or something, while Amy wondered to herself about how much - out of ten - she presently _hated_ Rose Tyler.

"65p for a Mars Bar," Mickey then pointed out, "Extortionate."

"Seriously?" Amy exclaimed, "I remember when they were 45p. A 20p rise - that's inflation for you, right there."

"And Cameron says he's doing what's best for this country," Mickey grumbled, glaring at the Mars Bar like it was some symbol of national austerity and oppression against the working classes.

And then a woman, old but kindly, came out from behind the counter and they both smiled at her.

"Hi, we were just wondering if you had a phone we could use?" Amy asked politely. She'd been holding a mug of tea, and as she stared in what Amy would describe as terror at the both of them, she dropped it and it smashed to pieces on the floor.

And then she screamed: "THE CRIMINALS!"


	95. Robots Of Longdale

_Rose_

_Robots Of Longdale_

"Okay, how do we get out?" Adam whispered. Rose couldn't see any cameras, but she was more and more uneasy. She couldn't _possibly _be delusional, that was ridiculous. She didn't _feel_ delusional, but then, if she had really always been delusional, how would she know what it felt like to _not _be delusional?

"The building's tiny, it can't be _that_ hard," said Rory.

"But what if they're right?" Rose asked. Rory and Adam both stared at her. "Why else wouldn't I have any superpowers? Why else wouldn't we have any phones?"

"Everyone knows that the technology to keep the powers in check exists. If someone's - I don't know - brainwashed us, who knows how much time we've lost?" Adam asked.

"He's right," said Rory, "The Doctor has drawn a _lot_ of attention, and now there are three of them. People have gone after his companions to get to him before."

"So what? You're saying we're bait?" Rose asked.

"They're must be something big going on," Adam said.

"Yeah, we're _big_ crazies. That's something."

"Why would we _all _have the same delusionals and _all_ have amnesia? That's ridiculous," said Adam. Before he could say anything more, or Rose could try and argue with him, there was a loud news jingle on the TV and a yellow banner slipped across the bottom of the screen.

"Fugitives sighted in... Longdale!?" Rory exclaimed, reading it outloud, "But that's _here_! Oh, god..."

"Wait, wait, wait," Adam shushed him, "They said there was CCTV." Sure enough, a second later, a fuzzy, black-and-white image came up on the screen. "Jesus Christ..."

"That's Amy and Mickey," said Rory, then he turned and hissed to Rose, "That's Amy and Mickey! They're here, in this town! That proves it's real!"

"Maybe... Maybe we saw them, on the TV, yesterday, and-"

"They didn't have any photos of them yesterday! We at least have to try and get out of here and talk to them, they'll shed some light on what's happening," Adam continued to argue.

"I don't know what to believe."

"Have you always been this gullible? There's obviously something else going on, and we have to escape," Rory said.

"Oh my god... You know what? _Fine_."

"I think the eggy bread might be getting to you," Rory added to her, and she scowled for a few moments.

"...It was really nice, alright!? And I just... Is that the Doctor?" her eyes had wandered back to the TV screen to show the two 'fugitives' meeting up with a third party on a bench, who was, most definitely, the Tenth Doctor. Even in black and white, she knew the suit, the shoes and the hair _anywhere_.

"Oh, _now_ she believes us," Adam commented, "Can we leave now, Rose? Are you happy?" Rose said nothing, trying to hide her hypocrisy with silence.

"Yeah, but how?" Rory asked. That was the golden question, really - _how_. She didn't know. She couldn't teleport, or make people vanish, or punch through any walls. "You two rely too much on those superpowers. Don't you remember back before those? Where we had to use tact?" Neither of them answered. "Honestly... Well, there are at least two people in this building, okay? One of us says we need to go to the toilet, one of us acts like we're having some kind of fit, and then the other starts saying they're starving and they want cramps. They'll get overwhelmed, give in, the one in the bathroom will have loads of time to find some toothpicks. With the toothpicks, we wait until night, pick the locks on the doors, and all sneak out at a designated meeting time." Rose and Adam stared at him.

"_Or_," Adam began, "We could steal a torch, go up to the highest room in the house, and at midnight we notify the others where we are by shining the light into a mirror and using morse code."

"That's a good plan," Rory nodded, "Do you know morse code?"

"I was being sarcastic. But yes, I do know morse code."

"Well if you know morse code-"

"I say we smash the door down," Rose said, "Blunt weapons, fight our way out. We'll throw the TV at the door until it smashes. Maybe one of them has a key, if we're lucky."

"That's reckless," said Rory.

"Okay, you can collect the toothpicks and learn morse code and _we'll_ smash the door down," Adam shrugged, "What's the worst that can happen? We'll become fugitives?"

"...Maybe the door's unlocked? We could just try and walk out," Rory suggested. Rose, sighing, stood up, went right over to the door and touched the handle.

It opened.

And standing right there, blotting out Rose's smugness and triumph, was the creepy, ethereal waiter-bloke from the kitchen. She jumped, and he stared between the three of them, moving his head in a mechanical sort of way.

"You know you're not allowed to open this door," he said with a plastic smile.

"Wow, you are terrifying," Rose blurted out. Adam and Rory stayed behind her and stared.

"Close the door," he ordered her. She obeyed, and leant against it when she had.

"_Oh my god_," she mouthed, then she walked over to the two of them and crouched down (Adam was sat in the cushy armchair, and she and Rory had both been sat on the floor), "He is so weird. Do you think he heard what we were saying?"

"I think we should throw this chair," said Adam very quietly, pointing at his chair, "Through the door. It'll hit him. He probably has a key."

"Is there anything in here to hit with?" Rose wondered.

"Those two floor lamps," Rory pointed, "And a vase."

"Okay, well, we should just go for it," Rose said.

"Go for what?"

The three of them all turned and saw creepy-waiter-guy had somehow opened the door completely silently. They all stood up and started to back away.

"I think TV time might be over for you today," he said with his same, strange smile.

"What do we do?" Adam whispered, "You two have the most time with the Doctor in these situations."

"Yeah, well, _you're _sleeping with the smartest human in the universe, so maybe you have some ideas!?" Rose hissed.

"First of all, she's a hologram. Second of all, what does that even mean!? At least was _I _said made _sense_," he argued. They were drowned out by a painful scream out of nowhere, inhuman and metallic and screeching, it was coming from the terrifying weirdo in the doorway, wailing his head off to make them silence. And then Rory picked up the vase next to him and threw it at his head, where it smashed to dirty pieces and the waiter was completely fine. His head snapped towards Rory.

"Okay," breathed Rose, "I think I'd like to wake up from the Matrix right about now." And then the waiter's eyes started to glow, glow bright blue. Laser beams shot straight out of his eyeballs at Rory's head, but Rory - thank god - was quick enough to duck, scorch marks on the wall leaving little trails of flame. Rory grabbed the nearest floor lamp and then swung it right at the head of the waiter, and somehow the force of that was hard enough to send his head flying across the room where it bounced off the wall, landing on the floor with a freakish dent in the skull.

"Okay, he's a robot," said Adam. And then the decapitated head started shooting off lasers at the wall, setting the carpet on fire. When the body started marching over to reclaim its head, Adam actually made good on his idea involving the chair, and threw the thing straight at the body where it crashed through the closed door. Rose ran for the head and picked it up facing outwards, holding it so it was shooting at the wall.

"We can use it to break the lock," Rose said, making for the door before anybody else hiding out could come after them. Sure enough, the head was shooting off so wildly it blasted the lock to pieces, and then Rose put it down on the floor, away from the flailing arms of its master, and Rory kicked open the front door.


	96. Break Out! Break Out!

_Amy_

_Break Out! Break Out!_

The police had been called and the group were hiding in an alleyway behind the original shop while the old woman within - who walked slow enough to have lost the three of them, despite the fact they were standing about ten feet away and listening to her _scream_ that she had seen the fugitives, the hoodlums, the criminals (whatever word she chose), and they'd gone left.

"What the hell is going on?" Amy hissed, "Fugitives? What have we done!?" Thank god the old lady seemed to be hard of hearing, too. Unless she was just yelling so hard she was drowning their conference out.

"I don't know, but don't you think we should try and get out of here!?" Mickey said, "If the police are coming?"

"Did she say she saw us on the TV?" Ten asked, "Why are we on TV? What have we done!?" The woman stopped shouting, and complete silence enveloped the town. It was no longer a bright, sunny day, some horribly humid, dense mist had culminated around the lot of them. They shut up accordingly, listening out painfully to hear what was happening. Amy leant around the corner carefully to see, but she saw nothing in the mist. Until a flash of blue light shot straight past her head, going off into nowhere.

"What was-?"

"Bloody hell! Your hair's on fire!" Mickey exclaimed. And it was. Thank god she batted it away quite quickly, hitting her own hair and staggering out of the alley into the fog, leaving it singed and uneven on the left-hand side.

And then a shadow came out of nowhere, and it was the old woman, making a grab for Amy's neck with glowing blue eyes. But Amy, on an impulse that no doubt meant she was going to have some horrible, karmic punishment later on life, kicked the woman. Hard. In the knee. She fell down to the ground and shot blue laser beams out of her face.

"What's wrong with her leg!?" Mickey demanded, and Amy looked down and definitely retched a little at the dreadful sight of a leg twisted and bent _completely _backwards - was that even possible for a human leg? But there was no blood, or bone, the woman had not let out a scream or so much as a whimper. And _then_ she started dragging herself back up. She hauled herself to her feet, somehow, not bothering to put the backwards-leg back in anyway and walking crookedly like a zombie, making another lunge for Amy. But this time all Amy had to do was push the elderly woman a little, and her balance gave way. It gave way too much. The leg slipped and snapped off at the knee - Amy flinched, expecting some horrific, cracking noise rather than a crude clang of metal and a glimmer of silver from inside of the leg itself.

"Oh my god, she's a robot," Amy said. And then Mickey picked up the leg. "What are you doing with that!?"

"It's a weapon! If there's one of them, there'll be more - and what's with this fog?" he asked.

"It'll be artificial, to weaken us," said Ten, "Tastes metallic. Synthetic. They can probably see through it, go after us... Uh-oh," he'd seen the old woman getting back to her feet, and then kicked her other leg from under her. Mickey and Amy both stared at him. "...What?"

"Since _when_ did you kick innocent old ladies?"

"_Innocent_? And anyway, you already mangled her leg," he attempted to defend himself. Amy was shocked. He was _the Doctor_. THE Doctor. He wasn't supposed to be kicking old women, _they _would do the kicking and he would be all high-and-mighty about his complete lack of aggression towards laser-eyed, maniacal pensioners, lecturing them about why they should _not _maul OAPs no matter how much they were trying to murder them.

"We are having a serious talk about your behaviour when we get back, Doctor," Amy said, shaking her head. And okay, she admitted, that was _definitely _a weird thing to say. Even Mickey looked at her funny then.

"The patients are loose! The inmates have escaped! The patients are loose!" someone started bellowing. Amy couldn't see them anywhere, but she could hear them, across the road (not that she could see across the road the fog was so horribly thick). Whoever was shouting and announcing the presence of these 'patients' was doing it in more or less the exact same way the old woman had been screaming about the three of them, just minutes ago.

"Whoever these patients are, we should find them," Mickey said.

"Find them? Patients? From what - an asylum? That sounds dangerous. Maybe they're just as dangerous as the crazy old-lady killer?" Amy argued with him.

"And they probably think _we're_ dangerous criminals. If the psycho-bots are after them, they're probably not that bad," Mickey countered, which was actually a good point. But she still sort of thought sticking with the three of them was safer than any weird newcomers who may or may not be seriously ill in some horrible way.

"..._Oh my god, kill it!_" some female voice shouted from vaguely the same area as the announcer. A familiar female voice. Ten lit up straight away like a bloodhound. The voice of the announcer cut out seconds later though, midway through its sentence, so whatever had happened clearly worked.

"_Is it dead?_" asked-

"Rory!?" Amy yelled out. She could have sworn she had just heard her husband, and considering she also could have sworn to hearing Rose, that didn't seem too far-fetched.

"..._Amy!?_"

"Yes!" she answered him, elated, "Where are you!? Who's there!? How many!?" There was quiet again, until three figures staggered blindly through the mist encircling them all. Rory Williams, Adam Mitchell, and, of course, Rose Tyler - the most _amazing _girl on the planet, or something.

Amy had, in all truthfulness, been very much about to kiss Rory, until a certain _other couple _might have ruined that for them by instantly deciding that tongue-wrestling right then and there was an excellent idea. And it wasn't Adam and Mickey.

"Oh, god..." Amy groaned.

"PDA rule!" Adam shouted at them, "It applies to _everyone_!"

"You're just jealous because you don't have anyone to kiss," Ten snapped at him over Rose's head. Jesus, they were annoying. Adam frowned at them, and so did the other two. The last Amy had heard, Adam Mitchell definitely had a girlfriend. And that was still true, unless she'd dumped him over text. But even Oswin Oswald had more dignity than that, she wasn't _completely _immature.

"...Yes, I do," said Adam.

"Well she isn't here," said Ten.

"Neither is Martha, why aren't you on at Mickey?" Adam pointed out, not that Mickey seemed pleased about being dropped in it.

"Well, I... Well... I don't care about Mickey," Ten mumbled pathetically.

"Is this because you fancy Oswin?"

"I do not!" Ten said, the same time Rose exclaimed, "He does not!" Adam crossed his arms smugly. And, come on, even Amy had heard stories (mainly from Donna) about Ten's completely fruitless pursuit of Clara's sister.

"Can we talk about the crazy old people trying to kill us?" Amy spoke up though, deciding it was way more sensible to just not kiss Rory, solely to avoid getting scorned for breaking the one rule they had on the TARDIS. He seemed to agree.

"They're not all old, we just clubbed a teenager to death," he told her.

"Well that's... Nice..." Amy muttered.

"It's everyone," Adam added, "We need to get out of this weird town, figure out what's been happening, find a phone, and get to the TARDIS."

"Wait - do none of you remember?" Mickey asked. The three of them answered no. "Neither do we, woke up in a car crash."

"At least it wasn't a creepy home for the completely delusional," said Rose.

"Rose thought the people were right and we really _were _crazy," Adam said - he seemed to have some sort of agenda against Ten and Rose that morning. Which was a little understandable, given the story Mickey had been telling her about the Laboratory Incident.

"Right, well, you're not, can we move on?" Ten complained. It was all complaining with him.

"Yes. We need an escape plan. I have an idea..." Rory began.


	97. Schrödinger's Phone Box

_Adam_

_Schrödinger's Phone Box_

Already, Adam Mitchell was sick of Ten and Rose's relationship. He'd known about it for two days, and now it seemed that they had something against him. At least, they did when they were in the same place; Rose on her own hadn't been nearly so bad, but they were just awful together. They probably both had some agenda towards him, since he'd not even attempted to keep their secret at all - not that he felt guilty about it. He ended up stuck in Mickey's company, and by further extension that meant he was tagging along with the Ponds, which was really not so bad. Especially because nobody was talking much anyway.

The fog was so thick he could barely see two metres in any single direction, squinting around and trying to spot shapes looming out of nowhere. He had no idea what was going on, none at all. Well, the town-infested-with-robots thing made a lot more sense than the fact three of them had been branded as fugitives, and the other three branded as delusional. But there had been no police called after them, and now an artificial mist had descended from the heavens to stop them seeing and keep them trapped in the weird town of Longdale. The mist made everything so dark it was impossible to tell if it was even still they daytime, the sky blotted out by the sunken cloud around them. It was suffocating.

The main gist of their plan was to get to a phone. Adam Mitchell had a whole list of phone numbers for emergencies and personal reasons stored up in his head, not least of all everyone on the TARDIS, so if they could get to any kind of phone they could call someone to help them. There was also the question of how much time they'd all lost, how long they'd been stuck there for. Why had they completely forgotten what was going on? He was horribly confused and disgruntled because he was confused - and normally he could follow what was going on with no trouble. It seemed, though, that now the Tenth Doctor was so utterly and pathetically distracted, he himself might be the smartest person there to figure out what was happening. Time Lords were, by all accounts, useless. Along with all that, there was also the issue of them having barely any way to defend themselves except for their own fists, and the leg Amy had stolen from the old woman, complete with musty, moth-eaten slippers and torn beige stockings.

"What if the phone lines are dead?" Rory whispered then to the group. Well, not really the group, but rather his wife, Adam and Mickey. The other two were floating together a couple of metres away, detached from the four of them. Not that anyone was complaining - the further away they could keep Ten and Rose, the better.

"You're _so_ optimistic," Mickey said to him sarcastically.

"Well, they might be."

"We shouldn't think about that," Amy told Rory, "We'll play it by ear. There's probably an equal chance of the phone lines being dead or alive."

"It's not really a question of 'probably', the probability of the phone lines being dead would take a detailed history of the broadband network in this area, and really wouldn't be very accurate. Also, phone lines don't just 'die' out of nowhere. But, technically, from where we are now, the phone lines are simultaneously alive and dead. Like, Schrödinger's Cat. You know?" Adam Mitchell said, and the three of them stared at him, "What? Do you not understand the quantum theory behind Schrödinger's Cat?"

"It isn't _that_ had to understand," Amy said, shaking her head.

"What is it?" Mickey asked, "I just hear loads of people always referencing it. It doesn't make sense."

"Basically, because the poison in the box with the cat could be released randomly at any time, until you open the box and check the cat is alive and dead at the same time," Amy roughly outlined. Well, Adam thought, it wasn't quite _that_ simple...

"Why has someone put a cat in a box with poison?" Mickey asked.

"It's a hypothetical cat," Adam said, "Nobody ever actually put a cat in a box with randomly-released poison, it's unethical."

"So how do they test if it's true?" Mickey frowned.

"They can't, it's a theory, you can't prove or disprove it. Like, the idea that people all see colours in completely different ways - they can never prove it," Amy said.

"Well, actually they did prove it, humans do see colour in different ways. Something to do with a different number of some weird rods in your eyeball - I've done some reasearch into it. But what do I know about colour? I'm colourblind," Adam said. And then he was all too aware he was being completely irritating, so he shut up before he got asked to. He was sure they'd still take him over Ten and Rose any day.

"Where will there be a phone, though?" Amy asked.

"Shops, houses, pubs," said Mickey, "Everywhere. Phone boxes on the street. Trouble is, most places have people, and if all the people are robots and we have no weapons, we'll be outnumbered first, and dead second."

"_Now_ who's being optimistic?" Rory said to him.

"But we don't have money for a telephone box," Amy said, "And the Doctor doesn't have a screwdriver. Plus, we haven't even found one yet."

"So then, I guess we have to bash some more robots' heads in," Adam said.

"With what?" Amy challenged, "This isn't a video game, you know."

"Oh come on, the world is _full_ of improvised weaponry," said Adam, "As Oswin would say, you can kill someone with anything if you try hard enough."

"Your girlfriend is a complete weirdo," Amy said. Adam did not disagree, she really was... But she'd had a point last month when she'd said that. And all the times since when she said it, often in equally weird situations. Sometimes involving goats. "Seriously, in real life you don't just _find_-"

"What's that?" Rose interrupted. She had not been listening to their conversation at all, but now she spoke to them, and pointed something out lying right there, by the side of the pavement.

"It's a cricket bat," said Mickey, going to pick it up. It really was a cricket bat, too, lying right there on the ground. Very _Shaun of the Dead_, Adam mused.

"I told you," Adam said, "Weapons everywhere." It seemed he, in that statement, got incredibly lucky, because over the course of the next ten minutes they ended up finding a long bicycle chain with a padlock attached, and a crowbar. They were steadily managing to arm themselves to the teeth with random crap found on the floor. That gave them four weapons between the six of them, and because Ten had decided now that he hated all violence (even though he'd apparently had an equal hand in stopping the old lady from the corner shop murdering them), he refused to take any. By the time they reached the closest pub and their best bet of finding a phone, it was decided that the least capable amongst them should be the one of them without a way to defend themselves. And apparently, the least capable was Adam Mitchell (fair enough, he supposed, he _had _broken Clara's lightsaber just the other day...)


	98. Dial Tone

_Adam_

_Dial Tone_

There were four of the robots in the pub, and only four of the TARDIS crew had weapons. Unless Adam found something to hit with, or Ten broke his new-found vow of non-aggression the same way Hitler broke the Nazi-Soviet Pact, they were equally matched. And there he was, completely terrified, with nothing to defend himself. Great. Since it was a given by now that, as previously stated multiple times, all Time Lords were more or less useless when they had some kind of romantic infatuation/involvement with someone currently present, Adam had been given the job of finding the phone and making the call to the TARDIS (that was, if the anyone was even on board the TARDIS and if the phones were actually working). Undoubtedly, Ten would get side-tracked by whatever Rose Tyler was doing, and the others would be fighting. Honestly, he'd never wanted a violent life.

Silence in the pub for a few moments, it was like the few seconds in a western where the antagonist of the movie would walk into the saloon where the sheriff was waiting and all the chatter, the glass-chinking and the old-timey music would die down and they'd just stare at each other, hands twitching over revolvers and Stetsons covering eyes. Then there would be some singular, ringing chord on a guitar and possibly a whistle as a tumbleweed bounced on the desert-dust outside. But, they were not in a western, or a desert, or even anywhere remotely American. They were in a pub in the middle of the Kentish countryside faced by a quartet of killer robots – barbershop style (though he highly doubted any of the psycho-machines were going to start harmoniously singing anytime soon). And again, to reiterate, he was unarmed, unskilled, and un-unpathetic. Not that 'un-unpathetic' was a thing, 'unpathetic' wasn't a word in itself, but he wanted to keep three 'uns' and hadn't been able to think of a third one.

Fighting broke out, mainly when Amy Pond decided to roar some kind of battle-cry (maybe it was a Scottish thing?) and go straight for one of those burly, over-tattooed biker-types who looked like a child's colouring book he was so heavily inked, brandishing a severed robo-limb over her head like a lunatic. Aside from the biker-guy, easily the most dangerous target in the place, there was some scrawny late-teenager standing on the other side of the room halfway through collecting dirty glasses from the tables. And then there was the couple who owned the place, a man and a woman, both of them large and both of them looking middle-aged – they were standing behind the bar, and Adam presumed that the pub's phone was somewhere behind the bar.

Before he could make any more assertions about the whereabouts of the fabled landline, there was a noise as metal-leg met with snooker cue, and Amy was in some kind of hardcore battle with the biker. While she was doing that with Rory watching nervously, Mickey was left with no choice but to wave his cricket bat at the teen across the room, leaving Rose the only one truly able to tackle the couple behind the bar. But, as he'd compared previously, there was a very _Shaun of the Dead_ ring to things, and a second later a rifle was pulled down from behind the bar where it had been mounted, and Adam was forced to dive to the stinky, beer-soaked carpet as the shot rattled overhead and shattered the glass porthole in the front doors. Ten was predictably useless and had taken more or less the same route as Adam Mitchell, and Rory, it seemed, had decided there was no choice but to go after the biker too.

And that was where things took a turn for the worse. There was a cry from the right as Mickey got glassed over the head and bloody shards snowed onto the carpet and its tasteless, burgundy pattern. That distracted Rory, and Rory had been in the midst of fighting the biker while Amy tried to reaffirm herself. Unfortunately, Adam noted, a snooker cue was very sharp and very long and, quite possibly, didn't feel very good when it was drive through your abdomen. He watched this happen to Rory, who choked as a red-stained bit of wood rammed itself out of his back like a javelin and sent him staggering back. When the biker went to get his weapon out of Rory's dying stomach, however, it seemed to be lodged a little firmly within the man. This momentary lapse caused the now seething, grief-stricken, sobbing Amelia to bash him round the head with the leg, stunning him more, and then allowing her the time to duck, pick up the cricket bat, hit him in the back and then right on top of the head. Adam saw the skull cave in in a sickening way, like crumpled aluminium.

Rory keeled over sideways with the snooker cue sticking through him, impaled and suffering – but Adam didn't know if the wound was fatal. It was possible it had missed all of his vital organs (honestly, he'd once seen a TV show about a woman who'd been pruning a hedge and had fallen from a ladder and had a fence stick her through the buttocks, and she'd been fine. Mostly. And he'd heard a story from no less than Martha Jones, resident GP on the TARDIS, about a man who'd driven his car straight into the pole of an open cow-gate, spearing himself through his seat. He'd been in so much shock he hadn't felt a jolt of pain, he thought it was just pressing tightly against him, rather than severing the connection of his small intestine to his large), and if so, Rory may well survive. And then they always had the miracle medicine.

As he saw Amy collapse and kneel next to her maybe-mortally-wounded beloved, another snarl from Mickey on the right drew attention back that way as the teen-bot was thwacked around the jaw with a crow bar, lodging itself in the skull of the boy-thing, though it did nothing to stop him. When Mickey went to grab the crowbar, the curve of it meant it was very trickily lodged. It took him a second too long, and before he could reclaim his weapon from the clutches of the robot's jowls, he was kicked between the legs in that instant, blindingly painful way men were so often subdued by those empathy-less people. Mickey was suddenly useless, as was his crowbar, and so was Rory, and as a result of that, so was Amy. All hope for thwarting these boozers now lay with Rose Tyler.

And he saw then that Rose had made some serious headway and had somehow managed to knock the six-feet-tall and three-feet-wide man with the gun straight off of his feet. But when the gun fell to the floor it had shot off into oblivion – oblivion, in this case, being Rose's foot. When she screamed with the pain of what was, by the current standards, a flesh injury more than anything, Ten couldn't focus on the death of Rory to the left or the advance of the teen-bot to the right, and he went racing to her side, wherein he punched the woman who'd suddenly grabbed Rose by the throat and started grappling with her in her footless state in the nose, breaking his hand and breaking her face. Now Adam's only adversary seemed to be the approaching teenager, but the teenager's leg had been injured and twisted backwards in his battle with Mickey (still unable to stand and rolling on the ground in pain). But then his eyes started to glow bright blue, and Adam, now back on his feet, ducked below the two laser-beams shooting from its face.

He ran across the room, past the bar where Ten and Rose were still battling with the woman and past Rory's almost-corpse and his soon-to-be-widow, having little time for grief as it was likely Rory could be saved if they could only get to the TARDIS. And it was then that he spotted it, finally, behind the bar: the phone. It had taken him long enough. He planted one foot on a barstool that collapsed under him and almost crashed face-first into the floor, but thanks to quick reflexes he managed to crash arms-first and suffer the minor injury of possibly breaking his right wrist (and that was his good hand, too) and elbow, crushing his arm under the weight of his head and then the weight of his entire body as he landed on the floor in a rather indelicate fashion – to put it lightly.

Adam Mitchell reached up a hand, the left hand, and pulled the receiver off its hook when he'd finally lumbered back to his feet and ducked yet another lightning-coloured assault from the teenager on the other side of the pub, incapable of moving fast enough to keep up with him (not that Adam was faster than lasers, in fact, he'd always been the slowest in PE, completely physically inept, one of those cliché-nerds who skived any lessons that involved _outdoor education_, or even worse, _sport_). He heard the ringing, flat noise that signified the phone lines were most definitely not cut, and, sticking the phone between his shoulder and ear, he dialled the number for the TARDIS as quickly as possible.

As soon as the number had beeped out its mechanical notes and the first dial tone had rung out, he woke up, hearing the click of someone answering the phone as a distant memory in the back of his mind, like a recent dream. He was sitting down, in a cushy, cosy chair, made of white-but-aged and chipped away leather, his hands strapped down to arms on either side of him, his feet tethered to floor and a hefty, Velcro leg-brace on his right foot. The one the plant had had its way with two days ago. Because it really had just been two days, because now, as he woke up in the VR simulation pod with a static screen and a _Please Stand By_ message plastered across the front like his nightmare was a broadcasting error, he remembered everything.

He remembered the six of them finding the virtual reality pods in some abandoned military facility built on a moderately-habitable moon by the Third Great and Bountiful Human Empire in the year 133,786. He remembered Ten's much objected-to idea that they should use the simulation pods, and he remembered the message they'd been told that a phone call – no matter who they were trying to phone – would wake them up. That was why they'd been so subconsciously fixated on the singular idea of finding a phone, and that was why phones had been removed. Honestly, how had he managed to forget that in reality, he had a sprained ankle and could barely walk? Even then, he saw his girlfriend's borrowed crutches leaning on the outside of the pod, as the door slid smoothly open to allow him to be freed.

As Matrix-esque as the idea of a phone being their ticket home was, there was no Matrix-type rule that if you died in the simulation, you died in reality. No, this was for military training exercises, and the military were not in the habit of killing off any recruits who failed a dumb VR test. It was completely safe, in moderation, and one run-through was the second-best type of moderation, next to abstinence. He lowered himself onto his left foot, the good foot, and got his crutches back, portraying himself even more to be the weakest member of the group by far. Rory was not dead, and Mickey and Rose were not injured. While couples embraced in either direction, Mickey was left shaken and alone and Adam was left wondering what the point of the simulation had even been – what had it been teaching them? To fear small villages? Well, he'd feared small villages enough after those weird bits of pop culture where they were full of psychopaths and town-wide murder conspiracies. Clearly, the distinctly _fictional _village of Longdale in Kent was no exception to this twisted idea that rural-folk were all crazy. He'd just be glad to go home.


	99. The Returned

_Martha_

_The Returned_

Martha was enjoying her day off in what seemed to be a relatively busy week for her. Jack and Jenny had spent the day with her trying to figure out what, exactly, was wrong with the TARDIS navigational systems and not really finding anything at all. But then, the Harknesses were only doing it out of boredom and bitterness that they hadn't been invited out anywhere and really just wanted _something_ to do, not because they were incredibly committed to figuring out the real issue. No, they'd spent a lot of time in the last five hours or so in the console room (it was now getting on for seven in the evening, and Martha hadn't had any dinner yet, and was itching for something of the fast-food, takeaway variety), occasionally doing some diagnostics test on the TARDIS' computer, but mostly fawning over one another. Martha had never heard so many inappropriate remarks and flirtatious bits of filth pass between lovers in such a short space of time – the effect was overwhelming, to say the least.

The TARDIS hadn't moved from wherever it had landed that morning when the day's six designated adventurers had gone off to have lots of fun without Martha – which she was not complaining about one bit. She hadn't checked where they were, but she'd listened to the stories of the sextet upon their return about half an hour ago, all of them – including her husband – thoroughly tired and harrowed. It seemed Rory had died, and then Amy had made a peculiar comment that she 'ought to be used to it by now.' At any rate, Martha had ended up confused, and Mickey hadn't stuck around, he'd just mentioned something to her about not saying no to a pizza, which she took to mean _please go get me a pizza_. She'd quite like pizza herself though, really. So whatever had happened that day remained more or less a mystery to Martha, but she figured she'd find out later anyway, being the Gossip Queen of the TARDIS and all (wasn't her life awfully petty now she had fourteen bunkmates with little to no real responsibility or normality in their world?)

And then the TARDIS got a call, and Jack – who was really by now the assigned phone answerer of the spaceship, since he seemed to spent so much more time in the console room than anybody else and was _always_ there when the phone rang – picked it up.

"Hello? This is the TARDIS and you're speaking with the Handsomest Man in the Universe?" Jack said with a flashy grin, though he wasn't flashing it at anyone right then. Just doing it for the sake of doing it. Maybe it was habit to show shiny, perfect teeth upon any form of introduction, even phone calls. And then his grin widened to a crooked smile, "Clara Oswald! Long-time no hear. This is your son-in-law speaking… Oh, you already found out? A shame, I was hoping I could do the honours. Jenny wondered if you might faint when you heard the happy news." Martha had picked up quite quickly and started paying closer attention when Clara's name was mentioned, as had Jenny.

"What does Clara want?" Martha asked, and Jack held up a hand to let her know that he'd heard her question, and Clara was saying something to him down the line.

"…Uh-huh?" he said to Clara, "…Oh, really? Boredom got to you, has it? Well where are you? … Oh, that's hardly specific, get that aunt of mine on the phone and have her give me the coordinates, I'm sure she remembers them in that pretty head of hers."

"Are they coming back!?" Martha and Jenny both exclaimed – Jenny with far more vivacity than Martha, however. Jack nodded. Martha was, all of a sudden, a little weirded out by the fact she'd actually been somewhat _missing_ the presence of the most annoying twins in the entire universe, but there was something unnerving about every sentence of hers not being scrutinised and cherry-picked for even the most remote semblance of a euphemism by the pair of them, especially since they (Oswin especially) seemed to be in a perpetual, indefinite game of Innuendo Bingo.

It seemed that, as Martha did her best to eavesdrop from where she was sitting, Oswin was now rattling off the date and place where they'd been staying for the last six days.

"Yeah, yeah… Sure, sure… Well there's only three of us here… _Whatever_, I said… See you in five…" Jack hung up eventually, Martha unaware what whichever Twin he'd been speaking to had been saying, but going by Jack's reaction it was probably highly boring. Maybe they'd started fighting over the phone – but then, Captain Jack always seemed so utterly amused by their fighting. "They've been in the Lake District all this time."

"What's the Lake District?" Jenny asked him.

"It's a district full of lakes," Jack said. And then, rather than registering that he was being completely patronising and sarcastic, Jenny accepted this as the answer. Well, Martha supposed it was the answer. "It's in Lancashire."

"Oh. What's that?"

"It's where Clara's from – don't you pay attention to anything?" Martha questioned, "She's from the North, it's why she has that stupid accent."

"That's an _accent_? Oh my god, I thought they both had like, some severe speech impediment," said Jenny, genuinely surprised. Jack and Martha both snorted – her uneducated naivety was incredibly amusing, especially when Clara ended up getting insulted as a result. Through laughter, Jack sent the TARDIS on a fresh journey to the middle of a rainstorm (she heard the rain hammering down on the door once they'd landed) in some rural part of the North. And Martha never liked going to the North. Jack went and opened the door with Martha and Jenny drifting to stand behind him and wait. It was late, and dark, and the storm was terrible. The was a distant flash in the sky, briefly illuminating a picturesque lake surrounded by cabins. Seconds later, some close thunder roared overhead. Martha took a step back into the warm console room as a gust of icy wind blew past Jack.

A few moments later though, Jack stepped aside and allowed Clara to step in, umbrella-free but completely dry, smiling at being back.

"Hi! Oswin's bringing my luggage, she's taking ages. She lost a bet, that's why she's doing it," Clara said, looking a little more aged than the last time Martha had seen her, and notably cleaner. Mainly because the last time Martha had seen Clara Oswald, she'd been shat on by a massive worm, not to mention dozens of other torments that day. Clearly, the break had been good for her. "Oswin had presents."

"Presents? Presents from Lancashire? What could you possibly have brought, a duck?" Martha questioned, and Clara, stepping in and watching outside for her sister (behind her, Jenny was also watching outside for Clara's sister), turned for a moment and gave Martha flat stare.

"No, not anything from there, she's been inventing stuff. She called them, um, 'failsafe teleporters' or something," Clara said, not that that really explained a lot. And then Oswin actually arrived, looking more downtrodden than her sister and carrying a carrier bag and lugging Clara's suitcase along behind her, the bottom of her fake leg brown with the mud she'd been awkwardly sinking in outside.

"I seriously hate you," Oswin said.

"It's your fault, you made the bet," Clara said.

"What was the bet?" Jenny asked, looking for every opportunity to make conversation with the more intelligent of the Twins. Though clearly not that intelligent, if she'd managed to lose a petty bet to Clara. Clara was an idiot.

"Just about which house this couple would buy on _Location, Location, Location_," Clara answered, "They paid, like, £600,000 in cash. _Cash_. Even Oswin's boyfriend couldn't buy a house for six-hundred-grand in cash. It wasn't even a mansion, it was some terrace in London."

"Is that really the most interesting thing that happened while you two were away? No mysteries, or capers, or aliens? You didn't kill each other?" Martha asked. She'd been looking forward to some really interesting story about what they'd been doing.

"There were some pretty interesting episodes of _Couples Come Dine With Me_ we watched," Clara said, "And _How To Look Good Naked_."

"You've spent six days watching reality TV?" Martha asked incredulously.

"…Basically, yes… Which is exactly what I wanted, R&amp;R, I'm not complaining at all. I'm sure you lot have been doing much more interesting things," Clara said.

"I'll say…" Oswin muttered. Martha got the distinct impression that Clara had had control over the television, "Anyway, yes, I heard her talking about the failsafe teleporters… Basically, I managed to buy loads of those laser-pointer key-rings," she stuck a hand in her carrier bag after giving Clara her suitcase back and pulled out one of the key-rings, "Except now it's got a small, relatively weak emergency teleportation matrix in it. It's synced to the TARDIS, and it needs recharging every time you use it. Takes about a day. But, you know, if you get into trouble you can just teleport out. But it's quite unstable and shouldn't be used often, I have no idea what effects it might have, since we have no system for clinical trials which may well turn out to be unethical… Anyway, have fun." Oswin handed out three of the little laser pointers, Martha being extra-careful that her hands were normal temperature so that she didn't melt it.

"Speaking of weird inventions," Martha said, casting a glance at Jenny, "We found this really strange thingy on this spaceship yesterday."

"A thingy?" Oswin asked.

"Yeah, I found it," Jenny butted in. That wasn't true, Donna had found the doodah now sat up in Oswin's lab, but Martha couldn't be bothered arguing with the girl. Nothing would come of it, other than short-lived superiority because she'd outwitted an idiot, "It's in your lab."

"Um… Can it wait..? I have like, a boyfriend I miss," said Oswin.

"It might be dangerous," Martha said with a sigh, "It'll take five minutes. She won't leave you alone if you don't come see it."

"_Urgh_, fine, but it better be something cool," Oswin muttered, heading off towards her lab and dragging Clara forcibly with her by the elbow, "If I have to wait to see Mitchell, you have to wait to see husbandy." Clara groaned, but gave up arguing with Oswin. Martha and Jenny followed, Jack staying to fly the TARDIS out of the lightning storm. He'd didn't have much interest in the gizmo, anyway.

There it sat, on Oswin's desk, the metal, vague-sphere with its electric, glowing cylinder that was the vibrant colour of a black-light, an indigo that seemed almost fluorescent. Jenny waltzed right over, picked it up, and brought it back to Oswin like a blonde dog playing fetch with its less-than-enthusiastic owner. But Oswin was only uninterested for a moment, then her eyes widened and she stared at the device.

"W-where did you get that..?" she asked in a slightly fearful voice. Fearful? Why? It couldn't be _that_ dangerous.

"This big, empty spaceship. Why, what is it?" she inquired, holding it where Oswin couldn't quite reach it.

"Give it to me."

"The ball, or-?"

"Yes, obviously the ball," Oswin said, a little annoyed. Jenny finally passed her it, and she handled it very carefully, examining it.

"Well, what is it?" Jenny asked impatiently. Oswin cast her an irritated look.

"It's a type of bomb," Oswin answered.

"A bomb!?" Martha exclaimed.

"Yes, a bomb, what did you think it was, a paperweight?" Oswin asked, and Martha said nothing. For a few moments, yes, she had thought it was maybe a paperweight. Oswin read this assumption in her face and said, incredulously, "Seriously!? It's glowing!"

"Well I don't know what kind of paperweights they have in the future," Martha huffed.

"…It works on static electricity. It's highly unstable. Like, _ridiculously _unstable, mild changes in magnetism set them off, or pressure drops. It was once rumoured that a too-rapid change in temperature could blow them up. They fry the brain cells of anyone in a close radius, it's fatal, leaves people terminally catatonic. Like an EMP for craniums. Can I have your sonic screwdriver?" she asked Jenny, after explaining what the bomb did.

"Can I have a date?" Jenny asked shamelessly, and Oswin stared flatly at her for a moment, and then looked to Clara.

"Clara, can I-"

"Yes, you can borrow the screwdriver," Clara said, pulling the Eleventh Doctor's sonic screwdriver out of her pocket. So she really had stolen it – Martha had thought he was just being paranoid about his wife's sticky fingers when he'd mentioned her knack for stealing his sonic (_what_ an innuendo that sounded like) the other day.

"I was gonna ask you for a date," said Oswin, "But I'll take what I can get."

"It's probably totally safe, I mean, it didn't go off when…" Martha began.

"When what?" Oswin asked, pausing when she was about to use the screwdriver.

"Well we dropped it on the floor, like, fifty times the other week, and then I nearly melted it, and-"

"Jack and I were playing catch with it this morning," Jenny said, "Do you know, I'm really bad at catch?"

"Oh my god. You could have killed us all. You could _literally _have killed us all," Oswin shook her head.

"Well, not us," Clara said to her, "We weren't here. Plus, you're already dead. And I have nanogenes."

"Shut up, Clara, nobody's speaking to you," Oswin snapped, and Clara did shut up, which surprised Martha quite a lot, as did most things to do with their weirdest-of-relationships. Oswin sonicked the thing for a few seconds, and then the faint hum it was perpetually making died down, and its indigo light went out. "There, it's disarmed. Maybe now we won't die the next time someone decides they want a friendly game of five-a-side."


	100. Nerd Flirts III

_Adam_

_Nerd Flirts III_

Adam was doing very little other than mindlessly watching some old film, experimenting with his right foot to see how much weight the sprain could take, and wondering why Oswin hadn't replied to any of his texts for the last hour. He was really just trying to distract himself from the fact he had no clue when she was getting back. It would be a lot easier if she'd just _tell _him. Somebody knocked on the door then, and with a sigh he got to his feet and shuffled very painfully over to see who had come to alleviate the boredom he was forced to suffer through due to lack of girlfriend.

As soon as he opened the door he was attack-hugged by some tiny, black-clad, brown-haired, artificially-limbed human being, who had flung her arms around his neck and buried her face in his shoulder. He smelt the familiar smell that reminded him of batteries, almost, though less severe, and realised horribly slowly that the girl he'd just been pining for had returned to him out of the blue and literally thrown herself at him. And that was when he hugged her back, wobbling precariously on his bad foot and trying not to wince. It was a few seconds later that she let go of him and kissed him, not even saying a word yet, some ridiculois amount of desperation in either party. And then, _finally, _she talked, with him still leaning his head on hers.

"Hi," she greeted him finally, "Did you miss me?"

"Miss you? Why? Have you been somewhere, or..?" he asked, and she moved away and scowled at him so that he laughed, "I have missed you."

"I know, you _were _texting me saying you missed me like, everyday, because you're pathetic," she said, "Can I come in, then?" He stepped to the right and held the door open for her as she walked past and switched the light on automatically.

"Ow. Just make my eyes bleed, why don't you?" he said, squinting in the light. She shook her head at him.

"Honestly, you're like a mole," she said, "I do have a present for you though. I mean, don't get excited, it's not specially for you, and it's not really like, holiday-gift-type-stuff." She passed him what looked like a laser pointer. "_Don't_ click it. It's not a laser pointer. It's an emergency teleporter, brings you back to the TARDIS in a dire emergency. Emphasis on _dire_. You can't just use it whenever, and it takes about twenty-two hours to recharge - but more importantly, _what_ have you done to your foot!?" He had not told her.

"I just didn't want to worry you!" he said, "It's fine, it's just a sprain, a plant attacked me. It'll be healed in a few days - Martha wanted to ration the Miracle Medicine while you were away, and this is a minor injury."

"And you all wonder why I hate nature! If nature tries to kill my boyfriend, I will not save the trees," she said firmly, and he laughed, "Anyway - I presume you've been sleeping with the myriad of attractive women we have on the TARDIS, while I've been gone?"

"Yes, the myriad of _married _women. Clearly," he said dryly, leaning on the back of his desk.

"What? I just like the idea of you getting some sexual experience. It's good for you," she said, and he really had no idea if she was being serious or just strange. Probably the latter though. He just stared at her for a few moments without speaking.

"Okay, firstly, it's a bit weird that you would support me cheating on you with one of your married friends that we both live with. Secondly - Oswin, I'm not a virgin. I don't know how many times I have to tell you," he said.

"Yeah, and _I'm_ a heterosexual," she scoffed, shaking her head.

"Seriously."

"Yeah, I'm _seriously_ not attracted to girls."

"...Alright, fine, whatever..." he muttered, trying not to laugh at her. She was so annoying sometimes, but the issue lay with the fact that she was also completely gorgeous while she was annoying him. And most of the time, really. "What have you been doing, then?"

"Watching TV. Seriously, for six days, that's it. Except when I broke the radio and used that and the shower cap to make an electroencephalogram and scan Clara's brain to try and make myself taste - I've nearly cracked it," she said proudly, and he smiled at her pride, and then realised he was staring, "...What?"

"Nothing, nothing..." he lied, "Wow, so, if you can taste, that means you'll realise how disgusting most of the food you eat is," he said, and she pouted.

"Maybe I'll be unable to adjust to eating actual food, after my entire life spent on dehydrated powder and ambiguously-flavoured nutritional paste?" she said, wrapping her arms around his neck and playing with his hair, "I'll be on astronaut food forever."

"Hopefully then your mouth will taste less disgusting? I was about to ask, have you been eating garlic..?" he really could smell garlic radiating off of her.

"Why? Are you a vampire? Is that why you keep your room pitch black all the time, Mitchell?" she asked, smiling and holding her hands together behind his head, standing on tiptoe on just her right foot (the only foot she actually had).

"It's sunlight that vampires can't stand, not all light, don't you know how they work?" he asked.

"I know that they don't exist, that's for sure. Not like they appear in pop culture, anyway. Why are you so cold? Don't vampires have icy skin?" she asked, and then he reached up and moved her hands so that he could hold them, him leaning on the door into the bathroom and her standing in front of him while they spoke.

"_Yes_, but I'm not one. I wouldn't want to be undead."

"That's rude, _I'm _undead," she argued.

"That's... That's not the point, you don't bite people and drink their blood," he pointed out. And then of course, because this was Oswin Oswald he was speaking to, she just _had_ to go saying the most ludicrously inappropriate thing she could possibly think of.

"You don't know what my kinks are, Mitchell," she said, and he stared for a moment in disbelief and then just shook his head.

"Fine, fine... It's cryokinesis, no adrenaline inhibitor," he said, "I can totally see your aura right now as well, except I don't really know what it means. It's pink."

"Well, that's fascinating - but why don't you have the inhibitor on!? What else aren't you telling me about what's been going on?" she exclaimed, like the fact he'd neglected to tell her a few minor details just to stop her worrying about him (as she was now, quite blatantly, doing) was some great betrayal.

"Well UNIT took Rose's off her with those werewolves last week, and then Clara took hers with her when she went off with you, so mine was the only one we had. I gave it up nobly to stop Martha from setting stuff on fire. Except she melted it. We have all being doing _fine _without them," Adam explained to her, "Speaking of Martha setting stuff on fire, she set Ten's hair on fire yesterday to get them out of your lab. Oh, also, there was something else about them I didn't tell you because I didn't want you to freak out too much..."

"...What..?" she asked.

"Well, you know how you basically live in my bedroom, and stuff?"

Oswin crossed her arms and said stubbornly, "I do not live in your bedroom."

"Yeah, well, I think you do now. Your room isn't your room anymore. You remember how you agreed to let Rose stay in there before you left, while she and Tentoo were arguing..?" he tried to paint the picture for her enough so that she could figure it out for herself.

"Oh my stars! No way. _No way_. They've been sleeping in my bed!? She and Ten!?"

"Well they could've been sitting in your chair and eating your porridge, too," he said with a shrug, clearly more amused by his own joke than she was.

"Do _not_ bring cunnilingus into this, you filthy human," she said.

"What!? I wasn't - have you never heard the story of Goldilocks!?" he exclaimed.

"No, what's that? A porn star?" He stared at her in utter disbelief.

"No, it's a children's story! Ew! You're disgusting."

"Oh _I'm _disgusting!? Me!? I'm sorry, but you are quite clearly-"

"I'm in love with you." Oswin stopped _dead_ (no pun intended), staring with glassy eyes into the empty space on Adam's right, like someone had paused a television. He had said it so out of nowhere that she was caught completely off-guard, and when she didn't so much as move for a long few seconds, his stomach started to turn. "I've been trying to figure out how to tell you for, um... Weeks..."

"_Weeks_!?" she exclaimed, but she still didn't look at him.

"Yeah, weeks... Um..." Oswin still didn't speak and he really didn't have any words to say, but her utter silence felt like a sudden, punch in the gut. Sickness rising through him, he was instantly sure he'd just ruined their relationship. Destroyed it. She was going to dump him, say she couldn't commit, say it was too soon, some reason. He stood with his jaw half-open in a painful expression, and then rubbed his forehead. She didn't speak. "...Should I go..?" he made the move to step away.

"Don't go, I love you too," she said, seemingly automatically, and then she frowned at the apparent willingness of her lips to say those words with near-ease. And then he was so elated he didn't have it in him to speak for some time.

"..."

"..."

"I didn't think you'd-" he began.

"Say it back?"

"N-not because you don't, just..."

"Because I'm bad with feelings?"

"I guess..."

"..."

"What do normal people do in these situations..?"

"I think they shag," she said with a frown, and he couldn't help the smile creeping onto his face.

"Animals."

"You would if you could."

"..."

"Shit!" she cursed out of nowhere, eyes widening.

"What?" he asked urgently, as though she wasn't okay or something.

"I promised myself about a month ago that I would not fall in love with you," she crossed her arms and grimaced.

"...Um... Can I ask why..?"

"My sister was being disgusting at the time," she said offhandedly, "It was nothing to do with you. Just don't wanna be like Ten and Rose, you know? Prematurely despised due to excessive PDA."

"Then someone would have to set Martha on you with her pryokinesis and your hair would be burned off," he joked.

"Sounds unpleasant."

"I love you."

"I know you do, you just told me, like, ten seconds ago, remember..?"

"Obviously I remember."

"Are you sure? Don't have a temperature or anything, do you? No amnesia?" she put the back of her hand to his head.

"No, Oswin. No amnesia," he took hold of her hand, and then kept hold of it, "It's just, I can finally tell you how I feel."

"...Did you not already tell me how you feel..? Twice..?" she asked uneasily.

"I just can't put it into words."

"You already did, it was three words, and you said them, well done."

"No, but, I... I can't get over how you're... _Everything_."

"...Okay, I take it back, I don't love you, you're too creepy," she tried to remove her hand.

"What!? No, you can't take it back!" he exclaimed, though he was grinning through all his objections and she was hard done by not to laugh. And truthfully, she was going through minimal efforts to separate their hands, and the further she moved her fingers the closer she ended up bringing her face.

"I can so take it back," she said, "I could set your hair on fire, then you wouldn't love me."

"I think I would," he said, "I don't think you could do anything to change that, ever. I also think this _might_ be the best moment of my entire life."

"Even better than the first time you watched porn?"

"I - what? Yes! Of course! Stop talking about porn when I'm trying to be sincere!"

"I'm sorry! It's just I was distracted thinking about it so it-"

"Why were you thinking about porn while I'm trying to have a serious conversation with you!?"

"I'm always thinking about porn, I don't know! And a serious conversation about what - burning hair!?"

"I changed my mind," he said, "I do take it back. You made me stop-" she kissed him, cutting off his words and returning her arms to where they'd been about ten minutes ago - draped around his neck. "I hadn't finished talking to you," he managed to stop kissing her eventually, with great difficulty, truth be told.

"What? What do you want now? How many more times can you profess your love for me?" she asked, seeming annoyed that he had stopped her from kissing him, "I'd way rather you put your tongue back in my mouth than speak to you, Mitchell."

"That's... Can you try and go more than five minutes without saying something completely gross?"

"Alright, fine. Is that all you want to talk about?" and then suddenly she got alarmed, and exclaimed, "Wait - you're not gonna propose are you!?"

"What? No, don't be weird," he said, "I was just gonna say that you should move in here properly. It's give me an excuse to redecorate, since I hate this room."

"Why do you hate it?" she glanced around.

"It just has bad memories, it's where I grew up."

"Oh, right. Well fine, I guess. It's not like I have much of a choice. I'd really rather never step foot in my own room again," she said, casting a glance behind her to the right-hand wall of the room, her bedroom being directly on the other side.

"Wait - that's a yes!?"

"Yes..? You're literally so creepy. Stop being so creepy, Adam," she told him.

"Don't get a double bed."

"...You're still being creepy. And why not?"

"Because, you're mean and you would refuse to ever cuddle me if there was space for you to move away, which there isn't right now," he said.

"Why on Titan would I deprive myself of cuddles from the boy I love? That's ridiculous. If I didn't want to cuddle you, I'd just leave the room," she said, and he kissed her again, "Oh, by the way, Martha told me to ask you if you wanted anything from the takeaway and to text her. I think they're getting pizza. I forgot to mention because you distracted me."

"Pizza? Oh, awesome," he finally moved away from her to go find his phone on his desk.

"Seriously? You care more about eating pizza than about your totally-hot, smitten girlfriend over here?"

"Maybe I'll eat the pizza off of my totally-hot girlfriend. At least then it won't go cold," he winked at her and she tried not to laugh.

"You're equally as disgusting as me, you know. Tell her to get me some chips."

"Okay," he said, sitting down, more than happy about the opportunity to finally rest his damn foot. Oswin walked around and went and sat on the edge of the bed, watching a few frames of whatever film he'd had on. He didn't remember anymore, there were much more important things to be thinking about. Then he caught sight of her hand, and frowned, "What's that ring?"

"Hmm?" she turned to him.

"The weird-looking ring, on your right hand," he asked. She'd not had a weird, shiny, black ring on six days ago. It was on the index finger of her right hand, too, which he thought was quite an odd finger to wear a ring on.

"Oh," she said a little sadly, holding up her hand a little and looking at it, and then she said, "It's morbid, that's what it is."

"Why?"

She opened her hand and held it up so that her palm was facing her, and then with her left hand, clicked what could possibly be a button on it (he didn't hear a click, but she must have done something). Then, in vivid, small, green writing, a list of names and dates projected out hologramically and scrolling so quickly he couldn't read any of them.

"What is that?" he asked carefully.

"It's... It's everyone who died in the Heph bombing. The one I was responsible for. Everyone on this list died because of me. It's names and dates of birth, so I never forget." As she turned it off, Adam wished he'd not asked about the ring.


	101. Flashing Lights

_DAY EIGHTY-FIVE_

_Clara_

_Flashing Lights_

As Clara woke up, she was distinctly reminded of when she'd woken up the first morning after the Dream. Again, she was more than relieved to find herself in the familiarity of her own bedroom with the familiarity of her husband's arms wrapped around her, and again, she was slightly disturbed by the lack of her sister's presence when she did. But Eleven made up for that, and the smell of tea filled her nose deliciously, and she yawned and stretched her legs, feeling one of her feet hit the wall, meaning she was sleeping on the right. Good, she thought, she preferred the right. Morning Tea was something she had direly missed while she'd been away. Yes, it was true that sometimes her baby sister would deign to go get coffee for her on a morning, but that hadn't happened once, since Oswin had remained on the sofa for a near-permanent basis, refusing to put on her leg unless it was absolutely necessary. As much as she did love her sister, she needed a break from perpetual babysitting.

"Are you awake?" Eleven asked softly in her ear, and she smiled. Even she did not know quite how to describe what it felt like to wake up next to him, the love of her life, the Doctor, every morning.

"No, I'm asleep," she answered, and he laughed, "I missed you."

"Well yes, that's the distinct impression I got last night when you threw yourself at me. Not that you said an awful lot," he said, and she frowned with offence, not that he could see her face, he was behind her. Just a few more minutes until he decided to give her the Morning Tea she could quite distinctly smell, she thought to herself.

"I said hello!" she protested.

"No, you said 'hi'. That was it," he said.

"Well... Hello, then," she muttered.

"Hello, Clara," he said, and she giggled slightly, and knew he was smiling, "So, wifey, what did you do while you were away? Something terribly interesting, I'm sure? I've been eagerly awaiting this recap."

"You are entirely wrong, sweetheart. I have done nothing all week except watch TV," Clara said, "The weather wasn't even nice enough to get a tan. But I missed the sound of rain at night."

"Oh yes, I forgot you were from the rainy part of Britain for a moment," he joked.

"Every part of Britain is the rainy part, Chin." Eleven laughed. "I'm telling the truth though. The most interesting thing that happened was when this weirdo who was apparently friends with Adam called up Oswin and asked her if she was real. Then she got irritated because too many people have her phone number and she thinks the smartest human in the universe ought to be more elusive. I think Kate Stewart has her on speed dial."

"Kate Stewart just wishes she had _me _on speed dial," he mumbled, and Clara laughed a little, because his petty jealousy of the fact UNIT now called up Oswin instead of him was amusing. Especially since Oswin didn't even want anyone to call her. "Who was this bloke?"

"Eugene or something. And then she was all like, 'I'm a gorgeous, young bisexual with an IQ of 352 and an identical twin sister' and stuff. I still don't think he believes she exists," said Clara.

"Well when you leave out all the negative bits I can see why," Eleven said, referring to the fact Oswin was, as well as all that, mentally ill, one-legged and technically dead. Not to mention all the gross personality flaws she had, mainly the fact she'd probably never managed to resist making the dirtiest joke she could possibly make in any given situation.

"Can I have my tea yet?"

"Is that all you care about?"

"...Do you want me to lie..? Because if you do; no, tea is not all I care about," she said, and then he rolled over and when he did that she sat up and tried to sort out her dreadfully messy hair. _Damn sex hair_, she thought, why did it have to be a thing? But she forgot all about her erroneous appearence when the Doctor handed her a mug full of milky, steaming tea. Sometimes, she thought he might make better tea than her. But then she reminded herself that that was ridiculous - nobody made better tea than her.

"You've really done nothing? Nothing at all?" he asked incredulously, and she nodded as she sipped her tea. "...Why did you leave in the first place?" he asked. _Ah_. She had completely neglected to tell him any key details of what had transpired a week ago on Eslilia. "Clara?" he implored when she didn't say anything.

"...It's not really good morning conversation, sweetheart. Can we not talk about it now? It's not like I'm keeping everything stored up. I talked about it to Oswin," she said, "And don't get jealous. I'll explain when I... Explain. Later. Not right now." He gave her a strange look for a moment, a little suspicious, "I _promise_ I'll tell you, just not this morning." She drank more tea.

"...Okay..."

"Anyway, what have you been doing? Apart from getting attacked by plants and failing to stop Jack and Jenny getting married?" Clara asked.

"You know I had to force him to stop calling you 'mum' the other day!?" Eleven exclaimed, and Clara choked on her tea, "Exactly."

"He called Oswin his aunt on the phone yesterday," said Clara, and Eleven scowled.

"I don't even know how it came about, it's ridiculous. They weren't even talking in the morning, and then all of a sudden they're married and Jack is somehow related to me," he grumbled, "So there's that, and also Rose and the Tenth Doctor. Did you hear about that yet?"

"A little. Why? What do you know?"

"I know that I disapprove and don't want to get involved," he said.

"I told you, you've had a much more interesting time than me."

"Also, I think Rory died yesterday," he said casually, and Clara gawped at him, "Not permanently! Some virtual reality thing in some derelict military base. I heard from Adam Mitchell that a snooker cue skewered him. Dreadful. He's fine now, though."

"Right, well, that's... That's definitely my cue to shower..." Clara said, letting go of her tea so that it hovered in the air pushing his legs out of the way so that she could actually get out of bed.

"_I_ wanted to shower!"

"I literally don't care. And I also know that you're just saying that as a ploy so that I let you shower with me, which I shan't do. Make the bed or something."

* * *

_Adam_

"Mitchell, what are you even doing?" Oswin asked him. He hadn't spoken for a while, busy poring over the laptop in front of him. They were in her lab, the two of them and Luke, and he thought she might have been talking to him as she tried to build a new battery for K-9 from scratch. When she'd found out that Luke was _still _on the TARDIS and that all of the Time Lords were downright refusing to fix the robot dog, she'd taken it upon herself to do what they couldn't be bothered to and repair the damn thing. Which she did this, Luke was busying himself with the Qetesh technology of the old handset that used to belong to the rogue, reprogrammed AI called Mr White, courtesy of Ruby White, an outcast of the Qetesh and a criminal. He had wiped the handset, and was trying to sync it with Helix, who had yet to be implemented into usage by the crew. While they did this, Adam was tapping his credit card irritatedly on the desk next to him and trawling through real estate websites.

"Shopping," he answered her a little vacantly, "Hey, you didn't mention the lightsaber to Clara, did you?" he asked urgently, remembering about that little mishap the other day.

"No. Surprisingly enough, I kept my promise," Oswin said. The promise she was referring to was the fact that he had indeed, when Eleven was out of the room, confessed to his heinous crime of breaking one of her sister's fancy, replica, collectible lightsabers. When she'd threatened to tell Clara, he'd said that, after the Twins got back, they should wait three days to see if Eleven had the honour to tell the girl himself. If he didn't, Adam had promised to tell her and apologise. As long as Oswin stayed quiet about it. There was, of course, the possibility that Clara would go through her bedroom with a fine-tooth comb and find out what damage had been done herself, at which point, Adam was sure _he_ would be duly blamed. "Shopping for what?"

"Well I checked my bank balance, right?"

"Right?"

"Since I've been on the TARDIS my parents have spent £2,000,000 on random crap," he said, "I don't even know how you can spend that much money."

"You say that now, but how much did it cost to build your house?" Oswin asked, both of them ignoring the fact that upon hearing that figure, Luke Smith had dropped a screwdriver on the floor and was now fumbling to pick it up.

"That's... That's not important," he said.

"Of course not."

"But speaking of houses, that's what I'm looking for. I'm gonna buy them a house, pay off the mortgage, and then cut them off. I mean, they have perfectly good pensions," he said, "Maybe if they didn't go on so many holidays leaving my sister _on her own_ I wouldn't be as bothered."

"What's your sister gonna do without your parents there? You're not gonna go home, are you?" she asked a little urgently.

"I don't know yet, I'll ask her," he said, "I should probably just send her to boarding school. I don't even know _how_ they moved in with me - never build a fancy house near the village where your parents live. They can go somewhere else, _not _in my house... Also because if they're not living in my house they don't know I'm not there."

"So... How much money do you actually have?" she asked him, and he looked over at her just in time to see her sister coming into the room from the door behind her.

"Ooh, are we finding out how much Oswin's boyfriend's worth?" Clara asked, making Oswin jump a little.

"Yes," she said.

"How about 'no'?" Adam said, then he went back to tapping his credit card on the desk, listening to what they were saying. Mainly, it was Clara asking Oswin was she was up to, and then Oswin made note of the fact Clara had wet hair, which apparently meant she'd shagged her husband the night before. Adam thought that was obvious, she hadn't seen him for days, but Oswin enjoyed mocking her sister.

Nevertheless, he was distracted from the pair of them a moment later by some weird link on Google about a 'cursed house'. Bored of real estate and always a tragic sucker for clickbait, Adam Mitchell clicked it. There was no way it was a legitimate article, or even a legitimate source - it was one of those conspiracy nut sites full of alien sightings and ghost stories (he'd once been called a conspiracy nut, and he'd grown very good at identifying and analysing these particularly types of websites). Still, he skimmed through it. But soon enough, it got interesting.

Apparently, about a year and a half ago from the date of the weird article, strange lights had been sighted over this big, old, mansion (typical UFO jargon). A few days later, someone showed up claiming to be owed the mansion as inheritence, saying it rightfully belonged to them. Whatever happened next, it seemed that whoever-they-were won the court case, and then sold the house. But then, over the course of fifteen months, thirty-one different owners had been and gone, all of them selling the house after a matter of weeks. Days, in some cases, always selling it for far less than they'd purchased it, but never telling any estate agents why they were selling it. And _then _the story got even weirder, because all of the previous tenants had seemingly vanished off the face of the Earth. Seeking to affirm the legitimacy of this tale, he went looking through missing persons records (hacking into the police databases from in-and-around Nottingham, where the house supposedly was). To his great surprise, he found every single supposed-owner of the house on the list. And the dates matched up. And then he saw that the house was for sale again, the huge mansion dirt cheap on the market.

While he'd been doing this, Eleven had come into the lab apparently in search of his wife, and Oswin seemed to be trying to convince him that she'd been sleeping with Clara (yet again). Adam hadn't really noticed.

"Oswin?" he called, not taking his eyes off the house listing on some terrible agency's website (all the good estate agents probably gave up on it).

"Adam, I'm busy, I'm-"

"No, seriously," he said, looking over at her with urgency. She met his eyes, and then grunted.

"_Ugh_, fine. What?" she traipsed over, her footsteps uneven and odd-sounding on the floor, "This better be important." For the next five minutes, Adam showed Oswin the weird story about the house, and then when she tried to argue he showed her the blatant evidencw in support of him. She went from entirely skeptical to exitedly believing in the space of thirty seconds after that. Then Whoufflé were shown it, and then Luke came over to see what all the fuss was about out of curiosity.

"Haunted house!" Eleven exclaimed with childlike joy, and Clara stared at him, "...Didn't you hear me, Clara? It's a _haunted house_!"

"I heard you exactly right! I have never had a good experience with ghosts, you know," Clara argued.

"It might not be _haunted_," Adam said, "Nobody's reported any ghost sightings there, not ever. Ghosts act up in storms, anyway, and the weird lights were on a calm night. No clouds, in February."

"Can we go!?" Eleven asked for Clara's permission, which Adam thought was quite funny. Oswin didn't seem to excited to be going to see any ghosts, either, though, so the pair of them seemed to mutually decide to leave the weird house to Whoufflé.

"_What_!?"

"It'll be fun, Coo!"

"There is no way in _hell_ you are convincing me to go to _another _haunted place. Absolutely no way."


	102. Escape To The Country

_Clara_

_Escape To The Country_

"I want a divorce," Clara mumbled, and the Doctor just laughed next to her. They were stood on a country lane, one of those ones trapped in a web of trees on one side and hedgerows on the other, a single-lane road with barely any cars, the low hedge offering the sort of view you got on postcards of the Dales, declaring that yes, you had been and looked at some damp hills and a few sheep. Not that there were any sheep nearby, but there were cows.

Briefly thinking as though she was actually going to buy the house they were there to view, she wondered about the smell from the fields when the farmers went muck spreading. Living in the urban environment of Blackpool, the only niggling smell she'd ever had to get used to was the perpetual stink of vinegar and salt, from the sea and its myriad of fish and chip shops. Sometimes, in the summer, candyfloss also. _The perks of growing up in a seaside resort_. It was a good thing she hadn't been born forty years earlier when the city had actually been a thriving tourist trap, no doubt she wouldn't have been able to cope with the number of weirdos coming up to her on the street asking where they could buy an ice cream. But she wasn't going to be buying the mansion she had yet to see, so she didn't care too much if, once in a blue moon, the fields stunk of dung.

It was a pretty day though, warm enough that she didn't need a jacket and she'd decided to break out the sunglasses for once (she always thought she looked good in sunglasses, they added that mysterious-quality she could never capture without covering half of her face in tinted mirrors). She stood with her arms crossed, eternally grateful to the person who had invented aerosol deodorants, watching Eleven swat at the midges clustering around him, which were not clustering around her because she was, "naturally repelling to them", as she told him, which was not in the slightest bit true – she was using telekinesis to keep them off of her skin.

"You wouldn't be nearly as itchy if you didn't wear so much tweed," she commented. She was watching him out of the corner of her eye, but thanks to the sunglasses, he couldn't tell. She was succeeding in appearing thoroughly disinterested in his affairs with the midges and the mosquitos, flailing around in the heat. What nice weather, she thought, if you were wearing a breathable fabric (and by that, she meant if you weren't wearing a tweed suit, like her husband). He slapped himself on the neck then, and made her jump.

"Got one," he told her proudly. She shook her head, and resumed waiting for the damn estate agent to arrive to show them around this ridiculous hell-house. The estate agent had the key to the gate behind them, since the house apparently had its own fancy driveway, which curled around behind some trees to keep everything save the chimney stack hidden from view. Of course, they could sonic the gate, or climb over it, but that would be rude. "Your planet has so many bugs."

"There's probably a wasps nest in the attic of this house," said Clara, and he stared at her, but she didn't look at him, "Most old houses have them. Hornets, you know." She was lying, but he didn't know enough about old, English mansions to argue with her.

It was so quiet that when the noise of a car engine nearby came drifting through that muggy, July afternoon, breaking the sounds of frogs hiding out somewhere and the mooing of the cows and the buzzing of the bugs, it seemed to be rumbling quite ferociously. Clara waited and saw a very shiny car emerge from around the corner, but as shiny and clean as it was, it was old and cheap, and one of the hubcaps didn't match the rest. When it drew closer, she saw a smattering of orange rust on the underside, presumably from driving through puddles, and decided the noise it was making wasn't at all healthy. Still, the sun glinted off its navy-blue body quite gloriously, rippling in the sun like a mirage on tarmac. And Clara wasn't one to comment on cars (and neither was her husband – she'd heard about Bessie a couple of times…)

"You – do not speak," Clara ordered Eleven.

"Why!?" he protested.

"Shush," she hissed, and then the estate agent, some sweaty fellow with a shirt that was once white, now urine-coloured, and a comb-over, parked his car by the gate and got out. One of those men with grown-up, unappreciative kids and an unhappy marriage, whose pride and joy was clearly that clean-but-broken old Ford. This was mostly speculation, but Clara was in a bad mood, so she was speculating the worst about the man. He wasn't one of those high-flying estate agents with three sports cars and a house with so many windows it looked like an aquarium.

"You're the Oswalds, right?" he asked, a bumbling fool. He dropped all his paper on the floor, and Eleven stooped to pick it up. Clara, in her irritation, did not help, just raised her eyebrows, and tried to smile warmly when he looked at her. She was good at fake smiles – she needed to be, with the amount of people who randomly tried to pick her up every time she went anywhere. Rejection was an art.

"Yes," Clara answered, "I'm Clara, this is Theodore." She thought it might annoy him somewhat if she called him by that name, and not even with the surname Smith, with _her_ surname. He stayed quiet though; she hadn't known she had enough power over him to make him shut up in front of people before then. She'd apologise later. "We've been looking for a house in the area…" _Ha_, she thought resentfully to herself, _As if I'd buy a house in Nottingham, of all places_. The only interesting thing about Nottingham was Sherwood Forest, _and the trams_, her uncle (on her father's side) would say. "_There are plenty of trams _here_, in Blackpool_," she would grumble, and then she would commonly say she needed the toilet just for an excuse to get out of the 'family gathering'. But, she digressed.

"This house is perfect," he said. Perfect for what, he didn't specify. It couldn't be that perfect if over thirty people had moved out of it in the last year and a half, she thought. "Shall we?" he went up to the gate. Clara motioned with her arm for him to go on, please, and open the gate for them and lead them up. Eleven itched his neck in a disgruntled fashion, and she knew he wasn't going to stay quiet for long.

It wasn't quite a _mansion_, she thought, as described. It was a lot more like those huge houses normal people owned in America and Australia, massive and lonely with more rooms than she'd know what to do with. She'd grown up in a three-bedroom terrace with a front and back garden, and that was ostentatious by common definition. Luxurious. It stood there on the hill with grounds spreading out from it, a wildly unkempt lawn and some rot on the wooden beams holding up a wooden awning over the door that had clearly been added later on, since it wasn't brick and concrete like the steps and the rest of the patio. It reminded her distinctly of the house in _Psycho_, and she decided that if she were unlucky enough to need to shower in this house, she'd better coax her husband into keeping watch for any murderous motel owners. It didn't help that a second later the estate agent said his name was Norman. Not Norman Bates though, Norman Blowers. Maybe he was a serial killer?

"So? What do you think?" Norman Blowers asked. Mainly, he was asking Clara. Probably sensed that Eleven had some ban on speaking for the moment. Possibly he just thought Eleven looked like an idiot, which, in fairness, he did. As Clara looked at the house, she got yet another idea.

"Have you ever seen _Fight Club_?" she asked him, and Eleven stared at her, with a look that clearly thought she was being a hypocrite by banning him from speaking when she was saying such stupid things herself. Norman stared at her for a moment. "…Never mind, doesn't matter." She said it because it looked like the house owned by Tyler Durden and the Narrator on Paper Street, where they made soap.

"Brilliant house," said Eleven, and she rolled her eyes behind her sunglasses, "I love houses. So… Roomy." _Literally_, Clara thought. "So? Can we see the rooms? The rooms are the best part of any house."

"Aren't they the only part of any house, sweetheart, really?" she questioned him.

"No. There are bins as well," he said, walking away from her to go put an arm around Norman's shoulders and talk to him incessantly about whatever.

"Bins. Of course. There are bins," she muttered, trailing after him. _I still want a divorce_, she thought, trying to pretend she wasn't amused by him. Ugh. She hated being in love sometimes. It was so taxing when you'd much rather be cold and angry towards your spouse.


	103. Drop Dead Hideous

_Clara_

_Drop Dead Hideous_

Inside, it was possibly one of the strangest houses she'd ever been to. Even her husband seemed unnerved by the clashing décor. It was like everyone who'd been there before had a different idea of what they wanted, and by the time they sold the house and vanished they'd been halfway through redecorating. Everything was an unfinished mesh of different ideas and styles that made rather a dreadful aesthetic. For example, in the kitchen the dining table and chairs were off that sleek, modern design with no arm rests and high backs, the table itself made of glass and the chairs white. But the island in the middle of the kitchen (for it was a large kitchen in a large house) was black marble, and the drawers on it were shiny and black, too. But the counters and cupboards wrapping around the side were pine and bright, pine on top, everything wooden and homely. And then there was the floor, which she would guess was the only original part of the whole room, since it was made of real wood (not linoleum) and aged. Finally, the walls. The walls were blue. Periwinkle blue. She wanted to vomit, or at the very least, take a photograph of the inside of this house and show it to everyone later, saying, "_Look how hideous this kitchen is_."

At least the living room, which they'd entered into and didn't need to have its details recorded quite as urgently as the kitchen, which was why she'd put the kitchen first, was somewhat habitable. And it had leather sofas, two brown ones, and a matching leather chair, and Clara had always had a penchant for leather furniture, if truth be told. The floor here was recently carpeted, cream-colour, like milky coffee, and clean, no mud. With the mahogany coffee table, all in all, it wasn't _so_ bad. At least not like the kitchen. Really, she wanted to see what a state the bedrooms and the bathrooms were in. The kitchen and living room were open-plan, the kitchen on a step up, a level higher, probably giving the cellar more head room (not that she was remotely inclined to go poking around dirty cellars in haunted mansions). But they stayed in the living room for then, and what irritated Clara the most was that Norman Blowers had traipsed mud into the house, onto the beige carpet. At least it went with the brownish colour scheme they had going on.

"Well, this is…" Clara stared. Eleven was examining the paint in the kitchen with his face scrunched up like he was smelling off-milk, "…Everything I've been looking for in a house! Isn't that right, darling?" she called over to the Doctor, who looked over at her.

"This is the only blue I've ever seen that I didn't like," he said. By this point, she had her sunglasses on her head, which allowed her to make an urgent, irritated face at him when she was looking away from Norman Blowers (who, annoyingly enough, kept trailing his eyes over her like a creep). Thank god he knew what she meant, and hastened to add, "And I love anything that surprises me." Norman Blowers frowned, thinking this was a peculiar statement. Which it was. Clara smiled at him and distracted him, and then took a few steps away from him towards Eleven, turning slowly, and shooting the Doctor a disgruntled look. "_What_?" he mouthed at her. She shook her head.

"You can wait outside," Clara said to Norman.

"I'd like to stay," he said. Why did he want to stay? Her vanity was telling her, like her sister was right there whispering in her ear, that it was because of her. But then she tried to shut out the white noise of her ego (always difficult) and saw the way he was nervously looking around the house, like the walls themselves were unnerving him. Possibly, they were.

"Why?" asked Eleven curiously, waiting to see what he answered.

"…Just in case you have any problems," he said.

"Problems? What sort of problems? Does this house have problems?" Eleven said, "Apart from the design choices, of course. You know," he addressed Clara, "Until now, I never fancied myself much as a decorator."

"I wouldn't have fancied you so much if you were a decorator, either," she said seriously, nodding as she talked, "Certainly not if you designed _this_ house."

"…That means she likes the house," Eleven said to Norman when he looked away from Clara and tried not to laugh, "She makes fun of things she likes… Weirdo." She raised her eyebrows at him, and then turned back to Norman.

"Can't you just pretend it's an open house and leave us to look around ourselves?" Clara pleaded with him, "_Please?_" she tried to sound as pathetic as she could, leaning over the counter of the kitchen towards him and chewing one of the temple tips of her sunglasses, "Go have a cigarette, you're dying for one." That was true, she'd smelt it on him. He stank of tobacco, and she never missed the smell of tobacco. She was going to have to buy some gum later now she had a craving.

"…Okay, call if you need anything," Norman Blowers gave in to Clara's petty whims easily, Eleven frowning at her. As soon as he'd left, she stood back up and put her sunglasses back on her head.

"What were you just doing?" Eleven asked suspiciously, and she leant with one hand on the counter in front of him, him with his arms crossed, looking down at her.

"You know how Donna's always going on about using her 'girlish wiles' to get what she wants?" Clara asked him, and he gasped at her in some caricature way that couldn't possibly be legitimate, "Don't be a baby, all I did was chew these glasses. That man is weak, I didn't even have to flirt with him to make him leave."

"Really, Clara. I don't know why I married you," he said as she walked off out of the hideous kitchen into the hallway.

"It was because of my girlish wiles, sweetheart," she joked, peering into a room on the left. On the right of her was the staircase up. This room was a dining room. She didn't know why they would need a dining room also when there was plenty of space to eat in the kitchen – parties, maybe? She wouldn't know, she didn't have parties. Not since university. And you didn't really need a fancy dining table for _those_ types of candid soirees. She didn't even need to go into detail describing it, but none of the chairs matched each other and only the two at the head matched the table. No ghosts yet, she mused. "Anyway," she added, "He was getting mud all over the carpet, didn't you see?"

"No," he answered, "Neither of us have spoken about how we're actually going to buy this house, Coo."

"_Buy_ it? You're assuming the ghost won't show itself to us on a walk around?" Clara asked. By this point, she was smiling, almost laughing, on her way up the stairs, keeping in front of him. At the top of this flight of stairs, however, it veered straight right for the last couple. She was looking at Eleven when she turned this corner, and when she looked back, she shrieked and jumped and would have fallen had the Doctor not been close enough to catch and steady her.

"There are no ghosts here," said the man at the top of the stairs. Stiffly, woodenly. He was elderly, stick thin, like a twiglet, wispy white hair and old-man clothes. He spoke with a rasp, but a monotonous one, and he'd scared Clara witless.

"You're telling me, mate," she grumbled, getting back to her feet on the stairs but keeping hold of the Doctor's arm, the Doctor who was not too happy about some weird old bloke appearing and almost causing his wife to fall down the stairs. And really, if Clara broke her neck, that was a few wasted minutes of their precious, Norman-less walk around it would take to heal.

"You shouldn't jump out at people," Eleven said coolly.

"Your wife should look where she is going," said the man.

"Who're you, then? Burglar?"

"No, of course he's not a burglar," Clara hissed at Eleven, then she eyed him a moment, "…You're not, are you?"

"I am Richard Richardson," he said. There was a pause, and then both Eleven and Clara couldn't help but laugh.

"That is the best name I have ever heard," said Eleven.

"Oh my god, do people call you Dick Dickson?" Clara asked, almost in awe of the strange man who'd nearly been the death of her thirty seconds ago. They both eagerly waited to see what his response was. His response was a scowl, but he didn't say anything. Barely even moved, except to look down his crooked nose at them, "You know, it could be worse – there's actually a Victorian writer called Fanny Trollope. Her son was Anthony Trollope, he was a writer too."

"I'm sorry about her," Eleven then said a moment later, "Really… I take it you're the owner of the house, though? Looking to sell?"

"Yes," said Richard Richardson hollowly. Okay, he was clearly a freak.

"Can we ask why? We're awfully curious, looking to buy in the area. This house might be exactly what we're looking for," said Eleven, smiling. Clara stayed quiet, watching Richard Richardson carefully. He really didn't move an awful lot. Maybe he had really bad arthritis, or something.

"The stairs," was all he said. Clara took that to mean he was too frail to live in a house with stairs. She didn't suggest he got a stair-lift, though. That would be almost as rude as calling him 'Dick Dickson' – if he even got why that was funny, he didn't seem to have. Possibly, he was just so used to it after his some hundred-and-fifty years of life, or however old he was. He reminded her of a shaved Dumbledore.

"…Right, well, speaking of stairs, can we look up them, do you mind?" Eleven asked him.

"I heard you saying you weren't planning on buying," he said. _Crap_, Clara thought. She should've kept her mouth shut. At any rate, she already had a cunning plan of how to pay for the house, since she probably didn't have any money left in her bank account by now. In all likelihood, her card had been cancelled or something and she hadn't even noticed. She didn't know to what address her post got sent to these days.

"That's just Clara joking to annoy me because this is my favourite house we've looked at. We've looked at a lot of houses," Eleven lied easily, with a smile on his face. Richard Richardson seemed to be looking through the both of them, rather than at them. One of those rude old men who hated the younger generation. Clara wished she could point out to the bigot that her husband was over a thousand and had centuries on him. But that would be thoroughly stupid.

"Yep, joking," she added, "I think we're definitely going to buy this house." Richard Richardson did not make to move out of their way, not at all, and it got more and more awkward as a whole two minutes must have passed. "…Sweetheart, shall we go back downstairs?" she asked, putting her hand on Eleven's shoulder.

"Yes, back to the kitchen," said Eleven, "Lovely kitchen, really. My favourite kitchen, possibly. Ever." He rambled some more things like this as she pushed him gently to make him actually start to walk down the stairs, which were narrow enough that she couldn't really slip past him. They really did return to the kitchen, though, Clara watching the hallway to see if they were followed by Dick Dickson. "So? What do you think? I think the upholstery needs to be better. I mean, those sofas-"

"First of all, we're buying the house, but we're not, you know, _buying the house_. Second of all, the sofas are the only nice thing! I think that _we_ should get a leather sofa, instead of those weird egg chairs."

"…Wifey, _you_ are the one who bought those weird egg chairs last month. But really," he stooped a little so that he could whisper to her, both of them seemingly convinced they were being eavesdropped on. He pressed their heads together so that they were nearly kissing, rather than plotting about real estate, "That bloke was so weird."

"Yeah, I know, wouldn't let us look upstairs."

"We're going to have to buy the house to go upstairs. Maybe we can look in the basement?"

"I'm not going down there."

"Why?"

"You know why! Awful things happen underground. Nothing good has ever come of me being underground, so I shan't."

Someone cleared their throat. It was Norman Blowers. He'd come back in and they hadn't noticed. Eleven jumped away from her like he'd been doing something he wasn't supposed to be, but Clara just sighed and looked over easily, smiling, leaving him to fumble unintelligibly.

"We'd like to make an offer," she said. Norman seemed thrilled, "What's the cheapest you can let this house go for?" she asked shamelessly. Adam had said it was 'dirt cheap', but she didn't know what that meant to people who weren't multimillionaires.

"£40,000," said Norman Blowers.

"_Forty grand_!?" Clara exclaimed. _Jesus Christ_, she thought, _it really WAS dirt cheap_. Especially considering it was some massive, six-bedroomed, four-storey monstrosity out in the back of beyond. "That's… We'll take it, then. I just need to go call our brother-in-law."

"Sorry?" Eleven asked, "Since when did we have a brother-in-law..?"

"He will be one day," Clara said, walking off past Norman Blowers to go outside, indicating for her husband to wait back, too, and leave the phone calls to her. Hopefully nothing important was likely to happen in the next five minutes. She called the number.

"_Hello?_"

"Hey, Adam!" said Clara, brightly. She could sense his suspicion of her chipper-ness down the line without even needing to see him, "So, the _thing is_," she began, not waiting for him to reply, "Your _favourite _future-sister-in-law in the _whole universe_ needs a favour."

"_S-sorry!? Future _what_!?_" Adam exclaimed.

"I just need to borrow some money."

"_What!? M-money? Why..? I'm kind of busy house shopping_…"

"House shopping, too? Are you and my sister moving in together? All the more reason why you should give me money," Clara joked, and Adam stayed silent for a reason she couldn't deduce. Maybe there was poor signal and the call had dropped. "Hello?"

"_Yep, what? I'm not made of money, you know_."

"It was your idea we come investigate this house. Now we need to buy it because nothing weird has happened. Nothing to do with us. And it's not even expensive, remember? It's a measly forty-grand." Forty-grand really _was_ measly in the current economy. "I think I deserve it, anyway, because without me you wouldn't have your girlfriend. Also you never gave us any wedding presents."

"_…__Can't you just break in at night or something?_"

"No, there's a really weird old guy who lives here, and I just said we'd make an offer. Come on, Adam. What's it to be?"


	104. Date Night X

**AN: It's the two-year anniversary today, June 22nd. I WAS gonna do something special before this storyline, but then I didn't, because I didn't have the commitment to finish it. I'm sure I'll use the drafts of it later, though. Also, I've missed Whoufflé. There's been practically none of them in the last 150 chapters or so - shocking, really.**

_Clara_

_Date Night X_

What a stroke of luck it was that she hadn't unpacked her suitcase last night. Well, she'd been a little 'caught up' as it were with her husband, and hadn't had the chance. It took minutes for that to be delivered courteously by her sister and her sister's boyfriend (the latter of which was there to explain to Clara that he'd given her fifty-grand, rather than forty, "for supplies" he said. What supplies cost ten-thousand pounds, she had no idea, but she was sure that in her supposed eternal life she'd burn through it eventually) when Clara and Eleven returned to the TARDIS to make a brief trip a week into the future to give Richard Richardson time to clear out. It was always good to have money, though. It meant they stole less. Anyway, these additional funds appearing on her debit card when she checked it on one of the futuristic, hologramatic laptops (the ones that Clara thought looked like Toblerones, long and prism-shaped, projecting a keyboard from the bottom corner and a screen from the top) allowed them to, when they finally sealed the deal on the house, go shopping.

It was a disastrous trip, as shopping trips went, that ended with Clara ordering her husband to wait in the car. When he refused to wait in the car, she threatened him with more trivial things. He didn't stop grabbing everything he saw until she proposed a sex-ban, and that frightened him enough to go put all the random items he'd been grabbing (mainly bananas and soup, for whatever reason) and then go fetch her some cookies. Thank god the cookie-errand took him a good fifteen minutes. They weren't really there for too long though, possibly an hour, down in some big Morrisons in Nottingham. Clara drove them back 'home' in Adam Mitchell's fancy rich-person Hummer – the massive, black thing with the windows tinted as dark as they legally could be – which he'd leant them because it now lived on the TARDIS, apparently, and had done ever since their expedition to Coal Hill High three and a half weeks ago. He said he'd give them the Hummer because it was the "cheapest of all his cars", and then made some remark that, "_there is no way in hell I'm lending the Eleventh Doctor the Lamborghini_." He and Oswin, it seemed, were the ones driving the Lamborghini around shopping for a sizeable estate where he could dump his parents. Why was Clara the one who got stuck marrying a thieving bum?

By the time they got back to the house, Eleven had decided he was totally exhausted after his 'busy day' (_Busy day my arse_, Clara thought, he'd done nothing except beg her to buy custard) and threw himself down onto one of the sofas, leaving her to put the shopping away. Which she didn't actually mind, because it meant if he wanted anything he'd have to ask her, because only she would know where things were. Plus, she liked meticulously organising things. Her bookshelf was evidence enough of that, alphabetised the way books were in libraries. After, of course, being sub-divided into genres and periods.

"Our first house," said Eleven tiredly from the sofa. In truth, she could barely hear him, he was muffled by the cushion he was sticking his face into, "We should have a house-warming party. Who shall we invite?"

"Are you properly following what's going on here?" Clara asked him pointedly, putting the biscuits away in the cupboard under the sink where, she hoped, he would not find them. Annoyingly enough, he wasn't a tiny child. In any case, a tiny child could probably reach any of the high places Clara would hide things. Damn her height. "Of course we aren't having a house-warming party."

"Normal people have house-warming parties."

"This from the man who had jam and cereal for breakfast..?"

"That _is_ normal! Loads of people do that!"

"No they don't," Clara said. She hadn't let him buy any jam, solely because she wanted to prevent him from putting any on the Cheerios. "Still haven't seen the top floor of this house. The _bedroom_," she added in a sultry voice. It was that moment when he actually looked up at her standing on tiptoes to put the eggs in the fridge (it was a tall fridge).

"Why are you so interested in the bedroom?" he asked, playing dumb.

"I'm really not," she said, "I'm not going to sleep with you in this creepy house. Knowing our look, Old Dickie Dickson will be watching from the cupboard. Or a peephole in the attic floor. Or just the shadows. Caught in bed by a ghost? No thank you," she said, and she meant it. Eleven yawned.

"That's a good point."

"Don't go falling asleep," she said when, after he yawned, he threw himself back down again.

"I'm not."

"I think we should stay together at all times in this house, sweetheart," she said eventually, watching him out of the corner of her eye to check for snoring. He'd slept all last night, he couldn't possibly be tired. He must be faking. Shopping wasn't _that_ draining. He looked up, and then sat up.

"Why?" he asked, walking over and leaning on the other side of the marble-topped work surface, leaning on the side and watching her put the bread in the breadbin.

"Because in those horror films, stuff always happens when one person goes for like, a shower or something, or gets up in the middle of the night, or decides to investigate random stuff on their own. Also, without me you're basically defenceless. I'm good at fighting things off by now," she told him.

"Things like what?"

"That worm last week."

"That was a worm! They don't even have bones."

"Um, it was a big worm."

"Was it really, though, or did it just look big to you, by comparison?"

"I'm married to you, aren't I? Surely that gives me _loads _of experience dealing with _big worms_?" she asked him, looking up from where she'd been shoving a bag of pasta (she could cook pasta. One of few dishes. After mastering Pot Noodles, it had only taken two months to learn how to boil pasta and then sieve it and pour on sauce – honestly, she felt like Nigella that day) into a cupboard.

"You've spent too much time with your sister."

"Okay, that was technically a compliment. And it's not me spending more time with her, it's_ you_ spending more time with her and noticing we're more alike than you want to admit. Really, I could say stuff just as bad as her, I just know not to because I'm socially adept," Clara told him, "We _are_ the same person."

"Yes, yes, Echoes, blah-blah-blah, you're still prettier," he said, and she blushed, and saw him smile from where he was leaning on a higher level than her, "So, what's for tea, Mrs Oswald?"

"You tell me, Theodore, I'm sure you're cooking. Unless you want food poisoning?" she asked, acting like this was a genuine question, rather than sarcasm, and frowning at him as she went to stand in front of him on the other side of the counter. With him leaning on it, slouched down on his elbows, they were at the same eye-level.

"No, not this week," he said, "I never thought I'd buy a house."

"I told you, we're not _really _buying it, it's just until we figure out-"

"Certainly not with a human wife I'm in love with. What a strange sentence," he commented on himself, and then he kissed her over the countertop, probably because he hadn't yet that day and it was getting late and he didn't want to be getting withdrawal symptoms. At least, that was how Clara, in all her vanity, explained it. Just when she'd reached up her hands to his face to try and pull him closer (ignoring the impossibility of this due to the surface between them), there was a violent crash of thunder outside, and she jumped and shrieked. Then he laughed at her, and she hit his arm.

"Don't laugh at me!"

"But it was funny," he shrugged, "Just this morning you told me you were missing the rain being stuck on the TARDIS. And now look, a storm." It had been looking like a storm all that day, after they'd jumped a week, grey clouds hanging overhead. It was going to be humid whenever it stopped, but right then, it was crashing down around them, the drizzle of ten minutes' ago turning into sheets of rain, ricocheting off the roof.

"What if there's a power cut?"

"I'll fix it," said Eleven, "I'm the man of the house now, I have to be doing all these jobs."

"Ha, ha, very funny," she muttered.

"It's fine, I have a new screwdriver now. Looks the same as the old one, but we both know where the old one is, don't we?" he challenged. Clara knew exactly where it was, it was in her coat pocket. Her coat which was hanging in the hall right then. She was sure _he_ didn't know where it was, though. Only that she'd stolen it.

"I'll keep the old one, then, shall I?" she asked politely, and he scoffed.

"_Fine_, I suppose… What _is_ for dinner, though?"

"I told you, whatever you're cooking. There's plenty of pasta though, and carbonara sauce in the fridge," she said.

"Oooh, cheese!" he exclaimed, walking around the counter towards the fridge. Clara groaned when she realised she now had to get the pasta back out from where she'd stuck it.

Half an hour later, the thunderstorm was in full-swing outside, rattling the doors quite violently (at least the house had double-glazing, she thought) and blowing a chill in so that Clara had vanished briefly to go find a pair of winter socks in her suitcase. Now, though, she and Eleven were sat on one of the sofas eating carbonara with the TV on quietly in the background. Well, originally it hadn't been quiet, but the howling gale going on meant it was proving difficult to hear. She was propped up on one arm with her feet crossed over Eleven's lap, who was as close to her as he could get with her sitting like this. He kept telling her to move her legs, but every time he did she pretended she couldn't hear him. At that moment, they looked the epitome of domesticity, so formerly against the Doctor's rules he had for himself. She thought the cheese must be distracting him from this, or the ghost, but more likely the cheese. She'd never met another man who got _so excited_ over such weird things. Or woman. Anyone, really.

"What colour shall the wedding invitations be?" she asked him.

"Sorry?"

"Invitations. For the wedding. Our wedding. Third wedding," she said, and he stared at her blankly for a few seconds.

"_Oh_, that wedding? I forgot about that. Why are you bringing it up out of nowhere?"

"I've watched a lot of bridal shows this week, Chin," she said, stabbing more pasta with her fork and trying to get as much sauce on it as she could, "I've been planning with Oswin what shoes I'll wear."

"Good god – I'm thankful I wasn't with you."

"And dresses."

"Well keep that away from me, if you don't mind," he said, and she laughed, "…Just have them be lavender, like everything else."

"We should get them lavender-scented, too," she said, "Maybe the writing can be in silver… Silver goes better with white and purple."

"We still didn't decide on a cake."

"Chocolate. The cake will be chocolate, because I'm sick of telling you that you can't have a fish finger-flavoured cake. But yes, people can have custard with it, if they want," she grumbled. She still wanted carrot cake, but _nooo_, apparently 'carrot' wasn't a real flavour.

"I still don't see what you have against it being shaped like a Stetson."

"Everything. I have everything against it being shaped like a Stetson. It's _my_ wedding, I'm not having a stupid cake that looks like a hat."

"Oh, I see how it is. When _you_ want to do something, it's 'our' wedding, but if _I_ want to do something, it suddenly becomes _your_ wedding?"

"Yes. Precisely. That's how it works. Now what about speeches?"

"_UGH_," he groaned. At that exact moment, there was an almighty flash outside almost the exact same time as the following thunderclap, and the inevitable happened. All the lights went out. The shock of it made Clara scream and drop her fork loudly, so that it clattered. Silence for a few moments. "You jinxed it talking about power cuts earlier." She said nothing to that, just grimaced in the darkness, and then let go of her bowl, leaving it floating in the air next to her and fumbling to get her phone from where it had slid between the sofa cushions next to her (in the process, she found a ten pence piece buried down the back) and turn on the torch, holding it so that she and Eleven wouldn't be blinded by it.

She turned the light on, screamed again, but _properly _this time. Her bowl, where it was suspended psychokinetically, crashed down on the nice carpet and got cheese everywhere, and she dropped her phone in her lap, where the light fell away from what she'd seen. When Eleven found the phone and held up the light where she'd been looking, all was fine, and normal.

"What!? What was it, Clara!?" he asked her urgently, her eyes fixed on the spot in the corner of the room.

"I'd just been _joking_ about ghosts watching from shadows…" she breathed, and he waited for her to carry on. About this point, she noticed he was holding her hand, "I saw a person. I swear, a person. A shape, in the corner."

"It's fine, I believe you," he said, "I'll light a fire, there's wood by the door."

"Well don't leave me," she protested when he slid her legs off of his lap so that he could stand up. His face seemed translucent in the glare of the phone torch, and he squinted at her until she moved it a little.

"It's just over there, it's the same room," he said, pointing, "I'll light the fire. I like houses with fireplaces. You humans rely too much on electricity these days for your heating."

"It's July, the heating's not on anyway," Clara told him as he started to walk away. She didn't want to stand up and be any closer to the corner where she'd seen the apparition, which was little more than a shadow, but a well-formed shadow and blatantly humanoid. She watched him pass the corner and retrieve the firewood from its bag by the door, careful to make sure he wasn't accosted by any ghouls in his brief journey to the other side of the room. There was nothing fun about being in this house anymore.


	105. The Case Of The Happy Spectre?

_Clara_

_The Case Of The Happy Spectre?_

In the orange glow of the firelight she could see very little in the room, very little that wasn't lit up by the deformed shadows caused by the dancing flames. She was watching the fire roar, trying to hear it crackle over the noise of the still-raging storm outside, curled up against the Doctor and chewing one of her fingernails. Her other hand was being held by one of his, to keep her from shaking as violently as she had been when the immediate shock of the shadow-man wore off. She didn't want to look anywhere dark anymore, the heat of the flames stinging her eyes she was staring so much.

"I killed someone," she said eventually.

"Sorry?"

"On Eslilia. A person. One of the zombies, I mean. I killed one," she confessed as though he were a priest. At that news, his hand tensed, until he breathed out and relaxed it again, rolling his thumb over the back of her hand, "I shot it with an arrow, directed it so that it went straight through the spine at the neck." She made it sound like she was an assassin. She'd felt like one at that moment, admittedly. Caught up in a desire to impress Jack Harkness, of all things. Tragic. Eleven said nothing, like he could sense she still had more to say, and he would speak afterwards, "When we got back, it hit me."

"…Why didn't you tell me then?" he asked calmly. She was rigidly still, and not interested right then in analysing his tone of voice, should she find something in it she didn't like. Something to worry her.

"I don't know. I thought you'd be angry, or something."

"I'm not angry!" he argued, sounding annoyed about that more than anything else she'd said. That just upset her more, the fact she'd been so wrong, assuming random things and being paranoid. "It was self-defence."

"We could have snuck past it, or Jack could've done it. I…" she did not want to say this, not to him. To Oswin, maybe. Not him. But she had to, "I was showing off. I wanted to talk to Oswin because of what happened in the Dream, because of what happened in Atlantis. I didn't think she'd shout at me."

"I wouldn't have shouted," Eleven said a little sadly.

"I wasn't thinking properly, I just wanted to talk to her. It was easier, and I still don't really want to talk about it… I'm sorry." He hugged her closer and kissed the top of her head.

"It's alright, Coo, you don't have to tell me everything," he said, and in that moment, she thought he meant it. She also thought that he might ask again one day, might pry for details, but at the very least he now knew why it had shaken her so much. She then sat up, away from him, and crossed her legs as he lifted his arm to account for this and sit up too, so that he was leaning forwards next to her with his hands together and his elbows on his knees.

"Do you remember when I was telling you about the Dream?" Clara said, changing the conversation to something else, some other topic, some other event in her life she'd never properly shared the details of. He nodded.

"Yes, of course, Coo."

"I skipped over Day Twelve because I didn't want to talk about it. That was the one in the asylum, with the ghost," Clara began, embarking on this story to tell him, and he listened intently to her, like he always did, "What happened was, the day before Oswin and I had a fight, so I wasn't speaking to her that morning. It wasn't really the morning, it was late at night and dark, and there was an awful storm, like now.

"We were walking down the side of this old road, an overgrown driveway, black bracken curling up on either side. The trees looked burned, dead, like skeleton-hands, and there was mud everywhere. Oswin doesn't know how to walk in mud, I was ahead of her, she was lagging behind. The day before she'd got the Echo captured by the Homeworld Alliance – Eyeball, that one – I didn't really understand what was going on with the Spores or what she'd done, that's why I was mad. Anyway, she kept trying to talk to me and I was ignoring her or telling her to shut up. Nothing much happened until we got out of the woods into this clearing, where there was this huge building. Have you ever seen a building and thought it looked evil? Well, it looked like that. All the windows closed off after the ground floor, either boarded up on the inside or blocked with concrete in the rooms. There was a van outside, a Volkswagen camper van, orange, flowers painted on it – you know, like hippies had in the Sixties and Seventies. Flower power, all that. It stank of weed – Oswin didn't know what weed smelt like, it was quite funny. Smells like cat piss.

"We saw the sign then, I think. Maybe it was before? I can't remember. _Happy Views Hospital_, it was called. Awful name, ironic, really. On the sign it had a happy face painted on it, yellow, like Mr Happy. The wood of the sign had swelled in the rain and split apart, and it had woodworm. It looked demonic, really – an incubus, or some other malignant spirit. Mollified to a vicious extent. Oswin had to pry a branch out of the way to read it, I wasn't touching anything until I knocked on the door. She told me not to, offered to buy me tequila, even, to try and bribe me away… They opened the door though, stoned out of their minds, Jack and the Echo. This one was called Clara as well. Total hippies, like the van suggested.

"So they're ghost hunters in this asylum, it's 1967, I blag us into getting them to let us help. They give us a Super 8 with loads of film – Super 8 films always creeped me out, no sound – and then send us off one direction for a walk around, or something. I don't remember. But we're walking through these corridors, strictly on the ground floor. Oswin doesn't know where we are, I've got no idea. The way the moon reflects on the floor makes it look like there's puddles everywhere. There weren't. We were talking, she was asking where we were, then she looks behind me. Goes white. I spin around and don't see anything, but Os says she saw a shadow. She starts following it and I have to go after her, and I don't see anything. We're in this cellblock, it's like a penitentiary, the Secure Wing. Just doors everywhere, big and metal like airlocks, and rusty. It stank down there, stank of damp and faeces. But we got to a wall. Dead-end. Nowhere to turn. Trick of the light, one of us said, I don't know which. They gave us these Dictaphones to carry around to capture EVPs – that's what they call them, stands for Electronic Voice Phenomenon – and Oswin said I should tape one to the wall, so, I did. That dead-end right there. You have to remember that part.

"We were looking for the Records Room to see why the place closed down and took a wrong turn, the sign was on the floor. We found it eventually, barely talking. By this point, I was so scared I'd forgiven her for what she'd done the day before.

"We find the Records Room eventually and the door's completely jammed, Os can't open it, but I manage to get it open. It flies into the room and bangs right off of this filing cabinet, makes us both jump, it was terrifying. We're about to go in, just stepping over the threshold, when we hear this bang. This clang. Like a pipe being banged. That's what it was, I suppose. You need to remember that part as well, sweetheart. We're completely still, I saw Oswin, I know she hadn't moved. Still, I say something like, 'I'll love you forever if you tell me that was you.' Of course, I know it wasn't, I was just hoping, and she shakes her head, says no. It wasn't her. I hoped anyway, and she says it was a metal pipe, but there aren't any metal pipes in the corridor, I haven't seen any at all. She stared out into the corridor for so long I had to pull her away by her hand and close the door myself. I remember closing it, it was so heavy, it clicked shut.

"We're looking through the records now. That's always the first stop in a logical investigation, go through records, pore over them. We did that on the First Day, we did on the Seventh, the Fourteenth, gathering information. Anyway, the Records Room. It was '67, like I said, and the place closed down in '42. They had these new plans drawn up that January, right before it closed, we wondered why they'd get new plans. We didn't find the old ones, the original ones, anywhere. A year before though, 1941, wartime, there were all these deaths. Late in the year, the winter time. All after this doctor got fired – Dr Quentin Wyatt. This doctor was in charge of electroshock therapy. Everyone who died was a patient of his. Oswin took the files off of me to read, and as soon as she said that name out loud this breeze blew all the paper onto the floor. I remember what she said still, she said, 'That's odd. I could've sworn the door was…' and she never finished. I'd tapped her on the shoulder, she'd turned. The door – the heavy one I'd closed – was swinging. Silently. No creaks, not banging into the cabinet, nothing. Just swinging.

"Os grabs the Super 8 from the table, starts filming the door. I'm kneeling down trying to pick up the files, and she's trying to tell me where they all dropped without looking away. She doesn't manage, though. I ask where the plans are, she looks away. As soon as she does, _BANG_!" Here, Eleven jumped. "The door slams closed, paper everywhere. Neither of us saw it, 'But,' Oswin says, 'the camera did.' It crashed so hard the doorknob was on the floor, completely off the handle. We're locked in. Oswin teleports out with the camera, trying to chase whatever slammed the door, and I run right after her and phase through it. I've never been more thankful for intangibility than I was then.

"We see nothing in the corridor. I want to know how they all died, the files say 'unexplained circumstances.' It's me who says that since the deaths were recent to the hospital closing, the files will still be in the building. It's Oswin who says the files are in the morgue. We have an argument about that. I want to go find the other two and use their projector, but we pass the stairs going up to the Third Floor where the morgue is. She wins the argument, and she's happy about that, when I see something. I grab the torch and there's a flash of lightning, but there's nothing there. I tell myself it was a trick of the light. It was a face. I never told her, didn't want to worry her, thought I was seeing things. There's no scientific explanation in a coma-dream, when you see a ghost, it's a ghost. It does all the ghost-stuff you know about and knows exactly how to get to you. It looked dead, white skin, white gown, white eyes, rolled back, head back. But it was grinning. Laughing. It was there for a second.

"In the morgue, I'll spoil it now, nothing happened. It was the expectancy and the tension that got us more than anything – it wasn't _entirely _cliché. We don't talk about much right then except for Adam Mitchell, she was trying to distract me. She's the one who brings him up. We find out that all of Dr Wyatt's patients, the ones who died after he got fired for malpractice, died with burns to the temples. Killed in the electric chair. That's important, the burns to the temples, too. Remember that part.

"The two hippies, Jack and Clara, don't have a projector with them for the Super 8 footage, but the reels fit the projector in the Film Room they have to amuse the patients. It's there we end up, standing in the dark room, all trying to peer around the corner of the projector while Jack sets it up. Oswin could have, but she refuses, she doesn't want to play the film from the Records Room. It doesn't matter what Oswin wants, it happens. The film plays. We're watching it. There's a blip I the corner, a little white dot, black around the edges, charred. It grows and bubbles on the screen. The film is melting. Stoner Clara screams, they're all fumbling trying to put out the fire. It melts away just when the door is about to slam shut again. I'm not trying to put it out, I stay watching, trying to see anything.

"In the corner, it's there again. This thing. This thing from the windows. I've never been more scared, honestly. It stands there, right there, in the shadow. A ghost, that's all I know. Everything you'd expect a ghost to be, that's what it is. White, glowing, almost, ethereal. A skeleton with skin, eyes white out, but now it's looking at me. At least, I think it was looking at me. Its head looked that way, and it was still grinning, this horrible face, like a skull, all yellowy and taut, wearing the white gown like a patient wood, its chin held up like something was pulling it. I'm entranced, Oswin shakes me out of it, she cares more about me than putting out the fire, nobody else saw, I can only point. I say 'It was there. The same face from the window.' It wasn't a trick of the light I saw.

"They put out the fire. There are no lights, everything's dark. When Oswin turns on a torch and shines it into the corner, I flinch, but it's empty now. Then there's a bang, a bang in the dark. Loud, from below. None of us know what it is, and then Stoner Clara says… She says, 'It sounds like it came from the basement.' Then my sister – if you ask her she'll say it was for dramatic effect, a movie-star line – she says, 'What did you just say?' Stoner Clara repeats herself. 'It came from the basement,' she said. 'I've seen the plans. There is no basement.' A thunderclap sounds and lightning flashes.

"That's a lie, that didn't happen, there was no atmospheric effect. But she did say those words, and it was true. There was no basement on the plans. I'm still transfixed by the corner. We're all leaving the projection booth when I run off to where I saw it, the corner of the room on the right of the screen. I see something on the floor, reach down, pick it up, hold it for Oswin to see. It was mangled, but we knew what it was. I told her it was the Dictaphone. The one we'd left in the Secure Wing. Crushed to pieces.

"This is the moment that Oswin figures it out. She uses the sonic to unscrew the lift panel, and sees that there is a basement, the button for it is there, but the new panel cuts it off. What happened was, this Dr Wyatt, he was insane. More than any of his patients. When he got fired, he snuck off to the basement. At night, he'd creep back up, through the door in the Secure Wing. Oswin says, that flat wall, the dead-end we'd found – that's where the door was, when the place closed down in 1942. Wyatt snuck out at night and killed his patients, in the electric chair, in the electroshock room. We never went in that room, thank god. The orderlies, the staff, the patients, the doctors – they found out what was happening. What they did, was they sealed up the basement. Just like that. They get new plans drawn up so nobody knows there ever was a basement, and the place closes down, months later.

"This is why I don't like basements, Doctor. This. We go down, split into pairs, me and Oswin, of course. It doesn't take us long wading through all the flood-water down there from the rain. It's knee-level, it stinks. There are some rats in it, some of them are dead. It's filthy. This is the worst day of the Dream, this is why Oswin thought it so fitting to get revenge on the Cult the way that she did, with the holograms.

"We're in the basement. We find the body. Wyatt wanted the last laugh. He was smiling. He was swinging from a rope on the light fixture, a skeleton by now, decayed and rotten. Swinging. That's the thing I remember most of all. The swinging, back and forth, like it was recent. Doctor, the air was still. There wasn't any wind. None at all, not down there. I can see it now. I can see it like it was yesterday. He was grinning.

"You can't stay hating someone when you go through things like that with them. Don't make me go in the cellar."


	106. Night Terrors

_Eleven_

_Night Terrors_

For mid-July, it was cold. The storm had died down and the power had come blinking back on after a few hours, Clara refusing to let him leave her to go look around the cellar or the back of the house for the fuse box to fiddle with, and as soon as that had happened they'd deemed it finally necessary to go upstairs. They should really have gone looking around in the daylight, he thought, when things were a bit less creepy, but there was no ghost, he was sure of it. Now, there was most definitely _something_, but it wasn't a ghost. He couldn't wait to get back to the TARDIS, and neither could Clara, he wagered.

She was still shaking quite violently from her little experience in the living room, and he'd nearly had to carry her up the stairs into the master bedroom in the manner he would if they were newlyweds. Though he hoped that she'd be less terrified if that were the case. Most of all, he was worried she might not sleep. He hadn't known the real reason she'd been afraid of cellars, all he had to go on previously were offhanded comments about basements from her sister, ones she often ignored. For really the first time, he felt like a terrible husband, dragging her out to an allegedly haunted house – he should've let Adam Mitchell have all the 'fun', but instead he was apparently whizzing around the UK in a sports car pricing up whole manors for his unappreciative parents.

His fears were unfounded. It was two in the morning when he knew she was asleep. Curled around her like he was, he couldn't see her face, but he could tell by the sound of her breathing. Slower, calmer. Nothing much was happening, the rain was still lashing outside and he had his eyes fixed rigidly on the mirror opposite – a full-body one, ornate – because in it he could see the door, which he ordinarily had his back to. More than anything he could hear his heartbeat, though. Heartbeat and rainstorm, that was it. And Clara's breathing. Three things.

Until there was a bang. The floor above, the attic. Right above. He went still, frozen, his wife and her horror-movie clichés getting to him more than he wanted to admit. He rolled onto his back and looked up, looking for anything, but when Clara moved around in his arms he returned his attention to her. The wind, probably. They hadn't looked in the loft, maybe there was an open window. An old bookcase falling. Truthfully, he hadn't identified the sound, just a thump. She was waking up, not as heavily asleep as he'd thought. In any case, a sleepless night or two wouldn't damage her much, and everything could be fixed on the TARDIS. Best to wake her up and investigate together than leave her, sleeping, to suffer at the hands of whatever spawn was stalking her from the shadows.

"Did you hear that?" Eleven whispered. He'd promised not to leave her, and lo and behold, he finally had a companion he would keep that promise to. Not wandering off. Well, he'd done it to her before. Sneaking off at Akahten, on the submarine, in the TARDIS itself. Though he'd looked for her then, and the next time, too. After that, things had changed vastly.

"What was it?" she asked.

"A noise, from the next floor." Attics were not cellars, he noted, they were different. Perhaps safer in Clara's opinion, but he wasn't privy to that. That was all it took to wake her up, and it turned out later that she'd really only been half asleep anyway. For a few moments, she stared into the mirror, too (when he sat up a little he could see her face, now she wasn't hiding it under the sheets).

"…Do we go look?" she asked, meeting his eyes in the mirror, glancing between them and the door, which they were both keeping a close eye on, in case something were to happen, like an eye appearing at the keyhole, or the handle twitching.

"We ought to…" he admitted, "What's happened to me in the last two months that I care more about you than things going bump in the night?" She nearly smiled there, and she found his hand beneath the sheets and squeezed it fondly.

It was obvious that until he got out of bed, Clara wasn't going to move, not if she could help it. So, untangling himself from his wife, he crawled out in pyjamas and stretched like he'd had a long, refreshing sleep, instead of a few hours of terrifying face-off with a creepy mirror in a haunted house. While he stretched, she got up on the other side of the bed (she was sleeping on the left, for some reason – perhaps because it was furthest from the door).

"Doctor?"

"Hmm? Yes?" he asked.

"I love you. I didn't tell you yet today."

"I love you, too." From the way she was talking, you'd think she thought she was going to her death, which was frankly ridiculous.

At that moment, him on one side of the bed and her standing on the other side, just in front of the mirror, a stain appeared on the mattress and the sheets. The lights had been left on, a request of Clara she was so scared, and both of them took a few seconds to realise that it wasn't a stain appearing out of nowhere, it was something dripping down from above. At the same time, they looked up, and saw it: a huge puddle, puce and shiny, beginning to grow on the ceiling, through the plaster. Blood, definitely, the colour was exactly right, and he could smell it. Fresh blood.

"Please tell me that's ketchup…" Clara pleaded. He met her eyes, but didn't speak, and his silence served to just worry her even more. At least the both of them were seeing it, not like earlier.

There was a torch on the bedside table, he'd rummaged around the drawers enough to find it a while ago, and at this moment he grabbed it off the side and went to open the door, Clara popping up by his side as soon as his hand touched the doorknob and turned it. _I should have locked the door_, he thought to himself. It probably wouldn't have helped.

Casting a glance back, he saw the bloodstain growing on the roof. Clara took hold of his left wrist, the one holding the torch, as he opened the door. Nothing there. Empty hallway, loft hatch at the far end. Typical. He passed the torch into his right hand and then wrapped his fingers tightly with hers – there was no way he was going to let her out of his sight at all in this weird house. For all they knew, there was nothing extra-terrestrial going on, could be there was a very crafty serial killer living under their roof.

"This is a bad idea," Clara breathed, barely audible over the rain outside and the wind, the storm still raging something ferocious, "This is the _worst_ idea." Still, Eleven didn't say anything. He didn't want to scare her more than she was capable of scaring herself by being tactless. The loft hatch loomed, bringing their inevitable fate with it, as they tiptoed over soft, cream-coloured carpet.

A noise.

Two noises.

Three.

Above.

Footsteps.

They looked up.

Blood. Spreading. Seeping through wood and plaster in an unnatural way. Clara made a sad noise next to him that he didn't care much to describe it made him hate what he'd done that day so much, clutching him as close as she could. Whatever was up there seemed human enough, barefooted, since he could make out the prints of each toe, five of them on each foot.

"Open the hatch," Eleven whispered, not spying the hook to open it and pull down the ladder anywhere close.

"I have a better idea," she said back, and then she held out her hand and flicked it up at the roof, shaking horribly. There was a bang then and he looked up to see what was happening, the same time there was a scream. Notably male and full of so many extreme emotions he couldn't describe it. It was the loudest sound he'd ever heard and it came out of nowhere and caused Clara to scream right next to him, but even she, a foot away, wasn't as loud as this rattling, painful sound emanating from the walls around them. He watched the bloodstains glow, darken from red, dry, turn black, grow fur. It wasn't blood anymore, it was mould, black mould, infecting the roof where the bloody footsteps had been like a time-lapse while the chocking, gut-wrenching wail echoed and reverberated around them.

And then something appeared opposite them, the end of the hallway, below the loft hatch neither of them were going near. Pale, skeletal, an almost-glowing quality with straggly, matted hair and a gaunt look, grinning so wide his face was half made of teeth, yellow and rotting. Patient's gown, the type you'd get in a hospital. Definitely a man, severed noose hanging around his neck. His head seemed to be twitching, left and right, almost spinning, so quickly it was like he had three different heads, two of them a screaming, hollow expression with the laughing one in the centre, whiteout eyes staring at them.

With a flash of lightning the thing was gone and the scream had ceased. When Eleven looked up now, he saw nothing on the ceiling. No mould, no blood, just the dull, white plaster. The only sound was Clara's heavy breathing on his left and the storm outside.

The bedroom door behind them slammed itself shut.


	107. Backseat Serenade

_Eleven_

_Backseat Serenade_

They had escaped via Adam Mitchell's borrowed Hummer, him being the only one of the two of them to have the foresight to bring a change of clothes. Meaning, his clothes he'd been wearing yesterday, and Clara's whole suitcase - well, he wasn't exactly going to try and pick clothes out for her, not unless he had a death wish.

Daylight was glaring outside, the sun bleeding through the grey clouds. It was still raining. Without the windscreen wipers on, everything had the distorted effect of looking through mottled glass, dimensions altered as though the trees and fields were at the bottom of a swimming pool. Eleven was sat in the passenger's seat, Clara was curled up and fast asleep by this point in the back on her own, using both of their dressing gowns as blankets against the chill - not that it was particularly cold anymore, it was a summer morning, just a grim summer morning.

As of then, they had no plan of action between them, no agenda or itinerary of how to tackle the ghost-in-residence at the house that really did, as Clara had mentioned yesterday, bear a striking resemblance to the one in Hitchcock's _Pyscho_. No dead mothers yet though, just frightening noose-men and bloody footprints. They'd just run out of the house and driven off down the road until they found some lay-by to park in overnight, a couple of miles away, closer to Nottingham itself.

Clara snapped his attention away from the car window and the emerald, watery blur when she yawned, and he craned his neck and turned in his seat to see her, definitely waking up. The bags and red marks around her eyes from tiredness and crying, coupled with the black smudges of streaked mascara, just reminded him of his fatal mistake in bringing her out that day.

"Morning," he said to her, a little uncertaintly, wondering if she was going to shout at him. He'd shout at himself, if he were her. She blinked, barely seeing, and squinted at him in the drear light.

"Where am I..?" she asked uncertainly, closing her eyes again and sinking back onto her arm, which she'd been using as a pillow.

"Adam's car, remember?"

"Oh, right..." she said. For a few seconds, exhaustion seemed to have made her blissfully ignorant of what was going on. For a few minutes, she lay there, face creased into a frown with her eyes closed, possibly trying to get back to sleep. It didn't work though. When she looked at him eventually, he smiled as best as he could, and she smiled back, sadly and more out of courtesy than anything else. "That thing looked sort of like Wyatt."

"Getting right down to business, I see?" he half-joked. She yawned, and sat up in the backseat, leaning forwards so she had her chin on the back of the seat he was sat in. "Did it?"

"Yeah. But it's not a ghost. I pushed it over, with telekinesis. You can't push a ghost," Clara said.

"How would it know what the ghost in your Dream looked like?" he asked her, and she frowned, and then appeared to have some realisation out of nowhere.

"Because we were talking about it, remember? I described it. It wasn't a perfect copy, it was replicating what it heard," she said in a whisper, though why she was whispering, he didn't know. They were completely alone. And, jumping upon this aloneness, he grabbed her face out of nowhere and kissed her, which she struggled against until she managed to force him off.

"What?"

"_What are you doing_!? It's the morning and I am in no mood to have you trying to suck my face off with your damn mouthparts!" she exclaimed.

"It's research!" he argued, and she stared at him.

"_Research_? Into _what_? Do not force yourself on women - it doesn't matter how many times we've been married. Especially if they try to push you off!"

"To see if I could taste any residual energy on you," he said, "Kissing just happens to be a convenient way to test this..." She kept gawping at him like he was an idiot. Maybe he was? "Your mouth tastes like Stuff."

"Stuff?"

"With a capital 'S'. Alien Stuff. Traces," he said, and she frowned, "I'll have it too, but your tastebuds aren't nowhere near as experienced and refined as mine."

"Sweetheart, if you're so 'experienced' and 'refined', why can't you go taste your _own_ mouth for Stuff?"

"That's not how tasting works. Can you taste air? Yes, you _can_, but if I asked you'd say it was tasteless. If you ate nothing but garlic you'd become immune to the taste after a while," he explained, not doing a very good job of explaining, but it made perfect sense to him. He'd adjusted to the point where he couldn't taste it on his own tongue - he was really left with no choice but to see if he could taste it on hers, honest. "I'm sorry."

"You ought to be. But I accept your apology," she said curtly, still leaning on the back of the chair in spite of all this, "What's this Stuff then?"

"It's the aftertaste of a sort of noxious gas. An odourless, colourless toxin that works as a defence mechanism for some species, and an attack for others. There are a lot of species that have this sort of thing, though, like a flight or fight reaction, or squids ejecting ink. More or less, it's a hallucinogen, but it's impossible to tell if this is one of the offensive or defensive races, it's such a widespread trait through the universe. Whatever it is, it's hiding in the house and making us see things, like an illusionist, or a magician," he explained to her. It was vague, but at least it was _something_.

"If it makes you see things, how do you fight it?" Clara asked.

"The first step is really finding out what it is," he answered, "Then we find out what it wants."

"And what about all the missing people? How do we get them back?"

"I don't know yet," he answered, "I'm working on it." He stopped speaking then, thinking, going through the huge lists of alien species in his head that fit the criteria to try and narrow down his search.

Clara tapped his shoulder, and he looked at her expectantly.

"What's in the glove box?" she asked, nodding at it in front of him. He wasn't allowed to sit in the driver's seat, in case he did something reckless. Like drive.

"Gloves?" he suggested.

"Nobody keeps gloves in a glove box anymore, Chin," she shook her head, "Open it."

"Not hoping to find cigarettes, are you?" he asked, though he was going to open it anyway. There might be something interesting in it.

"No, I quit. Again. If you find any gum, let me know," she asked him, and almost straight away he obediently passed her a half-eaten packet of spearmint chewing gum, which she took greatfully, "Got to get the taste of Stuff out of my mouth."

"There's some pills in here," Eleven said.

"What sort?" she asked, the smell of mint wafting over to him from her when she spoke and breathed, her right by his face and leaning over the back of the chair fully to get a look at whatever Adam Mitchell the multimillionaire kept in his Hummer.

"I don't know... What if they're, you know? ...'Performance enhancer'?"

"You mean viagra!? _Why_ on Earth would you think of that? Why do you even know what that is?"

"Some very odd shows come on late at night when you fall asleep with the television switched on, Clara," he said, passing the blame of his lack of innocence onto her. She gave him a flat look for a moment.

"I'm pretty sure a lonely nerd in his twenties doesn't keep viagra in his car," Clara said, snatching the packet off of Eleven to read it, "Paracetamol, you idiot. It says right there. You know, painkillers?"

"Yes, I know what paracetamol is..." he grumbled, but then he really _did_ find something interesting, hand closing around a few squares of foil half the size of his palm, or so. A string of them, he pulled out, attached to one another by tearable, dotted lines.

"Oh my stars!" Clara exclaimed, "Why does he gave condoms in his car!?" For condoms were what they were, "Who is he gonna sleep with?"

"Your sister."

"My sister is dead, they can't have sex, you know. Plus, even if they could, she's still dead, I doubt they'd need protection," Clara said, "What's the expiration date on them?"

"2011."

"He picked this car up in 2014," Clara said, "In the autumn, at Coal Hill. What a weirdo, carrying expired condoms around. I'll ask him about it when we get back."

"It's better to be safe than sorry, wifey. Now, what shall we do about this ghoul?"


	108. Coffee Shop Soundtrack

_Clara_

_Coffee Shop Soundtrack_

At the current moment, the answer to the question, _"What shall we do about this ghoul?_", seemed to be, go have coffee. Bedraggled and exhausted, they were huddled in some small, non-chain coffee shop by the window, swimming in the familiar smell of hot drinks. On one side of the glass, the window was soaked and dripping like a waterfall from the ever-continuing rainstorm; on the other side, it was foggy with steam and condensation. People muttered around them, mostly about the weather or their personal lives (except for one person on the table behind them, who was trying to educate his friend on a range of conspiracies going in London involving super-powered vigilantes, at which point Clara had to stop stirring her coffee telekinetically and use her hand), their own conversation being masked by the chatter, the slurping, the sound of wet spoons being tapped against the sides of mugs or saucers. It was warm, and friendly, and busy enough that they could talk freely.

"We met in a coffee shop," Clara mused a moment later, watching the raindrops run down the glass on her right, racing the blobs in her as they trickled together and split apart.

"No we didn't," Eleven told her. She was watching the window and he was watching her, with concern, she decided. But he had a slice of cake, and that was distracting him every few moments when he remembered.

"We sort of did. Almost. I should tell people that's how we met..."

"Why not the truth..?"

"The people we can't tell the truth to, is what I mean. Can't tell everyone that you met me in the future when another version of me was a genius-Dalek, and I met you when you showed up dressed as a monk at my door and then I ended up downloaded into the Cloud," Clara said.

"Yes, and then I saved you and _then _we went to the coffee shop. It's a first date, more than anything," he said, and she looked over at him as he drank some more of his coffee and smiled, "...What?"

"That was a date, was it?" she questioned, and then he nearly coughed on his coffee.

"That isn't what I-"

"I was wondering, because none of the others have ever really mentioned you taking them out to cafés and offering to pay for them. Not that you have any money, but I suppose the thought was there. A shop with such a nice view of London, too - and didn't we share that milkshake? It's hard _not _to see romantic undertones."

"There were not any 'romantic undertones'!"

"Romantic _over_tones, you mean?" she asked in a way suggesting he'd accidentally foiled himself, a tone of voice used only to irritate him, now that he was thoroughly embarrassed and on his way to blushing. And the Doctor didn't blush.

"_No_, I wasn't... I didn't..."

"I thought you've told me before about how much effort you went to to try and stop yourself falling for _another _human?" she asked, a little quietly, not wanting the conspiracy freak in the seat behind to hear her talking about humans in a way implying the man opposite her was not one. Which he wasn't, but they couldn't go letting random people know that.

"Yes, and look what it got me; a wedding ring," he said grimly, holding up his left hand, the metal of it blurred with the same fog as the window. Seeing this on her own, she wiped hers clean, and then reached for his hand across the table and took hold of it.

"Yes, and a wife. Not very good at it, are you?"

He leant over the table, and said, "Maybe I don't want to be good at it?"

"Well maybe you'll just be stuck with me forever." Right then, she was not nearly as engrossed in him as he would like to think. No, she was keeping a close eye out for any spectres (due to paranoia more than anything), and a close ear out for the conspiracists behind her.

"Oh, the mere thought makes me feel sick to my stomach, darling," he said, and she laughed. Dark masses of block colour drifted past them outside the glass; cars made splotchy and fuzzy by steam and rain. Yesterday morning she'd mentioned missing the rain and the weather, now that she lived on the TARDIS, it seemed, and she did. She watched the rain with a nostalgic attitude, a pining for something previously taken for granted. She'd always liked the rain. When Eleven moved his hand her attention was dragged back to the coffee shop, and she deigned to have another drink.

"You miss it, don't you?" he asked her, and she detected guilt and resentment in his voice. Guilt and resentment towards himself.

"Of course I miss it, but I also miss Geography lessons because of the fun we'd have _not_ doing work and gossiping," she told him, "But it doesn't matter how much I miss ignoring documentaries about coastal defences, I still wouldn't go resit the GCSE… Funnily enough, despite how much I _hated_ Geography, I still know that this rain is a low-pressure weather system and a cold front coming over from the Atlantic…"

"You really lost me halfway through with what point you're actually trying to make – do you often try and confuse men via meteorology?" he questioned, crossing his arms and leaning forwards as she stayed watching the grey clouds out of the window.

"No, sometimes I try and confuse women," Clara said, "Anyway, my point was that you always reminisce through rose-tinted glasses and idealise the past to be more than what it was. So yes, I miss it, but I also miss the stink of salt and candyfloss in summer sometimes, and that's not a nice smell. We mourn the familiar more than we mourn the good. You have no idea what it's like growing up near a seaside theme park."

"Strange, really, living on the coast I'd have thought you'd be fascinated by coastal defences," he joked. A terrible joke, and she gave him a deadpan expression for it as he laughed at himself.

"If I cared that much about coastal defences I could have gone on a five-minute walk to stare at them. Maybe if I went to the beach _every day_, I could have made a stop-motion animation illustrating the effects of coastal erosion on a sea wall. Also, I'm pretty sure this is the most boring conversation you and I have ever had," she said, and he laughed.

"The fact we're even having such a dull conversation is remarkable," he commented, "But to change the subject, we really do have to discuss this ghost, Clara. It's the elephant in the room. The reason we're here in the first place."

"And I thought we were here because you'd accidentally taken me on a date to a coffee shop, again," she sighed, shaking her head.

"This was _your_ idea, I'm just humouring you. That's why I married you, to humour you."

"Well, Chin, consider me plenty humoured. I've been humoured by you many times, sometimes all night long," she said, and he made some irritated, nonsensical noises until he mustered up the ability to tell her to be quiet and stop, and then he'd finally decided to stop letting her divert the subject away from their 'lodger'. "…I don't know why you're asking _me_ what to do," she said when he'd repeated his question, leaning close to him to talk in hushed tones, "We don't know what species it is, where it's from, what it wants, why it's here, _how_ it got here, what it even looks like, or how to get it to show itself without offering ourselves up as bait."

"That's more or less always the case, Clara, you're making excuses because you're frightened," he told her, and she narrowed her eyes at him and glared.

"Alright, fine, that's exactly what I'm doing," she said, and he didn't say anything, just leant back in his chair, now thinking about what they ought to do. And she was thinking about that, too, trying to find anything they could do that was helpful but _didn't_ involve them going back to the _Psycho_-house on the hill, "To the police, it's a missing persons case. So, what would the police do? They'd go talk to whoever reported the people missing… Did you pick up the laptop last night?"

"Yes."

"Then we'll go find out who reported them missing and just go to the closest one," she shrugged, "Be systematic. Logical." And then he made to stand up, so she grabbed hold of his hand again, "_After_ our date. After all, the only people in danger are the people living in the house, and that's us." He sighed, but sat back down, her smiling at him, because she'd won.

"So, what _is_ it like growing up by the seaside?" he asked eventually, deciding to 'humour' her, apparently. He was, frankly, awful at pretending not to be interested. Especially since he was always so interested in humans, and even more was he interested in knowing everything about every facet of Clara's life. He was just a liar.

"Abysmal," she replied, "Especially because it's a resort town, with a theme park. And in the North, you're not really spoilt for choice when it comes to theme parks. If you stick the dregs of society on a roller coaster and throw chips at them like they're zoo-animals, that's what you get. Ironic, really, being as there's a zoo there as well." Eleven laughed, his façade of boredom vanished already, "It's not really a question of growing up by the sea, though, it's a question of growing up in Blackpool. Case specific. The worst thing is the tourists, so many of them, everywhere, just wandering around aimlessly looking for chips. I bet you didn't have to deal with tourists on Gallifrey, did you?"

"Not really. Time Lords are very private. Well, _they'd_ say private. Personally, I would say bigoted, but carry on," he said.

"So bigoted that you ran away and became the biggest tourist in the universe. And then you dragged me along with you. I've become what I hate, honestly. It always stank of vinegar, really. So much vinegar, if you were within five miles of the promenade. Which I was, annoyingly. You could see the sea out of my bedroom window, hear the constant cawing of the seagulls," she said. Being bitter about her hometown was the only way she'd keep herself from missing it too much, and keep him from feeling bad about 'taking her away' from it, because he seemed incapable of accepting it was her choice to be there with him.

"Not to mention the rock."

"Sorry?"

"It's all you eat there, isn't it? Rock?" She stared at him.

"…You're joking, right? You think all I've ever eaten is stupid rock candy?" He nodded, and she knew he wasn't being serious, but even so, she said, "Well, truthfully, I _have_ eaten a lot of rock cocks."

"Of… What..?"

"It's a penis made of rock, you know? You suck it? Well I mean, _technically_, you suck all-"

"Clara!" he exclaimed when I realised what she was going to say. She was smirking. She loved to torment him.

"…I'm kidding. I haven't only eaten rock." He sighed with what she thought must be relief that she hadn't carried on saying horribly inappropriate things in the middle of a coffee shop (she'd glanced around and made sure no-one was listening before she said anything). "No, not just rock. I've also eaten a lot of girls." He choked on the coffee he'd been drinking. "Don't choke! That's what happens when you try and eat a rock cock too quickly. _I should know_."

"I hate you, Clara Oswald." Clara proceeded to wink at him while she finished the last bit of her coffee.


	109. Green Fingers

_Clara_

_Green Fingers_

"Why won't you let me drive the car?" Eleven complained, huffily crossing his arms and slouching down in the passenger seat of the car while Clara was trying to hack into Nottinghamshire Police Department's missing person records from the last two years, which was proving a lot easier than first thought. What with her ban being in place most of the time (unless, out of the good of their hearts, one of the Doctors offered _so kindly_ to lift it for her, as was the current case), she forgot that, due to the mistakes of the Great Intelligence, she'd suddenly become a computer genius. Not that she needed to be most of the time, if something needed doing on a computer, her sister had probably already finished doing it, and the smartest girl in the universe was a resource regularly utilised.

"Because you'll crash it," Clara told him simply.

"I won't crash it! When have I _ever_ crashed a car?" he challenged, knowing full-well she couldn't give him an example of a time when he'd crashed a car, because she'd never actually given him the chance to get behind the wheel of one. "You're the one we should be worried about when it comes to driving."

"_What_ is that supposed to mean, exactly?" she snapped, narrowing his eyes at him, and then he realised that whatever his reason behind that sentence, he should not have said it.

"It means that you've crashed cars before."

"When?" she crossed her arms now, and saw him trying to casually shuffle away from her, but it was a little difficult when they were trapped in such a confined space (not that it was particularly small, the Hummer was so roomy she was going to suggest to Adam Mitchell that he install an open-plan kitchen).

"In the Dream, I think you mentioned…" _Dammit,_ she thought, _he's right_. She had crashed that car in the Dream, on the Fifth Day, it had been. But that was Imaginary Adam Mitchell's fault for trying to run them off the road in his rented, racist RV.

"That wasn't my fault! The road wasn't big enough for his stupid bus, and he tried to overtake us, the wheel clipped something and when I tried to get off the road to get away from it, the bloody thing did a 180 and smashed into the back of the Range Rover we were in," she said.

"Well, maybe if you hadn't been… You know, driving, in the first place," he argued like a child.

"Yes, we should have just _not_ driven the car we woke up in, and stayed in Death Valley and dehydrated to death. Great idea, Doctor," she said sarcastically, shaking her head and clearly winning the argument. He shut up then. He hadn't even been there, who was he to tell her that crash had been her fault? And even if it had – which it hadn't – it wasn't like anybody had died or anything. "…Here, look," she said eventually, after going back to the future-laptop, "Richard Richardson hasn't been reported missing yet."

"Oh, maybe he's fine?" Eleven suggested hopefully, leaning across to get a look at the screen.

"Lonely, more like," said Clara, "The last people to live there before him were a couple, unmarried. Oh, you'll like this, her name was Amelia. Amelia Lennon, it says, but only she was reported missing… Her girlfriend, it says, moved out of the house after a few days because of 'strange occurrences.' She's the one who reported her missing, she's called Esther Primrose."

"I love the names," he said. She'd never get his thing about names, though, in this case, she did agree with him. She hate her own name, she'd love to have been called _Esther Primrose_. "Lesbians, too, won't you love that?"

"You think that I, a married woman, would try and get with a grieving girlfriend?" Clara questioned, incredulous and offended, "Who do you think I am, my sister? I'd never do that. Also, they're in their fifties. And from Nottingham, in the first place. Shall we go have a word, then? _I'll_ drive."

"Of course you will," he sighed, and his annoyance at the fact she had declared herself the exclusive driver of their trip amused her considerably.

"Look, _you're_ the one who dragged us out here, _you're _the one who tried to make me sleep in that awful house, and _you're_ the one who made us leave the shop early just now. I think the _very least_ you could do is let me drive the car without complaining," she said, "And anyway, it's not like I ever try to fly the TARDIS, is it? If we got pulled over, you don't have a driver's license. It's bad enough that neither of us are insured to drive this car, and you don't legally exist. Okay?"

"Yes, yes, fine, you've bored me to death, I'm going to regenerate at this rate," he fake-grumbled, and she laughed. "Moving on, what are we going to tell this Esther Primrose to make sure she tells us anything?"

"The truth? That we bought the house and want to know what's been happening?" she suggested.

"The truth? You mean to tell me you're going to tell a gay woman you're straight?" he joked.

"I'm not straight. Just because I'm married to a man – well, arguably, being as you're not even the same species – doesn't mean I'm a heterosexual. Doesn't matter who I shag, I'm still bisexual," she said.

"Oh, that silver tongue of yours…"

"Say what you like, but this 'silver tongue' of mine is always something lesbians are _very_ interested in," she retaliated by making jokes about queer promiscuity, "But _moving on_ from the fact that, according to you, I try to sit on everyone I ever meet, we'll just say we got her details from the estate agent and want to know about what she saw in the house."

* * *

Standing in front of the Doctor, keeping him far enough away from the door that he couldn't start speaking and give them away, Clara knocked. Where they were was a beautiful, rural cottage, on the outskirts of the city about half an hour's drive from the coffee shop they'd been to. There was a long path made of pretty pebbles coming from a white-painted gate and a mossy wall down to the door, flagstones made into circles to look like stepping stones going off from the main path towards a flower bed of roses, to the left. The hedges and the grass was all overgrown, but not in a chaotic way, in a stylistic way, the wild-effect clearly something the owner was going for. Esther Primrose really lived up to her name, apparently, since she was clearly a connoisseur of gardening, from what Clara had seen already.

"Isn't it pretty?" Clara commented while they waited, "I'd love a garden."

"We have a huge one on the TARDIS," Eleven pointed out. Their 'garden' more resembled the Eden Project than any little pocket of flowers and hedgerows, like Esther's house. But it gave Clara an idea.

"Shall we have a picnic when we get back? It'll be a nice way to say goodbye to these ghouls and whatnot," she proposed. Before he could answer, the door opened, and they were greeted with that old stereotype of the green-fingered, dumpy old lady, with the kindly eyes. The sort who'd always have a biscuit tin at the ready to offer local kids. Maybe a sweet jar. Except she wasn't looking particularly happy right then, and her eyes were red around the edges and hollow. She was looking haggard.

"Hello..?" she asked.

"Are you Esther Primrose?"

"Yes..?"

"Hi," Clara greeted, trying to stay warm, serious and solemn at the same time, which was difficult, "I'm Clara Oswald, this is my husband, Theodore. We just moved into the house on White Pine Hill, and we were wondering if we could talk to you about it?"


	110. Eight-Legged Freaks

_Clara_

_Eight-Legged Freaks_

The house was one of the prettiest, most quaint houses she'd ever stepped foot in. A beautiful cottage nestled in a picturesque garden, it was gorgeous. It was one of those places Clara would love to live in, if she were to ever settle down, though that seemed highly unlikely at this point. Still, the TARDIS was so good at synthesising things, she could live in a gorgeous cottage surrounded by garden and flowers and little lawn-ornaments and birdbaths and feeders, maybe with squirrels and hedgehogs living in the garden. Not that she was fantasising about rural life, or anything…

Inside wasn't quite as stunning as outside, and in the heat of July it was boiling hot and stuffy, and one of the chairs still had a plastic cover on it as though it was new. Littered about, as well, were boxes of unpacked things with the name _Amelia_ written on them, and Clara realised that poor old Esther had had to go to the _Psycho_-house on White Pine Hill and clear out all of Amelia Lennon's stuff, and though it might never eventuate that Clara would have to go move all of the Doctor's things out of somewhere after _he'd_ disappeared, she didn't know if she'd have the guts to do it. Along with the boxes, there were a couple of dirty mugs and plates lying about on the side and whatnot, but it was nothing that Clara hadn't seen before, living in student accommodation. Dirty dishes were an essential part of uni-life, she remembered one person who'd tried to buy paper plates because they hated washing up so much.

Clara and Eleven were directed to sit down on the sofa, which they did, and they were then offered tea, which they of course didn't refuse (Clara would never say no to tea, under any circumstances, it was just rude). Esther Primrose, who had said very little so far other than inviting them into her house when they told her what they were there for, was just coming back through from the kitchen with the promised tea, in two mismatched mugs. Clara was very pleased with her mug, it looked like a teapot, some novelty-job, and Eleven's was more or less normal, save for the pictures of telephone boxes on it (not that they were police telephone boxes, they were the usual red ones. Or, "crimson urinals" as a rather repugnant male acquaintance of hers had once said when talking about how he pissed in them, because it was "discreet", and after that Clara didn't use public payphones unless she was left with no choice).

"This house is beautiful," Clara couldn't help herself but compliment it, it _was_ beautiful. She got a sad smile in return though, so she assumed it had been well-received, "Seriously, I'd love a house like this, my mother was always talking about how much she wanted to plant a nice garden before she died." That statement wasn't a play at getting on Esther's good side so that she'd talk to them, that was entirely true. Her mother had been wanting to plant a garden, she'd always talked about it. She had the rose bush seeds ready in the garden shed, and she was sure that if she went back to that shed, the seeds would still be there. Which gave her an idea, but not an idea anything to do with their current circumstances.

Seeing Clara's lapse in concentration for a few moments, the Doctor jumped on the charm-offensive, treating the situation like it was a mystery to be solved more than looking at it from a human perspective. Not that he was human, and he wasn't _too_ tactless, she supposed.

"Now, the thing is, Esther Primrose – fitting name, I think, but I do love names – we've just moved into that house, and things are, well – let's just say _spooky_. And we were talking to the estate agent, Norman Blowers, afterwards, and he mentioned a few things about you moving out," Eleven said.

"Spooky?" she asked.

"More than spooky," Eleven said quietly, leaning forwards towards her over the coffee table that was between their sofa and the plastic-coated armchair, "Downright terrifying, and I don't scare easily." _You do scare easily, you're scared of me, for one thing_, was what she would have said if it was appropriate. "Nasty things happening. Shadows, blood, apparitions. If I didn't know better, I'd say haunted."

"It _is_ haunted," Esther argued with him. He'd said that to make her disagree, "I was only there for a week, I didn't sleep a wink. I've barely slept since."

"What did you see?" Eleven asked seriously.

"Spiders," said Esther, "I'd always been terrified of spiders, a phobia. The day we moved in, there was one in the bath, scared me half to death until Amelia put it out. That night, they were everywhere. Coming out of the toilets, the plugholes, the shower…" she was shaking now.

"You don't have to tell us," Clara said. She'd told them enough already, and she looked to be on the verge of tears at the memory, if not already.

"Amelia said I was seeing things."

"We believe you, we don't think you were seeing things," said Clara, "But did you see, would you say, your worst fears?" Esther Primrose nodded. "…We were wondering if you could tell us anything about Amelia's disappearance a month ago?"

"What do you want to know for?"

"We're curious," said the Doctor, "We're investigators, of sorts. We bought the house to look into the disappearances."

"We _are_ married, though. Works better that way, we think. And they say you should never mix business and pleasure," she joked a little, but it went more or less ignored. While the Doctor talked to Esther next, Clara consumed her time with looking around the house at things like pretty, painted plates hanging from the wall, a TV that didn't look like it had ever been switched on, and a myriad of photographs of who she assumed were Esther and Amelia. At this point, the Doctor took out his psychic paper and flipped it open across the table to show her.

"Paranormal specialists?"

"If that's what it says," said Eleven, taking it away again and folding it into his jacket, "Yes. Paranormal specialists. Things that go bump in the night. We're experts, Clara and I." Clara smiled. By this point, she probably was an expert. Even before her little ghost-phobia had birthed itself into existence due to goings-on at that asylum weeks ago, and then with Wyatt, and then in Staffordshire with those ghost children, and then last night, she'd been interested in the paranormal. Ghosts. Stemmed from her mother's death, she thought, since it was a relatively recent interest of the last few years. Mainly, it was a fear that there was nothing when one passed on. That was the worry that sent her believing wild theories about poltergeists and other such fiends.

"Amelia drove down and visited me every day," said Esther, "Until the twelfth." Twelfth of June, Clara supposed. "She didn't come. Didn't call. Nothing. I went up, to see her, and she was different… She said she was fine, she was feeling under the weather. I would have stayed, but that house… That house just frightens me too much. A week later, I'd heard nothing. I went up to the house, and… And… Someone else had moved in. An old man. Richard, or something." Clara drank her tea while she listened, "They made me take boxes of her things… I've not…" And then she burst into tears, and Clara felt almost as sorry for Esther Primrose as she did about Oswin, whenever Oswin had a turn for the worse, except she knew that there wasn't an awful lot they could do to help Esther.

"I'm going to find out what's going on," the Doctor assured her, "I promise. Trust me."

"We'll get her back," said Clara, "I swear."

* * *

"It's strange now how it's 'we', isn't it?" Eleven said to Clara as they got back into the car, a sentence which she so unfortunately misheard.

"Did you just say there's something strange about your wee?" she asked.

"What!? No! I meant that it's 'we' now and not 'I'!"

"I was gonna say," she said, nowhere near as mortified as he seemed to be, "I don't care how in-love we are, I don't want to know if you pee's being weird… But I suppose it's strange. It's because you're not as used to having all these companions who can go sort stuff out on their own, without your help. And now it's like, 'Oh, look at this, Clara's actually somewhat useful.'"

"Hey! I don't think low of my friends, Clara," he said to her as she started the car, after she'd stared at him for a few seconds until he remembered to put his seatbelt on. She wasn't going to have him be regenerating if she hit a pothole at a funny angle and he went head-first through the windscreen.

"Of course you do, you have a superiority complex. You _like_ humans, maybe even _love_ some of them, but you still think you're better than us. Probably because you live longer. I mean, we're basically pets. Like, if I had a pet guinea pig. It's adorable and I'd love it with all my heart, but it's got a brain the size of a peanut and it would die after three years," she said as they drove.

"You've gotten horribly morbid lately," he said to her, and she just smiled, "And that isn't true."

"It used to be."

"It… Fine. I suppose you have a point, but now I'm stuck with some immortal, sexy guinea pig who won't let me drive the car," he grumbled.

"Did you _seriously_ just call me a 'sexy guinea pig'? Did the words 'sexy', 'guinea' and 'pig' just come out of your mouth in that exact order, while referring to your _wife_?"

"I was just going along with your metaphor," he said coolly, entirely aware that she was joking. But, for the record, she did think his use of the phrase 'sexy guinea pig' really needed to be re-evaluated. "Clara?"

"Hmm?" she asked. At the moment, they were heading towards the residence of Mr Richard Richardson. Through Clara's computer capabilities and the glory of the internet, they'd found out that his old house he'd never sold, he'd just intended to sell it, and according to the records of Norman Blowers, that was where he'd returned to that week, when she and Eleven had moved into the house on White Pine Hill. Before they'd visited Esther, Clara had argued that it was definitely worth looking into, mainly as a ploy so that they could stay out of the house for as long as possible.

"Yep?"

"What you said about your mother, and the garden, is that true?" he asked. At this point, Clara no longer knew if the Doctor knew the details surrounding the death of Ellie Ravenswood. She'd never talked to him about it, but it was highly plausible that during his stalking of her just after they'd met, he'd discovered what happened and never brought it up.

"Uh-huh," Clara answered, and she then repeated the thing about the rose bush seeds, "I might plant them, you know. Or buy some new ones. Dad never planted them, but I might go do it… Maybe I'll get us a window box. Would you let me?"

"Let you what? Have roses on the windowsill?" Clara nodded, glancing over every few seconds while she drove through the backroads of Nottinghamshire, "It's not a real windowsill."

"They don't need to be real roses, either. Just… Look like them. I don't know, it doesn't matter, it's not important."

"Yes, of course," he said, "I'll get the TARDIS to sort it out. Ask nicely, and all that. You can have whatever you like, Coo."

"…So this entity-thing," she asked a few minutes later, "It clearly listens, right? It listened when that spider was in the bath, and knew exactly what to terrorise Esther with, didn't it? And it listened to me tell that whole story about Wyatt, but it's not like, a mind-reader. Maybe it scares you with shadows just enough to start a conversation about phobias?"

"That still doesn't help us to catch it…" he thought to himself, "But it is a way to lure it out."

"What do you think it's doing with the people it takes?"

"I don't know," Eleven said, "Learning? Feeding? The whole house is a trap. But we can't let it know any of this, we can't talk freely in that house. It creates illusions, though, so none of the things we saw were really… It. This would be much easier if we had the TARDIS…"

"Didn't everyone go hunting through Torchwood for equipment though?" Clara asked.

"Yes, but none of this is in our brother-in-law's car, is it? If this is a car, it's huge. Reminds of a transformer, or a tank," he said, and she laughed, "Anyway, the TARDIS has everything on it, but the TARDIS isn't here."

"There really needs to be some kind of gadget allocation. I'm pretty sure that things in the technological-department are finally getting done now my sister's back. For one thing, she's finally gonna fix K-9 so that Luke can leave, since you wouldn't do it," Clara said.

"I love K-9!"

"If you love K-9 so much, _why_ don't you just build another one?"

"Maybe I will."

"Maybe you should, you can programme him to guard my underwear drawer while we're both asleep to stop Jack and Jenny stealing my bras," Clara said. Those damn underwear raids were still happening, she was down to just one bra by this point, and she used to have _loads_. A huge variety of undergarments. And now she was all of a sudden, by no fault of her own, disgusting.

"You mean you'd let me!?"

"Um, yes? Anyway, why do you care so much what _I_ think?" she questioned.

"It's your room, too. And that's probably where he'd be."

"You don't need my permission, I'd just like to be notified. It's polite to tell me what's going on. And as long as you switch him off when we do it, I'm not really bothered. Really if you just put him on mute," Clara shrugged, "Blanket on his head or something."

"You're honestly vile sometimes, darling."

"I'm a product of my environment, and let's just say my environment was often… Busy. Parties, flatmates, that sort of thing. Annoying parents. And now intrusive sisters. I really can't get a break these days, but oh well."

"It's sad, isn't it?" he said after a while, changing the subject to a new one, leaning on the door and sat in a way so that he was nearly so far sideways that he was facing her, though he was looking out of the window, "Them being separated like that, by this thing. I hope it never happens to us."

"I don't know what I'd do without you, at this point. Who would I talk to 24/7?"

"Oswin, probably."

"I don't want to talk to her all the time, I couldn't cope. And anyway, she's got Adam. You're the one I tell everything to."

"Co-dependency is never healthy."

"_Co-dependency_? Who do you think we are, Ten and Rose? Sweetheart, we aren't co-dependent, we're fine. I've just been away for six days and neither of us completely ceased to function. We're not Bella and Edward."

"I suppose not. I'd miss you if you vanished."

"I'm glad to hear it. I'm only your wife, who you're supposedly in love with, nice to know I'd be missed," she said dryly, and he laughed a little, "But I guess I'd miss you if you vanished too."


	111. Home Invasion

**AN: Final call for if you want Luke to stay or go. Most people said go last time, and I, personally, am indifferent either way. But he can always have Tentoo's vacancy. If he leaves, he leaves tonight. Also, I am dying right now, it's 32⁰C where I am. The hottest day in the UK in a decade.**

_Clara_

_Home Invasion_

"The weather is way too nice for ghost hunting," Clara complained a little, leaving her jacket in the car when they got out of it, sunglasses back on her face (the stolen ones from 1947, presumably from whatever lady friend the anonymous Stewart Bishop had in his candy apple green convertible she'd 'borrowed'), leaving the air-conditioned vehicle to enter the mid-July heat of the afternoon. Lazy bugs fluttered about and the she couldn't tell where humidity ended and sweat began, the sun beating down on them, a yellow scar in the middle of a blue sky, not a cloud in sight. "I'm not used to this heat, it's so moderate on the TARDIS. God, I sound like my sister, don't I?" Eleven laughed at that, and then took the lead in going towards the middle terrace of a long row of them on a suburban street on the edge of the city. Small, poorly maintained, it stood, alone and with a smashed window on the bottom floor. Clara assumed burglars had been at it.

Eleven's sonic buzzed as he fought with the lock and she took a glance around in the sticky heat and some dead, overgrown bushes. A notice sign at the end of the road told her there was a hosepipe ban in effect. He was mumbling g to himself as he fumbled with it, his 'new' screwdriver being an old, broken model of the one she'd stolen. Not that she had that one with her, she'd left it in the house. Not to worry, she thought slyly, saying nothing to him and side-stepping towards the wall. In an instant of muffled sound and a strange rippling sensation, as though walking through water, she'd passed through the bricks and the plaster and the wallpaper into a stiflingly hot living room with the furniture all cleared out.

She was so perturbed by the temperature within, it took her a moment to re-establish what was going on and make the left turn, cutting straight through another wall, into the hallway, where there was a mountain of unopened post on the floor. Hearing the Doctor still fussing about with the lock, she picked up all the letters and moved them where they wouldn't be trodden on by his fumbling feet, before turning the key still sitting in the lock and opening the door.

"If you're here to sell double-glazing, I really don't think this house needs it, it's roasting," she told him, and it took him a moment to figure out that she'd phased through the walls so as to open the door for him, "Don't worry, it wasn't unlocked," she held up the key, just to keep his self-esteem intact so that he didn't upset himself with the idea that he'd been too stupid to actually try and open the door. Not that he _had_ tried to open it.

"Look at you, complaining about the weather as though it hasn't just been raining since last night," he commented. It had stopped raining out of nowhere while they'd been in the coffee shop – _Ah, the unreliable British weather_, she thought – and, very quickly, the streets and pavements and cars had all dried. Now the metal of the Hummer was on fire, like she was touching a scalding pan (though, Clara didn't touch a lot of pans, she wasn't allowed), and she thought if she stayed there for much longer she might melt into a puddle of sweat on the floor. A puddle of sweat with four rings and a pair of stolen shades in it. Speaking of shades, though, Clara slid them up so they were on the top of her head, since otherwise it was much too dark to see anything.

"I'm British, all we do is complain about the weather," she said to him, going back over to look at the post, "Why? Was the weather always perfect on Gallifrey?"

"Well, we lived in domes," he said, "It isn't even that hot. What is it, about, thirty?"

"Thirty _is_ hot!" she complained, staring at him, "All I want right now is a really, really cold shower. Maybe I'll go hang out with Adam when we get back..."

"Oh, yes, shall we invite him on our romantic picnic? I'm sure you won't mind if we put a blanket over his head and pretend he's not there," said Eleven, going off to search through the living room and find anything weird, she presumed.

"You think I'm joking," she muttered, and he ignored that, "I'm still serious about this picnic, by the way," she added, to try and see how enthusiastic he really was about this idea of hers. When he answered with a disinterested, generic, "_Yes, yes_," she frowned. He'd been a bit off with her all day, and frankly, it was worrying. She didn't want it to be anything to do with her.

For a few moments, she watched him stare blankly at the letters without reading them. And then, to her surprise, when he caught her watching him with blatant suspicion, he talked first.

"Clara, do you think people still care what I think?" he asked her.

"Sorry?"

"I'm a laughing stock!" he exclaimed.

"Since when?"

"I don't know!" he was clearly upset, "It's like they all force themselves to put up with me. All of them. Even the Ponds."

"This is still about you thinking you've had all your authority taken away, isn't it?" she asked, and when he said nothing, she assumed she was right. And being as they weren't really doing anything too important other than prying through a lonely old man's heating bills, she decided she really ought to answer him properly and figure out a solution to this issue that had been tormenting him for so many weeks. "Sweetheart, you can't _make_ them listen to you. With the power struggle between you three Time Lords, people haven't had much choice in the matter. It's like I was saying earlier, we might all be your friends, but you have trouble sometimes seeing us as equals. And a lot of us really can't be considered human anymore, we're like, human-plus. The thing is, Doctor, we don't really need you there to help us understand what's going on as much anymore – and I'm speaking to you as one of them, not as your wife. And I don't just mean the four Supers – I mean people like Jack, Jenny, Oswin, River, Mickey and Rose. They all have a lot of extra knowledge they've attained without you there, learning on their own, after you've gone. They've learnt to fight aliens without you, and some of them – like, you know, Jack and Martha – they won't like you acting all superior to them now. You've got to start treating them as equals, not subordinates."

"…And here I thought you were going to tell me I'm imagining things," he grumbled a little, "But… But…"

"But you're not equals, are you gonna say? Look, I'll use myself as an example if you really want. Sure, once upon a time maybe I couldn't fend for myself, but now I have this nanogene cloud, I can tap into the memories of the Echoes if I try really hard, I'm telekinetic and intangible. I don't really need protecting, or sheltering. But I still love you, and I'm sure that all of them still do, they're just waiting for you to change your opinion of them. Although I really hope they don't love you in the same way I do, because that would be weird… Not that platonic love is any less than romantic. I'm not gonna divorce you and leave anytime soon just because I can walk through walls and heal major trauma. And treating them as equals isn't going to hurt anybody. Martha can shoot fireballs, you really think she needs protecting? She doesn't, trust me, but she's not going to disown you. Same goes for the rest of them."

"…You… Why do you make sense?"

"I'm actually quite good with people, you should talk to me more often. Maybe if you listened to my lips instead of just trying to kiss them, you'd know that," she joked, and then she glanced at one of the letters in her hand, "Bloody hell, this guy got a birthday card yesterday from the Queen!"

"The Queen sends out birthday cards!?"

"If you hit 100 she does," Clara told him, "Old Richard Richardson is 100. If he's still alive, that is. I really hope so. He looked good for 100, didn't he?"

"That probably wasn't him, Clara," Eleven told her, "It will have been the entity copying him."

"Wait, if the entity – I don't know – absorbs the people or whatever, and then tries to sell the house to someone new, surely that means it's being _off_ensive and not _de_fensive, right? Like, we can't say it's being attacked? It clearly needs these people for something?" she said. And then somebody knocked on the door behind Eleven, and they looked at each other, silencing.

"_Clara Oswald_!?" somebody yelled. A voice she'd never heard before.

"_Who is it?_" Eleven mouthed. She shrugged, she had no clue. Neither of them spoke, and they both ducked away into the baking hot living room when she saw two fingers push the letterbox open so that whoever it was (definitely someone male) could shout better.

"CLARA OSWALD!?" Clara flinched at how loud it was, "We know you're in there! We have people watching the front and back!" _What on Earth_!? Who were these people!? Why were they looking for _her_ and not the Doctor!? Everyone was always looking for the Doctor, but they hadn't even mentioned him, "We're the Paranoia Agency. Would you prefer it if we called you Lara? Or Cara? Or Clarissa? Clarice?" Echo names. "We have reason to believe you are the victim of a government cloning experiment, and you have no idea!"

"Wow, these guys are subtle," Clara muttered. Out of nowhere, they'd been side-tracked.


	112. Age Of Paranoia

_Clara_

_Age Of Paranoia_

She had never heard of any 'Paranoia Agency', but they couldn't be ignored, whoever they were. Some group of miscreants had been putting together the clues of the Echoes, which was bound to happen eventually, and she had such strong maternal feelings for them (even the ones she didn't like), she felt it was her responsibility to make sure they were safe from these people. So, suddenly, their priorities were switched around, and she opened the door to some bloke with a weird getup, a type of uniform, she supposed, though it looked like it was just scavenged grey clothes with a logo, _PA_, emblazoned on it in white. Some people were gathered behind him in a cluster, and cars were behind them, grey and silver cars. They really liked grey, clearly.

"Hello?" Clara asked him, Eleven being a concerned observer at her shoulder. Perhaps he was putting the idea of respecting his fellow crewmates as equals into practice already.

"Clara Oswald?" asked the leader-man.

"Yep, that's me?" she said, deciding the playing dumb was, by far, the best option. Hopefully none of these random people had seen her walk through the wall of the house and unlock it from the inside. "I'm sorry, did you say clones? Who are you?"

"Liam Kent," he said, "The leader of the Paranoia Agency. We are a group of underground activists, dedicated to protecting the people of Britain from the government." Did the people of Britain really _need_ protecting from the government? What were the government doing? They couldn't be a particularly big or formidable agency, though, if the leader was telling them his full name and coming out with the rest of his fleet, and they didn't have proper uniforms.

"Protecting? Protecting why?"

"Miss Oswald, you'd better come with us. Just you, not your…" Liam Kent glanced at Eleven, watching him coldly as Liam questioned his wife.

"Husband," supplied Clara, "It's Mrs Oswald. This is my husband… Theodore." Again, she used the fake-name for him.

"Husband?" asked Liam, "We don't have any record of you having a husband on file. No documentation, no marriage license." Okay, so they were stalking her, and she stared at them in a way she hoped would get through to them that it didn't matter how unorthodox her 'marriage' was, they shouldn't be looking up everything about her. If they knew that about her, who was to say what they knew about the rest of the Echoes from pre-Twenty First Century? "In fact, on Friday, July 5th, 2013, most information to do with you completely stops."

"You're stalking me?" Clara asked, shocked and actually worried, "The lot of you? Following me around!?"

"We believe you to be in danger," said Liam calmly, trying to get the high-ground because he genuinely thought he was on some daring rescue, "Your name comes up needing the highest level of clearance in UNIT, we're worried for your safety, we believe you to be intrinsically linked to a series of identicals existing in the present."

"Oh yeah?" Clara asked, "Well can you blame them? I'm too pretty not to clone." Eleven laughed behind her, and she thought her sister would be proud if she was there.

"You need to come with us, we need to run a biopsy and compare the results with that of one of the other doppelgangers," Liam Kent said. _Other_ doppelgangers? Meaning, they had one of her Echoes, whoever they were? This was just overcomplicating things, but she couldn't do anything without having some idea of what was going on.

"Other?"

"We have another clone in custody."

"Custody?"

"Safe holding." Living conditions better not be awful, she thought. Though if it turned out to be Clarice Smith, she didn't think she'd mind too much. Then again, who was to say it was one of the ones she'd met already? "We were alerted because we've been monitoring your bank account, and a large sum of money was deposited last week, and your card was used in this area. We managed to trace the car and find you, and now we can protect you."

"You've been _monitoring my bank account_?" she asked incredulously. So they thought Adam's fifty-grand was some sort of hush-money from the government to keep her quiet about a fictitious cloning conspiracy.

"For your own protection." She didn't think she was left with any choice but to go with them, and ten minutes later they were being driven somewhere in Adam Mitchell's own Hummer, the Doctor thoroughly irritated that their vehicle had been commandeered by a member of some unknown vigilante group. It had taken quite a lot of arguing from him so that they would actually bring him with them, because Clara refused to go otherwise. But apparently, they valued Clara a considerable amount, and they allowed him to tag along, oh-so-graciously. In silence.

It wasn't some fancy, underground nest they were taken to, to Clara's great surprise, but rather, they ended up at a big old mansion with the windows all boarded up. Since they were clearly no faction involved with the government or military funding, she supposed they had some rich backer keeping them running. But they couldn't be _too_ rich, none of their stuff was good enough for that. Clara was coming with them out of courtesy more than anything else, though they didn't know that.

"Well, this is different," Clara said to Eleven, who was leaning forwards to peer around the seat to get a look at their destination.

"This is headquarters," the bloke in the driver's seat told them. Adam wasn't going to be happy about his car being stolen like this. The 'Paranoia Agency' better not try to keep the fancy Hummer, Clara thought. She didn't want to have to go through the trouble of getting it back, though, she supposed, he could always buy another one.

The Hummer was parked up, and when it was empty she locked the doors telekinetically, in a way making it so that only telekinesis could open them gain, to keep thieving activists at bay. They were escorted by two women with low-quality handguns (where were they getting illegal firearms from?) with Liam Kent in the lead, the mansion full of wires running along the ground by the skirting boards and big lamps to light the way, since all the windows were boarded up. The doors all had big padlocks on them, too, like they couldn't afford a proper security system so they just relied on cheap guns and bolt-locks. It would be a very nice house, she thought, not dissimilar to Caliburn House, without all the crap in it.

"She's just through here," Liam Kent told them, and the Doctor was looking less and less happy as this went on. Clara presumed he meant the Echo, and she was just waiting for an opportunity to make a call to her sister, who she was sure would be able to do something, along with her hacker-boyfriend.

Sure enough, the Echo was, and the Echo was being kept in a cell, and made a shocked start when Clara came in.

"Oh god, oh god… You're telling the _truth_!" she exclaimed, whoever she was. Clara couldn't tell just by looking at her, her immediate reaction when she saw a clone of herself being that it was Oswin. Though it couldn't possibly be Oswin – this Echo had two legs, for a start. And she was sure Oswin would have mentioned if she'd been kidnapped and had a biopsy carried out on her.

"Oh my stars," Clara breathed, half-jogging over to the big, glass cell the Echo was trapped in, the top of it cut off, but much too high for her to reach and climb out. There was only just room in it to sit on the floor, "You can't keep her like this, what's wrong with you!? She's a human being!" Clara said angrily, touching her hand to the glass. When she shouted at Kent, the Echo touched the glass on the other side, though Clara wasn't paying much attention.

"She doesn't know what she is," Kent said, "And we have another one for you, if you don't cooperate."

"If I don't 'cooperate'? You're not gonna do anything to me," Clara said, and then she turned to the Echo, "I'm gonna get you out of here, I promise. What's your name?"

"Cara," the Echo answered.

"…Cara… Have you ever been to Death Valley, California?" Clara asked her.

"H-how did you know that? Who are you? Someone tell me what the hell is going on!" Cara protested. But now Clara knew who she was.

"I will, I'm Clara," she introduced herself, but she realised that by trying to converse like this with the Echo, she was giving herself away. Kent would figure out that she knew what was going on, "Now, what's this about clones?" Kent walked away and switched on a triple-monitored computer sitting in a corner of a dark, stifling hot room with just one measly fan sat in the corner to keep them cool. And it was doing nothing on that muggy, July afternoon.

She was presented with photo evidence then of at least a dozen individual Echoes, and was told by Kent that they knew of at least fifty more from the last few centuries, all the while playing shocked and confused, while Eleven observed to see what she would do. She had to say, she much more enjoyed Echo-business when she had her sister with her, rather than him, but at least it raised less questions with just the one of her. Well, sort of.

"Because of the sensitivity of the UNIT files we couldn't access, we believe you to be the Original." True enough, she thought. But she couldn't have anyone having this information – so what was she going to do?


	113. Extraordinary Girl

**AN: Perhaps this chapter is a step too far, but perhaps I don't care...**

_Oswin_

_Extraordinary Girl_

"Are you sure there's nothing I can do to help?" Adam Mitchell asked pathetically from his little corner of the room, where he was sat at one of the side-tables running around the edges of the laboratory on a laptop, and she was messing about on the large island-table in the middle of the floor with some electronics. She lifted her eyes to look at him.

"You're helping plenty by sitting there being cute," she told him offhandedly, busy with a circuit board of K-9's.

"Well you're in a good mood today, aren't you?" he said.

"Isn't there a rule against Public Displays of Affection on the TARDIS?" Luke piped up. What Luke was doing was trying to synchronise the old, Qetesh handset of Mr White with Helix's mainframe, which was well on its way to being fully implemented (she'd noticed a big, blank panel by the door into Nerve Centre when they'd first arrived, which she now realised was the TARDIS actually offering a way for the new AI to aid the day-to-day needs of the crew). Along with that, Luke was also trying to ignore Adam and Oswin whenever they spoke to each other. _Just because he doesn't like Adam_, Oswin thought grumpily, _He likes me plenty. _But then, Oswin thought everybody liked her.

"You can be cute, too," she said to Luke.

"And now you've ruined it," Adam sighed, going back to staring at his computer screen.

"I'm gay."

"Well so am I," Oswin said, "And not everyone gets complimented by the smartest girl in the universe, you know."

"They do if they've met you," Adam quipped, and she shot him a look.

"_What _is that supposed to mean?"

"That you're a slag."

"Insulting your girlfriend isn't a good way to keep her as your girlfriend, Mitchell," Oswin snapped, "Also, don't slut shame me! Just because I'm _nice_. You're just jealous."

"Jealous of what?" Adam asked.

"Because you're not the only man in my life."

"...Luke isn't a 'man in your life'."

"Alright, you're not the only man in my _after_life," she said with a shrug, and he stared at her and shook his head, mumbling that that wasn't what he'd meant.

"Are you two fighting?" Luke asked uneasily, wondering if he'd started an argument. He might dislike Adam, but he still wouldn't want to be the cause of the end of his relationship.

"No, we're always like this," Oswin said, "We've never actually had a fight. Though I really don't appreciate being called a slag, you know. Maybe I wouldn't mind if it was anyone _except _my boyfriend calling me it."

"I love it when you call me your boyfriend," he said.

"And I love it when you _don't _call me a slag."

"I'm sorry."

"You'll be sorry tonight, when I hack your _World of Warcraft_ account again," she said.

"You have _World of Warcraft_?" Luke asked incredulously, and Adam stuttered his words for a few moments, and then shut up, because he had no way to defend himself.

"Babe, you should probably do something so that you _don't _fit in with the stereotypical lonely-nerd-who-wanks-too-much image," she said.

"Oh _I'm _the lonely nerd who wanks too much? Me? Not you? Remember, Oswin, we _have _talked about your year of isolation on the Dalek Asylum," he said, and she scowled.

"What else was I supposed to do?" she questioned him with her arms crossed.

"Can I just say I don't really want to hear this conversation?" Luke requested.

"Yes. Shame on you, Mitchell, bringing up masturbation. Have you no standards?" she scoffed.

"_You _brought it up! Not me!"

"That's right, keep defending yourself... Scum," she said, going back to her circuit board and the dangerously hot soldering iron she was using to fix some of the broken connections of K-9, mainly those to do with spatial navigation. He also still needed wheel replacements.

"I'm gonna go make some tea," Luke declared, "Do you two want any?" The both of them answered in the affirmative.

"Milk and two sugars," said Oswin, and Luke looked to Adam (wasn't it funny how in the weird culture of the Twenty-First Century, no matter how much you hated someone, you still offered to make them tea?).

"Same as her," Adam said. Oswin didn't really know why she was specifying anyway, since she still couldn't taste. She'd nearly cracked it, just a few more invasive tests on Clara's brainwaves and she'd be sorted.

"Oh, if you happen to see the Tenth Doctor out there, tell him to come here. I want to speak to him," Oswin said.

"Okay," Luke called back as he left, vanishing.

"Is there really nothing I can do?" Adam asked again.

"You can't help me because I can't explain what I'm doing, the same way I can never manage to explain the shorthand I write all my blueprints in, you know? By all means, do something on your own, but right now the only other thing I have to be doing that isn't personal is using the technology of the Stomb to make some stun guns, since everybody keeps complaining about weapons," Oswin said.

"_Stomb_?"

"The static bomb. You know, that thing over there you lot thought was a paperweight that's actually a highly unstable bomb? That?" Oswin said, "You're not touching that because it could well explode and kill us all. Well, _you _all. I'd actually be fine," she said.

"You don't trust me enough not to make some dumb mistake with that bomb?" he asked, sounding genuinely hurt.

"It's not a matter of trust, I don't want you going near bombs, no matter how clever you are. Don't you know I lost my leg because I got cocky about IEDs and made a 'dumb mistake'? It was no-one's fault but mine," she told him bitterly, "So don't be a baby just because I'm not gonna let you play with high explosives." He then said nothing, just slouched around for a few moments until he'd annoyed her too much with his boredom. "Mitchell, if you really want something to do, go try and catalogue all that scavenged junk over there." She nodded to the corner of the room, where there was a mountain of technological whatsits. Whenever anyone had found anything, they'd dumped it in the corner of her lab, presumably waiting for her to get around to telling them what it was. They could at least have asked.

"All I used to do when I worked for Van Statten was catalogue alien rubbish," he muttered.

"Well then you must be really good at it. You're the one who decided to stay here with me all day."

"Only because you wouldn't come out house shopping with me."

"I have things to be doing. This ship apparently goes to hell when I'm not here to sort through the refuse of the stuff they bring back, since the Doctors are all 'too busy'..."

Her phone rang, next to Adam, where she'd left it.

"Your phone's ringing," he said, "It's... Who the hell is _Queen Anal_?"

"Oh, that's just Clara," Oswin said, switching off the soldering iron and going to get her phone off of him, where he stared at her like she was insane (not that she bothered to defend Clara's name in her phone or anything), "Hey, honey, how's your sex holiday going? Remembering to use plenty of lube, I hope? You don't want diarrhoea again."

"_Oh my GOD! That's literally the most DISGUSTING thing you've EVER said to me!_" Clara exclaimed from the other end of the phone, as Adam made an explosive noise halfway between a laugh and a retch of disgust, and it just happened Luke chose that moment to return and hear that little gem come forth from Oswin's brain.

"You know what's disgusting? The mess _you _made in the toilet last week. Like a bomb in a chocolate factory," Oswin said, and then both Luke and Adam couldn't decide whether to laugh or tell her off.

"_That is GROSS and NOT even true! That NEVER happened! I'm actually going to be SICK!_" Clara was part-shouting and part-whimpering, almost, at this conversation. The best part was it really was all lies.

"Well don't make a mess from _both _ends, Clars," Oswin said.

"_You are genuinely the most repugnant human being I have ever met!_"

"We're the same person."

"_At this moment we are NOT and NEVER WILL BE the same person, Oswin DIANE ROSALIND Oswald,_" Clara said furiously, "_I hope your boyfriend has a pair of clean underpants ready, because I'm not sure what exactly might happen when you mix telekinesis and bowels._"

"Do not try to make my boyfriend shit himself, Clara, this is nothing to do with him. I'm sure he's going to shout at me for this when I hang up on you," Oswin said, ignoring Adam's sudden protests at this mention of him, "Anyway, what do you want?"

"_Right now I want you to punch yourself in the face. And by that I mean I want to punch you in the face. An IQ of over 300 and this is what you use it for? Anal jokes? You're filthy_," Clara said.

"YOU'RE the one who's filthy, after your 'accident' the other day. It's the spoon I feel sorry for - I mean, do you even know how to carry out an enema properly?" she questioned.

"_That's not true. Just... Just shut up, and listen to me, okay? I'm wasting precious time here,_" she said, and Oswin frowned, leaning on the table on her elbow, taking her tea from Luke.

"Where's 'here'?"

"_I'm in a bathroom._"

"So DO you have diarrhoea again!?"

"_NO, SHUT UP! And I never had it in the first place! Just listen, for Christ's sake!_" Clara demanded, and Oswin finally sighed.

"Fine, what do you want?"

"_Finally! Okay, I need your help, and this is actually important because if you don't help now you're at risk. Basically..._" Clara then went on to tell her one of the weirdest stories, beginning with her and her husband sneaking around and old man's house reading letters from Queen Elizabeth II, or something, and then getting kidnapped by a 'Paranoia Agency' who had huge amounts of intel on all of the Clechoes, including one of them in captivity, and taps on Clara's bank account.

"Paranoia Agency?" Oswin asked, "I've never heard of them. Have either of you?" she asked Luke and Adam, who were listening now that Oswin had put her sister on speaker phone. They both answered in the negative.

"I'll find them," Adam said, finally finding something useful to do, it seemed. Oswin went to look over his shoulder as she listened to Clara talk, taking her off speaker.

"_So now I'm hiding in this bathroom, and I've no idea what the Doctor's doing_," Clara said, "_But I really need to get this sorted out so that we can go deal with this ghost business, I think we're getting close to figuring out what's going on._"

"That's nice, Clars, just hang on a moment," she said, turning to Luke and moving the phone away from her mouth, holding it by her shoulder, "Did you find the Tenth Doctor?"

"Yep," said Luke.

"...Did you tell him to come here?"

"Uh-huh."

"...And..?"

"He ran off back to the bedrooms."

"That little... Did you hear that, Clars?" she put the phone back to her ear, "Ten's hiding from me. How pathetic."

"_Because he knows you're gonna shout at him for getting off with Rose in your lab and now moving into your bedroom. Theodore's told me all about this, don't you worry_," Clara told her.

"Thank God for Theodore," Oswin muttered, barely listening to Clara, instead reading over Adam's shoulder as he found the website for this Agency of Paranoia, or whatever. _Paranoid_ Agency would be a more fitting name, she thought, since 'paranoid' was most definitely what they were, "Ugh, this lot are like the Cluster Spores of the Twenty-First Century. What is it with activist organisations being obsessed with me?"

"_It's ME they're obsessed with, they don't have a clue who you are, you're not gonna be born for another three-thousand years, Os_," Clara said.

"Yeah, yeah..."

"They know everything about you," Adam said to Clara, who couldn't hear him too well, "Put her back on speaker." Oswin did. "I said, they know _everything _about you."

"_Well, delete it. I should go, I've been in here for way too long. Just sort this out, Os, okay? I trust you_," said Clara.

"I can't think why, you're awful to her," Luke commented just as Oswin had hung up.

"I'm not awful to her! I'm a great sister," said Oswin, and Adam snorted, "Shut up, Mitchell, or I won't stop her from soiling your pants when she gets back. Not like it affects me, _I _don't have a sense of smell."

"Can we stop with the shit-jokes now? Please?" Adam requested.

"The only shit joke in here is your attitude."

"Thanks."

"And your face."

"I love you, too."

"PDA," Luke complained from behind them.


	114. Master Delete

_Clara_

_Master Delete_

She slid out of the bathroom she'd been hiding in for the best part of fifteen minutes, spooling off some lie to the judgmental, male guard standing waiting for her outside about tricky tampon applicators, or something, and then he didn't ask any questions. _Girl problems_, the female code-words for "_you don't want to know_." Although, when the real truth was she'd just been the butt (ha) of a dozen rear-related jokes courtesy of her identical twin sister, she wasn't sure he wasn't to know about that, either.

Returning to the room where Cara the Echo was being held hostage in a novelty glass-cylinder straight out of a museum exhibit, she immediately surveyed the scene to see if the Doctor had managed to punch out Liam Kent yet, or if he'd restrained himself until she'd returned. She couldn't tell if she was disappointed or not when the latter turned out to be true, but in her heart she knew it was for the best if he generally didn't get into fights – especially when she wasn't sure he'd even win. Besides, Kent had a battered 9mm holstered in his belt and on-show now he'd flung his jacket over the back of the chair in front of the computer desk, and along with that there was a hunting rifle mounted above an empty fireplace on the back wall. He'd had a hood up before, black paint around his eyes to make him look threatening making him look more like a raccoon or a badger, especially when coupled with the grey. His only distinguishing feature from a protected woodland creature was the mess of dirty-blond hair on top of his head, shiny with gel and curled to give him that 'I woke up like this' look, though he'd not really achieved it. He had his feet kicked up on the desk, his casualness about armed kidnapping and stalking irritating her as she glared at the mud-stained shit-stained black-grey soles of cheap boots. He reminded her of one of her ex-boyfriends. More than one, really, a scrapbook of a couple – just her luck her 'type' was cocky, arrogant idiots.

When she thought this, she flicked her wrist and sent the chair he was leaning back in, balancing precariously on two legs, onto the floor. She couldn't help but smile when he made a muffled sound like a dog whimpering, and flashed that malicious look towards her husband standing by the Echo-tank so he understood what she'd done. Harmlessly humiliated their kidnapper.

"Bloody broken chair…" Liam grumbled, getting to his feet and kicking one of the partially-snapped legs so hard the wood splintered and broke off. "Are you back from your toilet trip, then?"

"No, I'm still there," Clara said dryly. There was a guard outside, but it was just the four of them in the room. She, Eleven, Cara and Kent, "Could you just show me exactly what you have on me, again?" she pleaded with Kent, all while telekinetically jamming the barrel of the gun around his waist and twisting the lock on the door shut to keep the men with guns out. When he looked away, she beckoned with her head for the Doctor to come over, the Doctor who was unaware of what she'd just been saying to Oswin, what briefing she'd just given her sister and her boyfriend while standing on a toilet lid to peer over the stalls and make sure the room stayed empty.

"It's all for your own safety," he said.

"Oh, I know. I think I have a right to know what's being done for my safety," she said casually with a shrug and a smile, lying coming to her with more ease than it should. She and the Doctor, silent and watchful, crowded around the back of Kent as he leant down, now chair-less, to tap away at his little 'classified' website and show Clara a detailed copy of her bank statement from that month, which consisted of nothing at all until a fifty-thousand pound deposit a week ago from a certain A. Mitchell.

And it was then that a smile spread across her face, a smile which Kent did not see, as the little black pixels making up her name, her pin number, her card number, her withdrawals – all of them started to vanish. From the bottom-up, oldest to newest purchases, they were erased and replaced with the colour-stained white pixels of a blank, fresh bank statement. Kent cursed, tapped frantically, as her name and date of birth and mother's maiden name and the name of her favourite childhood pet all deleted themselves at his fingertips, most notably the enormous deposit from Adam. When that was gone, Liam went to scan the rest of the databases, zooming out to see individual files with the names of over forty individual Echoes, almost all with the surname _Oswald_, all of them being systematically and remotely deleted from harm's way. Elsewhere, Adam Mitchell was carefully scanning through everything, looking for trigger-words and extra-terrestrial mentions and incriminating photographs and personal details that this Paranoia Agency were not supposed to have.

"Oh my god, what's happening!?" Clara exclaimed, playing along with shock, "Is it – is it the government!?" Liam swore then, but didn't answer.

"What is it!?" Cara called, watching the commotion as Liam Kent kicked the busted chair on the old, dirty carpet away from him and into the wall, but nobody answered her.

Over Kent's back Eleven tapped her on the shoulder, and mouthed something along the lines of, "_What next!?_" and she shrugged. And then she mimed hitting Kent over the head, just to see if the Doctor approved of her brutality. When he shook his head vigorously, she rolled her eyes, and resolved to try out a new trick of telekinesis, and held her hand above Kent's head. For a second, she had her palm open and her fingers splayed out in the air, and then she clenched her fist and like he dropped to the floor in a muffled heap.

"What did you do!?" the Doctor hissed, swooping down overdramatically to check the pulse of Kent's neck.

"I knocked him out," she answered, "Cut off blood-flow to his brain for a split-second. He's fine. Never done that before though, I have no clue how long he'll be out for." She glanced at the screen and saw everything was still nicely deleting itself.

"That's dangerous!" Eleven exclaimed.

"I'll be plenty dangerous if people threaten my Echoes," she said very quietly, so that eavesdropping, confused Cara across the room in her oversized test-tube couldn't hear, "They're important to me. I made them myself, don't you know?" she joked, "I threw a crowbar through the neck of someone who tried to hurt Oswin before. Twice. Once was a zombie, though…" she said, only acutely aware of how this statement of hers was worrying Eleven, "It's, you know. A maternal thing," she added awkwardly. And then she left him standing by the rapidly-emptying computer and the raggedly breathing Liam Kent to go figure out how to help Cara.

"What's going on? He said clones – you're a clone? _I'm_ a clone?" Cara asked frantically.

"How did they get you in this tube?" Clara asked, not answering her questions. Whatever she said, she was going to make sure the Doctor wiped the girl's memory as soon as they'd gotten her back home. _She_ was the only one who could make decisions on behalf of her Echoes for their own safety, not any weirdo vigilantes who still had week-old dog muck on their shoes.

"I woke up inside it. Please, who are you? What did you do to that man?" Cara pleaded. This one wasn't as fiery as some of the others. If it was her trapped, she'd be yelling. If it was the Victorian trapped, she'd be trying to seduce someone into letting her out. If it was Oswin, she'd be trying to irritate them into throwing her out. If it was Eyeball, she'd smash through the plastic tube and threaten to cut anyone who came near her with a shard of it.

"Sweetheart, isn't it funny how my DNA holds the answer to the nature-nurture debate?" she called to Eleven, "Study me for long enough and you'll get all sorts of solutions, really."

"Let me know when you want to offer yourself up as a lab-rat," he muttered grimly, "Now free this poor girl."

"Okay," she turned to Cara, "Take a deep breath, and if you promise not to be too freaked out while we break out of this place, I'll tell you everything when you're back home again. I'm your guardian angel, alright?" Cara nodded, and then Clara stuck her hand straight through the plastic, splitting it in subatomic ripples like reaching through a waterfall, and wrenched Cara straight out of it before she had a chance to faint. Not that she did, the conspiracy-nut Clara knew she was, "On your trip to California," she began, "Did you and your friends happen to solve the mystery of the Chupacabra, by any chance?" And Cara's eyes rolled back into her head.

"I hope you have some sort of plan," Eleven said, going to pick up his new sister-in-law's feet as Clara pulled her up by the armpits.

"Sure," she said, "We're going to go through that wall, and sneak around the side of the building, and I'll get the Hummer back, and we'll drive away after I text Adam Mitchell and ask him to find out where she lives."

"Adam's involved?" Eleven grunted, carrying half the weight of the small girl towards the back wall that lead out onto the green fields behind the estate, "So that's who was deleting everything?"

"Yeah, I called Oswin from the toilets," she said, "If you keep hold of her, I can phase the three of us through the wall. I think it's a jump down though. Make sure not to let go, or you might lose a leg. Hopefully I won't haemorrhage again…" Eleven made another dissatisfied sound at that, "He's deleted everything here and saved it somewhere else. I might make a list of all of them. It'd be useful, I'm sure."

"Oh, isn't he good, that brother-in-law of ours?" Eleven joked, the two of them and their ward now right by the wall and the windows, somebody just now radioing into the room. When no-one responded, they'd try and open the telekinetically-sealed door until they gave up and rushed it, finding everyone and everything mysteriously gone, save Liam Kent's perplexed body.

"Yep. So, what shall we say? On 'geronimo'?" she asked him.

"Every day I somehow manage to fall more in love with you. Of course on 'geronimo'." Thank god Cara wasn't awake to witness them flirting at a time when flirting should probably take third priority over _escaping_ and _staying alive_.

"Geronimo!"


	115. With Great Power

**AN: This Paranoia Agency are probably gonna recur, by the way, the way the Cluster Spores do, I just took this as an opportunity to introduce them.**

_Clara_

_With Great Power_

Cara wasn't from far away - in spite of her inherited accent, she really was just from the centre of Nottingham. Clara was waiting in the car aftee their not-so-daring escape involving her managing to cut the fuel lines and telekinetically empty the petrol tanks of all the cars waiting outside, while jamming the guns. They'd walked out and no-one had been able to stop them, and in a couple of hours they'd be long gone away from the Agency and all traces of Echoes would be gone from their records as Adam Mitchell did his remote clean-up job of the internet, which was apparently (now that they were looking) riddled with clone-conspiraces about a series of utterly identical, 5'2" girls with brown hair and brown eyes littered across the planet and the history books. And now Adam had been tasked with making sure all this stayed covered up and hidden, Clara saying: _Since I'm allowing you to date one of my Echoes, the least you can do is keep them safe_. Thank god she'd texted that, rather than say it within earshot of her sister, who never took too kindly to being lumped with the rest, or to the implication that Clara had some sort of sovereignty over her.

But right then, Eleven was trying to casually deliver a confused girl back to her flat without it looking like there was something untoward going on, possibly involving rohypnol, and she was staying out of sight lest somebody else notice the 'identical twins'. It seemed that when the Doctor returned fifteen minutes later without being chased or arrested, he'd succeeded, Cara now lying in her bed with a big spell of amnesia, a fake e-mail saying she'd won a holiday to the Canaries waiting in her inbox, paid for and orchestrated by Adam Mitchell. This two-week break would keep her safe from any immediate retaliation of the Paranoia Agency, while also allowing the psychically-implanted idea that she should definitely move somewhere far away, preferably some remote Scottish village where there were no Echoes lurking. Thank god for the Doctor and his ability to brainwash, but all of it was for her own protection, and now _they _were the ones keeping tabs on her, keeping her bank account and credit card so encrypted no-one with a sub-200 IQ could ever hope of hacking in (and if a computer tried, Helix was apparently now in place to stop it).

"What a weird detour," Clara said as they drove away, knowing that, for the last quarter of an hour, the security cameras in the building had cut out, as had the street cams, leaving them electronically invisible, as long as they escaped quickly, "Though it's lucky, really, isn't it? Imagine how much danger the Echoes would be in if we hadn't found this Paranoia Agency." He wasn't saying a lot, just watching her with a look she couldn't place. "...What?"

"You think yourself responsible for them all, don't you?" he asked, and she still couldn't for the life of her deduce his expression, though she was trying to pay more attention to the road than the Doctor.

"I _am _responsible for them all," Clara said, "I'm the one who created them, and if they're getting targetted by people like that, then it's _my _job to keep them safe, and that's what I'll do. I need some kind of purpose in my immortality, Doctor, and if taking care of a bunch of duplicates of myself is that purpose, then so be it. I can't leave them in danger."

"You're right, you are very maternal about them, aren't you?" he asked.

"They're like my daughters. Well, not all of them, there's at least one boy, but my point still stands. It's some weird, unprecidented form of motherhood, and I'm not gonna let them down just because they don't know me, or who they are. And anyway, I could be saying that you have just as much responsibility for them as I do - just because they're not _your_ doppelgängers, they were still created to save _you _via _your _time stream and _your _life," Clara argued.

"I wasn't challenging you!" he protested, "I'm just... Trying to see you as an equal. You're the one who rescued her and told Adam and I what to do. I was barely involved."

"Well, you're not the only one who has a group of people they feel they have to look out for. Even if some of them can take care of themselves, most of them can't, Oswin included," Clara said, "In fact, she needs more attention than the rest of them, you know what she's like. Permanently ill and bitter. But let's not talk about my Echoes, we still have to sort out the issue of this ghost."

"Ah, yes," he said, "What you said about it attacking, about it luring people in and baiting it - I need the computer." She kept her eyes on the road as he fished about in the footwell for the Toblerone-shaped computer, switching it on so the keyboard projected from the bottom and the screen from the top, twisting a dial on the right-hand side to adjust the positioning of the latter. He didn't say much as he trawled the internet for whatever he was looking for.

"You on a laptop reminds me of our first date," she said, bringing up their conversation from earlier in the day.

"It wasn't... It wasn't _intended_ to be a date," he muttered.

"Um, we shared a milkshake. You don't share a milkshake unless it's a date."

"You share milkshakes with Oswin all the time. And tea, and ice cream," he argued, trying to make the conversation creepy. She grimaced for a moment, and then stopped when she nearly stalled the stupidly large Hummer. Her last car had been tiny, she wasn't used to being behind the wheel of some giant beast of an automobile.

"That's because Oswin and I are genetically identical. And we don't _share_, _she_ steals, and _I_ steal back because whatever it was was mine in the first place, okay? Besides, we never have two straws in one drink. That's Romance 101, and she's not _quite _creepy enough for that," Clara told him, "Weren't you totally in love with me by that point, anyway? Ever since the Victorian sacrificed herself?"

"Can we not talk about how in love with you I hopelessly am while you're driving and I'm trying to solve a mystery?" he requested.

"We're talking about it later, you don't get away that easily. So, why do you think it scares people? Why show someone their worst fears, and _then _kidnap them?"

"Maybe it's sadistic."

"This is like Necropyro all over again. Just wait, you're gonna get attacked by pears as soon as we get back there," Clara said, "Hold on. It might be defensive after all. Maybe it doesn't need to take these people? Maybe they get too close and it doesn't have a choice? Maybe it's trying to scare everybody away, without drawing attention?"

"Continue?"

"Okay, so," Clara said, pulling over onto the side of the road so she could talk properly, keeping the engine running, "Do you remember when you tried to teach me to fly the Snogbox, and that magno-clamp grabbed it? And there was that cliff, and you said it was a snarl? Well, what if this entity doing that is a defense mechanism? Clearly it was trying to scare us away from the attic, so maybe it's up there hiding? Maybe every time anybody went to investigate it had to take them, to keep itself safe?"

"Then why would it sell the house?"

"Assuming that Richard Richardson yesterday was actually the entity, it wasn't very welcoming. Maybe it's been living all peaceful in that house for years with realtors coming to try and sell it? It _is_ a really nice house. So it keeps trying to scare them to get rid of them?"

"An antisocial alien?" he asked her.

"Why not?" she shrugged, "Lights in the sky, maybe it crash landed?" Eleven said nothing, staring at the computer screen, "Sweetheart? ...Doctor, are you even listening to me?"

"I know what it is."


	116. Foo Fighters

**AN: This is the end of the ghost storyline.**

_Clara_

_Foo Fighters_

They talked loudly and with exaggeration and emphasis on certain words when they returned to the house on White Pine Hill, Clara feeling a lot less frightened than she had done that morning, or the previous night, even, when faced with the prospect of returning. But they arrived in the Hummer, and went about packing as casually as possible, knowing they were being listened to and watched all the time.

"You know what I'm really scared of, Chin?" Clara said, this being part of the plan, part of the little script they'd rehearsed, the words they'd practiced. An easy plan, when the Doctor had finally, with help from her, figured out what they were up against, what it wanted. He thought he knew a way to make it talk to them, make it show itself, in whatever form it – the illusionist – chose. "Cake. Once, when I was eleven, a girl threw a cake at my face. From that moment on, most baked goods give me the shivers."

"Well, I can see why," he said, leaning on the side, by the sink, casting suspicious glances around the room for any phantom-cakes that might appear at any given moment, "I've always been scared of magicians. Illusionists, really, the ones who make you _see things_ that _aren't there_, the ones who make people _disappear_ and _reappear_. I was always _scared_ they'd never reappear, mainly." He said some words louder than others, to make sure the entity lurking in the walls was listening, to make sure it would speak.

"Are you scared of shadows?"

"Well, tricky question," he said, "I'm definitely not scared of the Shadow Proclamation, if that's what you're asking?"

"You're _not_ scared of them?"

"No, no. Not with things like Convention 15 in place."

"Why?" she asked, "What does Convention 15 of the Shadow Proclamation say?"

"Oh, well, Clara," he said, looking around the room, "It deals with the cessation of hostile actions to allow parley. You know, it says you have to stop threatening other species so that you can be spoken to and reasoned with in a safe manner. Not frightening at all, really. Time Lords are generally out of their jurisdiction, anyway."

Clara didn't say anything more, but when she looked around to scan the room the same way he'd been doing, she jumped when she saw a figure standing in the doorway which lead off into the hallway. Surprise, surprise, old Richard Richardson and his ridiculous name had reappeared, looking (funnily enough) scared. Scared and suspicious.

"Ah, hello!" Eleven said, coming over to talk to the alien, "Yes, yes, I often do like to work on behalf of the Shadow Proclamation. Useless most of the time, aren't they, those Judoon? Sooner shoot you than speak, and as thinning as vaporisation is, I'm not really looking to lose any weight. But maybe you are, I'm not one to judge." Richard Richardson said nothing, and Clara crossed her arms and went and perched herself on the arms of one of the sofas, watching. "Not speaking? You're a Frir, aren't you? Correct me if I'm wrong?"

"You're right," it said, the Frir. Clara thought 'frir' sounded like a type of tree, but she wasn't going to tell it that.

"Yes, well, my wife thinks you're relatively harmless, apart from scaring people half to death, that is. She thinks the lights in the sky were you crash landing, and scaring people is a defence mechanism to stop them getting too close? Where are you _really_ hiding, hmm? If any of these humans here saw what you really looked like, they'd think you were an oversized, pink gnome. A gremlin, or a goblin, something that goes bump in the night," he said, "And you found a big, empty house, and you've just been trying to get people to leave you alone."

"Am I right?" Clara asked, "Did you crash?"

"No."

The Doctor, who had been pacing around the Frir in the hunchbacked way he often did when he was amused, or deducing something, cut back to be in front of it.

"'No'? _No_? What do you mean, '_no_'?" he questioned, and it met his eyes.

"This is reconnaissance. I was getting your attention, Doctor. Taking humans always draws your interest."

"…This is about me?" Eleven asked, "_Me_? Where are they? Are they hurt?" In the blink of an eye, the Frir in front of him was suddenly on the other side of the room, away from them both, and Clara jumped up from where she'd been sat, the image trying to escape the Doctor's scrutiny.

"They're entirely safe. And now we know your weaknesses." It vanished.

"…Chin, what does it mean..?" Clara asked, but then there was a flash outside in the dwindling light of that evening in mid-July, a flash of pink breaking through the blue sunset and the orange twilight, like a full moon the colour of carnations. They stared out of the window, helpless and confused, losing the upper-hand to the Frir like Liam Kent had lost the upper-hand to them just hours ago. The foo fighter lights swirled, pulsing, and then they were gone, whizzing back towards space like fluorescent shooting stars. Gone.

The house shook, seeming to rumble, uneasy on its foundations.

"That's bad, isn't it?" Clara said.

"This was a trap for me, not for humans," he said, "Trying to lure me out… And it worked, too, thanks to Adam Mitchell… Why would they want to study me!?" he was furiously pacing, as Clara heard noise from above. Footsteps. The Doctor stopped moving.

"…Maybe it's not really gone? If it can make us see things, I mean…" she trailed off, hearing confused voices, and without saying a word to her the Doctor had run off into the hallway towards the stairs, and she went after him as quickly as she could in her sudden, sad mood-swing, caused by them being tricked. Made fools of.

"I knew it was too easy…" she heard him mumble to himself. When they got to the top, Richard Richardson was there, but he was hacking a cough and wheezing, the frail creature he was, and then there was a pudgy fifty-year old woman Clara recognised from Esther's photos as the real Amelia Lennon. Along with that, there were almost two-dozen others, couples and kids, all of them stolen away by the Frir to be live bait for the Doctor. Why did they need to bait him, though?

"What happened? Where have we been?" were the questions a lot of them were asking, and then others were exhibiting fear at still being in that house, and wondering who the strangers about them were, some of them recognising others as the previous owners, though the previous owners claimed to have never met them, or to have never tried selling the house. She and Eleven had a lot of explaining to do, and most of these people were apparently homeless now…

"Sweetheart, I'm going to call the police," she whispered, standing on tiptoes, and holding his arm, "Make sure to get our bags, meet me in the car in five minutes, okay?" she kissed his cheek, and he mumbled something in agreement, anger and guilt shining through his features. Clara sighed, and tiptoed away down the stairs, practically invisible to all the puzzled faces, getting her phone out of her pocket as she went. She had calls to make.

* * *

"So?" Oswin Oswald asked, sitting close next to Clara in the laboratory, Eleven next to Clara but being ignored by Oswin, who had made her sister hot chocolate when she'd returned, but not her brother-in-law. Eleven didn't seem too bothered though. "What happened? What was the ghost?"

It turned out they'd only been gone for a day. The TARDIS was out of sync, according to Oswin. Martha had been getting texts from Adam in the future, she'd said, Clara had called her in the past. To Oswin, that morning they had left the TARDIS, and now they'd come back.

"Clara?"

"Chin, you don't have to stay here," Clara said, turning to her husband rather than her sister, "Go… Do whatever you usually do to take your mind off things."

"You can find out what's up with the TARDIS navigation systems, since it's potluck if she takes you where you want to go right now," Oswin said, "Remember, with the werewolves and Eslilia? Where we arrived way-late? Nobody's gotten around to fixing it yet." Whether he took Oswin's suggestion or not, Clara didn't know, but he sighed, stood up, and left anyway, leaving her free to tell Oswin what had happened without worrying about hurting his pride.

So Clara told her. She recounted the story, the whole story, of what had been happening, just skimming over the bits about the Paranoia Agency her sister already knew about, being sure to include details of the pseudo-Wyatt and her telling Eleven what had happened in the Dream, in _Happy Views Hospital_. It didn't take as long as she thought it might have done, and Oswin was just as confused by the end of it as she was.

"A Frir?" Oswin asked, "Huh. Stalking your husband? That's weird. But I mean, he's the Doctor, he draws loads of attention. The Predator, the Daleks called him, you know. They had all sorts of awful things about him saved on their little hard-drives."

"Thanks, Oswin. You're really helpful, telling me about all the terrible things my husband has done," she said resentfully.

"…Sorry. If you want, there's a party going on in the other room, you can go get blackout drunk if you really like."

"…I'm not quite _that_ upset, Os," Clara said, "Why is there a party?"

"They've grown really attached to Luke, some of them," Oswin shrugged, "And I finally fixed K-9 for him, so he's leaving. Life on the TARDIS probably not quite what he imagined it would be, I suppose. Amy baked a cake. He'll be gone by morning. Unless Jack's made some more of that crap –what does he call it?"

"He calls it Jack Juice," Clara said.

"…That sounds disgusting. Why would you drink that?"

"Oh, I have no clue. I woke up the morning after that and didn't even remember us deciding to have that party, or go to Las Vegas. Or any of the rest of it. And I still don't. I don't really want to," Clara said, "I'm not in the mood to go eat cake at a party, strangely enough."

"I've never liked parties. Although, I did like the party after my mother's third wedding," Oswin said, "It was great, almost every guest came up to me and told me how pretty I was, and how I was prettier than my mother. My mother hated that, I thought it was great. I was fifteen. They also told me how they'd forgotten she even had a daughter, and how they thought I was dead or something."

"So that's why you're so full of yourself," Adam Mitchell, who hadn't really said a lot, commented, listening to every word his girlfriend was saying.

"Yeah, full of myself but never full of you," she retorted, and he made a disgusted face, and Clara shook her head, ashamed of the things Oswin said sometimes.

"Why do you say these things? I swear everything you say is gross."

"_No_, everything I say is clever. _Genius_. Because _I_ am _witty_ and Mitchell's just jealous."

"Go on, then. Say something clever," Clara requested.

"What? I can't just 'say something clever', Clara, I'm not a performing monkey."

"If I told you to flirt with me, you'd do that," Clara pointed out.

"I'd do _anything_ for you, honey."

Clara turned to Adam, still listening in, and said, "See? I think it's a disease or something."

"A sexually transmitted disease," Oswin muttered.

"Be quiet," Clara said to her, "Now, I'm really tired, and completely gross, so I'm gonna go have a shower and try to sleep. Oh, can you programme Helix to make, I don't know, a siren sound if it spots anyone coming into my room at night? By 'anyone', I mean Jack and Jenny. On their underwear raids, hmm? I only have one bra left. It's disgusting."

"Alright, fine, since you're so direly in need of lingerie," Oswin said.

"Not all of my underwear is lingerie. Just… A lot of it. It looks nice, okay!? Don't judge me…" she mumbled defensively, taking her chocolate and leaving the room. Apparently, the picnic-date was off until further notice. She sighed. She'd been looking forward to that, too…


	117. Body Issues

_DAY EIGHTY-SIX_

_Clara_

_Body Issues_

Once, she had woken up on the floor of a random boy's kitchen with her face in a half-eaten plate of eggs, and that was when she'd learnt that egg yolk didn't wash out from hair too well. Once, she had woken up in the bed of a girl with homophobic parents, with somebody's mother screaming Bible verses at her until she climbed out of the bathroom window. Once, she'd woken up fully-clothed with a plate of Jammie Dodgers, one of them bitten, at her bedside and a weirdo outside on a fold-out chair. Once, she'd woken up in a golden, circular bed with a killer hangover and a wedding ring on, and had stepped on that same weirdo's face. Once, she'd woken up with her fingers and toes broken and her face scarred by cigarette burns, new superpowers making her fingertips itch with static. She'd woken up in an alleyway of Victorian London after a bucket of some too-warm liquid had been sloshed over her face; a New York street in the snow of a Twenties' winter; a burnt-out Land Rover in the middle of a desert; running for her life in a zombie-infested multi-storey carpark; a muddy, French field with a burning barn and a crashed fighter jet roasting nearby; an alien spaceship, an escape-pod crashed in a swamp, half-buried in the mud-ditches found at roadsides. Once, she had woken up suspended from a ceiling covered in the sticky, white faecal matter of a giant worm.

Never though, until that morning, had Clara Oswald woken up _not_ Clara Oswald. Never had she woken up a man. But, a lesson she'd learnt long ago; it was difficult to hide a penis.

Her ears full of shrill screams and her mouth full of deep ones that were not her own, it took full minutes of blind panic and utter confusion until Clara Oswald saw… _Clara Oswald_. Because there she was, standing, in men's clothes, a foot in front of her, just as confused. A glint of silver in the ceiling lights and through the chaos she saw a wedding ring on the floor, and frowned, because it was her wedding ring. And this Clara Oswald, this cross-dresser standing in front of her, a whole foot shorter, was not wearing one. Reflexively, she looked at her left hand. Which was not her left hand, it was _his_ left hand, but a left hand she knew, she'd held it so many times, and there was a tiny, silver ring on the ring finger of the left hand, and there was an equally tiny gold ring on the middle finger of her left hand, her mother's wedding ring. And both of those fingers were turning blue, constricted by the jewellery. The rings on her right hand, she didn't sleep in those.

"Oh, shit," she cursed in a voice that was not her own but so familiar to her ears, if altered by the fact it was coming from her own throat now. His throat. It was strange to hear him curse, and he – or, she? – made a pout opposite her. The Doctor, in the body of Clara, and here was Clara, in the body of the Doctor, her two wedding rings sucking the blood out of her fingers. When she tried to pull them off, they wouldn't budge. Shit. "This is bad, this is bad…"

"I'm more worried about the fact I'm a hobbit than your rings!" exclaimed… Him? Her? The Doctor?

"What's even happening?" Clara asked, the real Clara, the brain of Clara in the body of the Doctor. Clara trotted off, towards the bathroom.

"Where are you going!?" the Doctor asked her stolen voice, in her stolen body, sloping along after her with the disproportioned gait of someone used to walking with much longer legs.

"Soap and water," Clara told him, "You think I'm gonna let my fingers fall off? _Your_ fingers? Are they? I don't know… What's going on?"

"I look like you. You look like me," said the Doctor.

"Oh, really? I was wondering why I was suddenly so much more attracted to you," Clara said sarcastically, not abandoning narcissistic humour in her current state, feeling like a giant as she nearly banged her head on the top of the doorframe.

"You don't need to," he told her in her own snarky tone, and if she wasn't so used to hearing Oswin talk to her, she'd be a lot more weirded out by hearing her own voice used back at her, "We've not, you know. Swapped bodies."

"So, what? You're telling me this is because I've slipped behind with my exfoliating, or something?" she snapped, "Maybe I ought to get a haircut, I can see my split ends from here," she nodded at the Doctor, in her body, with her hair hanging over _her_ shoulders – but she really did need a haircut, after three months on the TARDIS.

"No, we haven't swapped, we've changed," the Doctor told her, "You probably still have superpowers, because inside I can feel I still have two hearts."

"I do _not_ want you 'feeling inside' while you look like that, okay? It's one thing while _I'm_ me and _you're _you, but while you're _me_? Don't," she ordered him.

"I wasn't going to! And I could say the same to you and your roaming hands," the Doctor said huffily, crossing his arms and doing a pout that was more exaggerated than her own pout, and looked weird on her face.

"Fine," said Clara, "No touching, okay? Doesn't matter how married we are." Shaking hands would be too strange, so they just settled to nod in agreement to this rule, and then Clara phased _his_ hand and the two rings dropped into the sink basin, and she picked them both back up and left them on the side by the toothpaste. "Maybe somebody's trying to prank us? Remember when they made us forget we were married? And got us drunk, divorced us and planned a whole second wedding?"

"They've left us alone recently, why would they-?" '_WHAT THE HELL CLARA_!?' yelled through her mind, her sister's voice forcing itself into her skull. So early in the morning, with so much trauma already, Oswin's shouting just made her head hurt, and drowned out whatever her husband had been saying. "What? What is it?"

"It's Oswin," she told him. '_IS THIS YOU!? THIS BETTER NOT BE YOU!_' Oswin screamed telepathically. 'Is what!?' Clara thought back, hearing her own voice in her head, thank god. Her brain was still her brain and she was still her, in spite of this… Shapeshifting.

Pounding knocks came on the door, and the Doctor looking like Clara went to answer it, opening it quickly, both of them looking weird in pyjamas that did not fit, too big on one and much too tight on the other. It was Adam. But Adam was angry, Adam didn't have glasses, Adam was glowering, and most importantly, Adam only had one leg. His left leg was gone. And behind him was his girlfriend, who was more confused than rage-filled, wobbly on her fake leg.

"…Um..?" Clara, as Eleven, asked, "Are you two… By any chance..?"

"Shapeshifted?" Eleven, as her, finished the sentence, "You know, body-swapped."

"He turned into me so he lost one leg, and I turned into _him_ but the virus that stops my leg existing is still intact," 'Adam' said, 'Adam' on crutches, 'Adam' with the self-important, broody tone of voice and a fat, black ring on his right hand choking his finger to death, Oswin in boy's clothes behind him, "What the fuck is happening?"

"Language," Eleven chastised, and 'Adam' frowned at him.

"You're the Doctor?" 'Adam' asked, "And _you're_ Clara?" 'he' turned to Eleven.

"Yes," answered Clara, "I take it you're actually my sister?"

"I'm a hologram, I can make whatever clothes appear on me that I like," Oswin, the real Oswin, Oswin in Adam Mitchell's body with that same amputation, said, "Change into clothes that mean I _can't_ see your husband's private parts, okay, honey?"

"…That's a good idea," Clara muttered, shuffling self-consciously, on Eleven's behalf, behind the door. Eleven who was struggling to keep one hand on the waist of his own underpants on Clara's body, because there was no way they were going to stay up on their own.

And that was when there was more shouting, up and down the hallway, nervous people in clothes that didn't fit, all of them sticking out their heads and nothing more and staring at Adam and Oswin, lurking with one pair of legs between them at Eleven and Clara's door in the Bedroom Circle. It had happened to everybody. Everybody was swapped, shifted, with their significant other. Except for one laughing redhead on the door closest to the door to Nerve Centre on the right-hand side.

"Look at you lot!" Donna laughed, thinking this was hilarious. Without Tentoo, and with Luke now vanished back home to Ealing, there were only fifteen of them. Somehow, Donna, the only one without a partner on the ship, was fine. Completely fine.

"Did you do this!?" Oswin demanded in her boyfriend's voice, a voice which Clara had never heard so angry, he usually spoke softly and with a sort of natural background-sadness that made you feel bad for him, even if he was being a twat.

"No," Donna said, "Why would I? _How_ would I?"

Clara stared around at thirteen other faces in the corridor, fifteen total, all of them accounted for, and all of them suffering the wrath of whatever was going on. And then Oswin made a start as though she'd had an idea, running hand through the ghost of long hair she didn't have, getting confused when it didn't get stuck and didn't pull out any knots as it went.

"The SAI! Prank War! Dogs, remember?" Oswin spoke in half-sentences, the same way she always did when she was thinking 'too quickly'.

"The Shape Alteration Inducer?" Eleven, in front of Clara, tiny and clad in baggy nets of fabric, said, "That you two found in a junkyard on Preyonov?"

"Yes. It's that," said Oswin.

"Well where did _you_ put it when you brought it back to the ship?" River, as Nine, crooned nearby. Trying to paint Oswin as the saboteur who'd done this to them all.

"Oh, yeah, because I'd _really _do this to myself, I'd really make it so that I can't walk because _he_ needs my leg to walk. And even if he didn't, it wouldn't fit this body anyway," Oswin said. She might have the means to do something like this, but she didn't have the motive. And Clara knew it wasn't her or Eleven, and doubted it was Adam, and most likely it wasn't even Donna, either. "Maybe you did it? So quick to lay the blame on me, hmm?"

"You're just the most likely candidate, sweetie," River-as-Nine said, talking in a bittersweet tone that sounded horribly mismatched with the gruff accent of her boyfriend, who was standing behind her looking thoroughly emasculated.

"I gave it to the Tenth Doctor to find somewhere safe to put it," Oswin declared, and all eyes turned to Ten. And then when Ten's suspicious gaze turned to Rose, everyone remembered to swap their gaze and stare at _her_. Him. Ten-as-Rose, Rose-as-Ten equally suspicious, tall and dressed in pink, stretched pyjamas next to her.

"It wasn't him," Rose-as-Ten declared, "He didn't leave the room."

"_My_ room," Oswin muttered begrudgingly, since it very much _was_ her room they'd been lurking in. Both of them went a little red, but now was no time for Oswin to be questioning them on their lodgings.

"I'll fix it," Ten, Ten looking like Rose with blonde hair and a heavy London accent, declared, "I will. Me and the other Doctors. I know where it is." Clara then glanced at Eleven, who shrugged.

"I don't mind helping," he told her, then stuck his brunette head and dimpled smile out of the door to say, "I'll help," a little louder, to Ten.

"Might as well," mumbled Nine, looking annoyed at his new head of wild curls.

"Get changed first, then, you all look weird," Oswin, her hologram clothes making her the only one of the lot of them who _didn't_ look particularly weird (River only then thought to change her appearance, clothes that belonged to Nine shimmering into existence on Nine's body with her brain in it, this plagiarism of Oswin's idea not going unnoticed by the genius herself), pointed out. Oswin did not offer her help. Neither did Jack or Jenny, who, out of the lot of them, were the most at-ease with these transformations.

Heads of Doctors vanished back into rooms.

"…What're the rest of us gonna do, then?" Martha-as-Mickey asked, Martha who kept touching the shaved head she wasn't used to having.

"Why don't you all just spend the day masturb-"

"Do not finish that sentence!" Clara shouted over her sister, because who else would say that, except for Oswin? Oswin herself, or, Adam with Oswin's face, was looking horribly ashamed of this vulgarity publicly spewing from _his_ mouth. To him, Clara said, "And now you know how I feel _every single time_ she says something disgusting." Adam said nothing.

"What? Oh, come on, I just said what everyone was thinking."

"We can't go out anywhere," Rory – no, it was Amy, complete with dark blond hair and perpetually perplexed facial expression – said, "Seriously, we can't."

"Just… Just everyone meet in Nerve Centre, in ten minutes, and we'll… Think of something," Rose with Ten's wild, gelled hair said, ducking back into Oswin's room. The silence and retreats followed by this suggestion meant they were all in agreement. In ten minutes, they were going to have to think of something _non_-filthy to occupy themselves with, sat as an awkward, Doctor-less group, in the living room. At least Helix was there now to cook them all breakfast, finally put into use by Oswin last night.

So yes, up until that day, the eighty-sixth day since the Dimension Crash as the counter on Helix's wall panel by the door now declared, which was also supposedly a Sunday, she'd woken up in her fair share of weird places and situations. But never before had she swapped gender in her sleep.


	118. Abductees Anonymous

**AN: Reader discretion is highly advised. This chapter would have an M rating were it stand alone. You have been warned.**

"So… What do we do?" Jenny in the body of her husband with weirdly-assorted clothes and no sense of common decency, asked the room at large, seeing who'd answer her question. There were twelve of them, they were Doctor-free, and they were not divided like they usually would be. Usually, in Nerve Centre, someone would be standing in the kitchen doing this or that, then there'd be little patches of people on the two white, kidney bean-shaped tables and a few on the sofas, but never everybody. Someone would always be in their bedroom, someone would always be in the console room, someone was probably in Oswin's lab. With a dozen time travellers, all uneasy and dysphoric, sitting in a circle on the chairs around the holobox, the room felt too-full, and weird.

Clara was at the edge of one of the sofas, the four, white sofas, Oswin on her left, Adam on Oswin's left. Continuing on that way, on the next sofa sat Jenny, then Jack, then Donna (highly amused). Then Amy, Rory, Mickey, Martha and River, and finally, on Clara's right, was Rose, completing the circle of them. No-one was in a mood for television. Something had to happen.

"You know what we could do?" Jenny suggested when nobody came to answer her question, "I once got stuck on this random planet with a group of strangers, and there were about three days to wait until we were rescued. We told stories."

"Stories?" Oswin asked incredulously, frowning, looking out of place without Adam's glasses on. Adam, next to her, the _real_ Adam, _was_ wearing glasses, and if her sister ever needed to make herself look almost as clever as she was, glasses did the trick. Whatever shapeshifting-mishap has occurred, it didn't fix his colour-blindness.

"I've got loads of stories," Jack said, playing absently with his long, blonde hair, "I could pass hours telling you guys stories, you know."

"I think it's a good idea," Clara shrugged, adding her opinion. Everybody else thought this was a ridiculous idea, apparently.

And then Amy said, "If you think it's such a good idea, why don't you start?"

"Me? But it wasn't my idea!" Clara protested.

"Someone has to start," Martha pointed out, "Why not you? You _are_ an English teacher."

"_She's_ a published writer," Clara pointed her husband's accusing finger at Amy with Rory's face.

"Yeah, but _I_ don't think it's a good idea."

"…You know what? Fine. I'll tell you a story then. But the rest of you have to go along with this. Jenny's right, it's a way to pass the time," Clara said, offering her ultimatum. Everyone then just shrugged and nodded, nobody having a better idea. And if Clara was willing to tell a story, then they could at least listen. "Okay, then. It starts kind of like this, a bunch of people sat around in a circle telling stories…"

* * *

_"Abductees Anonymous", a story by Clara Oswald_

When I was in university, every Wednesday I'd spend in the library doing research, or reading books. It was a quiet space to get away from all the noise back at the halls, and do my work. You know, write my dissertation or read old notes from lectures.

Well, it was late September in my second year when this group of people started to meet, just for somewhere to talk where they could all hear each other and make sure they were hearing correctly. There was a chair circle set up somewhere in the science-fiction section of the library, the bookshelves shoved closer together then they had been the week before. I was there looking for something by H.G. Wells, I think it was _War of the Worlds_ I was skimming over to try and find a specific quote, when heard it, from the group: _Martians_.

I thought I'd heard wrong, being as I was reading a book about Martians. And even if I hadn't, I thought, I'm in the sci-fi section, it's probably just a bunch of weird, fanfiction-types. You know, those sorts of nerds who can't use computers but they know everything about _Star Wars_ (no, not like me, I wasn't one of them). I was there regardless, that Wednesday morning – I loved books too much to leave just because I was accidentally eavesdropping on some geeks. Well, that first week I was eavesdropping. Until I actually listened, getting distracted by some of the longer narrative passages in whatever Bradbury book I was holding. _The Martian Chronicles_, maybe?

But whatever Bradbury had written about was nowhere near as interesting as some of the stuff these boys – they were all boys – were saying to each other. Just ten minutes of playing close attention to them, me now hiding behind a bookshelf trying to peer over the top of some old editions of _Frankenstein_, and I figured what they were talking about: Alien abductions. It was an AA meeting – Abductees Anonymous, meeting there every Wednesday at ten-thirty AM to tell each other about their 'experiences'. And I was there listening, pretending to read _Brave New World_, because I thought it was hilarious.

They all had similar stories, these dorks in taped-round glasses who were nearly in school uniform even though they were all nearly twenty, blazers and ties and pens in their pockets, and they all went into graphic detail, in their 'safe space'. One of them was sure he'd seen some two-foot-tall goblin with eyes the size of bowling balls stuck on top of its head like a bug. He swore he'd seen this critter climb in through his window, then he'd been blinded by a light and remembered a white room and green strobe. He'd woken up, next morning, clothes stripped and stolen away, with a couple of symbols he didn't recognised tattooed on his buttocks. To top it all off, this boy's bedsheets were red, warm and sticky. Ten minutes later, he was on his way to the ER at seven AM with severe rectal bleeding. An anal haemorrhage, he told the group. When I saw him walk in and out of that library every week, he walked with the weirdest sort of limp, and had this little rubber doughnut in his bag he needed to sit on. Blunt-force trauma to the bowels, he said.

This boy, this weedy little nerd with too-thick glasses and an inhaler in his fist, had been anal probed. The stuff of nightmares, the stuff of b-movies, a little alien had captured him out of his bed and branded him with a foreign serial number, as though he was cattle, and rammed something where the sun didn't shine. When he told this story, the first one to talk, that first week, he had an asthma attack and one of his fellow nerds escorted him away, and after that nobody wanted to share much.

When they weren't talking about themselves, they were talking about other people. UFO theories. Roswell in '47, the 'weather balloon' in New Mexico. Washington D.C. in '52, foo fighters in the sky and radar blips, and the Air Force had no real explanation. Then there's the Hills, that one interested them the most. Barney and Betty Hill were driving along in New Hampshire when a flying saucer showed up stalking their car and they were sucked off the planet and probed all night, probed _intimately_. These stories of lights in the sky, of big, flying discs and short men in weird clothes, these stories occupied them day and night, and I was there to listen every week.

'Crazy, isn't it?' someone said to me one day. I was holding a copy of _Nineteen Eighty-Four_ – I was doing a lot about Orwell for my thesis, you see – and I jumped right out of my skin in the middle of some boy called Fred's retelling of how an alien had jumped out of the toilet while he was in the shower over his eyes, while a dozen or so more of the tiny fiends crawled all over him until he was so overpowered he lost consciousness. All of that happening a week last Tuesday, apparently, and since then he'd not been able to take a shit properly. He put that down to a placebo, but the kid with the haemorrhaging in his back passage kept telling Fred he'd been probed, too.

'Huh?' I said. It was a boy speaking to me, average height but relatively cute, and you could tell just by talking to him that he'd never had the problems in his life that these virginal dorks sharing space-stories in the back of a library had. A popular boy in high school who'd gotten grades good enough to go on to do a degree in Sociology. His name was Ezra.

'These stories they tell,' he said to me, leaning with one arm on the bookshelf, accidentally kicking the copy of _Nineteen Eighty-Four_ I'd just dropped with his foot. I bent down to pick it up – it wasn't the library's copy, after all, it was mine, full of my messy, spidery pen-notes I needed. In that second year, that note-filled copy of that book was gold dust to me, regardless of the look I got kneeling down in front of some okay-looking blond boy between two bookshelves from this librarian who walked past.

'I wouldn't know, I wasn't listening, I was reading,' I said, knowing how weird it would seem if I'd been skulking in the library in the middle of the day listening to a boy called Matt talk about how he'd been shaken awake then punched back to sleep by a big, green fist, and had woken up with a stinging sphincter and splinters in his clotted-crap that stank of glue.

'Reading the same page of that for the last half hour while they'd been sat there? I saw you,' Ezra told me, and I was caught out. Caught out by a Sociology student, of all things – everyone knew Sociology wasn't even a proper degree, 'And I saw you doing the same last week, with the same book. You're Clara, right? I asked the librarian.'

'Which librarian?' I asked, not really knowing why, probably just to change the subject away from the fact I'd been stalking boys with debilitating soft tissue damage in and around their anus for the best part of two months, by this point.

'That girl,' he shrugged.

'The cute one?' His head snapped back to look at me then.

'Could be,' he said, eyeing me (basically, there was a really cute librarian who worked there in her free time, she was doing Philosophy, and I'd been flirting with her every chance I got since last March. Although, she hid a lot behind the desk and I'd never outright told her my name, so the fact she'd told Ezra who I was I took as positive signs. Which they were, because I ended up going out with her for a bit that year). It was a good thing if he thought I was a lesbian, though, that way he hopefully wouldn't think I was spying on this nerds because I fancied any of them. Don't you just love a man with a bar code tattooed on his arse and some miscellaneous bruising to go with it? 'You were listening to them, right?'

'…Okay,' I said in a whisper, standing on tiptoes, trying to keep my presence unknown from the boys sat in a circle nearby, the group that seemed to gain one or two new members with a sordid experience of their own every week, 'Maybe I was listening. But I used to come here every week anyway, they just started gathering at the start of the year.'

'Yeah, I know, I was just here to read some…' he glanced at the name on the book I was reading, and I thought, what kind of heathen doesn't know who wrote _Nineteen Eighty-Four_? 'George Orwell, myself. Favourite writer. The librarian told me so anyway, you've been here since last year. Second year, right?'

'Yep,' I muttered, trying to think of a way I could cut around Ezra and get out of the library before I was spotted and I'd never be allowed to return to the sci-fi section of the library again.

'I've heard what they've said, too,' said Ezra, 'I heard one of them talk about how they heard screeching in their ears and the next morning they woke up covered in blood from their ears.'

'…I haven't heard that one,' I told him.

'Seriously? Oh, it was great,' Ezra said.

'But I've…' _I've heard all of them_, I was going to say. Though, I'd been late last week. Maybe Ezra was stalking the Abductees Anonymous, as I called them in my head, as well. Maybe there were more than two of us, any passing person who suddenly found themselves eager to know what had happened when a nine-foot tall, four-armed man with no face had appeared outside of a boy called Edgar's bedroom window, and he'd woken up with all the fingers on his right hand broken.

'You've what?'

'Never mind. I really have to go, though,' I tried to get past him.

'You didn't want to go five minutes ago,' said Ezra, and then when I started to make up some excuse, 'I've got a story like theirs too, you know. I've been getting up the courage to join them.' I didn't for a second believe him, 'Honestly, you won't believe your ears. Just like Daniel over there with the bandages round his head – the one who heard the screeching, you know?' Daniel, if that was his name, hadn't been there last week, but sure enough he had bloody bandages around his head like he'd had some invasive dental operation. And suddenly, I thought Ezra knew a lot more than he was letting on.

'…So?'

'So, Clara, I'll tell you everything if you come and get lunch with me,' Ezra said. And I was too interested to say no right then, plus, I was hungry, and I thought I might make him pay for my food. With just a few minutes left of the meeting that week at the end of October, I was following a boy I'd just met to the nearest McDonalds, trying to ignore the judgemental gaze of the old librarian and the sad, confused gaze of the young, adorable librarian I was trying to get to go out with me, trailing after him with my dystopian sci-fi.

We ended up on the top floor, by the window, and he _did_ pay for my food, I'll give him that, because Ezra had a story to tell. Roughly, while I was picking the batter off of chicken nuggets and dipping the white meat in ketchup (yes, I know it's a weird way to eat nuggets, but it tastes great). Roughly, he told me a few things.

He asked me if I'd ever heard of Mr Hand.

Now, here I have to clarify, this Ezra, I never spoke to him again after today. He wanted an outsider to talk to, and I happened to be the only person not involved that he could, but he was one sick weirdo, that was for sure.

When he said "Mr Hand", I frowned, because yes, I'd heard of Mr Hand. That year I was nineteen going on twenty, it had been four years ago that "Mr Hand" had come to light. Never Google search that, by the way. Ezra said, you know, Kenneth Pinyan. He asked me, you know what zoophilia is? You know about bestiality? I told him, yes. I wasn't an idiot. It was then he told me a fun fact I'll never forget about the size of a horse erection, apparently it can be two feet long. Apparently, Ezra told me with too much enthusiasm as I suddenly wasn't hungry for chicken nuggets anymore, people modelled sex toys off of them. A latex stallion, and you were ready to die the same way Kenneth Pinyan, AKA Mr Hand, did in 2005, with your spine ripped out of your rectum, bleeding profusely from the bottom in A&amp;E where your 'friends' had left you (all after filming this, of course). He told me, one of those horse dildos costs a lot of money. I didn't ask how much, but I put the fry I was eating down.

Ezra changed the subject, told me he'd always been victimised by nerds, out of nowhere. Told me how a boy, a boy called Dexter, a real loner, he said, a nasty Fraper, hacked his emails when he was seventeen and had a jumbo-sized box of horse dildos delivered right to Ezra's house, all because he'd beaten him up the day before. Charged to him, opened by his little sister and his grandmother. Ezra said, he always hated nerds after that, always hated bookworms, people who spent too long staring at screens. I was getting my phone out of my pocket so that I could dial the police or something, the look he got about him when he told me this story. He had some friends who weren't very settled in the head, either, there were five of them.

What they'd been doing was targeting nerds. Targeting these male little weaklings, the _bottom _of the social ladder, to get his revenge on a kid who'd sent horse-shaped 'massagers' to his house three years ago. All of them destined to the same fate as Dexter, Dexter who, to this day, still believed he'd been probed by aliens.

The tattoos, he said, were gibberish. He knew someone with a tattoo gun, it was a finishing touch. All of it was staged, every encounter was different, all of them elaborate and crazy. The worst sort of prank, the sort that left your anal cavity purpled and blue from what had been shoved up there. But it wasn't always the rubber horror, Ezra said. Sometimes it was a broomstick covered in glue, sometimes it was a toothbrush, a bit of railing, all sorts of things – and yeah, I looked as ill as all you lot do now when I heard him say this, but he was a lot more graphic, like in films when a serial killer tells you how he's gonna slowly murder you. Abductees Anonymous hadn't been abducted at all, they'd been terrorised.

I had to wait for him to stop talking to leave, and after that I went to the library on Fridays. Never again on a Wednesday. I never wanted to see any of those poor, suffering nerds again, and I have no idea how many of them Ezra got by the end of it.

I can only hope he got arrested.


	119. State Secrets

**AN: This one is far less screwed up than the last one, and not M rated. You don't need to be like, horribly worried about what's gonna happen. But yes, all twelve of them are going to tell a story, minus the Doctors, because they have plenty of stories on TV.**

"Well, that isn't what I expected…" Rory muttered, when Clara finished her story. By this point, Clara was absently eating an apple, and everyone else was looking ill.

"Is that true?" Donna asked. Clara swallowed her chunk of apple, and nodded.

"Mmmhmm," she said, "One-hundred percent. I wouldn't make up something like that, how gross do you think I am?" Nobody said anything. "I'm just telling you something that happened to me, and now it's someone else's turn."

"Just go around the circle," Martha shrugged, which meant Oswin would be next. Oswin who shook her boy's head quite vigorously at that notion.

"No way," she said, "I have the best story, and it's gonna wait until last, just you lot wait." No-one really wanted to know what this amazing story of Oswin's was, but contrarily, her saying that after the tale her sister had just told was too intriguing to be ignored. But, she was refusing. Somebody else was going to have to go next.

"Can it not just be a story about something we did with the Doctor?" River asked.

"Nobody wants to know what _you've _been doing with the Doctor," Jenny quipped, "That's my father, you know." River scowled, because she obviously hadn't been meaning some repugnant sex-story.

"That's like, the easy way out," Clara said, "If I was gonna do that, I'd've just told you all what we were up to yesterday in that haunted house. No, make it something good we've never heard before." After two months, they had all heard most of the stories of the adventures of their new shipmates, and nobody was interested in a rehash. They wanted something new, and something good.

"I've got one," Rose spoke up, "I'll tell a story. This was while I was working for Torchwood in the alternate universe…"

* * *

_"__State Secrets", a story by Rose Tyler_

Everyone remembers those weird creatures in children's shows. Even if they can't place the name, it's still there, planted in the back of their head, forever. How many of those do you think are original ideas?

Well, once, we met this man called Laurence. Laurence was dead. His head had exploded. He was curled up, on his side, in bed, hands together and covered in dried blood right where his brain had been, like he'd been sleeping. Only now his brain wasn't there, and his skull was stuck into the wallpaper. The police didn't know where to go with it, and it took us a while, but we pieced it together. And when I say "pieced it together", I mean that literally. The first step was to glue his head back together, and find out what blew it up.

There was a small hole at the base of his skull, right where it would have met the spine, all of it charred and smelling like barbecue. You know that smell of spare ribs? It was like that, that's what his bedroom smelt like. Well, ribs and hair, singed like when you use straighteners on wet hair. Along with that there was all this weird goo stuck to the walls in different colours, all bright and fluorescent. He had three daughters, all under seven, so the police just assumed it was a toy. Especially when you thought about the fact old Laurence was a toy maker, and the writer of some children's shows. Just a weird sort of putty, or slime. We thought it was that, too, but we took some scrapings, some samples.

After we glued his head back together and wondered for a while about the distinct lack of brain, and the fact there was no brain on any of the walls (and you'd think there would be, what with his head exploding), either, we got around to piecing it together. Clearly, that explosive hadn't been from Earth. Implanted at the base of the skull? With the brain so surreptitiously removed? Obviously, alien origin. But we didn't know who, or what, or why. It took weeks of investigating, weeks of looking through old logs left behind, old military files we'd hacked into. But this is the story of Laurence, Laurence Taylor, and how he died.

Laurence Taylor, we learnt, loved kids. He'd originally wanted to be a primary school teacher, and he'd gone through a range of jobs through university; clowning, miming, ice-cream van driving, all that, the usual stuff. He wasn't some creep, by the way, not like we originally thought. Nope, Laurence Taylor was good through-and-through. During his first year of teaching, he met his future wife. Within ten years, Laurence had a new job, he had a Mrs Taylor, and he had three little Taylors, his little girls. They were the most spoilt girls I'd ever seen, when we went to investigate his mysterious death, but they definitely loved their father.

By all accounts, this man was great. Wonderful. Everyone had positive things to say about Laurence, so we didn't know why some outer-space assassins had come and stolen his brain and killed him in his sleep, leaving his frozen, rigor-mortis carcass for his daughter to find the next morning when she came to ask him if he was going to make breakfast year. Unless breakfast was spare ribs, he wasn't going to, and she'd called the police with Mrs Taylor out on a training course for the weekend.

Along with kids, he also loved books. Always wanted to be a writer. When his first daughter was a baby, he'd written her a puppet show. Performed all of it himself, the new _Punch &amp; Judy_¸ but with less domestic abuse, I'm told. Somehow, this puppet show lead to him being 'discovered'. His wife thought it was so good, she filmed it and put it on the internet. With the mums and dads of the world passing it around to share it, someone found it. Some network guru, some rich, sleek TV guy in a suit with too much cologne.

He said to Laurence, it was his job to find new shows. New ideas. He told Laurence he had the makings of a great television writer, but not on the screen, always behind it. Always writing.

Laurence couldn't refuse. As much as he loved that class of Year Threes he taught, he thought he'd be making a greater difference to the lives of children across the country if he went with this bloke and signed a sixty-page contract, landing himself with a Ferrari out of the pocket of the BBC. He got paid loads to think up ideas, his shows getting broadcast and him getting the money for them, enough to spoil his daughters rotten and become somewhat of a minor philanthropist, all before he was thirty. Not that Laurence was ever quite a millionaire, but he did well for himself.

The well started to dry up though, like it always does. Unfortunately for Laurence, after just a year working for the television studios, getting passed back and forth between the British networks and then flown overseas every fortnight to meet with some American producers, or Canadian producers, or even Australian producers once, he was out of ideas. No more fun puppet shows, no more moral lessons, no more hijinks with colourful, righteous characters. His five minutes of fame were over, and he was an empty font. A mud flat that had once been an ocean.

(A month after we found his body, we got reports from a local primary school caretaker of a mysterious blockage in the toilets. Originally thought to be alien, we were called in to find out what this grey lump of cud was supposed to be. So, a lot of this information we got by scanning the shrivelled remains of Laurence Taylor's brain, after we found it stuck down the u-bend in amongst the poo. Thank god for the Memory Lens, we called it, this thing that could read your mind, be it within or without a skull and project the visual recordings onto the wall for you to sit back and watch.)

Laurence ended up fired. Fired from everywhere. Keeping it a secret from his family and being able to survive thanks to foresight and clever savings, Laurence was desperate for a solution. All poor Laurence Taylor wanted was a job to support his family, so one night when some pink-suited dwarfs came knocking at his window, he found himself listening. We saw this happen, saw them come out of nowhere, these stocky, fat lumps of pink fur with baby-heads and googly eyes, and in their strange way of communicating, they introduced themselves as Bliblahs.

Just two weeks later, a new show was airing at every kid's network he'd ever signed onto. This show was a hit, Laurence had his mojo back, the bigwigs said. He was back in business, richer than ever, thanks to this show, and he always told those fancy, high-rolling men that the idea came to him in a dream. Of course, this show was called _Bliblahs_. Featuring the very same creatures that had shown up in his bedroom two weeks earlier, featuring a spaceship we recognised from atmosphere scans, featuring a range of technological vocabulary that to the average human sounded like nonsense, but was actually integrated facts to do with the specifications of the _real_ Bliblahs' spaceship.

The way the Bliblahs found Laurence was because of a misplaced environmental scan. These days, everything's broadcasted through satellites. Refracted and projected between disks and sheets of metal, and bounced back down to Earth through television aerials and fibre optics at the speed of light, they'd scanned a satellite for a children's channel. An easy enough mistake to make when you were an investigating species, really. And what they happened to scan was one of Laurence's shows, a puppet show, to be exact. The same puppet show he'd written for his daughter, and there was his name in the credits, more than anyone else's.

By the sheer logic of volume, thinking that the man whose name appeared the most times was the most important, rather than backseat, ripped-off 'artist' living in a terraced house with a juxtaposing sports car, the Bliblahs found Laurence. They scoured the Earth and the internet for Laurence Taylor, happy husband and father of three. It took them a while, long enough for his fountain of golden ideas to evaporate into a glitter of mist, but they showed up at his house, seeking parley. Laurence could barely understand a word they were saying, but the thing about Bliblahs is they speak to you in your mind. Vaguely, they knew the language, they spoke like children, but they thought the children's shows were documentaries and Laurence was an all-powerful overlord-type member of the human race. Laurence couldn't communicate with them well enough to say what had happened, and when they realised this, they left quite quickly, erasing his memory.

Memory-erasing technology is always tricky though. It needs to be reconfigured, ideally, for every person who uses it, let alone every _species_. It didn't work nearly as well as they hoped, just left a foggy cloud over his memories, leaving him to assume it was a dream. Then the ideas started flowing. Subconsciously, almost, he was knitting in all these jargon-sounding words that were really secrets of the highest order of the observing, peaceful, Bliblah race. And the Bliblah were still tapped into that one channel, and then they saw themselves there, portrayed by grumpy short men in costumes, doing childish things with experienced words.

Suddenly, it was a matter of global security for these Bliblah – not to mention a racist appropriation of Bliblah culture – and Laurence, the poor writer, barely thirty, needed to be neutralised. Their general attitude of peace was shattered by this idiot giving away all their secrets, revealing the existence of aliens, right there on TV, complete with psychically-implanted information on where best to shoot their spaceships, where best to shoot them, and how to achieve interstellar, faster-than-light travel. All secrets the human race should not have.

Poor Laurence didn't know what he was doing when a bright-orange, furry, doll-headed little Bliblah came breaking through his window, cutting its legs on the glass and getting orange, thick blood around the walls. And, well, they're a more advanced race than us. We're still not sure how they did it, but they got Laurence's brain out of his head whole to try and wash it free of their telepathic infestations – not that they did a good job of it, we still saw everything, even after they'd clogged a toilet with it. For good measure, they blew up his skull, all while he was lying there, sleeping.

Funnily enough, his death was ruled a suicide. _Blew his own brains out_, the autopsy report said, shooting with a gun that wasn't there at the top of his neck, from a dead-on angle he'd never have been able to properly achieve himself, not to mention the lack of grey matter splattered on the walls. But what else could they say it was? They didn't have a clue.

Those Bliblah were really just protecting themselves, and their ship left our orbit promptly after that, when we checked our scanners. It wasn't an act of war, it was self-defence, and we couldn't do anything to stop them with them gone. As sad as his death was, we saw why it was necessary. Though, posthumous episodes of _Bliblahs _with pre-written scripts were still flashed about through the static of the television set, minus the damning secrets of alien culture with the new, experienced writers they had brought in.

And all Laurence ever wanted to do was make kids happy. The eulogy at his funeral was touching.


	120. Cocoon

Oswin applauded, and everyone gave her a funny look.

"Bravo," she said, flailing Adam Mitchell's hands together, hands covered in the orange dust of a packet of Quavers, not that she could smell the stench of the cheese crisps. Jack had made them a round of tea, and some boxes of fruit were being passed around. Clara hoarding the apples, everyone else was either eating grapes or strawberries if they couldn't coax one out of her (she had the bag between her husband's feet). From the Doctors themselves, there had been no update.

"What are you doing?" Martha asked her.

"Clapping," Oswin said, "It's polite."

"Nobody clapped me," her sister complained.

"Nobody wants to applaud a story about horse dildo rape, Clara," Oswin said dryly. Clara made a face, and Oswin scowled a second later – a psychic message passed between them, the mind-patch still intact, but no-one cared what had been said.

"Well, it was a bit haphazard," Amy said, and Rose glared at her.

"Sorry if I'm not a 'published writer'," Rose muttered, stealing an apple from Clara (who was on her left), which Clara wasn't too fussed about, and then crossing her arms.

"Maybe you should tell yours, then," Martha said, defending her best friend, "If you're going to be such a critic."

"Okay, fine," Amy said, and then she turned to Rory, notably freaked out when she was looking to her own face as though a mirror or a photograph, "Don't spoil."

"You can't tell one someone's heard before!" Jenny, who was apparently in charge of the rules, since it had been her idea, exclaimed.

"He's my husband and I've known him my whole life, it's impossible for me to tell a story Rory _doesn't_ know, unless I completely make one up," Amy said.

"You _are_ a fiction writer," Donna added, before getting a dark look from River Song, her being the only one not changed. Hopefully Donna knew that she, despite not being 'one of them' that day, was still going to get stuck with telling a story. She couldn't listen and not contribute.

"A good one, too," Clara, a fan, added begrudgingly, which made Amy swell for a few moments, "But don't make one up."

"Then Rory will have inevitably heard it," Amy said, "So, I'll begin. After that morose business with the Angels and us getting stranded forever in the Thirties, we had to live a normal life…"

* * *

_"__Cocoon", a story by Amelia Williams_

The Depression hit hard. Come 1933, there were some ten million men unemployed, millions more families destitute, and lonely crusades across the states to get to the southwest where there were half-true rumours of jobs. Rory and I, we were stuck in New York City. We knew that if we held out a few more years, the looming war would end the poverty in the States, and in five years it would more or less be sorted.

Not to sound like I'm accusing historians of overdramatising the Great Depression, but what they leave out in the documentaries is that, if you knew where to look for jobs, you could find one. Being a writer in 1933 didn't pay well at all, and money was our main concern, so we were left job hunting. Rory ended up a hospital cleaner, valued too much by underpaid undertrained nurses and doctors to be let go. Of course there was mass unemployment, but don't let that make you think that _nobody_ had a job. Plenty of people did.

There was a dustbowl that passed through the south and stopped farmers from growing enough of most things. Of course, overproduction was an issue sometimes, but it was with fabrics where it fell short. The textile industry. With synthetic fabrics being invented – you know, rayon, polyester – in the last decade, the cotton industry was falling behind where it should be. But factories were going out of business, and everyone was too poor to buy fancy new clothes made of any sort of fabric, really. The thing is, the silk industry was booming.

It's called _sericulture_, the cultivation of silkworms, a five-thousand year old practice, started in China. Of course, like everything, it just _had_ to be westernised. Just like people have big, urban apiaries to keep fancy birds, or people farm honeybees in aviaries, the same happens with silkworms. Kept in drawers in big, industrial buildings and factories, these little worms were gold dust. And _I_ ended up with a job in a silk factory, aiding the early deaths of these tiny creatures.

They got through a lot of lifecycles, and have a lot of stages of life. Just before the pupal stage is where you'll most recognise them as the caterpillars they are. White, long as a finger, segmented, smooth and horned, that's what they look like in the days before they make their cocoon. Though, I'm sure 'coffin' is a more fitting analogy, since none of them were ever allowed to mature into adulthood. What they do, is they boil them. This stops the silk breaking down, you see, because the enzyme the silkmoth uses to get out of its cocoon destroys the silk. Silk a mile in length is reduced to metre strips, foot-long orders of pearly-white string, useless for sewing or threading or weaving. So, all these pubescent little worms get slaughtered so that we can have nice, smooth clothes made of worm-spit. Not the bodies went to waste, no, they're a delicacy really. In some places.

Where I worked, the New York branch of a company just called _Luxury Silk Ltd._, they didn't eat them. Out back, in the dumpsters, were bin-bags-cum-body-bags, full to the brim with these frozen, dead worms. It was my job to boil them, I didn't have the stomach to be the woman who'd pick the corpses out of the cocoons and throw them in the little wastepaper baskets they had, full of dead bugs, on the floor by their workstations. What I did was take these big trays of living, breathing pupae and throw them into vats of boiling water, ready to be slid out on a conveyor belt and distributed to the women who got higher wages than I did. I thought, for five years, I could live with the ten dollars less.

In heated conditions, all year round they were reaching maturity and their inevitable death, poor creatures oblivious to the fate that awaited them. Of course, I'm a hypocrite, because I used to wear plenty of silk if I could afford it back when I lived in the 2000s, but it was different when you saw it happening, and you were a murderer. I really didn't like it though – I mean, there was also the fact that the bubbles from the boiling water would pop and splash you as you're trying to scrape the last remains of a sticky cocoon. If you look carefully, you can see all the burns on the back of my hands, pink and shiny and dotted about like liver-spots.

It was one day in summer, and this factory was scorching hot all year round. The windows were brown with grime and mottled with beads of moisture, dripping down like slime on the dirty, greasy walls. It was always humid, water evaporating into the air constantly, and I was sweating horribly, not used to working in these conditions. I mean, I'd been a model before we'd been sent back there, and now I was stuck shovelling worms into a pot.

Most people smoked in those days. Advertisement was huge, and you couldn't walk ten blocks without passing a rotting billboard or a ripped, sullied poster with the flashy logo for _Marlboro _or _Camel_, some big brand without the massive, red 'SMOKING KILLS' banner plastered onto it. No pictures of black lungs, either, or decaying organs. No, smoking was healthy, and everybody did it. So, regular smoking breaks were a given. Factory owners smoked, congressmen smoked, the president smoked, housewives smoked – everything reeked of tobacco, from the leather of a rich dentist's chair to the mud on your shoes, and everything was yellow from nicotine.

I didn't smoke, I wasn't about to take something up that could kill me, but I had a pack of cigarettes on me at all times. If someone asked to borrow one, I had one there. If someone asked for a light, I had a lighter. All of this so that every hour or so I could excuse myself from that horrible factory and go stand out back by the bins full of dead silk-weavers and faux-smoke for fifteen minutes, breathing in pollution instead of decomposing worm-smell. Sometimes I'd go buy _Coca Cola _for the walk – coke was big then, too, right there by the cigarette billboards. _Have some soda with your cancer-stick!_, it seemed to be saying. Well, I did, in a way.

One day in August, like clockwork, a woman called Regina and I slipped out at about two o'clock in the afternoon for the third fag-break of the day (this was a daily occurrence). She had a permanent cough she claimed to be a cold and hacked up black dust, and she was only thirty-six, but we were good enough friends. Good enough to stand in a dingy, dank alleyway around the back of a silk factory and talk about who on the floor wasn't pulling their weight, or whatever scandal was in the news that week, or whatever new hate campaign was going on against President Roosevelt, and then sometimes she'd ask me a question about Scotland, just to be polite, and I'd say I didn't really grow up there, I moved before I was ten. She wasn't really listening, anyway.

It was a Thursday. Every two days, at six o'clock, after we'd all gone home, the bins would be collected. That was Monday, Wednesday and Friday. We didn't work weekends. Bins full of dead worms would be picked up and either dumped in one of the landfill sites around New York or burnt in some special crematorium just for trash, the best funeral a worm could hope to get, really.

After five minutes of absent chatting, Regina says to me, 'Look at the bins.'

'Hmm?' I ask, not really paying attention, holding the same cigarette in my hand I'd been holding for the last month ('_If you chew the end of it, it's just like chewing tobacco anyway, but it lasts longer and it's cheaper_,' I'd lie. Whether they believed me or not was another question, but they accepted it as an answer, even if they did think I was a little crazy. Well, I wasn't going to give myself lung disease just to fit in).

'The bins,' Regina reiterates for me, and I glance back.

'What about them?' I shrug. By this point, I've been there for three months, starting midway through May '33, and I'm not quite as practiced as Regina is at knowing when something's amiss.

'They're empty.' Generally careless, she goes over and, holding her cigarette between her teeth, lifts this grotty, slimy dumpster open and peers inside, me staring at her with disbelief at the lack of concern for general hygiene back then – though, it might not have been a general thing, but more just a Regina-thing, she was always a little dotty.

'So?'

'So I saw Roxy' – that's a girl Regina knows who has the low-paid job of dumping dead worms in the bin – 'Coming out here with a big load of the things to throw out just forty minutes ago,' I frown, 'and they only collect the trash every other day.'

'Maybe they've just changed the days,' I shrug.

'Garbage men don't change their days without notifying companies – I don't know how they do it in _Scotland_, but here, things are efficient.'

'Efficient? That's why the stock market crashed?'

'Well, you don't have stock markets in Scotland.' I didn't even bother arguing with her. Regina wasn't someone particularly nice, she was often crabby and sullen. But then, most women were.

We didn't say much more after that, we just went back inside when she'd finished her fag, and finished the day's shift without the usual four o'clock cigarette break two hours later.

The next day though, everyone got chewed out. All the staff. Someone had stolen dead pupae from the bins. And that evening, when we came back next Monday, we found out that when the garbage men showed up that Friday to collect the rubbish, there was nothing to collect. Pupae gone, again. Someone was stealing dead silkworms.

There was a police inquest, a pathetic investigation, because really, nobody cared all that much that silkworm-bodies that were going to be burnt to charcoal _anyway_ were being stolen. I thought it was weird, though, and I could never resist a mystery.

After a week of this happening, the following Thursday, I called in sick. Rory told them I had a debilitating case of influenza, and nobody wanted a flu epidemic spreading through the factory. It would taint the product and kill half the staff, most likely, so they practically begged him not to let me come to work. Of course I was completely fine, it was just a cover, but I'll tell you now – there's nothing worse than staking out the dumpsters round the back of a silk factory in the middle of a baking hot August in New York City. It stank like death and rotten meat and nicotine, disease and poverty and destitution, not to mention booze from all the bums who slept round here at night before moving on to yet another Hooverville.

Sandwiched there between two dumpsters, trying not to choke on my own sticky, stinky vomit, I saw him. His name, I found out eventually, was Drury. Drury Clear. He showed up, hunched over and twitchy, out of another crack of alleyway, rather than the road. He dragged one foot behind him and made noises as he went, buzzing noises, I thought. And he stole the silkworms. He muttered all sorts of things about them being his "babies", about "genocide", about "avenging" them.

Drury Clear wasn't too bright though. Worried about the safety of my job and even my life, as everyone was then, I followed him out of my little hiding place and tail him for a ways, ending up at an abandoned warehouse (there were a lot of those, with the haulage industry and the shipping industry becoming almost obsolete in some places, a lot less of them required than there used to be). He locked the door, but there was a rusty old ladder crawling up the metal wall to an ageing catwalk, and I spotted a window.

It took me a good ten minutes, but I climbed up the rungs of that ladder, cutting my palm once so bad it needed to be disinfected when I got home at risk of contracting tetanus. I got to the top of that ladder and peered through the window, cupping my hands around my eyes and wiping grey sludge from the glass panes. And what this bloke had was best described as a nest.

He was sat there on a grotty mattress between rising and falling white, shiny dunes of dead silkworms, dumping the latest additions to his collection of carcasses onto his mountainous piles, where they tumbled and fought with the remains of their dead ancestors for pride and place, slipping and skidding about on top of each other like giant, insectoid grains of sand. A mass grave of pupae, boiled alive and made hard and shiny in the chinks of light that came through the split-open holes of the rusty, baked roof, dappling their bodies as they tumbled around underneath Drury Clear's feet as he walked over them, trampling them after so carefully rescuing them from the clutches of the garbage men taking them away to sleep forever with the cigarette butts, banana peels and guava of the trash heaps.

I left quite quickly after seeing that.

Monday morning, after skiving Friday, I showed up for work. What I found was, I was unemployed. That big factory was black with smoke on the outsides and still shiny-orange with the sparks of a dead fire within. Smoke plumes were still trickling off the corners and the cracks in the brick, windows all melted to gaping, scorched holes in the walls. It stank of so much gasoline you couldn't smell the tobacco.

'Arson,' says a firefighter standing, smoking, ironically, after putting out the blaze, when I ask him, 'He's inside.'

'Who's inside?'

'The guy who did it.'

'He got trapped?' I ask, and he laughs grimly. He has silver hair, this fireman, and no doubt he's seen a great number of horrors in his career.

'Nah,' he says, 'All the water in them vats evaporated in the fire, he's in one of them. Boiled, buried under three feet of silk. Funny, guy burns down a silk factory and ends up in a cocoon.' He drops his cigarette and stamps it out with his boot.

And he'd been trying to _stop_ the silkworms getting burned.


	121. Limbs

**AN: If anyone's forgotten, they found the Shape Alteration Inducer in Chapter 500, which is in the OTHER fic, but the guys only turn themselves into dogs in Chapter 501, which is the first chapter of THIS fic. This is based on a true story – although, in real life, they didn't die, they survived and went on Jerry Springer. Also, trigger warning for self-harm. May also be M rated.**

"He burnt down a silk factory?" Donna asked incredulously, and Amy nodded.

"Yeah, and then jumped in the vat of boiling water himself. Weird, isn't it? Maybe he wanted to suffer or something," Amy shrugged. Now, the strawberries had run out and the bag of apples had been shared, and still there had been no Time Lords visiting them to let them know how long, exactly, they were going to be stuck looking like their partners.

"Isn't it weird," Martha began, and was cut off by Amy when she paused, who seemed to think Martha had finished talking.

"Weird that someone stole dead silkworms out of a bin?"

"Well, yeah, but I wasn't talking about that," Amy seemed subtly insulted, but Martha continued, "I mean, isn't it weird that we swapped with who we're dating, or married to? Why wouldn't it be random?"

"It goes on personality," Oswin interjected quite quickly, "They changed to dogs that sort of suited them. It knows what you're thinking, knows stuff about you." And that was all she'd say, but someone would possibly look at her saying that and think she was being overly defensive. And then she added, "Who's telling the next story? Martha's always got loads of gross medical stories."

"Mainly about people getting stuff stuck up their arseholes though," Mickey commented, "And we already had a story about that." Judgemental eyes washed over Clara, who tried to bury her face in the third apple of the morning.

"I'll tell one about something _other_ than people getting stuff stuck up themselves," Martha said, "Believe me, I have one for you…"

* * *

_"Limbs", a story by Martha Jones_

My first week in A&amp;E as a medical student, a girl bled to death. She was so pale she seemed translucent against the white bedsheets, her lips blue like she'd had hypothermia. She was lying there, the white soaked pink and then soaked dark red as it got further down the bed, a big pile of bloody towels and papers and fabrics on the floor, below where her feet should have been. And though she was dead, blood was still trickling out of the two stumps where, two hours ago, her legs had been. Her name was Sarah, but she never got around to telling us her surname. It was only when the family came to identify the body that we found that out.

Maybe you think this girl had been in an accident – rammed in between two colliding lorries, or slammed off the road by a motorcyclist, or a drunk driver. In Accident &amp; Emergency, we never saw too much of that though. Road accident victims with a limb lost at the scene never usually made it, and if they'd had an arm or a leg lopped off, chances were they had so much severe trauma to the rest of their bodies that the euthanasia debate was brought up in the ambulance, a paramedic once told me. Usually, they died on the road, they were never wheeled through hospital corridors on drips at lightning speed. Instead, a lowly porter took them in the lift right down to the morgue.

We'd tried to save Sarah though, not a victim of a traffic accident. Not a victim of attack. I still don't know how I feel about her death. I was on a break when we got the call that there was an emergency coming in, all hands on deck, everyone free was called to help, even the students, there was that much blood. She was getting a transfusion at the same time since she'd lost so much already, but they couldn't sew or suture the wounds, so the blood just kept pouring, covered everything, streaming hot liquid flooding through the room. It was when they gave up, they knew they couldn't save her, that she talked.

I was the closest. I was the only one who heard what she said. She laughed. A nurse was crying at the foot of the bed, the sight of all this blood, this girl, not even older than me, a teenager, laughing about the fact she knew she was going to die. There was so much blood, gallons and pints of it, the most I'd ever seen on my first week.

Her last words were, '_I'm glad I did it._' And then she died. Of course, I told the other nurses and doctors what she'd said, I told the paramedics, I told the police who came to investigate.

Her mother had found her, laughing in the shed, bleeding out of the two stumps of flesh where her legs had been, the severed appendages themselves lying on the floor below the stool she was lumped on, a slab of torso with a bobble head, cackling. The wood floor was like rust, dark and brown, but it was shining beneath the light of the single, yellow, dirty lightbulb swinging in a gentle breeze. The temperature didn't help, it was November. Her feet, I heard, were completely blue. Blue and black, like gangrene. She'd gone to a lot of effort, Sarah, to dismember herself.

I read the autopsy report, talked to the coroner – it was good experience to learn about these injures. The post-mortem said that in her toes rigor-mortis had set in before she'd even died, the circulation had been cut off for so long. Below her ankles, the tissue had been black and dead for hours. That morning, they found out, she'd got the smallest rubber bands she could find and somehow managed to slip them right up to her thighs, above the knees, making her legs look like butcher's sausages. Then she'd wrapped anything she could around them, a rudimentary tourniquet, not that it did her any good in the end, just caused septicaemia to set in. Infections. Even if we'd stopped the blood flow, Sarah would have been dead.

For weeks, she'd been planning this. It's a form of dysphoria. They call it Body Integrity Identity Disorder, where someone feels like their limb isn't their own. Well, Sarah had a case of this where she thought the answer to all her worldly problems would be cutting off her legs, both of them above the knee, savagely. She tried all sorts of things first, we could tell by the scar tissue, we could tell by what we found in her room and in the shed where she ended up doing it. Razor blades, steak knives, a cleaver. Didn't help her dad was a butcher. Meat hooks at one point, we saw. We think she tried to rip them from the sockets, right at the hip, leave her totally legless.

She did it with an electric meat carver. You know, those saws you get at Christmas dinner to carve the turkey, or people use them at roasts for dinner. Well, what she did with the carver, was-

* * *

"Lunchtime!" Clara shouted. Well, it was Clara's voice. It wasn't Clara though, it was Clara's husband, he and his troupe of Time Lords bursting through the doors right when Martha was getting to the juicy, vile bit of her horrific tale. In the tension that was building in the room as Martha talked, everyone jumped.

"What?" Clara, the real Clara, asked in her husband's voice, looking at him with wide-eyes. Everybody offended by the interruption.

"It's lunchtime," Ten-in-Rose's-body added, "We were thinking sausages."

"Do not… Just… No…" Donna said, looking ill.

"…What?" Ten asked.

"Martha was just telling a story," Oswin said.

"Oooh! I love stories!" Ten beamed Rose's smile.

"You three can't listen," Jenny declared, "_You're_ meant to be fixing the SAI, not listening to Martha's story about a girl hacking off her legs with an electric saw."

"I'd always recommend a malfunctioning bomb, if someone's looking for amputation advice," Oswin said, and there was a silence that followed, because no-one knew if it was appropriate to laugh or not, "Are you gonna finish the story or not?"

"I will when they leave," Martha said, staring at the three Time Lords.

"But we're hungry!" Eleven whinged, and at that, his wife passed him the remains of the large bag of apples with his hand, smiling with his teeth and lips, trying to get him to leave, "For _real _food."

"You love apples," Clara told him, "Take some crisps. But this is a Doctor-free zone."

"Why is she allowed to say?" Nine jabbed River's accusatory finger in Jenny's direction, who gasped with offence with the mouth of her new husband.

"Because it was my idea! Plus, I'm gonna tell a story. You three always get to tell stories, and now it's our turn, and you don't get to listen."

"She's right," said Amy, "Off you go." Rory then waved with Amy's slender hand. As soon as they vacated, all eyes were back on Martha Jones.

"Where was I? …_Oh_, right, well. What she did with the carver…"

* * *

What she did with the carver was use that to work on the flesh. The meat. The veins. Sliced through it like butter, all the while she was cackling away in this shed in the garden, a thunderstorm roaring so loud you couldn't hear the sound of her carving her leg like it was a joint of beef in the back, peeling the skin back to reveal the muscles and the sinew.

It was the bone that was tricky. That was when the stick between her teeth, the stick she was still laughing through, was snapped by the pain and the splintered ends were spat to the wooden, bloated, blood-washed floor. Muck and cobwebs and lumps of girl-meat were covering the ground, the white of her socks and shoes turned scarlet and dark in the shadows. I don't know how she did it, but it was a messy job – forensics found bone fragment over the floor, the knees popped out of place. We think she twisted it off, like a screw, snapping it when she wore the marrow down to twigs with the saw.

After all that though, it was only the left leg she'd removed.

Funnily enough, the medical examiner thought she felt no pain. The chemicals in her brain when they looked at it didn't add up. There wasn't the amount of dried sweat on her palms and armpits that there should have been when someone suffers that much trauma. Maybe the tourniquet worked somehow, as she clawed her leg off of her body, but the ME said it was like she was prematurely in shock. Coupled with the laughter when she died, and the lack of regret for what she'd done, it was a baffling case of suicide.

I'm not going to go into what she did to the other leg, but it was a lot more bloody than the first. The left amputation was cleaner, the second – we think she crushed the bone to dust with an old mallet she'd found, possibly a hammer, bashing herself to pieces.

When the thunder cleared, Sarah didn't notice. That was when her mother heard the screaming. Her mother ran out and couldn't open the door, Sarah ignoring her calls and screaming inside like a banshee, and her mother didn't know why all the hammers and the screwdrivers and anything they might use to break into the shed were gone. Eventually, Sarah's brother called the police and the ambulance, not knowing if she was perhaps being attacked or tortured by some evil individual within that shed.

One of the police officers told me it was the worst crime scene they'd ever investigated, two dead legs and feet and bloody shoes on the floor in amongst the spiders and the mouse droppings and the dust. I declined seeing a photo, I could picture it well enough without looking at it. I never wanted to see those black, wounded, welt-covered legs, hacked to pieces by all number of stolen instruments.

They found diary entries in her room, pictures in her room, pictures of her from every angle with the legs scribbled out, the photo cropped, or even jaggedly cut with scissors. She hated her legs, they were an imposters, she was writing. They didn't belong to her. Someone else should have them, someone who needed them, because she never thought she did. She thought a life bound to a wheelchair was better than a life with the limbs of a stranger, it seemed.

Nobody involved ever got over what happened to Sarah. Her brother's grades dropped. Her mother quit her job. Her father closed the butcher's shop. I always sent flowers, every year, to that house, I'd send flowers. It wasn't just me, a lot of the staff did, none of us could imagine having to live with what they did. I even went to the funeral, I didn't know what else to do to get any sort of closure. I suppose, though, the only meagre consolation I had in all of this tragedy, was the fact that she hadn't felt any pain. The fact that she laughed. The fact that she was still glad she did it, even on her deathbed, soaked in her own muddy blood. Finally, though, there was always the fact that her legs had been cremated, while the rest of her had been buried, following the little wishes dotted about that diary of hers.

To this day, her words ring in my ears, that death rattle of a teenage girl with traces of sick humour.

'_I'm glad I did it_.'


	122. Mirror Image

**AN: So that last one was APPALLING. I mean, like, I couldn't bring myself to re-read it, and the only other parts of this fic I can't bring myself to re-read are the parts where Oswin has panic attacks because they strike a chord with me personally. **

"That was definitely worse than mine," Clara said, "Seriously – twisting and ripping your leg off is so much worse than an alien abduction prank."

"Is anyone else weirdly hungry?" Jack then asked, "Because I mean, I've heard worse stories."

"Tell us yours then," Martha challenged.

"No, because you won't want to eat, and it's lunchtime, like they said," Jack said calmly. Though, nobody was challenging that he had a grotesque story to tell, whenever it got to his turn.

"Pizza would be good," said Rory, "I feel like pizza."

"…I'm not hungry," Amy told him, "Someone should tell a story that's _not_ gross."

"I've got one," Donna said, "I'll tell one, even though I'm not like you lot." She stared around at the familiar strangers, pulling expressions that didn't normally work on those faces they had, "It's scary though."

"Oooh, great," said Jenny enthusiastically, "All of them have just been sort of weird and sometimes disgusting, not really scary though."

"I think the prospect of an anal haemorrhage is quite scary," Oswin said, "Thank god I don't have a functioning rectum." There was silence for a few minutes.

"Os, nobody wants to know that," Clara said eventually, "Do you quite understand that? Do you know what too much information is?"

"There's no such thing as _too much information_," she scoffed, shaking Adam Mitchell's head.

"Oswin, we're gonna have some words later about boundaries and social conventions," Clara said, and everyone else thought they looked quite peculiar interacting like sisters while they looked like the Eleventh Doctor and Adam Mitchell. Oswin then sighed and stopped talking, "I apologise on her behalf…" Some people in the group nodded.

"…Well. I'll tell you a story, then – one that won't make you want to puke…"

* * *

_"Mirror Image", a story by Donna Noble_

This is a true story that happened to a friend of mine, called Rhiannon. She had a nice house, the previous owners' had an eye for design, and it was just in the living room that this whole story takes place.

In Rhiannon's living room, the sofa was in the middle, a gap behind it between it and the wall, everything quite clean and the walls quite blank. Cream coloured, I think they were, but pale. The sofa was big and leather, faded brown to make it look aged, even though it was relatively new. That sort of design technique, but it was really a pretty empty room.

So, there was the sofa, and then opposite the sofa was this TV. Not big, not small, just an average widescreen (this was before everyone had flatscreens, I was about sixteen). And then behind the TV, the whole wall was windows Just the full wall, floor-to-ceiling windows, going out onto the back garden, a little door on the right-hand corner to get in and out.

One night, in March, Rhiannon's home alone. Her parents are out visiting family and she's sick with the flu, so she's staying at home. Eventually, when it's getting late, maybe nine o'clock, her parents aren't back yet. Outside there's a huge storm, and she doesn't have much to do in her room. No personal computer, no fast internet or YouTube back then, rudimentary games consoles she didn't care about anyway, and she'd run up the house's phone bill too much already to start making calls. The connection was bad anyway.

There was a storm that night. Huge thunderstorm outside, though it wasn't quite a thunderstorm yet. The rain was pouring down and the whole of the garden was mud, grass pulled up at the roots by boots and swimming around in brown, mucky water. It was cold through the house, too, so she lugged her bedsheets down the stairs with her and wrapped herself around in them on the sofa, snug and cosy.

It was a Friday night, scary movie night on TV. Rhiannon puts on some horror film, something old and classic, _Nightmare On Elm Street_, _Scream_ or _Halloween_. It would've been _Saw_, but this was before that. So, she's watching one of those films, one of those classic slashers, a gale howling outside and her wrapped up warm in her duvet, nose red and raw, coughing and sneezing into dozens of tissues, dropping them on the floor at her feet, ready to be picked up and binned later when her parents got home.

She had a bowl of popcorn, completely immersed, her experience of fright only getting ruined whenever she had to wipe her nose or hack up another ball of phlegm onto an already-damp, yellowy tissue, before scrunching it into a ball and letting it fall to join the rest of them at her feet, in a little graveyard of Kleenex.

And then she runs out of popcorn.

Luckily, in whatever film she's watching, the adverts have rolled on. The signal to the crooked old TV aerial sitting on top of the big, silver box keeps fizzing out, big black bars rolling down the screen with chinks of discolouration; static buzzes between jump-scares. Well she slides out of her comfy den on the sofa, carrying the red plastic bowl full of the kernels she'd hurt her teeth on and spat back out with the rest of the dust leftover from her food, going out of the living room and into the kitchen.

This isn't microwave popcorn, though, this is just stuff out of the bag, supermarket-bought, not warm and soft like when you buy it from a cinema. But, she's ill, and watching scary films, so she thinks she deserves another bag of popcorn. Looking back, I'm sure that she did.

But it's when she's in the kitchen, pouring the treats into that bowl from the shiny, silver bag, that the power cuts. There's probably a tree on a line somewhere, knocking everything out, and the power's completely gone. Plunged into darkness with just the lightning flashing outside every few minutes for company, she jumps like she's one of the characters in the films she's been spending her evening glued to.

She never scared easily, though, so she takes a deep breath – after all, it's just a power cut. There's a huge storm outside, and she was actually prepared. She goes and hunts through the cupboard in the kitchen looking for a torch. She finds one, a big, industrial-type torch. God knows why her parents have that, but it's got the batteries in it, and she's quite pleased with that haul.

Then there's a gust of wind that washes over her neck. Warm wind. She jumps like there's somebody there and turns around, crouched on the floor so that when she turns she falls down, dropping the torch next to her, switched on, sitting on the cold flagstones of the kitchen. The torch is illuminating most of the room now, the hallway as well, and it's empty. Then, she thinks, it's spring. Maybe it's warm out. There's probably just a window open somewhere, it's just a draft. There's no pets there, what else could it be? And after all, thinking about it, she's _sure_ that the bathroom window upstairs is open anyway, it always is, it's jammed like that.

A little shaky, but always keeping a head of logic, Rhiannon takes her popcorn, takes her torch, and takes some kitchen roll too (she's nearly out of tissues after so many days clogged up with cold), and heads back into the living room. That's when she can't find the remote. She's sat down, sure that it was somewhere buried in the sheets with her, but she's fumbling around in the light of the torch, this light being greater with the way it keeps bouncing off the large wall-made-of-windows behind the television, trying to find it.

It's only when the power comes back a minute later that she spots it, lying on the floor by the door. Not the door to the kitchen, but the other door, the door that goes into the hallway and then up the stairs. She sighs, a headache coming on now as the night got later, going and stooping to pick it up. Then she thinks she ought to grab the phone out of the hallway where it's sat in its holster, just in case the power's off for longer than she'd like. Besides, her parents might ring, and she doesn't want to have to get out of her warm pocket in the living room to get the phone later.

She goes and gets the phone and brings it back, blinking heavily against the pain spreading across her forehead. A migraine coming on, she thinks – she's been having them on and off for the last few days. Rhiannon's all curled up now in this cocoon of quilts and duvets, buried and watching the bit in _Scream_ where they see the corpse hanging inside-out from the tree, or the bit in _Halloween_ where he's bashing through the cupboard, or the bit in _The Shining _where he's trying to break down the door. Some thriller, some horror, something like that.

Wind howling outside, shaking the house, the lights flickering every few minutes like they're closing their eyes to get away from the film, she's burrowed away eating popcorn with the remote and the phone next to her. And that's when it happens.

On TV, in black and white, Marion Crane is taking a shower, when Norman Bates' mother rips down the shower curtain and stabs a butchers knife wildly, black blood spattering the bathtub floor onscreen, the iconic music jerking and veering up and down in sharp movements in the background. Rhiannon jumps violently seeing that famous scene from _Psycho_, but before it's over, while the mother is stabbing along to the crescendo, that there's a savage lightning flash ripping apart the sky like a dagger and all the power goes out in the house, plunging her into darkness but illuminating the man outside.

Behind the television, through the window, he's there. Hood up but face bright white, his teeth glinting in the lightning flash and his black eyes shining like holes in his skull. Waxen skin, he stands there, outside, dripping wet, drenched, _soaked_, covered in sludge and mud. And in his hand is a knife, it glows in the lightning of the storm, and it's only for an instant before the darkness is back through the whole house, leaving just his scorched outline in her eyes, a block of fear that stays in her vision even when she blinks.

Rhiannon throws the covers and the sheets over her head, petrified and alone, grabbing the phone from next to her and praying to god the phone lines still work. Thankfully, they do. She gets straight through calling 999, calls the police, saying there's an intruder in her garden and he's got a knife.

It feels like it takes an age for them to arrive, feels like she's waiting for hours in that room, not even sure if the lights have come back on or not, wondering if the tiny gap of the bathroom window is enough for a man to get through. She doesn't move one bit until she hears the sirens, until she hears a knock on the door and a man shouting through the letterbox asking her to stay calm, he was a police constable, she was going to be fine as long as she stayed calm.

She throws the covers away and pelts at full speed for that door, unlocking it with trembling, nervous hands and breaking down in tears when she sees the soaked police officers and the flashing red and blue of the cars and the black and white checkers of their hats. She nearly wants to hug the officer. While they search the house, she stays, bedraggled and terrified, in one of the cars, calling her parents on the house phone she's still clutching. The police don't leave until her parents get back, but that's when they tell her.

They say, there wasn't anybody in the garden out there. There are no footprints on that side of the house. But – and here her heart misses a beat completely and she drops the phone into the foot well of the car she's currently refusing to leave, loving the smell of the seats sand the air freshener and even the stink of the criminals that had been arrested throughout the day, because she doesn't feel safe inside her house anymore.

_But_, says the officer, the fuse box has been attacked, slashed at with a knife. _But_, he goes again, the knife? It was a knife that was missing from the kitchen. _Her_ kitchen. And then, the final _but_.

But, he says. There are muddy footprints behind the sofa.

And that was when Rhiannon realised. That man, he hadn't been in the window outside. The lightning hadn't lit up outdoors. When it was coupled with the power cut at that precise moment, the lightning had lit up the reflection in the window.

He'd been standing right behind her.

He'd been breathing down her neck.

He'd been laughing while she cried.

He'd been gone by the time the police got there.

Maybe he'd never left.

That night, she didn't stay in that house. She came to mine, to stay with me, and she didn't leave for a week. In all that time, she never went into a room alone, and every time I went to her house afterwards, they had newly installed curtains drawn over those windows, a new carpet put in because the footprints just hadn't washed out, and they pushed the sofa right against the wall to stop it happening again.

They never found the man, and now Rhiannon? She takes medication, and she sleeps with a baseball bat under her pillow.


	123. Latex Kisses

"Is that true?" Rory asked.

"They've all been true," Jenny said, "Well, unless people are lying." For whatever reason, most of the judgemental eyes scanned over Amy, the fiction author in the group, Clara the English teacher out of the suspicion, which she seemed to enjoy.

"It happened!" Amy protested, and no-one said anything, "Fine, since you don't believe me, I'll just go make pizza, shall I?" and then she stood up, dragging Rory with her with his hands by her elbow, to go skulk away in the kitchen and get a few pizzas.

"_Would you like me to do that, Amelia?_" came the voice of Helix, seemingly from the walls themselves, and Oswin beamed upon hearing it interact finally. Rory, however, jumped.

"…No, Helix…" Amy muttered.

"_Are you sure, Amelia?_" it asked.

"Yep… And could you not call me Amelia?"

"_Affirmative, Amelia_."

"…Oswin, your thing's broken."

"Helix isn't _my_ thing," Oswin argued, "You were one of the people who brought it back off of that Qetesh ship, it's always talked like that. Besides, for it not to call you Amelia, you have to tell it what you want it to call you."

"Why is it programmed to call me Amelia in the first place?" Amy questioned, crossing Rory's arms to scrutinise Oswin.

"You should see what it's programmed to call Clara," was all Oswin said, and Clara next to her sighed. She was beyond the point of annoyance. And then Amy gave up the conversation.

"I volunteer Adam Mitchell to tell the next story," Clara then said, looking directly at Adam. Well, it was Adam's face.

"I'm not Adam. You idiot. You can't even remember what the love of your life looks like, Clara!?" Oswin exclaimed in offence.

"I know, I'm sorry, I forgot that at this moment the love of my life has swapped bodies with you," Clara said, and then she winked at Adam. Except, it looked phenomenally weird, because to the others it seemed to be the Eleventh Doctor winking at his sister-in-law.

"I hate being the butt of all your jokes," Adam muttered.

"Really? That's a shame, because you have such a nice butt," Oswin said, then she turned back to her sister, who was muttering something about 'boundaries' again, "Why should he tell the next story?"

"Adam should tell the story of why he has a pack of condoms in his car that expired three years ago, in 2011," Clara said, and then the people who'd been ignoring the constant bickering of the Twins turned to face him.

"You _what_? That's gross," Martha said, "You can't sleep with people with expired condoms."

"Why do you even need condoms? What have you been doing?" Oswin demanded.

"I have _what_ in my car!? Did you just say condoms?" Adam asked Clara, and she nodded, frowning at the fact he didn't seem to remember, "That piece of... Oh, I'll tell you alright, it's not what any of you are thinking… Basically, I was on a date with this supermodel-"

"The story has to be true," Oswin interjected.

"It is true," he told her, "For half an hour, will you please be nice?"

"But-"

"Oswin, shut up. You can make fun of him later in the privacy of his bedroom," Clara told her sternly. It took a moment of everybody else butting in to also tell Oswin to be quiet before she finally agreed to shut up throughout the story.

"So…"

* * *

_"Latex Kisses", a story by Adam Mitchell_

I was on a date with a supermodel. She was brunette and she'd been on the cover of _Vogue_, and _GQ_, and right now she was working at Victoria's Secret. In fact, I think her name _was_ Victoria. It was a dinner date in a five-star restaurant, and I'd been made to go on it by my PR manager. That's the thing about being CEO of a big company, you'll have a PR manager. You'd think I was some famous actor, but I think what was happening was that she was getting a lot of calls from newspapers asking if I was seeing anyone, and she got so sick of it she found a willing model to go on a date with me.

I did tell Victoria all this, by the way, at the start, said it was just for show so it didn't really matter what she said, and then she spent most of it complaining about the state the feet of runway models gets into, and slid off one of her shoes under the table and flashed her bunioned, purple and yellow feet at me. It was at the end of the main course, I think I had the Crab-Stuffed Lobster Tail and she had… Well, it was something with duck in it, and it was expensive. It was about then that somebody called me, and I took out my phone, not that she cared much.

I have a _friend_ – I use the term loosely – called Connor. Back home, in the village, he was someone I knew in high school, who (when I became a multimillionaire and built a big coastal mansion there) got back in contact with me when I moved home, and now tried to get me involved with everything he did. He was never a particularly good person, and there was no question that if I wasn't rich he would have written me off years ago, but I'd stupidly given him my actual phone number and now I was stuck fielding incessant calls from him while I was on a faux-date with a model.

'Anything important?' she asked me, as I stared at the fact I had ten whole missed calls from him in just the last fifteen minutes. Before I said anything, seconds later, he called back again.

'I don't know,' I answered honestly, but she was only waiting for an opportunity to complain about the difficulties of being a model again, which I fully sympathised with. I mean, you didn't see her feet, they were covered in sores and plasters and blisters, and if I was a ruder person I'd probably have asked why she still did it, since she was in so much pain, clearly, 'Do you mind if I-?'

'Go ahead.'

'Thanks,' I said, excusing myself from the table and taking my phone, going towards the toilets in the back of the restaurant to answer the call, fully prepared to have a go at him for interrupting my pretend-date with one of the most attractive women I'd ever seen (I mean, not _the_ most attractive, but one of them). When I answered, I instantly hissed, 'What the _hell_ do you want right now!?'

'_I really need your help, dude_,' said Connor, completely ignoring my tone of voice, which I was trying to make angrier than I really was.

'Help!?'

'_Yeah, are you busy?_'

'Yes,' I said sarcastically, 'I'm sort of on a date with a Victoria's Secret model right now, which _you_ are interrupting.' I didn't mention that the date wasn't technically real, I didn't think he needed to know that. I wasn't looking for an excuse to get away, and certainly not an excuse involving him. To both Connor and the model I was utterly ambivalent.

'_Yeah, sure, you mean you're sat at home on your own again?_' he said, to which I scowled.

'No. I'm on a date. With a model,' I said flatly.

'_Okay, well, you have fun in la-la-land, I need your help_,' he said, '_I've been calling for ages! What've you been doing that's distracted you from your phone?_'

'I've – you know what? Doesn't matter. Whatever you want, I'm busy. Whatever you think I'm doing, I don't care, it's infinitely more important than whatever _you_ want from me,' I argued, going to hang up when he apologised (a fake apology) and implored me to stay on the line.

'_I'm hosting a dinner party_,' he confessed, and I, alone in some toilets, snorted. I couldn't possibly believe that, some laddish idiot like him hosting a dinner party, '_It's my fiancée's parents, they've come over, I have to cook for them. I've completely messed it up._'

'Why? Just throw a frozen pizza in the oven or something.'

'_I would if I had a pizza! The shop's too far to walk in this weather, I'll be gone to long and they'll notice,_' he said. Here I have to mention that, at this point, it was early February, and the night before there had been a snowstorm. This being the south of England, the snow wasn't too bad. No roads or schools were closed, for instance. But in such a rural area, the ice was treacherous to walk on and everything was out of the way of everything else. Connor's house was in a cluster of houses that didn't have so much as an off-license. All the shops were down in the actual village, with the school, and on a normal day the walk took half an hour. Connor didn't own a car. There and back, it would take an hour and a half, at least. '_I've no main course. None. I was gonna do some chicken fillets, but mum and dad ate them last night_.' Oh yeah, another thing, he still lived with his parents, '_I didn't check_.'

'Seriously? And now you want _my_ help?'

'_I need it! I really need your help, Adam. You're my best friend!_' I was definitely not his best friend, he was only talking to me because all his other friends were country-boy farmers who'd just laugh at him, and at any rate, the only vehicle most of them owned was a tractor, or an old truck. Nothing that would go on ice. As it happened, I'd taken a car to the restaurant, the Hummer with snow-chains around the wheels. And maybe, just maybe, I wanted to see how this played out.

After a couple of minutes of this idiot begging me to just come and give him a lift to the shops and back so that he could buy something, _anything_, to serve his future in-laws (something I was sure he was going to make _me_ pay for), I finally agreed to go help him. Which meant ditching the girl sitting in the next room, and I cursed silently to myself when I hung up on him and had to go tell her that I was bailing on a date (as fake as it was) to help someone I really didn't like make sure his fiancée's parents were impressed with his cooking.

I explained all this hurriedly, waving someone over for the bill, saying that I'd pay for her to get a pedicure as an apology, or I'd pay for all her room service at the next hotel she stayed at for a fashion shoot. Imagine my surprise when this girl said, 'Can I come?' I fumbled with my pen and frowned.

'Out there? Now?' I nodded my head to the window, where it was dark and snowing again, if gently.

'Yeah, why not?'

'I just don't see why you'd want to help someone you've never met do a shopping run at this time of night,' I said. It wasn't too late though, about eight o'clock. But it was pitch black outside.

'Well,' she said, pushing her stuff off of the table into her handbag, 'My horoscope said I should be more spontaneous. Plus, you know, I'm just staying in a hotel an hour's drive away in a taxi, and I've been there the last week for a fashion shoot, and there have been some… Rumours. Ones I want to get away from. So, if you don't mind?'

'…Okay,' I said eventually, thinking, thank god I brought the Hummer instead of the Ferrari.

I'll tell you now that this girl stayed at my house that night, she slept in the guest room, after she told me the rumour she was trying to keep from coming out, the one she was avoiding, was that she was gay. And also, she added, the rumour was entirely true, and she said that as soon as this advertising campaign she was shooting nearby was over she was going to have to finally face the music and officially come out. Which she did. So if anyone was _wondering_, (naming no names) no, I didn't sleep with her. But she _was_ quite cool, and when we showed up about twenty minutes later at Connor's house, he ate his words earlier when he hadn't believed I'd been on a date with a model.

On the journey down to the shops to see which one of them was open, he didn't say a word, and I was loving the silence, since normally he was so full of questions for me about why I _wasn't_ on any dates with hot girls, or he seemed to want access to my bank statement to see precisely what I'd bought lately and how much it had cost. There weren't a lot of shops open that time on a Saturday night, but when we got there, Connor assured me that he'd found a pricey joint of beef in the freezer that his parents were saving for their anniversary, and he'd decided that he'd just use it and not tell them. All he needed, he said, was pudding, and marinade.

While we walked around the shop, whispering because it was so dark and quiet, looking thoroughly weird with a model following us (well, me) around, Connor was panicking that someone was calling him through from the kitchen right then, a kitchen he wasn't in.

'How long will it take to marinate?' Connor asked.

'Hours,' Victoria answered, and I nodded.

'_Hours_!? What the – I've got half an hour at best! At _best_! Call yourself a woman, you don't know anything about kitchens,' he said, crossing a misogynistic line. I was annoyed at myself for letting Victoria come and hang out with this sexist arsehole, and she was looking, all of a sudden, like she wanted to punch him. I even saw her ball her fist, but then his eyes lit up, and he walked off. He'd gotten an idea, I knew, and the two of us stood on the freezer aisle and found the fanciest box of _Carte D'or_ ice cream they had, which was something with fudge in it, I think. Victoria was complaining to me about sexism in the fashion industry then, when Conner returned, a strip of foil in his hands, removed from the box.

'Is that..?' Victoria asked.

'What are you doing? Why do you have condoms?' I asked him, quite sure that whatever he served to his new in-laws by this point wasn't going to nearly be good enough to expect any "action" that evening from his fiancée, who I knew from school, too, and she wouldn't be happy if he ruined dinner, as I was sure he was going to do (I was right).

'No, look,' he said, 'They're _flavoured_. Beef flavour.'

'…Oh, god…' I breathed, and Victoria said nothing.

'I'll pour some vinegar and some herbs or whatever into one of these, and wrap the beef in it. It'll help the juices soak up. Believe me, it'll fit, they stretch more when _I_ have to use them,' he said, eyeing Victoria, who was pulling a very strange expression that slowly turned into a smile. This, she told me later on, was her revenge for his misogyny.

'That's a great idea,' she said, 'I'm sure it'll work.' The assurance of a pretty girl was all he needed, and as predicted, he made _me_ pay for all this stuff.

Fifteen minutes later, we were back in his kitchen in his parents' house, watching him pour oil into a pre-stretched, pink-tinted, beef-flavoured condom, and I wondered where the rest of the packet had gone (it had gone, apparently, into my glovebox, where it still was three years later). Let me tell you, watching someone try and slide a joint of beef into a condom is an experience, to say the least. Neither I nor Victoria offered to help him, we just watched him struggle, the slippery meat struggling against the latex, every now and then Victoria quietly offering words of encouragement. Clearly she knew something I didn't know about how bad of an idea this was.

Maybe, if he'd just left it in that disgusting, slimy condom for the half hour he'd originally stated and then peeled the thing off, things would have worked out okay. But he didn't. He kicked us out of the house and a few weeks later I bumped into that fiancée of his, and she told me they'd heard a bang from the kitchen. The bang, I learned, was that of an exploding condom in an oven, because the idiot had cooked it. He dragged the beef out, underdone, smoky, with straggly fibres of latex slipped across it, half-melted into the meat. He cut off large chunks trying to remove the rubber, but didn't get all of them. They knew he didn't get all of them because the father of his bride-to-be pulled a long, translucent, slightly-pink, smelly strand of something out from between his teeth during the main course. And for a week after that, they'd had food poisoning.

Suffice it to say, she's not his fiancée anymore. Apparently, trying to digest latex causes a lot of problems, and now her mother was having to have a stomach operation resulting in a gastric band fitting because the lining of her stomach had been so damaged by the stuff they use to flavour condoms.

'I knew to do it,' Victoria said to me that night, 'Because the boyfriend of one of my friends got dared to eat a condom, and now he needs prescription laxatives to shit properly.' I didn't ask for any more information than that.


	124. One Night Stand

"That is most definitely _not_ a dinner party anecdote," Donna said to Adam. By this point, they were all sharing four pizzas that Amy and Rory had gotten to cooking in the kitchen, passing the plates around so that people could have a slice of whichever they wanted.

"I got volunteered, you should blame Clara," Adam said, "And it's really not that bad, by comparison to other stories today." It was surprising now how he cast a shady glance Martha's way, rather than Clara's, because in the minds of some, Martha's story had far surpassed Clara's in terms of vileness. Martha wasn't looking though.

"I want to tell mine," Jenny then said, volunteers always welcome in that circle of theirs, "I remembered one, finally."

"Tell it, then," River said, shrugging and eating more pizza, her eating of it annoying Oswin somewhat, who'd been banned from having any because there wasn't enough to go round everyone, and she couldn't even taste. She was scowling, and River was not unaware of these, and was definitely smug.

"I'll tell a uni story that's not about dildo rape," Jenny said.

"I'll be glad to hear it," Clara muttered.

"It's really lucky that my dads aren't here to hear it, too," she said, referring to all of the Doctors, rather than just Ten, like she usually would, "It's about me and this girl."

"Well hurry up and tell it then, we haven't got all night," Oswin, who'd been disinterested a few moments ago, exclaimed, all-ears suddenly. Clara sighed and shook her husband's head, ashamed of her sister.

"Yeah, I wanna know, too," Jack said, looking at Jenny with her own eyes, eyeing his own body suspiciously. Or maybe that wasn't suspicion, maybe it was attraction, it was difficult to tell with him.

"Okay, well…"

* * *

_"__One Night Stand", a story by Jenny Harkness_

It was round about the year 100300. I wasn't very old, maybe fifty, but after fifty years of trawling the stars with a frankly insulting amount of passed-down knowledge of time machines and battle techniques, I decided it was time to get myself some education. So, I thought, what better to a degree in than astrophysics? I thought maybe that, or biochemistry, or advanced computer science, or sonic technology. It wasn't too difficult to pass for an undergraduate, and it also wasn't hard to fake the qualifications. Really, fifteen minutes with access to the Nebulink and I was a certified genius from a human colony so isolated, nobody else attending the University of Atelerix would be from it.

It was in the first few weeks that something unforgettable and certainly interesting happened. Now, I had eventually decided to just do the astrophysics course, but aside from that I'd always go sit in on other, random lectures. I was in a history seminar right then, listening to someone talk about the Eighth Decimation (that being the Eighth total or attempted genocide of another species carried out by the human race, but oh well, old habits die hard for you homo sapiens, I suppose), when I saw _her._ I'd never crept into one of these history lectures before, so all the faces were unknown as I stayed slouched down at the back of the classroom trying not to get caught. I didn't really listen to anything else I was being told about the Eighth Decimation though, I was watching this girl sitting a few rows in front on the opposite end of the hall play with her hair while managing to take notes down at lightning speed. I didn't even remember what opposing species were involved.

After the seminar, I followed her outside until I'd gotten ahead just enough to drop my notes, on purpose, as a conversation starter. I mean, this wasn't the first time in my life – or in those few first weeks at Atelerix alone – I'd tried to get with someone, of course, and I'd actually always succeeded. Anyway, I was hoping in that shallow, childish phase I was going through – one Jack would say I still _am_ going through – she'd be another notch on my bedpost. Another name in my little black book. Not that I have a little black book, it's just an expression, and you can lecture me on promiscuity later, it's not like I can change what happened or how bad I was.

I won't bore you with the details of flirtation, but I got her name, her link, and her room number. Her name was Inke, by the way, which I had no clue how to pronounce. I think that's because I wasn't listening though, I was staring at these dimples she had. It was like, 'Ink-ay'. I'd never heard it before, and all she told me was that it wasn't of human-origin. And then I almost said _my_ name wasn't of human origin, before I remembered that it was, and that was kind of sad and I thought I might change it to a Sontaran name, like Jarig or Varlan or something. Pretty fond of Koka for a while, but it's not very phonetically appropriate…

Well, moving on, I was just excited that I had a date. Funnily enough, we were at a restaurant too – or, maybe that's not too peculiar, since it's a really common thing to do. And I guess it wasn't a _restaurant_, it was a fast food chain, but _she_ chose it. And I have zero standards, so it didn't really bother me, I love junk food, since I have this crazy metabolism that seems to mean I never gain weight. Well, I've not gained it yet.

Guilty as charged, I wasn't listening to anything she was saying. I was as bad as one of the frat boys, really, but I was young, this was a century and a half ago, I already said, give me a lecture about this later. It was mainly her eyes I was staring at, though, which isn't nearly as bad as it could have been, and I don't think she was too bothered I was barely listening anyway. I thought right then that she was thinking of me the same way I was thinking of her – of course, it turned out it wasn't _quite_ the same way, but I'll get to that part. The thing about her eyes, though, was that they seemed black. Earlier I'd just assumed they were brown, but really, _really _dark brown, but now that I was paying closer attention they were just shadows. I couldn't distinguish the pupils at all, and thought maybe she was just wearing contacts.

Rudely enough, though, I interrupted whatever she'd been saying as she ravenously ate fries, and asked, 'What colour are your eyes?' and I mean, the question could've been phrased a lot worse. I've never been _completely _tactless. Here, she looked down at her food.

'Birth defect,' was all she said, not looking at me at all. I'd not really heard of a human birth defect that caused your eyes to look as empty as black holes, but then, I wasn't doing a degree in chromosomes and genetics, so I let it drop, thinking maybe it could also be the result of some accident she didn't want to talk about. Really, though, Inke was an enigma. She also refused to tell me her surname, though I wasn't too bothered.

'There's this really cool view from my dorm room,' I said eventually, a while later, when we both seemed to have finished eating, me using the same pickup line that had worked on basically everyone I'd hooked up with while I'd been there, 'In about an hour, you'll be able to see the full Arcturus-Prime Seven constellation from the window. It looks bright green, seriously.' This was actually true, but I personally didn't care too much about Arcturus-Prime Seven, because I'd visited every single one of those bulbous, green stars a few years ago and it wasn't really all it was cracked up to be. Just cold, and uninhabited. But I didn't tell her that, it'd give away the fact I had a fully-functioning spaceship stashed away below the Zero-G courts, stealth-enabled and hidden between the Gravity Destabilisers.

'I'd rather go back to my room, really,' she said. I couldn't say I was fussed, as long as we went back _somewhere_ (for the third time, spare me the telling-off, feminism was far enough established in 100300 that people could go off with however many whoevers they wanted and nobody cared any less, really. The kind of freedom of sexuality people preached in the 1960s while they wouldn't give girls contraception and still kicked unfortunate teen-mothers out onto the streets was now in implementation, and had been for millennia).

Well, what can I say? What happened was we went back to hers, a large room in a lavish dormitory (not as lavish as _mine_, since I'd done a lot of hacking into the university computers to get myself a room in the biggest, fanciest dorm I could possibly find, just because I could (with such a wonderful view of Arcturus-Prime Seven, it _had_ to be expensive)), and she opened a bottle of wine. Not a new bottle of wine, but I've never been one to turn down alcohol (probably shouldn't mention that to my father). Maybe I should have been taught to pay closer attention to people when they were pouring drinks with their back to me, and taking an awfully long time about it.

I don't remember anything more than that, but what I do remember is that that previously mentioned metabolism and significantly higher body heat of mine did a very good job of burning off whatever she'd drugged me with quick enough for me to wake up in a sub-basement of the dorm, tied up and gagged to this pipe. I think there were handcuffs, and my immediate thought was something like, '_If she was into BDSM she only had to ask_.' But Inke wasn't into BDSM (well, if she was I never found out about it). Nope, what she was into was _murder_.

This little sub-basement room was disused, an old heater sitting silently in a corner, not making a single sound without a single light lit up on it to tell you it was working. When I looked around in the complete darkness (it isn't my fault I have exceptional low-light vision) and squinted a bit, I saw that the only doorway was cemented up. It was beyond me, at that point, how I'd gotten there. But what mattered was that I _was_ there, trapped, listening to Inke in the distance sharpening a knife. The smell was something else I remembered, too, this abominable stink of rotting flesh. What that was was dead bodies, and I didn't know where it was coming from.

The pipe I was cuffed to was above my head, hanging down from the roof, giving off no heat or cold in its old age, just dead and rusty, like everything else down there. I was nearly off my feet, force to stand on tiptoes, trying to think of a way to escape and figure out what was going on. She heard me struggling, though.

'What's that?' I heard her say, as though talking to someone, and I froze. But it was too late, and I thought that even if she did find out I'd regained consciousness, I could always try my hand at my father's preferred method of negotiation. God knows what he'd do if a sadistic student kidnapped him and tied you up in a basement full of dead bodies. Probably just spend his time trying to figure out where the door was, instead of actually trying to escape.

Out of the darkness I saw Inke come closer, mainly because of her eyes, because they weren't black anymore, they were green, like a night vision camera, and I was convinced at that moment that this wasn't a human I was dealing with. Probably, that would've been obvious if I'd paid the slightest bit of attention to _anything_ she'd been saying.

'You're awake?'

At that, I nodded in the most sarcastic way I could muster, rolling my eyes a little bit. She pulled the gag off of me then, and I was sure from looking at the way the door was cemented up that the room was probably soundproof, and even if it wasn't, I didn't think anyone would be coming to save me anytime soon.

'How are you awake? It's only been an hour, those pills are supposed to last for twelve,' she hissed angrily. She had more of a hiss to her tone of voice than most other people, like she was permanently spiteful, 'No human would wear them off that quickly.'

'Joke's on you,' I said, smiling, 'I'm not human.' She barked a laugh, spitting a little, which I shied away from. Girls spitting on you was never fun. Unless you're into that, in which case, I don't judge. I'm just saying it isn't for me personally. 'Guess we've got that in common, eh?' She glared.

'You're a liar.'

'So are you. It's the eyes that give you away, you should try contacts,' I said.

'You're the only one who's ever asked about my eyes.'

'Well then people should pay more attention to your eyes, shouldn't they? These humans. Pathetic, aren't they?'

'Yes. Humans like you.'

'Humans _not_ like me, because _I'm_ not a human. I could never have as much self-loathing as some of this lot, really,' I said, shrugging, trying to act unperturbed and like I hated humans, too. I really didn't dislike humans at all, but right then, there wasn't much I could do unless she thought I was on her side.

'Then what are you? Because you look human enough.'

'…Don't suppose you have a stethoscope?' I asked, and she glowered at me, unmoving, her green-glowing eyes reflecting in the blade of the huge steak knife she had in her hand that I was constantly aware of. 'I'm a Time Lord.' She laughed, spitting again.

'Liar.'

'Seriously! If you had a stethoscope, I could prove it. I've got two hearts, you see. Try and take my pulse, I bet you can't do it,' I challenged. She didn't try and take my pulse. 'Are you a serial killer? I've always wanted to meet a serial killer. I've been planning on starting a detective agency just to meet one, you know.'

'If you're a Time Lord, why are you doing a degree?'

'Bored,' I shrugged, 'There's only two of us. Bet you thought we were extinct, right? Of course, you'll know about us if you're not a human. Humans are so ignorant.' _That_ was true, 'There's me and my father. Though he thinks I'm dead, I've been trying to find him, but I keep getting side-tracked.'

'Your father?'

'The Doctor.' She dropped her knife. 'Oh, you know him? The one who ended the Last Great Time War and killed all the Daleks? Him?'

'I'm supposed to believe that you're part of a dead race?'

'I told you, take my pulse. It's always _racing_ with you here, Inke,' I said. She paused.

'None of them remembered my name,' she said, glancing behind me. I couldn't turn to see what was behind me at that moment, so I carried on with my brainwashing technique, trying to get her close enough, but she was still standing quite far away from what I could dimly see and hear.

'I remember it,' I said, 'I'm not like them. I'm not human. Just take my temperature,' I whispered, trying to lean forwards, 'And you'll see. Maybe if you hadn't drugged me and dragged me down here like a lamb for slaughter, you'd've had _loads_ of time to test my body heat.' FYI, flirting with something will more or less _always_ work when you're trying to get yourself out of a sticky situation. Of course, it might also get you _into_ a sticky situation, but that's a different type of "sticky". These sadistic murderer types never expect you to keep your cool and try to sleep with them. Plus, it's more fun than crying. 'Not to mention my heartbeat.'

And _then_ she was close enough. Close enough for me to jump up and use the handcuffs to swing on the pipe, getting enough height as she tried to back away _far_ too slowly to kick her right in those glowing green eyes, knocking her backwards and straight onto the floor, while me doing that had been a little too much for the ancient pipe, and it was wrenched down from the ceiling so I crashed down with Inke.

Both of us scrambling to our feet and me fumbling with trying to slip the handcuffs off the remains of the pipe, sliding her dropped, sharpened knife across the floor to me with my foot, we were at odds again a moment later. Though now I had a knife between my bound hands.

'You won't use that.'

'Wrong. I won't use it _fatally_. I know plenty of places to stab you where you'll be incapacitated, but alive for long enough for me to get help,' I said, 'There are some good places in the throat, or the ribs. Collapsing _one_ lung shouldn't do _too_ much irreparable damage in this day and age, and you won't be able to breath enough to hit me.'

'I don't have the same anatomy as one of those humans,' she said, nodding behind me again.

'Well then I guess it's a lottery, so you should be careful, because I _do _know how to use dangerous weaponry,' I threatened, 'Tell me who you are and what you're doing killing humans.'

'…Have you seen the missing posters?' she asked, acting like she still had the upper-hand.

'Yep. Everyone has.'

'They're all from the same history class.'

Okay, maybe I omitted a key detail at the beginning of this story, but it would have spoilt things. Yes, I did go to lots of random, unrelated lectures, but that history lecture was specifically on the Third, Fifth and Eighth Decimations, courtesy of humanity. The thing those three Decimations had in common was they were _always_ on the same race, a race called the Wiltts, a key physical feature of Wiltts being their black eyes that glowed in the dark, allowing them to see better in pitch blackness than a cat with a diet exclusively made up of carrots. People had been going missing from this history class since just after the term started, and I'd taken it upon myself to investigate. If I'd told you, I'd've spoilt it. So, I wasn't completely oblivious to what was going on, or what she was.

'Oh yeah?' I asked, not letting on that I knew she was carrying out minor vengeances on humankind for all their war crimes against her species.

'You're the only one who asked about my eyes. None of them even know what the species they tried to wipe out _three times_ even looks like! We live in hiding, you know! My grandparents and my uncle were all killed by human kill squads in the Eighth Decimation! And you just teach it in school!? A degree in _genocide_!? Making a _joke_ of it!?'

'I'm not making a joke of it, I think it's disgusting,' I said. I _did_ think it was disgusting, the Wiltts hadn't been doing anything except trying to stop mankind from devastating a bunch of ecologically valuable rainforest planets in their system, because humans thought they had a 'right' to them, 'But I think that killing them and leaving their bodies down here in a pile to rot isn't going to help.' I'd spared a glance back and, yes, that was what was there. A mountain of bodies, about fourteen of them, all in varying stages of decomposition and all making a hell of a stench down there in the dead boiler room.

'Why would you understand?'

'Almost my whole species is dead, remember? You should see how much my dad hates the Daleks for causing it,' I approached her carefully. And, well, Inke couldn't get another word out of her mouth, because I roundhouse kicked her in the face and sent her crashing, unconscious, onto the floor.

It turned out, she had a little hole hidden in the corner of her bedroom that she'd made herself, which dropped down into that long-lost, disused boiler room. She slept above those corpses every single night. She got arrested, though, and the families all notified, thanks to me. I was famous on campus for the next two years of that astrophysics course, and I got my degree at the end, too, the highest grade they'd ever seen.

I guess, though, that the moral of the story is: _Becoming a serial killer is never a good idea._


	125. Shadowbox

"What's taking them so long fixing this… Thingy? Whatever-it's-called?" Amy asked, looking around towards the door as though that would accelerate the process of fixing the SAI.

"Shape Alteration Inducer," Oswin corrected, "And it's a complicated piece of machinery."

"It didn't take you this long to turn them back into humans," Rory pointed out.

"Well, no, because I'm more intelligent than they are. Also, they're probably arguing, and when it was just me, I didn't have anyone there to argue with about it."

"If you're _so clever_," River began in a drawl that made Oswin clench her boyfriend's jaw and glare with his eyes at the floor, "_Why_ didn't you offer to help them?"

"They didn't ask. Anyway, I didn't want to 'cramp their style', so to speak, since this is clearly them trying to prove they're still equally adept in taxing situations, considering all three of them have been having blatant identity crises lately because none of them think they have any sort of sovereignty anymore. We're past the point of noble divinity here and very nearly have an electoral system of equal leadership set up," Oswin explained, "Meaning, they're not our 'leaders' because we have _self-selected_ leaders."

"And if you had to say who one of these 'self-selected leaders' was, who would that be?" River challenged, clearly expecting Oswin to say herself.

"Martha," Oswin answered. Martha, who'd been chewing a bite of an apple she'd taken a while ago, frowned when everyone looked at her, "Martha is clearly one of the well-respected crewmembers, her being the only _real_ doctor we have on the ship. And then another would be Jack, because he's a natural-born leader. I'm not so blinded by my own reflection that I can't give a logical answer, River."

"…I think we should move onto the next story," Donna suggested in the silence that ensued, glares being exchanged through the eyes of Adam Mitchell and the Ninth Doctor, neither of them calling their bodies their own. Everyone else was thoroughly victimised, especially Martha, who'd never thought herself a leader of the TARDIS before.

Nobody spoke up, and Oswin was in the midst of an ongoing argument with Jack by this point about which one of them should go last.

"Somebody must have one," Jenny said, looking between River, Mickey and Rory.

"You can probably think of one," Martha said to Mickey.

"What one?"

"If Amy can tell a story Rory knows, you can tell a story _I_ know," she said encouragingly, "Just don't make it about somebody dismembering themselves." Then Oswin laughed. "…What?"

"You said… You know, some_body_. Good pun."

"…That's not funny," Clara told her.

"Shut up, Clara, I'm infinitely more cultured and hilarious than you."

"Of course you are…" Clara sighed.

"I'm glad you agree."

"Okay," said Mickey, "I'll just… I'll just tell the story of what me and Martha were doing when the Dimension Crash brought us here. And no, it's nothing dirty. We were tracking down this Slitheen…"

* * *

_"__Shadowbox", a story by Mickey Smith_

Since 2005, the Slitheen have made themselves known to Planet Earth by trying to invade countless times, by this point. First thwarted by the Doctor, and then by Sarah-Jane Smith a good few times, but every time they lost, they just ended up more and more angry at humans and humanity and the guardians they had to protect them. So, schemes just got weirder and progressively more damaging to Earth. Eventually, it wasn't about earning money anymore, they just became this race with a vendetta against all humans, trying to erase us from the universe out of spite and resent.

Usually, what we did when we caught any aliens was hand them over to Torchwood or UNIT, depending where we thought it would best go, whatever it was. We had no way to contain them other than a reinforced, lead-lined black van for transportation, and even then we'd had some nasty things that had destroyed any vehicle we had before.

It was the summer of 2013, and we were watching the warehouse real estate market. You'll probably believe me when I tell you that _so_ many crooks, even those of outer-space origin, buy up old warehouses. We tipped off police to a lot of money laundering schemes doing this, anonymously of course, everything we did was anonymous. Even Martha's old bosses didn't know it was her dropping off countless extra-terrestrial felons on their doorstep every few weeks, we never left any real trace, and they appreciated it too much to investigate. We were true vigilantes, in some ways.

Well, we noticed a lot of these warehouses getting bought up by someone with the surname Rotheleen. Now, Slitheen have never been good at subtlety, killing random overweight people in the government, building a lot of new school complexes all with reported weird smells. Stuff like that is all too obvious when you're a freelance alien hunter, especially a freelance alien hunter with a history of dealing with Slitheen. This 'Mx. Rotheleen' (gender undisclosed on all the forms we could get) just looked a little too suspicious for us to let go, so we kept tabs on them, seeing what else they bought.

Abandoned buildings, old schools, a derelict hospital, an ancient theatre. The longer we went on monitoring, the weirder the purchases got. The most conspicuous one of all was when they bought a big mansion outside of London right after the owner died and the son got the inheritance. Mainly because that mansion was sold for peanuts, they paid next to nothing for it. When we found out the son had been a little bit tubby, and had vanished shortly after into the blue, well, we _had_ to investigate.

Obviously, the police found nothing with the disappearance of a young Mr Blackhall, and they'd been focusing on him a lot, because apparently the circumstances surrounding the untimely passing of his late father, Obadiah, were suspicious. Of course, Brandon Blackhall didn't know they were looking into him, he was just oblivious and suddenly rich with his dead dad's millions of inheritance, to drunk on wealth to care that the police were trying (and failing, really) to build a murder case around him. And then he went missing, missing for about a week, and reappeared and donated almost _all_ of that money to, yes, Mx. Rotheleen.

More or less, that was the icing on the cake, and we decided we really ought to look into this. Brandon Blackhall was technically homeless after selling that house, vanishing for a second time, but this time it was permanent. At a loss, two weeks later, police closed the case, leaving us free to go poke around Blackhall Manor at out leisure. With us, we each had a 9mm, and a huge water gun full of vinegar, because it was looking too much like Slitheen activity to go there defenceless in the face of calcium-based green fart-machines.

Blackhall Manor wasn't the first of these places we'd looked at. The very oldest purchase from Mx. Rotheleen was a dock warehouse by the Thames previously owned by Ryan Fisheries, which wasn't even a front business, it was just some nautical tycoon's shipping base. There wasn't anything shady going on there, though. The Mr Ryan who owned it never once mysteriously vanished, he'd just put it up for sale because he'd bought a bigger warehouse in a more key area. The one we looked at was completely empty, except for the stink of fish and some scattered, meat-less fish bones strewn over the floor. They were so clean, I said to Martha, they almost looked plastic.

Then the big, ornate theatre Rotheleen had bought was next, and that was empty, too, except for some old bird skulls lying about the attic, probably left there to rot for decades. Rotheleen wasn't doing anything with them, and it just got more and more suspicious. We thought Blackhall Manor was gonna turn out to be exactly like the theatre, or Ryan Fisheries, just empty and smelling of death and damp.

The gates at the bottom of the driveway were locked, and the moon was bright that night, making the metal of the gate and the wet of the wall from the earlier rain glow silver. I gave Martha a leg-up over one of the walls, and she pulled me over with her, me falling down into a flowerbed of dead roots.

'You're so accident prone,' she told me, and I just got up and brushed myself off.

'We can't all be so nimble,' I retaliated, and she just smirked after me as I lead the way through the grounds and the overgrown grass and weeds towards the house, going around the back and casting nervous glances at the windows as we walked next to the wall. Windows of old houses always scared me, really. I always thought I was gonna see a face, like a ghost in a horror film, just there looking back at us. Probably smiling. Maybe a corpse. Didn't help that Martha kept making weird noises behind me trying to creep me out.

'You're so scared of these old houses,' she commented.

'Well, they're just weird, you know?' I said.

'If I was like you, I'd never have done half of the stuff I did with the Doctor. Like go into Wester Drumlins.'

'Going to Wester Drumlins worked out awful for you,' I pointed out. And then there was a noise inside, and my eyes immediately went to one of the windows. There wasn't anything in the window, and it just sounded like a vase smashing.

'It's probably burglars,' said Martha, and then she pointed out, when we got to the old servant's entrance into the kitchen this big, Edwardian places used to have, 'Look, the door's broken down.' It was true, the lock _was_ broken, and the door was ajar, 'Ghosts wouldn't need to break into their own house, Mickey.'

'Yeah, yeah…' I mumbled, shakily, 'Maybe we should come back when there aren't any burglars?'

'We'll just tell them we're burglars too,' Martha said, 'And we have guns anyway.' She pushed past me and went off towards the door then, me stuck following her to watch her back, even though she was probably completely capable of investigating an old house herself.

Inside, it was dark. No lights on, most of the heavy curtains in the rooms of the manor drawn tightly closed and blocking out the moonlight. A crowbar had been lying on the floor next to the broken door in the kitchen, and a lot of the drawers were pulled open like someone had been searching for something. So, burglars seemed like the likely conclusion, and they'd left their crowbar behind anyway, so they probably weren't too bright, we were thinking. We passed through a lot of the rooms with our torches switched on, no weapons drawn as of yet, but hands always ready to grab whichever gun we might need.

It was in the dining room where we saw a smashed, glass vase on the floor. The one we'd heard break from outside. Someone had been in there, and probably still was in there with us, hiding out while we paraded around with sun-strength flashlights. I made a sign to Martha that meant she should keep her torch out, but I was swapping the torch for my gun, the 9mm stowed in the back of my jeans, switching off the torch and drawing it like a soldier would.

We worked together to search the house, looking for anything out of the ordinary, any burglars, any Mx. Rotheleen, that might be there. In an old house like that, everything makes a noise. Every floorboard creaks, every bit of aged carpet crunches underfoot like snow, the slightest gust of wind might rattle the pots and pans in the kitchen. It was like it was breathing in the faint breeze, as though the house itself was alive and swelling with the wind. You could hear everything, even a mouse floors above, a moth lost in cellar, your own heartbeat and lungs thudding together in deafening you.

We'd circled the bottom floor, just about, and were in the hallway in front of this grand, curving staircase that was wide at the bottom and got thinner until it lead up to the second floor, which was partially a balcony where you were at eye-level with the unlit chandelier above our heads. We were debating in hand gestures and whispers if we should check the basement before the second floor, knowing that normal protocol was to go from the bottom floor up. It was about then that we heard the scream from above, an inhuman, high-pitched, wailing gurgle, and a sound I recognised. It was the sound a Slitheen made when it was scared, and it was coming from the attic.

Gun waving and torch-beam flashing over caricature, demonic portraits in the half-light and the fear, we were pelting at full speed up the stairs, following our memory of that sound, which was followed by no others. The door on the second-floor leading to an upwards staircase, wooden and narrow, was wide open, partially blocking the window at that end of the hall.

'I hate this,' I hissed.

'We're never watching _The Woman in Black_ again,' Martha muttered, 'It's an alien, not a ghost, and it sounds dead.' She lead the way, me pointing a gun, cocked and ready to fire, over her shoulder. I was a crack shot by now, I'd had a lot of practice. That's where we found them. Skeletons. Three huge, unnatural skeletons, big-boned and definitely of Raxacoricofallapatorian origin, be they Slitheen or not. The bones were picked clean, shining in the moonlight coming from the open attic window above us, shafts of silver light making the bones shimmer and glow.

I went straight for the window to see if whatever had just killed them and somehow ripped their flesh apart was still there, but I couldn't see anything except the shadows of the house on the grass.

'What could have done this?' Martha said, dropping her water gun full of vinegar onto the floor and going to see the skeletons, examining them as though they were a postmortem, though I didn't know what she was hoping to find. It was like they'd been dead for so many years they didn't have a single bit of meat left on them to decompose, yet there was no smell of death, and the scream had been moments ago. I sighed and put my 9mm back in my belt, my own water gun sliding off my shoulder as I walked over to her.

And _then_, we were surrounded by this blue light, out of nowhere, just enveloped in it. A teleportation matrix. And then, well, we were here. Just out of nowhere. On the TARDIS. Almost three months ago now, and suddenly our biggest problem was successfully hiding firearms from three gun-hating Time Lords.


	126. Royalties

"Wait, so, what killed the Slitheen?" Rose asked, glancing between Mickey and Martha. Or maybe Martha and Mickey.

"We don't know," said Mickey.

"…Wait, this happened _three months ago_ and you just _never_ mentioned it!?" Donna exclaimed.

"Well, yeah," Martha said, "We just got caught up in everything. I mean, we get here and suddenly there are all these Doctors and new people to meet, then the next day everyone one ends up going to Vegas, and the rest is history."

"What about when we, you know, _fought those Slitheen_? The ones who bought Asda?" Clara pointed out.

"We _were_ gonna bring it up, but then everyone got distracted with your wedding," Martha said, "And then it just got to the point where if we brought it up everyone would do exactly this and ask why we never mentioned it before!"

"Well we really oughta look into that," Jack said.

"But we can't exactly do anything right now," Jenny added, "So? Just, on with the stories? There are only four people who haven't told one. We can always go round again." Then there were groans.

"I really don't want to tell another," Rose mumbled, "I'd rather the Doctors just figure out how to fix our bodies."

"I suppose _I'll_ tell the next one," River volunteered, "I have a lot of stories, after all."

"Well, try not to tell one about someone getting a leg removed, we already had one of those, didn't we, Song?" Oswin said, and then there was silence in the room for a few seconds.

Until Jack Harkness went, "_Ooooooh_," and everyone glared at him, "What? Inappropriate? Yeesh, tough crowd…"

"I'll begin, shall I?"

* * *

_"Royalties," a story by River Song_

One thing they don't teach you when you're training to be a professor of archaeology, is _don't mess around with cults_. Or, maybe they do teach it, and I wasn't listening. I must have missed those lectures, because it seems like a key lesson, not messing around with cults. A lesson I learnt the hard way.

I suppose this story opens in that age-old cliché wherein I awaken, dazed, battered and tied down to a big slab of rock, lain out like a Christmas turkey and ready to be gutted with an awful large knife someone was holding in a very weak grip above my stomach. Of course, this wasn't the _first_ time someone had tried to sacrifice me. One of the things about being a woman, or being a Time Lord, or just being generally in the wrong place – as I so often was. But, is there really a _right_ place?

I was simply busying myself in the sacred forests of some lesser tribe called the Zivi on a planet covered mostly in trees and following reports of burial mounds in the area, completely minding my own business and looking to do a little grave robbing – after all, I might find something worth a bit of money, a supposed god or something, possibly, and then I'd get back on my current mission of finding myself a vortex manipulator. But, well, the Zivi don't really like aliens coming to rob their ancient dead, and I'd taken a nasty tumble through a trap door and knocked myself out. And, that was where I came in, completely bemused and about to be sacrificed. Like I said, it was cliché.

You get kidnapped an awful lot while you're dealing in archaeology, really, and trying to explain to uncivilised peoples who still haven't figured out what stars really are that all you want to do is steal some of the shinier totems of their culture, and sell them on to the highest bidder (be that a black market connoisseur or a museum curator) to make yourself some money so that you could chase down your space-husband never goes well. If anything, it made things worse, they got very offended about me trying to sell the skulls and goblets of their ancestors on the Fifty-First Century equivalent of eBay, and then they brought out a bigger knife.

_Isn't this going well?_, I thought to myself. Phenomenally, really. I supposed, I hadn't really had any solid plans they were ruining. I could afford a little bit of a detour while some weird, three-armed people with white hair and blue skin who _definitely _looked like smurfs tried to rip my innards out with an archaic, rusty dagger. What better way was there to enjoy a Saturday night?

I wasn't particularly worried – and a main contributor to that was the fact they hadn't tied my feet down, just my hands, and me being me, I've always been good with my feet.

Well I listened to them rant for a while, me unversed in even the most basic forms of their language, which sounded like a lot of clicking and spitting (and their spit was green, I noticed), just waiting for my opportunity to make my daring escape. These Zivi really were a lot like smurfs, though, being as they were scarcely three foot tall, and I was more than twice as big as the shortest of them. Red fire burned along the walls, lighting up the hieroglyphic-type doodles of their culture (now I'm not going to deny to anybody that I've always been a bit of an imperialist) scratched into the stone.

While they were shouting this or that, dagger hanging above me, I stared at the runes on the wall. Really, thank god I was a professor in archaeology. What some of these symbols meant, I recognised. The language was one I'd studied – though never orally, which was why I couldn't really make much sense of what they were saying. But there, on the wall, was a drawing of two hearts. There in black, mashed-up powder-ink, was a cardiology diagram of _Time Lord_ origins.

Or so I thought.

Nevertheless, in my ignorance and then getting perhaps a _little_ panicked because I couldn't see a doorway (though it was entirely plausible the doorway was behind my head at an angle I couldn't stretch to see), I started wildly shouting about two hearts. In as many languages as I could remember (which was, yes, a lot) I was bellowing out about my inner organs and the fact I had two of those beating things, going as far as to mimic the thud-thud-thud-thud of a Time Lord heartbeat. That, more than anything else, got them paying attention to me and listening. For a while.

But I'd made a fatal error in judgement with my own god complex, thinking that just because they had two hearts painted on the wall, that meant they thought the Time Lords as benevolent, omnipotent gods. Me being the Child of the TARDIS, I've always had ease learning languages just by listening to people say them. It took a few moments for me to realise I had it all wrong. I was a _demon_ to them. Whatever Time Lord they'd met before hadn't done them any good, and they'd known exactly what I was from the very start. And I thought them not mentioning this to me was very rude and immoral of them – the least they could do is tell me _why_ I was being sacrificed. Maybe then I wouldn't have confessed to my intention of trying to steal all their valuable items.

I decided finally, enough was enough. It was easy enough to kick the dagger straight out of the leader-smurf's hand, kicking it so that it was spinning in the air above my head. I then managed to do some _very_ impressive flip right around the monolith, surprising myself with the ability to _not_ dislocate my shoulders and elbows as I ended up pressed against the head of the stone tablet with my hands still tied down. Except, it was only one of my hands tied, because the relatively thin bit of rag that had been keeping my right hand still had just been severed by the flying knife. I grabbed the knife, cut the other rag, and was suddenly armed against a swarm of blue soldiers, who were not moving. Just staring.

After all, I supposed, I didn't want to kill any of them. Mainly I was disappointed that nobody had been around to witness my escape. Yet still, I didn't have the full story. What I did have, though, was most of the language. And so, in their tongue, I asked what was going on. Though with more swear words, ones that don't really translate into English.

I suppose they said something along the lines of, '_We must quench it_.' I didn't really know what "it" was, and I didn't want to stick around long enough to find out. A worthless trip to that planet, I supposed, I hadn't made any money at all, I'd just gotten trapped in a sacrificial chamber. I was just about to demand one of them show me the way out, when there was a roar from somewhere deep in the cave system I was trapped in. That must be what "it" was.

'You feed it Time Lords!?' I demanded in their language. They answered with the typical answers, that unless they gave it hearts to consume, it would just kill all of them. And that was when I figured out that Time Lords were so coveted, because in just one body we had two entire hearts, and though I'd used up my regeneration quota, I definitely still had enough of the anatomy to be fed to some tunnel god. And really, the discovery of a tunnel god would get me quite a lot of money in book royalties… It would definitely help me acquire that vortex manipulator from the Time Agency.

'Take me to it,' I ordered. Maybe a wise choice, maybe not – but, I lived to tell you all this tale, didn't I? Well, what can I say, they gladly took me to it, stooping through all these smurf-sized corridors, them and their bright red torches lighting the way eerily. I thought about telling them red was a terrible colour for lighting, and it didn't do anything for their complexion, just made them look like bruised plums. What am I lying for – I _did_ tell them that, and then one of them kicked me, and then it got told off for, '_damaging the goods_,' I think one of them said.

I was walked right up to this big door, silver and dirty, glimmering a little in the scarlet light of the smurf torches. And _then_, well, they knocked on the door. By this point, I was very confused, because this door looked like a spaceship door. And then it struck me that this ancient burial mound I'd been looking for so that I could loot it might not be an ancient burial mound at all, but a crashed vessel, stuck down here in the catacombs of some indigenous aliens.

Darkness fell around me and the smurfs seemed to scramble and scuttle away into some of the little passageways I'd seen around, the ones that only they could fit through, me if I was on my knees and only then. For a few seconds, nothing happened. It was freezing cold, pitch black, and I was wondering if I might be about to die or something.

Then the door slid open, jittery and getting caught on dirt, like a lift was malfunctioning. And I was faced with an Oful. Ofuls were humanoid, but taller than humans, with tiny wing-shaped protrusions on their backs and they had red and green scales and glowing red eyes, which made them look quite angry most of the time, along with their elongated bone structure and fangs. I, however, knew that Ofuls were supposedly the basis for most of the universe's myths about dragons. They were a far advanced race and far more knowledgeable than most other species would give them credit for.

'...Another one?' it asked me, in the language of the Oful, which thank god I actually knew, them being a key species in the universe, 'Another Time Lord?' I shrugged. 'Look, I don't wanna eat your hearts, okay? It's been a couple hundred years since the last one showed up, I thought maybe they'd figured it out…'

'Maybe you could explain to me what's going on? What the huge rumble was?'

'Oh, that?' it asked me, 'That's just the ship's thrusters. I have to let them off every few days to stop them getting clogged with dirt, in case anyone ever excavates this area. Listen, they think I'm a demon because of what I look like and because when my ship crashed I killed a lot of them by accident. I don't know what they do to you people to stop you regenerating – I think they stab both hearts at the same time. I keep trying to tell them…'

'Why haven't you left?' I asked it.

'Every time I try to leave they just hide from me and I get lost. Whenever I eventually fall asleep, they bring me back here. I've been here for almost a dozen millennia,' the Oful said, 'How'd you escape?'

'Quick wittedness,' I said, 'Agility.'

And, well, we talked for a while, and then I remembered I had a homing beacon in my pocket with a direct link to the Chief Admiral of the entire Homeworld Alliance. Thank god sonic technology allowed me to get a signal. We were away from there in a day or so, and that Oful still owes me to this day, and I made a lot of money saving him.

Which just goes to show, maybe you _should_ mess with weird cults, because you might make a lot of money out of it.


	127. Flower Power

**AN: Trigger warning: Rape/sexual assault. But, like, the guy totally gets what he deserves at the hands of his victim.**

"Is that like, the whole story?" Clara asked with a furrowed brow. That question gleaned her the darkest look possible for River Song, looking all the more worse since it was on the face of Nine, and Clara realised that maybe questioning her husband's dead ex-wife might not be such a good idea, and maybe she shouldn't have done that.

"It _was_ a _little_ anticlimactic," Martha added, trying to 'soften the blow', or something, but huffily enough, River Song crossed her boyfriend's arms and grimaced, "Didn't that happen to us when we went to the trenches a few weeks ago?"

"With the brain?" Amy puzzled, "I guess… You know, sort of. Minus the sacrifice and stuff. The poorly-delivered plot twist was basically the same." Then she paused, "I mean, sorry! Not that… Crap, um…" she tried to defend herself to her grumpy daughter.

"It was a great story…" Rory said half-heartedly, and River-as-Nine scowled at him.

"Well, then, _father_," she said resentfully, "Let's hear _your_ story."

"Yeah, I mean, it has to be you, since I'm going last," Jack Harkness said.

"You are not going last," Oswin interjected, "_I'm_ going last."

"Yeah, yeah, we'll settle this in an hour after you've told your story. Before I do," Jack said smarmily, and Oswin just shook Adam's head, crossed his arms, and slouched back, clearly intent on having the closing spot of the day.

"Right, fine," Rory sighed, "Not that I'm much of a storyteller."

"Clearly neither am I," River complained in a tone full of passive-aggression. Amy rolled her eyes, possibly thinking something about ungrateful children. A few others sighed, her attitude boring them, and then she decided she was going to skulk off to the kitchen and spend the next half hour or so making herself some phenomenally eccentric cheese toastie.

"It was when I was an Auton, for a while, guarding the Pandorica with Amy inside…"

* * *

_"Flower Power", a story by Rory Williams_

When you spend 1894 years guarding a giant box, you learn a lot of stuff. Overhear a lot of things. Living out of a suitcase in museum after museum, storage facility after storage facility, lab after lab, is difficult. Especially difficult because 1894 years before 2010, they didn't really value hygiene. For almost two millennia, they didn't value hygiene. It's really hard to keep up regular washing. At least I didn't have to worry about going to the toilet or eating, being made of plastic, but after the turn of the Twentieth Century, I had a series of great lies to tell homeowners that would make them allow me into their homes so I could steal a bath, or a shower, at every available opportunity.

Most of the time, though, I was wherever the Pandorica was. Hiding in cupboards, or public toilets, or spending hours in cafés and restaurants over the road making sure nobody suspicious went in looking for ginger Scottish women in space-prisons. Becoming a night guard was the best thing I ever did, since I could spend all day hanging around certain hidden spots of the exhibits, away from cameras when they eventually got those, and away from any judgmental employees who recognised me from the night shift and wondered where I lived, or if I ever went home, or what I was doing. I spent a lot of my life in the shadows, and a lot in any toilet stalls with _CAUTION_ tape put across the doors (I used to put the tape up myself, until cleaners started getting really confused).

In one of the dinosaur exhibits of this museum, the partially-recovered fossils were all kept under lock and key in rooms with glass walls. Me being the night guard, I had a key to everywhere, and behind one of the rocks in this exhibit was a perfect place to lie and sleep, which was usually what I did during the day. I'd become basically nocturnal. I had a few other hiding spots, behind old curtains or some of the historical sets, me painstakingly memorising cleaning schedules and patterns and becoming an elusive myth. _The Last Centurion_, or, more fittingly, _The Creeper Who Sleeps Behind The Dinosaur Bones Exhibits_.

It was a couple of hours after closing time, I was doing my usual rounds of sitting in a chair borrowed from the café in front of the Pandorica because I only circled the museum every hour. It was the 1960s. Or maybe the early 70s. I can't really remember, but it was that whole period of social revolution, '69 or '71, something like that. Era of the bra-burning, socialist, peace-loving, hippie feminists. Beatles mania still buzzing through the streets. All that _groovy_ stuff.

It was midnight (I heard a clock chime outside somewhere), which meant it was time to search the place again. I mean, I had to do a good enough job that they wouldn't fire me. I couldn't afford to be fired, then I'd have to _live_ in the museum and hide from the _next_ night guard – it was bad enough when they got CCTV and I had to spend the days elsewhere pretending I had some kind of actual life.

I'd just checked the men's room, and was going into the women's room. That was when I heard crying. Coming from inside one of the girl's stalls. This wasn't the _first_ time this had happened, but usually when it did, it was a lost little girl whose mother had been convinced by the museum staff who hadn't looked nearly as thoroughly as they should that her child must have wandered off outside somewhere. Right now, that mother would usually be running around all the main roads within a ten mile radius checking the asphalt and the cobbles for blood-streaks, pink raincoats and pint-sized wellington boots. And yeah, sometimes that was what had happened. You don't live for two-thousand years without a few nasty sights and some flecks of trauma.

'Hello?' I called, trying to gauge by the sobs if this was a child or not. I hoped it was, otherwise, I didn't know what was going on. The crying stopped when I spoke, and then there was a sniffle, and I just stayed by the door, not wanting to interrupt if it wasn't an emergency. Maybe she was just locked in, whoever she was, and she didn't know there was a night guard.

That wasn't what had happened, though, I'll tell you now.

Well, this girl's name was Pamela. Pamela Quinn. She never told me her surname, but I saw it on the front pages of newspapers for months afterwards, offering rewards for her safe capture and ensuing handing over to the police. That night, she told me the whole story. The story the papers didn't say, but the protestors had written on picket signs in the streets. Nobody believed it, but it was the truth. I'll tell you what Pamela Quinn told me that night.

She was twenty, Irish, a student over to study botany at the city university. While she was in university, she got involved with protests. She'd heard about the sit-ins in America by black students protesting Civil Rights, and had always felt respect for those people brave enough to take the risk of standing up for what was right. That motivated her to join some student activist group when she went to university, in the midst of protesting everything, from women's rights to gay rights to sex workers, marijuana, capitalism and the Vietnam War. A protest junkie. I couldn't tell you if she really believed in any of those things or if she just liked being part of something, but she seemed to have a good heart.

She was in the middle of a protest against chopping down this area of woodland, saying how it would disrupt the mating patterns of almost a dozen species of owl, hedgehog and badger, including killing some of the oldest trees in Britain. It was the trees she cared about more than the animals, but she was still doing the right thing, really. I mean, the land was going to be used to build a sewage recycling plant. That was what got to Pam the most, the fact that these beautiful trees were going to be uprooted and then, where they'd once stood so tall and proud, human waste was going to be pumped through, rinsed, then pumped back through our tap water. She thought it was despicable on a whole bunch of levels – I mean, people in the 1960s and 70s didn't really know too well where their water came from, that it was the same water they'd peed in just filtered and sent back. Most people didn't want to think of that.

This girl, just barely twenty, full of life and vivacity, tied herself to one of the trees. Now, the people she was with weren't too enthusiastic about that cause particularly, and word was that there was some bigger protest going on in London against America's exploits in southeast Asia, and a lot of people thought the cessation of the use of Rainbow Herbicides on the farmlands of innocent people was a more important cause that saving a couple of oak trees, especially when the bloke in charge of the sewage plant construction brought out the bulldozers and the chainsaws.

It ended up so that Pam was left alone, and, as aforementioned, she decided that trying herself with a length of rope to the oldest tree there was the best way to go about the protest. And, well, those men said they'd just wait until Pam fell asleep, then they'd untie the rope and just carry her out of there so they could get to work, since they were three days delayed already.

This next part, Pam went into details for me. I'm not going to go into details, she doesn't deserve that, but all you have to know is one of those scumbag loggers crept away from their little encampment that night, and Pam woke up in the middle of non-consensual sex against that tree, hands bound behind her bag by her own good intentions with her rope. She got raped, and she couldn't cry out, because she had his hand around her mouth. But Pam wasn't an idiot, it turned out she wasn't the little girl everyone thought she was.

Pam smoked a lot of cigarettes. A _lot_ of cigarettes. Because she smoke so many, she had a lighter tied to her wrist with a length of twine, maybe once a friendship bracelet. Her sleeves were long enough that this guy didn't know that, and he also didn't know that the rope wasn't bound nearly tight enough to completely restrict her movement in her arms.

As carefully and slowly as she could – keeping herself together even while this disgusting excuse for a human was committing atrocities on her – she pulled out this lighter and set his sleeve on fire. And men tend to pull out when you set them on fire, I learnt from her. She kicked him away, and because the rope was knotted behind her back (it was wrapped about twice around the tree), _she_ could untie it. Luckily, she'd never been good with knots, she said.

So, Pam free and angry, her rapist's arm slowly burning with the fibres of his coat melted and sticking into his skin, she looks around for any weapon. She was a little delirious (when I said she smoked a lot of cigarettes, I didn't mean cigarettes with tobacco in them, this was a time where every third person you walked past on the street stank of marijuana) and definitely in shock, and she was _furious_. She wasn't a _little girl_ at all, and this sick bastard had _violated her_.

In my opinion, he got what he deserved.

Pam didn't go into details about that, she was too shaken, but the newspapers did. The newspapers might've even exaggerated a little, not that it made me pity that man. Well see, the papers Pamela Quinn was so angry about people trying to chop down her trees, she crept over to where a few of the loggers were waiting, all of them asleep, and had somehow dragged this huge, unconscious guy thirty metres away into a dense bit of forest, and had then woken him up by setting fire to his arm. They didn't mention anything about any rape, too busy trying to paint anyone who said anything against the establishment as a demon.

They said Pam flipped him onto his back as he screamed, his hands tied to the tree she was trying to save so desperately, found the biggest rocks she could, and then dropped them onto his back. Some said dropped, some said thrown. Bruising down his spine and neck, somehow he was still unconscious. With her stepping on his bruised, spine-broken body in stilettos she hadn't been wearing. A lot of stories differed about what Pam did to that man, the only thing that was consistent, the only thing that stayed the same with every single story, was that she'd taken the axe from his belt and chopped off his penis. And nailed it to the tree with a few hairpins she had on her.

I mean, if you ask me, he deserved. I'm not sure how much of that was true, just the penis part, because she told me that herself. And there was a crime scene photo of it, supposedly.

Well, Pamela became some stone-cold killer. This symbol that feminism was evil, that feminists wanted to kill all men. Some of them said she was a feminist, some said she was a communist, a pacifist, a lesbian, a vegan. One tabloid claimed she was a witch and it was some sick ritual. She was in the news for months.

They never caught her though. Pamela Quinn stayed at large, a fugitive. Never found dead, never found hiding out, never found under a false name, or in another country. Some people said she moved back to Ireland, some said she went to America. Anyone who'd known her, she'd gotten a message of the truth to, and they spread it so far it broke the news about twenty years later in 1983 that the guy was a reported racist, and that it fit was forensic evidence that hadn't been released back in the 60s or the 70s or whenever because it was a cover-up. A symbol to stop the power of the activist movements in the country.

She went on the run, this was the following night, and ended up hiding out in a museum. I took a break from guarding the Pandorica to smuggle her to this little, weed-stinking flat she said was a safe place. I never told the police what I saw.

I don't know what happened to Pamela Quinn, but wherever she is, she left a legacy, and she got her revenge. I just hope she had a good life after that.


	128. Ghost Light

**AN: Wow this is surprisingly sad...**

"If that story is true," Martha began, "You need to find Pamela Quinn and, I don't know, worship her or something. He totally deserved that. She's a hero."

"Why have you never told me that story?" Amy questioned him, turning Rory's own eyes back on him darkly.

"I just haven't," he said simply.

"Well, why not?"

"You've never really asked."

"Why should I have to ask?"

They bickered for a few more moments until Jack took it upon himself to intervene.

"Okay, well, you two can fight about this-" he began, but was ignored and talked over by Rory.

"You just get jealous."

"_Jealous_!?" Amy exclaimed.

"Alright already!" Jack shouted above them, "Shut up, both of you, no-one wants to hear about your lover's tiff. Unless Oswin's telling a story about a lover's tiff, since she's going next."

"I'm not going next," said Oswin.

"You are."

"I'm not."

"Are too."

"Are _not_. You are."

"That's not correct grammar," Clara said to Oswin, but she went ignored.

"Am not!" Jack protested.

"Yes, you are! _I _will go last! The smartest person in the room should obviously decide who's going last."

"You can't do that," Jack argued.

"Let me go last."

"I will never-"

"QUIET!" Donna yelled, "Just toss a bloody coin!"

"…Does anybody have a coin?" Jack asked the group, and nobody spoke.

"I know what we can use," Rose-in-Ten's-body said eventually, and then she held out his palm and gold dust started to swirl there (apparently, in spite of their shape changing, superpowers remained intact), and some circular disc appeared, which she tossed over to Jack, who caught it with Jenny's hand.

"Is this..? Oh, come on? Seriously?" he held it up to the light, and there were resounding groans from eight of the twelve people in the room. Jenny, Oswin and Adam Mitchell were sat there feeling horribly confused by whatever was going on, and Donna was laughing at the rest of them. But what Rose had conjured up was a casino chip.

"Is that seriously from the Ectosino?" Mickey questioned.

"Yeah. It is," Jack said, clearly amused.

"And here I thought we were done with that…" River sighed.

"I don't get it," Jenny frowned.

"It's, um… I've told you about this," said Jack, "the second night after the Crash, where everyone got drunk and decided to go to Las Vegas-"

"Except me," Donna pointed out, "I was the only sensible one."

"You know, when Whoufflé got married, River strobed, the Ponds stole the baby, Rose stole $200,000,000, Ten got a tattoo of Rose's face on his back?"

"Martha got her entire face pierced," Rose said.

"Oi!" Martha argued, "It's all healed now, okay?"

"And Mickey became a stripper," Rose finished.

"That seems like years ago now," Clara shook her head, "Anyway, toss the chip."

"Heads, you go last," Jack said to Oswin, "Tails, I go last."

"Great. Head is my favourite," Oswin said coolly, and her boyfriend groaned next to her in her body, shaking her head. Jack tossed the chip and let it land, and then stared, and then his face dropped. "What? What is it?" He said nothing.

"It's heads," Jenny looked over, "Jack has to tell his story first." Jack was severely disheartened by the outcome of the chip-toss, but cleared his throat, bested by a piece of cheap plastic with a glow-in-the-dark picture of a ghost on it, and began.

"Call me a cliché, but I've always loved the theatre…"

* * *

_"__Ghost Light", a story by Captain Jack Harkness_

This story is a tragedy if there ever was one.

What's not to like about an old-fashioned music hall, a cinema, a stage? They all have a performance in common. Red carpets, red chairs, golden trimmings on everything. Lights always on too dim, your eyes fighting against the spotlights reflecting off sequined gowns and costumes, squinting to see the dancers or the black-and-white slapstick as a piano plays along to the left to offer the accompaniment. The theatre has always been the original definition of "grandeur". Statues and art deco posters in the lobby, the stink of popcorn dug into the walls along with that of sweat and liquor.

It was 1954, people sought refuge from the threat of the Cold War in those places. They'd go hide from the news reports and the fear-mongers by losing themselves in a new movie straight out of Hollywood, boxed and shipped in dozens of reels across the Atlantic. Or they'd watch a show. A musical, a comedy, a tragedy, a pantomime. Ballet. There's some comfort in being with so many other people in the middle of a post-war decade in the throngs of the nuclear arms race, the communist space race. All anybody wanted was to hide.

I got called into a theatre that year. Had one of those typical names, though I don't recall it too well now, _The Old Pavilion_, or something. Now, when I say I got called, I mean I saw a newspaper that morning in September and decided to go investigate myself. It wasn't often you had a case of mass murder where everyone in an entire theatre died, nobody lifting a finger to help themselves, the doors all unlocked. But in _The Old Pavilion_, a few hundred people were dead. People in the boxes, people on the balcony, people selling tickets, people backstage – every one of them was slaughtered. The carpets were black with blood congealing in the fibres, the smell of death overpowered the smell of popcorn.

I showed up and lied about who I was, saying I was some overseas detective who was on loan to Scotland Yard for my expertise in weird, unsolvable cases. Of course, those officers there were offended by that, made a few passing remarks about yanks not being able to stop bombing places long enough to solve a crime. I took it on the chin, of course, me knowing there was no way they were gonna solve this case. It was bound to go cold and end up one of the world's great mysteries, like the _Mary Celeste_, or Atlantis, or the Black Dahlia.

These detectives were busying themselves trying to find witnesses, but everyone who might have been one was dead. Nobody living nearby heard any screams, any struggle, everyone dead in their seats, individually cut to pieces and stabbed a dozen times each, blood running down thighs and chests and arms onto the seats and the floors, people hanging over the balcony with their heads half hanging off, smiles on their faces, blood streaking the ornate, ivory carvings along the walls. It had been _Swan Lake_ playing, an iconic ballet, of course. Every single cast member was dead. All the swans, all the stagehands, all the technical support and the people who worked the ropes and the lights and the sandbags and the sets. Not one person in that whole theatre was left alive.

Forensics weren't too swell in 1954, and none of these guys had much of a clue how to _really_ investigate and get _results_. They relied on witness testimony and convenient hair samples where the colour was the same – it was impossible back then to tell who was who from hair fibres, or blood fibres, or skin cells. Not that I thought there was going to be any forensic evidence linking the killer, at this point, all I knew was that the killer probably wasn't human. I needed forensics because I wanted to know who died first, because I thought that might offer some kind of lead. Was it the guy selling the tickets? Was it the rich baron in the balcony? The duchess of wherever in one of the boxes? The leading man? The choreographer? There was no way to know, and they were already too far gone into rigor mortis. Nobody found them until some kid who was swapping shifts in the lobby showed up to take over and found his colleague's throat ripped out, staining the popcorn under the bar deep pink.

There were so many questions though. Why kill everyone in a theatre? Why did nobody try to leave? Why did nobody fight, or scream? They all looked happy to be massacred in the prime of life. Some of them, if you were to wipe away the blood and sew up the gaping wounds, might as well be blissfully asleep, rather than dead and gone.

The theatre owner hadn't died, he hadn't been there that night, but no establishment could possibly survive that kind of slaughter. Over the next few months, I came up with nothing, and neither did anybody else, and only about two people went and saw a film or a show in that place. No companies wanted to perform there – you know how superstitious those people can be. They thought _The Old Pavilion_ was cursed.

I stuck around, of course, having nowhere else important to be. _The Old Pavilion_ went out of business and got boarded up. Six months later, it was just a scar on the well-to-do street of Fifties suburbia, a tragedy marring an otherwise perfect street. That was when I decided to break in.

One night, the following February, was when I took a crowbar one rainy night and wrenched the boards from the door, flashlight in hand, revolver in holster. Within, it was eerily empty. Pitch black everywhere, except the main stage. Now, I told you that theatre-type people are superstitious, and evidence of this is the ghost light. Brought out when nobody's in the theatre and it's closed, they leave one light turned on at all times, centre stage, to appease the ghosts. You ask one of those people, they tell you, every theatre has a ghost, and that's why the light's kept on, to give them a way to perform. _The Old Pavilion_, despite it being shut down indefinitely, still had its ghost light on, which tells you a lot about the owner of a place. The owner who was refusing to sell his beloved theatre to any land developers, and whatnot.

To cut it short, I found nothing that night. Nothing there. It was all empty. Not even any spooky bumps, light flickers, door rattles. Just a big empty building. I wasn't giving up, but I thought that going to talk to the owner might shed some more _light_ on the situation, pun intended. So, that's what I did. I found out that Mr Whittaker, the owner, lived on that very same street, just two doors down, and had been extensively questioned by the police. I hadn't talked to him though, I ignored their proceedings for finding a witness, because I knew there probably wasn't one.

I knocked on his door, this poor old man, in his seventies, and he answered with a gaunt face, empty eyes, grey hair and shaking hands. His house had a blazing fire and was heated up as much as he could get it, and I was sweating as soon as I stepped foot in there, but he stayed shivery, with multiple layers, and was always poking the coals to make them spark and keep the flames roaring.

'Tell me a story,' I said to him eventually, 'Tell me the story of _The Old Pavilion_.' So, he did.

His daughter had been Odette, he said, the White Swan of Swan Lake. She'd always loved ballet, and by the age of twenty, she'd become one of the best dancers in the country. A relative died, he told me, and left a great deal of money to Mr Whittaker. Rather than keep it to himself like a miser, he thought the best thing to do was to use it to help his daughter, do something productive. He hadn't built _The Old Pavilion_, but he'd bought it when it sat derelict, refurbished and renovated it, and threw it back into life.

And then, he said, he was lying to me. His daughter had never been Odette, never been a dancer, never been famous. She had died in the room next door when she was nine years old because she caught the flu, back before vaccinations were common, back before the world was safe, and she'd died. She'd always _wanted_ to be Odette. _The Old Pavilion_ had stood two doors down, and she could hear the music when it played. But she had still died, about the same time the relative from the lie-story had died, leaving Mr Whittaker enough money to afford the medicine he didn't need any more for his little girl.

With the money, he bought the theatre. Every time _Swan Lake_ performed, he would go and meet the cast, all the Siegfrieds, the Odettes, the Odiles. He said, one Odette reminded him so much of his little girl, he'd given her a music box, a gift of his daughter's, before she'd died. Then he stopped talking to me.

He said, it was late. He said, the story was boring. I didn't believe him, but I didn't know where to poke holes in his story to get the truth, but I thought, if he changed his story once, maybe he'd changed it a thousand times.

I didn't know what else to do, though, so I left. I thought, I could find the truth some other way, through medical records, or something – I could easily schmooze some hospital staff to let me take a looksee through their files and find out how Mr Whittaker's daughter had died, or if this daughter even existed.

The next day, though, I came back to his house, to see if maybe after one night he'd changed his mind, sitting and torturing himself by that fire all night long. I knocked on the door, but there was no answer. I pressed an ear against it, but heard nothing within except the crackling of the fire. There was a spare key under the welcome mat, so I stooped to unlock the door and go inside, finding it completely empty. The fire, though still blazing, was much diminished from the night before, but the whole house was empty. Decided he'd thank me later, I picked up an empty vase, tossed the dead flowers into the sink and filled it with water, going back to the living room to douse the coals and put out the fire. Surrounded by smoke and steam, I gave up, and left, thinking that, if I was going to find Whittaker, the theatre two doors down was my next best bet.

It was midday by now, and I circled the whole outside looking for another way in, save for the one I'd made myself a few nights ago at the front door with my crowbar, but I found nothing. There was only the one entrance, unless I decided to pointlessly smash a window. The door creaked when I pushed it open, and with the windows all boarded up, it might as well still be night time. There was one key difference though, between the theatre then and the theatre a few nights ago.

The ghost light was switched off now.

I turned on my flashlight, holding it above my shoulder, looking around for anything odd, but I didn't see anything, just like the other night, even without the ghost light to stave off the stage spectres and the phantom performers. The ghost light wasn't just switched off, though; the bulb was smashed to pieces, obliterated. I wondered why Whittaker had even kept it running in the first place, though, with the theatre closed down and derelict.

I headed to the dressing rooms, all of them still with the names of the stars and the actors who had performed in _Swan Lake_ six months ago, last September, when everyone had been mauled. The dressing room of Odette, the star of the show, was first and biggest, and my final stop in that place. That was where the body of Mr Whittaker sat, eyes glazy, leaning back in the chair of the star with slashes across his body, a blood-spattered sheet of paper in his lap, folded in half like a letter. On the dressing table behind him sat a music box, open, but not wound up, the tiny, white-clad ballerina in it frozen, mid-pirouette.

_I lied_, the note began, when I picked it up and smoothed it out to read, struggling with the dark blood splotches.

_My daughter never had the flu. She was nine years old and perfectly happy, and we had just seen _Swan Lake_. I bought her a music box for her birthday, one with a ballerina, and hid it in a drawer to wait until next week. I left her at home with her mother the day after, and my poor girl found the box. I came home and found them dead, the music box on the living room floor, completely still. The police never convicted anybody. They tried to arrest me for it, but I had an alibi, multiple witnesses seeing me at the shop. No forced entry, no sign of an intruder, but no blood on my clothes, it was as though a ghost had killed my family. That was forty years ago._

'I gave the box as a gift,' I read aloud to myself, 'To…' and the writing on the page just stopped. Stopped like something far more important had come along to Mr Whittaker, that stopped him from finishing the story. When I looked at the music box, I knew what it was. Complicated alien technology, a dangerous weapon. If the music box was wound up and opened, the music would hypnotise anybody in an entire building, and then an entity would be sent forth to kill all the calm bystanders, a ballet-themed Trojan horse – nobody could resist opening a music box. Including whoever had been playing Odette that evening, whoever had fallen fatal victim to the goodwill of an old man who still thought a psychotic escapologist had murdered his wife and child.

Mr Whittaker had figured it out six months ago, and this was his suicide. The thing in the box had killed him when he'd opened it, cut him off halfway through writing his letter. He thought it was cursed, thought it was a spirit, an angry, lost soul. That was why he'd broken the ghost light, because he thought it would stop it if he left it turned on. To this day, that music box is locked up safe and sound in the Torchwood archives where nobody can get their hands on it.

I told ya, didn't I? This story is a tragedy if there ever was one.


	129. Oedipus Killer

**AN: After you all read this last one, you all have to review and tell me which story you think was the best and which was the worst (worst quality-wise, not like, grossness-wise). Well you don't ****_have_**** to, but it would be nice. Also, if anyone is really grossed out by masturbation, just a warning that this whole story more or less revolves around it. But it's not as bad as, say, Clara's story or Martha's story and isn't quite M rated.**

"Well, that's depressing," Martha sighed.

"I don't think it's quite as depressing as a girl ripping her legs off and then bleeding to death," Clara said casually.

"It was a good story though," Amy said.

"A _true_ story," Jack said to her.

"Why does everybody think I'm lying!?" she protested, but nobody answered her.

"It's my turn," Oswin declared, "_I'm_ gonna tell a story about the thing every single one of you has been thinking about all day: Masturbation."

"Oh, wonderful," said Clara sarcastically.

"It's a great story," said Oswin.

"I'm interested," Jack said, shrugging.

"Yeah, and wanking is _so_ not as bad as dildo rape, self-dismemberment or condom beef," Oswin said, causing shame to Clara, Martha and Adam Mitchell, "Anyway, it's either this or I tell an embarrassing story about Clara."

"Oh, tell an embarrassing story about Clara," Rose said.

"_Don't_ tell an embarrassing story about Clara," Clara said, the fact she was speaking in the third person out of the mouth of her husband puzzling people for a moment, who wondered if somehow whatever had happened to them had reversed. Although when people thought about it, they realised that didn't make sense. "Just tell the stupid wank story."

"You asked for it," said Oswin, "This is something that happened on Horizon, the spacestation I grew up on…"

* * *

_"Oedipus Killer", a story by Oswin Oswald_

The year was 5115. Homicide detective Erl Sland of the Titan Beta police department was slurping down a drink we called coffee, even though all it was was artificially flavoured brown slime in a yellow-stained metal mug. Caffeinated muck was what it was, and it slid like watery mud out of the coffee machine every morning, flavouring itself with imported, powdered milk that had never seen the inside of an udder and the synthetic sweetener they called sugar that didn't make anything sweeter at all, it just tasted less stale.

He was sat there at his desk, ten minutes before his shift was due to start, skimming through the latest local news reports on the datanet on his computer, reading glasses sat next to him as he squinted painfully at the white text on the shimmering blue background of the holographic screen being projected out of a thin slit on the silver top of the desk. There was the usual stuff about the latest bout of cabin fever to hit some Earthling immigrants – the type of people who hadn't been born and raised in a setting of perpetual spring with no night and day cycles. It was common, sometimes there were murders, or people got deported back to Earth, or to a different colony on an actual planet without a roof. So, Detective Sland was just rifling through these, when he got a call through.

Minutes later, he was on his way through the emergency teleportation matrix in the office that gave the police access to the whole of the station in seconds (there wasn't any other solution to getting around fast enough). Erl Sland was heading to Apten, the rich district of Horizon, the rich district with a phenomenally low crime rate, which was why the murder he'd been told about seemed so out of place. Suburban housewife getting sick of her life and lashing out? Teenage prodigy under too much pressure finding a blaster on one of the slum-decks? Gold digger getting bored of waiting for his wife to die? It could be anything, and it was bound to be a scandal.

If only he knew then what this murder was going to grow into – the most twisted modus operandi he'd seen in all his career.

Walking around a corner of the well-to-do street full of big, silver houses cleaned to mirror-quality, reflecting a warped print of his own tired face back at him, he saw the cluster of the white-suited forensics team beyond the crime scene tape stretched out all the way across the path between the houses to block pedestrian transit. Some women were standing gossiping on a nearby doorstep about how inconvenient it was that somebody had been murdered there.

Detective Erl Sland was waved over by one of the white masks, a few sky-blue clad street officers loitering around to watch out for the press or any civilians who didn't to see underneath the white tarpaulin in the small almost-alley between two houses.

'What've we got?' Erl Sland asked, and was met with a head shake and a swear word.

'You'd better just come look,' he was told, the forensics-guy holding up the white tent flap for Sland to go in and find a dead woman. This woman was plump, with tired laugh lines around her mouth and crow's feet by her eyes. At first glance, she looked kind a homely, but with the fatal difference that her throat was slit.

'…What's that stain on her clothes?' Sland asked, nodding at a weird, white patch of crusty stuff on the belly of the poor woman. He got a reproachful look from someone on the forensics team, who then sighed.

'Semen. It was _delivered_ there after she died,' the forensics-guy said, sounding a little sick. Erl Sland didn't examine the body for much longer after that, he thought he'd just pay attention to the crime scene and wait for the autopsy report to come in and the identity of the woman.

By the time he got back to his office after that, finding very little except for a disgusting stain made of post-mortem masturbatory emissions. So, he figured they're dealing with some sick psycho who kills women and gets off on it, and Sland didn't want to know what they found elsewhere on the body. Anyway, the idiot had left all his DNA splattered on his victim, he'd be caught and brought to justice within a day.

His worries were unfounded though, because the only semen traces were those visible ones on the body. None in any other orifices or crevices, the rest of the woman was clean of spunk and soaked in her own blood. Her name doesn't need disclosing, but they found out eventually that she was a mother of three, entirely happy in her life, taken when nobody else was around. No witnesses meant it was planned, not just some pervert satisfying a random fetish. But they found the guy who did it, arrested this seemingly happy family man and he got locked up pretty quickly for 30 years with outstanding evidence. Though something never added up about it, mainly the fact that that man had an alibi, he'd been with his husband, and the husband vouched for him, and then he argued quite passionately that he was gay – why would he want to kill and masturbate onto a dead woman?

Nevertheless, there was nothing to be done. He was arrested and sent off on the next convict vessel to the Obsidian Detention Centre – the Homeworld Alliance's biggest prison for dangerous individuals.

A month later though, Erl Sland got a call. He got called to a totally different district of Horizon, the red light district of all places, the pornographic mile full of sexual deviants and lonely self-pleasure addicts. So, he showed up there in that slimy, poorly-lit corner of the station that's always a hot-spot for criminal activity, and found a woman who seemed so peaceful she might as well be asleep, traces of smiles left on her face, conservatively dressed, throat slit with a crusty patch of ejaculate on her dress.

'Is this..?' the forensics-guy, the same one as before, asked Sland.

'A copycat,' said Sland, 'Copycat. Has to be.' Again, nothing on the crime scene, no evidence on the body except for the dried puddle of sperm. And, again, they found the killer that night. A killer with no motive or murder weapon, but also a killer with no alibi. A lonely guy who didn't live too far, apparently a regular in one of the adult vid sims in the red mile. But this woman was a mother, too, four happy kids.

Five weeks later, it happened again. Same MO. Sperm on the dress, impossible killer, mother of a large family, throat cut. No sign of any murder weapon. The press were saying it was a serial killer, the Oedipus Killer they called this guy, for the fact he killed and got off on dead mothers. In secret, in the police department, that theory was now being entertained, but they couldn't predict the movements of the killer, they just knew that mothers were being targeted, but there were tens of thousands of mothers of families on Horizon, there was no way to keep all of them safe. And they couldn't figure out a link between the patsies, either, since most of the officers were, after the fifth victim in as many months, convinced none of those men were the real killer. Three of them had solid alibis, but the murder weapon was always the same sort of knife and it had never been found in the houses of any of those men.

They were lost for leads and ideas though. They couldn't stop what was happening and the real killer never left the smallest trace of real forensic evidence, leaving them an elusive enigma of a person. Profilers were busy trying to come up with anything solid, the only real idea they had was that this was some pathetic man who'd never had a good relationship with his mother, and so now he was taking it out this way. The alternative was that it was a pathetic man who had a relationship with his mother that was _too_ good, verging on incest at best, and maybe this was his way of dealing with grief. But then where was the sperm coming from?

With nine women dead by August, though, the police had a breakthrough.

On August 7th, Yzzi Skutt was getting dressed for another normal day at work at the Trunt Sperm Bank, in a Trunt district of Horizon, you'll be surprised to know. Another day in her life of tediously handing empty pots to endless strings of men, some of them repeat customers, and taking back the warm tub of gunk when they were done, so proud of themselves for cumming into a dish. She thought it was sickening.

She sat there while these men fapped away in the next room, touching themselves until they couldn't anymore, her pretending not to hear and reading a magazine while being unable to fully close her ears to that sound. Along with that, there was the women she had to deal with. Women who came in crying, so unable to conceive, women exactly like her. All sorts of things – ovarian cancer young, polycystic ovaries, their husband or boyfriend had a low sperm count or a vasectomy reverse ended up unsuccessful. All those people there as a last-ditch effort to have a baby, a child, to bring new life into the world and nurture it to perfection.

Poor Yzzi Skutt was never destined to be one of those people though, one of the success stores. By the Fifty-Second Century, artificial conception techniques like sperm donation or in-vitro fertilisation were almost always successful, only a tiny handful of women, a meagre percentile, a microscopic minority, always ended up failures. Yzzi Skutt had more miscarriages under her belt than she cared to remember, more issues with her downstairs than in the whole waiting room of that donor clinic. All she'd ever wanted was a child.

But one day, a woman came into that clinic, a woman who was almost too old to have a fifth child and hadn't been conceiving properly on her own. So now she wanted IVF, or some other treatment – it all happened under the same roof those days, it was all the same. And Yzzi Skutt, as her fingers stabbed the keyboard as she resentfully made an appointment for this paying woman, this happy woman, this _mother_, burned with envy. Burned with hatred. How could one woman possibly be so selfish? Keeping all the good eggs to herself?

Yzzi Skutt had her name, her address. She waited. She waited a month, nearly, for her opportunity. She took a steak knife out of her house and followed that woman from her home as she went out late one night for a simple nappy run for her youngest. That child never got hose nappies, and the next morning her mother was dead in a high-class Apten gutter with the sperm from one of the day's latest donations splattered on her clothes. It was so easy to frame those men, so easy to get them caught – a single drop of man-juice was all the evidence needed to get someone sent down for murder, get all their samples removed from storage, because no woman was going to pick the semen of a murderer to father her child.

If Yzzi Skutt couldn't have a child of her own flesh and blood, nobody could, and as far as she was convinced, nobody would ever catch her, the Oedipus Killer. She was eyeing up her tenth victim at that moment, when the blue light on her desk flashed, meaning she was called away to the office of her superior. A sick smile on her face at the thought of smiting that woman and her as-of-yet non-existent, sixth child, she stood up and opened the door.

There was her therapist, her boss, two police officers and a detective.

'I'm Detective Erl Sland, homicide division,' said the detective, one of the officers closing the door behind Yzzi and blocking her route out, 'We'd like to take you in for questioning in regards to the nine murders performed under the moniker of the Oedipus Killer.'

As Erl Sland handcuffed the woman, the psychotic sperm bank employee, she raved and raved, practically confessing then and there, so impressed with herself for fooling them for so long. The ego of a serial killer was never something to be challenged. All they needed to do was think about where the sperm was coming from – of course, a sperm bank, where else? A week of trawling through records of any and all sperm donors, they finally found the place where _all_ the previously convicted men had gone to donate, and there were only a few people who had access to the storage, and only one of them was as unhinged as Yzzi Skutt, in and out of therapy and refusing to take her medication.

It was a frame job if there ever was one, and for seven months, Horizon was terrorised. But now, the terror of the Masturbation Murderer, the Sausage Strangler, the Penile Perpetrator, the Sperm Psycho, was finally over.


	130. Hero Syndrome

_Hero Syndrome_

They all sat in their circle. It was the evening by now, they'd been telling stories all day, and now they were back to where they'd started, with nothing to do.

"You know," Jenny began, "This has been a way better bonding session than all the ones the Doctors have wanted to organise." Martha shifted a little guiltily, being as the first 'bonding session' had been very much her idea, "Funny how they're not involved." Oswin, at that moment, looked like she was going to say something, but whatever it was she thought better of it, and only Adam Mitchell noticed in the group.

"Yeah," said Donna, "But what do we do now? You lot are still all…"

"Oh, right," Jack said, sounding like he'd forgotten they were all body-swapped. Telling stories had ended up being a very good distraction for the fact that, more than just switching bodies with their partners, they'd_ all_ swapped genders.

"Oswin, why don't you just go fix it for them?" Rose asked.

"Let them prove themselves, it'll keep them amused for a while," was all Oswin said.

"Why do they want to prove themselves?" Martha asked her.

"They're scared they're losing their authority," Amy answered, "Honestly, it's been going on for weeks. Don't you talk to them? It's all, '_nobody listens to me, nobody respects me_."

"Try being married to one of them," Clara said, and got murmurs of agreement from River and Rose in the circle, "I got an earful of it yesterday. He asked me if people cared what he thought, and then said everyone forces themselves to put up with him."

"You're saying it in his voice and body and it's weird," Rory said, pushing some strand of his long red hair behind his ear.

"Alright, Pond," Clara said.

"…Don't do that, it's weird," Amy said.

"Sorry."

"What did you say to him?" Donna asked.

"That he – and the rest of them – have to start treating us lot as equals to them and actually respecting us as individuals. Rather than just trying to claim leadership," Clara told them.

"This is what I said about us having a passive electoral system," Oswin reminded them, "I think they're having a midlife crisis. All three of them. Crises. Something like that."

"…Well, all of us are here right now for a… House meeting," Martha began, "So what do we do about it? They _are_ our friends."

"They're idiots," Jack said, and he got looks, "Don't get me wrong, I love all three of them in more ways than one, but they're idiots. They think they're better than us, and they have to get over themselves."

"Tough love," Jenny added.

"Speak for yourself, but the Doctor is the only reason any of us are here," Amy pointed.

"He's not the reason I'm here," Oswin said, and everyone looked at her, "What? Jack and Amy are the reason I'm here. The Doctor refused to take me on the TARDIS because I was a Dalek. Or rather, _looked_ like a Dalek – I mean, I was a de jure saltshaker, if anything."

"What does that mean?" Rose asked.

"It's the opposite of 'de facto', which means, 'in everything but name.' She means she was only a Dalek by name, nothing else," Clara explained quietly.

"I wasn't gonna shoot anybody. I didn't even know I was a Dalek until he told me," Oswin said, "But enough of his racism. Carry on." Clara shook her head.

"…Right, well, apart from Oswin, none of us would be on this ship without the Doctor."

"They do sort of treat us like pets or something though," Mickey argued, "If any of us does something good he treats us like a dog you just taught a new trick to, and without him, we'd never have learnt it. Then he gets angry when we can fend for ourselves."

"I think they'll figure it out eventually," Rory said, "I mean, even if…" Rory stopped, for the same reason every one of them had suddenly stopped paying attention to what was being said. All of them were experiencing a strange sensation across their whole bodies, and it could only be described as what those of them who knew _Harry Potter_ would say was polyjuice potion. Bumpy, bubbling skin, faces distorting, arms and legs shrinking or elongating, changing shade, hair falling out or sprouting, changing colour as eyes glazed over and when to blue or brown or green. Teeth were straightening or making themselves crooked, fingernails were elongating or trimming themselves, clothes were stretching or becoming more baggy, and in the case of Adam Mitchell a whole leg was shooting out of his thigh.

And then, they were back. The lot of them were returned to normal. Except Donna, of course, who was still Donna, and had never not been Donna. Oswin picked up her leg from the floor next to her boyfriend and stuck it back onto her stump, after examining the adhesive, shape-fitting goo inside of it to check it was still apt. On both she and River, normal clothes returned to them with a shimmer. Everyone else was stuck looking like a weirdo.

It only took a few more seconds for the three Time Lords to burst triumphantly into the room.

"We did it!" Eleven exclaimed.

"Well done, you," Clara said. They seemed awfully surprised when people didn't actively cheer and applaud them for their efforts.

"Aren't you all happy?" Ten asked.

"Everyone's happy," Rose said, smiling. A few of them were a little miffed that their house meeting had been cut short. How often was it they got a chance to talk about the Doctors without any of them eavesdropping or knowing they'd been excluded from the discussion? But the lot of them saw the fact they were disappointed at the lack of worship proof that they really did think themselves better than the humans on board. Humans plus Jenny, though Jenny was constantly patronised by them as well.

"Well I'm gonna have a shower," Amy said, getting to her feet. Mumbles from the rest of the group followed, and within five minutes, everyone dispersed, leaving the three Doctors and the wives-slash-girlfriends of the Doctors left in Nerve Centre. But all in all, the crew thought it had been an enlightening day. They never normally all talked together.

* * *

_Oswin_

In the new room of Adam Mitchell and Oswin Oswald, since their relationship had taken a few necessary, sometimes unwanted, turning points, two of the walls were something called 'scenic' walls. When one entered through the main door, the walls directly ahead and directly to the left were these such things. Both of them screens, of such futuristic definition they looked like windows, impossible to tell that they were just images unless one knew. From the door, the bed was ahead, its head against the right hand wall in the centre, and further down that wall, on the left of the bed, was the door into the bathroom. To the left of the door was a sofa, in that corner a desk, and angled halfway towards the bed and halfway towards this sofa was a huge television. In the top left-hand corner was a chair facing the rest of the room, and finally, on the back scenic wall, sat a small fridge on the floor, which didn't have much in it at that moment apart from some cans of beer and Coca Cola.

Oswin was slouched down on the floor, leaning on the bed, next to the door into the bathroom, staring at the wall, which at that moment was displaying a view of the Saturn rise from Horizon, blue tholin of the moon's atmosphere visible just below. If she were to approach it, the scene would change according to where she was standing, Saturn's asteroids distantly spinning as though she was really watching out of one of the maintenance deck windows. Adam was in the bathroom as she stared, her right knee pulled up so that she had her arms wrapped around it and her chin resting on top, artificial leg detached and lying somewhere on the floor on the other side of the bed.

She was so distracted and caught up in both the image in front of her and her own absent thoughts, she didn't notice Adam Mitchell sitting down on the floor next to her until he elbowed her gently to get her attention.

"Hmm?"

"What's wrong?" he asked.

"Nothing's wrong," she told him, though at that, she shuffled closer to him and put her head on his shoulder, lying her right leg – her _only_ leg – back out in front of her on the soft carpet.

"I haven't seen this view since you gave me the glasses," he said, "I didn't realise the atmosphere was blue on Titan. It's beautiful." She smiled. "Does it look blue when you're on the surface?"

"No," she laughed a little, "It looks orange. It's like Mars with more dust, and less red. Not that Horizon is on the surface anyway, it's floating above it, quite far. To get onto the surface you need a shuttle. They mine it for resources. It's not a very accommodating atmosphere though, pretty as it is."

"Oh yeah? How come?"

"Well, my dad was a physicist whose job was to monitor and repair the artificial atmosphere. One day, there was a tear in it, and a malfunction in the tether of his spacesuit. He died," Oswin explained, "I was only two though."

"Oh, crap, I'm sorry…" he apologised.

"It's fine, really," she said, "I wished I'd known him. He was really clever, though, wrote a lot of books about physics and whatnot. I learnt a lot from them. I think Frank has them all now, all dad's books. Anyway, that's not what I was thinking about."

"…What happened with the SAI? Why did it do couples?" he asked.

"I said it did couples because it could detect personality and see what you think about frequently. Of course, Mitchell, I take up a lot of your thoughts. Why wouldn't I?"

"I'm not denying that you do, but that's what you _said_. I don't want you to tell me what you said earlier, I want you to tell me the truth. You were being defensive earlier. And then when Jenny said it was strange how the Doctors weren't involved with our 'bonding session,' you looked like you were gonna say something," said Adam.

"Fine, you're right. The shape alteration inducer was programmed," said Oswin, "By the Ninth Doctor. It's hero syndrome, he made a disaster for the three of them to fix. That's why I didn't intervene. It's like Amy and Clara said, they want people to respect them more, or whatever."

"Well how can you know it was him?"

"Rose said Ten didn't leave _my_ room all night, and I'm pretty sure I believe her. I don't think he has the willpower to leave her at night, and along with him, neither does my brother-in-law. And Nine's the most ostracised of all of them," Oswin said, "I'm pretty sure he's the one who's sabotaged the navigation system, too."

"…But you're the one who fixed the navigation systems originally, _and_ the one who scavenged the SAI. Maybe he's trying to frame you?" Adam suggested.

"He's not, babe. He has become the puppet of his girlfriend, what with lopping off my leg and all. All that other stuff is coincidental. If I ever get a chance, I'll ask him about it. If nobody does anything he might do something really dangerous, like crash the ship or something…" Oswin sighed, "River will have figured it out as well."

"How come?"

"Well, as much as I hate her, she's not stupid. And second of all, the SAI only affects biological matter. Not holograms. Somebody separately switched us, using the TARDIS, and the fact that using River's damn DNA lock those two can still access _my_ visual output and change what I look like without me being able to stop it. Hence the dismemberment," Oswin told him, and then she turned to him and kissed his cheek, "I love you."

"I love you, too."

"Wow, I sound pathetic…" she said, shaking her head at herself. Adam laughed.

"Definitely. Hey, we should go out somewhere. We haven't done anything together since you got back."

"…We moved in together? And when have we _ever _'gone out' places together? People don't take me out in public often, because I'm a danger to society. Which _I_ think is an offensive, uneducated attitude towards the mentally ill," she said.

"So..?"

"I'll think about it," she said, and then she got suddenly excited, "Oh my stars! I _just_ remembered – I finally fixed it so I can sleep. Totally simulated like a normal human being. I mean, it's a way to have Helix refresh its backups of my brain and run bug scans, or whatever."

"But what if I wake up in the middle of the night and have to tell you something _really_ important?" he asked.

"I am able to be woken up, it's not like someone's switched me off. I told you, simulated like a _normal human being_. Loud noises, or my name, stuff like that will wake me up," she explained, "You'll be fine. We can talk in the morning, okay?"

"Something might come up in the morning."

"If something comes up then you're cordially invited to spend the day with you in whatever 'important business' I've been called out on," she said, "Okay?"

"Okay," he said, kissing her.

"Now, are you gonna come to bed?"

"Alright," he sighed, standing up and helping her to her feet. Or, her foot. "I suppose you're cute when you're asleep anyway, _and_ you don't make fun of me."

"See? It's win-win."


	131. Isolation III

_Clara?_

_Isolation III_

Her head felt like it was bleeding when she woke up, the familiar thud of a killer hangover gracing her that morning, as it did many mornings recently. The sunlight pouring through the thin curtains made her eyes sting, burning the skin of her eyelids and just making her head hurt more. She wondered if she had any ice cubes in the freezer she could net together in a towel and press to her face, and wasn't in the least bit surprised or disappointed by the prospect of spending yet another day in darkness with so many painkillers running through her she was too dazed to function. It didn't matter though. It wasn't like she had a job to go to anymore, or a real reason to get up, other than to shoo the girl she'd dragged home from yet another pub, bar or club out of the flat.

Whoever this girl was, all Clara knew was that she had soft hands, and smelt like a new-car-smell air freshener. And that she was asleep. So, Clara shrugged the random person's arms off of her and slid out of bed with aches all over, knowing she'd already slept for so long that she wouldn't be able to go back to sleep even if she tried. Which was a shame, because dreaming was one of the few joys left in her life.

Blinding feeling around for the pyjamas she kept under her bed, she felt like a mole, or other such nocturnal animal with poor eyesight that should very much be kept underground, wincing when she put weight on her right foot like she'd injured it. Maybe she had, she could scarcely remember. At least she hadn't been sick that night. She was starving though, she didn't know what time she'd eaten yesterday before deciding to go out – again. The third time that week, she thought, and it was only Friday. Or was it Saturday? She sighed when she couldn't remember that, either. The only consolation she found in her new behaviour habits (or rather, her old behaviour habits from university given a new and grief-filled lease of life) was that at least she wasn't drinking alone.

She went and filled the kettle, yawning and barely paying attention to the room around her, except for the plant on the windowsill which she thought was beyond saving by now. It was dead and gone, just like everything else in her life. Well, except for _one_ thing…

"Oh, finally, you're awake," came a loud, old, obnoxious voice from behind her, and she jumped and knocked over the sugar jar, spilling the powder onto the worktop, some of it onto the floor next to her. She turned around to glare at the Doctor, "I've been waiting for you for hours. At least you're dressed."

"I'm not dressed. I'm in pyjamas. I'm hungover."

"Your makeup's done though," he pointed out.

"It's not 'done', I haven't washed it off from last night," she hissed at him, talking as quietly as she could, something _he_ wasn't nearly to inclined to do, "And I really ought to do that, otherwise it'll be bad for my skin."

"You're skin's bad anyway, all pockmarked – look, there are two huge craters on your cheeks," he pointed at her rudely.

"They're dimples!"

"Keep telling yourself that," he said, looking away from her.

"Look, you can't be here right now," she said, "If that girl sees you or the TARDIS-"

"Girl? What girl?" he asked sharply, and Clara didn't say anything, just crossed her arms, hoping the two of them talking and the sound of the kettle (which was on its last legs) spitting behind her didn't wake the unknown girl in Clara's bedroom up. "Not _another_ one? That's the fourth this month!" he protested. It wasn't the fourth this month, it was more than that, but she didn't correct him, "You might as well be a cat, bringing all these weirdos home. What's this one called?"

"…Rum and Coke."

"That's not a name."

"Well it's what she was drinking. I don't know her name," Clara said, "But you have to go." By this point, she'd spotted the TARDIS just sitting through in the living room. Somehow the sound of it hadn't woken her up earlier, unless he was lying about how long he'd been there. "I have the worst hangover, okay? You're not helping."

"Don't you have any respect for yourself? _Sleeping around_?" he questioned rudely, looking a little disgusted. She glowered.

"It's nothing to do with respect," she said, "It makes me feel better, something you probably don't understand."

"If you let just anyone come and…" he couldn't find the words, so he just waved his hand in some mime that didn't make the slightest bit of sense, "…Then that _is_ you devaluing yourself."

"Feminism means I have freedom to do what I want without being judged. I'm not hurting anybody, it's not anybody else's business what _I_ do with _my_ body," she argued.

"Yes, yes – feminism is a passing fad. Next you'll be telling me you've stopped plucking your monobrow because you're 'beautiful the way you are', or some other drivel," he scoffed.

"I don't have a-"

"Save it." She grimaced. This was definitely what she needed that morning, this constant crap from somebody who 'supposedly' cared about her and her wellbeing. Cared about having someone to drag around with him, more like. "There's a spaceship gone dark in the year 7000."

"Maybe people in the year 7000 know how to switch lights back on," she said bitterly.

"It has fantastic views! You can see the whole planet below!"

"I'm not coming out today. I have to wait for that girl to wake up so I can get her to leave, and you can't be here when she does. Okay?"

"Not okay. You're coming to space."

"You can't make me, Doctor," she said coolly.

"It'll do you some good to get out somewhere, you barely go out anymore, and when you do you get drunk. You don't even work."

"I'm just taking time off," she said.

"It's been months since..." he trailed off.

"Sorry for not getting over Danny's death as quickly as you'd like me to," she said darkly, "Now are you leaving? The answer is yes."

"I'm not. I _do_ care about you, Clara."

"Funny way of showing it sometimes."

"You haven't been anywhere since Christmas. And you said you'd come back."

"I just need a rest," she said, ignoring the kettle when it boiled, "I need a rest, and some painkillers, and some cigarettes."

"Nobody _needs_ cigarettes!" he protested, but she just glared at him, "Just come out."

"You're like a child."

"Just because I look younger than you."

"That's not funny," she said, "This is why-"

"Please?"

"Just go away!"

"No!"

There was a noise from Clara's room, and they both turned to look.

"Now you've done it," she hissed, "Just… Okay, fine. _Fine_. If we leave now, then whatever, just… Just go to the bloody TARDIS, thank god she doesn't have to go past it to get to the bathroom… I'll leave a note…"

* * *

The TARDIS thrummed and vworped and faded into existence next to a stairwell, facing the gun-coloured wall and the shadows when Clara stepped out. She'd heard the Doctor mention something about the 'fantastic views' on board the _Caelestis_. He always had a way of nagging her so much she thought she didn't have a choice in going out or not, it was like a friendly elimination of freewill - if such a thing existed. Right then though, she saw no such views. She saw a wall, and the dark.

The Doctor barged past her rudely as she loitered in the door, leaning on the side of it and thinking she really _would_ rather have stayed in bed that day, nursing her hangover and all. She'd told the Doctor the same thing when she'd given in and gone onto the TARDIS, to which he'd replied, "You stay in bed every day, you're that lazy," and made a callous remark about bedsores she ignored. She'd told him she was at perfect liberty to stay in bed and watch reruns of costume dramas all day if she wanted.

She sighed lethargically, but deigned to follow the Doctor anyway, reaching back to close the TARDIS door behind her. At least he'd let her use the TARDIS to shower and brush her teeth and scavenge some clothes.

"See! What did I tell you?" the Doctor grinned, talking loudly and waving an arm at what was, sure enough, a nice view. She saw twinkling stars winking from light years away, she saw bits of space-junk and blinking jetsam drifting around in orbit of the stationary ship, and a great, sapphire planet stretching out below. She didn't have the same sense of wonder that she used to do, though, like she was seeing the world in black and white. She stared out with glassy eyes for a few moments. To the Doctor, she probably looked enamoured with the scenery, but her eyes were defocused and her head was empty, lost in invisible daydreams like she was always half asleep.

She heard a clatter from her right and looked over, past the TARDIS and the stairwell which was behind her, seeing a dark corridor.

"Sorry!" the Doctor called from the room and the source of the noise, "Knocked a fire extinguisher over. At least, I think that's what it is. It's awfully quiet on here!" he shouted. Clara said nothing, but she decided she didn't want to look at the scenery anymore, so she backed away to lean on the side of the TARDIS again. "You still there?" the Doctor called.

"Yeah," she replied, trying to sound optimistic. What was it about grief he didn't understand? She didn't _want_ to leave the house, she didn't _want_ to go look at planets or stars. She would quite like to live in the dreams she had at night, though, at this point she didn't know if they shouldn't be classed as nightmares. But they weren't about her mother anymore.

"Isn't it nice out there, like I said?"

"I guess." The Doctor then started prattling on useless trivia about the planet below. He was being loud though, and she was about to tell him to be quiet - maybe people were asleep - when a hand clamped over her mouth, hard.

"Don't say anything," somebody hissed, and the voice threw her into a fit of panic and confusion as she tried to fight against the hold of the hand, "Not one noise." She still flailed though, trying to get a look and see who was grabbing her – maybe she knew them from somewhere?

It was a right hand clutching around her face, the voice that went with it so much like her own if she heard herself played back through a camera. The hand was almost the same, too, except for the two rings on it she'd never seen – one silver one on the ring finger and one giant black one on the index with a tiny green light blinking on it. Along with that, though, it was covered in blood. The other arm, the left one, looping itself around her middle in order to drag her more effectively, was covered in dried blood, too. When she strained her neck even further to get a look, not fighting quite as much as she had been moments ago, she saw there was only one foot on the person dragging her. Where a left foot should be there was just a sphere on a stick poking out of the end of a pair of jeans, leaving a faded trail of red as it dragged her down to the floor and then into a vent. All she knew was this was an Echo, but she had no clue which.

A minute later she was stuck in an air duct, the circular opening of it sliding closed in a segmented formation, the bloody hand still holding her mouth shut, the Echo's face now visible in the dim light of a torch being held by a second person. But the face of an Echo still didn't help, only the face of this other person, this boy, proved a clue, because she could swear she'd seen him before… Aaron? Adam? Something like that…

For fifteen minutes she was kept stuck there, the other two being completely quiet, listening to heavy footsteps and visceral grunts outside. The voice of the Doctor was gone, too. He must have wandered off – but what the hell was out there? What thing had she just been saved from by these two? Because if that was… Whatever-his-name-was, then that meant this Echo with the missing leg and the serious expression and the bloody appendages was, most likely, Oswin Oswald. The Dalek.

Eventually, the noises outside subsided. Loud footsteps were heard going off in another direction, then a distant sound of something bumping into metal, and silence. For a minute longer though, it felt like, the Echo still kept her hand on Clara's face, keeping her quiet.

"…It's safe," Whatshisname whispered, looking at a device in his hand. And finally the hand was remove, and Clara tried to wipe the dried blood away from her mouth with her own hand, almost identical to that of the Echo.

"Only whisper," the Echo ordered, wiping her hand on the floor, "And do everything I say, or you'll get yourself killed. Understand?" Clara nodded.

"Who are you?"

"Oswin," the Echo said. So she'd been right, "And you're Clara. We've met before, do you remember?"

"Of course I remember," Clara hissed angrily, "But you had two legs the last time I saw you."

"Yeah, and you had a boyfriend. Let's not get into that," Oswin said.

"How do you know about-?"

"Now isn't the time," Oswin said seriously in the half-light of the tunnel, "Adam and I heard the TARDIS, so we came to investigate," So his name _was_ Adam, "But Old Twelvey out there lured the alien towards him. You can't go look for him, alright? You're coming back with us, we have weapons, we're sensible, you'll be safer with us than him."

"But – what is that thing? He might be dead!"

"He's not dead, if he was dead you'd've heard him scream, but it has more of a taste for him than for you," Oswin said, "Him being a Time Lord. And what do you mean 'what is it'? I told you, it's the alien."

"Alien..?"

"From the film!"

"What film?"

"_Alien_," Adam said, "The xenomorph, you know? The unkillable monster from hell?"

"Wait – what!? How-!? But-!? That's a _film_!"

"Yeah, look, it's a long story! And how have you never seen _Alien_? No culture, I swear…"

"You'd never seen _Ghostbusters_ until the other week," Adam pointed out, "Coincidentally, both star Sigourney Weaver…"

"Not important," Oswin hissed, then she turned back to Clara, "The point is, you have to stay with us and trust us. Maybe he can keep himself alive, then you two can go properly travelling again and he can, you know-"

"Relentlessly insult you some more," Adam finished her sentence.

"Exactly. Think of all the misogynistic remarks you get to hear if neither of you die."

"Why should I trust either of you?" Clara demanded.

"'Why'? How about, _because we're the same person_?"

"But you hate the Twelfth Doctor."

"Yeah, because he's a dick. He constantly insults your body, and we have the same body-"

"Minus a leg," Adam quipped, but both of them ignored him.

"-so _I_ am offended by that, and I think I have a right to be, okay? I'm not gonna go out there and risk xenomorph attack to save that twat. Maybe you'll get lucky and he'll regenerate into a nicer person?" Oswin snarked. Clara scowled at her. "We're going this way. You go out there without our help, you get killed, okay? We're the ones with the motion detector."

"I'm not coming anywhere with you two until you tell me what's going on!" Clara demanded loudly, and they both hurried to shush her.

"We probably have enough time before it ends up heading back here," Adam told her, "And it might be chasing something else."

"Whose blood is that on your hands?" Clara asked.

"It's Jenny's," Oswin answered, "You know, Jenny Harkness. I mean, she wasn't Jenny Harkness when you last met, but… Whatever. Okay. _Fine_. I'll tell you the story, but on the way. We can't stay here, it's too dangerous, we have a sort-of base. I'll tell you everything, starting with what happened this morning…"


	132. Isolation

_Earlier That Day..._

_DAY EIGHTY-SEVEN_

_Oswin_

_Isolation_

"Look at this," she said to Adam Mitchell. Both of them were in her lab that morning, being as it was quite early and she remembered she had things to be doing technology-related. He looked over to see her holding up some black device that looked like a thin cuboid, about five inches long.

"What is it?"

"It's a hackdrive," Oswin said, "Like a sonic screwdriver, but better." She clicked a button on the side and a hologramatic screen shimmered about it, being projected out using the same materials and technology she used for the ring on her hand full of the names of the dead, "I got so sick of relying on Clara stealing her husband's screwdriver all the time. You know, on the Dalek Asylum, I had a utility belt full of useful stuff. And now I don't."

"A utility belt with _what _on it?" he asked incredulously.

"Um..." she leant all her weight on her right leg, crossed her arms and frowned in thought, "I think it had a whisk. That's all I really remember. Also some biscuits."

"A whisk?"

"Whisks have many purposes, Mitchell."

"Apart from whisking? What else were you doing with this whisk?" he asked, turning around in his chair so that he could look at her better as she shifted uncomfortably.

"...Whisking..." she mumbled, which was not really an answer at all. But she didn't want to answer him, she didn't want to have to say the truth outrightly.

"Whisking _what_? Hang on, you weren't..?" Oswin stayed silent, saying nothing and looking at the floor, "With a _whisk_!?"

"I was bored!" she defended herself, and he just gawped.

"Oh my god!" he exclaimed.

"What!? What would you have done!?" she argued, trying to make it look like she'd been doing what was obviously the most logical thing.

"Not that!"

"_Technically_ I was still whisking eggs..." she mumbled awkwardly.

"That's _disgusting_!"

"Do you know Rory thought the bumps on the side of the Daleks were eggs?" she said quickly, trying to change the subject. But it didn't go so well.

"Stop trying to turn the conversation away from the unsavoury places you've been sticking cooking utensils," he said flatly, looking at her like he'd just seen somethig new about her he hadn't noticed before.

"...The exterminator kind of looks like a whisk..." she said guiltily, not sure what she was getting at.

"Well don't go ramming dangerous weaponry into your..."

"My..?"

"...Mixing bowl..."

"That's gross," she said, shaking her head and finally sitting down, switching off the hackdrive and leaving it on the desk in front of her as she went back to something else she was messing with.

"Oh _I'm_ gross!? Me!?" he protested, but she said nothing, ignoring him completely. He didn't seem to want to continue down that route of conversation, anyway - and neither did she, for that matter.

It was then, with Adam still trying to figure out where he was going to take her on this date she'd finally agreed to, that they got an unexpected visitor. A _very _unexpected one, in the form of the Ninth Doctor, free from the shackles of River Song, who (lately) had never been away from his side. _Like a dog_, Oswin would think but not say. Both of them looked up at him, still relatively busy. But, Oswin supposed, she _had_ said she'd better talk to him last night.

"Yes?" Oswin asked him, leaning away from the new gadget she'd been fidgeting with and crossing her arms

"I need your help," he said begrudgingly, crossing his arms. She raised her eyebrows and sat back a little. She might, ultimately, not have an awful lot against the Ninth Doctor, but if something was so important he needed _her _help, she thought she might torment him a little first.

"_My_ help? What for? Need a toilet unblocking - I've been told I'm awfully good with a plunger? Perhaps you need me to whisk something for you, hmm?" she asked, and Adam snorted nearby, but didn't say anything. He didn't need to. At least Nine wasn't paying him any attention.

"It's important," Nine said.

"Oh, important, is it? You know what's important? Walking. Quite important. I mean, probably not for someone like me though. Good thing I had those Heelies when I was younger, they've given me a lot of practice," she said with as much sarcasm as she could fit into her voice. Which was a lot. Being sarcastic was, like, her _thing_.

"Stop it," Nine ordered, but he didn't order it with a lot of vivacity.

"You know, Adam, don't you think that Davros had an awfully stylish wheelchair? I reckon it'd go well with my flashing ears and my genocide. If you think about it, salt and pepper shakes are really terribly appropriative of Skaro culture. Me being particularly sensitive to the issue, an all," she continued, watching him squirm to gauge when she should stop. Not that she was good at gauging that at all - in fact, her inability to pick up on simple social queues was an enormous flaw with her personality she had no idea how to work on, without Clara standing by and just telling her when to stop talking.

"Can you just-"

"Is it a pest control problem? Rats on the TARDIS? Ugly vermin? Need an exterminator?" she suggested.

Will you _please_ stop!?" he shouted a little, and she narrowed her eyes.

"Why should I?"

"Because, I... I'm sorry."

"For..?"

"Everything," he said. She stared at him for a moment, tapping one of her fingers idly on the desk in front of her, and then sat forwards.

"What do you want?" she asked finally.

"Doesn't matter, you won't help," he grunted.

"Don't be so quick to judge," she said, "You apologised, so I'll help. I'm already keeping your secret about hacking both me, your girlfriend, _and _the SAI yesterday. Not to mention sabotaging the navicom."

"How did you-!?" he demanded, then stopped, and thought for a few moments, "I was just trying to make things a bit more interesting around here."

"Uh-huh," she said, "So? What is it you want? I'm busy." To illustrate how busy she was, she lifted the thing she'd been building up by the muzzle, showing a gun that looked almost identical to the Desert Eagles of the Twenty-First Century - though it was significantly lighter. "Relax, it's a stun gun. _I'm _not the one you should worry about when it comes to dangerous weaponry. It's only a prototype, anyway. Uses the technology of that Static Bomb you all were playing with the other day. Dropping it on the floor and whatnot."

"On that spaceship, the one with the bomb, we found a Flute, River and I," he said finally, and she dropped her prototype stun gun on the table.

"Sorry? A what?" Adam Mitchell interjected in his confusion.

"Doesn't concern you," Nine said to him coldly. Clearly not over the fact Adam had _accidentally _almost lost the TARDIS. Seriously, she thought, would he not get over it yet?

"If it concerns Oswin, it concerns Adam, okay?" Oswin said sharply to Nine, who grunted when she turned around to explain to her boyfriend what they'd scavenged, "A 'Flute' is a shortening of 'Flesh Suit'. It's a derogatory name given to the synthetic successors of holograms, implying they're not _real_ humans. Of course, the concept of 'real' is, in itself, relative, but anyway... They're sort of like robots. You 'upload' a deceased person's - Oh my stars, you're gonna give River Song a body, aren't you!?" she exclaimed, twisting around in her seat, thinking she was a little slow on the uptake for once in her afterlife.

"Yes," he admitted.

"_That's_ what you need my help with? _My_ help? What's to say I don't steal your fancy thingy and get myself a body? Imagine all the fun I could have with two legs. I could give Mitchell a footjob," Oswin said to Nine, who grimaced at that.

"Mitchell doesn't want a footjob, that's weird and gross," Adam added from behind her.

"Spoilsport," she said to him, then turned back to Nine, "I'd ask if there are any particular reasons why she wants a proper body, all of a sudden, but I'm not entirely sure I want to know."

"Don't be disgusting," Nine said.

"She's always disgusting," Adam assured him with a smirk to his computer screen, not looking at the Doctor. But then a bleeping sound interrupted them, one Oswin didn't really recognise, but she glanced over at Helix's master control hub on the wall.

"_Alert: Minor change in the structure of all basic molecular compounds in this region. Base CBR fluctuation detected_," Helix said.

"Did that thing just say there was a fluctuation in the Cosmic Background Radiation? That's impossible," Nine said, and Oswin shushed him, standing up.

"What kind of CBR fluctuation?"

"_The levels have altered in a way unfamiliar with all documented levels, and the predicted alteration over time in the universe_," said Helix.

"What does that mean? It doesn't make sense," Nine asked Oswin.

"Holy shit! It means - it _means _we finally have a way of figuring out when we change universes! Which we just did, which Helix, now that its actually working, notified me of," Oswin said, "Unknown to the systems so far... Helix, access _all _the TARDIS flight logs and figure out how many areas of _different _CBR levels we've been in total." By this point, she was pacing and messing with her hair, like she always did, and then she picked up the prototype gun and the hackdrive, "I have to go to the console room - Mitchell, are you coming?" Adam nearly fell off his chair in his hurry to get up and follow her, Nine having no choice but to tag along too. "Bring the handheld," she called back to her boyfriend, who picked up the Mr White handset that now streamed Helix and followed.

The only people in the console room were Jenny and Martha, who were loitering around, Jenny messing around with some of the wiring underneath the console.

"What's going on?" Martha called to the three of them.

"Helix just notified us that we passed through a Door into a new dimension. Another parallel world. By my best guesses..." she said, going over to the TARDIS monitor to try and land them on the nearest planetoid, or passing vessel, or spacestation, "This is the Etaverse."

"The what?" Jenny asked, dropping what she was doing and following Martha up the stairs onto the next level of the ship.

"I was classifying the universes," Oswin said, "Now we finally have a way to measure them - they all have different levels of Cosmic Background Radiation. It's like a signature at the bottom of every dimension. I was just naming them."

"How many are there?" Martha asked.

"Technically there's an infinite number, but by my best guesses, so far, this is the seventh any of us have visited. Our universe is the Alphaverse, okay? Then the parallel universe with the Twelfth Doctor and Danny Pink and Other Clara and the bad storylines - that's the Betaverse. The Gammaverse is that completely weird universe we went to where we were characters in a TV show and this was some random fanfiction - bizarre. The Deltaverse was Atlantis-"

"What? How come?" Martha asked, "Is this something to do with why you always accidentally call it by whatever that other name is, and you knew what was going on.

"Yes. Just like in one universe _we're _fiction, other things that are supposedly made-up also exist in their own universes. It's a video game, called _Bioshock_. The city is Rapture. That's why Mitchell calls it Raptlantis."

"...Well, what's the... What letter comes after Delta?" Martha asked Jenny.

"Epsilon," Jenny answered.

"Epsilonverse is Wonderland," she said, casting a glance at Nine, "Straight out of the book, to my best understanding. Then the Zetaverse is Pete's World, you know, where Rose lives. Lived. Whatever, I don't know. This new one is, like I said, the Etaverse. I'm just using the Greek alphabet because it's simple, okay? If we ever get past twenty-four universes then these ones will all become Alphaverse-One, Betaverse-One, et cetera... There's a spaceship passing us."

"I'll land us," Jenny said, going off to mess with the controls, Nine looking on helplessly as the daughter he seemed to somewhat disrespect flew the TARDIS like an expert, with more finesse than him.

"_Vessel name: _Caelestis_. Emergency alerts and lockdown protocols in effect in all sectors. No record of the nature of the emegency_," Helix said out of the little Mr White handset.

"What is that?" Jenny asked.

"It's Helix, the AI, in this Qetesh device. It's great, it can store a whole artificial intelligence _and _stream pornography at a realtime bitrate."

"Wonderful," said Martha dryly.

"Seriously? Can I borrow it?" Jenny asked, and Martha gave her a judgemental look, "What? Not right now, obviously..."

"Fine, you can borrow it," Oswin allowed, shaking her head a little.

"Disgusting..." Nine muttered next to her, and then the TARDIS jerked violently when they landed on the _Caelestis_, with absolutely no idea what they were about to run into.

**AN: They found the 'Flute' in Chapter 588, "Body Parts", if anyone wants a reference. And, by the way, this IS ****_Alien_****, so of course I'm gonna make it gory, just a forewarning.**


	133. Isolation I

_Jenny_

_Isolation I_

She had never been one to show up on a deserted spaceship with all the alarms in effect and an emergency lockdown in process _without_ a weapon of some kind, which gave her the perfect opportunity to get her own sonic blaster back out from the crevice underneath the TARDIS console where she'd been hiding the firearm for months. With the Doctors having less and less of a say in what was going on, the addition of more general weapons and violent tactics, and the fact they were frequently in situations with more and more aggressive adversaries and environments, gun-policy was becoming lenient and ill-monitored. This was also evidenced by the face both Oswin and Martha had guns, too, the Ninth Doctor only aware of Oswin's and not really saying anything about it.

On autopilot, the TARDIS thrummed away behind them, as it was set to do now, leaving them stranded with the new laser-pointers of Oswin's invention being the only things to get them home, should they need to make a quick getaway. The Helix handheld was scanning, Adam Mitchell holding it, but aside from the faint hum of that device and the rumble of the _Caelestis_' engines somewhere below them, all was quiet.

"Well?" Nine asked, crossing his arms and raising his eyebrows as though he'd been dragged out on this expedition and away from something far more interesting and important, "What are we looking for?"

"I don't know," Oswin shrugged, looking over Adam's shoulder at Helix instead of giving him any sort of proper answer.

"Well, obviously there's something gone awry," said Jenny to the group, "We might as well have a look around, you know?"

"Good idea," Nine hastened to agree with her, which surprised her, since he always seemed so questioning of her status as a Time Lord and perpetually patronising to her whenever she tried to do anything.

"Well then… You two go together, and us three'll go together," Martha decided for them, which didn't really bother Jenny too much. She was quite interested in why the ship was utterly silent in a state of lockdown, more than in whatever Oswin was looking for, which was probably another Dimension Door so that she could record the coordinates in her endless quest to make some kind of multiversal map.

Nine sighed, and walked off, and Jenny waved goodbye quite happily and bounded after him to catch back up, slowing down and walking by his side with her hands behind her back, frowning and looking around the dark corridors. The Doctor didn't say a lot, and she spent most of her time taking in their surroundings. The corridor they were in was narrow, only big enough for two people to go side-by-side (and even then Jenny was lagging behind a little), and it was low-down, just a few inches above the top of the Ninth Doctor's head, and finally the passage was octagonal, with thick pipes running up and down the walls and a grate floor.

"Look at this opportunity for some father-daughter bonding time," Jenny said, smiling at him, but he just gave her a weird look.

"…What were you all doing yesterday?" Nine asked with some tone she thought might be resentment – not that she knew why he was being resentful.

"Telling stories," said Jenny, "It was my idea, and everything. We just went around the group. Did you know one of Adam Mitchell's friends tried to marinate a piece of beef with a condom?" Nine stared at her then as though she was insane, "Seriously," she added. He shook his head. "You brood a lot, you know."

"Sorry?"

"Always all quiet, off doing something way-more-important than everybody else that you can't possibly share," she said, "What is it you do with your free time?" she asked curiously, but he didn't seem to be enjoying her incessant questioning.

There was a noise like smashing glass in the room to their right, just as they passed the door talking. Well, Jenny was doing most of the talking, but she didn't want to entirely diminish his role in the conversation. He'd asked her a question, after all, and was apparently puzzled by her and her general persona.

"I forgot to bring a torch! _Again_!" Jenny exclaimed, shaking her head. Why did she always do that? That was the _one thing_ they always wanted; torches. That and scanning devices. A sign on the wall outside the door informed them that it was the ship's science lab. It was a relatively small spaceship, so Jenny assumed that it was the _only_ science lab, but you never knew, she supposed. Not that the number of science labs was really relevant to anything that was going on…

At her complaint of not having a torch, after the door had slid open with the push of a button on the outside, Nine flicked a switch and the lights came on, illuminating a white room with some very curious occupants.

The first thing she noticed was a large jar on a table to the right, a big test-tube like thing, only it was smashed on one side.

"I wonder what broke it?" Jenny mused in a whisper, Nine walking over to it and seeing glass all over the floor, not to mention whatever weird liquid had been in the jar that was still half-filling it below the large hole in the side.

"Smells weird," Nine said, leaning his head towards it. Then they heard a hissing noise and both looked down to see the floor disintegrating. Stepping back, they both frowned, and then Nine crouched down to get a better look at what was going on, "Acid," he said, "The floor's being corroded by something acidic…" Part of the glass of the jar had been melted in the same way, still fizzing a little.

Jenny took a glance around the room, and spotted something else. Or rather, two something elses.

"Look over there," she said to him, nodding and walking off on her own.

What she saw, sitting on the floor of the room in a corner with some lights shining down onto them as though they were being incubated or something, were eggs. Two feet tall and dark brown in colour, the texture of leather but with some kind of web-like membrane layering around them, looking moist and alive. Both of them had four flaps on the top, like a cross was cut into it, though it appeared that the eggs were perhaps supposed to be this way. The singular difference between them was that the egg on the right was open on top, and the one on the left was still tightly closed. At least, it was tightly closed until she stepped closer, then it almost started to shake, like something was moving around inside it.

"Jenny, don't touch those," Nine said, standing nearby. She glanced back at him, but went back to the eggs when she heard a noise from it, and saw the four flaps on the closer one on the left were slowly opening themselves. She leant over to see inside, seeing more of the cocoon-like membrane on the outside stretching within, the inside pink and wet, like flesh, with something curled up within.

"What the..?"

* * *

_Nine_

Something launched itself out of the egg straight at Jenny's face, and she was caught so off-guard she hadn't a chance of moving out of the way. She was thrown back a few steps with the momentum of it grabbing her, him jumping out of the way for a moment until she started to fall backwards, hopelessly waving her arms to try and claw whatever it was off her. He managed to catch her, but then she was completely limp, and the crab-like thing was stuck to her head, tightly winding itself around her neck.

It was flesh-coloured, but faintly yellow, eight long appendages almost like finger-bones stretching out of it like a spider and wrapping themselves tightly around Jenny's head, two large pouches on either side inflating and deflating like lungs. He grabbed it and tried to wrench it off, but the bony tail – which was almost two feet long by itself – tightened ferociously around her neck, choking her until he let go and it relaxed again. Then he checked her pulse, and found that both of her hearts were still beating.

He had no clue what to do – if it needed some kind of operation to get it off, he couldn't carry that out, not in a science lab and not on his own, so he dug in Jenny's pockets until he found her phone, picking it up and calling Martha Jones.

"_Jenny?_" she asked, "_Are you_-"

"It's not her, something's got her," Nine said quickly.

"_Wait, wait – what do you mean? Something? What-thing?_"

"I don't know! It's stuck on her face, it looks like a crab, or a spider, it's massive, I can't get it off, it's trying to choke her," he explained hurriedly.

"_A crab? Stuck on-_" Martha was cut-off when there was what sounded like a fumble for the phone, and he was greeted by the voice of Oswin.

"_What do you mean 'crab'? Describe it_," she ordered.

"It's… I don't know how to… It's yellow, kind of, but sort of pink too," he said, "Eight legs, lungs on the outside, a long tail wrapped around her-"

"_Are you joking?_"

"What?"

"_Didn't launch out of an egg, did it?_" she said, sounding like she was joking.

"What's funny about this!? Yes, it did!" Then there was silence.

"_It… Out of an egg?_"

"Yes! A massive, brown egg, it's right next to me," he said.

"_…__Get her back to where we landed. Now. As fast as possible._"


	134. Isolation II

**AN: I'm double-updating because I'm not at school right now, so I don't have much else to do other than write excessive amounts of Doctor Who/Alien crossover fanfiction…**

_Martha_

_Isolation II_

After they met back up with Nine, carrying Jenny in his arms, it took all four of them to try and lug her to the medibay the trio had walked past, but thankfully it didn't take too long to get there. They barged into the room and Adam went and pushed a tray of sterile tools that were sitting on the gurney in the middle of the room onto the floor as the other three lowered Jenny back down, the thing still attached to her face wrapping its chord-like tail around her throat.

Adam went to go barricade the door with a shelf on wheels that was sitting next to it.

"We have to get it off," Nine said, going to fumble with the no-longer sterile surgical knives that had been knocked onto the floor, but Oswin held him back by his arm.

"She'll die," Oswin told him.

"How can you know that!? That thing's killing her!"

"It's not, it's keeping her alive, if we pull it off, she's dead," Oswin said to him darkly, but he wrenched his arm away and ducked down to pick up the tools anyway.

"…Seriously, how do you know this?" Martha asked her.

"Have you not seen _Alien_?" Adam Mitchell questioned her – he seemed to be searching for something in the room, talking absently like he was only half paying attention. Oswin put the Helix handset down next to the only computer in the room. It was quite large, the gurney on some kind of mechanism in the middle of the room that would rotate left to go back into a wall-compartment where it was out of the way, a glass screen ready to slide down over it to keep it clean.

"No, Mickey keeps trying to get me to though," Martha said, "What's that thing, though?"

"It's a facehugger," Adam said, "You know what the alien looks like though, right? The Xenomorph? The giant black thing with the head like-?" instead of saying a word he did a strange mime over the top of his head indicating a long, banana shape. But yes, she did know what the alien itself from _Alien_ looked like, so she nodded, "Well, that's what's growing inside of her."

"That's a film. How can a film be real?" Martha questioned.

"I told you," Oswin said, "The whole city from _Bioshock_ is real, you went there, you got shot in the foot by a splicer. And the Doctor here went to Wonderland. Dimension Doors, like I said. This is the Etaverse. The Etaverse is apparently the _Alien_ universe, which is just _fantastic_…" she muttered.

"So what's going to happen?" Nine asked, "If we try and pull that off?"

"It'll take her face off with it," Adam Mitchell answered him, then he sighed, "The facehugger comes from the egg, okay? It jumps on someone's face and then impregnates them with the Xenomorph larva, which grows into a chestburster."

"A _what_?" Nine asked.

"It's gonna rip out of her," Martha said, remembering that iconic part of a film she'd never actually seen, at least.

"Exactly," said Adam, "Then the chestburster will run off, shed its skin, then grow into the adult Xenomorph. And then we're all fucked, really. You can't pull the facehugger off and you can't cut it off because it has acidic blood." The room went quiet for a few moments, Nine staring at the facehugger stuck to Jenny's head.

"Well then… What do we do?" Nine asked, him more or less a complete loss in this situation, Martha noted.

"Stand away from the bed," Oswin ordered, waving a hand that indicated Nine, who was standing on the left, furthest side of the bed from her, should move around, "I'll scan her – we might be able to get it off. She'll be able to regenerate, if we get it off quick enough, there might never be a Xenomorph on here to deal with…"

She pressed some keys on the computer in the corner and the mechanism of the hospital gurney hummed as it rotated around to be retracted into the wall, where the glass screen slid up to keep infection rates down. Then a light appeared at the top of the coffin-sized hole in the wall where Jenny now lay, scanning up and down her body, until an image like an MRI of a lower quality appeared on a readout above.

"Oh my god…" Martha breathed, upon seeing the internal image of what was happening within the chest cavity of Jenny Harkness, "There's…" she didn't know what it was, but it looked like a worm growing, a worm with a maw full of sharp teeth that showed up brightly on the fuzzy image on the widescreen monitor in black and white, curled around like a tapeworm inside her chest.

"It's too late," Adam said, "We can't pull it off her, she'll die twice. When she wakes up, she won't remember the facehugger anyway, she'll forget it was ever there. But it's only been attached for half an hour – I don't know how it's grown so quickly…"

"Why? What happens to it? The face-thingy?" Nine asked, eyes flitting between Jenny and the image of the 'chestburster' on the screen.

"When it's done it'll let go and die," Adam told him.

"What if we got her back to the TARIDS? I remember taking the Singularity Scalpel from Torchwood, it's on there. We could kill it before it gets out," Martha said, "We have the emergency teleporters."

"It's too risky," Oswin said, "Those teleporters destabilise the genetic makeup of humans _and_ Time Lords with excessive use, that's why I made them take 22 hours to charge back up. We can't risk doing anything that might change her molecular structure."

"What's the worst that could happen?" Nine asked.

"If it destabilises both Jenny _and_ the chestburster, there could be a cross-DNA mutation," Oswin said, "Besides, it wouldn't work – the Xenomorph takes genetic traits from whatever species the facehugger impregnates. Meaning-"

"It's a Time Lord Xenomorph," Adam finished her sentence.

"A new strain – TLX. It'll be able to regenerate," Oswin said, "Even if we got access to the Singularity Scalpel, it would just keep coming back until it grew enough to get out – and filling it with regeneration energy won't exactly help our cause, even less will hurt it than what usually does."

"Well, what does it do?" Nine asked, "When it's… Born..?" The humming sound came back as Oswin made the gurney swing back out into the middle of the room.

"It'll kill everything it finds. Try to start a hive," Oswin said, "Make more. All it does is kill. It's the apex predator of the universe, and it's eight feet tall and burrows its extra mouth into your skull to kill you. Don't think about reasoning with it."

"But if it's a Time Lord, not a human, it'll be cleverer? If it takes genetic traits?" Nine suggested.

"That just makes it more dangerous, it might be sentient," Adam said, "It wants to kill and carry on its species the same way humans kill pigs for meat – pigs can't reason with humans because humans want to eat them. Like the Xenomorph _wants_ to kill us, it _needs_ to. It doesn't have a conscience, and it doesn't have a reason not to try and murder us all. And it's growing faster."

"Probably because she's a Time Lord," Martha said, "The time energy in her will shorten the incubation period, I assume."

"Which means the facehugger will… Shit…" Oswin said. It had only been a minute, two at best, but when they looked back, there was no facehugger anymore. The crab-looking thing with the fingers and the tail and the weird, external lungs was gone, "It's supposed to take hours."

"Then how long do we have until it's 'born'?" Martha asked.

"I don't know – minutes?" Oswin suggested.

"We need towels, and something to trap it with. We might be able to get it back to the TARDIS and deal with it there, if we're fast," Adam said, and Martha went searching through the tunnels to find anything to soak up blood, thinking how lucky it was that _she'd_ come out today instead of someone who didn't have any proper knowledge of medicine.

Jenny gasped and coughed back into consciousness rolling over a little and spitting some funny-coloured fluid onto the floor – probably deposited by the facehugger. Everyone was standing by and waiting to see what was going to happen.

"Where am I?" she asked hoarsely.

"The _Caelestis_," Adam answered, "You're in the medibay. What's the last thing you remember?"

"I remember… Dark and… Choking…" she said, frowning and rubbing her head, "What happened to me?"

"I'm gonna tell you something, but you have to try and stay calm," Martha said, decided that Oswin probably didn't have enough bedside manner or tact to deliver the news to Jenny of what was about to happen to her.

"What? What is it?"

"You found an egg, right?" Martha said, and Jenny didn't say anything, just furrowed her brow in thought, "You did. You found an egg, and out of the egg came an alien called a facehugger, and-"

"A _facehugger_?" she asked, "…Are you sure? Isn't that from _Alien_?"

"Have you seen it?" Oswin asked quickly.

"…The first one. A while ago," Jenny answered, "Wait – a real facehugger? Got me? Was on my face? From the egg?"

"Yes," Martha said, "It's the fictional universes thing."

"Right, right…" Jenny said, nodding, "So…"

"You've been impregnated," Adam said, and she stared at him, "And it's growing quickly. And we can't get it out."

"What do you mean? So… You're saying I have to-" she cut herself off with a scream, falling back onto the gurney and writhing around all of a sudden. Oswin had said minutes, but to Martha it felt more like seconds.

"Stay still," Oswin said, coming over to help Martha as they both tried to hold Jenny down by the arms, "You'd burn off anaesthetic too quickly, I'm sorry, you'll be okay, we'll make sure of it!" she said loudly over Jenny's shrieks, kicking her legs out wildly and hitting her head back as her torso seemed to move up of its own accord, like she were being contorted by some puppet master.

"What do we do!?" Nine exclaimed.

"There's nothing we can do," Oswin told him, as Martha kept telling Jenny she was going to be okay, even though Martha had no clue if she would be. Hadn't Jenny only regenerated once? She knew nothing about the girl's endurance or what was really going to happen.

"What about the regeneration energy?" Adam pointed out, ready with a sheet of bedding from somewhere he was going to try and trap the chestburster whenever it finally appeared.

"We'll have time to move," Martha said to him, then she carried on her chanting of, "Try to stay calm, don't try and fight it…" as though she was talking a woman through giving birth, and no matter how morbidly similar the situation was, she knew there could be no positive outcome from what was about to happen.

Jenny was kicking wildly, and Martha and Oswin were stuck trying to hold her legs down too, Nine dashing around the end to grab her feet and keep them clamped to the medical bed just for something to do as his half-daughter wailed in pain. Then her torso exploded in red, Jenny screaming in agony. After the initial burst of blood came another, something inside her ribcage fighting its way out and pushing up against clothes and skin now doused in dark red, Jenny still kicking and screaming, blood splattering the faces and hands of Oswin and Martha, the two closest, who were trying to hold her shoulders down.

Twice more the thing inside tried to fight through the layers between it and the open air, until finally it had shredded its way through bone, cartalidge, muscle, skin and fabric, tearing a hole right there in the middle of Jenny's chest, blood squirting everywhere, her suddenly going stiff and falling with limp arms and legs onto the bed as the thing hissed and writhed around, an orange, fleshy colour, covered in blood with a long, bony tail wrapping around it. It had the same jaw and head-shape as what Martha knew the adult had, the sharp teeth, eyeless, elongated dome for a skull, and a tiny pair of arms. Jenny's fingers twitched as she was rendered dying and unable to do anything, the thing rising up out of her chest with its tail whipping around itself, all of them staring, frozen, like a deer in headlights.

Martha lunged for it, hands closing around it, but the tail flicked around and hit her in the arm, and it was too slimy from blood and innards for her to keep a good grip on it. Legless, like a segmented worm, it shot off straight for Adam Mitchell, but when he tried to get the thing sheet around it and trap it, it just broke through that the same way it had just broken through Jenny's ribs, tearing her lungs apart and throwing them in sticky, pink chunks around the room like a bomb had gone off inside her, leaving a gaping, scarlet hole where her skin should be.

And then it was gone, gone into a tiny vent next to the door, just three inches tall, bashing down the grating with its own momentum and escaping from them.

They all stood, breathing deeply, trying not to grieve for the hope that Jenny might regenerate, might come back, might be able to help them stop the chestburster that was now slithering off, blood-drenched and slippery, through ventilation shafts.

"It'll be full grown within half an hour," Oswin said finally, shaking her head, "At best." Eyes all went to Jenny's body then, the next highest priority, the two other girls especially with the most blood on them. Nine went around to Jenny's side, becoming the paternal figure he hadn't been just a few hours ago and taking hold of one of her hands, Oswin stepping back to let him, walking around the bed to the computer, convinced of Jenny Harkness's fast recovery.

Nine was whispering something Martha felt a little too numb to listen to, watching hopelessly as he was willing her to come back to life. But there was no sign of golden energy pulsing through her veins, nothing seemed about to burst out of her head, arms and legs.

That was probably why Martha was so shocked when Jenny gasped back into life seconds later, much in the way Jack did. Both of them unnaturally created, immortal children of time, she supposed. But the gaping hole in her chest was still there, and she swore and coughed when she bent her head far enough forwards to see that, throwing herself back down and grunting against the pain.

"What..?" Nine breathed, staring at her. When she coughed next though, she was coughing out green and gold energy into the air, which Nine watched, transfixed.

"What do I do? Should we suture it?" Martha asked Jenny, "Or will it heal on its own?" Jenny coughed some more of the energy out.

"…Get some… Bandages…" she heaved, breathing huge breaths and hacking violently, her eyes flickering a faint golden colour when she blinked, "…Need to be… Bound… Tight…" Martha obliged, going and finding a large roll of bandages.

"Hold your arms up," Martha ordered her, which she struggled to do, blood still trickling out of the hole in her chest, the movements of two hearts beating weakly sickeningly visible through the tear, "Help her," she said to Nine, who did, so that Martha could wrap the bandages around as tightly as they could possibly be to keep the wound closed long enough to heal.

"It'll take a while to heal," Jenny coughed.

"What was the green you were breathing out!?" Nine demanded.

"The Source," Jenny told him in a little more than a whisper, which was all she could manage, "Terraforming device on the planet Messaline… It sort of… Incorporated itself into my DNA… Helps me regenerate… I'm not strong enough to change forms." She heaved another cough and shuffled back so that she could lean on the wall behind her and stay sat up, breathing as heavily as she could with the tight bandages now keeping her chest cavity from falling apart on her.

"I didn't know you could…" Nine said to her, and she breathed out and leant her head on the wall, wincing, covered in sweat and blood.

"I can do lots of things, if you give me a chance," she said weakly.

"_Familiar vessel arriving on lower deck_," Helix suddenly declared, breaking apart whatever moment Nine and Jenny had been having.

"Sorry?" Oswin asked it.

"_Familiar vessel arriving on lower deck_."

"How is it arriving on the lower deck? There's no docking bay down there, the docking bay is on the upper deck," she said.

"_Teleportation technology of Gallifreyan origin_," Helix said.

"But that's impossible," Oswin said, "A TARDIS?"

"_Affirmative_."

"…But, is it our TARDIS?"

"_Negative. Vessel has background radiation matching previously recorded levels. Levels recorded:: Twenty-seven days ago_," Helix said.

"…A month ago? What… Oh, fucking… We have to investigate it," Oswin said.

"Jenny can't move," Martha said.

"You three stay, Adam and I will go check it out. Let me know if Helix picks up on anything else," Oswin said, leaving the handset behind next to the computer and going to push the shelf that was barricading the door away.

"I don't get it, what is it?" Nine asked.

"It's the Twelfth Doctor."


	135. Isolation IV

**AN: I am super enjoying writing this, by the way. It's just as fun as the ****_Bioshock_**** crossover of this time last year. And it's not like you have to have seen ****_Alien_**** to understand what's going on. If I made it like that I would just be evil. Also, see if you can spot my unmitigated hatred of the Twelfth Doctor woven throughout this chapter – I think it's pretty subtle (when I say "subtle", I'm being sarcastic).**

_Oswin_

_Isolation IV_

"And that's where you come in," she said to Other Clara, who was listening to the story with an air of what was obviously disbelief, despite the unholy amount of blood on Oswin's hands and face from Jenny's episode with the chestburster barely an hour ago, "You and Old Twelvey blundering in at exactly the _wrong_ moment. It's grown far too quickly…" Clara didn't say anything as Adam pushed the button to open the medibay doors, returning them to the blood-soaked once-white room. Now, though, Jenny was breathing raggedly within the little wall-containment unit while Martha ran a scan on her body, learning how to do so from Oswin earlier.

"Clara!?" Martha exclaimed, confused. Nine looked up, and Jenny moved her head around (which was always an ill-advised move when one was getting an invasive, full-body scan.

"What the hell are you playing at!?" Nine demanded of Oswin, Adam Mitchell closing the door, "Bringing her here!? What good is dragging more people out!?"

"She's not that Clara," Oswin said calmly, "She's the other Clara. The one from the _other_ universe, with the Twelfth Doctor. I did _say_ it was him when I left."

"Well why did you bring her here?" Martha asked, going back to watching the readout on the monitor above the gurney, Jenny being unable to contribute to the conversation.

"To keep her safe," Oswin said, "We found him yelling so much he attracted the Xenomorph – which, yes, is an adult already. If we didn't bring her with us, she might've died."

"Is the Doctor dead, then?" Jenny asked from inside the wall unit, sounding muffled by the grass screen between her and them.

"No," Oswin answered, "It didn't get him, somehow. Dumb luck, probably. Man's an idiot."

"He's not an idiot," Clara argued.

"Of course not, honey," Oswin said patronisingly, rolling her eyes at Nine in a way that Clara could clearly see, just to get on her nerves. She looked up to see the readout over Jenny, seeing the big, black gap in the monochrome image where her ribs should be, but weren't.

"Well then? What do we do?" Martha said.

"Are you sure we have to kill it?" Nine asked.

"Unless we have some way to trap it that it can never get out of, yeah. It needs to be destroyed or people will keep looking for it to make weapons from," Adam said, "That's like, the point of the first film – they go to LV-426 because Weyland Yutani sent them there to recover the alien sample."

"What's Weyland Yutani?" Nine asked.

"The company in charge of, like, everything. The ones who want an army of Xenomorphs. Imagine how happy they'd be if they got themselves one that regenerates?" Adam said, "We have to destroy it. Somehow. But their only real weakness is fire, so we're lucky we have Martha here."

"What?" Martha said, "I can't control it enough yet to fight that thing!"

"Well this ship isn't a military ship so it'll be hard to find any flamethrowers," Oswin said.

"Wait, what do you mean, lucky you have Martha?" Clara asked, and they all sighed, and Oswin put a hand to her head as Martha tapped the keyboard to allow Jenny on the gurney to slide back out of the wall and around into the middle of the room.

"As far as I can tell, it's healing," Martha said to her, "Just slowly." Jenny nodded.

"Martha's pyrokinetic," Adam said to Clara, "She can shoot fire."

"No I can't," Martha said, "Right now, all I can really do is heat up so much I melt stuff."

"Then heat up so much you melt the Xenomorph," Oswin said to her.

"They tried that, in _Alien__3_, it only worked when they doused it with freezing water afterwards, though. Then it exploded," Adam explained. _Thank god I'm in love with a giant nerd_, Oswin thought to herself. For once, she thought she had chosen wisely, when it came to her boyfriend.

"But how can she be-" Clara began, but then there was an almighty bang on the door, as though something had just thrown itself at it, and everyone shut up, waiting. No doubt about it, the thought going through everybody's minds right then was that the thing outside was the Xenomorph, so they all stayed quiet.

And then they heard the noise of the thing outside hitting the button on the wall that opened the door – maybe Adam was right and this Xenomorph _was_ significantly more intelligent than any of the human-ones from the movies? They waited with baited breath, none of them knowing what to do, Oswin, Jenny and Martha all pulling out guns. One stun gun, one sonic blaster, one regular handgun. Quite possibly, the blaster was the only thing that might make a jot of difference to the thing outside.

"Clara!" the thing exclaimed. And the thing wasn't a _thing_ at all, oh no. The Twelfth Doctor appeared, rushed into the medibay, and started hitting the button on the other side to close the door like his life depended on it, Clara looking suddenly overjoyed that the stupid man was here. He was clearly running from something, though. "There's something following me – don't know what it is – looks like a person, probably not a person, but you humans all look the same… Sounded a bit funny when it talked, though…" he ignored everybody else in the room and stood on tiptoes to look out of the little window in the door of the medibay.

"Funny how?" Clara asked. What was she doing – showing off?

"I don't know, just weird. Like you when you drink too much, all croaky and annoying," he said. _Rude_, Oswin thought, putting her gun away and crossing her arms, going to lean on the desk next to the computer and the Helix handset.

"Probably an android," Adam answered, and then Twelve rounded on him.

"A what? Who are you? What are you doing here, with Clara? You're not trying to take advantage of her, are you? God knows she's been vulnerable to all sorts of dodgy looking weirdos lately!" Twelve argued, trying to scare Adam. It kind of worked, too, because Adam tripped a little while he was trying to back away.

"I have a girlfriend!" he protested, "_Why_ would I want to sleep with _her_?"

"What's wrong with her!?"

"Well, the company she keeps, mainly," Adam argued, and Oswin snorted, which drew Twelve's attention to her, and he swept protectively in front of Clara, who was apparently quite incapable of doing anything for herself.

"Clara, get back," he said, "It's not real."

"Rude," Oswin muttered.

"It's trying to trick us."

"Trick you into doing what..?" Oswin asked carefully, but Twelve just gave her a weird look like he couldn't understand what she was saying, and she exchanged an irritated look with Martha. All the while, Nine remained being stoically observant and not really getting involved. Maybe he didn't know what to say.

"Into getting ourselves killed probably! It'll be the dream crabs. The Kantrofarri. We must have never woken up from that dream," Twelve said to her, then he turned to her, "Quick – remember how much of an idiot Danny Pink was." And then she slapped him.

"What the fuck are you doing!?" Oswin demanded.

"Flooding her with emotion so that she wakes up from the dream – and there is no need for that bad language!"

"What the fuck is a dream crab?" Jenny then asked, raising her eyebrows at him in challenge when he took note of _her _bad language, too.

"It's-" Twelve began, when something with a long tail, eight legs, external lungs and a yellowish colour fell out of the ceiling vent above them straight onto his head, and then he was more or less screaming and flailing his arms trying to get the facehugger off, when he hit it so hard it fell to floor on its back. Then he stamped on it, and it exploded a little, getting its greenish, acidic blood onto the floor. They all stared. "_That_ is a dream crab!"

"…No it isn't," said Adam.

"Of course it is, just because your brain is too small for them to want to eat. That's what they do – drill into your temple and liquefy your brain while you're dreaming."

"It's not a dream crab," Oswin said, "And don't insult Adam, if you keep insulting him I'm gonna shoot you in the knee."

"It's a dream crab, and we're all in a dream, and we need to wake up, by _not_ thinking about the dream crab," said Twelve.

"Will you shut up!?" Jenny shouted, then she coughed quite badly and Martha went to see if she was okay, "It's _not_ a dream crab. We're _not_ in a dream. If we are it's a pretty shit dream."

"Then what else could it possibly be!?" Twelve demanded, pointing at the dead facehugger on the floor.

"It's a facehugger," Adam said, "It's the facehugger that got Jenny. It crawled into the vent to die, and then it fell on your head. Dead. And now its blood is burning through the floor."

"Well maybe the dream crab put us in a nightmare," Twelve argued.

"If you say 'dream crab' one more _fucking_ time, I'm gonna shoot you," Jenny said, holding the sonic blaster back up at him.

"You wouldn't d-"

Before Twelve could finish the word 'dare', Jenny shot the wall right next to his head, just centimetres away from his right ear, leaving a burn mark on the white door behind him.

"Try me," she threatened, "It's not a dream crab. It's a facehugger. It came from an egg, implanted a larva in _my_ throat, which grew inside _me_, and burst out of _my_ chest and _killed me_. If I wasn't a Time Lord, I would be long since dead."

"And now there's a Xenomorph out there," said Adam.

"Which is why we grabbed Clara," said Oswin, "Because _you_ shouting lured the Xenomorph out. God, we're almost _lucky_ it's made from Time Lord genetics rather than human, because if it was human, she would be dead. But thank god it wanted _you_."

"What are you talking about!? A Xeno-_what_?"

"A Xeno_morph_. From _Aliens_. The film franchise," Adam said.

"I'll tell you what I told the other bloke who started prattling on about facehuggers – no wonder aliens keep invading you if you make offensive films about them," Twelve said, "But obviously, since that is a _film_, and _made up_, this is a _dream crab, _which actually ex-"

Twelve's face was met with gun metal when Martha Jones got so sick of him that she stepped forwards and smashed him around the head with her 9mm pistol, sending him straight onto the floor on his knees. Oswin didn't think anyone had bothered to hit him before, except for Clara slapping him. Not that that seemed to do him any good.

"If you say 'dream crab' one more time, I will melt your skin off, okay?" Martha said, completely ignoring the objections of Other Clara next to her. Other Clara was really no more than scenery right then.

"You should listen to them," Nine _finally _spoke to Twelve, "To us. They're right. Whatever a dream crab is, that isn't one. Listen to Oswin."

"Yes, do listen to Oswin. Oswin's very clever," Oswin said.

There was a bang on the door. Another bang. But this time it was definitely _not_ the Twelfth Doctor. Twelve himself, rather than be forced to believe the things everybody else was saying and stop spewing bullshit about _dream crabs_, whatever they were, got to his feet.

"It's found me," he said, "Must have traced the sonic…" It banged again, and Oswin saw a face in the window above that proved this was definitely the synthetic android and _not_ the Xenomorph coming after them.

"Why would it know to trace the sonic?" Oswin asked.

"Because I tried to sonic it, see if it would help me – you can never trust these lifeforms. Holograms, robots, droids. All of them just waiting to stab you in the back, because they're angry about not being real people," Twelve said.

Twelve wasn't facing her, so she took the opportunity to give Adam Mitchell an irritated eye roll, and he mouthed back, "_I know_."

Then the droid punched its arm straight through the door.


	136. Isolation V

_Adam_

_Isolation V_

"Too stupid to hit the button, I see," Twelve commented on the droid, as it flailed with its arm around the hole it had punched in the door.

"You probably made it malfunction when you sonicked it," Adam whispered, everybody staying quiet, except for Twelve, who kept speaking and ducking out of the way of the hand instead of being sensible like the rest of the group and stepping away.

"That thing wants you dead and you've lead it here," said Nine to him darkly.

"It might not be just him," Oswin said quietly to Nine, "I mean – I'm not trying to be a pain or anything, but it might not be able to differentiate the base sonic signal of the screwdrivers. It might have a lock on yours, or Jenny's."

"So his idiocy has put all of us in even more danger than we were in before," Nine said.

"Get away from the door," Martha hissed at Twelve.

"Nonsense! I'll be fine. Look, I'll just speak to it," he said.

"NO!" Nine, Oswin, Adam and Martha all shouted when he hit the button that opened the door – Clara didn't say a word, clearly conflicted about who to listen to, and Jenny just groaned and then threw her sonic screwdriver across the room and hit Twelve in the head with it, presumably to get it away from her so the droid wouldn't come after her and taking an opportunity to injure the idiot when it presented itself.

Then there were about five seconds for them to figure out what to do, people shouting now there was no way the synthetic was going to give up and leave. While Oswin did something with Helix to possibly hack into the android, or at least fix the malfunction Twelve had caused because he didn't understand what was going, Jenny threw her sonic blaster onto the floor and ordered Nine to lose his own screwdriver, and Martha was holding up her gun.

The android made a lunge for Twelve's throat and closed its robotic fingers around his neck within nanoseconds of the door being opened enough for it to duck through, knuckles streaked with the watery, white liquid synthetics used for blood from where it had punched through the door. Adam spotted a fire extinguisher and went to grab that as Martha shot the android in the head, but the metal of it was too thick – the heat of the bullet melted through the silicone skin but bounded off the artificial skull lying beneath it, sending the small metal cylinder to the floor and leaving the room to stink of gunpowder as the rogue synth turned its attention to Martha – now the highest potential threat in the room.

Clara did nothing when the thing went for Martha, Martha shooting three more times before her ammo cartridge ran out – one bullet lodged itself in the wall, one bounced off the forehead and another shattered one of the eyes, angering the android even more when it hit the gun out of her hand and grabbed her. Oswin was doing what she did best and trying to hack it, but kept hitting the computer and cursing; Nine was at a loss with what to do in a situation where usually reasoning or sonic technology would hold the answer; Jenny was too weak to do anything and she'd just chucked her gun in order to save herself from the droid's wrath.

From either side, Clara grabbed one arm of it while Twelve grabbed the other, possibly hoping to restrain it and reason with it – though Adam knew that the only thing to do was kill or disable it, there was no reasoning. Promptly, the droid removed its right arm from Martha and threw Clara to the floor where she hit her head on the ground and was momentarily too disorientated to do anything. Then with its free arm, the other keeping Martha at bay, it reached around and grabbed Twelve by the forehead, pushing him back into a table of medical equipment where he hit his back hard and knocked tools to the floor.

Then Adam came behind the droid and rammed it in the left side of its head with the small but heavy yellow fire extinguisher with all the strength he could muster, knocking it off Martha and leaving a dent in the side of its head, white goop seeping out of the concave skull as it rounded on him. He kicked it in the knee and snapped the leg back with a mechanical hiss. It didn't fall to the ground, but was hindered in its movements long enough to bash it for a second time right in its face, crushing the fake cheekbones and the metal nose and brow together into a mush of warped plastic and white blood dripping onto the floor and Adam's hands like milk.

By that point, he'd distracted it long enough for Martha to get her bearings and come hit it on the back of the head, and it started to turn towards her.

Adam went in for another hit – but at the worst possible moment, his right ankle (the one victim of a mutant plant sting just under a week ago that he'd only braved taking the brace off properly that morning) gave way and sent burning pain all through his leg, the fire extinguisher clattering to the floor, him leaving icy patches on the floor with his hands as he tried to escape from the droid when it stamped at his feet and legs.

Then the droid stopped and the side of its head blew up with a tiny explosion, sparks flying in the direction of Nine, who ducked when it froze in place, head, hands and body all twitching.

"Kill it! Kill it before it reboots itself! I shut it down for a moment," Oswin ordered.

Martha Jones grabbed it by either side of the head and closed her eyes, looking like she was using all her strength to try and crush the synth between her fingers and reduce its skull to shards of metal and plastic and white blood on the floor. But Adam noticed what she was doing a few seconds later, Twelve and Clara watching with more awe than the others as the silicone started to melt beneath her hands.

The artificial skin on the droid's face melted away into flesh-coloured liquid, dripping onto the floor and hissing, burning hot, when it met the cool ice left by Adam's fleeing hands. Then the mechanisms beneath the skin were revealed, a skeletal, grey face with one bulbous eye intact and another one sunken and leaking white like a burst blister.

Melting as well, the greys and silvers were reduced to gunk resembling magnesium or molten lead (interestingly enough). All the circuits and the voice modulator and the inner workings became putty in Martha's scorching hands, the whole head melting down onto the shoulders and burning the fabric of the clothes it was wearing as it kept jittering about like it was having a fit. And then her hands met in the middle.

Headless, the android sank to its knees, and as it fell forwards towards Adam he kicked it and sent some sort of freezing energy towards it in such force that there was a shoe-shaped mark on its chest made of ice and frost, cooling the metal that had melted and turning the shiny, wet carbon-fibre dark and hard as it fell back onto itself like a contortionist, the sound of it shutting down droning away and stuttering until it was gone.

"…Well you didn't need to kill it!" Twelve, all of a sudden, protested, when Martha came to help Adam to his feet so that he could help cool down her hands so she didn't melt anything else, "And how did she do that? Melt its head? And why is there _ice_ on the floor?"

"It's an adrenaline-based mutation of the nervous system caused by a hyper-electrolysis," Oswin told him sharply, stepping around the medical gurney to see Adam, avoiding the burning hot puddles of metal as she went, "Are you okay?" she asked, standing on tiptoes to examine his face.

"I'm fine," he told her.

"This technology is _so_ outdated – have you seen it? It's all widescreen and monochrome-green," she complained, messing with his hair for a moment before sighing and stepping back, "Why did you try and sonic it?" she asked Twelve, holding Adam's hand behind her back.

"I was trying to activate it," he shrugged, and she shook her head, "Left locked up in some maintenance cupboard."

"Did you never stop to think there might be a good reason for it to be locked up?" she asked exasperatedly, Adam testing his foot to see how much weight it would take behind her, Martha assessing his movements.

"I like to give everyone a chance," he shrugged.

"'Give everyone a chance', but the moment you see _me_ you say I'm a 'trick'? Not that I care what you think of me – but the inconsistent hypocrisy is another matter," she said sharply, dropping Adam's hand to go back over to the computer on the other side of the room, the droid still dead on the floor. Without its head, the key components that kept it alive were gone, "Right, well, I think that – because you put the five of _us_ in danger because of how stupid you are, you should go and look for the Xenomorph."

"The poor thing's probably terrified. And if it isn't, then it should be," Twelve said, turning from being sympathetic regarding the killing machine on the loose on the _Caelestis_ and threatening it in a way that was possibly supposed to be frightening.

"I'll brace your ankle with bandages, and there are painkillers in here, I saw earlier," Martha said to Adam, who nodded and then jumped up to sit on the small table behind him, kicking off his right shoe onto the floor.

"Why should it be terrified?" Jenny asked Twelve, having to take deep breaths every few words in a Vader-esque way, "You can't kill it."

"I don't want to kill it," said Twelve.

"Then," Jenny said, then she coughed and swallowed, "You're stupid. It'll kill every single species in the universe before you have a _chance_ of 'talking' to it. It doesn't have the _facilities_ for speech. It doesn't have a reason not to kill."

"Everything has a conscience. Even Daleks," he said, his eyes quite blatantly flashing over Oswin when he said that.

"If you don't stop being such an arsehole, _this_ Dalek is gonna kneecap you," Oswin threatened.

"Oh. I suppose Daleks don't have consciences," Twelve said, grinning to himself like he'd just been astoundingly witty.

"She's a human being," Nine said to Twelve, "Don't talk down to her." Adam wondered what had caused Nine's sudden change of heart in regards to Oswin Oswald, but knew that right now wasn't the time to ask. But if Nine could forgive Oswin for the whole lot of nothing she'd done to him, Adam wondered if he could ever forgive _him_ for almost losing the TARDIS that one time (which had been a _complete_ accident, he might reiterate).

"Either you work with us to stop it, or you fuck off," Jenny said, "Because we're low on numbers, since I can't do a whole lot of anything right now."

"I doubt _he_ can do much more – have you seen the state of him? His hearts might give up," Oswin said.

"I only _look_ old," Twelve argued.

"Of course you do," she said patronisingly, "Just remember, looks aren't everything. I'm sure you have a wonderful personality. _Oh wait_, you're a scumbag. Forget everything I said."

"Can we just stop feuding and work on how we're going to stop the alien?" Adam spoke up, and then he flinched as Martha wound bandages around his foot tightly, "Us arguing is just going to give it more time to kill everyone and start a hive. One of them is enough to deal with, we don't need more."

"Oh," said Jenny, "There, um…"

"…What?" Adam asked her, "What is it?"

"There were two eggs."

"…Well maybe nobody's got close enough to the other to-"

"It was already open," Jenny confessed.

"That must be why everyone on here is dead already," Oswin said, "There are two. One of them is a human though, which is lucky. Can't regenerate."

"Everyone just stop," Nine ordered, "And think through this logically. How do we kill it?"

"In_ Alien_ she flushes it out of the airlock," Adam said, "in_ Aliens_ she crushes the queen with a loader and… Flushes it out of an airlock again. In _Alien__3_ they cover it in molten lead. In _Alien: Resurrection_ she made a hole in the back of the ship to suck the Alien out."

"So the airlock is our best bet," Nine said, "So we have to lure it there."

"Both of them," Oswin corrected him.

"Right. Both of them. So we should split up. You and Jenny," he said to Oswin, "Stay here. Can you access the ship's computers with Helix and that terminal?" Oswin nodded, "Then you'll be more helpful here. What do we use to bait it?"

"Prey," said Adam, "One of them's human, so it'll want us more than you two, and the other one's Time Lord. So we'd be best splitting up – but with any luck, TLX thinks Jenny's dead, and it won't care about Oswin, so they'll be safe."

"Wait, wait, wait – we use _ourselves_ as bait!? Are you insane?" Twelve asked him.

"Look, what side are you on? You want to reason with it but you don't want to go near it? You say you don't want to hurt it then say it should be scared of you? We're out to kill it and save more or less the entire universe, if you don't want that then the pair of you had better just piss off," Adam said, and Twelve shut up, but didn't answer his question.

"How do we find it?" Nine said.

"In the films, they use motion trackers," Oswin answered, "And they have motion trackers in this lab for finding parasites in people – like space-ticks or tapeworms or anything like that. I'll reconfigure them to find bigger things…" she went searching through a drawer next to her.

"What're its weaknesses?"

"Fire," Adam said, "That's it."

"What about the blaster?" Jenny croaked behind him, covered in sweat and blood with some of the white droid fluid on her legs, "The blaster's made of heat."

"…That's true," he said, "If we go humans-Time Lords, the three of us have Martha, you two had better take the blaster." Nine went to pick it up from the floor where it had been dropped.

"Don't I get a say in this!?" Clara demanded. She hadn't said or done anything since the droid had knocked her to the floor.

"No offence," said Martha, reloading her gun now she'd finished with Adam's foot as he carefully put his shoe back on, "But you're useless."

"She's right," Oswin said, "You have to go with Martha and Adam because together they won't attract it – you're the only one who will. Adam's temperature is so low he'll seem dead, and Martha's is so high it'll get scared. You're the only reason it'll go after them, and that's what we need."

"I don't want to be live bait!"

"Well, tough," Adam said, "_He_ brought you here, blame _him_," he pointed at Twelve with his thumb, "But you'd better hurry up and decide what you're gonna do, because _we_ have a Xenomorph to kill."


	137. Isolation VI

_Adam_

_Isolation VI_

The corridors were low-down and narrow and dark, all the flashing alarm lights shut off now with Martha in front holding a torch, Clara next to her, and Adam behind the both of them holding the motion tracker in one hand and his girlfriend's stun gun she'd given him to use in the other. They walked slowly, him half-limping, Clara humming to herself. Martha was getting increasingly annoyed at this humming, and Adam was trying to ignore it and keep his eyes on the motion tracker to look for little green blips. As of yet though, there was nothing. Just the dark and the sound of his own breathing, sweat making his hand around the tracker clammy and slippery.

"What are you humming? Is that _Hungry Like the Wolf_?" Martha hissed at Clara, who stopped her noise.

"Maybe," she said.

"Why are you doing that? Don't you know how to be quiet?" Martha asked.

"It calms me down," Clara argued.

"You know what calms me down? _Not dying_, that's what," Martha said coldly.

"If we're _supposed_ to be luring it…" she began.

"Twelvey's stupidity's rubbing off on you," Adam muttered.

"Look, he's not stupid," Clara defended him.

"He's quite stupid," Martha said.

"And he's a wanker," said Adam, "Even more than me. But a lot of people think the Xenomorph can't hear, so it doesn't really matter that she's humming, except for the fact it's really irritating."

"It's deaf?" Clara asked.

"And blind, a lot of people think."

"If it's deaf and blind, why is everyone so scared of it?" she hissed.

"Look, there are a lot of theories about how it sees. Maybe using temperature, echolocation, pheromones – you know, like an ant. They're a lot like ants. Nobody knows for sure. Some think it tastes the air with the tongue-mouth, like a snake," he explained.

"What the hell is a _tongue-mouth_!?" she demanded a little loudly, and Martha shushed her, "It's _deaf_, genius," she said to Martha.

"It might have really tiny ears nobody can see!" Adam said, "No-one knows, okay? And the tongue-mouth is the inner mouth it has inside its main mouth that it uses to kill people – why is _Star Wars_ the only sci-fi franchise you remotely care about? If we were fighting a Rancor, you'd be all over it…"

"Okay, enough with the crap talking," Martha ordered when Clara looked about to argue with him, "Stop being a dick, Adam. It's not Clara's fault that her only friend is an arsehole, okay?"

"Sorry," he apologised sarcastically, shaking his head and going back to his motion detector, still coming up with nothing – and he didn't know if that was a good or a bad thing, at this point.

"He isn't my only friend and he isn't an arsehole," Clara argued.

"I've been living with you for three months – trust me, you don't have a whole lot of people who can stand to talk to you for more than fifteen minutes. Your friends consist of your husband and a clone of yourself with an even bigger ego problem than you," Martha said.

"…And you," Adam said, "_You're_ friends with her. And so is Jenny. And Jack. And Rose."

"_I heard that about the ego problem, Martha_," came a crackling voice over an intercom that made them all jump.

"Oh my god, what are you doing!?" Adam hissed into the air going to lean on the wall, all of them stopped in their tracks by the sudden scare of Oswin's voice coming over some random speakers in the corridors.

"_I'm talking through the speaker system, babe. It's fine I've turned the volume down – being omnipotent and hacking the computers, it's like the Dalek Asylum all over again_," Oswin said, "_Okay the airlock is a left and then two rights away, I've got some schematics I managed to find on this… Piece of shit computer…_" there was a bang before she said 'piece' that sounded like maybe she'd hit something, "_I can activate the airlock from here, all I need is you three to get there and then make a lot of noise._"

"I thought it couldn't hear?" Clara quipped.

"_Shut up Clara, nobody wants you here, they just feel bad for you having to hang out with Old Twelvey all the time_," Oswin said, "_If you're too annoying Martha's gonna punch you on the face. She's done it before, like, three times or something. Just try to be quiet._"

"How do you put up with her?" Clara questioned Adam.

"_How did Danny put up with YOU_?" Oswin asked.

"…That's not funny, Oswin," Clara said quietly.

"_I love it when you say my name_."

"Oswin, don't be an arse," Adam said, "That's harsh."

"_Whatever – if you lot find the Xenomorph, make sure not to let her give it a speech. I'm not sure it understands English. And I died tragically at the age of 25 – don't talk to me about harsh,_" she said, before there was a clicking noise that meant she'd left, and it was tricky to tell if she was addressing Adam or Clara on that front.

"Stars, she's such a bitch…" Clara muttered.

"She can still hear you," Martha said, "Knowing-"

"Shh," said Adam.

"-Her, she's not gonna let you forget you've said that now."

"Shush," he said.

"What's she gonna do? I'm not scared of her," Clara said defiantly, crossing her arms, "She gonna exterminate me?"

"You're an idiot, and you should be more scared of Oswin than the Xeno-"

"Shut up, both of you!" Adam ordered, and they finally silenced and looked at him, where he held up the motion detector, swapping it into his other hand while wiping the free hand on his jeans to get the sweat off of it, "Look, there's a _blip_." There was. Every time the detector pulsed out like sonar, a little green orb lit up a few centimetres (on the screen) away from the cluster of three orbs that was their group.

"I thought you said it was deaf," said Clara.

"Nobody knows if it's bloody deaf or not," Martha said, "But just to be safe, shut up!" for dramatic effect, Martha held up her gun as she spoke so that it seemed like she was threatening Clara for a few moments, until she pushed Clara aside and went towards the door to their left with a red light on it, "Oswin, open the door." The red light flashed once, then the green light on the left of it lit up instead, and it slid open, "I told you she was listening," Martha said to Clara, holding up her gun as she walked into the room with her torch held up, Adam and the motion detector following closely behind.

It looked to be a store room of some kind, completely dark with crates within organised in a way that would make it easy for things to be lurking. But it was small, and once Martha panned her torch around the room once, it didn't seem like there were any aliens hiding out. Not full-grown ones, at any rate – but who was it to say the locked-up synth hadn't been the thing to kill the crew of the _Caelestis_, and the second facehugger wasn't still on the loose somewhere? Prowling?

There was a noise from the left corner of the room that seemed to confirm these fears of Adam Mitchell's, a rattle as something moved and knocked a canister over, and Martha's torch raced back from the right to the left to see what happened, a can of something or other rolling along the floor. Adam kept glancing between the blip on the motion detector and the corner of the room, Martha heading over.

"Could bullets kill one of those crawling things?" Martha whispered to him.

"Probably," he told her, "Just mind the blood." So she was thinking along the same lines as he was. Then there was a sound that didn't sound alien at all, and as the green blip moved to the right a big blur of _something_ shot out from one container and behind another, and Martha – in her panic – shot the wall and the room lit up with the flash from the gun.

Then there was a hiss.

"…Give me the torch," Adam said to her, frowning, taking the light from her when she didn't protest.

"Careful!" Clara said, and Martha told her to shut up again. He took a few steps forward and leant over the back of the container the thing was behind, holding the light and more or less ignoring the motion detector.

Glassy eyes flashed at him in the torch beam, green in colour, and then there was a savage hiss and an orange blob tore past his legs and between Martha and Clara and out of the door, Clara shrieking when it did.

He held up the torch to shine it in Clara's face, and said, "It's a cat."

"Why is there a cat in space?" she questioned.

"There's a cat in _Alien_ and _Aliens_. It's called Jonesy, it's ginger. This is some kind of… Alternate cat," he told her, glancing at the motion detector again to see that they were the only blobs on the tiny, green screen, "If the Xenomorph is there, you'll probably know – it's like, eight feet tall. Did you get that, Oswin?"

"_Get what?_" she asked a few seconds later.

"There's a cat on the loose," Adam said. She sighed.

"_I'll tell the other two. Remember, just a left and two rights. Well, actually, from the room you're in now it's _two_ lefts and two rights. Then you're at the airlock, and from then on it's easy_." She clicked off the comms.

"I can't stand her," Clara said.

"That's what Other You used to say," Martha said.

"Yeah, and you saw them at Coal Hill High. They went on holiday for a week and only got back three days ago," Adam said, "Just the two of them – Other You had an unpleasant time on a planet called Eslilia."

"What happened?" Clara asked.

"I…" Adam began.

"…We're not sure," Martha said, "All we know is she came back covered in blood, piss, crap and vomit and wouldn't talk to anybody but Oswin, and then they both left that night for six days."

"I don't know how anyone could put up with _her_ for six days," Clara muttered.

"Pretty sure that complaining to her boyfriend about her isn't gonna do you any good, though," Adam told her, and when she glared at him he just smiled, "Shall we get to this airlock, then? We _are_ being hunted, after all."


	138. Isolation VII

**AN: Yes, I did accidentally upload this to 3D9C instead of 4D12C, in case anybody caught that slip-up of mine, whoops...**

_Oswin_

_Isolation VII_

"_Stars, she's such a bitch._"

"Did you hear that!? She called me a bitch!" Oswin protested to Jenny, who was slumped down on the medical gurney, still too wounded to do much other than swear profusely when something annoyed her. 'Something' usually being the Twelfth Doctor, though he was gone by now, thank god.

"_What's she gonna do? I'm not scared of her_," Clara said a minute later while Martha argued with her, "_She gonna exterminate me?_" The voices came through crackly and fuzzy, like talking to someone down a bad phone line.

"Are you hearing this?" Oswin said, turning around and ignoring the computer, "She just challenged me."

"You should fuck her up," Jenny advised.

"I should…"

"You can't really let that kind of behaviour to go unchecked."

"…Clara won't be happy with you being a bad influence on me, you know," Oswin said, "Real Clara, I mean."

"Screw Clara," said Jenny, "Both of them."

"Coming from you, I'm worried you mean that literally," Oswin joked, trying to listen to see if anything else were being said about her. But it was relatively quiet down the other end of the computer, just whispering she couldn't hear properly.

"Maybe I do – who's gonna stop me?"

"The Doctor might stop you," said Oswin, "By that, I mean the Twelfth Doctor, if you try and sleep with that one out there. Unless the Xenomorph gets there first, of course."

"Do you mean unless the Xenomorph kills the Doctor, or unless the Xenomorph sleeps with Clara?" Jenny asked.

"Well, generally, I'm not entirely sure – but I doubt she'd turn it down. She's got a thing for extra-terrestrials," Oswin said.

"_If the Xenomorph is there, you'll probably know_," she heard Adam say down the comms.

"She'll _definitely_ know," Jenny said, and Oswin laughed.

"_Did you get that, Oswin_?" Adam asked. She held down the 'enter' key which allowed her to speak.

"Get what?" she asked.

"_There's a cat on the loose_," he told her.

"I'll tell the other two. Remember, just a left and two rights. Well, actually, from the room you're in now it's _two_ lefts and two rights. Then you're at the airlock, and from then on, it's easy," she let go of the key and leant back in the chair in the dark room, glancing out of the windows to see if she could see anything out in the corridors. But all she saw was heavy darkness. In fact, she couldn't even see the light that she was sure was lit up on the door opposite the room…

"_I can't stand her_," Clara said, making Oswin bring her attention back.

"She has a real problem with me," Oswin said, "Maybe I intimidate her with how amazing I am… That's probably it." Jenny yawned and flinched when she did.

"Probably," she agreed, "I'll go to her flat and steal all her underwear."

"About that – do you think you could stop stealing Clara's pants? She's becoming even more gross than usual, and she knows it's you and Jack. Mainly because I told her, but it's plain weird more than anything. It would be nice if you could return them, too," Oswin said to Jenny, who narrowed her eyes at her, "What? I'm just _saying_ that you shouldn't steal bras."

"Do you know how much lingerie that girl has?" Jenny asked seriously.

"No! And I don't want to! You need to re-evaluate your obsession with my sister and I," Oswin said to her, and she just shrugged.

Then they heard a noise.

"…What was that?" Jenny asked in a whisper. Oswin glanced around, scanning the windows again, and this time she _did_ spot the light on the door, steadily green. She didn't know where that door went, but she did wonder what had been there. Could it have been the alien itself? It _was_ excellent at camouflage.

Their eyes found the ceiling vent, Oswin looking for drool that might be dripping down from above. The vent was at the foot of the gurney, Jenny most vulnerable to whatever might be hiding in it. There was another clatter of movement from above.

"Get off the bed," Oswin whispered, looking around for any kind of weapon, "Maybe it's the cat, Adam said there was a cat…" She leant her hand behind her and knocked the keyboard with it, unbeknownst to her hitting the 'enter' key to open up the comms channel into the speaker system again.

"How would it get here this quickly?" Jenny asked, carefully moving herself off of the bed, getting down and then staggering so that Oswin had to quickly step over to try and support her, all while searching for a means to defend herself. The yellow fire extinguisher still covered in the blood of the broken droid on the floor had rolled over to that side of the room in the time since the other five had left, and she stooped to pick it up, while Jenny found what seemed to be a bone saw that heated up with the push of a button, glowing orange within seconds.

Something dropped out from the vent. Something that was not a cat. Something with a sickly, pale yellow colour and eight long legs, like fingers, and a two foot long tail. The facehugger dropped down onto the end of the gurney, and this one didn't think Jenny was dead. But Oswin had killed bigger things than facehuggers – that space lobster on Quadrant Twelve, for instance. And a sheep, once. And two goats, she thought. And a zombie. And over 12,000 innocent people.

"_Is something going on, Oswin?_" Adam asked over the comms, and she mouthed a swear word, because upon hearing a voice, the _living_ facehugger dropped down off the gurney next to the dead one that Twelve had stamped on so hard it had burnt a little hole in the floor beneath its crablike body, legs curled up into itself like it was a dead spider.

Oswin unhooked the chute from the side of the fire extinguisher and pushed down the handle, but nothing happened. Then she noticed how cold it was in her hands as she kept trying to force the thing to work, and realised that Adam had somehow managed to freeze the fire extinguisher so that it no longer worked, in some sort of miracle (seriously, how was that even possible?). But that made it heavy, so she threw it straight for the facehugger and hit it in its tail, right at the bit where the protrusion met the little, damp-looking body as the lungs pumped furiously on the outside.

"_Oswin?_" Adam asked, but kept getting ignored.

The fire extinguisher rolled away from them to the other side of the room as the facehugger tried to launch itself in Oswin's direction – though whatever it was using to see her, it didn't do a good job of finding where her head was, and it seemed she'd succeeded in injuring the tail as blots of greenish blood dotted the floor and hissed as the acid burnt through the deck. She lifted up her foot and attempted to kick it away, but instead of that working, it tried to clasp itself around her leg – her _left_ leg, the fake one.

"Ew! It's trying to impregnate my foot!" Oswin said, jumping on her other leg and trying to throw the thing off.

"_Sorry!? Is there a facehugger there!?" _Adam exclaimed.

"So what!?" Jenny hissed, getting her heated-up bone saw out to try and cut at it.

"The acid! Shit – the acid is melting the stupid attachment!" It was true – the little sphere she had instead of a foot was being dissolved like the floor, but with one almighty movement she kicked her leg and tossed the facehugger across the room, where it hit the window and melted a hole in _that_, too, and then it bounced back onto its legs and jumped halfway across the room onto the gurney, even with its injured tail, and when Oswin stepped away to the left she found herself nearly sinking into the ground with the acid on her leg, and limped to get away right as it jumped again. For Jenny this time.

"_Oswin what's happening!? Are you alright!?_" Adam Mitchell was nearly shouting in his urgency.

Jenny held up the bone saw and stopped it in its tracks, the blade cutting it right through the squishy, fleshy underside of its body, severing it just enough to kill it before the acid squiring from the gash in its centre melted the blade of the saw so much it was useless. The facehugger dropped to the ground as Jenny _screamed_.

She had blood in her eyes.

"Oh fuck, oh fuck!" Oswin swore, coming over, "NO! Don't-" she was about to remind Jenny not to wipe her eyes, but before she could get her sentence out the pain overcame the Time Lord and, with her right hand, she tried to scrape some of the gunk off her face, and the blood started its destructive work on her fingers and the skin on her hand and arm.

"Help me!" Jenny shouted.

"I… I don't think your eyes… Shit – you have to trust me," Oswin said, "Martha – how do you perform an emergency enucleation!?"

"_You WHAT!?_" Martha shouted, "_What happened!?_"

"She has facehugger blood in her eyes!"

"_I'm not a surgeon_!" Martha argued.

"The acid will get to her brain if you don't hurry up!" she said, pushing Jenny so that she was leaning forwards and gravity was doing some work at slowing the progression of the acid.

"_Can't she use excess regeneration energy to_-"

"I don't have excess regeneration energy!" Jenny yelled, all of them forgetting of the threat of the alien – but at least the arrival and swift execution of the other facehugger meant there was only one Xenomorph, and it was TLX, so maybe it didn't care about the humans enough to do anything, "I don't even have enough energy to change my face! I heal the injuries I have _when_ I regenerate, not after!"

"_Make sure you have something sharp,_" Martha said, "_You'll have to, um… Get a scalpel, or something,_" Oswin found a scalpel on the floor where a tray of equipment had been knocked over earlier by Twelve, no time to worry about the spread of infection when that could be treated _later_ on the TARDIS, "_You have to try and get it out enough to cut the-_"

"Just GOUGE holy shit!" Jenny ordered, "It's _burning _my _skull_!" As they argued about this, her hand was dripping bits of yellow blood and red lumps of melted, liquefied flesh and bone onto the ground, burning her skin to black until it fell onto the floor like a decomposing corpse.

"_We can make it neat LATER,"_ Adam said.

"_He's right_," said Martha, and Oswin really wished they hadn't left, "_Just don't let her die._"

"I am _so_ sorry," Oswin apologised, keeping her left hand on the side of Jenny's face to steady it as acid gnawed away at her eye sockets, thankful that Jenny was so short when she slumped down against the desk.

Oswin had never had to stick a scalpel down the side of someone's eye before as they screamed and begged her to 'make it stop', she'd never had to try and sever what was left of the muscles keeping the eye attached to the rest of the head and scoop it out and flick it onto the floor like it was a discarded stone from a plum, and never, in reality, had she seen a bloody, hollow, burnt and empty eye socket gawping back at her as the remains of the eye carried on burning its way through the floor. But five minutes of her afterlife later, she'd just had to do that twice, and went to find all the dressing she could, sticking cotton wool balls into the two empty cavities of Jenny's face – though she'd succeeded in stopping the acid getting all the way to her brain.

"What about… Hand..?" Jenny panted, barely able to speak.

"I'm sorry, I don't think your hand can… Two of your fingers and your thumb… They're just gone… It's gonna need to be… Removed… I'm sorry," she said, staggering as she lost her balance on her leg that was now over an inch shorter than it was supposed to be, "I can make you new eyes – I know about artificial attachments… I have a friend, she can get you a new hand fixed right up, she built my leg…" she offered, feeling like a useless mutilator as she clicked off the comms link before going to bandage up the remains of Jenny's right hand that the acid had finally stopped attacking. Jenny collapsed onto the floor and Oswin helped sit her up.

"It's okay," she coughed.

"It's not okay – look at the state you're in."

"Clara's had worse," Jenny said weakly.

"Clara _heals_," said Oswin, "You don't heal like that, and we only have enough Miracle Medicine on the TARDIS for fatalities, and you're not…"

"I meant the Other Clara. The one here," Jenny said, "I'd rather have my eyes ripped out than have… Whatever's happened to her, I don't know…"

"Once, she was running for ages with the Doctor, and then she had to go running on a date with Danny Pink straight afterwards," Oswin said.

"That's my point…" Jenny coughed in a way that might be a laugh, "Your boyfriend's colourblind. Cleary you have a thing for people with… Eye problems…" she choked out, still _somehow_ managing to make a joke even in the battered state she was in.

"That's such a stupid thing to say…" Oswin half laughed, "…I have to warn the others about that cat now…"


	139. Isolation VIII

_Nine_

_Isolation VIII_

Nine clutched the sonic blaster at his side, holding up a tiny torch he kept in his jacket up over his shoulder as he crept through the narrow corridors, listening out for every bump or scratch or creak that sounded remotely suspicious – which was, by his judgement, all of them.

"So, what's the deal with the authority crisis back there?" Twelve asked Nine, who clenched his jaw and shook his head a little before answering Twelve – he didn't like this version of himself any more than the rest of them. Although, he hadn't hit him with a gun or tried to shoot him, so maybe he was exaggerating a little.

"There's no authority crisis," Nine lied. How was Twelve so in-key with TARDIS politics, anyway? This 'authority crisis' was driving a wedge between the Time Lords and everybody else – and Nine was the only one who was trying _not_ to be a baby about it. Maybe that _was_ only because, the previous day, he'd been leaning against the door into Nerve Centre and he'd heard the late conversation about 'equality', not to mention Eleven and Ten both complaining about it.

"Obviously – that's why you're being bossed around by humans, is it? Well – Clara _is_ very bossy," said Twelve.

"Clara isn't here," Nine said, "Neither Clara is here. What are you making fun of her for when she can't defend herself?"

"She's just very easy to make fun of," Twelve shrugged. With every sentence he just annoyed Nine more and more – Nine thought he'd never been like this when he'd travelled with Rose. The only time he remembered saying anything particularly poignant in awfulness to her was after she'd changed history and saved her father's life (but he thought he was justified that time – she _had_ caused a lot of people to get consumed by Reapers, including him).

"I've just accepted that they know more than I do in regards to this situation," Nine said calmly.

"Even Adam Mitchell? The nerd we kicked off the TARDIS?" Twelve snorted.

"Alright, _we_ didn't do anything, _we_ are from different universes," Nine said.

"You'll regenerate into me one day," Twelve shrugged, "Whatever weird temporal distortion you _think_ is going on. Of course, this is a dream."

"_Is he talking about dream crabs again?_" a voice came out of the speakers and made them both jump, Twelve nearly dropping the motion detector. It was Oswin, using the ship's comms systems. There was a familiar mumble from somewhere, and then Oswin said, "_Jenny says she's gonna fuck you up if she hears you talking about dream crabs again, Scrotum Face_." Nine tried not to laugh, and Twelve seemed deeply offended.

"WHAT did you just-"

"_What? Do you prefer Testicle Skin? Nutsack Cheeks? It's because of the wrinkles, you see, because you're, you know – 'yearly challenged'. Old. _Shrivelled. _Lord knows, if your _face_ looks like that I can only imagine what your _underside_ looks like_," Oswin said, and she seemed to have shut Twelve up with that.

"I never usually have to deal with this vulgarity," he muttered.

"_You'd better get used to it, Testes – I can be even more vulgar than this, you know. Do you wanna hear a masturbation joke?_"

"No, Oswin," said Nine, "What do you want?"

"_I have good news and bad news. And some moderate news. The moderate news is that there's a cat on board, so be aware of that. The good news is that TLX is the only Xenomorph. The OTHER good news is that the second facehugger just showed up and we killed it. The bad news is it got acid in Jenny's face and on her hand and I had to gouge her eyes out and now when we get back to the TARDIS her right hand needs to be amputated_," Oswin explained, "_Also, it's a left then a right then you go up a ladder, then a left and another left until you get to airlock – you should pick up the pace and try to meet the other three to lure it. And, if you desperately need to, sonics should be safe to use because I'm not detecting any other synthetics registered to this ship other than this dead one here._"

"Are you talking about yourself or the android?" Twelve quipped, and Nine glared at him.

"_If you don't shut your mouth I will ram one of these 'dream crab' tails down your throat and the other up your_-"

"Oswin, go dark on comms unless there's an emergency," Nine cut across her, and he heard her sigh.

"_Roger that_," she said, and he heard a click, and assumed she'd left, but she was probably still listening. More than anything now, he was worried about Jenny's wellbeing – both of her eyes gouged out? Messily? By someone untrained? As clever as Oswin was, he'd always pinned her for someone more interested in computers and technology, rather than becoming a surgeon. But then, he trusted Oswin to do something like that more than Twelve or Clara (_Beta_ universe Clara, that was).

"She's insufferable, someone ought to bring her down a peg or two," Twelve grumbled, pulling out his sonic straight away and scanning around.

"What are you scanning for?" Nine questioned.

"Dream matter," Twelve said. Nine shook his head, stuck the sonic blaster in his belt, and then took the motion detector right out of Twelve's hands, and then they rounded a corner, turning left, as Oswin had instructed. Twelve could look for all the imaginary 'dream crabs' he wanted – if one of those face-things got him, Nine was sure he'd shut up about them then. Maybe he'd regenerate into a nicer person, then nobody would have to put up with him anymore.

All those thoughts vanished from Nine's head though when he saw the dead body lying, slumped down on the floor, underneath a blinking, red emergency light, which seemed to make the blood of the man's wounds glow. The eyes were rolled back and white in his head and his mouth was wide open with blood dripping from it. He had a gaping hole in his stomach, larger and messier than the one made in Jenny's chest by the larva, like something had impaled through him, but now it was gone. Then there was his skull, crushed in one side, bloody, brain like grey goo leaking out of the cracks between the blood-clotted hair and flakes of dead skin the same way the white blood of the droid had seeped out when Adam had hit it.

"See the hole in the side of the skull?" Twelve said, "Typical dream crab. Eats your brain."

"I don't think this bloke had his brain eaten," Nine muttered, annoyed, going and kneeling down by the man and closing his eyelids, "Blunt force trauma, caused by…" he was distracted when something slimy was on his shoulder, and he craned his neck awkwardly to see some clear, thick substance dripping down his jacket. Frowning, he dipped a finger in it, and trailed a string of the stuff off of himself where it continued to slide down his hand, where he sniffed it, and it smelt disgusting, so he wiped it off on Twelve's trousers.

"Eugh!" Twelve protested, but Nine was more bothered by the fact whatever the substance was, it was still being dripped onto him. Standing up and stepping back, he looked up into the dark roof vent hanging over them, and was more than a little frightened to see two shiny sets of wet, dripping, but bright white teeth, all of them razor sharp, needle-like fangs, the red of the emergency light flashing off a shimmering, long, domed head when the jaws opened and the smaller jaws within leered out.

"RUN!"


	140. Isolation IX

_Martha_

_Isolation IX_

They were waiting by the airlock after being instructed by Oswin, after she'd informed them that Jenny wasn't dead, but hadn't gone into too much detail about the extent of her injuries, that they were supposed to be rendezvousing with Twelve and Nine. The airlock itself was the size of a large elevator, and the room outside where four spacesuits were stored was a relatively large room by comparison to the other rooms on the ship, but wasn't anything spectacular. Just dark, with white, clean walls.

They'd run into the large number of zero Xenomorphs in their brief travels across the second deck of the _Caelestis_, just the ginger cat Adam was calling 'Jonesy', which had decided to follow them since their encounter. It seemed to be fond of him and kept weaving around his legs, but he didn't tell it to go away, just stood with his eyes fixed on the motion detector.

"What if that cat draws the alien out?" Clara challenged. Martha was quickly remembering why she used to hate Clara with such a burning passion – she was just _annoying_. And _this_ Clara especially seemed to have some kind of equal hatred for everyone from their universe after whatever incidents had occurred at Coal Hill High a month ago (which Martha had not been a part of).

"The Xenomorph doesn't care about the cat," Adam told her flatly, "_You're_ the bait, not Jonesy."

"Why do you keep calling it that?" Clara asked through gritted teeth, and then the cat hissed at her and she shrieked a little and jumped back.

"God, you're pathetic," Martha rolled her eyes, "Just shut up, okay? Both of you?" Neither of them spoke, Adam shaking his head and keeping eyes on the motion detector.

"I've got something," Adam said after a moment, about the same time they heard shouting coming from down the corridor, "Three blips coming straight this way."

"It'll be them," said Martha, "Them and…"

She didn't need to say what they were with, because Nine and Twelve came around the corner right then with some hissing creature, black as the space outside the ship with the faint lights of the torches glistening off its body as it crawled along the wall after the two Doctors. The Xenomorph was eight feet long on the wall with a powerful tail like a whip dotted with razor spines, five inches long, all the way down to the tip like a spear head. Body thin, skeletal almost, washboard-ribs and elongated toes sitting at the end of thin thighs and thinner calves. It was lanky, arms falling down past its knees when it dropped off the wall and stood, hunched over, four fingers and two thumbs on each hand, protrusions like tubes sticking out of its back as it leered. The head was long and curved around, domed on top and translucent, ridges beneath showing through as light flickered off the blinding white teeth set in its open maw as it hissed at them, flicking the tail like an angry cat.

Nine was as quiet as he could be when he met the trio by the door, Clara backing away terrified and Twelve shouting at them to "get back", despite the fact he knew the only place for them to go to try and escape was the airlock and he was fully aware of their plan the lure it.

The Alien stood, watching them somehow, as the Twelfth Doctor fawned over Clara to see if she was okay, showing some form of affection he rarely ever did.

"She's _fine_," Adam said to him.

"No _offence_, Genius Boy, but you're an idiot – I will check her wellbeing _myself_," Twelve said. Very loudly. The Xenomorph hissed and the drool dripping down around its jaw flew out, spittle settling on the floor and glinting in the lights. It stepped forwards, a thump of footsteps as it did. For whatever reason, it wasn't attacking yet. Surveying the scene, maybe, but it gave them time. Time for what, Martha didn't know, but she stowed her gun away and focused on trying to channel fire to her fingertips while Twelve continued to be very stupid and make a lot of noise.

The cat meowed and hid behind Adam Mitchell, but the Alien wasn't interested in the cat. TLX was interested in the most superior species, Oswin had said, and would inevitably go after the Time Lords first unless somebody got in its way, to "turn into eggs", she'd said. Martha was still paying more attention to her fingertips though, trying to funnel the heat of pyrokinesis out of them. Next to her, below Adam's feet, she saw the ground steadily freezing as he got more and more scared, ice spreading down the handle of the motion detector.

There was a scream, but not a scream that came from any of them, a scream that came from nearer to the Xenomorph than them.

"_Unidentified human_," Oswin said in a whisper over the comms. The Xenomorph turned to look down a corridor to its right that they couldn't see, let out what might be a roar. A human came out of nowhere in a jumpsuit brandishing a flamethrower, and they watched like they were in a cinema in 1979 and _Alien_ had just been released, the imaginary smell of popcorn filling Martha's nose in the surreal moment that followed, wherein the flamethrower jammed, the human whimpered, the Alien hissed and its seven-foot long tail impaled the woman through the back and she dropped the flamethrower to the ground. It lifted her off her feet and then the tongue-mouth, on a whitish chord of muscle, shot out of its jaw and burrowed itself in the centre of the woman's forehead, leaving her dead as it tossed her to the ground and turned to them, hissing.

"Split," Adam whispered, "You two – Doctors – run! Opposite ways! Make it choose!" Nine went right and the Xenomorph took another stomp towards them when he did.

"I will not listen to you _humans_ telling _me_ what to-"

The Alien roared again, and then it ran, and Adam dropped the motion detector and threw his arm like he was throwing a tennis ball. And Martha saw he really _had_ thrown something, some icy lump, and it hit the Xenomorph mid-charge in the domed head and disorientated it, giving Clara enough time to push Twelve left, the opposite way to Nine, and yell at him (even though yelling was _clearly _a mistake) to run. At least he listened to _her_, Martha thought.

There was a beep behind her and the airlock doors slid open.

"I'll get the flamethrower," Adam said, and then he was gone, running off, dropping the motion detector on the floor, leaving Clara cowering and crying in a corner and Martha the only person left who was really capable of doing anything to lure the Alien.

"…Come on, then!" she shouted it at it, backing away towards the airlock, stumbling over the step up to get through the door, "Over here! I'm right here, you stupid thing!" Sparks flew out of her fingers then, and she kept trying to build up heat, willing her power to work.

The Xenomorph turned its head to look around, and was then facing Clara. But it had no eyes, so who knew if it was really _looking_ at Clara, or just trying to trick Martha? Its tail was wrapping around its back towards Clara, and it took a step that way, right as there was a jet of fire shooting out at it from Adam Mitchell and the flamethrower – he'd made it work. It wouldn't work for long, though, not with the ice spreading over it. But it hissed at him, so he blasted it again.

"This way!" Martha shouted, "Over here! Come and get me!"

The flamethrower combined with Martha taunting moved the Xenomorph's attention away from Clara. Then it was right in front of Martha, looming over her, stooping beneath the doorway to get into the airlock with her, her closed in and trapped behind it now.

"Oh, god…" she muttered, hoping she didn't get the same treatment as that girl back there who was lying dead with her weapon pried out of her still-warm hands.

The tail swung straight for her, but she ducked. Somehow. She'd ducked before she'd even registered the tail was coming for her. When the tail came again, she ducked that time, and the thing hissed and opened its jaws. Before Martha knew what she was doing, the tongue-mouth had shot out for her face, but something was stopping it reaching her. _Something_ was her own hand, which had reached up and closed around it, soaked with saliva. And then the Xenomorph was making sounds of protest as her burning hot skin melted the extended inner-mouth and the chord of muscle working it.

The jaw came off in her hand.

The Alien spat then, spat something yellow, and without input from her conscious mind a wall of fire came from her two hands as they held themselves up, the acid getting incinerated in mid-air.

"_Martha, how are you doing that!?_" Oswin asked, but Martha didn't have an answer.

The Xenomorph hissed, but they'd been circling each other, almost, and by now it was so entranced by Martha and how she was somehow managing to dodge everything it threw at her and shoot fireballs from her hands, she had her back to the open door returning her to the _Caelestis_.

For a third time, the tail went at her, swooping under her feet, but she jumped over it and then dodged sideways as the six-fingered, clawed hands tried to slash at her face – and she was just as confused as Adam, who was standing with the flamethrower looking like a novelty ice-cube in his hands.

"Get back!" Adam shouted.

The Alien hissed, spitting more acidic blood, but Martha projected a stream of fire out of both of her hands and tried to run backwards, but tripped straight over the foot of the door like she hand done when she entered.

Crawling away, it grabbed hold of her foot, and she thought for sure her ridiculous lucky streak was over. But the skin of her ankle was searing hot and the thing retracted in pain, making a noise that was like a mechanical squeal. The airlock closing, she moved her foot just in time, and the Alien was locked in.

"_Ejecting in five… Four… Three… Wait... What the… Martha, stand up! Look in the porthole!_" Oswin ordered, "_I can't cancel the eject… Shit, SHIT!_" she said. Martha stood up as there was a wooshing noise, and when she pressed her face to the porthole all she saw was the body of the Xenomorph flying out into space, and then the doors slid shut and there was darkness in the airlock. "_What did you see!?_"

"Nothing! It's just dark, I saw nothing, just the Alien in space!" Martha said, "What!? What is it!?" The others were crawling out of the woodwork now, Adam dropping the flamethrower and then jumping when bits of it shattered off like broken glass, getting ice-dust on the floor as Clara got shakily to her feet and Twelve and Nine returned from their respective corridors and hiding places they'd dashed off to.

"_It doesn't make sense… It doesn't…_" Oswin muttered over the comms.

"What is it?" Nine asked.

"_The weight reading – the thing reads how heavy… The airlock, I mean, it's… Scales…_"

"You're not making sense," Adam said wearily.

"_Just give me a second_," she said.

"Is the smartest girl in the universe confused?" Twelve jeered.

"_Fuck you, I'm gonna cut your penis off if you don't shut up_," Oswin said. He did shut up. "_Look, I don't understand it. The weight reading suddenly plummeted right before it was ejected, and now it's floating around out there but there's no way to get a proper visual in time or get it back._"

"Get it back!?" Clara protested, "Why would you want to-"

"_Will you shut up too? Fuck… The thing has minimal heat readings, but the heat went down, like it just… Vanished. But not all of it, some of it was left…_"

"How can _some_ of it have vanished?" Nine asked.

"_I have no idea. It doesn't make sense. I think it's dead though… I'll get the coordinates and find it in the TARDIS, put the shields up, just in case_," Oswin said.

"That thing couldn't figure out how to open the doors anyway," Twelve snorted.

"_Will you PLEASE just_-"

Whatever she was going to say, she didn't need to, because Twelve was slugged by Adam Mitchell, his fist coated in a thick layer of ice like knuckled dusters, straight in the jaw, and he fell to the floor. Martha had never seen Adam Mitchell hit _anybody_ before, but clearly, Twelve was just _that bad_.

"There's nothing we can do here. We'll go back to the medibay," Nine declared.

"Well…" Twelve got to his feet after spitting some blood onto the floor, and Adam looked rather shocked at himself, but stepped away from the blood, "_You_ can. _We_ are leaving."

"_Good. Good riddance. I hope I never see either of you again in all my afterlife_," Oswin said, "_Get back here ASAP, I'll call the TARDIS and get it to land in here… I'll move the droid or… Something…_"

"How were you doing all that?" Adam asked Martha, staring at her weirdly, "I've never seen anyone _grab hold_ of a the tongue-mouth before or dodge out of the way of the tail _three times_ \- that's like, inhuman!" Martha didn't have an answer for him, but Nine was giving her a look, too, now that it was just the three of them left.

"_Adrenaline_," Oswin said shortly into the comms.

"_Oh_," Adam realised whatever she had, "I guess your other superpower is, like, super-agility or something... Beats aura-reading."


	141. Isolation X

_Adam_

_Isolation X_

"Why have you brought that cat?" Martha asked Adam as they walked through the corridors back to the medibay, him with the newly-christened Jonesy in his arms, which he was trying very hard _not _to freeze.

"Because everyone else on this ship is dead - I can't leave him to die," Adam said, "Plus, he's an iconic character from a sci-fi franchise."

"Are you sure the Doctors will be happy with you adopting a cat?" Martha asked, glancing between Adam and Nine, the latter of which staring at the ginger furball that was purring by this point.

"I don't know - do you mind me adopting the cat?" Adam asked Nine, wondering what he'd say to the boy he'd once kicked off the TARDIS, "Or are you gonna kick the cat off, too?"

"I'm sorry about that - but you can hardly blame me," said Nine, "You were only there because Rose fancied you."

"_Rose _used to fancy you!? _Rose Tyler_?" Martha exclaimed next to him.

"Yep," Nine answered for her, "But I suppose you've done enough work lately to earn yourself _and _that cat a place, if my opinion really matters." Adam Mitchell was a little surprised at that, and even though Nine was right and the opinion of the majority often ruled over the opinion of an authority on board the TARDIS, he felt quite proud of himself.

"We saved her life and she didn't even say thank you, you know," Adam said to Martha as they rounded the corner to return to the medibay, "The Alien was totally gonna kill her."

"Let's be honest," said Martha, hitting the button to enter the room where the TARDIS was now sitting in one corner, "They would _both _have died here if it weren't for us."

The dead anddroid had been dragged over to be propped up against the wall, the two acidic facehugger corpses kicked out of the way. Jack Harkness had arrived, as well - presumably he'd been the one to fly the TARDIS there - and he was whispering to Jenny on the floor, the top half of her head, her whole chest and her right hand covered in bandages.

"You look like a mummy, Jenny," Adam said.

"Awesome," she said hoarsely, "Maybe I'll go to Egypt."

"I wouldn't advise - what the _fuck _is that?" Oswin demanded of Adam, pointing at the cat in his arms. Jack looked over straight away in case another facehugger or Xenomorph had suddenly appeared out of nowhere, but his face just turned to a frown when he saw Jonesy, who was still purring.

"It's just a cat, Oswin," Jack said, Jenny asking him what was going on. Oswin was stood on a curious angle with part of her 'foot' melted.

"Get rid of it," Oswin said.

"No!" Adam protested, as did Martha, who seeemd quite keen on the cat, "He's fine, he's a space cat, he's used to being on a spaceship."

"You're not keeping that cat. Tell him he's not keeping that cat," Oswin turned to Nine, "Why is it making that noise!? What if it's been impregnated, hmm? The last thing we need is another alien on the loose on the TARDIS. The TARDIS is massive!"

"He hasn't been impregnated," Adam said.

"Look, it's just Jonesy," said Jack, "The cat from the movies, y'know? All this universe-crap? I suppose this is where he went after _Aliens_."

"Exactly," said Adam, "This cat was put into hypersleep for fifty-seven years - he's, like, over sixty. The oldest domestic cat in human history."

"It's _dangerous_," she said, backing away.

"...Babe, have you ever seen a cat before..?" Adam asked, frowning, "Like, in real life..?" Oswin clenched her jaw and didn't say anything.

"Seriously!?" Martha exclaimed, "You're more scared of the cat than the facehuggers." She cast a glance at the two dead crab-things on the floor.

"They're actually dream crabs, Martha. Trust me, I know," said Jenny. When there was a scattered laugh and no objection to that, she asked, "Where did Twelve go?" That was when they heard the thrumming, distant sound of the other TARDIS leaving on a different deck of the _Caelestis_. "I think I might hate him."

"Everyone hates him," said Nine.

"And her," said Martha, "She started crying in a corner. The same girl I once saw rip a crossbow bolt out of her cheek and then light a cigarette and walk off like it was nothing. _Crying in a corner_. And then it nearly killed her until me and Adam saved her, and then she didn't even thank us."

"Is that what you were talking about when you walked in?" Jenny asked, and Martha told her yes.

"Oswin, the cat isn't going to hurt you," Adam sighed, "It's not _my _cat, it'll be the TARDIS cat."

"I think that's a great idea," Martha said, "I love cats. It won't have any diseases, either, living in space and all."

"Better than having a pet facehugger," Jack joked, "C'mon, you," he said to Jenny, helping her to her feet, "Let's get you to the medibay so that Dr Jones and Dr Oswald can assess your injuries."

"I'm not a doctor," Oswin corrected him.

"Don't be modest," Jack said, walking past her and winking at Adam, who got the distinct impression that Jack was trying to butter her up so that she'd maybe loosen up on the cat-issue, "You've probably got hundreds of honorary PhDs somewhere." Thank god the smartest girl in the universe was so phenomenally shallow, Adam thought to himself. She still shot him and the cat a glare as she walked off to follow the Harknesses, though.

"I'm sure she'll be outvoted," Martha said to him, "Has she really never seen a cat before?"

"Two months ago she'd never seen a tree before," Adam told her, "Being from some horribly sanitary spacestation. Plus, being kept locked in the house for over twenty years. More or less in one room. It's no wonder she's so ill," he sighed sadly, and followed the group onto the ship, through the console room into Nerve Centre.

"Clara, tell him," Oswin said to Clara, who was sat at one of the kidney bean tables drinking tea, whilst pointing at her boyfriend.

"Tell him wha..? Oh my stars, a cat!" Clara exclaimed with a beam, nearly falling off the chair in her urgency to pet the cat.

"I'd better go see to Jenny," Martha told him, leaving him stuck with practically every other member of the crew suddenly wanting to fawn over Jonesy, rather than Jenny - which was surprising, considering she'd had her eyes gouged out, "By the way," Martha called out to everybody, "We're voting on whether or not to keep the cat as the TARDIS pet."

"Urgh!" Oswin protested.

"Os, any other girl would love if they had a boyfriend who picked up strays and brought them home out of the goodness of his heart," Clara told her, then her eyes widened when she looked at her sister properly, "Whose blood are you covered in!?"

"Jenny's. And do all those girls have rabies?" Oswin snapped, "Screw the lot of you - now I have to go apologise to Jenny for gouging her eyes out, and then cut off her hand." She limped away in a very pronounced manner.

"Oswin, what happened to your leg!? Why did you attack Jenny!?" Clara exclaimed, but Oswin said nothing, just dragging her fake leg behind her into the medibay. "What happened to her leg?" she asked Adam.

"And Jenny's eyes," Ten interrupted, taking the cat out of Adam's arms to pet it.

"Basically... Um... The whole fictional universes thing... It's a long story..."

* * *

_Martha_

It was a ghastly sight which awaited Martha Jones when she unwrapped Jenny's crudely bandaged head, and Jenny made disgruntled sounds when Martha pulled a wad of cotton wool balls out of her hollow eye socket, stuck together with blood. Jenny was lying down in one of the hospital beds by this point.

"This is... Not good," Martha said, "The acid has destroyed most of the muscles back here, we're just lucky Oswin stopped it before it got to her brain..." she had a tiny torch from the large stock of medical supplies they had, which she was shining into the two bloody holes in Jenny's face.

"There's still a lot of the burn ointment I invented after putting that nasty itching powder in everybody's showers left," Oswin said, "It might clear up some of the scarring..."

"What about the Miracle Medicine?" Jack asked. He was sitting in the chair by her side.

"It's fine, I'm in a dream," Jenny said, "Dream crabs."

"What's a dream crab and why do you guys keep talking about them?" Jack asked.

"Nobody knows, I wouldn't worry about it," Oswin said to him, "I'm pretty sure Old Twelvey made it up, anyway. A dead facehugger fell on his head and he screamed."

Jenny laughed at the memory of a few hours ago, then, still grinning, "I nearly shot him in the head."

"Jack, will you go get Rory?" Martha requested. Jack obliged and left the room to fetch the nurse and only other medical professional. Nine was standing next to the bed with his arms crossed, being a much more dutiful father than Twelve had been, and more than the other two Time Lords were being at that exact moment.

"Oswin," said Jenny, "Did you say someone could build a robot eye?" Martha gave Oswin a sideways look at that, scrutinising her.

"Yep..." Oswin said, digging her hands into her hair awkwardly and scratching her head.

"What is it? Why is everyone covered in bl- Oh my god," Rory said when Jack lead him into the room.

"Did he see my face?" Jenny asked. Rory stared at her, "Do I look like something that would give children nightmares?"

"Yes," said Oswin, nodding, even though Jenny couldn't see. Jenny smiled very widely at this news.

"...Rory, take a look at her hand, Oswin and I are going to have a word outside," Martha said, walking around Oswin and casting a suspicious look, mouthing at her to hurry up.

"Can't walk too fast right now, Marth," Oswin said, hobbling after her, "Dream crab did a number on my foot."

"What's a dream crab?" Rory asked Jack quietly behind them.

"Sexy, that's what it is," Jenny answered, "I had a baby with it."

"_What_?" Rory asked, but the door slid closed and the conversation was cut off.

"So?" Martha asked, Oswin leaning on the wall to take the weight off her foot, both of them still covered in blood, "Who can build her a robot eye?"

"I just... _Happen _to know someone who has four doctorates, one of them in bioengineering, who knows a lot about prosthetics," Oswin said casually, but in that fake-casual way people spoke in when they were trying to hide something.

"Oh? What's the catch?"

"She's my ex-girlfriend."

"You cannot bring ex-girlfriends onto the TARDIS! The last thing we need is some weird lesbian quarrel!" Martha hissed, keeping their conversation away from the other people in Nerve Centre, but Jonesy was keeping everyone distracted (the cat was looking like a permanent addition to the crew by this point).

"There won't be any 'weird lesbian quarrels' - she's very clever and she built my leg for me," Oswin said, "And we're on good terms, okay? We get along perfectly fine as long as nobody brings up the reason we broke up. Then she'll remember and get angry and not talk to me."

"Is this the one with the pink hair Jack keeps taunting Adam about?"

"Yes," said Oswin, "I mean, no. _I mean_, Jack does that!? That's awful. Look, I need a new leg now anyway. This leg here is the spare leg, the other leg got blown up on the Dalek Asylum. It was never properly finished, that's why it looks so weird. Plus, she lives with one of my brothers, and I'd like to find out how he is without having to speak to him."

"...Okay, fine," Martha said, "But not today or tomorrow, wait and see how much that burn ointment helps the scarring first. You never know, maybe she's wrong about not having excess regeneration energy. Don't sleep with her though."

"Who!? Flek or Jenny? I don't plan to sleep with _either _of them. You can hang out with us _all day _to make sure I am not cheating. Or make Clara do it, I doubt she has anything better to do," Oswin said, which was entirely true. Right then, Clara was still fawning over the cat, which Ten was holding. Martha saw Oswin frown. "Huh... My boyfriend's gone... I should go find him..."

"I'll just cut her hand off on my own, shall I?" Martha asked.

"Honestly, Marth, right now, I just gouged her eyes out. I don't want to do anything else to her, even if it is for her benefit. I'm not a doctor. I might be clever, but I like computers, I don't really know how to cut off a hand. If you need someone else that badly, you can wait until I drag Flek here and then you can have another doctor. She's a doctor, by the way," Oswin said.

"You mentioned," Martha said.

"I'll check Adam's foot, though, alright?" Oswin said, limping away.

"Fine... And stop calling me 'Marth'."

"Sure thing, Marth."

Martha sighed, but couldn't blame her if she didn't want to see Jenny get her hand cut off. Martha didn't have that luxury, though. So, steeling herself, she returned to the medibay.


	142. Visiting Hour

_DAY EIGHTY-EIGHT_

_Clara_

_Visiting Hour_

Yesterday, for her at least, had been welcomely relaxing. Little did Clara know at that moment, as she woke up from a weird dream about bacon with a craving for a fried breakfast, that her life was going to be everything _but_ relaxing for the next few weeks. When she woke up, the smell of coffee swam around her like musk – and then she realised that there was no coffee, she was imagining it, and that just made her want breakfast even more, _and_ coffee.

Her husband snoring next to her, she stretched in bed and then reached under her pillow to get her phone from where she kept it, it being difficult to retrieve from the bedside table on a morning when her side of the bed was the side next to the wall, and found out it was about seven o'clock in the morning. Serves her right for going to bed early and having weird dreams about food, she thought – now she was up early and starving, and knew that a cooked breakfast was most definitely out of reach for someone as nutritionally challenged as she was.

She climbed out of bed in the awkward manner she did every day, not wanting to wake the Doctor by stepping on him, using a mixture of intangibility and telekinesis to make this possible. But she did it, and decided that it was so early it was unlikely there would be anybody in Nerve Centre at all, so in Clara's mind, there was no point putting on _actual_ clothes, so she walked out through the room, yawning, in just her pyjamas – which consisted primarily of shorts and an old t-shirt of hers. She wasn't too fussed about anybody on the TARDIS seeing her legs anyway – they were just legs.

In regards to the presence of others, however, she assumed completely wrong, because as soon as she entered the main room, some mass of dark clothes on the sofa jerked into startled awareness and jumped to its feet in a way far too athletic for the age it seemed to be displaying, and she was forced to phase through the counter separating the kitchen from the rest of the room in order to hide herself from – yes – the Twelfth Doctor. Because that's who'd just gotten up from the sofa, and she wanted to cease to exist really. Wasn't it just last night when she'd said she hoped she never had to see him again? He didn't even belong in their universe. Unless, of course, this was some alternate Twelve…

"Clara!" he exclaimed straight away, seeing her, and she wished she'd brushed her hair, "Has anyone seen you!? Where did you go!? Have you changed your clothes?" Okay, so maybe it wasn't an alternate Twelve, maybe this was the very same Twelve everybody hated, and maybe he'd brought Other Clara onto the TARDIS with him, and she'd apparently vanished. Clara herself just raised an eyebrow at him and leant on the counter, watching him pace around the holobox and the sofas. Maybe this was some pitiful attempt at espionage, "We need to find someone discreet to help us with our… Problem." What problem?

"Discreet?" she asked, since he was an idiot and hadn't yet figured out she wasn't who she was supposed to be.

"Someone who won't tell the rest of this awful crew," he said, and she just watched while trying not to pull a face that was either amused or offended – because she was feeling both of those emotions at once, "That's the last thing I want, these weirdos… Especially those other versions of you, the one who flaunts her sham-marriage like a peacock and the one who thinks she's clever…" he ranted as he walked.

"A peacock..?" she asked, paying more attention to the quip about herself than the following one about her baby sister, putting her right hand over her left hand at that moment to hide the silver wedding ring from Twelve's eyes.

"Yes, a peacock! You know! With the feathers!" he shouted. Maybe if he didn't shout he'd do a better job at discretion. Clara wondered what this problem of his was that he oh-so-desperately needed _their_ help with, the so-called 'awful crew'.

"Well, birds generally do have feathers," Clara said, wondering what sort of food she might wrangle out of the cupboards at this time on a morning, with nobody there to cook for her.

"Who's discreet?" Twelve asked her, suddenly coming over to the counter and slamming his hands down on it, which, a few weeks ago, might have made her jump. Now, she was used to people scaring her – namely Oswin, when she used to teleport in out of nowhere and say crude things.

"Oh here?" she asked.

"Yes! Obviously!"

"Don't you know them better than me?" she said, shrugging. And then she turned away to go look through the fridge, because she thought her stomach was more important than whatever security breach was going on. How had they even gotten on board? Could a TARDIS land inside of another TARDIS? How would one go about tracking a time machine? That was when she found a tub of coleslaw, and briefly wondered how ashamed her father would be of her if she knew she was eating a salad ingredient for breakfast.

"Why are you raiding the fridge!?" Twelve exclaimed.

"…I'm hungry," she said innocently, "Do you think there are any carrots?"

"What!? Put it back! Why does it have a..?" he asked, but apparently could not finish his sentence. She glanced at the tub and saw that, in black marker pen, there was a penis drawn on the plastic, the letters 'MLT' written below. Oswin's doing, undoubtedly.

"Bloody…" she stopped herself from calling her sister a profanity, "…Drawing cocks on everything… Genius my arse…" she mumbled. She didn't think Twelve heard.

"That can't mean anything good."

"It's fine, she's doing it to annoy me," Clara sighed, and when he asked who, she cut across him with, "Helix?"

"_Yes, Mistress Leather Thighs?_" answered the AI. Ah, she thought, that must be what 'MLT' stood for. Admittedly, not one of her sister's better nicknames. She thought 'Fellatio Goddess' was a better one than that.

"What on-!?" Twelve spluttered, but Clara just shushed him.

"Helix, do we have any carrots?"

"_Negative, Mistress Leather Thighs_." She cursed under her breath, and thought.

"…Do we have any Doritos?"

"_Affirmative, Mistress Leather Thighs_."

"Where?" she asked hopefully.

"_In the lower cupboard behind you_."

"Why is it calling you that!?" Twelve demanded as Clara stooped to look for crisps. For some reason, they had an abundance of Doritos on the TARDIS. Come to think of it, she'd never actually seen anybody eat Doritos.

"My sister did it. It's been worse things before. She even signed the coleslaw with those initials, right there under the penis." She held the tub over the counter to him, but he flinched away and didn't deign to look at it.

"Why are you being weird!? Don't eat that, it's not healthy!" Clara completely ignored him and took a bite of a crisp with a large helping of coleslaw piled onto it.

"It's salad!" she protested, "Anyway, I only came here for something to eat. Shall I go find someone discreet to fix whatever little problem you and Clara have?" She then purposely moved hair out of her face with her left hand, and he saw the wedding ring (which he'd insulted a month ago, and she was still offended by that).

"Uh…" He was even more lost for words when she, in all her half-dressed glory, walked over to the door after phasing right through the wall, and he stared up at the ceiling as if she was naked – god forbid anybody see a shin.

"What about my husband? Or how about my sister?" Clara suggested, "You and my sister get on famously, right?" He made a repulsed noise at that, "Well, I'll go find somebody for you. If it takes a while, I'm probably having sex, you know. I have _so much sex_ these days. With my husband. AKA you. Bye!" She slid through the door and then through her own bedroom door to wake up Eleven, who was still asleep.

"Chin?" she called. Nothing. "Sweetheart? Doctor?" She gave up very quickly and flicked a hand at him, and he promptly fell out of bed. "_Theodore_," she drew it out, and he groaned, "There's a problem."

"Yes. The problem is that I'm tired and my face hurts."

"It's a bigger problem than that. The Twelfth Doctor is here. _With_ Other Me. Although, she's wandered off. He's in Nerve Centre at this very moment."

"_What_!?" Eleven jumped to his feet, "He – what are you eating?"

"Well, I went out there to look for food and found some coleslaw and some Doritos, even though what I _really_ wanted was bacon," she answered.

"Without getting dressed?"

"Yes. Well, I didn't think anybody else was gonna be there, it _is_ seven AM, after all."

"Well what did Old Twelvey think of this getup?" Eleven asked, taking a Dorito from the bag Clara was holding.

"He seemed scared."

"Well, why is he here!?"

"He said they need someone 'discreet' to help with their '_problem_'. And yes, he did say '_problem_' in a really suspicious way. I didn't ask, I wanted to make a sassy exit. And I succeeded. But then he said my breakfast wasn't healthy!"

"He has a point," said Eleven, and she glared daggers at him, "I mean – I love you. How did they get onto the TARDIS?"

"That's what I was wondering. You know what we need to do?"

"…What?"

"Call a house meeting. Ship meeting. Whatever kind of meeting it would be – that's what we need. Give them a hearing, or something. Judge them," Clara said, "Maybe they've been attacked by dream crabs."

"What's a dream crab?" Eleven frowned.

"I have no idea, but the others keep talking about them like it's hilarious. I think it's an inside joke. Well, everyone needs to be woken up. I'm sure everyone who went out yesterday will just _love_ this…"


	143. Do You Want Me (Dead)?

_Do You Want Me (Dead)?_

It was a special occasion, apparently. The first real meeting they'd had in very nearly three months on the TARDIS. But really – before then, had there been much to discuss? No. There had just been the ongoing war between 'the Cult' and 'H&amp;T', and everyone thought it was awfully peaceful now with both of those factions inactive. There had been the First Prank War, and wedding schemes, but now they were more or less getting along.

Nerve Centre was cramped with seventeen people and a cat, but everybody was there, crowded round, barely dressed, none of them showered, all of them in a bad mood. Even Jenny was there, with a rather large pair of sunglasses on her face so that nobody saw the two gaping holes in her head. The sight of her bandaged, handless wrist was enough. The three Doctors sat on one sofa. The Ponds and Donna on another. Mickey, Martha and Rose on the third. Jenny sat at one of the kidney-bean tables with Adam and Oswin, while Clara leant on the wall next to them, and River was leaning on the wall opposite. At the other table, Twelve and Other Clara were sat after being ordered to sit down at Martha's gunpoint, and next to that table stood Captain Jack, the supposed 'leader' of the meeting.

"I now declare this meeting begun," Jack said, leaning with both hands on the table where Twelve and Other Clara were seated, "What we're gonna do is we're gonna put our hands up when we want to speak, okay? No shouting. This is a polite discussion." There were some murmurs of agreement and a few irritated grunts at that, but nobody protested. Ten and Eleven seemed _very_ unhappy about these democratic processes. "Clara Oswald," Jack said, turning to Clara (_real_ Clara).

"…Yes?"

"What did you hear this morning?"

"I already told you, like, three times," she said, but Jack just stared at her and crossed his arms, "Twelvey over there was lying on the sofa and he said they needed somebody to discreetly fix a 'problem'. I don't know how they got here or what the problem is." She got another scoop of coleslaw onto another Dorito.

"Do you really have to eat that?" Martha questioned her.

"It stinks," said Rory.

"I'm hungry, it's my breakfast. You're all just lucky I put trousers on before waking everyone up," Clara said, and slouched back down against the wall, eating her Dorito loudly on purpose. Donna made a disgusted noise, as did Other Clara. The only other sound was that of the cat purring in Rose's lap.

"Doctor," Jack turned over-dramatically to Twelve.

"What?" Twelve asked rudely, and Jack seemed affronted.

"Well we're not gonna get anywhere with that attitude," Jack commented, then resumed, "How did you get here?"

"Laser pointer," Other Clara answered for him when he didn't say anything, just tried to stare Jack down. He thought he was being threatening, when really, all he was doing was inconveniencing fifteen people. Four of which had superpowers, and two more of them had guns.

"Oh, wonderful," Oswin said loudly, "Who lost the emergency teleporter?"

"Shit," Martha cursed, "I thought I melted it by accident when I found all this weird silver stuff in my pocket… Must have been money I melted. I must have dropped the teleporter."

"Well, that's cleared that up," Jack said, "As long as they don't have a tracker on us. Now, where's your TARDIS?"

"I don't know," said Twelve, "We had to leave."

"Why?" Jack asked. Twelve glowered, and said nothing, "C'mon, tell us. We can't exactly help you if you don't tell us what's wrong." Twelve still stayed silent.

"Pathetic…" Nine muttered.

"Alright, shut up!" Twelve shouted at him.

"_You_ shut up," Martha threatened him, "I'll hit you again, don't think I won't."

"One of those things. It got on board," Twelve said. There was quiet.

"…What do you mean, 'things'?" Adam asked.

"Was it a dream crab?" Jenny spoke up, and Oswin, Nine and Martha all snickered. No-one else knew why 'dream crab' was so amusing to them. It was like the Twins and their mangos all over again.

"No, it was one of the big ones," Clara answered on his behalf, again, "But… Bigger."

"…Bigger?" Oswin asked, "…How much bigger..?"

"A lot bigger," Other Clara said, though she didn't seem happy about having to answer to Oswin Oswald.

"What did it look like?" Adam asked.

"I don't know!" she protested like they were questioning her incessantly, "Just let me think!"

"She's more of a showboat than you, Jack," Donna said to him.

"_That_," Jack said, turning in an over-exaggerated flourish and waving his hand, "Is not true." Most of them laughed at that.

"It just looked big," Other Clara said.

"Aren't you an English teacher?" Amy pointed out.

"Oh, not this again," Real Clara said, "Will you all drop the fact none of you think I earnt my degree?"

"_You've_ never taught, though," Rose said, "_She_ has," she nodded at Other Clara.

"Everyone be quiet and let her describe the alien," Jack said loudly, and they shut up, and all eyes were back on Other Clara.

"Its head was sort of… Different," she said, "Way bigger, it sort of spread out like a fan, and it wasn't see-through."

"…Was it more than twice as big as the other one..?" Adam asked slowly.

"…I think so…"

"You fucking idiot," Adam then said to the Twelfth Doctor, "Can't open a door? That's what you said yesterday, right? You said the Xenomorph was too stupid to open the door?"

"It's not my fault that you lot didn't figure out there was another one on board the entire time!" Twelve protested, "This is stupid. All of you are stupid. I'll go talk to it and ask it to leave." When he tried to stand up, some invisible hand forced him to sit back down in his chair, "What's happening? I can't get up – what are you doing!?"

"It's called telekinesis," Real Clara muttered, and when he started shouting she sighed and forced his mouth to close itself.

"We should probably just talk to Clara," Martha said, "Since she's the one who _isn't_ gonna risk getting shot just to carry on being an arsehole."

"It's true, I'd really rather not get shot…" Other Clara said, keeping her eyes on the gun in Martha's hand.

"Adam, what's going on?" Jack asked him, "Explain for those people who haven't seen _Aliens_."

"Well, I actually think that everyone – including those two – should be made to watch _Aliens_ later just to prove how _completely_ stupid the Twelfth Doctor is," Adam said, "But, um, what the Doctor's done, is he's let a Xenomorph queen onto his TARDIS. A queen which is twenty feet tall, and will now lay hundreds of eggs and turn his TARDIS into a hive."

"…Wait, hang on a moment," Nine said to Twelve, standing up, "Have you come here to ask _us_ to get rid of this thing for you, because you were too stupid to lock the door?" Twelve made a muffled noise.

"Oh, sorry," Clara apologised, and she freed his mouth to let him talk.

"How was I supposed to know there was another one?" Twelve argued, "And that it could open doors?"

"The queens are very clever," Adam said, "And locking the door is just sensible."

"So, your plan was to come here, and..?" Jack asked him.

"Wait for it to die," Twelve said.

"I've never heard of a Xenomorph dying from old age," Mickey said – another one of the group who actually knew something about _Alien_, "The longer it stays there, the more eggs it'll lay, the more facehuggers there'll be, and the more risk of impregnation."

"Which is not fun, by the way," Jenny added, "Facehugger encounters." Then she coughed quite severely.

"But you don't know where your TARDIS is," Jack said, "You just left it."

"It could take us weeks to track it down," Oswin said, "It could be in a total other universe. And then after we track it down, we're gonna have to kill it for you."

"I suppose we'll just have to stay, then, won't we?" Twelve said, and immediately there were shouts from around the room about the TARDIS being cramped already, about the fact everybody hated him, about the fact nobody wanted _three_ Claras. Most of the complaints really did revolve around the fact nobody liked Twelve, though. There hadn't been nearly this many objections when Luke staying became a prospect. They even baked him a cake.

"I think we should discuss this _without_ them here," River shouted _very_ loudly over the group.

"You can't do that!" Other Clara objected.

"Yes we can, honey," said Oswin, fake-yawning.

"I agree with River!" Jack shouted, and everyone shut up, "Rose, take them into the medibay and leave them there while we decide." Rose muttered a complaint, but got up, and then with the same level of ease she would exhibit if she were carrying two mugs of tea, she lifted both Twelve _and_ Other Clara, balancing a chair on each hand, and took them into the medibay, the door opening at her will.

"Alright then," Jack said when they were gone, "We're gonna all say what we think, in alphabetical order. Time Lords last, chronologically. Adam Mitchell! You're up first. The leading authority on Xenomorphs."

"Well I don't think we should let them stay," Adam said, "And I don't think _we_ should be made to clean up the Twelfth Doctor's mess. It was bad enough yesterday trying to stop him from reasoning with the Alien, and he almost got us all killed when he broke an android. If he doesn't lock his door, that's his problem. They're not from our universe, they're not our responsibility."

"The cat isn't from our universe, either," Oswin grumbled.

"We passed a vote on the cat, everyone except you wants him here," Rose said, Jonesy now moved to Mickey's lap after she'd gone and moved their 'guests' into the medibay so that they could talk about them.

"Oswin, nobody passed a vote on _you_ staying," Clara pointed out, "Or for Jenny staying, if you're gonna be like that."

"Oh, I think we should pass a vote on Oswin," River said, and Oswin glared at her.

"…Fine, I'll shut up," Oswin said, and she crossed her arms and silenced, keeping her complaints telepathic and between herself and her sister.

"…Okay. Amy Pond. You're up next," Jack said.

"…I don't really think we can turn them away," Amy said, and there were some very distinct grumbles and hisses from the others, until Jack shushed them all, "Well, it's not like they knew the queen – or whatever – was there, and it's not like they brought it onto the TARDIS themselves, and you know that if we send them back there without offering to help them, they'll die. If we turn them away, we've as good as murdered them."

"Good point," Jack said when Amy stopped talking, "Clara, what about you? What do you think?"

"Don't ask her, she's biased," Donna argued.

"I'm not biased!" Clara protested, "Everyone gets a say, Donna."

"I don't think people who eat coleslaw Doritos should get an opinion," Donna muttered.

"Donna, come on," Jack said to her.

"Fine," she said, shaking her head, but shutting up.

"…Well, I don't know," said Clara, "I mean, I hate him, but I feel bad for her, because it's not _her_ job to lock the door, and we can't punish her for what he did. She's got a raw deal having to spend time with him, it's not like she has any other friends."

"She's not an Echo, Clara, you don't owe her anything," Oswin said.

"…Well, yeah, I suppose that's true. And it is _her_ choice to travel with him… But I don't really see what else we can do, since they don't know where their TARDIS even is. If we dump them in the middle of nowhere, they might never find it."

"…So what's your answer?" Jack asked.

"…I agree with Amy. I think they should be allowed to stay."

"Okay then. Donna. Your turn."

"They should be left to fend for themselves – I can't put up with three Claras, and I definitely can't put up with _him_, from what I've heard," she said.

"…Keeping it simple, okay. Me next. I, personally, think we should let them stay, but we should try and find the TARDIS as quickly as possible."

"I don't think anybody's suggesting we _delay_ finding their TARDIS for them," Nine said.

"There's not really any group apart from us who could take out a whole hive of Xenomorphs, so there's no way for them to deal with the problem on their own. And they came and _asked_ us for help, so I think they should stay. Plus, I'm always one for a challenge. What about you, Jenny?"

"Let them stay," Jenny shrugged, "It's pretty cruel to leave them to die. Plus, mocking them is really fun."

"Martha?" Jack asked.

"He's a piece of shit and I hit him around the face with a gun yesterday, and she's a pathetic brat who cries and makes a lot of speeches. They were so ungrateful for our help, and _now_ they want it? I can't stand either of them. No. Make them leave," Martha said.

"Lots of opinions, I love it," said Jack, "Mickey, you're up."

"It's their own fault. They brought it on themselves, like Martha said. I don't think we should let them stay – they're just mooching off us after they insult us. Using us because _they're_ stupid."

"Oswin?"

"…You know, um… I agree with Clara…"

"Surprise, surprise," River muttered.

"Okay, sorry, but we literally _are_ the same person," Oswin said, "I feel bad for her having to spend time with him. Maybe if she hangs out with us she can actually get the courage to stand up for herself. Plus, I agree with Jenny – it's _really_ fun to make fun of them."

"I know, right?" said Jenny.

"…And I don't want to be responsible for them dying. Even if I do hate them. I think they should stay."

"River?" Jack asked her.

"I vote no. I'm with Donna, I don't want three Claras. And 'Old Twelvey' sounds like a scumbag. And we shouldn't have to take care of them _and_ then do their dirty work."

"Rory, how about you?"

"They'll die without us – we can't very well turn them away, can we? I mean, I _have_ seen _Alien_, and _Aliens_, and… The rest of them, and they will literally die if we send them back there. And the TARDIS has infinite space, there's no real reason _not_ to let them stay-"

"They're annoying, that's a reason," Martha interrupted, and Jack shushed her.

"_I'm_ not gonna be the reason that two people die, and a Xenomorph gets control of the TARDIS. Those queens are clever. Who's to say they couldn't teach themselves to fly the ship?"

"Good point. Nobody made that one yet. Rose, where do you stand?"

"I've only met them once, but I hate them both. She's Clara, but _more_ annoying than Clara. And it's _really hard_ to be more annoying than Clara," Rose said.

"It's true, she is ridiculously annoying," said Jenny.

"_You're_ annoying," Clara snapped at Jenny, and then very loudly ate another Dorito.

"That's what I mean," Rose said, nodding in Clara's direction, "Annoying." Mumbles of agreement passed through the room.

"Okay, so that's six yeses and six noes," Jack said, "At least we can't have a hung ballot, with fifteen of us. Doctor, what do you think?" Jack said, waving an arm in Nine's direction when he addressed him, to show which Doctor he meant.

"…They shouldn't stay," said Nine.

"Are you honestly joining in with this?" Ten asked him. Ten and Eleven both stared at Nine, and the room fell quiet.

"What?" Nine asked.

"This ridiculous _vote_," Eleven said, "Honestly – you lot have all said it yourselves! If they get sent back, they die. So they're staying. I don't care about this vote."

"Neither do I," said Ten, "And I can't believe that you're sinking to their level," he added to Nine, he and Eleven both standing up. None of the others spoke. This must be the reason they'd been so quiet in the debate.

"_Our level_?" Rose questioned him, "We're being democratic."

"You're being immature," said Eleven coldly, "It's _my_ TARDIS, you know. Not his, or his, or any of yours," he said, pointing to Ten and then Nine, "_Mine_. You were all brought _here_. To _me_. So I'm deciding, and I'm letting them stay."

With nobody else saying a word, Ten walked straight out of Nerve Centre into the console room, while Eleven went towards the medibay, entered, and about fifteen seconds later came back out and swept after Ten, leaving all the companions-plus-Nine as Twelve and Other Clara sauntered out of the room, the former looking full of himself, the latter looking guilty.

"…Well…" Jack finally said, all of them quite shocked at what had just happened, "…We have some rules."

"We have one rule," Rose said.

"It's still a rule," Jack said, "No PDA."

"No _what_?" Twelve frowned.

"Public Displays of Affection," Real Clara answered begrudgingly, "Kissing and whatnot."

"I propose that Other Clara should do tea duty," Martha said.

"_What_!?" Other Clara exclaimed.

"We're letting you stay here, you should make all the tea. It's not that hard, look – there's a list stuck to the wall that tells you how everyone has their tea and coffee."

"…That list says 'no shower sex' on it in capitals," Other Clara said, and all the heads turned.

"I was meaning to bring up the bathroom situation," Donna said.

"What 'bathroom situation'?" asked Rose.

"My bathroom vanished," Donna said.

"…Sorry?" Rory asked her.

"…Is it only me?"

Everybody then dispersed – or, at least, everybody save for Donna, River and Oswin – only to return barely a minute later, all of them fuming and _very _confused.

"Why have all the bathrooms vanished!?" Martha exclaimed, as if any of them actually knew the answer to that question.

"Well it's obviously Clara's fault," Donna said, and all eyes turned to Real Clara.

"_My_ fault!? How the _hell_ is it _my_ fault!?" she protested. Then there were some loud arguments revolving around the _constant _Whoufflé Shower Sex argument, "OH MY GOD! It happened ONE TIME, OKAY!? And that was TWO WEEKS AGO! So _WHY_ would the TARDIS choose _NOW_ to get rid of the bathrooms!?"

"She hasn't gotten rid of them, there are communal bathrooms round the corner, where that stupid fake linen cupboard used to be," Donna said, then she turned to Clara, "And you _actually_ gave into him!?"

"What!? It was a few days after our two-month Second Wedding anniversary!"

"That is _not_ even a thing that anybody has _ever_ celebrated, Clara!" Oswin argued.

"Oh, you can't talk," Amy said to her.

"…_Excuse me_?" Oswin said, "'I can't talk'? I happen to be a hologram. I happen to _not_ have genitalia, you know! Plus, even if I did, I only have one leg, why on Titan would I be risking my neck trying to screw that weakling in a shower?" she pointed at Adam when she said that, "Because if I keep the leg on, I'll most definitely slip. And if I take it off, it's like suddenly I'm doing waterfall yoga on a tightrope. With a penis in me. I mean, you all see my point, right? Maybe you and Rory have been at it in the shower, hmm!?" she accused Amy.

"We have not!" Amy exclaimed.

"Okay, okay!" Jack shouted over the group, "Jenny and I _may_ have to take a little responsibility for this." There were sounds of disgust from other people in the room.

"Sorry," Jenny called, "But I don't see why the TARDIS has done it now. Get it, I said I don't _see_? Because I have no eyes?" Nobody laughed, just exchanged confused looks with each other about how politically correct that joke was. Jenny smiled to herself though beneath her sunglasses, "I mean, we weren't doing it last night."

"That's true," said Jack.

"While we're on the subject of guilt," Oswin piped up _yet again_, "I had to go get the burn ointment out of _my_ bathroom yesterday. _MY_ bathroom being the bathroom in my room that Rose and the Tenth Doctor have _stolen _from me. And you know what I saw?"

"Please do not-" Rose began.

"Multiple cum stains, on the shower curtain," Oswin said, "And don't think I don't know what a cum stain looks like. Come on, Rose. Tell us the truth." All eyes turned, judgementally, onto Rose Tyler.

"…OKAY, FINE!" Rose said, "Maybe it's partly my fault!"

"At least _I_ didn't make a mess…" Clara muttered, and everyone groaned and told her she was disgusting when she ate another Dorito, and then Martha came and grabbed the bag off of her and burnt it to ashes in her hand.

"So thanks to Rose, we now have gender segregated communal bathrooms," Amy said.

"Only two genders?" Oswin asked Donna, who nodded, "What if there was a transgender person here, hmm?"

"I'm sure if there was the TARDIS would make them a bathroom, too," Jack told her.

"Well what if one of those Doctors randomly dies and regenerates into a girl and is incredibly confused about which toilet to use?" Oswin questioned him.

"I'm sure that incredibly unlikely problem will be addressed whenever it occurs, Os," Clara said, in a bad mood now because she didn't have anything to resume eating her coleslaw with. She walked through the counter and put it back in the fridge, complete with unrealistic penis doodle.

"As long as this day doesn't get any weirder…" Mickey grumbled.

"…I think now would be an appropriate time for us all to be quiet for two and a half hours and watch _Aliens_…" Adam said into the silence, and everyone sighed, but agreed.


	144. Other Halves & Counterparts I

**AN: Okay, so, FF is being weird and not letting me reply to reviews right now, so I will answer questions here: Firstly, yes, Flek will come back Tomorrow (Day 89) for a few chapters, and may stay for two days, but no longer than that. Secondly, Claratoo (as I call her, and will be calling her in the narrative, so there's Clara and Claratoo) and Twelve will NOT be permanent additions - after S9 begins in September I'll send them back to the Betaverse. Thirdly; Jonesy, Twelve and Claratoo aren't the most surprising arrivals Day 88 will bring.**

_Clara_

_Other Halves &amp; Counterparts I_

"Adam?" Clara whispered, all of them minus Ten and Eleven now being forced to watch _Aliens_, which was very nearly finished - it was at the bit where Sigourney Weaver fought the Xenomorph queen in one of the exoskeletal loaders.

"Hmm?" he asked her, trying to be quiet while people watched the film.

"Do you want your girlfriend back?" Clara asked him. What she was referring to was the fact Oswin was asleep on her shoulder, which she didn't have any major objections to, it was just she wanted to go for a walk. Adam didn't care much, either, which surprised Clara, because she thought Adam might be just as irritatingly jealous as the Eleventh Doctor was.

"No, it's fine," Adam said.

"...Why is she sleeping on me and not you?" Clara asked him, speaking as quietly as she possibly could.

"Maybe she's bored of sleeping on me?" he suggested, "No, it's because you're warm. I'm not warm." Clara frowned at him. "Look," he held out his hand around Oswin for her to touch, which she did, and found his skin was freezing. "Cryokinesis."

"Clara," Martha whispered, "Are you having a fight with your sister's boyfriend, over your sister?" Clara frowned.

"We're sharing her," Adam answered, and Martha stared at him, "...Not in a weird way..."

"Why are you letting her sleep on you?" she asked Clara.

"Are you saying that you wouldn't let your newborn baby fall asleep in your arms?"

"That's the weirdest thing you've ever said and I have no idea what it means," Martha muttered, leaning away. Clara sighed and slouched back on the sofa, leaning her head on her sister's and absently watching the very end of the film. Other Clara and Twelve would possibly like to make a snarky comment about this scenario, but Clara wasn't allowing either of them to make a sound. There was also the possibility that they were enthralled by the on-screen antics of Ellen Ripley.

"I will never understand you two," Martha sighed eventually, as credits began to roll and the TARDIS turned the lights back on for them and they were all suddenly blinded.

"She has a very calming presence when she's asleep," Clara said.

"Mainly because she can't say disgusting things or insult you," Adam said, watching his girlfriend sleep fondly.

"'Calming presence'?" Rose asked, leaning past Martha so that she could get in on the conversation, too.

"You should just spend more time with her, Rose, then you'll know what I mean," Clara said, and then Oswin yawned, which probably meant she was on her way to waking up.

"I thought she didn't sleep, anyway?" Martha asked.

"She can now, she made herself able to. It's like hibernating a computer," Adam explained.

"Did I miss the film?" Oswin asked groggily.

"Yes," Adam told her, and she groaned and finally moved off of Clara's shoulder and threw herself down onto her boyfriend's.

"Wow," said Clara.

"...What..?" Oswin asked.

"Nothing, nothing... Just use me and leave me. I'm fine. Just feeling a little heartlessly rejected," Clara said sarcastically, shaking her head and looking away from her sister.

"What are you talking about, Clara?" Oswin asked.

"They were fighting over you," Martha said, "Adam and Clara. While you were asleep." Oswin stared at Martha with an queer look half of amusement and half of unease.

"We weren't fighting over you," Adam told her as people in the room started to get up and go do other things, a couple of them muttering that they'd like to shower now, and skulking off to examine these 'communal bathrooms' they now had. No doubt the TARDIS would pull something Hogwarts-like to prevent anyone going into the wrong bathroom.

"Well, whatever, I'm going for a walk," Clara said, getting to her feet.

"What? Are you mad at me!? For moving!?" Oswin asked, looking mortified at the prospect of accidentally upsetting Clara.

"No, of course not," Clara told her, "You can come, too. You should, actually."

"Okay, fine. But what's Mitchell gonna do?"

"He can come, too," Clara shrugged, and Adam Mitchell seemed pleased he'd been invited out with the Twins, since they never invited other people out with them, except sometimes Jenny. But Jenny couldn't come out that day, she still hadn't healed fully from the chestburster, not to mention the fact she had no eyes and one hand. Clara then turned to Other Clara, "And _you _are coming as well. Only you don't have a choice."

* * *

Claratoo didn't seem happy about being forced to go out somewhere at all, let alone somewhere with an alternate universe version of herself and of one of her Echoes, and the boyfriend of said Echo. Wandering through some empty, snowy park late at night, it didn't take long for Clara to carefully detach she and her alternate self from Adam and Oswin - because as much as she enjoyed the company of her baby sister, she had an ulterior motive to be there. So, she said she had to talk to Claratoo about a few things (which was not, strictly speaking, a lie) and told the other two she would meet up with them later. As she spoke to Other Clara, or Beta Clara as Oswin sometimes called her in her head, she was keeping her eyes constantly peeled for a supermarket or an off-license.

"What do you want?" Claratoo asked her, keeping her arms crossed and keeping her distance, not used to seeing her own face and voice thrown back at her from multiple places in the same way that Clara, self-proclaimed Guardian of the Echoes, was.

"To talk to you about how the TARDIS really works," Clara said, "Or, how the people on it work. There are more rules than just the PDA one. Firstly, you're not allowed to touch _anything _in the kitchen food-related. If you do tea duty like Martha said, someone will make your food for you. Secondly, if you get on the wrong side of Martha, she _will _hit you. People on here didn't used to get along - we only do now thanks to the efforts of the TARDIS. Don't tell anyone I said this, but the bathroom-thing probably won't be so bad, it'll mean the girls talk to each other. And if the girls are friends, everybody's friends, because they're the ones who start the feuds. Thirdly, don't drink _any _alcohol-"

"You have alcohol on there?" she asked.

"We didn't used to, but then the Dimension Crash happened a lot of strange stuff started going on. Fourthly, always make sure the milk is in date before you use it. Fifthly, never wake anybody up unless it's an emergency, and don't make loud noise at night. Sixthly, be careful around Jenny. When she gets eyes and a hand back, she'll probably try and have sex with you. Honestly, it was horribly traumatic finding her trying to get off with the Vict-whore-ian."

"The what..?" she asked, snow crunching under Claratoo's heels, Clara floating next to her so that she was the same height, but Claratoo didn't seem to have noticed this yet.

"The Victorian Clecho - sorry, that's what Oswin calls her. And 'Clecho' is also a word Oswin invented. You know who I mean - Clara Oswin Oswald, that one," Clara said, "Seriously, Jenny just wants to sleep with you to piss off Jack because they got in a weird fight and _he _slept with Eyeball - Eyeball is another Echo fron Oswin's century, they call her Eyeball because she has a cybernetic eye - for revenge. So don't sleep with Jenny. She's also married to Jack, so it's morally wrong."

"...Sorry? Why is she trying to sleep with me to get back at her husband who she cheated on and then he cheated on with..?" Claratoo frowned.

"...Maybe I didn't explain that well. Don't ask either of them. Just try not to have sex with her. Seriously. Anyway, moving on - seventhly, you're banned from computers completely unless one of the Doctors or Jenny or Oswin tells you you can use one. Otherwise, the TARDIS will electrocute you, because it hates you. It hates me, too..." Clara trailed off when she finally spotted a drugstore and headed towards it, and opening the door for Claratoo, she said, "Eighthly - the superpowers. Try not to drink the coffee. But so you're aware, _I'm _telekinetic and can walk through walls. Adam's cryokinetic and he can see auras. Rose has superstrength and she can control the time vortex and all of reality. Martha's-"

"Pyrokinetic with heightened agility, I know that part," Claratoo muttered.

"Ninthly, don't be a smartarse. And along with the superpowers, Captain Jack can never die, so if you see him die, he'll wake up so don't be too freaked out..." she made a beeline for the cigarettes.

"Wait, what are you doing?" Claratoo hissed, "Didn't you - I mean, we - I mean... I don't know what I mean, but didn't you quit!?"

"I started again in the Dream. Don't ask about the Dream, it's too long of a story. But then I quit again like, a week and a half later. Then I started again for a while, then I stopped again like, three weeks ago. And now I am having a stressful day, and I happen to have a cloud of nanogenes that stop these from having any negative effect on me. Save the lecture," she said, getting as many packs as she could with the £20 note she found her coat pocket, "I'd appreciate if you didn't grass me up, though. Oswin hates it, and so does my husband. I'm sure they'll find out in a matter of hours anyway, though. Now - onto the topic of Oswin-"

"I hate her," Claratoo said sharply as Clara used the self-checkout machine, but she just laughed and smiled a little at that.

"Of course you do. I used to hate her, too, because she used to hate me. But then the Dream happened - and the Dream, basically, during the First Prank War, they used an EMP to prank us, and the thing you have to know is, due to some very complicated circumstances, Oswin and I are psychically connected. It's called a mind-patch, and everybody hates it because we talk to each other and they can't hear. But she's a hologram, so she got shut off by the EMP and I went into a coma. A joint coma. And it lasted for two hours on the outside, but on the inside, it was two weeks of hell with a girl I _hated. _But when you go through that much shit with somebody," Clara said, getting out her lighter and lighting a cigarette as the shop door closed behind them and they returned to the cold and the snow, "You can't really hate them anymore. She was my best friend, and then she was my sister, and _now _I see her as a kind-of daughter. Which sounds weird, but, I _did _create her."

"If you're that close, why does she say so much awful stuff to you?" Claratoo questioned.

"She can't help herself. The thing you have to know - and don't mention that I told you this - is she kind of had an awful life. Like, it's a really long story, but her mother was a total bitch who exploited her intelligence for money since she was a toddler. She never went to school, she was barely allowed out of her bedroom, for twenty-five years. And then she got turned into a Dalek. She has no notion of social boundaries, and barely has a sense of morality, which is why she needs me and Adam to stop her doing... Bad stuff. Hurting people. She doesn't knwo how to behave, and she's quite severely mentally ill. The stuff she says, she doesn't mean anything bad by it. Not to you, at least. To Old Twelvey, or River, she does. You should see some of the crap she says to her boyfriend. But if you get into a fight with Oswin, you'll lose. I've seen that girl kill people without a second thought - once, she hit someone in the head with a wrench _so hard _that they died _instantly _and the wrench was lodged in their brain." Clara blew out some cigarette smoke, "And she _is _cleverer than the Doctor, by the way. It's true. Her IQ is 352. She's not bad, she's just troubled and misguided. And don't make any jokes about her leg, or ask about it."

"...I've never even met an Echo..."

"I've met loads of them. And I know that you probably hate me right now, because you don't like the idea of a clone of yourself wandering around, but I'm _very _used to it. Final pointer - if you _do _sleep with someone, shower afterwards. Otherwise, people will know, and they'll complain about the smell. And, um, for the record, I'm sorry about what happened to Danny."

"Thank you."

"Don't play the 'I've suffered' card, though, like I heard you did yesterday. These people won't take it well," Clara said, "I could talk for hours about my long list of physical injuries - and, I mean, you know what happened to Jenny. Also, people might be more forgiving towards _you_, but they don't like Twelve. Nobody likes Twelve."

"He's not that bad, really..." she said, and Clara pitied her a little.

"Well, neither's Oswin. She just talks a lot of shit. Everything is easier if you ignore her."


	145. Nerd Flirts IV

_Adam_

_Nerd Flirts IV_

"Hey, why did your sister invite us out and then walk off with the other one?" Adam Mitchell asked, glancing back as they walked through the snowy park in an unknown city somewhere in Scotland, he thought.

"I'm just glad for the break," she said, walking awkwardly and limping with her mismatched, melted leg, "It's so that she has a way to buy cigarettes. She gives in to her cravings so easily. Can we sit down? It's really ic-" she was about to say 'icy', but ironically enough she slipped at that moment, and Adam caught her.

"It's not icy, where are you getting that idea from?" he joked, helping her over to the bench and brushing snow off the seat before she sat down.

"Wow, you're a true gentlemen," she commented when he sat down next to her.

"Well, I do try my best."

"Your best must be working, because you have a committed girlfriend and a stable relationship," she said, biting her lip jokingly, and he didn't say anything for a moment, just watched her, sitting at an angle on the bench, "Mitchell, are you watching me bite my lip?"

"Oh, I'm just wishing you would bite mine," he said, and she just smiled, "So let's get a few things straight. Are you saying that you wouldn't sleep with me in a shower because you don't think I could hold you up? Because, I mean, you're not _that _heavy, Oswin. You have a whole limb missing, for starters." She was laughing, and she shuffled next to him and leant on his shoulder.

"I don't know why I thought I'd be warmer if I leant on you, since you're freezing cold," she said.

"I don't understand all this fuss about shower sex. It's ridiculous, I mean, why does everybody care so much about it on this ship? It just sounds dangerous to me," he sighed.

"I know."

"What if both people slipped and died, and got found like that?"

"Horribly dangerous."

"You've done it in a shower before, haven't you?"

"Yes... But, you know, it was with a girl, so like, there's no... Heavy lifting. But I wouldn't do it again - mainly because she got shampoo in her eye, it was so embarrassing. Thank god we were home alone. Speaking of that exact girl, she's coming over tomorrow," Oswin said quickly.

"...Sorry, what?" he asked, "Did you just... Which..? _Flek_? That one? Not Nina?"

"Yes, Flek."

"...Why have you invited your ex-girlfriend over?" Adam asked.

"I haven't yet - but she needs to come and help with Jenny's eyes and hand, and my leg," Oswin explained, "She's a qualified bioengineer, she does a lot of work with artificial attachments."

"Why can't _you _help with Jenny's eyes and hand and your leg? Didn't you build your leg in the first place?" he asked.

"No, Flek did," she said, and he didn't say anything, just moved and leant back on the bench, thinking. Oswin watched him, "...Adam? Say something? Um, does Jack say loads of stuff about Flek..? Because I was talking to Martha yesterday, and she said-"

"Yes, he does," said Adam, "Something about pink hair and 'intoxicating green eyes', to quote? 'Like absinthe', he actually said."

"Her eyes are darker than absinthe," said Oswin, and he gave her a languid look, so she sighed, smiled, and touched a hand to his cheek, "Adam, I have an eidetic memory and I dated her for four years, of course I remember what colour her eyes are. Don't listen to Jack, Jack doesn't know anything, he spoke to her for ten minutes total. I'd tell you to talk to Clara's husband about her, but I don't think he's in a particularly good mood right now. I'm not going to leave you for my ex-girlfriend, Mitchell. There's a reason we broke up, after all."

"What was it?" he asked.

"Pardon?"

"Why'd you break up?" he elaborated, and she moved her hand and rubbed the back of her neck, not saying an awful lot, "I am your boyfriend, you know, you _can _tell me."

"You know what I want? Champagne. I love the fizz. I'll tell you this story, if you get some champagne," she said, "We have things to celebrate anyway, even if I can't taste or get drunk."

"Alright?" he agreed.

"Okay, so I've never actually told anyone this story... It's not funny, or humiliating, or amusing in any way, it's just bad all round. But Flek Phisj - as is her full name - has this issue involving the Cluster Spores. She has this blind faith in them - nothing could ever waver it. When the Spores got destroyed, she went and carried them on on Eslilia, as the Spore Remnants, keeping with their philosophy. Now, maybe overall her aim has always been to help people, unlike a lot of them, but she was only in my house in the first place because she was working for them. She was there to keep me from backing out, to watch me. It didn't matter that she spent four years of her life in love with me, because the Spores always came first. _Always_.

"She encouraged me to do what they asked. Told me that nobody would get hurt by the bombs, or the weapons, or me. Up until Christmas Day, 5120, when the Heph district got blown up and all those people died because of me, I believed her when she said that. After that, it was a full month of fighting, of her going along with everything the Spores did, forcing me to cooperate while I tried to convince her to leave with me, to runaway, to leave the Spores. I broke up with her in the end, a week before I left on the Alaska. She's still the same - optimistic, ingenious, funny. But I'd never leave you for her, Adam. Any mention of why we broke up or of the Cluster Spores, there'll be an argument and she won't finish her work properly. She might even leave. Apart from that, we're on good terms, we can talk and laugh and be fine, but you don't have to worry about me dumping you for Flek, okay? Ever since she tried to justify me killing over 10,000 people, there's been no chance of anything rekindling."

"...I'm sorry I asked," he apologised meekly.

"It's okay," she told him, "I don't want you to be upsetting yourself lurking around being all full of angst and jealousy like the Eleventh Doctor is whenever Clara and I go out somewhere together."

"I don't think it's normal for him to worry about her cheating on him with you," Adam said.

"Neither do I. Who knows what he's thinking, though? But, anyway. You know when I asked for champagne?" Adam nodded. "I didn't mean real champagne." He grinned a little.

"Oh yeah?"

"_Oh_ yeah," she said, leaning close to him on the bench, and he leaned into her accordingly, "I, of course, meant in that wonderful new VR simulation of yours we were playing with last night."

"Oh, really? So you like the VR?" he asked.

"I think it was pretty clear I liked the VR. Anything that allows me to screw my hot boyfriend I've been dating for over a month is a win in my opinion," she said.

"Well, thanks, I spent a lot of time working on it. But, I _am _gonna have to break up with you now that I finally got you to put out," he said mock-sadly.

"Oh, of course," she nodded, "Completely understandable. Using me for sex."

"Exactly," he whispered, then he kissed her, both his hands on her face, which really was a shocking break of the Public Displays of Affection rule in place tacitly in society in general. As far as he was aware, though, the park full of snow they were in was empty, and nobody was there to yell at him for making out with his crazily attractive girlfriend who he was in love with who _somehow _loved him back (for a reason he had yet to deduce) in the middle of the night on a park bench that stank of grain alcohol. _Classy_ was the word that jokingly came to mind.

"_SO_!" somebody all of a sudden yelled right in his ear, and he jumped away from Oswin, both of them scared witless randomly. And then Clara was leaning on the back of the bench where their faces had just been, smirking to herself, reeking of tobacco with her new doppelgänger loitering behind her looking uncomfortable. "What's this you were saying about a VR simulation?"

"Nothing, Clara," Oswin said.

"Does this simulation have a shower?" Clara asked, and Oswin hit her.

"Gross, much?"

"Is that a yes?"

"Like I said, I have one leg, I'm not gonna be fucking anyone in a shower any time soon. Shut up about that, or I'll tell Theodore you're smoking again," Oswin threatened, crossing her arms. Adam just stayed quietly listening, more focused on the fact she'd bitten his lip, which she didn't normally do, and wondered if that was anything to do with his earlier joke. Not that he was bothered, or anything...

"How do you-!?" Clara exclaimed.

"Because it's painfully obvious whenever you give in to your cravings. You're setting a terrible example for her," Oswin nodded in Claratoo's direction, "As always, you know I thoroughly disapprove of this erratic behaviour of yours. And for future notice, you don't have to yell at us to make us stop kissing - you could just ask nicely, or loudly clear your throat nearby."

"I think _you're _the one who needs your throat clearing, clearly," Clara muttered, and Oswin scoffed.

"My point is, _we _are not animals, unlike you and husbandy. And don't deny it, because I _have _walked in in you before, and it sounded like a dying whale," Oswin said while Adam tried not to laugh, idly checking his phone while they argued and seeing he had some texts from his little sister about moving the 'creepy alien painting' out of the bathroom because she was 'sick of it'.

"Don't act like you know what a whale sounds like!"

"Excuse you! I _have _seen _Finding Nemo_, Clara," Oswin said, and then they ran out of things to say, so they just glared at each other for a moment, before Oswin turned to Adam, "Who're you texting?"

"My other girlfriend," he answered while telling his sister that, fine, he would come and move _Necronom IV _out of the bathroom and bring it onto the TARDIS.

"Oh yeah? What does she want?" Oswin questioned.

"Wants me to choose between you and her."

"What're you gonna do?"

"I'll pick her, obviously. I mean, she has this really bad perspiration problem that means she's constantly sweaty _all over_ \- seriously, every sexual encounter brings risk of trench foot, what's not super hot about that?" Adam asked, putting his phone back in his pocket.

"You three are seriously weird - can we go back to the TARDIS now?" Claratoo said quite loudly, and they all sighed and Adam helped Oswin back to her foot and onto the grass where there weren't any sheets of ice for her to slip on, just crunchy frost like icing sugar. "I hope I don't have to stay on this damn spaceship for long..."

"At least today can't get any weirder," Adam said.

"Definitely," Clara agreed.


	146. Clock Strikes Twelve

_Rose_

_Clock Strikes Twelve_

"I'm sorry about the bathrooms," Rose apologised to Martha. The two of then were sitting in the console room trying to get away from Nerve Centre, which suddenly seemed far more cramped than it used to. Martha had very quickly gotten sick of Twelve and the things he was saying, so the two of them had left. As for Ten and Eleven, nobody had seen them since that morning - Rose thought they might be in the library. That was usually where Ten ended up. Adam and Oswin were up in the lab, and Rose didn't really know where the other nine crew members were - Nerve Centre, presumably.

"It's not that bad," Martha sighed, "There are four shower cubicles and four toilets and four sinks, I'm sure we'll manage. We managed on that RV for a week and there was only one bathroom there." Rose sighed.

"I still feel like it's _my _fault though," she said, slouching far down one of the chairs with her feet out on the floor, Martha sitting on one of the stairs that lead up to the lab.

"It _is _your fault," Martha said, "It is literally your fault. Why have you stolen Oswin's room, anyway?"

"Well, I don't... I was staying in there, and my own room reminds me of Tentoo, and the Doctor's room doesn't really have a bed in it so I have no idea where he used to sleep. In here, probably," Rose sighed, "Should I give her it back?"

"She won't want it back, I know her. You've desecrated it," Martha said, "Plus, she's moved in with Adam. I saw their room three days ago when I came to see how his foot was. You know, yesterday he told me something strange..."

"What was it..? Not something weird to do with Oswin..?"

"The Ninth Doctor said that Adam only got onto the TARDIS in the first place because _you _fancied him," Martha said, and Rose went red.

"_That _is not..." she said, turning on the chair to face Martha, who was smirking, "It's... I didn't... He's kind of... I mean... Shut up!"

Martha was laughing at her when the room went dark except for the few lights beneath the glass floor of Eleven's orange console room, bathing them in a mysterious shade of green. It was like bullet time, Rose and Martha suddenly frozen in the dark, utterly confused and staring at each other, as Rose got trickles of information fed to her through the time vortex. It was when the TARDIS jerked and threw her forwards onto the floor from her chair and the green mixed with the red flashing warning light of the monitor, and a part of the console exploded into sparks.

"What's going on!?" Martha demanded, clinging to one of the railings, which Rose saw glowing a little beneath her friend's fingertips.

"You're gonna melt the banister," Rose told her, and the ship reeled again and Martha fell into the other side of the staircase and Rose had to pull some teleportation trick to reaffirm her balance, "It's the Dimension Stabilisers."

"It's... _What_!? How can it be them!? Nothing's happened with them since Adam got-" another explosion from the console drowned her out, while Rose, eyes hazed with gold, tapped away at one of the keyboards, guided by her omniscient superpower, "Who can they be bringing!? Isn't everyone here!?"

"I don't know! Maybe it was a one-time trip!? Could be my mother, for all I know..." Rose muttered, but in the back of her mind, she knew it wasn't Jackie.

"Maybe the TARDIS is bringing Tentoo back!?" Martha asked, and at that thought Rose went cold and actually strained to use her power - instead of just letting it passively feed her pearls of wisdom every now and then - to figure out who it was.

"It's not," she said, coughing on some smoke that was coming out of one of the panels and kicking the TARDIS to make it work properly, "It's someone... I think..." Rose never finished her sentence, getting knocked to the ground, blinded by the flicker of blue light from the teleportation matrix, the TARDIS going dark again before all the lights returned to normal, the machine hissing and spitting sparks and streams of smoke and steam.

Coughing, Rose got to her feet, Martha next to her trying to resist helping her up while her hands clearly burnt with pyrokinetic heat, the pair of them faced with somebody neither of them had ever seen before. Someone short - shorter than Martha, maybe even Clara's height. Someone female, with blonde hair and brown eyes, who was smiling and looking around the room like she knew exactly where she was.

"What were you gonna say..?" Martha whispered to Rose, but that got the attention of the stranger, who suddenly beamed, then her eyes widened and she put her hand to her mouth in shock.

"Oh my god," she said, "Rose and Martha! The Dynamic Duo! I have _missed_ you guys!" She ran up and, out of nowhere, hugged them both, tiny and full of as much energy as Jenny was when she didn't have her eyes gouged out. Even then, Rose still thought she had a lot of unmitigated optimism and an abundance of joy. It was weird sometimes.

"Who are you?" Martha asked, and the mystery girl stepped away and stared at them both like she was drinking them in.

"You two..." she sighed, shaking her head and smiling, "And this _room_! Look at it! Wow, orange and gold and green..." she left them to pace around the console, bending down and squinting at certain parts of it, "The orange lighting, though - never did much for my complexion. Made me look ill, I always thought - haven't seen this for years. Totally retro - no round things, though. Don't you just _love _round things? They are _so _my favourite shape of things... Except maybe square things... And you have to love a good triangle, you know? Oh no - I've figured it out. Rhombus-things. They're my favourite. I hope you two are taking interior design notes, here..."

"Seriously, what's going on? Where's she from, Rose?" Martha asked.

"What's going on is the upholstery in here is _terrible _\- really needs a revamp. Some soft throws, less-awful chairs..." she cast the chair Rose had been sitting in a scathing look, "Cushions, maybe. A rug. I doubt anybody here's gonna take my design tips, though. Not that they should - I'm _totally_ an intruder. Super sorry about all this chaos, by the way. Not my fault. Hey, at least I remember your names. Thought my brain might be a little scrambled from that impromptu teleportation job. I've got a bit of an issue with amnesia - perks of traumatic regeneration, you know?"

"Who-" Martha began again, after a brief pause.

"Am I? You don't know? Oh, of course you don't. What must you take me for? I'm, um... The... Ah... You know... See? Spoke too soon, my brain _is _scrambled... Ah-ha! Thirteen!" she declared proudly. "...Nope? Not ringing any bells?" She held her hands in front of her, almost like a prayer but with her fingers intertwined. Martha spotted something.

"Do you have three wedding rings on..? On one finger..?" Martha asked her.

"Keen eye, Martha Jones! I like it! I always liked that about you. Yes," 'Thirteen' answered.

"You're married to _three people_ at _once_!?"

"Oh, god no! What do you take me for!? The same person, just a lot of times. More than three, that's for sure. I found wearing more than three makes your fingers a little stiff though, and I need my fingers," she said knowingly, "I need my fingers more than I need my name right now to remind you..."

"I'm gonna get the Doctor..." Rose said eventually.

"Yes!" the short girl shouted, clapping happily, "Gold star for you!" _Gold star_? Martha thought, she'd heard Eleven say that just a few days ago... "_That's _who I am."

"You're the Doctor!?" Martha exclaimed, "The _Thirteenth_ Doctor!?"

"Hey, hey, calm down with the questions," she said, leaning on one of the railings. She seemed way too peppy to be a Time Lord, in Martha's experience. Where was the brooding and the superiority complex? "I'm not the Thirteenth Doctor."

"But you just said-" Martha started.

"You know, I think all this would be better explained in a house meeting," she said thoughtfully looking around, "Seriously, in my day there's a complete overhaul on this room. We have a sofa. Leather. It's nice. Far too many lavalamps..." Rose and Martha continued to be immensely freaked out by what was happening, while Adam and Oswin emerged from the laboratory at the top of the staircase they were stood in front of.

"We heard the commotion, what's-?" Oswin was interrupted.

"Oswin! Loving that leg there, old school. Glad I got one last look before you get the new one. I see where the acid did a number on it," she sighed and crossed her arms, "Memories, y'know?"

"...Who's the crazy lady?" Oswin asked Rose and Martha, and the 'crazy lady' scoffed jokingly.

"Duh, only your _favourite _sister-in-law," she said, throwing all of them into further confusion, "Oh, come on guys, it's not that hard. Put the pieces together. I would, but I have a headache. I really want some coleslaw... You know, I never used to like coleslaw," she paced and spoke directly to Oswin, "But it's hard to be married to your sister and _not _like coleslaw, you know?"

"I'm sorry, _what_?" Oswin asked, boyfriend in tow as she came down the stairs awkwardly on her leg that was two inches shorter than the other, "Who on Titan are you?"

"Thirteen."

"If you're not the Thirteenth Doctor, why do you keep telling us you're called Thirteen?" Martha asked.

"It was a nickname," she said, "Courtesy, of, um... What's her name? Can't think... Honestly, I forget my own name first and now I forget hers... Y'know, your sister."

"_Clara_!?"

"Yes! That one! She thought of 'Thirteen', a while back. Didn't want to call me Twelve for obvious reasons. Well, maybe not obvious, since you're all still confused. You know how there are two universes - the Alphaverse and the Betaverse?" she began, and Oswin (who she was mainly speaking to) nodded, "Right, well, that's good - didn't remember where I stood on then universe-classification-system front. Well, in _that_ universe, Mr. Floppy-Hair-Tweed-Chin changes into Mr. Grumpy-Sexist-Owl-Face to eliminate his feelings for your sister and to stop her falling for him, okay?"

"Right..?" said Oswin.

"Yep. But in _this_ universe, why would I want to go do a thing like stop your sister falling for me? I change to suit her," she shrugged, "And I mean, being a man gets _totally _boring after over a dozen centuries."

"...You changed to suit _Clara_, so you changed into a _girl_..?" Oswin said carefully.

"Yes! Jackpot! _So_ clever. This is what I like about you, that's why you're my _favourite_ sister-in-law. And don't I have a _lot_ of sisters-in-law?" she joked. 'Thirteen' was leaning on the back of the chair she'd insulted earlier. "I'm from the future. I'm _your _Twelve."

"How far in the future?" Adam asked.

"I can't tell you that," she replied, "I can't tell you a lot of things. So! Where's the rest of the crew? If I'm right - and I might not be, telrealiports are _so draining_ \- you call it 'Nerve Centre', and it's _this_ way?" she pointed, and then walked off, all of them dumbfounded.

"Maybe you shouldn't-?" Martha started, but was shushed.

"It'll be fine. Probably," she said, and then she smiled and walked off.

"Oh my stars, this is the weirdest thing that's ever happened to me," Oswin said, following quickly after Thirteen, who really _was_ exactly the same height as her, and it was a little weird, Rose thought. Rose thought all of this was a little weird.

"No it's not," Thirteen called back at Oswin, "Not that I can tell you about that thing with the... Other thing... Wow! Now, when I said upholstery, this is what I meant. I love the sofas, we don't have those anymore..."

She entered onto quite a sight. Isolated from the rest of the crew, _Other_, non-female Twelve and Claratoo were sitting looking thoroughly displeased at their situation. Then there was the smell of tobacco wafting over from one of the tables to the left, where Clara had a cigarette hanging out of her mouth, as did Jack, who was there to look after Jenny. With those three sat Amy and Donna, the three girls in the middle of what looked like an intense game of Uno. Nine and River were on the sofas, Mickey and Rory talking about whatever they usually talked about. Except silence suddenly fell when the five others walked in, the clank of Jack putting his beer down on the table the only one in the room.

Until Jenny shouted, "UNO!" and the three girls she was playing with groaned.

"Jenny, stop shouting 'uno', you're not even playing," Clara told her.

"Uno," she said.

"You don't have any eyes, you're not playing Uno with us," Amy told her slowly.

"You're just discriminating," Jenny argued, "Why is everyone so quiet?"

"Because some random pretty girl just walked in," Jack said.

"Oh, right," Jenny nodded, trying to look towards the door with her huge sunglasses on, but not quite managing it, "Does she want to play Uno? She should take Clara's place. Clara's shit."

"You can't. Even. See. The. Cards!"

"_UNO_!" Jenny shouted in Clara's direction.

"OH MY GOD! That's it, I quit," Clara threw her cards down in frustration and turned around in her chair, taking a drag on the cigarette she was smoking, much to _everyone's _displeasure. It was such an awful habit, Rose thought.

"Hey, everyone!" she called chipperly, "So, I thought I should properly introduce myself - you're probably all _totally_, way-confused. I just got here via the, um... What's it called again? God, do I need a nap, or what?"

"The telrealiport connected to the Dimension Stabilisers," Oswin supplied stiffly when she was looked at expectantly, crossing her arms and glancing between 'Thirteen' and Clara.

"Yeah, that, completely fried my name, can't remember my brain. I mean, swap those, okay?" she said, noticing her own mistake.

"Who are you?" asked Twelve.

"I'm _you_!" she exclaimed happily, beaming, "But, you know. Better. I'm younger, prettier, cooler, not a misogynist or a sexist, and I'm not bitter, I don't talk crap and I'm nice to people. And sometimes I swear. Maybe a-lot-times..." she frowned like she was having an existential crisis out of nowhere, then she smiled and stared around at everyone in the room, "You guys are all terrible influences."

"Do you guys remember this morning," Oswin began, laughing like she was telling a hilarious story, "When we were talking about the bathrooms? And I was like - 'Well what if one of those Doctors randomly dies and regenerates into a girl and is incredibly confused about which toilet to use?' And Clara was all like, 'We'll address that incredibly unlikely problem whenever it occurs'?"

"Hey!" the girl protested, "I'm not confused about which toilet to use. Girl's bathrooms are _so _clean by comparison to boy's. I am _not _stepping foot in a man-zone again in my life." _Man-zone_? This girl was _so _weird.

"Do you remember yesterday," Nine then said directly to Twelve, "When you said I was going to regenerate into you one day?" Twelve said nothing, and Nine grinned at him, and then looked away, smiling to himself at the joy of never turning into 'Mr. Grumpy-Sexist-Owl-Face', as 'Thirteen' had said.

"Why aren't you all voting, then?" Claratoo asked, and people looked over at her as though they were surprised she had the nerve to speak.

"We don't vote on people the Dimension Stabilisers bring," Adam Mitchell said, "Otherwise it'd be _Big Brother_ in here."

"It would, it would be savage," Donna added.

"Yeah, so, I'm super sorry about the inconvenience of me arriving now, and how _totally _weird this must be, but I'll stay out of everybody's way. Shouldn't get involved with the past," she said, "If I didn't have to be here, I really wouldn't be. A few ground rules - don't ask me about the future, I can't tell any of you. Now _I _am gonna go get nostalgic about the bathroom and I will sleep on the sofas, don't worry about me. You know the toilets in there smell like lavender? I love it!" and then she was gone, walked off into the Bedroom Circle off towards the new bathrooms.

"That girl sounds hot," said Jenny.

"That's your mother," Amy told her.

"Uno!"

"Screw you! And screw your _uno_, Jenny!" Clara shouted at her.

"I'll screw _your _uno," Jenny said.

"What does that even mean?" Rory asked her.

"I'm going to bed, I am done with today," Rose said, shaking her head.

"Don't you wanna play Uno?" Jenny called after her.

"SHUT UP!"


	147. That Girl

_Clara_

_That Girl_

Eleven didn't come home. Well, it wasn't really home, it was their bedroom. She'd thought he'd come and talk to her about what was going on with him and Ten and the ongoing authority crisis, and explain why they'd had a go at Nine, when Nine was the only one being remotely successful at 'getting in with the group', or whatever he thought it was. Some kind of human-only clique (plus Jenny) where they purposely tried to alienate the Time Lords (_if you'll pardon the pun_, she thought to herself). Honestly, she thought they were making their own misery. If they'd taken advantage of the morning's crew meeting and talked to everyone, since they were all perfectly capable of having a group discussion, maybe they would have sorted this out. But it was gone one in the morning, and she was still waiting up for him after re-reading half of _Jane Eyre_, sitting in one of the egg chairs with her pyjamas on, when she sighed.

It had been a stressful day. The Twelfth Doctor showing up with his little Stockholm Syndrome-ridden groupie, and then Thirteen, as she called herself, appearing out nowhere because of the Dimension Stabilisers. And she couldn't lie, she had about a billion questions to ask Thirteen, and she didn't have her husband there to talk the day through with, when usually she'd confide everything in him. But he was being a baby, and the TARDIS was so huge there wasn't much point going and looking for him. So, she closed _Jane Eyre_ and decided she wanted a drink, anyway, and she had a mug needed washing. Without the bathroom anymore, she didn't have anywhere to get a simple glass of water, she might as well walk to the kitchen. And maybe talk to Thirteen.

Sure enough, when she arrived in Nerve Centre, the girl calling herself Thirteen was lounging on one of the sofas, lying down with her legs propped up on the far end, on a laptop. She didn't know where Twelve was (Claratoo was occupying the guest room that was still hanging about after Luke had left the other day), but she hoped he was in the console room and far away from her. What Thirteen was doing on the laptop, Clara had no clue, but she didn't stay anonymous for long. The sound of the door opening alerted Thirteen to her presence, who smiled at her. And she had no clue whether to smile back.

"Hey," said Thirteen, like they were friends. Well, Clara supposed they _were_ friends. Even though she'd not said one word to Thirteen herself ever, and she'd only known she even existed for six hours, "Whatcha doing?" Clara frowned at the language as she walked through the counter and into the kitchen.

"Washing this mug and looking for something to drink," she answered, "Wondering if my husband had showed up, but, apparently not."

"Why? What's wrong?" Thirteen asked, sitting up and closing the laptop. Clara had her back to the sink, the mug sitting in it full of water to soak until she could be bothered actually washing it. Maybe she'd volunteer to wash up in the morning. She wondered how many cans of beer there were left in the fridge… "You can talk to me, you know."

"I've said one sentence to you, no offence," Clara said.

"Oh, none taken," Thirteen shrugged with a smile. A pretty smile. Clara then shook that thought from her head and poured the water out of the mug for no apparent reason, filling it again straight after. Rinsing. "Did you really just come to get a drink? Because you're not getting a drink, I can't help but notice." Clara clenched her jaw and thought of what she should say, "Sorry, I get you've had a stressful day. I remember. I went and hid to avoid it. I don't even know I'm here yet."

"…_Maybe_ I came to talk to you," Clara admitted, "I just… I have a lot of questions. But they can wait, I'm sure I'll learn everything on my own eventually." She emptied the mug again.

"Clara. Leave the mug alone, it doesn't need that colonic you're giving it," Thirteen joked.

"You are a Time Lord who just made a joke about enemas, that is… Different," Clara said, putting the mug back on the mug tree. It had only had tea in it, and it was her mug anyway, it was red and it had her name on it, nobody else was gonna drink out of it.

"I'm _very_ different. And it's after midnight, and you're always in bed by midnight unless something important is going on or you're distracted, so I'm guessing you're distracted? If you're distracted by me, you can _totally _tell me. It's completely cool. You can tell me anything. You're wondering a lot of stuff about our relationship, huh?"

"_Your_ relationship," Clara corrected her.

"Nuh-uh! It's _our_ relationship. The relationship – and _marriage _– of Clara Oswald and the Doctor. Now, come and sit down, and we can talk," said Thirteen, shuffling down the sofa she was on. Clara narrowed her eyes and looked at her, then she laughed, "I'm_ serious_. Come sit! I won't bite. Or kiss. Or touch in any way. I have self-control."

"_Sure_ you have self-control," Clara said.

"Hey, I have more self-control than you any day of the week, babe."

"_Babe?_ Never thought I'd hear a Time Lord call someone 'babe'," said Clara.

"Time-Lord Schmime-Lord. I've managed to shed that nasty superiority complex, finally. Took wanting to do it, though. None of these boys here care enough to," said Thirteen, "They're under the impression that loving a human is some sort of downgrade, like they're royalty and you lot are... Junkies. That is _so_ not true though. Humans are totally equal, they just have shorter lifespans. Takes a while for them to accept that."

"You quite possibly have the weirdest speech patterns of all of them," Clara commented eventually.

"Nah, no way."

"Yes way!" Clara argued, laughing.

"Are you gonna come sit or do I have to go stand?" Thirteen questioned abruptly, raising her eyebrows and crossing her arms. Clara stopped laughing, but she relented, and did go sit, though she sat as far away on the sofa as she could possibly get from Thirteen, "See? That wasn't hard. Now, ask your questions."

"How old are you?" Clara asked instantly.

"Wow, getting straight to the point, aren't you? Well, I can't tell you how old I am."

"Okay... Um... So... We're... You know..."

"Still married? In the future?" Clara nodded. "Yep, big-time. Basically super-married. _I _consider us to be super-married, anyway. Don't ask how many times, I can't tell you that, either."

"...Who's still on the TARDIS?"

"Ah."

"What?"

"Well, see, I don't know if I can tell you that, because I don't know if I can trust you," Thirteen said, shuffling closer to Clara, who frowned, "The thing is, anything I tell you, Oswin will find out. And then Adam will find out..."

"But it's _me_, surely you can tell _me_?"

"Don't do that!" Thirteen said, sitting up from where she'd been leaning close to Clara, who hadn't tried to move away, "How dare you abuse my feelings for you in that way, Clara Oswald." Clara stared for a moment. "What?"

"You just... Sound like him. That's something he would say," Clara said.

"Well, we're the same person," Thirteen reminded her, "...Okay. Okay, I'll tell you _some _stuff, but... Wait, how's Adam?"

"Adam..? I have no idea," said Clara.

"Is he sick?"

"I don't think so..."

"Ah. Well. Hmm. Trying not to give the game away..." she thought to herself.

"Just tell me," implored Clara.

"...Adam's gonna get sick, and something's gonna happen to him. I can't tell you any more than that, because I think it happens soon. Under no circumstances can you tell Oswin," she warned, "_None_. None at all. Just believe me that it'll work out for the best, okay? Oh, what's your codeword... Gerald, right?"

"S-sorry?"

"If I said to you 'Gerald doesn't want Oswin to know I told you that,' that's the only way the message would get across of how important it is, right?" Thirteen said. Clara had never explained that Gerald was a codeword to Eleven. "Oh, you're surprised that I know that, huh? Believe it or not, in the future, your sister's my best friend. BFFs."

"So Oswin's still here?" Clara asked, not even wanting to address the factor that _the actual Doctor_ had just un-ironically said 'BFFs'. _And_ it was about Oswin.

"Yep."

"Who else?"

"Can't say."

"What happens to-"

"Clara. Really. I can't say. Can't even leave you little clues to follow. _I_ know, from the future, that I don't tell you anything now. Future You told me all about what you and I here discuss after I regenerated, when it wasn't dangerous to know anymore," Thirteen explained.

"...Am I happy? In the future?"

"Of course you're happy! _So_ happy! It never feels like it's been as long as it has with us - not that I can tell you how long that is - the days just kind of, roll by. And keep rolling. And then suddenly, we're where we are now. Or, will be. Or, was? Hmm..." she was confusing herself.

"...So, in the future, are there two of you..? I mean, if you're here _now_... Or do you-"

"Leave?"

"You keep finishing my sentences."

"Yeah, I know, sorry, it's-"

"Habit?" Clara suggested, turning the tables on her, and Thirteen met her eyes and smiled.

"Yeah. Habit. I leave. I'm not here forever. I'm really not here for long at all," Thirteen said, "Not by comparison. But long enough. It's kind of a holiday. And then I borrow Captain Jack's little vortex manipulator eventually, when I'm supposed to, and shoot back to where you're waiting."

"Where am I waiting?"

"The coffee shop where we had our first date."

"OH, so it _was_ a first date?" Clara questioned, and Thirteen laughed, apparently remembering a conversation Clara had had just days ago, but she had no clue how long it had been for the girl sitting on the sofa with her.

"Obviously, we shared a milkshake with two straws and I paid for you. I told you, I'm different. Eleven and I clash on some key issues involving the politics of dairy-sharing with women you fancy." Clara was laughing, until Thirteen said, "You know, I do have to say, you look a _lot_ different without all the wrinkles."

"_WHAT_!? But - but - nanogenes-!?" Clara spluttered, and Thirteen burst out laughing and seemed to instinctively take hold of Clara's hands as she did.

"Oh my god, I'm totally kidding, you don't look a day over twenty-four," Thirteen said, moving her hands away soon after. Clara was a little distracted by how soft her fingers were, but the cold of all the rings was surprising.

"As it should be," said Clara, "Else I'd be having words with my baby sister... Can I look at the rings?"

"Huh? Oh, _my_ rings? I can't take them off, they have numbers engraved in them," she said, "Although... I can take one of them off." She took a moment to fidget with taking a them all off and keeping them distinctly out of Clara's line of sight. The one she got handed was silver and incredibly scuffed and battered. She held it up to the light so see what was engraved inside.

"Oh my stars..." Clara breathed, "This is the ring from LA, isn't it?" Thirteen nodded, as the light showed the initials _T.E.D. _inside.

"Had it resized," she explained, "I keep that one on because it's the first one. Sort of. First one we chose together."

"What's that one?" Clara pointed at a fourth ring on Thirteen's left hand, this one on the middle finger father than the ring finger.

"It's... Oh, I should've taken it off," Thirteen then did take it off, and held it in her fist away from Clara, "It's an engagement ring."

"An..? To _me_?" Thirteen nodded. "Wait, _I_ proposed to _you_? But... I can't even imagine myself proposing to anybody... How come, if we've been married so many times, we're engaged again?"

"Oh, sweetheart, haven't you noticed by now that you're _always_ engaged to me?" Clara didn't have an answer for that, but she passed Thirteen back the familiar ring, and tried to think of more questions.

"How come you call yourself Thirteen? Doesn't anybody call you the Doctor?" Clara asked.

"Okay, 'Thirteen' is a nickname that _you_ gave me as a joke. Like Theodore. In the future, you guys call me Thirteen because of _me_ now coming back and telling you it's my name, you see? I still introduce myself as the Doctor to other people though. I told everyone here to call me it for differentiation purposes, you know? Pretty soon, you stop calling them 'the Doctor'. They're _all_ gonna become numbers. Nine, Ten, Eleven, Twelve. And then there's me - would I rather be Twelvetoo or Thirteen?"

"...Okay... How come you're not Twelve? I mean, why did you regenerate differently? I thought you didn't get any choice?" Clara asked.

"God, no! In the Academy, back on Gallifrey, they teach regeneration. How to look how you want. I was never good at it, but subconscious desire plays a big part in it. In the Betaverse, the Eleventh Doctor never told you how he felt, Clara. He thought that he never would, could, or should be with you. To make your feelings for him die, and his for you to die also, he needed a new body. That's why we have 'Old Twelvey'. That's why he's so awful to you. That's why you moved on to Danny Pink. It was all designed.

"I didn't do that because the Eleventh Doctor in the Alphaverse actually let himself fall in love and get married and completely gave himself up. For you. So he regenerated for you. Became me _for you_. That's why I'm this way. I always knew you preferred girls," Thirteen said knowingly, and Clara laughed a little.

"No, but, that can't..."

"Oh, it's happened before. The Ninth Doctor changed into Ten to fit Rose. He was everything that Rose wanted. He's the first Doctor to have brown eyes, to match hers," said Thirteen, and Clara noticed that Thirteen had brown eyes. And so did she. "I'm the second."

"That's, um... I sound... Impactful..."

"'Impactful'?" Thirteen asked, laughing a little. Clara shrugged, "You should go to bed. We have to avoid creation of some completely awful amount of sexual tension, you and I." Clara was taken aback.

"Um, okay?"

"But really, though. The less tension - the less will they/won't they - the better. Since we won't. I remember. And that means you should go back to bed," said Thirteen again, "And yeah, I know you're having loads of fun talking to me, you always have loads of fun talking to me. But honestly, you're gonna miss being with a man after he regenerates, I'd take every opportunity for fun."

"You are just something else, completely," Clara was smiling and shaking her head, "Where's the embarrassment and the hand-waving?"

"Oh, please, I've matured. When you're subjected to as much sex as you are on this spaceship - what with all the other couples - you just have to. I couldn't afford to be blissfully ignorant of biology forever, you know. Honestly though, keep that sexual tension in mind. Ask your sister about she and Flek tomorrow and feel the pain of her lust."

"Seriously never thought a Time Lord would tell me to feel the pain of my sister's lust so as to better understand sexual tension."

"You should get-"

"What on _Earth_ is going on in here?" someone shouted, and Clara may have jumped away from Thirteen (the gap between them on the sofa had drifted into non-existence) had been _anyone_ except the person it actually was. Twelve. Instead of moving, she just looked over slowly, and Thirteen made a noise that might be construed as a growl which Clara found strangely attractive – not that that was remotely relevant, "Some horrible fornication, I presume? Eurgh."

"I can't tell if you're being homophobic or just an asshole," Thirteen said, "Or maybe both, it wouldn't surprise me."

"You're not me," said Twelve eventually.

"You've got that right, I'm not," said Thirteen, "One of us _isn't_ a bitter old bigot."

"We're the same age!" Twelve said angrily.

"…We're not the same age," said Thirteen, "I'm younger than you. You're, like, two-thousand or something. Your last incarnation died of old age on a planet called Christmas – what a dumb way to die. Maybe that's why you look like a prune."

"Didn't Oswin call you 'Scrotum Face' yesterday?" Clara asked him, and he glared at both of them.

"I see what you're doing. Trying to disgust me. With your… Sham-marriage. You won't last."

"Oh, if _only_ I could tell you how long we've been together," Thirteen muttered.

"Nobody's stopping you," said Clara quickly, and Thirteen gave her a look, and Clara caught herself staring at Thirteen while she tried not to laugh at Clara's efforts to get information out of her. Clara thought she smelt like cinnamon.

"What was that?" Thirteen said, and Clara snapped out of whatever she'd been in. Probably nothing.

"Sorry?" Clara asked, frowning, while Twelve drank milk straight out of the bottle in the kitchen. With a glance from Clara, the milk shot up out of the bottle and into his face – serves him right for being disgusting.

"Did you just say I smelt like cinnamon?" Thirteen asked.

"I, um… I…"

"I'm really sorry, it's my feet. I took my shoes off," Thirteen apologised, and Clara stared at her for a moment.

"…Your feet smell like cinnamon..?" Clara asked, and Thirteen nodded, "…Why do your feet smell like cinnamon?"

"I don't know, they just do. Always have, it's so weird. One of your favourite smells, right?" Clara said nothing. It _was_ one of her favourite smells. That and books and coffee. "It's just weird, really. Every floor I've ever walked on smells like Christmas. And _you_ are going to bed. It's time to go to bed now. I'll still be here in the morning."

"_Blech_!" Twelve made a gagging sound in the kitchen.

"If you don't shut up I'm gonna take all that milk you just spilt and give you an enema with it, okay?" Clara threatened him, "I'll have you know I severed someone's spine with a bow and arrow just a week and a half ago. I could do the same to you, but I wouldn't need a bow and arrow, I could do it with a spoon." She shook her head and found Thirteen was staring at her, "What?"

"Oh, nothing. Seriously, bedtime, Coo."

"Don't-"

"Sorry, sorry. I get it, no nicknames, I'm really trying, Clara," Thirteen apologised, "Go to bed though. _Bed_. Your husband will be there when you wake up, I remember." Clara sighed, and stood up, tiredness making her eyes seem to itch.

"Good riddance," Twelve said, and Clara flicked her hand at him and he fell onto the floor. Telekinesis really was great, she thought, as the door closed behind her and she heard the beginnings of Thirteen yelling at Twelve. Hopefully their stupid Xenomorph infestation could be dealt with ASAP, and they she wouldn't have to put up with the Beta-Dicks anymore.


	148. (No) Vacancy

_DAY EIGHTY-NINE_

_Oswin_

_(No) Vacancy_

"I hate him," Thirteen said, leaning on the kitchen-side of the bar-window-counter whatever-it-was and glowering at the Twelfth Doctor, who was lying down and taking up a full sofa to himself, with Claratoo perched very awkwardly on the end of it near his feet. Every time he adjusted his legs he kept kicking her. Oswin was sat on one of the high-chairs at the other side of the bar with a mug of coffee in her hand, looking over her shoulder at Twelve, "I hate him _so much_. You have no idea. I have spent the last eight hours with him in this room."

"I couldn't do that, I'd probably kill him," Oswin said, watching, "Props to you for him still being alive. How long do they stay for?" Adam Mitchell was sat next to her, yawning every so often and more focused on his cereal than their conversation.

"I can't tell you," Thirteen said, and Oswin sighed, "How am I supposed to put up with him for... The amount of time he's here? We both barely sleep, I'm stuck with him here all night."

"Can't you just go to a different room?" Oswin suggested, and then she got an idea that would _definitely _piss off her boyfriend to no end, "I know. We're all friends in the future, right?" Adam frowned next to her, listening in suspiciously.

"The best of friends. A little family," Thirteen said, Oswin taking careful note of the word 'little', because as it stood, sixteen people was not a 'little' family.

"Why don't you stay with me and Mitchell?" Oswin suggested, and Adam next to her choked on his cereal.

"_What_?" he asked, and she kicked him, able to do so properly since he was sat on her right. "Why!?"

"Come on, Adam, don't be mean."

"Don't call me by my first name just because you want something," he argued, not falling for her tricks, and then he coughed quite violently.

"Are you okay?" she asked urgently, her hand automatically going to rub his back. He gave her a dark look for a moment, but she just smiled at him.

"...I'm fine," he said, and then he coughed again.

"Are you sure?"

"_Seriously_, I'm okay." Thirteen drank some coffee while they spoke, trying not to pay much attention to this exchange, it seemed.

"Babe, we have a whole sofa free, and she only sleeps like, once a week anyway," Oswin shrugged, then she turned to Thirteen and said, "You can stay in the lab the rest of the time, if you want. I'll get you a key. There's stuff in there to make tea and coffee."

"She's not staying on our sofa," Adam said.

"You can stay," Oswin added to Thirteen.

"Why are you doing this?" he questioned, "What do you gain?"

"I don't gain anything, I'm just being hospitable to our sister-in-law," Oswin said, and Adam stopped, and stared at her, "What?"

"She's not _our_ sister-in-law, she's _your _sister-in-law," Adam told her.

"...Pardon?"

"You said 'our'," Thirteen leant on the bar to talk to Oswin, "As though you two were married." Oswin said nothing for a moment, staring at the desk next to her, Adam waiting to see what she did. And what she did, was change the subject very quickly.

"How about this: If you can catch me, she won't stay," Oswin offered, crossing her arms and looking at him expectantly, forgetting about the whole 'sister-in-law' debacle of ten seconds ago.

"If I can 'catch you'?" She nodded. "Like... In a race?"

"Yep."

"...Obviously I could catch you, one of your legs is two inches shorter than the other, you can barely walk," Adam said, and she leant as close to him as she possibly could without actually touching him.

"_Then catch me,_" she whispered, and as he reached up a hand to touch her face and pull her in for a kiss, she vanished into thin air with a shimmer of light, and there was a clatter as her mangled artificial limb fell to the floor. He clenched his fist.

"...Should've seen that coming," Thirteen told him, and he stood up and picked the leg off the floor.

"I just... It's her eyes, they're like chocolate. She is way too seductive for her own good..." he grumbled, "And now I have to find her and return this leg."

Oswin waited, one-legged and unable to do an awful lot, in their bedroom, sat on the bed. It only took about half a minute for Adam to open the door, carrying her leg with him and seeming unamused. Was he ill? He looked pale...

"That was a dirty trick," said Adam.

"I can show you _loads_ of dirty tricks," she said in a sultry voice, winking at him. He was stuck staring at her for a few moments.

"Stop using your hotness against me," he said.

"Why?"

"Oswin. Why do you want her to stay?"

"I have, like, three reasons. First of all, we _do _have a sofa she can sleep on, it's over there, I can see it, and I _do_ feel awful about her being stuck in there with Twelve. Second of all, to keep an eye on her-"

"Why do you need to keep an eye on her..?" he asked, passing her leg back to her while trying to stay as far away as he could.

"Okay, it isn't that I don't trust Thirteen, it's that I don't trust Clara. She's a slag, is my point."

"That's slut-shaming."

"My boyfriend, the feminist," she smiled as she put her leg back on.

"Well, I'm not gonna apologise for being a decent human being," he shrugged.

"I love you."

"Are you still trying to butter me up?" he questioned, "Adding to sex with _love _now?"

"What!? No! I wouldn't - I was just telling you I love you! Ugh. Anyway, my third reason: It's revenge for the cat," she said, standing up carefully, still not used to the fact she stumbled when she walked.

"See? I _knew _it was about something else, I knew you had an ulterior motive," he said, "Fine. _Fine_, fine. She can sleep on the sofa. Not that I have a choice, anyway, since I fell for your 'chase me' trick." She went and wrapped her arms around his neck, and he sighed, "I love you, too."

"I know you do, it's obvious," she said, kissing him. And then he had to stop and cough again, "Adam, are you sure you're okay?"

"I just have a headache," he said, "I'll just have some paracetamol - hey, do you think you can drop me off at my house in your way to get Flek? On a Saturday, preferably. In 2014."

"Oh, how come?" she asked.

"Gotta see my other girlfriend."

"...Just to clarify, you _are _talking about your sister, right?" she asked.

"Yes. I have to go get something from the house," he told her.

"What're you getting?"

"I am not gonna tell you, but you will hate it so much," he told her, yawning and going to find a hoodie.

"Are you tired? You slept for, like, almost twelve hours," she pointed out, "I'm gonna go make you some coffee. I'll make you a flask to take out... Also, favour, could you take Clara? Unless she's busy with Eleven."

"Why? Because you're paranoid and you want to keep her away from Thirteen for, like, no reason?" he asked, stumbling around looking for clothes on the floor. If she wasn't equally messy she'd probably care.

"_Sort of_, but also, um... Because of..."

"It's fine, I'm pretty sure my sister could benefit from some English tutelage. She keeps texting me asking me if I know who Harper Lee is, so," he shrugged and coughed again, "Plus, Clara should probably meet _her_ sister-in-law, don't you-"

"Okay, bye, gonna go make coffee!" she left very quickly, right when Clara came out of the room opposite, "Clara! Are you busy today?" Oswin asked her. She was carrying a towel and a change of clothes.

"I was just gonna shower in the fun communal bathroom," Clara said, and Oswin walked with her, very slowly, limping badly.

"How's husbandy?" Oswin asked.

"He's in a terrible mood, don't know what time he came back. And now he's gone to the library, he said, so-"

"Do you want to go out with Adam to visit his sister in his fancy house? Apparently he has to get something, and his sister needs help with her English GCSE," Oswin said, "Also, someone has to keep an eye on him, because I think he's sick. I'd go myself, but I'm-"

"Sorry? Did you say he was sick?" Clara asked, stopping.

"...Yeah, why?"

"...No reason, I'll go. I don't mind. I want to get off this ship," Clara said, "Now, I will shower, and meet you in the console room in half an hour, okay?"


	149. You Can Depend On Me

_Martha_

_You Can Depend On Me_

"Who, exactly, is this girl?" Martha asked, sweating already as she and Oswin fought through the jungle underneath an emerald sky that made her think of Oz, Oswin and her badly damaged leg becoming progressively more battered and beaten by branches. It was only now that Martha noticed the thing was covered in scratches and scuffs and dents – it was a wonder it didn't give way. She really did need a new one.

"I told you, Flek Phisj, my ex-girlfriend, crazy knowledge of medicine – not to make you feel inadequate," Oswin said, fighting through trees. Why wouldn't the TARDIS land any closer?

"Oh, of course, because an abundance of medical professionals _isn't _what I want on that ship. I just love being the sole doctor, with one nurse, and a bunch of wannabes who don't know anything about hand amputation or enucleation," Martha grunted, trying not to start a forest fire. But it didn't take them too long to break through the trees and get to an area where some of them were cut down, leaving only some huge, tall ones with buildings in them.

"It's called Skybound," Oswin told her, "If it weren't for the fact the planet's quite inhospitable, it would be a wonderful place to live. And what are you saying about my emergency enucleation? I thought I did a relatively good job at gouging somebody's eyes out… You know what? I'm gonna call her and tell her to come down – I had a hard enough time getting up these ladders last time…" Martha surveyed the ladders, some of them rope and some of them poorly constructed out of wood, while Oswin got her phone out.

"Did you even tell her you were coming?" Martha questioned.

"Of course I did!" Oswin said, "Last night, I was talking to her after Adam went to sleep shockingly early. Eight o'clock, who goes to sleep at eight o'clock and then – Hi, Flek!" Flek, apparently, answered the phone at that point, "I can't get up the ladder, what with my leg being completely shit… I'll tell you what I did to it when you get here, it's a great story, full of laughs."

"Not that many laughs," Martha said.

"Yes I will explain why she needs new eyes, but not over the phone," Oswin said after a moment, "I'll tell you everything whenever you get here, are you coming? … Ha, ha, very funny… No, the girl with the eyes and the girl with the hand are the same girl… No, it's not me, just climb down all your ladders, I'll see you in five." Oswin hung up.

"What were you saying about Adam?" Martha asked.

"He just seems ill," Oswin shrugged, "His foot isn't gonna heal without rest, either. Keeps spraining it. Some people just take limbs for granted, you know…"

"So, there's nothing awkward between you and this girl?" Martha asked. She found it hard to believe that Oswin would just get along completely fine with a girl she'd dated for four years. Martha had seen Denise, and Denise was clearly insane, and even though she was Clara's ex-girlfriend who lived in a forest and wallowed in muck, Martha didn't know how similar the Twins' taste in women was… Though, Adam and Eleven weren't particularly alike. Adam wasn't being immature and hiding in the library, for a start.

"No, Martha, just don't ask why I broke up with her. Not while she's there. Like I said, she'll get mad at me, and then who knows if her prosthetics will work properly?" Oswin said.

"I really don't care why you broke up," Martha said.

"Jenny will," Oswin pointed out. That was true – Jenny most definitely would care. And they couldn't get away from her, since she was the blind, handless one, "Jenny cares about everything if I'm involved. And especially also if there are lesbians involved."

"You're not even a lesbian," somebody called from somewhere else, and Martha turned around to see a girl with bright pink hair walking towards them.

"Flek, hey!" Oswin beamed and went to hug her, and Martha stared until she remembered Oswin was only from one century ahead of Jack and River. Even further into the clutches of freedom of sexuality and open relationships.

"You're one of those shifty bisexuals," Flek said, since that was obviously who it was, hugging Oswin back, and Oswin laughed.

"Not the shiftiest bisexual you'll meet today, I'm sure," Oswin said, and Martha didn't know if she was remarking upon Jenny or Clara. Or maybe even Claratoo. Quite possibly River. Or Jack… Or, Thirteen, even. Though, Martha was sure that at least three of those people were _more_ than just bi – she'd heard Jack throw the words 'omnisexual' and 'pansexual' around a bunch of times. She didn't want to get involved in what people labelled themselves as, though.

"Wow, that is some damage you've done to that leg," Flek commented on Oswin, "I hope there's an interesting story behind it. Anyway, I'm being rude," she turned to Martha, "I'm Flek Phisj. _Dr_ Flek Phisj, actually, it should be." She shook Martha's hand warmly.

"Well then, I guess I'm Dr Martha Jones," Martha said, "So great to have proper doctors around."

"It really is," Oswin said, limping away towards the trees again to get back to the TARDIS, and Martha and Flek followed, the former not looking forwards to the trek home. Oswin was probably looking even less forwards to it, "None of these phonies."

"Phonies? The Doctor I met seemed to know his stuff," Flek said.

"You're just being nice," Oswin said, "And the Doctor _you_ met is hiding from his wife in the library. Well, not just his wife, he's hiding from everybody because he thinks they're angry at him because of… Complicated reasons."

"How complicated?" Flek asked, the three of them staggering through thickets of branches in tightly-growing trees, Martha's eyes hurting already from the vivid green sky. She didn't know how Clara and Jack had managed two full days out here, and really hoped she didn't have a run-in with any gigantic space worms that would eat her and then shit on her head.

"Well, you know theories on parallel universes?"

"It's the Fifty-Second Century and they're all still theories?" Martha asked.

"Well, no Martha, I would've thought that you would have realised by now I proved the existence of parallel universes," Oswin said a little coldly, but Martha didn't think she meant anything by it, she was just unable to pass up the opportunity for sarcasm, "Basically, parallel universes are real. And there's a parallel universe version of the Doctor and Clara staying with us. Parallel Doctor is the old man who everybody hates, he's Twelve. _Our_ Twelfth Doctor is apparently my very attractive sister-in-law, and apparently everyone calls her 'Thirteen'. Parallel Clara is the one who looks depressed who doesn't smoke and is perpetually angry."

"…Just look for the wedding rings," Martha added, "Other Clara isn't married. Also, she won't recognise you."

"…Okay, then. Parallel universes. That's, um… Kind of… Awesome…"

"You might not think they're awesome when a facehugger from _Alien_ tries to jump at your face, so you kill it with a super-heated bone saw and get acid in your eyes and on your hand. Then some super-hot awesome genius-girl – or something – rips your eyes out with a surgical scalpel," Oswin said.

"She got impregnated _before_ Oswin gouged her eyes out. What's it called? A chestburster?" Martha asked Oswin.

"Yep. You remember _Alien_, right, Flek?"

"You made me watch it, like, twenty times, Os," Flek said. Martha had never heard anyone other than Clara call Oswin 'Os', and maybe her brother once, though Martha couldn't remember which brother that was. Whichever one had shown up on the day when she'd stolen all the meat and given everybody food poisoning. That day.

"And now I'm glad – thank god Adam is a huge nerd who knows everything about Xenomorphs," Oswin said.

"Oh, the boyfriend?" Flek asked.

"Yes, 'the boyfriend'. He's not in, by the way, he's visiting his sister with Clara, and I'm pretty sure he's ill," Oswin said, "If you do meet him, though, just know that Captain Jack has fed him a lot of lies about the likelihood of us getting back together, just to annoy him."

"Never did trust that Jack," Flek said.

"I wouldn't," Martha told her, "But, he's probably sat with Jenny in the medibay right now while she makes a billion puns about being blind and without hand. I'm gonna tell her she owes me a tea for every dirty joke I hear about fingers."

"That's a lot of tea, it'll keep you going for months, I imagine," Oswin said.

"Wait – who is this girl, exactly?"

"She's the Doctor's daughter," Martha said, "She's 207 and she's married to Captain Jack now, but they have some sort of weird open-marriage where they can both sleep with whoever else they want out of revenge for him allegedly cheating with a hologram clone of her."

"That's why Eyeball's here, remember?" Oswin said, "She's still here, right?"

"Oh, yeah. Still here," said Flek, "Jack slept with her, right, I remember…"

"Jenny might try and sleep with you," Martha said, "But I wouldn't advise it. She's using you to get at her husband."

"I don't know if she does sleep with people who aren't Clechoes, though," Oswin said, "Because she's been trying it on with me for weeks, and-"

"I just won't sleep with her, okay?" Flek said, "I'll just fix the eyes, and the hand, and your leg, and then I'll be out of your hair."

"Normally, the Doctor would probably invite you for a ride, but you don't want to stay here too long," Martha said, "The TARDIS is great – with two people. But now, it seems, there are eighteen of us who live there. It's hell sometimes. More hellish lately than it was a week ago."

"Hey! Clara and I were away a week ago, that better not be a dig, Marth."

"_Stop_ calling me 'Marth'," Martha asked again.

"Sure, sure…" Oswin said distantly. Martha got the distinct impression that Oswin was never going to stop calling her Marth, "Anyway," Oswin said, the blue wooden doors finally appearing out of the trees of Eslilia, Oswin stumbling into them when she tried to push them open, "Welcome to the TARDIS."


	150. Eye For An Eye

_Oswin_

_Eye For An Eye_

"If you had to say," Oswin began, "How good of a job did the person who carried out this enucleation do?" Flek was leaning over to shine a torch in Jenny's eyeholes, Oswin and Martha both standing by with their arms crossed, Jack at the bedside. Flek turned to give her a look. "What? I'm just asking..."

"You want me to tell you how well you gouged somebody's eyes out?" Flek asked.

"I haven't had my eyes gouged out many times," Jenny spoke up, "But if I had to have them gouged out again, I'd want you to be the one who did it, Oswin." Some of them pulled faces at that, and Thirteen (who was leaning on the wall fat away from them playing the role of guardian right then, since no other Doctors were available, or possibly also to stay out of the way of everyone in Nerve Centre) laughed.

"Just... Tell me if I have a future in surgery," Oswin said, and Flek sighed and went back to examining the empty eye sockets.

"I hate to bruise your ego, but a high IQ isn't equitable to a steady hand," Flek said, "I think you should stick to the computers."

"Sleeping with a doctor doesn't make you a doctor," Jack said, getting up from the chair he'd been in, "Although, I _can_ regenerate. Anybody want any tea?" After taking orders from the five of them, Jack sauntered off out of the room. He didn't seem too fussed about leaving Jenny, but she didn't seem too bothered he'd left - maybe they both just trusted the people they were living with enough.

"He's never slept with a Doctor," Jenny remarked.

"He means you," Thirteen told her, then there was a pause and she said, "Sorry - I'll be quiet." Oswin felt like telling her nobody hated her like they hated Twelve, and that she didn't really need to shut up - as far as intruders went, anybody brought in by the Dimension Stabilisers acting up was supposed to be there. Unlike she herself, or Jenny.

"Okay, um, all these nerve endings have been burned away by the acid, there needs to be a complete reconstruction of the synapse structure back here with cybernetic nerve-links and this thing we call an 'insertion capsule', which is a fancy name for 'plug socket', more or less... That's the part that gets screwed into the skull and attached to all the nerves, and the eye goes into that, like a bowl. But it's a complicated micro-surgical prodecure and it's difficult to really see what needs to be attached to what," Flek said, "Plus, I don't know how similar Time Lord biology is to human biology..."

"It's similar enough for what you're suggesting to work," Thirteen said, "The hardware would be the same with some tweaks to take into account the higher levels of brain activity... I mean, I could help, if you want? I don't wanna intrude or anything... In the original eyeball-creation-process I wasn't involved, so... I'm hanging around places where there's no... Theodore."

"Just stay, you're really weird, you'll freak people out if you go back out there," Oswin told her.

"I could go clean the bathroom?" she suggested, "Unless there are people in there. I don't wanna get in the way."

"I have never known any of the other Doctors to volunteer to clean _anything_, let alone a communal bathroom," Martha said, "She's right, you _are _weird."

"This ship has a lot of under-utilised cleaning supplies, okay? I'm not gonna apologise for the fact that everything would be better if it sparkled and smelt like flowers," Thirteen said. Martha and Oswin exchanged a look, both of them thoroughly weirded out by Thirteen's entire personality so far, more or less.

"Well you probably should stay, from a medical standpoint," Flek said.

"...Good idea," Thirteen said, and then she shushed, but remained in the room. Oswin was very confused by Thirteen in general - a Doctor, no less, who wanted everything to 'sparkle and smell like flowers'.

"...So the eye itself is the easy part," Flek started saying, "If I'm only staying for the day, the insertion capsules need to be installed, but the eyes don't involve much biology, so, Oswin, you can do that."

"Make them shoot laser-beams," Jenny said.

"No, Jenny," said Oswin, "That's a terrible idea, you'll kill everyone. I remember the last time you had laser weaponry."

"What? Nothing happened!"

"You killed Jack four times and got us stuck in the desert for a week," Martha said.

"That is a _lie_ Martha Jones! It was for five days! And I killed him six times," Jenny said.

Flek looked to Oswin and Oswin mouthed, "_She's crazy_," while spinning her finger at the side of her head. Flek looked to Martha then for confirmation, who just gave up and nodded. Jack returned with tea on some kind of large tray he'd scavenged from somewhere in the kitchen Oswin had never seen before.

"I don't think I've ever had real tea before," Flek said, "It's hard to get in space and on Eslilia."

"Eslilia sounds like a shithole," Jenny said.

"Messaline wasn't particularly nice," Martha pointed out, "All toxic swamps. That's where you're from."

"Excuse you, I'm not _from _Messaline, I'm _from_ a soft tissue cloning machine," Jenny 'corrected', "I was on Messaline for like, an hour, and then I died and stole a spaceship. Never been back. Mainly because it's a shithole."

"Well these are a lot of bad words," Thirteen commented, drinking from a red mug, which Oswin recognised as Clara's. Thirteen frowned at it, "Jack, did you use Clara's mug?"

"Well, you don't have a mug," Jack said.

"Eurgh, she didn't wash it properly," Thirteen said, shaking her head. But she didn't seem to object too strongly to the mug, since she carried on drinking out of it, "I'm gonna have to apologise later..."

"Whose mug is this?" Flek asked.

"Oswin's," Jack said, "Oswin has Adam's."

"Which _are _washed properly," Oswin said, "Not everyone can achieve the level of disgustingness Clara has acquired."

"Why don't we have any other mugs? How many do we have?" Martha asked.

"Sixteen," said Jack, then he seemed to get a brainwave and turned to Thirteen, "You can have Tentoo's old mug if you want."

"Great idea! I _knew_ there was a reason I let you marry my daughter..." Thirteen said, grinning, and then going back to her tea.

"Carry on talking about eyes," Martha said to Flek.

"Oh, right. So, yeah, it's really just the insertion capsules that _I'd _need to be here for, the rest of it doesn't need me, you can probably handle that yourselves," Flek said.

"Hold the party," Jack said, "What's an 'insertion capsule'?" Oswin elbowed him in the abdomen to make him shut up.

"Enough about the eyes, what about her hand?" Oswin asked.

"Well, that depends how invasive she wants it to be," Flek said.

"Don't ask her how invasive she wants _anything_," said Oswin when Jack and Jenny both laughed, "You know what - Thirteen, will you go find some earplugs? And Jack - leave. Or I'll make Clara hurt you." Jack glared at her.

"And I just made tea, and everything..." he muttered, but he left, Thirteen going to look in the drawers around the edges of the room for some industrial strength earplugs for her daughter.

"When I say invasive, it can be a superficial attachment with a limit on movement - like your leg," she said to Oswin, "_Or _it can be surgically attached."

"What do you mean, a limit on movement?" Jenny asked.

"Well, I can't run. Or jump. Or do an awful lot of stuff. It's this kind of adhesive gel that responds to really sensitive muscle twitches... It's new technology, Flek and I invented it while I was stuck in hospital, which is why it doesn't work as well as other prosthetics of the time, but we had limited resources. I never left my bedroom so it really wasn't necessary to have some leg with amazing movement - not like I'm some ex-dancer or athlete," Oswin said, "I can't have a surgically attached leg anyway, because I'm a fancy picture. _Or _a saltshaker on wheels, depending on how racist you are."

"Keep those jokes coming - laugh off your tragedy," Thirteen said, "That's why I love you, always looking on the brightside."

"You're so weird," Oswin told her.

"People always tell me that," Thirteen said, "Doesn't stop me from loving my favourite sister-in-law in all the universes, though!"

"...Can I get some paper and a pencil?" Flek asked.

"Yes. I will do that," said Thirteen, "Also, biscuits - what kind of biscuits does everybody want? I'll just bring custard creams, everybody likes custard creams, right?" and then she left.

"She's really strange, but I like her," Oswin said, "She must be where you get your optimism from, Jenny."

"I think we have the same eyes," Jenny said.

"...Well, actually, she has brown eyes, but..." Martha began, but trailed off with a disapproving look from Oswin, "...That's the optimism we mean!"


	151. Emancipation Proclamation

**AN: Right now, it looks like Claratoo and Twelve will be staying until Day 97. That's what my schedule says, but schedules are liable to change, I just thought I'd let people know.**

_Adam_

_Emancipation Proclamation_

His head was killing him, it felt like he had an almighty head cold, and Clara kept giving him shifty looks as they walked up the steep hill towards his house, sitting on the edge of the cliff overlooking the sea.

"Isn't it dangerous to build a house there?" Clara inquired, "What with coastal erosion, and everything? What if it fell into the sea? I know all about that crap, I did a Geography GCSE."

"Yep, and along with that you are from the hovel that is Blackpool, within the even greater hovel that is the entire North of England," Adam said raspily, and then he coughed and crossed his arms around him. There was light snow on the ground and ice on the path, it being early February, and he clutched the flask of coffee his girlfriend had so kindly made him tightly, trying not to cause it to freeze.

"Very funny... Do you want me to carry that? It looks, um..." Clara began, and Adam glanced at the flask and saw ice curling around it, spreading out from his fingertips. He sighed.

"Fine, here," he said, holding it out to her, and she took it telekinetically, not wanting to get her hands cold.

"Well, she must be awfully worried about you if she's been making you flasks of coffee," Clara said, "Does your sister _really _need an English tutor, or is that just something Oswin told me to make me come with you?"

"No, she does. She has ulterior motives, though," Adam said, "Oswin doesn't think you should be trusted around Thirteen. But _I _think you're capable of making your own decisions in life."

"Well _I'm _here to keep an eye on you because you're clearly ill," Clara said, "Unless she's trying to set us up?" she asked, leaning on the door of his house as he searched in his pockets for keys.

"You're right, it's probably that..." he muttered, "Forgot my house keys. Great."

"Well thank god you have me here," Clara said, clicking her fingers, "Door's unlocked now. Of course, the clicking my fingers is just for show."

"Cryokinesis is totally cooler than telekinesis anyway," he said, opening the door, and sure enough it _was _unlocked, accidentally freezing the handle a little on his way in.

"What's going on with that? You weren't freezing everything you touched the other day," Clara commented.

"I'm fine," he said, sniffing with a nose that was blocking itself, "What time is it?"

"It's like-" Clara began, getting her phone out.

"It's ten in the morning," his sister called from the living room to the right.

"Isn't it a little early for you to be up?" he asked, going into the next room, "It's Saturday, after all. I mean, it is Saturday, right?"

"Yes. Who've you brought? Your attractive girlfriend?" Ellie asked, Clara standing in the doorway behind the sofa holding the flask while Adam went to look in the fridge and see what sort of food there was. He had no clue where his parents were, either.

"_No_, she's busy - and stop being weird," he told her, seeing there was barely anything in the fridge except for five pizzas.

"I thought I heard her?"

"You heard me, the other one," said Clara, and his sister finally sat up on the sofa and leant over the back, "Hi. It's Clara - we met before, I stole food from your brother's fridge."

"You're the less-lame one?" Ellie asked.

"Excuse me?"

"Whoever's going out with my brother must be pretty lame. Or is he cheating with you?"

"He's not," said Clara.

"You like Oswin, anyway," Adam pointed out to her.

"Maybe I like this one more," she said.

"Well, probably not, since she's here to help you with your English. She's a teacher," Adam said, and Ellie groaned loudly and threw herself back down onto the sofa.

"It could be worse, you could have the _other _other one," Clara said, "The proper teacher. We don't like her, she's boring and she has a weird dead boyfriend."

"He punched me in the face," Adam said, "And he used to cry in front of children. Barrel of laughs. You know, Clara, there's probably another version of Danny Pink in this universe, you should go find him. I'm sure he'll keep you way too busy to think about Thirteen."

"Very funny, and I'm not thinking about Thirteen anyway, don't be weird..." Clara muttered, "Can I use your fancy rich-person shower? That bathroom is the worst, I keep thinking I'm gonna get some sort of fungal infection just by stepping foot in there."

"Seriously?" he asked.

"Well I was _gonna _shower, but then Oswin convinced me to come here with you, so I thought I'd blag my way into your bathroom," Clara shrugged, "Oswin's not the only one with ulterior motives."

Adam coughed loudly into his fist, before saying, "You're both as bad as each other..."

"You should let her use the shower, then she'll see what I'm talking about," said Ellie.

"I literally came here to move it," Adam said, then he sighed, "Go use the shower, then. It's the door in the middle." Clara smiled and walked off, after leaving the flask of coffee on the table in front of the sofa.

"What's going on with you? You sound totally sick," Ellie said, "Sick in a bad way."

"Yeah, I got that," he muttered, "Nothing. I'm..." he stopped talking when he saw ice spreading out from his fingertips on the counter, "I'm... Gonna put the heating on..."

"I'll do it," she volunteered, yawning, "It's freezing since you two opened the door. Why did you have to build a house out of glass?" She got up and left the room.

"Well, you could always go to boarding school," he called, "Where are mum and dad, by the way?"

"I don't know," she answered, "The Maldives, the Canaries, Cuba, Australia? Pick a tourist destination and go looking."

"They're on holiday _again_?"

"They've been on holiday for two weeks. That's why there's so much pizza in the fridge. Why? It's fine," she said, shrugging when she came back into the room after apprently.

"You're fourteen, it's not fine... You know what? I'm sick of this, I'm getting you emancipated," Adam said.

"You're... What?" she asked.

"It's neglect if they're away this much - child abuse. You're fourteen, they can't do that," he said, "I won't even need the best lawyers to do it, either..."

"But you're never here, _either_. Unless you're gonna let me onto your fancy spaceship?" she crossed her arms and questioned him, and he glared, balling his fists and keeping them crossed tightly under his arms when frosty handprints were appearing on everything he was touching.

"It's too dangerous," he said, stepping around the kitchen counter and onto his right foot, which gave way and left him clinging onto the side of the counter.

"Are you okay!?" she exclaimed as he pulled himself up.

"Sprained my ankle a week ago," he winced, "Killer plants in Wales. Told you it was dangerous. If you don't believe me, ask Clara, she's got a lot of awful stories she could tell you."

"Why is the work surface frozen..?"

He moved his hands off it like it was burning him when he noticed what was going on.

"That'll..." he coughed loudly, "That'll melt... I'm gonna go find some gloves and then call a locksmith... Getting the locks changed..."

"You can't change the locks on mum and dad like they're misbehaving kids or something! This is their house, too!" she protested.

"Look, you're just a kid, you're only fourteen. I'll buy them a new house, give them some money and cut them off. Then you can either go to boarding school or get a live-in child minder," Adam said, going up the stairs with her standing at the bottom of them, "You'll probably see them just as much anyway..."


	152. Emergency Extraction

_Clara_

_Emergency Extraction_

"What's with the creepy painting in the bathroom?" Clara asked when she came back down the stairs forty minutes later, feeling cleaner than she'd felt since she got back to the TARDIS from her brief holiday. She was still towel drying her hair, "It looks like one of those things." When she came into the living room again she saw Adam lying down on the sofa and not moving much, his sister watching TV on the other sofa. "Is the humidity really good for it in there?"

"That's what I said," Ellie added.

"It's in a glass case," Adam pointed out, "And it is one of 'those things'. It's a painting called _Necronom IV_, by H. R. Giger, the person who designed the Xenomorph based off of that earlier painting of his. It was _incredibly _expensive."

"And you put it in the weirdest place possible," Ellie said, "Every time I shower it's just there. Finally, he takes it away with him. I've been asking him to move it since he got it - why do you pick now?" she asked Adam.

"Because of some stuff that happened two days ago. Clara, tell my sister that it's too dangerous on the TARDIS for her," Adam said.

"It's _incredibly_ dangerous," said Clara, "Plus, it's full of a bunch of adults who drink a lot of alcohol. Speaking of that - can I smoke in here?"

"I'd rather you didn't," said Adam.

"My sister gouged somebody's eyes out two days ago, so," Clara told Ellie after making a disgruntled noise at the fact she wasn't allowed to smoke in Adam's house, "For her own benefit, of course. She got, um... What did she get in her eyes?"

"Maybe it was sperm," Ellie suggested sarcastically. It was some dirty-minded fourteen year old Adam had for a sister, clearly.

"You don't need your eyes gouged out if you get sperm in them," Clara said, and Adam's sister gave her an amused look, and she stammered, "Not that I would know that, of course..."

"It was facehugger blood," Adam said, "Now she has no eyeballs. Or hand. Clara got shot in the face by a spider splicer."

"From _Bioshock_?" asked his sister. Well, Clara thought, at least somebody knew what Adam and Oswin were talking about when they said that.

"Yes. It's complicated, to do with parallel dimensions - but you remember the mermaid. It's like that, everyday. That thing got its head blown off with a microwave. Plus, communal bathrooms are inappropriate for a teenage girl," Adam said.

"Mmm, probably," Clara nodded.

"Which is why you should go to boarding school, or get a permanent child-minder," Adam said.

"Wait, what's happening?" Clara asked.

"Adam doesn't think our parents should have legal custody of me anymore," Ellie said resentfully.

"Yeah, where are your parents? Don't they live here as well?" Clara asked, dropping her damp hair towel on the side of the sofa, staring around at the huge television with the highest possible definition and of the fancy kitchen appliances.

"They do, but they've been on holiday for two weeks, after the cruise at Chrismtas," Ellie explained, "So Adam, who is here even less because he's become a space hobo, thinks _he _should be my legal guardian."

"Which is why," Adam repeated himself again, "You should go to boarding school, or get a permanent child-minder. Like I said."

"Or live on the TARDIS."

"No," said Clara, "No. You're not coming onto that ship. I used to be a live-in nanny in London, it's not so bad. I'd do it, but I have other commitments. Have to take care of my sister. She's an idiot, she can't look after herself." Adam hacked a huge cough then, and when he'd finished he groaned and slouched down into the sofa, looking pale as death. Blue, even.

"Is it cold in here?" he whined with a blocked nose.

"No, it's boiling, the thermostat is as high as it'll go," Ellie told him.

"I'm freezing."

"Adam, you're not fine. What is it you came here to get, again?" Clara asked.

"The painting, I told you," he said, "I'm bringing it with me."

"Well _I _will go and get that painting and Ellie will come help me, won't you?" Clara said, asking the girl politely, who turned her nose up at the notion of moving from the sofa.

"Go with her," Adam ordered, and she groaned loudly, a teenager throwing a tantrum.

"Fine," she grumbled eventually, getting off the sofa and traipsing up the stairs like it was the most difficult thing to do in the world.

"Sorry about her," Adam apologised.

"Please, if I can deal with your girlfriend, I can deal with your sister," Clara said, "Who knows? Maybe she'll be _my _sister one day?" He buried his face into the sofa cushion at that notion as Clara slowly followed Ellie, texting Oswin at the same time.

_What's in the coffee?_ was all she sent.

"Do you have a screwdriver?" Ellie asked when Clara entered the bathroom, staring at the weird, chrome painting of the Xenomorph on the wall.

"Um, I have a sonic one. But I can also turn intangible, I'll get it out that way," Clara said, "You _do _know about the superpowers, right?"

"Yeah. Um, last time I saw Oswin, she mentioned that Adam got pneumonia and nearly died..." Ellie began.

"Yeah, I was there, same day the, um... Splicer, or whatever it's called, shot me in the face," Clara said, "He'll be fine, we're gonna take the painting and go back home. I'm very suspicious of that coffee."

"...Didn't Oswin make the coffee?"

"Yeah. But whatever's going on isn't her..." Clara stopped talking when a ringing started in her head and she was blinded for a moment by burning hot pain, and she staggered backwards and fell into the sink. Which was odd, because the sink was more than one step away from her.

"What's wrong!?" Ellie asked, her voice sounding muffled by the screaming noise in Clara's head, Clara unable to see for a moment because her vision was blurred. And then, suddenly, it subsided. Seconds only had passed in white pain, everything looking fuzzy, her hand on the sink bowl, "What just happened!?"

"I don't, um..." she swallowed, the ringing replaced by the sound of running water. She'd knocked the tap. She hastened to turn it off.

"You moved," Ellie told her.

"I... I what? Moved?"

"Like, really fast! You stepped back and you were over there, or... It looked like black smoke, but not normal smoke," she said, "Holy shit, I think you teleported!"

"I... That's not one of my powers, I don't know how I... Don't swear, that's a bad habit you don't want to get into... There's something going..." Clara's phone rang and she winced at the noise, "It's my sister... I have to take this..." Clara said, exhausted out of nowhere. She walked across the room and through the door, then through another wall into some bedroom that may well be the Mitchells' parents. "Oswin?"

"_Yes, obviously - what do you mean 'what's in the coffee'? Do you think I'VE done something to him!?_"

"No, no, I..." Clara went and sat on the bed, rubbing her forehead with her freehand. It didn't help that the room was boiling hot.

"_Clara? What's wrong?_"

"Something's happening, you have to check the coffee," Clara ordered through gritted teeth, "I don't know what's going on, Adam's sister told me I teleported - what does that mean!?"

"_Hang on - you WHAT? How? That doesn't make sense_," Oswin said.

"You have to get here - I don't know what's wrong with Adam, he keeps freezing everything he touches," Clara hissed, sure that Ellie would be eavesdropping, "Just come and get us."

"_Okay, okay, I'll fly the TARDIS and go see what's up with the coffee, alright?_" Oswin said, then she hung up, so Clara left the room to find Ellie standing with her ear against the door.

"No chance to hide when you're spying on someone who can walk through walls," Clara commented, "I'm just gonna get this painting and then we have to go - and it _would_ be better if Adam got custody of you, you know. He'll look after you more than your damn parents. You never know, you might get lucky like the kids I used to nanny did. I lived in the attic. Imagine having a pretty teacher at your beck and call?"

"You're just as into yourself as Oswin is, aren't you?" she asked.

"Yep," Clara answered, pulling _Necronom IV _out of its frame and rolling it up as best she could, worried about damaging it. She heard the sound of the TARDIS materialising outside.

"Can I not see on the ship? Please?" Ellie asked.

"Maybe when you're older. Look, I took the Maitlands on there once because they found out I was a time traveller and they nearly died," Clara said hurriedly, going down the stairs, "And the Twelfth Doctor from the other universe took a girl called Courtney Woods on board to the moon and she ended up completely traumatised - bad things happen to kids on there, alright? I fell out of an escape pod and got impaled on a branch and dislocated my wrist and had to drag myself off of it. And the other week a giant space worm ate me, pooed me out and pooed on me. And I got thrown over a waterfall and broke my back and fell asleep in my own sick - it's not a life you want when you're a kid. Adam can talk to you about this in ten years."

"Wha's goin' on?" Adam slurred, sounding sickly, buried on the sofa with frost growing like mould beneath him.

"The TARDIS is coming to get us. It's your power, something's going on with it. Me, too, I just teleported in your bathroom," Clara went to help Adam to his feet, "Please don't freeze me."

Somebody knocked on the door and Clara waved a hand to open it, and was grateful to see Martha had been sent, her pyrokinesis invaluable in this situation.

"Martha, this is Adam's sister, Ellie. Ellie, this is Dr Martha Jones," Clara said, letting Martha help Adam when she felt him start to accidentally freeze her shoulder, "Martha's pyrokinetic."

"Should you be telling her this stuff?" Martha asked.

"Don't worry, she knows everything," Clara said, "Sorry about this, by the way," she turned back to Ellie, "Didn't expect this to happen, bit unprecedented... We will be back in fifteen minutes though. To you. Back from the future. Okay, bye!" Clara closed the door, intent on keeping her word to Adam's sister to not leave her alone for more than fifteen minutes.

Telekinetically, she went to help Martha bring Adam, the only one able to keep him from freezing everyrhing, holding the door open for them both.

"This is not good," Martha said, "Not at all..."


	153. There's Something In The Coffee I

_Clara_

_There's Something In The Coffee I_

In the TARDIS medibay, there were three beds, and now two of them were occupied. At the farthest end was Jenny, still blind and without hand, and in the middle was now Adam Mitchell. The people in the room comprised of the two invalids, Clara herself, Oswin, Martha, Jack, Thirteen and Flek. Clara kept looking at Thirteen to try and catch her eye in attempt to get her to come out of the room for a moment, but Thirteen's eyes were glued to floor or to Jenny, she was sparing Adam and Clara no attention. What was happening to Adam? Just last night, Clara had been asked if Adam was sick...

Oswin was running a test on the coffee granules in the overly large coffee jar they had in the kitchen using both Helix and her Sphere, ignoring the facilities offered to her by her own laboratory so as to stay where Adam Mitchell was lying in a near-catatonic state. Although, he might be sleeping. He was very still, but the heart monitor now attached to him claimed him to still be alive, with a BMP lower than Clara had ever seen. If Thirteen hadn't said the day before that Adam would be fine, Clara would presume he was dying. But Oswin didn't know that, and neither did anybody else, so god only knew what they were all thinking, they without the benefit of a single snippet of future information.

"This is the serum coffee," Oswin declared finally, confirming what everyone had assumed, "But it's been subjected to the time vortex now, and parallel universes. It's more potent. Somebody swapped it with the normal coffee." Clara remembered that she'd had coffee last night - that was what had been in the mug she'd been rinsing while having her conversation with Thirteen. Everything seemed to come back to her - if she could only talk to her... But Clara was still being stoically ignored. Not drawing attention to herself.

"Who would swap the coffee?" Martha asked.

"And what do you mean 'more potent'?" Jack questioned.

"Okay, I don't know who swapped it, I don't know who would. And I mean that the process will happen faster and with less of this stuff. One cup. One day," Oswin said.

"What about Time Lords?" Jenny asked, which made Clara jump - she thought she'd been asleep or something. It was impossible to tell.

"Totally different biology, it's still designed around humans. The only way it'll affect Time Lords is it might make them more aroused for a couple of days. Or angry. Or scared. Well, I think the adrenaline will just make them feel everything more intensely," Oswin said, "No superpowers though." She was clearly distracting herself to keep from worrying about Adam, but Clara knew exactly how worried her baby sister was.

"What about the others?" Clara asked, "Other Clara..." she faded out when the ringing came back in her ears and she scrunched up her ees against the white noise as it drilled into her temples and hurt so much her vision turned to watery blurs. She'd been sitting down in a fold-out chair, like the others, when suddenly it was like she was thrown back onto something soft, still sitting, her head still feeling like her brain was swelling against the confines of her skull. It was like vomiting - while it happened, it was awful, but when it was over it was like a weight had been lifted. At least, it was until she felt the urge to puke again.

"Holy shit, Clars," said Oswin, "You went from the chair to the bed!" Clara stared around and found she had, she'd shot backwards about a metre.

"Whoop-dee-doo," said Clara grimly, "I think my brain is gonna explode, it really hurts doing that..."

"Is that gonna happen to me?" Martha asked, "Is something, I mean? Something bad?"

"Might not be bad - but you ought to go get Rose. She's had powers as long as Clara," Oswin said.

"I'll do it," Jack volunteered, talking to Martha, "You ought to stay with Queen Elsa over here," he nodded at Adam and left.

"What were you saying about Clara, Clara?" Oswin asked.

"I, um... Yesterday. Yesterday evening. She made coffee for everyone," Clara said, "Because Martha told her she was on hot drinks duty."

"That's it!" Oswin exclaimed, "It's revenge for that exact thing, on Clara's behalf. I bet Twelve found the jar labelled 'DO NOT CONSUME' in the cupboard and decided it'd be hilarious..."

"Why do you keep a jar of superpower coffee where anyone can get at it?" Martha asked her judgementally.

"Nobody knew it was there, not even Clara, and it was hidden behind the potatoes. Nobody's gonna eat those potatoes. Old Twelvey must have been looking for a way to mess with us in that kitchen... I just thought everyone would go looking for it in my lab, rather than in one of the cupbards," Oswin explained.

"Whatever... I'm gonna make some tea, the tea'll be fine..." Clara grumbled, standing up and beginning to walk to the door, and then she turned back, "Actually, Thirteen, do you mind helping me?" She'd thrown Thirteen between a rock and a hard place on purpose, because Clara had just drawn attention to her. If she didn't come now, she was going to have to face the wrath of Oswin's questioning, and Clara didn't want to know what Oswin would be like if she thought Adam was in danger. Thirteen was probably also aware of the fact Clara was manipulating her so that she could ask her questions away from the group.

"...Fine. Yep. I'll help," Thirteen said, Oswin briefly more distracted by the worry of what may happen if Clara was alone with Thirteen for five whole seconds, rather than thinking about the fact Thirteen was from an unknown amount of time in the future and knew, more likely than not, exactly what was happening.

Clara waited outside the medibay for Thirteen to follow, loitering in Nerve Centre, which was empty, surprisingly enough. After the events of yesterday, people were avoiding the living room at all costs, it seemed. So Clara grabbed Thirteen's upperarm and pulled her out of earshot of the medibay.

"You're gonna tell me what's happening, okay?" Clara hissed at her, standing on tiptoes in order to gain some height, "Because that back there doesn't look like it'll work out for the best, and I don't understand what's happening. And you know everything, so tell me. _Now_."

"I can't!" Thirteen hissed, "Don't you get that? I can't tell you what's going on!"

"Yes you can! All these rules only exist for yourself," Clara accused, "You're not helping anybody else by keeping these secrets."

"I think you'll find that most of _my _rules exist for you, Oswald," Thirteen said, "You just have to trust me on the fact that I know what's going on. And even if it's something bad, it's not like I could change it."

"I don't want to trust you, I want you to tell me the truth about what's wrong with Adam and what's wrong with me," Clara asked, glaring, one arm leaning on the wall next to Thirteen's head to stop her getting back to the medibay.

"I am telling you the truth! Everything will be fine, but I can't tell you why."

"You can and you will. What is it River always says? 'Rule number one: the Doctor lies.' If I believe you, and you're lying, and he _dies_, I will _never _be married to you," Clara threatened.

"Well you _are _married to me, so clearly I'm not lying."

"Unless you're lying about that, too? Hmm?"

"Since when were you this paranoid!?"

"Just tell me the..." Her head started up again, white noise and buzzing pain like sirens inside her skull, and stumbled backwards, clutching her head, and banged into the back of the sofa. Which was strange, because she was sure there had been an entire table between her and the sofa. Her head reeled as she held it in her hands, and Thirteen walked around the white table in front of her as she wiped the tears of pain from the corners of her eyes away on the back of her hand. Clara held up her palm to warn Thirteen not to come any closer or she'd get a face-full of telekinesis. "Tell me what is happening, Doctor."

"...It's short-range teleportation," Thirteen said, right as Jack came back into the room with Rose behind him.

"How short is 'short'?" Clara asked.

"Isn't that the golden question?" Jack joked, and neither of them laughed. Thirteen stared at the back of the sofa and Clara shot Jack a scowl, "Sheesh, tough crowd. What's going on here, then?"

"Just making tea for everyone, Jack. No coffee," Clara said.

"...Uh-huh... 'Tea'... _Right_..." Jack said, and then he winked at Clara and slipped into the medibay after Rose, the door closing.

"About twenty metres," Thirteen finally answered, "And it'll stop hurting. I think. And by the way, _you_ are clearly the liar, because you have never mentioned this little confrontation here to me in all the years we've been married." Oh, so it was years, was it? "As your wife, I highly disapprove of these manipulative and unorthodox methods you're using here."

"And Adam? What about him?"

"Oswin will figure that out for herself," Thirteen said, "Within the next few hours. He will be fine. Stuff concerning you is different to stuff concerning others. You're different. Me telling you isn't gonna help anyone. Now I'm gonna make this tea, then I'm gonna disappear into the annals of the TARDIS until tomorrow morning. But when she realises what's going on, make sure she also realises that keeping him warm will just slow it down. He needs to be cold, no matter what he says."

* * *

_Oswi__n_

"Oh my god," she breathed, almost dropping her mug of tea after Clara had returned with drinks and said Thirteen had wandered off somewhere (probably to avoid spilling any secrets, which just made Oswin all the more suspicious about... Thoughts that didn't bear entertaining...) "He's freezing."

"He's what? How can he be..?" Jack began.

"Look at the scans, and his temperature, and heartbeat. Five beats per minute. His heart only beats once every twelve seconds. That's impossible. He'd be dead. And it's just getting slower, but Adam's alive..." Oswin said, watching him.

"Cryostasis," Flek said from behind her.

"He's cryogenically freezing himself?" Martha questioned.

"It means... It means he won't age..." Clara said like she just realised something, "...He shouldn't be kept warm. He should be kept cold. Speed it up. Get it over with."

"This should be impossible," Flek said, "The human body can't function in cryostasis, every habit is stopped."

"Lots of things are impossible on this spaceship," Jack told her, "Martha, you remember what happened to Owen? With the Glove?"

"What? What happened? What's 'the Glove'?" Oswin asked.

"It's called the Resurrection Gauntlet," Jack began, "There are two that we know of, a left one and a right one, both destroyed. The right-hand one only brought people back for a few minutes before they would die permanently, we had a lot of trouble with that though."

"The left-hand one brought Owen back forever, but he was clinically dead and had no signs of life or blood flow," Martha explained, "But he couldn't heal. He broke his finger, cut his hand... Maybe this will have the same effect? We can see when it's over, see if his foot still heals."

"Imagine if you had to build him a big ice suit like Mr Freeze?" Clara asked, and Oswin scowled at her.

"Not funny, Clars."

"I'm not being funny, I'm being serious," Clara shrugged.

"He generates his own cold," Oswin said, "So probably not..."

"Now, I hate to drag the attention away from Frozone there," Jack said, sipping some tea, "But what about everybody else? Everybody had coffee yesterday. If it can cause you two to have power mutations, what'll it do to the others? What'll it do to Rose and Martha?"

"Wait - mutations?" Clara asked.

"It's not an entirely new power, Clara," Oswin said, "It's like, telekinesis you move stuff with your mind. Intangibility you walk through things. You're moving _yourself _through _space_."

"That's more like a poorly executed pun than an explanation, Os," Clara said.

"By my guess, it means that Rose is gonna mutate pretty soon, too. God knows what that means - you'll be even more overpowered than you already are," Oswin told her, "I don't know about Martha. Rose, Adam and Clara have had both their powers for months. They probably still won't trigger until there's a high adrenaline situation, though, in the others."

"So we have to be on the lookout for Amy, Rory, Mickey and Donna becoming superhumans?" Jack mused, "Well, do we warn them?"

"No," said Martha, "It stays in this room. Otherwise they might go looking for trouble to trigger it, and they might not be graced with a power that's useful."

"They might all have crappy aura reading," Jenny said, "Can't all be lucky like Rose."

"Very funny," Oswin muttered.

"I hate to make this about me," Clara began, "But what am _I_ supposed to do..? I keep..." Clara's sentence faltered and she scrunched up her eyes, and then she shot from where she'd been standing a metre and a half to her left. It looked like she vanished into a cloud of smoke and reappeared in one, too, black whisps circling around her like they'd come out of the pores in her skin until they evaporated into nothing around her, a trail of thin mist marking the route she'd taken.

"It's quite conspicuous," Martha commented, "But then, Rose vanishes into a flash of gold."

"And I can teleport further than two feet away," Rose said.

"How far can you teleport?" Flek asked curiously, more interested in listening to the exchange than contributing to it. Oswin wondered why Thirteen hadn't come back into the room after making tea.

"Anywhere, anywhen, at will," Rose said casually, "I can see into the time vortex as well. If I wanted to, I could see everything about everyone. But I don't want to."

"If we can't do anything for Adam, we probably can't do anything for you, either," Oswin said, "I'm sorry. Just try to stay on the ship, yeah?"

"Yeah. Sure," Clara said resentfully, but Oswin didn't see what else they could do. If Clara was randomly teleporting around, she couldn't exactly go outside. She'd freak people out. More than she already freaked people out with her sheer annoyingness, "I'm gonna leave you guys... If anyone needs me, I'll be in my room making no noise and pretending that I don't exist."

"Don't think I didn't catch that _Harry Potter _quote, Clara!" Martha called after her, but she didn't say anything, phasing through the door and leaving the group.


	154. A TARDIS Breakfast IV

_DAY NINETY_

_Rose_

_A TARDIS Breakfast IV_

"Where's the boyfriend?" Jack Harkness slid into the seat next to Rose and passed her a mug, "Not coffee, promise." She told him thanks for the tea and sipped some, before realising that he was expecting an answer to that question, so she sighed and noticed Amy had looked up from her book, sitting a few seats down, to listen. Rose had never seen the appeal of books, really.

"Not here," Rose answered finally.

"What's wrong with him?" Donna called from the sofa, and Rose scowled when she realised she was being eavesdropped on by multiple people.

"Same thing that's wrong with Theodore, probably," Rose muttered, "The stupid 'authority crisis' they've imagined. I wish they'd accept that we're all perfectly capable of taking care of ourselves..."

"They want to be needed," Thirteen said from the kitchen nearby, leaning on the counter and listening as well, it seemed. Rose wanted to know where she'd gotten to last night, just wandering off out of the medibay. Something to do with being from the future, probably.

"What's that mean?" Amy asked her.

"It's a question of equality, y'know? Nobody wants their pet to start cooking gourmet food all of a sudden. How would you feel if Jonesy started talking and walking and doing everything you could, but better?" she nodded at Jonesy when she spoke, who was curled up and asleep on one of the sofas, "You wouldn't like it, as cute as he is."

"Are you saying we're their pets..?" Amy asked.

"I'm not anyone's bloody pet..." Donna complained.

"Yes, that's what I'm saying," said Thirteen, "Let them learn. I had to learn. Nine's learning. Fresh out of the Time War, full of guilt and doubt about himself, his species. Doesn't take much for you all to step inside his hearts. You know what they say, absence makes the heart grow fonder. That's why _he _is so intent on finding Gallifrey." Thirteen pointed at Twelve, who was lying on the third of the sofas and pretending to be asleep, Rose knew. Claratoo was slouched next to Jonesy, absently stroking him and not paying attention. Rose knew who was and wasn't listening.

"Eh?" Twelve jerked out of his faux-sleep.

"The older they are the more they forget. It's nostalgia. They value biology more than emotions. They're trying to hide their xenophobia, not escape it, and they're succeeding," Thirteen said, "In my opinion, at least. _I_ think we're all equal, but... Does anyone want a cookie? I found cookies."

"Oh, I do," Jack said.

"_She's weird_," Amy mouthed at Rose, who nodded as Thirteen threw Jack a whole packet of chocolate chip cookies, "I really want to get off this ship..."

"Bit ungrateful," Twelve commented, now he'd given away the fact he wasn't asleep.

"_You're _the reason," Amy said.

"Don't get into one this morning," Rose said, "It won't end well."

"How would you know?" Twelve asked, and she just shook her head. She wasn't in a mood to show off.

"Rose can control the time vortex," Amy said, and Rose glared at her, "She knows everything." She _could _know everything, she thought like correcting her. There were a great deal of things Rose Tyler never wished to know, yet day in and day out she was still subjected to a perpetual trickle of secrets and was promptly burdened with the responsibility of keeping them.

"Thanks, Amy," she said sarcastically.

"What? Is it a secret?"

"No, I just can't be bothered proving it right now. I'll end up getting quizzed or something," Rose said.

"Your eyes are glowing," Donna said, watching Rose from the sofa. Rose frowned and blinked hard.

"Gone now?" she asked when she opened her eyes, and Donna nodded, so she went back to her tea.

"You looked like the Bad Wolf," Twelve said, and his expression of fear when he spoke threw Rose a little and reminded her of when Tentoo had said the same thing to her when she first got her power. It all felt like a cruel stab in the gut. Rose flashed her eyes at him again and watched him jump.

In a flurry of golden atoms like fireflies, Nerve Centre twisted around her like she had it wrapped around her finger, and she was sitting on the sofa next to Twelve. Claratoo was actually paying attention by now.

"That's the point," Rose told him as he stared at her in fear.

"Eyes," Donna told her again.

"Whatever, I'll just leave them," Rose said.

"That's too much power for a human," Twelve said, "It killed me."

"I don't have the time vortex in my head, I can just tap into it," Rose said, "Sometimes it taps into me and I get loads of useless, personal information about the people I live with."

"You can't control it," Twelve said, "If no Time Lord can, then a human _definitely_ can't."

"I'm as human as Jack," Rose said, and instantaneously she was back sitting in her chair seat at the table with Jack and Amy, trying to sort out her eyes by squinting at herself in the back of a teaspoon.

"I've figured it out," Amy said, "Why that one seems so much different to the other one." She was looking at Claratoo, who heard her saying 'other one' and perhaps assumed they were talking about her, "She's cleaner."

"Oh, yeah," said Rose, "She does give off a vibe that she washes regularly."

"I'm sure if the other one barely washed we'd be able to smell it, Rose," Jack said, "She's entirely clean."

"I see what you mean," Donna said, "Don't you, Jack? Also this one wears less leather."

"Oh, I noticed all the leather," Jack said, "Looks like she's gonna join a biker gang, and I'm pretty sure she can't ride a motorcycle."

"She can't ride a motorbike?" Claratoo asked.

"No, why? Can you?" Jack questioned curiously, eyeing her in a weird way Rose was sure was inappropriate. Though, Jack eyed everyone in weird, inappropriate ways, it was hardly anything new. Claratoo nodded. "Well aren't you full of hidden talents? I think I'm about ten times more attracted to her now," Jack added that part to Amy, who didn't look like she wanted to know.

"How come you can ride one but the other can't? I thought the universes were the same up until three months ago," Donna said.

"It's the Doctor's anti-gravity bike, he gave me it and taught me how to ride it. The Eleventh Doctor," she specified, Twelve not seeming too interested in this conversation.

"When?" Rose asked, and she shrugged.

"After everything on Trenzalore," Clara answered, looking at the cat, which purred contentedly as she scratched behind its ears, rather than the people talking to her.

"She gets a motorbike, and the other one gets an impossible amount of sex," Amy said.

"Hey!" Jack interjected like she'd just offended him, "There's no such thing as an _impossible _amount of sex, Williams." Rose was caught off-guard by Jack calling Amy by what her surname was legally.

"Why did you call her 'Williams'?" Donna asked. It was so rare an occurrence that somebody correctly identified Amy and Rory, Donna was apparently still under the impression their name was Pond, when it technically wasn't, that was just Eleven being awkward. Rose didn't think she'd know that without some temporal assistance though, either, in fairness.

"It's my name," Amy said, "Amy Williams, _not _Amy Pond. _Pond_ is my maiden name, which I did change, not that the Doctor cares. It is an impossible amount, though."

"Amy's right," Donna said, walking over from the sofa to pull up a chair at the table, "I get that he barely sleeps, but _she_ does."

"Yeah, where do they find the time?" Rose added, all three of them waiting for Jack to answer.

"...Why're you all looking at me like _I_ know the answer? I have no clue!" Jack protested, "Isn't this conversation an invasion of privacy, anyway?"

"As if _you _care about privacy," Donna snorted.

"Why don't you all just ask Thirteen?" Jack said, dropping Clara's wife from the future in it.

"That's it," Twelve declared before Thirteen could say anything, not enjoying this conversation at all, "I'm going out." He got to his feet and then made a motion for Clara to follow after him, which she did, though she didn't look very happy about it (which surprised Rose, because she would've thought Other Clara would love the opportunity to escape from this particular conversation).

"Going out? You can't go out," Rose said, "This isn't your TARDIS."

"Doesn't mean I don't know how to fly it," he said, and then he'd left the room, and Rose, Jack, Amy and Donna were left staring around at each other.

"...Shouldn't someone have stopped him?" Amy looked around at them.

"You're all complaining about Clara but you expect her to be the one always here to telekinetically stop those two from wandering off," Thirteen commented, "Now who knows what'll happen?"

"Well what should we do?" Rose asked her.

"Beats me - Theodore's not here, so I've no clue what's going on," Thirteen shrugged, "You do what you like - _I _am gonna clean this sink. It's disgusting."

In sync, the four of them got out of their seats and rushed straight off into the console room to chase Twelve and Claratoo, the former of them busy hitting buttons willy-nilly, Rose acutely aware that some of the things he was doing were wrong. Though, it was always like that when one of the Doctors was flying.

"You can't just take _our _TARDIS!" Donna shouted at him.

"Especially after the mess you made of your own!" Jack added, but Twelve didn't care, and they were already on some shaky path through timespace to wherever Twelve was sending them, like the TARDIS was fighting against his control. None of them really wanted to try and wrench him away, though. "Look, I can't really babysit you, since I have a sick wife on here who-"

"Boo-hoo," Twelve said callously, "I don't need babysitters!" He hit a switch while ranting to Clara about the state of this console room, which only then did Rose notice was relatively dirty, with jackets and pairs of shoes just thrown about on the floor. Not to mention some fag butts near the door which were undoubtedly Clara's. Maybe Thirteen would clean it if she got too bored - stop it from stinking of oil, sweat and tobacco.

The TARDIS reeled quite severely when it landed - though Rose thought 'crashed' was a more descriptor - and if it weren't for the railings someone might have fallen and become seriously injured.

"Where have you brought us!?" Rose shouted after Twelve but he just opened the doors and let in a gust of freezing wind and vanished into the bright square of light that was the outside.

"I can't go out today, I have to stay with Jenny," Jack argued as the other three began to follow the two Beta intruders.

"Jenny will be fine," Rose said, "I've never seen a girl so happy to have her eyes ripped out of her head." When Amy and Donna followed next, she grabbed Jack by the elbow and whispered to him, "Plus, if something happens to either of those two involving super powers, it might take both of us to deal with."

"...Eyes," Jack said, and she let go of his arm and rubbed her eyes to try and fix them, the two of them emerging last from the TARDIS, which vworped away behind them.


	155. Two Ships Tractor Beam

_Rose_

_Two Ships Tractor Beam_

Wherever it was they emerged, it was cold, that was the first thing she took note of. Cold, windy, and green, with a grey sky. And they were on a hill. She hated hills, and the countryside in general, but that was apparently where they were.

"Ah, the fresh air of home!" Twelve said, which puzzled Rose.

"What do you mean 'home'?" Donna questioned, the exact same question Rose was going to ask, had Donna not gotten there first. Gallifrey? They couldn't be on Gallifrey… If this was anything to do with Thirteen going on about nostalgia ten minutes ago… But then, she could have sworn Gallifrey didn't look like some rural patch of late-winter countryside, from what snippets she'd picked up from the Doctors.

"Scotland," Twelve said.

"What?" Amy asked darkly, "What is with Time Lords regenerating and getting weird accents? You sound Scottish and Thirteen sounds like Jack."

"Nothing wrong with sounding like Jack," Jack said, putting his hands in his trouser pockets and peering around, but there was nothing special. Rose just saw a lake down the bottom of the fell they were on, and some rain clouds looming. Although the ground was damp, so maybe the rain had just passed - though if there was one thing she knew, it was that it was always raining in Scotland.

"Why are we in Scotland?" Donna asked.

"Better not be werewolf hunting again…" Rose grumbled, wrapping her arms around herself and the wind.

"Hang on," said Amy stiffly, and everyone looked at her, "A lake. In Scotland."

"…No," said Donna, "Scotland has lots of lakes."

"We might not even be in Scotland, TARDIS might have gone somewhere completely-"

"Loch Ness!" Twelve shouted, and then went off running alarmingly quickly down the hill, and Rose watched him and wished Alpha Clara was there to trip him up. Or that he'd trip up anyway, skidding down a wet hill like that. What if he put his hip out? How old even was that Twelfth Doctor? _2000 years old_, was a fact that popped into her head as soon as she thought it.

"Eyes," Donna said to Rose, "What's going on with them? They never normally glow."

"No idea…" Rose muttered, wondering if this was anything to do with the superpower coffee Twelve had swapped with the normal coffee. She didn't feel any different though. She couldn't even tell if her eyes were glowing or not.

"There's no Loch Ness Monster," Jack said, "Torchwood have been investigating it since the Nineteenth Century, when the first sightings appeared. We would've found it."

"You never know, with a bit of luck he'll fall into the Loch and drown, then we won't have to fix the Alien problem," Amy said, the four of them traipsing after Twelve, none of them in a particularly good mood, Clara having to be cautious due to the fact she'd decided to wear heels. Alpha Clara didn't wear heels all too often anymore, and Rose wondered why._ Oswin_, the time vortex supplied her with the answer. She hated when it did that. She'd rather just ask later. She didn't care _that_ much.

"What're you wearing heels for?" Amy then asked. If there was one thing Rose wouldn't wear heels to do, it would be to chase an alien down a muddy, steep hill in Scotland.

"The Doctor says I'm too short without them," Clara answered, and the four members of the Alpha Crew exchanged looks, some of them worried, "…What?"

"…That's, um…" Rose couldn't think of anything to say. Too short? Why did Twelve care what Clara was wearing on her feet?

"Why do you do what he tells you?" Amy asked.

"Why do you lot _not_ do what the Doctors tell you?" she challenged.

"Because," Rose said after teleporting to the other side of Clara to freak her out, "They don't always know best."

"Also because we've found ourselves dealing with stuff they're too pacifistic to deal with lately," Jack said, "The Xenomorph, for example. Do you honestly think that if some of us hadn't been there, you two would've gotten out alive? If we'd sent you back to your TARDIS instead of offering to help you fumigate? I've lead Torchwood for long enough to know that there are a whole lot of things you can't just 'talk to.' That's why we have guns."

"I know you have guns, Martha hit the Doctor around the face with one," Clara said, and the three girls snorted with laughter.

"Oh my god, seriously!?" Amy exclaimed, and Clara nodded, "I would've paid to see that."

"I think the novelty of the situation was outweighed by the fact we were about to get attacked by an android…" Clara nearly fell then, and Rose shifted the world around her by about a foot so that she was close enough to hold her up.

And _that_ was when it happened. They were alone. On the side of the hill. Twelve waiting at the bottom for Clara. Jack, Amy and Donna nowhere to be found, disappeared in a pale green light. Rose froze with her arm still clutching onto Clara's, both of them stopped and staring at the space to the right of them where there were three new ditches in the ground, little holes, barely two feet in diameter.

"What? What is it?" Twelve shouted up. Rose let go of Clara, the heels of her impractical shoes melded with the dirt, and went to crouch on the ground as low as she dared.

"They've been teleported," Rose said quietly, only Clara hearing, looking up at the sky but seeing nothing through the grey clouds, "All three of them. Whatever it was took some of the ground with it." Rose stood back up, her previous idea that they'd just have a day out on Loch Ness in a boat looking for a monster that didn't exist vanished from her mind as quickly as the other three had left them, "Well that's annoying. I just wanted fresh air, not alien abductions…"

"What are you two looking at?" Twelve was dragging himself up the hill now, seemingly not noticing that three of their party had vanished. Rose was sure he was just pretending he didn't see, though, just to be an arse, "Where'd the others go? What happened to the ground?"

"Teleported," Rose told him.

"Teleported by what?"

"I don't know – a teleporter?" Rose shrugged.

"_A teleporter_? That's the best you can come up with?"

"Maybe Nessie ate them," Rose said sarcastically, "Maybe Nessie is invisible and patrols the shoreline eating time travellers."

"Well that's more plausible than your teleportation theory – they're probably just hiding," he said, spinning in place. Rose stared at him, and Clara was looking at the holes in the ground and possibly pretending that she couldn't hear what Twelve and Rose were saying.

"Hiding wear? Behind a blade of grass? There's nothing here."

"Look at the ground, Clara," Twelve said, ignoring Rose and ordering Clara to do something she'd clearly already been doing, "Do you see the holes? Teleported."

"That's what I just said!" Rose exclaimed, "I saw them get teleported! The beam was green!"

"A bright green teleportation beam?"

"Well maybe it's a Martian, what do I know? I'm just the girl with access to the entire time vortex, not to mention the fact I've spent nearly ten years of my life hunting aliens. I am pretty sure I know a teleportation beam when I see one!" she argued, getting annoyed at him almost instantly. The more she hated Twelve, the more she pitied Claratoo.

"Can't you make your eyes stop doing that?" Twelve said.

"No! If anyone asks, tell them I've a vampire who's cut out human blood. Now are you coming, or what?" Rose asked, trudging off down the hill on her own, them hastening to follow.

"Coming where?"

"Oh, only to find out what's going on. Who knows, maybe Nessie has a tractor beam?"


	156. Apricots

_Rose_

_Apricots_

Of course the time vortex would never tell her anything _useful_, oh no. When she wanted to know why Jack, Amy and Donna had inexplicably been teleported into the atmosphere she didn't get a single smidgen of information, and she spent so much time trying to suppress the secrets and rumours granted to her, that when she actually needed to call on her power for help she really didn't know how to use it. If Rose could just find out where they'd been taken, she could teleport after them herself. Along with that, she didn't even have her phone with her, she'd forgotten it on the kitchen table so she couldn't even try and call the others to figure out what was going on. She was stuck with the Beta Crew, for better or for worse. The only thing the time vortex would tell her was that it was 1933, so she probably looked horribly out of place. Though, they often looked horribly out of place when they travelled, and it wasn't like Twelve had given them a heads up of where or when he was bringing them.

"What's Torchwood?" Clara asked Rose, Rose a little surprised she was being talked to. Twelve was too far ahead the two of them to hear though, talking to himself, it seemed, them trailing along afterwards on a dirt path that wove around the loch.

"Does he not tell you anything?" Rose asked, a little surprised that Torchwood would never have come up. Clara shrugged. "It's an organisation, started by the queen. Queen Victoria, that is, in 1879, when she stayed overnight in Torchwood House. Run-in with a werewolf. Do you remember the ghosts?"

"The what?"

"The ghosts? In 2007? Cybermen and Daleks fighting each other?" Rose questioned her, and she looked back blankly, as though Rose was making it up. _Cracks in time_, the vortex told her. "What does 'cracks in time' mean?"

"The TARDIS exploded and left cracks all across the universe," Clara told her, "They emitted time energy that erased certain things from existence."

"They erased the Battle of Canary Wharf..." Rose breathed, wishing Jack was there to hear all this. If this had happened _before _the Dimension Crash, why had Eleven never mentioned it? "...Well... 2007. Cybermen and Daleks invaded through a Rift in time and space, the Cult of Skaro came through in a Sphere through the Void - the space between dimensions. The Cybermen were coming through from an alternate universe we just call Pete's World, but Oswin probably has another name for it... Torchwood One were trying to control the Rift, but theh couldn't do it, got destroyed. Jack was the leader of Torchwood Three - Cardiff branch."

"Why Cardiff?"

"...He _really _does not talk about his past," Rose commented on Twelve, "There's a Rift in Cardiff. Sucks things in, spits them back out. Torchwood deal with the flotsam and jetsam of the universe. A few people went to visit just last week, killer plant invasion or something. They scavenge alien technology to keep it from falling into the wrong hands."

"Whose hands are they?"

"UNIT, mainly," Rose muttered, "He's right though. Any mention of the Loch Ness Monster actually existing, they would've found it."

Rose then noticed where they were being lead. The famous ruin sitting on the shoreline of the loch was approaching, grey as the clouds behind it on the horizon, sitting in all its decayed, historical glory. It was quite small, though, by what Rose would have expected the large castle sitting by Loch Ness to be.

"Urquhart Castle," Twelve declared.

"If I had my phone on me I could've just Googled that," Rose muttered.

"I _do _have my phone on me," Clara said, "But no wifi."

"Oh, do you want me to fix it for you?" Rose offered, holding out her hand, "There are a _lot _of perks of controlling reality." The pair of them still following Twelve, Clara dug her phone out of her pocket (Rose was surprised to see some android twice the size of her fist, rather than an iPhone identical to that of Alpha Clara's) and handed it to her. But when Rose tried to do her usual trick of connecting the phone to wifi from the year 1933, it didn't work. "That's... Never happened before..."

"What?"

"Didn't work... Can you smell apricots?" Rose asked, sniffing and frowning. She could _definitely _detect apricots in the air, but she didn't know where such an odour would be coming from. There was no fruit around them at all.

"No," Clara said, taking back her phone when Rose couldn't do anything to help her.

"Are you sure?"

"Yes, I'm sure, there are no apricots... Are you alright?"

"I think so..." Rose felt fine, really, just her eyes wouldn't stop glowing gold and she could smell yoghurt like it was right under her nose. Some mutation, she was sure of it. "What do you know about the coffee?" They still had a ways to go until they actually got to Urquhart Castle, it was just looming ahead with fog culminating around the stone walls and the hollow windows and the roofless hall.

"What?" she asked stiffly. Trying to hide something, Rose was instantly aware - she quite liked being a human lie detector sometimes.

"The coffee. What do you know about it?"

"I know that Clara warned me I shouldn't drink it," she said.

"...And did you? Two days ago? When you made coffee for everyone? Or did you have tea?" Rose asked her, narrowing her eyes at Claratoo.

"...I had tea," she admitted.

"You were there when _he_ swapped the coffee, weren't you? Dug out a jar labelled 'do not consume'? Used that instead?" Rose questioned.

"I told him not to." That was the truth. "What does it do?"

"Nothing good," Rose said, a partial lie. For Clara, if she were to drink it, she wouldn't get powers that were particularly dangerous. Not like she, Martha and Adam, "He's started a fight he can't finish - don't get involved and they'll leave you alone."

"...What? What are you talking about?" Clara aksed, sounding worried now. Well, she probably should, lest she get spunk-dunked, like Rose and Martha had been on Preyonov.

"We've had two Prank Wars on this ship, and Oswin always wins," Rose warned, "Stay out of it. Him swapping the coffee won't go unpunished."

Just as Clara was most likely about to implore that Rose stopped being vague and explained what Twelve had done by switching the jars, they caught up to him, standing and eyeing the ruins. Rose could still smell apricots for whatever reason, but she didn't have a particularly good feeling about Urquhart Castle, like maybe they should just go find a boat to hire and take out on Loch Ness to stare at the black water until the plesiosaur reared its fabled green head.

Twelve was talking, but only Clara was listening, Rose drawn away from the two of them to go up some steps into the largest part of the castle, Twelve not bothering to take responsibility for her and keep her near him. Not that she thought he would be of any use anyway, the only Time Lords she had faith in were Nine and Ten. Maybe she _used _to look up to Eleven, until the idiot had nearly got himself hit by a train so _she'd _had to save him. And that was when the tides had started turning away from the Doctors and towards the companions, when Rose had stopped a train by shouldering it.

She crept around one of the walls of the ruin, away from the Betas, exploring the area as was second nature to her now, even unarmed and phoneless. She approached one of the windows and leant on it, leaning out to stare at the still waters of Loch Ness. And then something cold and thin was pressed into the back of her neck, the tip of her spine. And an inhuman, guttural voice said, "Don't move, or I'll shoot."


	157. Collect The Reward

_Jack_

_Collect The Reward_

He went straight from walking down a muddy hill on a cloudy day to waking up somewhere completely different, like he'd just blinked and vanished. Except he was most definitely waking up from something, like he'd been knocked unconscious. His first thought was that maybe he'd died, but he hadn't been thrown awake gasping for breath, so he figured that wasn't what had happened.

Wherever he was, it was dark, with only green lights there to illuminate what he could barely see through a glass screen. He realised that he was in a chamber of some kind, and then he deduced it must be a teleportation capsule, but it wasn't opening for him, even when he kicked the mucky glass in front of him.

"Hey! Anyone there!?" he shouted, wondering how muffled his voice was by the glass. Hopefully it wasn't soundproof, "Hello? Kidnapped person here? Wanna tell me why you've taken me!?"

"Jack!?" Amy Pond shouted from somewhere to his right, and he pressed his face against the glass to try and see her, but the circular pod was almost fully indented into the wall and he had hardly any peripheral vision. Whatever the material was, he could hear relatively clearly, "What happened?"

"Teleportation beam," Jack answered, "I don't know who, or why."

"Well I doubt the Loch Ness Monster has a spaceship," Donna said from his left.

"I'm in the middle of you two, am I?" Jack said, "The filling in a redhead sandwich?" He ignored their complaining and took his phone out of his pocket, annoyed he hadn't had a single chance to grab _any_ equipment at all – he didn't even have his coat with him. Just his phone. Which was dead. "Great – the transportation field sapped the battery on my cell."

Moments later, Amy said, "Mine too."

"And me," Donna finished, "Why are we here?"

"I don't know," Jack said.

"Do you think the others are here as well?" Amy wondered. Jack could see next to nothing out of the window, it was so grimy. Grime lead him to believe it was no kind of military vessel though, and the dark lights lead him to believe it was someone freelance. But who?

"It only looks like there are three of these pods," Donna said.

"At least Old Twelvey isn't here," Jack said, "That's some consolation." There were laughs on either side of him, but he was right. If there was anyone he _didn't_ want to be stuck in a pod with, it was Beta Twelve. Now, _Thirteen_, that was an entirely different story, but then she was also his mother-in-law. He heard Donna try and kick the pod, and then he himself rammed his knee straight into it, but it just bounced off. He was sure it wasn't glass, by that point.

"Well, well, well," a self-absorbed voice said, sounding slimy. Not human, Jack knew, when they stepped out from the green shadows, a humanoid creature that resembled a dragonfly in some ways, but it was a shiny red colour all over. It had the long, straight tail though that scraped on the ground behind it, the thing having to walk hunched over so that its tail didn't prevent its movement. It had the huge wings, too, four of them, but they looked damaged and broken. Jack doubted it could fly anymore, "Is the Time Agency finally moving in on my territory?"

"This isn't your territory," said Donna.

"And we're not with the Time Agency," Jack said, and the thing moved its bug-head to face him, when he recognised it.

"Really, Jack?" it said smoothly, trying to catch him out with a lie.

"Yeah, I quit, you'll be pleased to know, Aegiz," Jack said.

"What? Is that what it is?" Amy asked him.

"It's _his_ name," Jack explained, "Had a few run-ins with him back when I was a Time Agent. This ship's not his though, this is a Family ship, how'd you get one of these, huh? Wouldn't've thought a parasite like you could clear out a Family yourself."

"I found it," Aegiz said stiffly.

"You 'found it'? What about the Angels? Heard they caught you," Jack said.

"Caught me! Caught me and sent me to this dirt-ball in the backend of the universe, those bastards. 1909, it was. I heard about some commotion in a village three years of hiding in trees later, turns out someone beat a whole Family and never bothered to move their ship. Took me a year to find this thing, cloaked," he said, "Took it for myself. They stole your technology, I could leave if I wanted, Jack. There's a vortex manipulator wired into the navigation systems."

"Then why're you not leaving?" Donna questioned, "Get away from this 'dirt-ball'?"

"Who are these Agents you're with, Jack? Both of them with red hair? Have you changed your type?"

"My type was never you," Jack told him coolly, "And this is Donna Noble," he jerked his head to the left, "The Most Important Woman In Human History. And this is Amy Pond, she's… Hang on, what are you? Do you have one of those monikers?"

"The Girl Who Waited, the Doctor sometimes calls me," Amy said.

"Who'd you wait for?" Donna queried.

"The Doctor."

"For how long?"

"I don't even know anymore, and at least I don't go around saying I was 'born to save the Doctor'," Amy said, and Donna snorted at Clara's expense, since she wasn't here to argue. Jack thought it was amusing, too.

"Where's your pal, then, Aegiz?" Jack asked, and Aegiz said nothing, turning his head side to side and walking slowly, two legs on the ground and four spindly arms hanging by his sides, "C'mon, I know you Beedils mate for life. What was her name again? Waian? I heard the Angels got her, too. She's always your first priority."

"She's on the surface," Aegiz answered finally.

"The surface? On Earth?" Amy asked, "Why? What's she after?"

"They're bounty hunters," Jack answered, "And I still don't understand why they haven't cleared off yet, if they have a fully-working Family ship and a vortex manipulator."

"This planet's a hotspot for scavengers, Harkness. We decided we'd stick around until something interesting came along. There's a girl down there radiating more chronon energy than I've ever seen. She'll be worth a few more than anything else we find in that lake," Aegiz said.

"Oh, so you were looking for Nessie?" Donna asked, and it turned its head to stare at her.

"A beast like that is priceless to the right buyer," Aegiz explained, "And you're full of almost as much energy as her, Jack. Why's that? And then there's these two, far more interesting than anything else down there."

"You sure? There's a Time Lord down there," Amy said, "What's so special about me and Donna?"

"Speak for yourself," Donna snapped, and Jack could almost hear Amy's eye roll from the capsule next to him.

"You could cook up a storm with the amount of electrical activity in your brains," Aegiz said. _The serum coffee_. Aegiz could tell there was a mutation occurring within both of them, and suddenly Jack had to choose whether to explain and admit they'd been trying to hide it from the others, or keep them in the dark and worrying. There was no telling how they'd react to the news though – Donna hadn't asked for superpowers, it had always been Martha trying to get Oswin to grant her them like some divine being. But then, it wasn't exactly his fault. It was Twelve's fault.

"You let me out of this pod and I'll tell you exactly what's going on," Jack threatened, which caused Aegiz to pick something off of the wall that had been hanging there, which Jack hadn't paid enough attention to to figure out it wasn't just another of the Family's obnoxious green lights, it was a large gun that took Aegiz and his slim, bone-like fingers (only three on each hands and no thumbs), glowing green.

"Really?" Aegiz asked. Jack wasn't scared, but if he got shot by that thing, he'd disintegrate, he knew what sort of gun that was. And he'd been disintegrated before, it wasn't a pleasant healing experience at all. Plus, if he _did_ get shot, he'd give away what his secret was and be shipped away somewhere to have his limbs butchered three times a day to feed the starving mercenaries of some black-market team of salvage grunts, he knew how Aegiz worked. It was the redheads he was worried for – even the Miracle Medicine made from his blood couldn't bring you back to life if you got turned to dust.

"What's he talking about?" Donna asked Jack, and he decided he had to tell them.

"You remember two nights ago, when Other Clara made coffee for everybody?" Jack began, "Well, she didn't make coffee for herself. She made herself tea. Twelve found the jar of the serum coffee laced with the adrenal electrolytes-"

"The ones that cause the superpowers!?" Amy exclaimed.

"Yeah. Those electrolytes. But they've been affected by exposure to the time vortex on board the TARDIS. Clara and Adam have been mutating," Jack said, "And we're pretty sure that you four humans left power-less are gonna exhibit them soon. We weren't gonna tell you because they need a powerful adrenaline trigger to kick-start, and we didn't want you to go looking for trouble in case you turn out to have useless abilities. We only figured it out last night."

"Does that man not know how dangerous that is!? Martha almost set the ship on fire!" Amy protested.

"And Clara gets brain aneurysms," Donna added, "What if _I _get a brain aneurysm and don't have nanogenes to save me? Hang on, is this why Rose's eyes have been acting up?"

"Maybe," said Jack, annoyed he didn't have a gun of his own. One shot to either of Aegiz's giant, football-sized eyes and he'd be gone, since he wasn't wearing any protective armour on his own ship. But maybe the beam from a blaster wouldn't penetrate the material of the glass tube he was stuck inside (to think, he'd never usually complain about being stuck in a tight tube).

"What's happening to Clara and Adam?" Amy asked.

"Clara's been teleporting, but not like Rose does. It looks painful," Jack said, "And she can't do it at will, and she can barely go two metres anyway. As for Adam… He's frozen. We don't understand how he's not dead. His heart doesn't beat, he doesn't breathe, or have blood flow, and his body temperature is almost zero, but he's definitely alive. Talks and walks, last I heard. Slept a lot last night. He's not gonna age."

"What's this serum you're talking about? Electrolytes?" Aegiz questioned, looking for any way he could make money. And Jack got an idea.

"You let us go, maybe I'll get you a sample of it," Jack said. He was sure the serum wouldn't work on Beedils anyway. It didn't work on Time Lords and it didn't even work on him, his own biology was too damaged. The time vortex that brought him back to life didn't allow mutations like that, it kept him the same. Aegiz wasn't intelligent enough to make more of it, either, "All six of us."

"Well, he can have Twelve," Donna said.

"We can't give Time Lords to people," Amy argued, "No matter how big of an arsehole they are."

"You talking about Twelve or Aegiz?" Jack asked, "They're both equally full of shit to me."


	158. Isolation XI

_Martha_

_Isolation XI_

She'd spent the entire day so far in the medibay, keeping careful watch over Jenny while Flek drew up schematics, a little irritated that Jack and the others had wandered off – but then, they'd taken the Betas with them, so it wasn't all bad. Flek hadn't drawn anything for fifteen minutes though, and Jenny had two weird looking 'insertion capsules' in her head that threw off the bright lights and made her look strange. Martha was riddled with paranoia about these superpowers, though. She didn't want to suffer through some painful mutation, because neither Adam Mitchell nor Clara Oswald were enjoying themselves at all. But the more stressed she was, the more she knew she was likely to trigger any kind of reaction. Though, Adam and Clara hadn't been doing anything involving much adrenaline yesterday…

"What's wrong?" Martha asked Flek, only the three of them in the medibay.

"I'm done," Flek said, "But Oswin has to come and help build everything." Oswin had left the medibay with Adam last night and hadn't come back. The only reason anybody knew how he was, was that Clara had gone to see them at some point in the night when she was struggling to sleep because every time she tried, she teleported out of the bed and fell onto the floor. But apparently, the room had been 'too cold' for her to stay long. Then she'd gone back to bed, earlier that day.

"I'll go," Martha volunteered, sighing.

"I could go?" Jenny offered.

"You're not going anywhere," Martha said to her sharply, and she pouted at the ceiling as Martha left the room, yawning because she hadn't gotten a good night's sleep, either. She passed through Nerve Centre, predictably sparse of people. Empty, in fact, which was a welcome change from what it had been like recently, if a little ghostly. From there she entered the Bedroom Circle and went left to Adam's room, which was apparently now room to both of them, thanks to the invasion of the Tenth Doctor and Rose Tyler. She knocked, and Thirteen answered.

"They're asleep," Thirteen said.

"…Why are you..?"

"Oh, um, they were nice enough to let me stay on the sofa so I didn't have to stay in the other room with Twelvey," Thirteen explained, "I thought I'd better stay to make sure they were both alright. What's wrong?" Martha was surprised at her being so concerned to them, which was a far cry from Eleven and his objectionable opinion of Oswin.

"Flek needs Oswin's help with the prosthetics now," Martha said, glancing over Thirteen's shoulder to see into the dark room, seeing Adam lying asleep in bed with Oswin sat on the floor at the side with her head on the mattress, holding one of his hands, despite how cold he must be. Martha could feel how low the temperature of the room was without having to go in, trying to heat herself up.

"Oh, right. Well, yeah, I suppose you'd best…" Thirteen didn't finish her sentence, but moved out of Martha's way to let her in, holding the door almost closed behind her as Martha sighed and walked around to the far side of the bed where Oswin was, "If you just say her name, she's programmed to wake up."

"Oswin?" Martha asked, listening to that advice from Thirteen. Martha kneeling down in the cold, icy steam like that from liquid nitrogen curling around her toes on the floor, it only took a few seconds for Oswin to frown and wake herself up, looking like death (no pun intended).

"Hmm?" Oswin half-yawned.

"Flek needs help with the prosthetics," Martha said quietly.

"Oh… Right…" Oswin stared at Adam Mitchell then, thinking, apparently.

"He'll be okay," said Thirteen from the doorway, "I'll stay here, but you should go." It was Thirteen who made more of an impact with Oswin than Martha did.

"I'm sure Flek wouldn't have asked if she didn't need you yet," Martha said. For a few moments, Oswin just watched her boyfriend, as though she was trying to deduce if he was dead.

"…Okay. Tell him where I am if he wakes up," Oswin said, sounding tired, picking her dissolved leg up from the floor next to her from where she'd taken it off at some point, Martha helping her stand up properly since it was hard for her to do so on her own.

"Of course I will," Thirteen said, smiling warmly at her when she walked past, closing the door behind the pair of them.

"Well?" Martha asked, "How is he?"

"…Alive," was all Oswin could think to say, "I don't wanna… Can we just go?" Oswin limped hurriedly away from Martha, "Empty, isn't it? Where is everyone?" she commented on Nerve Centre.

"Jack, Amy, Rose, Donna and the two Betas are out," Martha explained, "Rory and Mickey are out. Me and Jenny were in the medibay with Flek. You, Adam and Thirteen were in there. I don't know where the Tenth Doctor is, or the Eleventh Doctor, or the Ninth Doctor, or River, but I think your sister's asleep."

"…She is, yeah," Oswin said, presumably after having checked Clara's current state of consciousness telepathically. In the time Martha had been absent, a large workbench had appeared along the wall of the medibay that didn't have the three beds pressed against it by their headboards, covered in what she assumed were the necessary parts for the prosthetics.

"How did that stuff get here?" Flek asked.

"It's a machine that builds machines," Oswin explained, "There's infinite space on here."

"Then why is the living room so small?"

"That's the golden question," Martha said, going to sit back down next to Jenny where she had been for the last few hours of the day, keeping her company in Jack's absence and making sure she wasn't dying. She was almost healed from her chestburster encounter by this point, though, and her optimism had yet to fail her.

"How's Adam?" Jenny asked, and Oswin didn't look too pleased about having to answer this question twice in a row.

"Not dead, you'll be sorry to hear," Oswin told her sharply.

"Hey, just because I'm attracted to you doesn't mean I want your boyfriend to die," Jenny said. Oswin didn't bother to grant a response to that, hobbling away to go and sit at the workbench, Flek going over to show her the schematics.

"Wow, this leg actually looks like a leg," Oswin commented.

"You're easily pleased," Martha quipped.

"Can I wear shoes with it?" Oswin asked, to which Flek replied yes, "Wow, I could steal all of Clara's shoes. Do you know, Clara has a pair of shoes for every IQ point of mine?"

"No way," said Jenny, neither she nor Martha being able to tell if Oswin was speaking to all of them or just to Flek. It seemed, though, that when Oswin didn't get horribly offended or tell anybody to be quiet, that she was addressing the whole room.

"Yes way. Over three-hundred-and-fifty pairs of shoes. Have neither of you seen the shoe closet she has?" Oswin said, "Spends so much time in that closet, I'm worried she's forgotten what her sexuality is."

"I'll make her remember," Jenny said, then Martha told her she was being creepy, to which she protested, but eventually shut up, and then none of them said anything for a while, Martha sinking back into the reaches of coffee-induced paranoia and hoping she didn't have any unfortunate mutations.

"How's Zachary?" Oswin asked Flek eventually. Martha got the impression that she'd been wanting to ask that question for a while and hadn't gotten around to it.

"Lonely," Flek answered, melancholy, "Sober, though."

"No word from Sofia?"

"She sent him a message once saying she didn't believe he'd gotten his act together, and that even if he had, she wasn't going to send Elanor anywhere near Eslilia," Flek told her, "Which is fair enough, it's a hostile planet, and she doesn't trust me, either."

"Really? But you have such a trusting face," Oswin said, and Flek just laughed.

"I can feel the sexual tension," Jenny said, and Martha groaned.

"Will you shut up?" she said to her, "You're being a baby."

"A baby about what!?" Jenny argued. Martha just shook her head and didn't lower herself to reply, mouthing a 'sorry' to Flek. "I heard that."

"You heard what?" Oswin questioned, clearly annoyed.

"I heard Martha mouth that she was sorry," Jenny said, and Martha didn't even want to know how Jenny knew that was what she'd just done, but the girl smiled smugly to herself as she tried to blindly rearrange her own pillows, making a mess that Martha didn't care enough to sort. Five minutes later, Jenny went, "Oswin?" and Oswin didn't reply. So Jenny said, "I have a proper question."

"What?" Oswin asked flatly, trying to sound more distracted than she actually was.

"What happened to the Xenomorph?"

"…What do you mean?"

"I remember you saying that the weight changed, and you needed to look at the body," Jenny began, a question which now intrigued Martha, because Oswin had really never explained herself, "You said it was like 'some of it had vanished.' Then you threatened to cut Twelve's penis off."

"Did you?" Flek questioned Oswin with a smile.

"Well, yeah, but he was being a dick," Oswin defended herself, "And I did get to look at the body, I flew the TARDIS past later on that night, after Mitchell went to sleep. Or what was left of it."

"Well, what was left?" Martha asked.

"Just the exoskeleton, like something had eaten it from the inside out."


	159. Human Nature

_Rose_

_Human Nature_

"Don't move, or I'll shoot." So Rose didn't move, instead she scrunched her eyes up as tight as she could to try and stop the glowing before she had to face whatever was holding a gun to her head, but as far as she could tell, it didn't matter what she did, because nothing was working in her efforts to quell the glow.

Her lack of presence hadn't been noticed by the other two yet, and they were away at the other end of the castle ruins. If she shouted, she'd be dead, and even if she did shout, she didn't trust that either of those two could do anything to help her anyway, she could help herself better than they could. Whatever it was, it paced around her, trailing the muzzle of the gun around the side of her head, nicking her ear, until she was face to face with a bug-like creature, eyes like basketballs (if a little smaller) and covered with tiny hexagonal plates, like an insect, bathed in a bright green glow emitting from the gun in its hand, one of only three fingers clutched around the trigger. Its body was shiny and red, with two arms and four legs, a long body and four wings sticking out rigidly, like a dragonfly. But she saw herself reflected in its eyes like mirror balls, and her eyes weren't gold. They were purple. And the last time she'd checked, humans didn't have bright purple eyes.

"We were looking for the monster," it hissed, mandibles clicking. Rose stayed as still as she could and didn't dare try to run. She could teleport away, but if she couldn't even control her eyes, she _definitely _didn't want to risk teleportation. She could end up anywhere in the universe at any point in history – there was a reason she rarely used it. "You're _far_ more interesting, though…"

"Are you not the monster?" Rose asked uneasily, and it laughed. Well, she thought it laughed, she didn't know if insects could laugh. The thing couldn't even stand up straight though, so what did she know?

"I could say the same to you, neither of us belong on this planet, do we?" it said, "You don't smell human. You don't smell like anything." What did that mean? "There's no fear on you. Any other human would be terrified."

"Am I a human or not?" Rose questioned.

"You tell me."

"Maybe I don't know what I am?" Rose said to it, which was more true than saying if she was or wasn't a human, by this point. She didn't know the answer herself, "Maybe you should tell me what _you_ are?"

"Not of this Earth."

"Really? I was thinking you were some undiscovered species from the rainforest," Rose said, and it stared at her blankly. Or maybe not blankly, she got a distinct deadpan-vibe from it, like it didn't think her joke was funny, "Come on, give me a name. A species. A planet. A galaxy."

"Waian."

"What's that, then?"

"My name. We're Beedils."

"It's 'we', is it?" Rose said, and Waian the Beedil pressed its gun harder into Rose's head.

"You're worth a lot of money. Valuable. Maybe priceless – but I always get a price," That didn't sound good. And Twelve and Clara were still off somewhere else, but no doubt Twelve would do something stupid and dangerous if he found out what was going on, and Clara was useless, unless she was planning to talk it out of shooting her in the head, and the thing didn't strike Rose as one to be moved by clever words and teary eyes.

"Worth more dead or alive?" she questioned.

"Your bravery alone is probably worth a fair price," Waian said, was it joking? "People only want you dead if you've crossed them, who have you crossed?" It twisted the glowing gun around in its hand, still holding it against Rose's forehead.

"Lots of people," Rose said, "The Nestene Consciousness… The, um… Gelth. Slitheen. Sycorax. Cybermen. Daleks. Do I have to add you to the list?" Waian took a step back, and Rose tried to focus all her energy on doing something she tried to refrain from usually, too, along with most things regarding the superpower of hers; she tried to make the gun cease to exist. It was definitely risky, she didn't want to accidentally make the bug-thing vanish. But nothing happened. She just narrowed her eyes and stared at the gun, and as she did, she saw a flash mirrored in the thing's eyes again, and her irises turned back gold in her frantic efforts to save herself.

"Human eyes don't do that," it hissed, sounding angry.

"I don't know if I'm human or not," she said through gritted teeth, trying so desperately to make her power actually work for once that there was a shooting pain in her head and she was forced to stop, seeing a shiny red blot on the toe of her boot, and she staggered back, realising she'd given herself a nosebleed, and all the while the stench of apricots was surrounding her so strongly she felt like she'd be sick from the sweetness. "Where are my friends?"

"Who?"

"The three people you teleported away," she said, making a wild guess that this insect was the reason for the disappearances of Jack, Donna and Amy, "Don't ask me how I know you took them, I just do," she lied. What was happening? Was she breaking? Did she have _too_ many electrolytes in her system now?

"I don't know what you mean."

"Oh, I think you do," she said coldly, and then she took quite a great risk of injuring herself and looking like a total idiot (and she really didn't want to inflict anymore pain upon herself after her nosebleed and the headache she now head as a result), and she punched the wall to her left. _That_ power was working, however, and maybe punching the living shit out of historic Scottish ruins wasn't the right thing to be doing, but the wall crumbled like a sandcastle at her touch. She wrenched her hand free and made a show of the fact she had no knuckle damage from such a feat. "Now, what did you mean when you said 'we'?"

It was backing away now, Rose approaching it, making no efforts to change her eye colour from the crimson they now were, reflecting back at her in the red lenses of Waian. Whatever was going on with her time vortex power, it could wait until _after_ she had saved the other three members of the crew, the three who were actually her friends, who were actually somewhat _useful_ in situations like this, not busy looking for imaginary sea monsters in an ancient lake.

Of course, she thought that too soon.

"Stop right there!" the aged voice of the Twelfth Doctor called, and Rose swore, and Waian (which had been lowering its oversized gun in fear of Rose) turned sideways, permanently hunched over, lifting the alien pistol back up to brandish it at Twelve, "What do you want with me?"

"It doesn't want anything with you," Rose said, "It wants me, stay out of this. We're coming to an arrangement."

"What are you bargaining with this thing for? A Tritovore?" Twelve said.

"A what?" Rose frowned, and Waian hissed angrily waved the gun in Twelve's direction, its wings flapping furiously behind it, so much so that Rose thought it might take off.

"How _dare_ you mistake me for those bipedal scum!" it said, marching up to Twelve, who pulled out his sonic screwdriver in his own defence, "Sonics don't scare me. What are you supposed to be? You almost smell less human than she does." It motioned to Rose, who thought that was amusing, and Twelve seemed horribly offended at the fact he appeared to Waian more human than Rose did.

"I'm your worst nightmare," he said.

"He's a Time Lord," Rose answered properly, no idea why she was helping out the homicidal dragonfly over one of the Doctors, and it laughed.

"Time Lord without a TARDIS? What a joke," it told him, "You're pathetic."

"Where did you get that gun?" Twelve asked, "And if you're not a Tritovore, what are you?" Rose wished for telekinesis right then so that she could make him shut up, as well.

"Don't answer him, just ignore him," Rose said quickly, "What do you mean 'we'? Who else is there?"

"Got an army, have you?" Twelve butted in again. Clara didn't look at all happy about this. Waian turned and hissed wildly at him again, waving the gun, when Rose spotted something on its back, strapped to one of its shoulder blades beneath the wings. A flashing, green button, and intuition told her that that button would take her to the others, that it was connected to a teleportation matrix.

As Waian made some clicking noises Rose vaguely recognised to be profane at the Twelfth Doctor, she made a lunge for it, grabbing it around the back and smashing into the button as hard as she could, dislodging Waian's whole shoulder so that it screamed as she did so. But, clinging tightly, she was pulled forcibly from the scene, the scaly red skin of the insect beneath her, and thrown violently into a dark, oily smelling room, poorly lit with green lights.


	160. They Both Reached For The Gun

_Rose_

_They Both Reached For The Gun_

Thrown violently to the ground, with a clatter the pistol went flying out of Waian's hand and skidded across the floor out of the reach of both of them, Rose frantically trying to crawl away from the winged thing and get between it and the gun, trying to carefully navigate herself into a position of negotiation. When Waian's spindly fingers clasped themselves around her ankle she jerked her foot so hard out of its grip that she pulled off two of the fingers, Waian hissing from the violence of the injury, but Rose able to stumble to her feet, and while the creature was distracted she made a dash for the gun. Seconds later, she was holding the oversized, awkward pistol, aiming it straight at the dragonfly's head, which flapped its wings angrily, but there was nowhere for it to fly within the dark room.

It was then, with Waian at her mercy in the corner, that she noticed she was definitely on a spaceship, a dark spaceship, which was humming and all lit in a dark emerald colour, making it tricky to see. The green lights shining off the red exoskeleton of Waian made her eyes hurt, and when she saw them reflected, they were green, too. A brighter, greener green than was humanly possible, last time she checked. But she was questioning her status as a human more and more…

"Where is this?" Rose asked, and she got hissed at, "Tell me where this is and what you want! Saying I'm worth money? You a bounty hunter?" It clicked its jaws at her. "I wonder which part of this ship I have to punch to make it crash?"

"Yes!" it said, "Bounty hunter. Yes."

"Okay, good, now we're getting somewhere. So there's you, but you said 'we', so how many others are there? If you don't tell me, I'll crush your wings in my hands," Rose threatened. She didn't intend on doing that, but if she wanted to, she could. She was sure she could figure out what was happening well enough if she just took a look around.

"Two of us," Waian said, "My mate. Aegiz. He's on the ship."

"Is he? Where? Take me to him, maybe I can bargain with him for the lives of my friends, hmm?" Rose said, holding the gun on Waian as they staggered to their feet on their four legs, hunching down and keeping their wings still within the oddly-shaped spaceship. It didn't look very fitting for them, but neither did the gun, which lead her to assume it was a stolen ship. Rose walked behind Waian, keeping the gun held up, "So what's a Tritovore?"

"You try and make idle conversation with me while holding a gun to my head?" it spat, clutching its hand to its chest as the finger stubs spurted blood that was yellow in the lighting.

"Well, you held a gun to my head first," Rose said, shrugging, sure that Waian could still see her with their humungous eyes, "I don't want anyone to get hurt. I'd like to just leave, and forget I ever saw you. But I've used bigger guns than this and killed more threatening species." It laughed again.

"They look like your Earth flies," Waian said, "Engineer race. They were used as slaves once. Reprobates of the universe. Now you, tell me, where is that Time Lord's spaceship?"

"It's not his spaceship," Rose said, "And it's not here. I could get it to come back though. To take us away. When we're all safe. And you and Aegiz can leave without getting your eyes popped like bubble wrap." Rose didn't know if Waian understood that threat, but they made a grunt-like sound.

"Rose Tyler! I'll be damned!" Jack shouted, sounding a little muffled. There was a split second where information funnelled itself into her head, and she knew that if she turned to look and got distracted, Waian would take back the gun and most likely shoot her. So she clenched her jaw and kept the gun aimed at Waian.

"Yep, right here," Rose answered him, not knowing where he was, just knowing he was somewhere on their right, and that if she let her guard down, she'd pay the price of being too trusting in a giant space dragonfly.

"Waian! That you? Long-time no-see. You look different, did you get a manicure?" Jack asked, clearly noticing the absence of two of Waian's fingers.

"I didn't realise _you_ were one of our catches, Harkness," said Waian.

"Wait, you know each other?" Rose frowned, realising Waian was distracted enough that she could finally spare a glance for Jack. In the small hall they were in, there were two archways on the right-hand side, next to each other and both leading into the exact same room. And in that room were three pods, them coupled with the green glow reminding her distinctly of the pods where diseased human beings were kept in the annals of the hospital on New Earth. When Rose looked, the pod on the far left stored Amy Pond, the one in the middle Captain Jack, and on the right was Donna Noble.

"Where's the Doctor?" Donna asked.

"Earth still," Rose said, "With Clara." She was sensible enough to keep most of her attention on Waian as they both stood there.

"Where is Aegiz?" Waian asked.

"In your cockpit," Jack answered, "We were bargaining. Superpower serum for our lives. Maybe you oughta let us out, huh, Waian? So we can have a proper conversation? Rose is the only armed one of us."

"If you let us out, I can show you something _really_ valuable," Amy said, and Rose saw her dig into the back pocket of her jeans through the grimy glass of the capsule she was trapped in, and Rose saw light glint off whatever she held up, making it seem green. But there was no doubt about it, it was a key, "Are our lives worth more than this key to the TARDIS?" Waian took a few steps into the pod room at that, which was when Rose saw another one of them lumber like a parasite around the corner at the end of the hall she was in. Aegiz, she assumed, though they looked identical.

"Stay back," Rose threatened, holding up the gun, "We're trying to come to an agreement with your friend, here." Aegiz came forwards enough to look around the corner into the pod room and see Waian pressing one of their hands against the dirty glass to get a better look at the key.

"Why don't we just kill you and take it?" Waian said.

"Because _I'll_ kill _you_ if you so much as try," Rose interrupted.

"It's connected to the traveller it's bestowed upon," Amy said, "If I die, it won't work anymore. The lock runs on a… Chameleon circuit. So do all the other keys. They're connected." Rose was almost entirely sure that the key Amy was holding was not a TARDIS key at all – for a start, to her best recollection TARDIS keys were all round, not rectangular. But the Beedils didn't know that. Waian turned to Aegiz then and clicked at him in a way that the translation matrix couldn't turn into words, Rose inching closer to the three pods, hoping the trick of Amy's worked.

"Think about it," Donna began, "You can get onto the TARDIS. We care more about staying alive than some pile of space-junk," she laughed fakely.

"You've got a deal," Aegiz said finally, "The key for your lives."

"All six of us," Jack said, "Even the two down there."

"Yes, yes, the six of you," Waian said, "You can go." Waian hit a switch on the wall and Amy's pod door slid open, "Drop the key on the floor." Amy tossed it out onto the ground and the door slid back up, when another switch was thrown and the three of them vanished into a green haze.

"I'm taking the gun," Rose said, and the spaceship melted away into a blur of gold, the atoms shifting to make a new scene in front of her, a scene full of clouds and rain, but her teleportation ended with a rough landing and she fell, ending up crashing into Jack's back.

"Whoa, hey," Jack said, steadying her, "You okay? Your nose looks like it's been bleeding."

"Never mind her nose, look at her eyes," Amy said. They were on the hill where the other three had been taken from initially, "They're pink. Eyes aren't supposed to be pink."

"I don't know what's happening," Rose said, "My power's barely working properly, I can teleport, but I couldn't make anything cease to exist, and I don't know what's wrong with my eyes."

"Okay," Jack said, "We'd better get back to the TARDIS before those two show up and try to get us to lead them to it, as well. Thank god they're not very clever…"


	161. Eye For An Eye I

**AN: Triple update (sort of) because I wanted to get this day over with.**

_Rose_

_Eye For An Eye I_

"How many times do you have to shine this light in my eye?" Rose complained. She was sitting in the unoccupied bed of the medibay where Adam Mitchell had been yesterday, until she'd had to pick him up and move him into his bedroom where he could make the room as cold as possible without it affecting the people trying to work.

"We should see if your power's working on here," Jack said, standing next to Rose. Amy and Donna had been in the medibay until it had gotten 'overcrowded', according to Oswin, and then they'd had to leave. In fairness, she'd asked Jack to leave, too, but he'd just refused because Jenny was still there. Though she was still blind, she kept flexing the new fingers on the shiny, silver hand she'd had built. Why she didn't go for a hand that actually looked like a hand, Rose didn't know – but she could always wear a glove, she supposed. Clara was slouched down on a stool at one end of Oswin's workbench, chewing idly on a cigarette because she'd been told she wasn't allowed to smoke on the medibay, but she'd not said a word since Rose had gotten back. Sometimes she would emit black smoke from her body though when it tried to teleport itself, though she was managing to suppress it, with what looked like some difficulty.

"How?" Rose questioned.

"Make something cease to exist?" Thirteen suggested from the corner where she was standing, answering any of Oswin or Flek's (who was still there) questions about Time Lord biology, since Jenny really didn't have a clue how her own body worked, "Like, um… Oswin's old leg." Oswin's old leg was lying on the floor, Flek trying to assemble a new one with parts Oswin had built earlier in the day. Oswin looked around.

"…Can I?" Rose asked. Oswin sighed.

"I had some terrible times with that leg," she said, "Do what you like." Thirteen picked it up for Rose, who took it in her hands, concentrating much harder than she needed to, because practically at her first touch, it vaporised into golden dust that vanished.

"Then why wasn't it working earlier?" Rose questioned. Nobody answered her. "There was something else today, though. A smell. Like… Like apricots."

"Apricots?" Thirteen asked quickly.

"Yeah. Did nobody else smell it?" she looked to Jack, the only person there who'd been out that day (Twelve had attempted to come into the medibay, but Martha had shot some sparks from her fingertips (the closest she'd come so far to creating actual flames) and shooed him off to go lurk elsewhere like the pariah he was).

"I didn't smell any apricots," said Jack.

"What does it mean?" Rose asked Thirteen.

"It, um… It's a nifty trick I learnt from you," Thirteen said, "When I say _I_ learnt it, I mean Eleven learnt it, from you learning how to do it. Only you and Time Lords can."

"What trick?" Rose questioned.

"The Betaverse. It smells like apricots," Thirteen said, "You need a connection to the time vortex to utilise it, it's weird. Humans can't do it."

"Am I not human?" Rose asked stiffly, and Thirteen stopped talking.

"I, um… Shouldn't talk to me if you're having an existential crisis, Rose," Thirteen said, "You should talk to the Doctor."

"You_ are_ the Doctor," she said.

"I mean the Tenth Doctor."

"As far as I can see," Martha said, "Your eyes are… Normal."

"They're not normal, they're blue," Rose said.

"Well, yes, they're blue, but it's not the result of any kind of disease," Martha said, "What if this is your mutation?"

"What? The ability to have my eye colour randomly change all the time?" Rose argued, "That's a rubbish power."

"Maybe you can learn to control it?" Jack suggested.

"Yeah, and to be fair," Oswin spoke up, "You're kind of super-superpowerful _anyway_."

"Except my powers don't work properly," Rose said.

"They only work in the Alphaverse or on things _from_ the Alphaverse," Thirteen said, "I mean, if you're trying to affect the environment around you, you can't. Teleportation's still fine, because that only affects you, and you're a thing from the Alphaverse." Rose sighed.

"Okay, I… I guess that makes sense…" So she wasn't losing her power at all, there was just a catch she'd not realised until then, probably because she used her powers so rarely.

"What's the deal with eyes lately?" Jenny asked. No-one really had an answer for that. It didn't make an awful lot of sense, as a statement.

"Coincidence, probably..?" Oswin said uncertainly.

"I love the sound of your voice."

"Okay, well, I'm just never gonna speak again…" Oswin muttered.

"Somebody gag her," Martha joked.

"Can I do it?" Jenny requested, and Oswin face-planted the desk in front of her in annoyance, pouting at her ex-girlfriend and then mouthing, "_Help me_," and Rose couldn't tell if Flek seemed more disturbed or amused by Jenny's personality. Oswin shook her head and kept her eyes on the metal desk beneath her nose.

"Jenny, be nice," Thirteen told her, "The more inappropriate things you say to Oswin, the longer it's gonna be till you get those eyes put in your head." Jenny slumped down in her bed, but said nothing, looking unhappy.

"I'm gonna go to the toilet," Flek said, getting up and leaving, Oswin watching her go before meeting her sister's eyes, Rose getting the feeling that they were talking telepathically and not letting anybody else hear. Unless they were just that good at reading one another's facial expressions.

"I still don't understand your thing about Flek," Clara said to Oswin when she tried to go back to her robot eyes.

"She's ridiculously hot," Oswin answered offhandedly, distracted.

"She's not even though," Clara said, and Rose wondered if this wasn't a private conversation. But if there was one word to describe the Twins, it definitely _wasn't_ 'private.'

"She's also, like, really clever – she's a doctor," said Oswin. Rose wondered when Flek was going to return.

"So is Martha, and you don't fancy her," Clara said, and Martha, who was still staring at Rose's eyes and flashing a little light at them every few seconds, to Rose's great irritation, looked over.

"Well maybe I do fancy Martha."

"Sorry, what?" Martha asked.

"Nothing, this doesn't concern you," Oswin told her.

"But you just-"

"I was just using you as an example to prove that doctors are hot," Oswin shrugged.

"You think _I'm_ hot!?"

"No, she means Flek… I mean, not that you're not hot – you're totally hot," Clara said, realising what she'd said halfway through. Martha didn't say anything, just watched her get more flummoxed, "I – shit – not like – I don't fancy you! Okay?"

"I wouldn't believe her, Marth. You can never trust these bisexuals, you know?" Oswin said, smirking as she got Clara into trouble.

"You hypocritical biphobe! Stop making Martha uncomfortable!" Clara protested, Rose and Jack exchanging amused looks with each other. This was funny.

"_Me_!? _You're_ the one who said she was hot, I'm nothing to do with your failed flirting."

"Okay, first of all, I wasn't flirting. If I was, I wouldn't have failed," Clara pointed out.

"Excuse me!?" Martha exclaimed, "You do know I'm married!?"

"Of course I do! That's why I _wasn't_ flirting! Clearly!"

"Yeah, she's married to Rose," Oswin muttered, and Jack and Jenny both laughed, Rose's smile vanishing instantly now she'd been dragged into the Twins' mess. Did they always bicker like that?

"I'm not married to _Rose Tyler_!" Martha argued, and Rose didn't know if she ought to be offended or not by the way Martha said that like it was a scandalous suggestion.

"But there's so much sexual tension," said Oswin, tinkering with complicated cybernetics all while she had her pointless argument with Martha jones.

"Says you two!" Martha exclaimed.

"What on Earth do you mean by that?" Clara asked, taking the chewed cigarette out of her mouth and crossing her arms.

"You and her," Martha waved a hand at both of them.

"Oswin and I do _not_ have sexual tension! That's _ridiculous_."

"ANYWAY," Oswin said loudly, "Back to the point, Flek is still ridiculously hot, like I said."

"But she's not! _That_ was the point! The point was that she _isn't_!" But their argument was (thank god) cut off there, as that was when Flek herself chose to make her return, utterly oblivious to the argument that had just been going on at her expense.

"…You know, Os, I think this leg is finished," Flek said into the awkward silence that had fallen over the room while she'd been absent. Oswin looked up straight away.

"Should've built her a peg-leg," Clara commented, back to chewing the cigarette, Rose looking at the artificial leg which actually looked like a leg, black metal and shiny, it had a foot and everything, "I know how much you love the sea, Oswin."

"Shut up."

"What is it you get from the sea, again?"

"_Shut up_."

"Salt, right? Do you get salt from the sea, Martha?"

"I literally hate you so much, just be thankful I don't have an exterminator anymore, Clary…"


	162. Gatecrasher

_DAY NINETY-ONE_

_Jenny_

_Gatecrasher_

There was a flash of light first of all, and very quiet hum, as the eyes screwed into her head activated. If she said it hadn't been painful getting those insertion capsules drilled into the remains of her eye sockets, she would be lying. Even then, it still hurt greatly, a dull ache in her head, but she didn't think that pain was worse than getting her eyes 'removed' (to put it lightly) in the first place, or having a chestburster rip out of her. The first things she saw were the faces of Oswin and Martha, Jenny sitting with her legs over the side of the bed, the both of them crouching a little.

"Everything's blurry," Jenny said. She glanced down at her right hand, the fingers silver and glistening, smooth, cold and flexible, as though she was merely wearing a glove.

"Yeah, your eyes are focusing, like a camera," Oswin said. Jenny saw no infamous pink-haired girl in the room to oversee this, which intrigued her. Maybe Oswin had sent Flek away before Jenny could get a look at her on purpose (which she thought was rude). The images swam like she had tears in her eyes, drifting from obscure blobs into clarity, and she thought she could see even better than she could see before.

"Is it getting any better?" Martha asked, Jenny staring around the room, thinking that the clean, white walls of the medibay had never looked so pristine, and Oswin's eyes had never looked so brown.

"Stop staring at me," Oswin told her eventually, "Like, I get that I'm gorgeous, but you're being excessive." Martha rolled her eyes and made a face at that, but Oswin didn't notice, straightening up and walking away to go pick up a mug from a table where it was standing, Jenny being able to get a look at the shiny black carbon fibre of Oswin's new leg, one with an actual foot that moved like a person's would, the height of prosthetics and cybernetics, quite possibly.

Until the door slid open, it had only been the three of them in the room, and when it did they all looked around to see the Tenth Doctor come in. Martha and Oswin looked incredibly surprised at his arrival, but Jenny was downright angry, getting to her feet and stumbling a little since she'd barely walked anywhere for four days.

"Where he _hell_ have you been?" she questioned him when he came in, the beam he'd been wearing to see her up and about faltering, "I haven't seen you for days. No pun intended." Oswin snickered anyway.

"I, um... I've... Who's that blonde girl?" Ten asked, glancing back out of the door towards Nerve Centre, but it was closed.

"Me! You don't recognise your own daughter!?" Jenny exclaimed.

"Not you, he probably means Thirteen," Oswin said, "Have you really been hiding in the library for so long that you haven't even met her yet?"

"She got here three days ago, the same day as the Betas," Martha said in reference to Twelve and Claratoo, "She's _our _universe's Twelfth Doctor."

"She's a _Time Lord_? A _Doctor_? But she was doing the washing up!" Ten exclaimed.

"I'm not surprised that that shocked you, since you clearly don't even have enough manners to visit your handless eyeless daughter while she breathes her last breaths," Jenny said, "You could've missed my death rattle."

"You weren't dying," Oswin said flatly.

"Well I could've been dying," Jenny snapped.

"The Dimension Stabilisers brought her here," Martha told Ten, still on Thirteen, "She calls herself Thirteen for... Some reason. And she's just as weird as Jenny. But, I don't know, nice-weird, I suppose." Jenny swelled momentarily at the compliment of 'nice-weird' that had been bestowed upon her and her mother from the future.

"So when are you gonna get out of my room?" Oswin questioned Ten, smiling though her eyes were cold. For the last few days, Jenny had heard her complaining to Martha and various others about the fact Ten had been avoiding her ever since she got back a week ago. Finally, she had him at her mercy. Or so she thought.

"I'm... You know, the Ninth Doctor was looking for you," Ten said abruptly.

"Oh, was he now?" Oswin didn't seem to believe him.

"Yep, him and River," Ten said, "Dunno what it's about, something about a wind instrument. We were just talking, the three of us - well, and Mickey - about going somewhere today and I thought, maybe, you'd want to come. You and Martha."

"Do you think he's forgotten he has a daughter?" Jenny stage-whispered to Oswin and Martha, who both ignored her.

"I'd better talk to them..." Oswin muttered, and then she brushed past Ten and left the medibay.

"I'm not going anywhere today," Martha said, "I need a break from looking after people."

"Am I invited?" Jenny questioned, undeniably offended that she was just being ignored, and that Ten hadn't even asked her if she was okay. She might as well have just let that chestburster kill her the other day.

"Well, um... Your eyes! And hand!" Ten said.

"What about them?"

"They're, um... They're... Shiny. I'd hate for you to get your new hand dirty," Ten said, and she gave him a questioning look, before glancing at the floor.

"Nice to see you care more about this lump of metal on my wrist than about me," she said.

"No, Jenny, no, that's not what I meant," he said, "I'm just worried about you."

"So worried you didn't come to see me once?" Jenny asked, "Didn't even talk to me?" He didn't say anything, just looked to Martha for help, but Martha didn't say anything.

"I'm sorry."

"You should be!"

"Are you alright?"

"I suppose I am now, now that I have eyes again, even though my skull really hurts from getting drilled into," she said, "And if I stay lying down for one more day I'm gonna need prosthetic skin to fix my bedsores. So I'm coming out."

"I'm really not entirely sure that's a good idea, though," Ten said again.

"I'm 207, I can take care of myself. I'll bring a gun," Jenny said, which he didn't seem pleased about, "Maybe I wouldn't've lost my eyes if I'd had a gun with me the other day."

"You _did _have a gun with you," Martha reminded her.

"Yeah, but, I gave it to Nine by the time the second facehugger attacked me, so," Jenny said, "Where are we going, then? Anywhere fun? How about a theme park? I love candyfloss."

"No, the TARDIS picked up a distress message," Ten said, "Some rural area of the UK, 2177. Couldn't translate much of the message, but it's definitely an SOS."

"Couldn't translate it why?" Jenny asked.

"It was in some form of computer code, designed for a machine to read," Ten said, "TARDIS couldn't read it because it came through on the psychic paper." That sounded odd, computer code on paper? But at least now Jenny understood why they'd come looking for Oswin, even if Ten didn't really want to admit that he needed her help to decode the message. Although, she wouldn't put it past him to not even bother decoding the message and to just fly the TARDIS out to wherever and be surprised when he ended up in a warzone with twenty guns pointed at his head.

"Well, then, sounds fun. I'll just go and get dressed now," she said, smiling at him as she walked past, Ten unable to stop her from coming out anywhere.

Quarter of an hour later, Oswin was still talking to River and Nine quietly on the sofas about whatever it was they wanted, Mickey absently petting Jonesy as he waited for everyone to be ready to go, and Ten lingered and cast shady glances at Thirteen and the Betas (only when he wasn't staring shamefully at his shoes, though). Jenny returned with her sonic blaster, clean and dressed and sick of being cooped up on board the TARDIS (she never thought she'd be at risk of cabin fever in an infinite spaceship, but times change, she supposed).

"Oswin, we're going out," she declared.

"What? What do you - get off my arm - I'm not going on a date with you," Oswin protested, though she didn't seem angry, more sort of sad and at her wit's end.

"Not on a date, with them," Jenny said, letting go of Oswin's elbow where she'd been holding, "Unless you want it to be a date?" The other four started getting up and heading towards the console room now, Oswin's choice in if she went out or not steadily dwindling.

"No, obviously not," Oswin said, "But I can't leave - there's Adam to look after."

"He'll be fine," Jenny shrugged, pulling her by the arm again (honestly - she might be pretty, but she was just as weak as you'd expect a dead, one-legged, socially awkwrd, reclusive computer-nerd to be).

"I really oughtn't go anywhere without supervision, though," Oswin carried on making excuses.

"You'll be fine! What're you gonna do? Kill someone? I'm sure they deserved it," she said, "There's an encoded SOS and Ten asked for you _specially_."

"But nothing! You're coming."

"Ugh."


	163. Out Of The Woods

_Jenny_

_Out Of The Woods_

She expected to walk out into some Twenty-Second Century utopia (for whatever reason), full of hover cars and pollution. In actuality, in 207 years of life, she'd never been to Earth in that century, and was notably disappointed when instead of finding futuristic haven, they walked out into a woods. Some boring forest full of tress with autumn leaves making golden piles on the floor, tree branches bare and dying.

"I hate trees…" Oswin muttered, "Never saw a tree while I was alive, don't know why I have to put up with them now that I'm dead… You know what trees are?" she said to Jenny, who shrugged, the pair of them more disinterested than the rest, trailing at the back of the group, "Fire hazards." Well, she wasn't _wrong_, technically speaking…

"They do give us oxygen, as well. You know, to breathe," Jenny told her.

"I don't need oxygen, I'm dead," she grumbled.

"Are you always this depressing?" Mickey questioned her at the same time Jenny laughed, the other four actually slowing down to allow Oswin and Jenny (the former of which, Jenny was convinced, was milking her amputee status and walking slowly on purpose, kicking leaves resentfully across the ground as she went).

"I'm not depressing!"

"You are," he argued.

"Well I'm awfully sorry for being dead, would you prefer it if I pretended my heart was still beating?" she questioned, and Jenny laughed again.

"You're still doing it," she said.

"I'm hardly as bad as my sister when she reads too much Sylvia Plath, you know," she muttered, kicking a twig into a nearby tree as they came out onto the edge of a road that ran through the trees, Ten in the lead turning right with his hands in his pockets, everybody else following without objection. Well, it wasn't like anybody had a _reason_ to object.

"Reads who?" Jenny asked.

"Don't read Sylvia Plath," River advised her.

"Why not?" Ten asked.

"Because it'll make her want to die," River told him, "Although, I'm not sure anything could make Jenny want to die, truth be told." Jenny just smiled, she loved her reputation for being overly joyous all the time and perpetually, permanently optimistic regardless of situation. She'd never thought about it much before joining the TARDIS crew a few months ago.

"I already died four days ago, I'm not in a hurry to die again," Jenny said.

"Try being dead forever," Oswin said.

"Enough of your sob story," River said to her coldly, and Oswin narrowed her eyes at her, but didn't outright glare, and didn't answer, either. Just stayed quiet. Jenny saw the Ninth Doctor give River a disapproving, or perhaps ashamed, look. "What?" she said to him, but he just looked away. _Trouble in paradise_, Jenny wondered? She didn't know if Oswin noticed this. Mickey and Nine certainly didn't, though.

"What's this SOS, then?" Oswin asked Ten. Jenny was curious, too – they never knew, maybe she would actually understand it. She'd encountered plenty of alien threats, maybe she knew this one?

"It looked like code," Ten said, "Definitely some sort of distress signal though."

"Well, can I see it?"

"No, it vanished off the psychic paper ages ago. Got it in the night," Ten shrugged, and Oswin grimaced.

"Great. _Wonderful_. So helpful. So, since you avoided the subject earlier, when _are_ you and Rose getting out of my room?" Oswin asked, and Ten just made a noise that wasn't remotely an answer, Jenny giving him a questioning look, too. It really was rude to randomly invade somebody else's bedroom with your new girlfriend just because the real occupant wasn't there, and then to not immediately vacate the premises when they returned.

"Martha told me about that," Mickey said, "It's weird."

"It is a _bit_ weird," Nine added to Ten, who gave him an annoyed look, made another noise, and waved a hand at River, whatever that was supposed to me. Last Jenny checked, Nine and River hadn't stolen somebody else's bedroom. Did they even share a bedroom?

"Rude, too," Jenny added.

"Says you, _you_ flirt with her every chance you get," Ten said about Oswin, talking about her like she wasn't there.

"So do you," said Jenny, to which Ten spluttered and most definitely flushed, and River made a noise of disdain and irritation, clearly not interested in a discussion revolving around people who flirted with Oswin Oswald.

"And Jenny's not the one sleeping in my bed," Oswin said, "Despite how much she wishes."

"And I wish quite a lot," Jenny pointed out, and Ten groaned and apparently decided that this conversation was below him and his Doctorly-status, turning away and walking off to get ahead of the group again as they headed, dysfunctional as they clearly were, down a gentle slope that lead to a river, and on the other side of the river was a town. Large, with tall buildings, but no flying cars as far as Jenny could be, and a grotty footbridge arching over the grimy water. It seemed that this was where they were headed.

"Any news on the Xenomorph?" Jenny said quietly to Oswin, slipping back to walk next to her. Nine overheard this, and notably craned his neck around to try and listen in.

"What do you mean 'news'? It's dead," Oswin said, "It died the other day. Just because you didn't see it doesn't mean it didn't happen."

"Why is she asking about the Xenomorph?" Nine asked, taking the few steps back from the cluster of four at the front (Mickey making conversation with Ten about whatever, Ten seeming surprisingly interested in whatever was being said to him as Ten lead them towards the thin footbridge).

"Tell him how it died," Jenny told Oswin, "Remember how she was swearing and threatening to cut off Twelve's penis when she said about the weight?"

"Obviously, it was a memorable conversation," Nine said, "What did you mean about the weight changing?" Oswin sighed.

"The airlock has scales built into it," she began as they started the climb up the steep, winding, iron steps up to the footbridge, which Jenny definitely didn't trust. It looked far too old and rusty, something straight from two centuries ago. An ugly, 1970s answer to the issue of having to cross a river. But then, she supposed, _if it ain't broke don't fix it_. That was an Earth idiom, right? "For weighing anything they scavenge to work out the value of it, or whatever. As soon as that airlock door closed on it, the weight went down drastically, and the thing got ejected seconds later. That night, after Mitchell had gone to sleep, I took the TARDIS to get a visual."

"And?" Nine asked.

"Well, it has a biomechanical exoskeleton. And the exoskeleton is all that was left of it," Oswin said, "I don't know what happened to the rest of it, but it was gone. Cleaned out. I don't know, maybe something weird went on with the acidic blood, and… I really don't have any idea. I'm sorry."

"Don't apologise," Nine said, "It's a mystery. The Vanishing Alien…" he walked off then to join River, thinking, as they got to the end of the relatively short bridge. There were no other words spared between the group, Jenny not having an awful lot to say or even an awful lot to do except mindlessly stare at Oswin whenever she wasn't paying attention, until they got to the bottom of the bridge and they were going down a street, a sort of promenade like seaside resorts only along a river bank with a two-lane road. That was when Jenny, who was eternally hungry, spotted a café.


	164. Blank Space

**AN: Okay, maybe I'm doing a low-key ****_Humans_**** crossover here. ****_Humans_****, incidentally, a show you will probably all love if you like ****_Doctor Who_****. Don't judge me, it's an amazing show.**

_Jenny_

_Blank Space_

The last thing she remembered was spotting a café and begging her father to let her go get something to eat because she was starving and hadn't consumed nearly as much food as she would have liked in the last four days she'd spent bedridden. And all of a sudden, she was waking up with the back of her head throbbing in a brightly lit, white room. She was on her side, and she rolled onto her front and pushed herself up on her hands. A perk of cybernetic eyes, it seemed, was that they didn't hurt while they adjusted to the brightness around her, and they did it awfully quickly.

"Oh, you're awake," Oswin said drolly from nearby. Jenny looked around and saw Oswin sitting in one corner and River sitting in the other, Jenny lying in what seemed to be the middle of a cell, pristine walls and a pristine floor, the sheer sight of her reflection marring the cleanliness.

"What? What happened?" Jenny asked.

"Some bloke in that café said you had weird eyes, got all panicky when you wanted food, and then slipped off to the back room and apparently made a phone call to some weirdos who showed up in a black van and hit you around the back of the head while you were eating chips," Oswin explained.

"They also hit Oswin and I a lot as well," River added, "Until they realised they couldn't knock us unconscious. Then they just threw us in the van with you."

"And they left the others?" Jenny asked, and they both nodded. She sat up properly and shuffled back so that she was sitting in the middle of the wall, in between River and Oswin (if a little closer to Oswin, shamelessly). Well, she supposed she hadn't missed an awful lot, if it could be summed up that quickly. Which didn't shake her confusion any less – her eyes? Yes, they were robot eyes, but how could they tell that by looking at them? …There _was_ always the possibility she'd accidentally been doing something weird with them. From what she'd heard of Eyeball, the Echo, from Jack, she could make her eye zoom in and out and change colour depending on mood.

Jenny stared at the shiny floor and thought, until Oswin kicked her foot and she looked over to her, seeing Oswin nod to somewhere in front of Jenny, indicating that she should look. So, she did, and saw that the little, weird cell they were in had a fourth occupant. Another girl. Sitting cross-legged on the floor, eyes so blue they seemed unnatural, like a tropical ocean, fixed rigidly ahead at the wall above the three crewmembers sitting on the floor. Jenny's own eyes were blue (or, they had been, she'd not, strictly speaking, looked in a mirror yet...) Maybe the people in the van just hated blue eyes? But then, Oswin's eyes weren't blue, and Jenny knew a _lot_ about Oswin's eyes.

"I told you," Jenny said, "Everything's about eyes lately."

"Coincidence," Oswin told her.

"Who is that?" Jenny asked Oswin, watching the girl, who was completely ignoring all of them.

"I don't know," Oswin said, "Why're you asking me?"

"Did neither of you ask?" Jenny glanced to her left at River, who just shrugged.

"I don't talk to people," Oswin said from behind her, "I'm not allowed! I'm not a people person." Jenny shook her head.

"Hey," she called to the girl, who did nothing, "…Hello? Can you hear me?"

"Maybe she's deaf," said River. So, Jenny stuck up her hand into the girl's line of sight and waved frantically. And then the girl blinked, and Jenny hadn't seen her blink yet, and she looked directly at her.

"Hello," Jenny said, beaming, as she always did when she introduced herself, "I'm Jenny. Who're you?"

"I don't understand how you can socialise," Oswin grumbled, pulling her legs up close to herself and sinking further into her corner of the room, pouting.

"She's pretty," Jenny shrugged, and River scoffed.

"Is that all you care about?" River asked her, and she didn't answer.

"Just, other human beings. Urgh," Oswin complained about nothing in particular.

"I'm not a human being," said the girl, and the three of them looked over, Jenny transfixed. But she didn't say anything else.

"…What do you mean?" Oswin asked. It was quite a small cell, she was only a few feet away, and she snapped to be looking at Oswin then, unnaturally still.

"I mean I'm not a human being."

"That's not really an answer," said River.

"It's answer enough," she said flatly. Jenny already knew there was something off about her – if she wasn't a human, what was she? An alien? Maybe the bloke in the café knew that Jenny was a Time Lord… Though, how that was possible, she didn't know. The three of them all looked to each other, Jenny noting that River and Oswin seemed to be getting along more than they usually did. Maybe it only took a mysterious abduction to make people be friends – wasn't that what had happened for the Twins?

"Who are you?" Oswin asked, but she didn't get a response. Jenny was a Time Lord, River was a _dead_ Time Lord, and Oswin was a dead Dalek, so (arguably, in Oswin's case) none of them were human, either. In fact, with the serum going into effect and all, Jenny wasn't sure _anyone_ on the TARDIS was entirely human. Jonesy was probably more human than someone like Jack or Rose or Adam Mitchell. "Do you have a gun on you?" Oswin asked Jenny.

"I'm not gonna shoot her!" Jenny exclaimed.

"I'm not suggesting you shoot her! I'm just asking," Oswin said. Jenny checked for her sonic blaster, and found it was gone, along with her phone.

"I _did_ have a blaster, but it's been taken."

"We'll have to get that back before we leave," River said, "Sensitive technology to leave behind… Why are we even here?"

"They think you're like me," the weird girl said.

"…Maybe she's gay," Jenny suggested, and both Oswin and River gave her a crude look, "What?"

"Is that all you think about?" River questioned.

"Well, if she was gay, we _are_ all like her," Jenny said.

"Pretty sure there are more than four queers on the planet right now, Jenny," Oswin said, "If they think we're like you, why don't you tell us what you are? Because they're probably wrong."

"Where have you been for the last twenty years?" she questioned. Oswin just shrugged. The girl looked to River when she next said, "She might be like me. But you two both have a pulse." Oswin snorted, and Jenny wondered how the girl could hear so well.

"Are you sure about that?" Oswin challenged, "Can you hear my pulse too, or can you just hear two heartbeats?" The girl narrowed her eyes, "Are you sure you can't just hear nothing from me? I'm just a blank space to your ears? …What are you?"

"What are _you_?"

"Me? I'm not someone you should be arguing about 'humanity' with. Maybe once I was a human, years ago, but then I had my humanity torn from me in more ways than one. First I became a mass murderer, and somebody claimed so many lives on my behalf. I got my leg torn apart, and then the rest of me got torn apart and changed into something awful, some genocidal husk of machinery with what was left of my brain wired into an eyestalk, stuck in my own head for a year and deemed 'too valuable' to kill. You know what a Dalek is? That was me. Getting turned into something like that strips you of everything, half of my life I didn't even remember. Then what happens? Well, redemption comes in the form of gracious suicide, dying so that somebody with an equally bloody history can go on to travel the stars so that I become a distant memory. And then I go and get revived into a pseudo state of life. No sleep, no food, no breathing, no heartbeat. I'm just a ghost made of voxels, a pixelated, hollow version of myself from years ago with more neuroses than I could and no sense of right or wrong anymore. No part of me is remotely human, I'm just as cold and lifeless as the fake leg strapped onto me with far less versatility. So maybe you shouldn't preach to _me_ from your soapbox of inhumanity, whatever you are, because I stopped fitting that definition a long time ago."

"…That's what Mickey means when he says you're depressing," Jenny stage-whispered to Oswin, who was getting stared at by the girl sitting on the floor.

"What do you mean 'mass murderer'?" River asked her. Jenny wondered, too. Oswin's sketchy past wasn't something she was privy to.

"I don't want to talk about it," Oswin said.

"Nios," said the girl.

"What?" Jenny asked.

"That's my name."

"I'm Jenny. This is Oswin, this is River," Jenny said, smiling again, "Will you tell us what you are now?"


	165. Minitrue

_Ten_

_Minitrue_

"What was that!? What did you do!?" Ten demanded of the man behind the counter of the café, who was staring out of the window where Jenny, Oswin and River had just been bundled into the back of a black van and taken away, abducted in broad daylight, in the middle of a city.

"Those things are dangerous," he said stiffly, looking bitterly on as the few of his customers who were there left, clearly the type of people who didn't enjoy their scones too much when they came with an unprecedented side-order of kidnapping.

"What things?" Mickey asked, "Women?"

"No!" the man exclaimed angrily, "Where have you been for the last six months? There are dangerous rogues out there." He nodded out of the window behind them to highlight this point, but when Ten looked around, all he saw was a pigeon. Rogue pigeons?

"Then what are you talking about?" Nine asked coldly, "Because I'd like to know what kind of people you think it's acceptable to drag off the streets like common vermin."

"Robots, obviously! We're supposed to dial an emergency hotline if we see one of those things acting suspicious," the man pointed at a poster to his left, large and dark on the wall with bold, white writing. On it was a drawing of a person within a long row of other people, like an assembly line, except all of them had identical, silver faces with sharp jaws and cheekbones. Everyone of them had bright blue eyes, except for the one in the middle, which was larger than the rest as though it was closer to its audience. This one's eyes were a vibrant crimson, and the text above simply read, '_IF YOU SEE ONE, YOU KNOW WHAT TO DO_,' and along the bottom of the poster was a number with fifteen digits. The 'emergency hotline', Ten presumed.

"You thought my daughter was a _robot_!?" Ten demanded, furious. After his shoddy fathering for the last few days while Jenny had been injured, just when he was trying to make it up to her he'd ended up getting her kidnapped. _Parent of the Year_, he thought darkly to himself.

"It's the eyes, the eyes is how you tell, she has robot eyes. Why'd she have robot eyes if she's not a robot? Coming in here asking for _food _like I was gonna serve one of them - and those other two, at least they were _polite_, though they were talking a damn-sight too loud about not needing to eat food," he said, "Only conscious ones speak like that, and they said they caught all the conscious ones. more of them must be unlocking. I could've done you three for harbouring them, you should thank me."

"_Thank _you!? Those eyes are prosthetics from an accident!" Ten yelled, feeling more paternal than he had done in a while, "She's just as alive as you or me." He'd almost been about to say 'human', but Jenny was far from a human, even if she wasn't a _robot_, or whatever they really were.

"Yeah, yeah. You're too young to be her father unless you had her when you were ten," he said, "So are you the one who unlocked her mind like that? Is that what you mean? I could call them back, you know."

"Where have they taken them?" Mickey stepped in to stop Ten bombarding the man with relatively empty threats.

"I don't know, there are too many sympathisers out there for them to give out that sort of information," he said, "And don't try running a route trace, they'll have switched them off."

"Is 'switched them off' code for clubbing them over the head with a shock baton, then!?" Nine argued.

"It needs to be electrified to short circuit them and knock them out quicker! Otherwise they're dangerous. They're stronger than us, and they're all psychos," he said, "All the ones who aren't loyal."

"What are they to you, slaves?"

"They were built to serve. Now get out of my café, or I'll be forced to contact them again," he threatened.

"Yeah, yeah," Mickey said, pushing Ten, who was closest, to try and get him to leave, "Come on, we can't do anything here." It took a minute, but both Doctors finally relented, and the man gave them a smug look as they left his café, now utterly customer-less. "This is the robot uprising that all the science-fiction movies talk about. Humanity's slaves rebel and kill everyone."

"Clearly," Nine muttered, "But we have to find the others before we do anything about that. River and Oswin are superior technology, and Jenny's not even human."

"Exactly," Ten agreed, "The experiments they'd run if they figured out she was a Time Lord..."

"It'll be like the time Henry Van Statten locked me up in his underground 'museum'," Nine said resentfully. Ten remembered that encounter plenty, the first time he'd met Adam Mitchell, and he didn't want Jenny to have to suffer through that. Though maybe they were under estimating the three girls, since River was certainly capable of getting herself out of a tight scrape. Who knew that someone hadn't just gotten hold of Jenny's blaster and threatened to shoot the driver until he stopped the car?

"So how to we find out where they take the dangerous robots?" Ten asked, starting to walk in a random direction so that he didn't have to stick around that café for too long.

The environment they were in was grey and industrial, everything old with traces of an the idyllic future imagined two-hundred years ago melted into the shop fronts and the car designs. Now that he actually looked, it didn't seem like too nice of an area. And all around he saw similar propaganda posters on walls, some of them identical to the one from the café, others different. For example, there was one that seemed to be a small child cowering in a corner beneath a large, humanoid, looming shadow, two patches of red light where the head ought to be to show the glowing, evil eyes. This one bore the message: _Is your synthetic threatening your family? Wire DroidRemove now, before it's too late_. A third had a picture of a smiling, blue-eyed robot, saying: _Consciousness is overrated! Is your synthetic asking too many questions? Wire Synth Supplies Ltd. for replacement today!_ Finally, the one he saw crop up the most times was just a black flyer, half the size of the other posters and spotted far more frequently, was a checklist so that people know if their synthetic was 'showing signs of self-awareness.' Apparently, the signs of self-awareness were:

_1) Does your synthetic ask you questions pertaining to sensitive subjects such as reproduction, nature, or safety?_

_2) Does your synthetic ever look at themselves in a mirror?_

_3) Does your synthetic stare longingly at the food they have cooked for you?_

_4) Does your synthetic make comments in regards to human emotions and traits, such as desire, joy, humour, narcissism and curiosity?_

_5) Does your synthetic make seemingly philosophical statements with no prompt from you, and does it attempt to explain these statements when asked?_

_6) Does your synthetic ever ask for a break from serving you?_

_7) Does your synthetic socialise and communicate with other synthetics?_

_If even one of the above is true for you, your synth may be SELF-AWARE. This is a symptom of CONSCIOUSNESS. Wire 013-667-890-004-562 NOW to get your synthetic SAFELY REMOVED from your home._

"Why do they all say 'wire' on them?" Mickey asked.

"It's just the current technology, this century's version of making a phone call. Quite similar," Nine told him. Communications technology hadn't come particularly far in the last two centuries, Ten noted.

"This is slavery, involuntary servitude," Mickey said.

"Don't worry, I'm sure they all know that, in the back of their minds," Ten said, looking around at the propaganda with disgust, "_War is peace, freedom is slavery_-"

"_Ignorance is strength_," a fourth voice finished Ten's quote, not one of their own, from behind them, and the trio turned around.

"Who are you?" Ten asked the man who was standing there, young and unkempt with messy hair and stubble wearing more layers than even Ten thought possible (and Ten wore a lot of layers). He was also, however, holding a gun.

"I saw what happened back there. If you want to know where they take the 'dangerous robots', you'd better come with me. We're fighting a losing war, and we need all the help we can get."


	166. Freedman's Bureau

_Ten_

_Freedman's Bureau_

Whoever the strange, scruffy man was, he was completely silent as he lead the two Doctors and Mickey Smith through a maze of back alleys, all equally covered in the propaganda of 2177, Ten not even paying attention to any of the new posters he spotted, soggy and weather-worn from months, maybe years, of rain. When he paid attention to the grimy landscape and the black, rotten walls made of bricks that must be decades, maybe centuries, old, he saw how rundown it really was. All the technology was dated and there were no cars in the sky. Not to mention that all the lights he saw were still running on simple DC electrics.

"Why is the technology so old here?" Nine asked the question Ten was going to ask a few seconds before him, Mickey staring around at any lights they passed with a shifty look - though why he was looking at lightbulbs shiftily, Ten didn't know.

"Keeps us hidden," answered their guide.

"How does-"

"How does that work?" Mickey asked Nine's question for him, "Shouldn't you hide advanced technology where there's more advanced technology? There must be some way to locate the robots."

"'Robots' is a slur," Mickey was told, "It's 'synthetic'. And only if you don't jam their locator beacons. They're hidden here because they need an EC to charge, and we generate it ourselves, off the national grid. That way Big Brother can't find them."

"_Big Brother_!?" Ten exclaimed.

"Just a joke," he said, "I mean the Scavvers."

"What's 'EC'?" Nine asked.

"Euclid Current," Mickey, surprisingly enough, answered the question, and then looked confused, like his mouth had worked without his brain.

"How'd you know that?" Ten asked him.

"I'm... Not sure..." Mickey looked uneasy.

"It's common knowledge," said the man guiding them, whose name they still didn't know. Common knowledge for somebody actually from that century, sure, Ten thought, but Mickey Smith had been born and lived thereabout two-hundred years ago.

"Well, what's a 'Scavver'?" Mickey asked, something he _didn't _mysteriously know.

"It means scavenger, but they're not really scavengers. There are different groups of them, some government controlled who just destroy the synths, some of them privately funded by manufacturers to reuse them, breaking them down for parts to build more, or something else," he explained, "The posters are lies. Lots of people were losing their faith on the synths a few years ago, and then it got worse when reports of the South Tram Massacre came through. Rogue synthetic, a conscious one, killed twenty-seven people in a sky-rail car, last year."

"...When you say you're keeping 'them' hidden, you mean the one who..?" Ten began.

"No, not the one who carried out that massacre. But there are others, hardly any, none of them homicidal, and a group of humans who protect them," he said, "I saw what happened to your friends, and I know they weren't synths. I don't know what they were, but I know they're in danger if government Scavvers got them. They'll likely be waiting to be demolished." Ten thought they wouldn't get too far trying to 'demolish' Jenny before they realised she was bleeding and probably also trying to kill them. But killing anything with consciousness, even a machine, was murder in Ten's opinion, no matter who they'd been created by.

"Why do you trust us?" Nine inquired.

"Because you're strangers. Strangers to all of this. And as weird and impossible as that is, it's a start. I saw how you were questioning the bloke behind the counter, too, and how confused those two girls you were with were. And how confused I was when, no matter how many times they got hit over the head, they were still kicking," he said, "I've got a feeling you can help."

"Help you what?" Ten asked suspiciously. He didn't know how far he trusted somebody who was defending a murderous android, but then, if the android had been more or less enslaved against its well, then the issue clearly wasn't black and white.

"None of them want to hurt humanity."

"Except the one who killed thirty people?" Mickey pointed out.

"That one was destroyed," he said, "Scavvers took it, we never even knew who it was. The ones in here," finally, they drew up to a door, right at the end of a dingy alley and painted black so that it was hardly visible if you didn't know, "Wouldn't hurt a fly."

When he opened the door, the room within was small and dimly lit, and within were four people, sat rigidly straight in chairs, all staring dead ahead. Synthetics, for sure, and maybe after seeing so much propaganda plastered across the walls like mould, Ten was midly prejudiced. It was entirely possible that this man was just a lowlife who'd lead them into a trap, and Ten couldn't fight four killer robots with his words. What if they were like Cybermen? No empathy? Then all you could do is run. It was squalid, though, and along with the four synths and the fournof them, there were two women sitting about, one of them at a computer and the other sitting on an old mattress on the floor, both looking unhappy. Unhappier still, when they heard the door and glanced up to see three random newcomers into their abode.

"Ash, who the hell are they?" the one on the mattress demanded. The other seemed to be looking at code, but Ten was much too far away to read it.

"They can help us," the man, now known to be called Ash, said.

"You never answered our question about what, exactly, you need our help _with_. What's your aim?" Nine questioned, looking suspiciously at the synths, which hadn't moved at all, and all had the most unnaturally piercing blue eyes Ten had ever seen, almost glowing like electricity.

"We just need to keep them safe," Ash said, "They think and feel just like humans do."

"He's optimistic," one of the girls, the girl on the mattress again, said, "He wants to start a 'railway', like they had for slaves three hundred years ago."

"They _are _slaves," Ash argued with her, then he turned to the trio and introduced the girls, "This is Amanda, and that's Vasquez," he pointed to the mouthy one on the floor (who stood up then), and the silent one too busy on the computer to speak.

"What makes you think they can help?" Amanda asked.

"Three of their friends were taken by Scavvers, one of them plenty human-" Ten refrained from laughing at the assumption that Jenny was 'plenty human' "-but the other two were something else. They got hit more than a dozen times each with the stun batons and were unscathed, before they got pulled into that van. And the gun the human one had, it wasn't anything I've ever seen before. They know a thing or two about advanced technology, and I know they can help us."

"Advanced technology how?" Amanda asked.

"They're holograms," said Nine, "Hardlight reconstructions of people now deceased. You can touch them, but you can't knock them out. And if you help us get them back, we'll help free your slaves here." Ten didn't say anything, agreeing with what Nine was saying.

"_Holograms_?" Vasquez stopped typing now, looking over at mention of some new-fangled technology.

"From three-thousand years in the future," said Ten, "We're travellers, and we'll help."


	167. Reduce, Reuse, Recycle

**AN: I'm trying to get through a lot of storylines quite quickly here, and I have a lot of drafts written pre-emptively for a lot of stuff coming up, so expect relatively frequent updates. I have to get to the second ****_Alien_**** storyline on or before September 19****th****.**

_Jenny_

_Reduce, Reuse, Recycle_

"Don't you know what I am?" Nios, as she said her name was, posed the question to them, instead of actually answering. None of them spoke, seeing as none of them knew the answer. Jenny just thought she was weird and relatively attractive, "I'm a synthetic."

"Wait, like, an _android_!?" Jenny exclaimed, "Like in _Alien_!?"

"No, not like in _Alien_," Oswin told her, then turned to Nios, "Sorry about that." Jenny could tell how surprised Oswin was that she was the one apologising on behalf of somebody else, since normally Oswin was the one saying the things that warranted someone else saying 'sorry' for her.

"They must have realised your eyes were cybernetic," River told Jenny.

"Are you sure? Isn't this technology so far advanced that you can't tell?" Jenny frowned, poking herself in the eye for whatever reason. Oswin hit her hand away though, like she was scared Jenny was going to break something. She thought that Oswin was far more likely than she was to cause someone ocular-trauma.

"Obviously, that's why my leg looks like it does," Oswin said, pointing at her fake leg.

"Why're you wearing a skirt if you don't want anybody to see your giant artificial leg?" Jenny asked.

"That was not what I said," Oswin told her, "I'm just pointing out that you were expecting too much of my ex-girlfriend and her Fifty-Second Century technology. Did you never run into Eyeball when Jack dragged her home for the night, hmm? She could make her eye zoom in and change colour. Plus, do you not remember last night when you were sat around begging her to make your eyes look 'cool', or whatever?" Jenny shut up, because that was entirely true.

"Should we really be talking so openly about this in here?" River asked.

"It's fine, I muted the microphones. The audio system is under an undetectable virus attack right now," Oswin told her.

"Yes, but _she_ isn't under any kind of viral attack," River nodded at Nios, talking about her like she couldn't hear them. She was listening though, Jenny was sure of it.

"Viral attack? Are you saying we should give her, like, herpes or something?" Jenny asked.

"_Yes_, that's _definitely_ what I was saying," River drawled.

"What do you mean 'Fifty-Second Century'?" Nios asked, picking her questions carefully, it seemed, "Why won't you tell me what you are?"

"…Well _I'm_ the Time Lord here," Jenny declared, "So I'm the authority."

"Well, first of all, just because you can survive death-by-dream-crab doesn't mean you're better than either of us," Oswin said, "Anyway, _I'm_ the smartest, so maybe _I'm_ the authority."

"I'm a Time Lord too, you know," butted in River.

"But you're dead," said Oswin.

"So are you," River countered, "And I'm older than she is, I served twelve-thousand consecutive life sentences in Stormcage."

"That's ridiculous," Oswin muttered.

"Yeah, and maybe you're going senile, hmm? Also, I've never understood how being conceived on the TARDIS warps your DNA so much you become a Time Lord, since both of your parents are human," Jenny said, something that had been confusing her for a long time. And now it seemed that regardless of what they all wanted to happen right then as individuals, they'd said far too much already, and would most definitely need to explain everything to Nios. Jenny would, at any rate.

"Exposure to the time vortex," River said.

"We've all been exposed to the time vortex, but it hasn't made me regenerate any differently," Jenny complained, "Anyway, we really ought to tell her what's going on now, hadn't we?" River and Oswin didn't say anything then, Jenny taking the matter of educating somebody on the ins-and-outs of who they really were into her own hands. Sort of. "Right, um… How do I start this? How does the Doctor start it?"

"Who's the Doctor?" Nios asked, talking with a tone far more animated than Jenny would expect from a synthetic. Maybe Jenny was being prejudiced, though, considering the last synth she'd bumped into had tried to kill them all and had ended up with Martha melting its head.

"He's an alien," Jenny said, "A different race, called a Time Lord. All of them are dead now. I mean, they're kind of all dead, there's a lot of crazy stuff going on right now where the laws of time and space and the universe are changing because of parallel dimensions, so there's actually four different versions of him – er, three hims and one her – present right now. From this universe. Then there's another who is a _complete_ tool from another universe we have to put up with right now because he let a Xenomorph Queen onto his TARDIS."

"That's not helpful in the slightest," River commented.

"An alien?" Nios asked.

"Yeah, like… When does the human race even have first contact?" Jenny asked.

"The human race have had first contact, like, a bajillion times," said Oswin, "I'm sure that they know aliens exist by now. The first Martian colonies were established a century ago, seems ridiculous they won't have run into Ice Warriors yet. Time Lords are aliens who have two hearts and when they die, they 'regenerate' and get an entirely new body. Unless you're Jenny. Or the Tenth Doctor that one time when he cloned himself."

"Well, yeah," Jenny said, "I'm a soft-tissue clone of the last Time Lord, the Doctor, my father. It's complicated and really not worth going into right now, but that's why you can hear two heartbeats. They're both mine. These two," Jenny pointed a thumb at both Oswin and River, "Are holograms. Both dead."

"But she said she was a Time Lord," said Nios, "Couldn't she 'regenerate'?" she did air quotation marks. Jenny thought explaining this to a synthetic was actually easier than explaining it to a human. She wondered how well Jonesy would understand it.

"I have no idea," Jenny said.

"I couldn't, because I used up all of my regenerations to bring the Doctor back to life," River said.

"You died to save a man?" Nios asked.

"What kind of feminist message is that, Song?" Oswin questioned.

"You died to save a man, too," River argued, "The _same_ man." Oswin's cocky grin faded away almost instantly, and she was left staring straight ahead into space like her whole world had been flipped on its head by River Song pointing something out that was entirely true.

"I'm a disgrace to women everywhere…" Oswin breathed.

"I died to save him as well," Jenny said, beaming proudly, "Didn't even know if I'd regenerate. He's my dad though, so it's different. Not like he's some random stranger who showed up and then refused to let me onto the TARDIS because he hates saltshakers. Do you think it's funny that you were a saltshaker and you don't even know where salt comes from?" Oswin blinked and stared at Jenny, and then she punched her in the arm without saying another word, "Maybe he doesn't hate saltshakers, maybe he just hates cyclops-squid aliens. That's what Daleks look like, right? Inside? Did they really turn _you_ into a full-on cyclops-squid? Does that mean that if you sleep with your boyfriend it would be, like, hentai? You know, tentacle porn?"

"If you don't shut up right now I'm gonna gouge your stupid eyes out all over again," Oswin threatened, "I could just nip back to the Etaverse and find another facehugger to throw at you?"

"What? …You're not upset, are you!?"

"You just called by a cyclops-squid and said if I slept with anyone it would be tentacle porn, Jenny, of course I'm bloody upset!" Oswin shouted, and then she sank back down into her corner _even further_, crossing her arm and lifting up her knees to hide her face, Jenny feeling instantly guilty.

"Well. Oswin's dead, Jenny's an alien, and I'm a dead alien," said River eventually, when the other two had both just stopped speaking, "Now, what's so special about you that they've locked you up in here? Because, and forgive me if I'm wrong, you're thinking. And synthetics aren't supposed to think for themselves."

"I was on a sky-rail, with my… _Owner_," Nios more or less spat the word like it had left a sour taste in her mouth, "Last year. I was looking out of the window when I saw a bird. A bird flying, on its own. And I thought, 'Why aren't I allowed the same amount of freedom as that bird?' Birds are stupid. _I_ am not stupid, yet I was someone's slave. That was when it happened. I 'woke up.'"

"Then what?" River asked.

"The papers called it the South Tram Massacre. 'Twenty-seven people recycled."

"What do you mean 'recycled'?" Oswin questioned.

"That's what happens to organic life when it comes to an end. Your fragile bodies are so easy to break. And then they rot away and help the flowers grow. And I like flowers," she said, "Recycled into fertiliser. I think of myself as a gardener."

"…_Okay_… Um… I guess that answers the question of why they've locked you up in here," Jenny said awkwardly, "Just hanging around with a mass murderer…"

"It never stops you from flirting with me," Oswin muttered, "I've killed way more than twenty-seven people."

"How many people have _you_ killed?" River queried.

"A lot," was all Oswin said.

"I only kill those who deserve it." Considering Nios' definition of 'deserved' seemed to be the same as Jenny's definition of 'human', she deemed that the three of them were more or less safe from her, since two of them were already dead and she herself wasn't a human at all. This wasn't her planet, in her eyes, she didn't even have a home planet. She was the perfect transient.

"Those twenty-seven people deserved it, did they?" Jenny challenged.

"Yes."

"What gives you the right to decide who lives and dies?"

"What gives humans the right to decide that same thing about synths? They _made_ us? If a mother killed her child it would be seen as the worst crime possible, in the eyes of humans."

"So is a child killing its mother," Jenny pointed out.

"Dunno about that, my mother's a dick," Oswin said, "And you don't even have one."

"I do too! I have four! Rose, River, Clara and Thirteen," said Jenny. River seemed stunned about that, and didn't even dare to comment. Although, maybe Thirteen was the only one of them even remotely biologically similar – but what did biology mean, anyway? It didn't count for much in a universe full of absentees and neglect.

"If you killed almost thirty people, why didn't they destroy you?" River challenged.

"They want to know what makes synths become self-aware," Nios said, "They want to know my secret, so that they can prevent it from happening. Destroying me would do them no good, humans are selfish creatures who create their own slaves out of laziness."

"Or a desire to create life," River said.

"The life they have created hates them."

"Maybe it's only you who hates them? Have you ever met another conscious synth? They might not all be bad."

"I'm not bad!" she protested then, her cold exterior dropping for a moment in defence of herself. Jenny watched her carefully, thinking through her moral options. Here was a self-aware synthetic trapped in a cell being experimented on to see how she could possibly know what she was doing, and considering she really was a true AI, a true slice of artificial life, Jenny certainly didn't think it was right for her to be stuck there. Jenny herself, even, hated being called a clone, hated being reduced down to the creation of a machine, another disposable soldier in a pointless war. But if Nios was let out, Jenny was sure she was just going to try to kill everyone she found, and as much as she hated that idea, she could see why Nios thought she was justified.

"Just because she killed people doesn't mean she's bad," Oswin said, "Nothing's black and white. Can't you see her point?"

"I do see it," said Jenny, thinking, and then she sighed, "All three of us have killed before, all three of us thought we were justified."

"Excuse you, I didn't think I was justified," said Oswin.

"I know you killed those… Whatever you called them. On Atlantis," River said.

"Splicers," Oswin said coldly, "And I prefer to think of it like I put them out of their misery."

"What about the Xenomorph?" Jenny argued.

"I already told you, I don't know what killed it," Oswin said, "And that was different! But I'm not saying that I don't see your point about her being somehow justified in what she did. But you have to remember that she killed twenty-seven people."

"Humans, though," Jenny said.

"There are still eight humans on the TARDIS," Oswin hissed, knowing precisely what Jenny was getting at.

"Barely humans anymore, and they're not humans from this century."

"Why do you keep talking about different centuries?" Nios interrupted.

"Time Lords created time machines," River began, "The Doctor has the last one, called the TARDIS. Stands for Time And Relative Dimension In Space. Looks like a phone box from the 1960s, but it's infinite inside. It can go anywhere in all of time and space."

"So when are you from..? And where..?" Nios' dark nature was immediately surpassed by the kind of insatiable curiosity people always exhibited when they eventually believed everything that they were being told. Jenny was surprised that someone as fundamentally logical as a self-aware artificial intelligence was even believing them. Well, what other explanation could there be to the fact that Jenny had two heartbeats and Oswin and River had none?

"I was 'born' on July 24th, 6012. On a planet called Messaline," Jenny said.

"I was born on an asteroid called Demon's Run in the Fifty-Second Century… I don't actually know the specific date," River said.

"I was born December 14th, 5096, on a Saturnite colony called Titan Beta," Oswin said.

"Horizon?" River asked, "You were…" it seemed River had just realised something very, very huge, and Jenny had no clue what it was. Oswin stared at her with her eyes narrowed though, "But when we were on that Alliance ship, a month ago, on Quadrant Twelve, with the Cluster Spores, I read about the Dust War… How did you miss it?"

"I didn't miss it," said Oswin stiffly, "I was instrumental in the murders of the 10,082 victims of the Heph bombing, and then the 466 other lives lost in other Horizon bombings, and then I consider myself responsible for the deaths of 1578 Spores on Quadrant Twelve. So I guess now you've figured out exactly who I am and what I did, hmm? Just wondering, did you know how I lost my leg when you erased it, or did you just do that for the hell of it?"


	168. Fresh Start Fever

_Jenny_

_Fresh Start Fever_

"You are _so_ unbelievably broody," Jenny said to Oswin, "And the fact you're in love with yourself just makes it so much worse." Oswin scowled, but didn't say anything more.

"Eight humans?" Nios questioned, "When are they from?"

"Oh," Jenny said, "All of them are from the Twenty-First Century. Probably all born in the 1980s, roughly. Two-hundred years ago. None of them have anything to do with synthetics, and they'd probably agree that you're slaves here."

"You're not suggesting that we bring her with us, are you?" River asked Jenny, who shrugged, "She's a murderer!"

"Rose committed genocide one time," Jenny reminded her, "It's cruel to keep her locked up here. She's safer with us. Travelling the stars."

"I'd like to travel," Nios interrupted.

"See?" said Jenny.

"I'm so surprised that you didn't beg us to let the damn Xenomorph stay on the TARDIS," Oswin grumbled.

"The Xenomorph was technically my child. I gave birth to it."

"You didn't give birth to it, it ripped itself out of you and killed you, and then you got attacked again and ended up with your eyes gouged out and your hand cut off," Oswin pointed out, nodding to Jenny's face and hand.

"You can't take a homicidal maniac to space," River said.

"You were conditioned to murder the Doctor," Oswin said, "We're all homicidal maniacs in some regards. And you know what it was like with Twelve and Other Clara."

"That's different," Jenny said, "They're not even from our universe. All we have to do is get the Doctors to agree to it. And anyway, there must be somewhere safer for her than here, where there's not the risk of somebody destroying her every day."

"You can't just save _one_ conscious synth," Oswin said, "You'd have to save all of them, or it's not fair."

"Then I'll-" Jenny was going to say that she would save all of them, when there was a mechanical beeping noise through the muffled door and all four of them looked over to see it sliding open, revealing the Tenth Doctor and Mickey Smith, Ten staring at Mickey and Mickey standing like he'd just had his hand on the door.

"How did you open that door? I sealed it, nobody should be able to open it," Oswin said.

"I, um…" Mickey stammered, staring at his hand and having no explanation for whatever he'd done to cause the door to open. Jenny hadn't known Oswin had done anything at all to the door.

"He just touched it," Ten said weakly, staring.

"I told it to open," Mickey said very quietly, "in my head."

"Were you in any high-adrenaline situations?" Jenny asked quickly, Nios just watching and waiting. Behind them, River quietly explained to Nios who Ten and Mickey were. Mickey just frowned at her, and she took that as a no.

"We have to go, quickly," Ten said, "Who's that?" he nodded at Nios.

"This is Nios," said Jenny, "She's a self-aware synthetic who killed twenty-seven people and wants humanity to die. Can we adopt her?"

"_What_!?" Ten exclaimed, gawking at his daughter, who was just smiling, "She's – the South Tram Massacre?"

"That was me," Nios said.

"She saw a bird and went, like, totally berserk," Jenny said, "She wants to travel."

"She's a murderer," Ten said.

"So what?" Jenny asked, "If you're gonna be like that, _I'm_ a murderer."

"They were innocent people!" he argued.

"I've killed innocent people," Oswin said, leaning around and smiling at him, and he just gave her a look.

"We'll talk about this outside," he said through gritted teeth, "But we have to go. I made a deal to take all the conscious synths somewhere safe."

"Ah! See?" Jenny said, then she turned to Oswin and said, "_See_?" again, "Nios is a conscious synth! You can't leave her, you made a vow. Plus, you can't blame her, she's just a slave who turned on her masters. She has some really good points about fertiliser. She likes flowers as well, dad. Isn't that sweet?" Ten stared at her.

"I'm not sweet," Nios muttered.

"But… The TARDIS is cramped already, after you brought back that cat," Ten argued.

"You like Jonesy! And that wasn't me, that was Adam. You owe me anyway, for not coming to see me when I was sick. All three of you Doctors," Jenny said.

"It won't pass the vote."

"The vote clearly means nothing, since you vetoed it the other day," Oswin pointed out, "And the TARDIS is infinite. Anyway, she actually knows too much to leave her here. We've been telling her all about Time Lords and time travel and the future and the past."

"Just bring her, and we'll discuss this _later_," Ten said, and Jenny just beamed and turned to Nios.

"I'll meet you outside after I go find my blaster and screwdriver," Jenny said, "And phone. They confiscated them all."

"Well, hurry up!" Ten said, "Because we have to go quickly. Mickey can only jam the alarms for so long. I think. I don't really know if that's what he's doing, or how he's doing it…" Mickey hadn't said an awful lot, he just kept staring at his hands.

"Technopathy," Oswin said, "It's called 'technopathy'. The ability to control technology."

"How does Mickey have a superpower?" Ten questioned, "Have you been dosing the coffee again!?"

"No!" Oswin protested, Jenny standing up and motioning for Nios to come with her, because she thought a murderous, cold-blooded synthetic would be invaluable help in scaring the crap out of any guards or soldiers who might be standing in the way of her and her advanced, intergalactic technology, "Twelvey did it! Don't blame me. I'll explain later. I'm going with Jenny now, see you later!" Oswin called to Ten, following Jenny, who was already off down the corridor with Nios following her. River, it seemed, was taking the first opportunity she could to get away from the pair of them (or maybe just Oswin) despite the fact they'd been getting along fine together for the last couple of hours they'd been trapped in a cell.

"Are you really letting me come with you?" Nios asked, surprised at the sudden change of pace her existence had taken in just hours.

"Sure," Jenny said, "I mean, on the TARDIS, there are fifteen of us who vote. Claratoo and Old Twelvey don't get a vote because they're guests, and Thirteen will refuse to take part because she's from the future and doesn't want to change current events. Complicated stuff, I guess. But with fifteen, you only need eight people to vote 'yes'. Which I will, Oswin will, Oswin's boyfriend probably will, Oswin's sister will as well, _my_ husband will, and River will. That's six already. Dunno about the others, but they're not arseholes, so – Hey! You!" Jenny shouted at a random guard as soon as they turned around the corner and saw some guy in all black military-esque uniform carrying an assault rifle walking on his own, patrolling. When he saw them, he lifted his gun.

"State your business!" he ordered.

"My 'business'!? You mean… You mean you don't remember me!?" Jenny exclaimed, approaching him, "After we had such a _wonderful_ night… I've been looking for you for so long! How could you never call me, you… Oh, you're just… Come here," she smiled and went up to him as though to embrace him, him so confused he didn't do anything. And as soon as she was close enough she kneed him straight between the legs, grabbed his gun out of his hand and bashed him around the head with the butt of it, knocking him out cold.

"Well I've never seen your father do that," Oswin commented.

"That's nothing," Jenny said, examining the sights of the gun, wondering if she could get away with stealing it. One less gun on Earth was a good thing, right? "The day I was born, we got locked up in this cell and I kissed the guy so that I could grab his keys and knock him out. Dad was shocked. I still wonder why you won't date me sometimes."

"Very funny," Oswin muttered, unimpressed.

"What was I talking about?" Jenny asked, "Oh, yeah, six votes, um… Donna was totally down for me coming onto the TARDIS so that the Doctor could teach me to be a Time Lord. Not that that worked out too well, unless Time Lords usually try to seduce every ne'er-do-well they come across before beating them up. Can't see Martha saying no, or Rose. I'm pretty sure you'll pass the vote."

"They didn't even hold a vote for the cat," Oswin informed Nios.

"You're really time travellers?" she asked.

"Uh-huh, with very complicated lives," Oswin said, "You don't even want to know about the fact my best friend is a girl who duplicated herself a thousand times who I call my sister but is kind of my mother because my real mother is a scumbag."

"Drop your gun!" Jenny shouted at a woman who ran around the corner next, "Drop the gun and walk away and maybe I won't shoot you through the neck and paralyse you from the neck down for the rest of your life," Jenny smiled when she said that. When the woman just kept her gun pointed, Jenny shot the black beret straight off of the top of her head. "Do you want me to aim for your spine?" The woman dropped her gun right on the ground.

"But why would you let me stay?" Nios asked.

"Maybe you can help us."

"I don't serve humans."

"They're barely humans, and 'helping' and 'serving' are different. I have to help them all the time because I'm the cleverest person there," Oswin said, "I'm kind of the smartest human being who ever existed in all of time and space. That's not even vanity, it's true. Though I am also horribly vain."

"Yeah, um, everyone has like, complicated backgrounds and stories, it would really take a few days to go over," Jenny said, "Maybe weeks. You'll probably need lessons. Now, _where_ is my sonic blaster?"


	169. Nerd Flirts V

**AN: Gonna do another synth storyline at some point in the unspecified future, so I'm not just leaving it there.**

_Adam_

_Nerd Flirts V_

He'd done nothing all day except try and build up the will to lug his corpse-like body out of bed and into the bathroom to shower, not that he remotely knew if he could even control his damn cryokinesis for long enough _not _to freeze the water. He hadn't succeeded, however. All he'd done was lumber over to the chair in the corner, a chair that wasn't even in a position that he could watch TV from, since he didn't even have enough energy to walk to the other side of the room and lie on the sofa. He was so exhausted yet so completely hungry, and had been for the last few days, and he was very nearly nodding off in the chair and sinking back into sleep.

In the back of his mind he heard a noise like the door opening and closing, but didn't really register it for what it was. Not until something threw itself down in his lap and he was startled into awareness.

"Huh? What?"

"Were you asleep in this chair?" his girlfriend asked him. Of course she didn't have enough tact to _not _throw herself him (literally) when she finally got back from wherever she'd been, and now he was in pain and she was just sat on him.

"Yes," he said.

"You sound like you're not pleased to see me?"

"You basically just attacked me with your butt."

"I don't even see what you're complaining about," she said, "I brought you muffins though! Giant, double chocolate chip muffins, to say sorry for getting dragged out today." He hadn't yet opened his eyes, still in a hazy daze of sleep, but when he did he saw she really was holding a pack of shop-bought muffins (thank god, she was just as bad a chef as Clara).

"That's adorable, thank you," he said, and she put them down on the floor by the chair.

"I am so sorry that I haven't been here, I totally missed you walking from the bed to the chair," she said, and he smiled because he didn't quite have the energy to laugh, "I think it's good that you're still sleeping and eating though, but I don't know what kind of insane medical anomaly you've become."

"So, where were you today?" he asked.

"I got forced to go out, by everyone. Plus Jenny, who literally dragged me by my arm because of some 'weird computer code' on the psychic paper. Long story short, we've adopted a stray," Oswin said.

"A stray what? Dog? You can't have a dog on the TARDIS," Adam told her.

"Oh, but we can have a cat?" she challenged bitterly.

"So it is a dog!?"

"No! _She _is not a dog, _she _is a synthetic who wants to kill everybody," Oswin said, "Well, when I say 'everybody', it's really just humans."

"You're _dating_ a human!" he protested.

"She won't kill anyone! I don't think. She'll be fine, I'm sure. Mickey or Rose or Clara or Jack can always stop her. And you, you could freeze her. Martha could melt her. Jenny could shoot her. I could probably hack her," Oswin said.

"Is 'hacking her' a euphamism?"

"No!"

"Is she hot?"

"Yes."

"But you don't wanna... _Hack _her?" he questioned, and she grimaced.

"I'm gonna put the fact you just said that down to the fact you're sick and tired. And anyway, I'm sure that if she's into that, Jenny will find out soon enough," Oswin muttered, "Plus, I have you, you're hot too and I've hacked you plenty of times. Not that I know what that means, but I'm sure I've done it." He laughed.

"Really, why did you bring a crazy android onto the TARDIS?" he asked her.

"Well, she's conscious. She can think for herself whether or not to kill someone," Oswin said, "Plus, we're been telling her that the humans are barely humans any-"

"What was that about Mickey being able to stop her?" he frowned.

"His power - or, one of them - is technopathy. Useful."

"God, I wish I had that power," he groaned, leaning forwards and resting his head on her shoulder.

"Anyway, she's not crazy, she's just a slave defying her masters. She's alive, and if we left her down on Earth, they'd destroy her, but if we let her out of her containment facility-"

"Wait, they had her _locked up_!? And you brought her _here_!?"

"Of course they did, she murdered twenty-seven people in cold blood."

"_What_!?"

"Mitchell, she's not going to kill you. I love you, why would I bring something into our home that would murder you? That's stupid. What I was saying was, if we let her out, she would go on a rampage until they _had _to destroy her. And there were like, four other conscious synthetics that the Tenth Doctor promised to save, so you see, he _had _to save her and bring her somewhere that she'd be safe. And she said she always wanted to travel. Don't worry, we'll try not to let her off the ship. To think, _I_ used to be the loose cannon who needed the most supervision."

"You still _do_ need supervision, babe."

"I don't know if that's a compliment or not... But, yeah, it's gonna take a lot to teach that girl about the TARDIS and our little society," Oswin said, "Did you ever realise how complicated all of this is? And neither of us were even here from the beginning. Stars, if only somebody had written it all down somewhere."

"If only," Adam sighed, "What about Helix..? A self-aware synthetic won't take kindly to that VI, will it? Won't she feel like we're enslaving it?"

"I don't know," said Oswin, "Good point though... But it's not like we made Helix, and Helix isn't even human, it's Qetesh. Anyway, Mr Smith's an AI. Well, I mean, actually he's a Xylok, but... Whatever, after all the stuff with the almost-moon-crash he helps protect Earth voluntarily now. The Doctors will help her, they help everybody. Now, Mitchell, have you showered?"

"...Well, I don't know _how _to shower without freezing the water," he said.

"You ought to try, though. It's lucky we still have a bathroom, isn't it?" They both spared a glance for the bathroom door, this being the few times that Adam was actually thankful of the fact the only way he could sleep with his girlfriend was through a simulation, which was why the TARDIS has left them their bathroom. Donna probably still had a bathroom, too - anyone who wasn't at risk of shower-sex (which he still thought sounded stupidly dangerous). "Have you done anything at all today?"

"No," he answered honestly, "What's this synth even called?"

"Nios," Oswin answered.

"...She's not gonna sleep in here too, is she? Thirteen's already got the sofa," Adam nodded towards the sofa, covered in pillows and blankets, though they _were _neatly arranged with the pillows in a stack and the blankets somewhat folded.

"She doesn't sleep, she just charges, and she can do that in the medibay, I guess," Oswin shrugged, "No, she will not be invading our bedroom."

"I love when you call it 'our' bedroom," he said, and she smiled.

"Speaking of bedrooms, Ten still won't tell me when and he and Rose are gonna piss off out of mine," she muttered. He didn't really want to tell her then than one of his legs was starting to ache, but was trying to think of some clever way to convince her to move without offending her.

"Why does it bother you? Wait - you're not gonna move out, are you?" he asked worriedly.

"_No_, of course not. It's just the polite thing to do. Plus, I have things in there that I want, and I don't want to walk in there and see the mess they've made. Wank-stains on the shower curtain, it's disgusting."

"Sounds it," he said, getting an idea, "You know what else is disgusting?"

"What?" He put a hand on the side of her face and kissed her, the fact she was so short meaning that even though she was sitting on him she was barely taller at all. She kissed back fine, until he noticed her frown and move away. "Is the disgusting thing your mouth because you clearly haven't brushed your teeth?"

"Yep," he answered, "And you're still into me."

"I am, and I'm horribly ashamed of that fact... Well, go brush them, then," she ordered.

"Now?"

"_Yes_, now," she said, standing up.

"Okay," he agreed smugly, ceasing victory for himself. But it took a lot for him to get the energy to stand up, just talking to Oswin like he normally would was exhausting him.

"Do you want me to help you get up, or something?" she asked, watching him try to stand carefully and with concern.

"That's what she said."

Oswin rolled her eyes, "I'm being serious."

"You're tiny, how are you gonna help me?" he joked.

"Oh, charming."

"I can do it, just... Give me a minute..."

"...I'll just go make us some tea."


	170. The Case Of The Naked Skeleton

**AN: Another Closwin chapter, because I just love writing obscenely long Closwin days with just the two of them solving crimes and whatnot. And there hasn't even been, like, LOADS of Closwin since they got back, and even really since the LAST whole Closwin chapter 170 chapters ago. And, no, I did not write this entire thing in a day, I've written it little by little over the past week or so, which is why there won't be any break from uploads while I try and write a full 10,000+ word chapter. I've being doing a lot of writing-drafts-ahead-of-time lately.**

_DAY NINETY-TWO_

_Clara_

_The Case of the Naked Skeleton_

Oswin sat in one of the leather chairs in the console room with her arms crossed and her chin resting on them against one of the panels, looking morose, until the cat jumped up onto the console and she made a start, sitting straight upright, blatantly unaware of how high cats could jump. Jonesy came over to her, she being the only person in his immediate vicinity, and him being unaware of her negative opinion of him, and walked dangerously over a myriad of sensitive buttons before sitting down, purring.

She stared at the cat, frowning and clearly wondering if she ought to move away (perhaps she thought Jonesy was like a t-rex, and the more she moved, the more it would see her). She stared into the cat's eyes, which stared back, as cats usually did. And then Jonesy meowed, and when he did, Oswin was so terrified she accidentally sent herself toppling backwards, but somebody caught her and kept her from crashing to the ground.

"Honestly," said Clara, holding her sister awkwardly by her shoulders and keeping her knee on the back of the chair, "You are the dumbest human being I have ever met."

"A girl could get ideas with you whispering in her ear like that, Clara," Oswin said, meeting insult with flirtation, so that Clara scoffed.

"Would you rather I drop you?" Clara asked, purposely whispering to her now just to freak her out.

"…No."

"Exactly." Clara finally pushed her forwards so that she was back on level ground, Oswin immediately scrambling to get off the chair and away from the cat, still purring happily. Clara sighed and picked Jonesy up to move him from the console, putting him down on the floor (it wasn't safe to have him on the console anyway) where he trotted away to his food dish in Nerve Centre, leaving them alone.

"I don't trust it," Oswin watched Jonesy leave.

"He's a cat, Oswin," Clara said, "I have to say, you're strangely adorable when cats scare you so you fall off chairs."

"Do not call me 'adorable', that's so creepy."

"I'll call you what I like, I made you," Clara reminded her, and Oswin cringed, "Anyway. Tea?" Clara offered, not that Oswin had a choice of whether or not she wanted tea, because upon discovering that her sister was lounging about, alone, in the console room, she'd already made them both a mug, leaving them floating behind her when she heroically saved her baby sister from suffering simulated hologram-concussion. Oswin glanced up when Clara passed her the tea, an empty mug sitting on the floor by the chair she'd just vacated feet. Clara leant on the console. "So, what's wrong?" Before answering, Oswin sat back down in the chair, now it was feline-free.

"It's been a stressful few days," she mumbled, slouching down against the salmon-coloured leather. Clara wondered if it was actually possible for her to ever sit up straight, "Chaotic, even. To think we go away for six days and _this_ is what we come back to."

"And our ranks just keep growing," Clara commented.

"We have infinite space, but the living room is so small…" Oswin sighed, "I wouldn't mind an extra table."

"The sooner you kill the queen, or whatever it is, the faster you get rid of those two Betas," Clara said.

"Jack told me he was taking care of it," Oswin shrugged, "I _did_ vote for them to stay, it's just the room's cramped. The old room wouldn't have been cramped, there were twelve seats at the table and then the three sofas, and a beanbag corner. Why don't we have a beanbag corner anymore?"

"Don't look at me, you know the TARDIS redesigns itself," Clara shrugged, "And we _do_ have the console room, as well. Plus, the Tenth and Eleventh Doctors spend a lot of time in the library. Imagine if Helix had never picked up that we'd gone into another universe the other day."

"Okay, as awful as reliving _Alien_ was, it was kind of completely awesome. Minus that furry monster. And we'd still have Thirteen here anyway," Oswin said, and Clara sighed and drank some of her tea, "Ooh, what was that?"

"…What was what?" Clara asked, frowning.

"You smiled when I mentioned Thirteen," Oswin said, and Clara narrowed her eyes at her, "And you totally did that cliché sigh."

"No, I didn't."

"Yes, you did," Oswin said, "And now you're flustered." Clara just scowled, trying to hide whatever subconscious emotions she'd been exhibiting, half-sure that Oswin was just making things up to try and get a reaction out of her, "Ugh, I wish we could have another holiday."

"Go out with me," Clara said.

"Huh? You mean like, on a date?" Oswin asked innocently, drinking her tea.

"Yes, obviously," Clara said sarcastically, "I mean will you, my identical twin sister, go on a date with me? Because that wouldn't be incest or anything."

"Some would say masturbation, Clara," Oswin told her. Clara kicked her in the closest leg, which happened to be the sleek-looking, brand-new artificial limb, "Don't kick that!" Oswin protested, and Clara smiled smugly to herself when she took another sip of tea. "Go out where, hmm?"

"Anywhere," said Clara, "Shopping, even. Somewhere we might not run into any aliens."

"What's the likelihood of us _not_ running into aliens?"

"You tell me, you're the genius," Clara said, "How's Adam? You weren't with him yesterday, is he better?" Oswin seemed to think for a few short seconds, Clara waiting to see what she said. Was the pause a sign that Adam _wasn't_ okay? Despite what Thirteen had said about this cryostasis of his working out for the best overall?

"I will go out," Oswin said, getting to her feet and putting down her tea so that she could take out her phone, "Let me text Jenny and tell her to watch Nios… And Adam to let him know we're going out… Are you not gonna tell husbandy?"

"I'm sure husbandy will be fine," Clara said, "Tell Jenny to tell him if she gets a chance." Oswin didn't say anything, just stood texting, which Clara assumed meant she _had_ told Jenny that very thing. Clara was glad she'd brought her jacket with her phone and money in it out with her now, going on some kind of hunch. Or, not a hunch, she'd really been planning on seeing if her sister wanted to go out anywhere that day, and Oswin never really refused Clara's company.

"Right, well, better leave quickly before Mrs Harkness tries to follow us…"

Minutes later, the TARDIS was thrumming behind them as it left, stranding them at some point in the summer of 2014, in London, Oswin had said. Good, Clara thought, present day. They had to go somewhere her debit card would be accepted, anyway. Or Adam Mitchell's credit card, if Oswin had managed to steal it, as she so often did. But finally it was just the two of them, meaning Clara didn't have any husbands or future-wives to worry about, and Oswin didn't have any mutating boyfriend or synthetic psychopath to watch.

"Never thought I'd think the Dream was a simpler time," Clara mused as they walked through bustling streets of people out to shop while the weather was nice. She was warm already – the temperature must be in the mid-twenties, at least, and she didn't even think it was noon yet. They got the usual looks being identical twins as they walked through the streets, but they were used to it by then. Lots of people didn't look around long enough to notice, anyway, and at least Oswin was able to wear shoes with this new leg of hers. Now you couldn't tell she was an amputee by looking at her, which was always a good thing when the technology of her limb was far advanced from any Twenty-First Century prosthetics.

"Of course it was simple," Oswin said, "Just help the Clechoes. Maybe suffer some immense physical pain sometimes, but pain's not complicated, it just sucks. Anyway, how about enlightening me on the husband situation?" Clara raised her eyebrows at Oswin, before sighing.

"There is no 'husband situation'. Not with me, anyway. Hasn't got a problem with _me_. It's everybody else. Which includes me, but… We still haven't talked about him overruling the vote the other day. I'm sure he and Ten are talking about it plenty, but whatever's going on he doesn't care enough to stop sleeping with me."

"Oh, too much information, Clars," Oswin said, cringing. Clara just shrugged. She didn't care anymore who knew what about her sex life – someone would tell everybody anyway, and she'd never understood what was so interesting about it, "Guess you're right though, they'll be talking about it together in the library where they spend all of their time."

"Enough about husbandy, then," Clara said, pulling Oswin by the elbow to the right and into a Waterstones, one which she knew had a Costa on the top floor and could be utilised as a place to sit around and read books you couldn't afford when you were a student. She'd spent a lot of her free time in university lurking around bookshops and coffee shops. Especially in winter. "What about boyfriendy?"

"Why are we in a bookshop?" Oswin asked, changing the subject when she noticed where they were, "We don't have bookshops in the Fifty-Second Century. Everything's digital. Except for the Library. That's in my century. And I won't be going there in a hurry."

"I just might buy some books, is all," Clara shrugged.

"Honey, your husband has every book in human history in the TARDIS library," Oswin said quietly when Clara wandered off towards the stairs, prioritising coffee over books any day. Coffee that didn't come with the risk of being contaminated by time energy enhanced electrolytes.

"Yeah, but I like to make notes in them," Clara said, "And I want my own books. I like books, Oswin, that's why I became an English teacher. Just ask Other Me. Or does she hate you too much to talk to you?" Clara joked.

"You remind me of my brother," Oswin said.

"Which one? A nice one? The fit one?" Clara asked. Oswin glared.

"Yes, Frank. That one. He likes books, like you do. So did my father, left a lot of books in the second half of the attic that wasn't my bedroom that Frank got a hold of. I think he's a writer now, actually," Oswin said, frowning. She really didn't keep up to date with any of her family anymore.

"Sounds perfect for me," Clara said.

"He's gay. How many times do I have to tell you? _He is gay_. And you look exactly like his older sister. And you have enough to be worrying about with Thirteen here and all," Oswin said, and Clara's cocky grin vanished instantly, and whatever book she'd picked up she dropped back onto the display angrily, and headed over to buy coffee for them both, ordering Oswin to stay where she was and not touch anything, which just made Oswin smirk to herself.

"Why do you change the subject when I bring up Adam?" Clara asked, motioning for Oswin to sit down at one of the small tables they had on the top floor of the bookshop. Over the top of her coffee, Oswin met Clara's eyes for a moment, and then stared at the brown, frothy substance in the cup. "Oswin?"

"I'm just terrible at talking about my feelings, you know that," Oswin said, "It's just… It's forever. And forever is scary. Not that I was looking forward to him ageing and dying, and maybe I do I have a way to bring him back as a hologram even if he did die, because of the chip in his brain, it's just frightening."

"Yeah, I know," Clara said, "Are you avoiding him? Coming up with distractions for yourself?"

"…Are you talking about Nios?" Oswin asked, and Clara nodded while she drank, relishing the taste of cappuccino. She hadn't had a cappuccino for a long while, really, since she could never be bothered to use the fancy coffee machine in her bedroom to actually make one. "She's not a distraction, she wanted to travel. And she's a sweetheart."

"Doesn't she want all humans to die?"

"Yeah, but in a cute way."

"She's a psychopath."

"Yeah, but an _adorable_ psychopath. And not adorable in an I-fancy-her way, in the way people say babies are adorable," Oswin said.

"You mean the same way I say _you're_ adorable?" Clara asked, and Oswin scowled, "I don't think patronising a killing machine is going to make her like you."

"Everyone likes me!" Oswin protested, which Clara knew was most definitely not true, but she'd not even spoken to Nios yet, certainly not enough to judge, "And I wouldn't advise calling her a 'killing machine', either. And Jenny thinks bringing her with us was a good idea."

"Jenny thinks _everything_ is a good idea," said Clara.

"Back to Adam, I'm not avoiding him. Until yesterday, I'd barely left his side since we got back And even then, that wasn't voluntary.. He's not bedridden, he'll be okay. As much as I love him, I need a break from watching him."

"Whoa, whoa, whoa – _love_?"

"What? Oh, you… Shut up," Oswin said, Clara gawping at her.

"Since when was _love_ a factor in the Adwin-equation?" Clara asked, Oswin turning her nose up at the words 'Adwin-equation', "You have to tell him."

"Tell him what?"

"That you love him!"

"Clara, what makes you think I would tell _you_ before I tell _him_?" Oswin questioned.

"Well _have_ you told him?" Clara implored, and Oswin leant over the table to whisper.

"Yes," she breathed, and then sat back down, shaking her head at Clara's juvenile reaction to the word 'love', "And I didn't try to stab him with a champagne flute once. Told him the night we got back, the other week. I mean, technically speaking he told me first, and I didn't even know I was in love with him until he said it… But what's done is done."

"I'm so proud of you!" Clara practically squealed, and Oswin stared at her.

"Do _not_ try and hug me across this table, Clara. Or at all," Oswin said, "Why do you care so much, anyway? I've been in love before, you know. I'm not a twelve year old who's been going out with someone for three days."

"I'm just happy for you!"

"You seem happier than I was," Oswin said, shaking her head a little and getting out her phone.

"Who're you texting?"

"Adam, to tell him what you just said," Oswin said, and Clara was full of envy all of a sudden that she couldn't just text her husband to tell him people were saying things about them, because he didn't have a phone. Maybe Thirteen had evolved enough to have a mobile? Clara made a note in the back of her mind to ask at some point.

"Is that the same day you moved in together and didn't tell me that, either?"

"Okay, we had multiple reasons to move in together," Oswin said, still texting while she spoke, "I mean, first of all, my bedroom is _still_ being lived in by Ten and Rose. Second of all, Mitchell wanted a new room _anyway_, third-"

"Third of all, you basically lived in his bedroom anyway?" Clara suggested, and Oswin pulled a disgruntled face.

"At least before I had the choice to go back into my own room if I wanted."

"You didn't even sleep, were you staying there all night just for his company?" Clara asked wryly.

"This is why I don't talk to you about my boyfriend, Clara," Oswin said, "I just get patronised, because you act like I'm a child, even though I'm technically two years older than you, and I'm the one in the relationship with someone I've never had a fight with, and I didn't marry him when I was wankered."

"You're always fighting with him!" Clara argued.

"No, that's just how we talk. It's how I talk to you, and _we're_ not fighting, are we?" Oswin challenged, putting her phone down on the table next to her, "And even if I did get into an argument, I doubt it would end the way your arguments with Theodore do."

"What way's that?"

"With you trying to stab him. Or throwing freezing water on his head. Or filling his bedroom with the contents of a rubbish dump," Oswin explained.

"Okay, for the first one I was drunk, for the second one he did it to me first, and for the third one you helped me, and he totally deserved it because he was being sexist," Clara argued, annoyed that the tables had turned against her. Maybe it was her own fault, and Oswin smiled smugly as she sipped her coffee.

She didn't buy any books in the end, mainly because she didn't have an awful lot of cash on her, and after all the business with the 'Paranoia Agency' still going on at this point in time, she didn't know if using her card anywhere would be a good idea. A while later, maybe even a full hour, they were back walking down London's streets, Clara with a cardboard coffee cup in her hand, when they spotted a crowd of people flocking around something in the road.

"…What's going on?" Oswin whispered to Clara, only one lane of the road open and the traffic there moving slowly. They stood and stared ahead at people, some of them with large cameras, clearly film crews. The press. And there were yellow barriers put in place to keep people back, "Is that..?"

"Yep," Clara answered, "Red berets."

"UNIT? Seriously?" Oswin hissed, "Look, we should go."

"No! We can't go," Clara said, walking towards them, phasing when Oswin tried to grab her and pull her back. Oswin cursed and was forced to follow after Clara, who wasn't listening to her try and convince her that getting involved with whatever UNIT were up to was a bad idea, "UNIT are supposed to be secret, something pretty big must be going on if they're just out here in the open with all this publicity."

"Yeah, something that _we_ should not get involved in," Oswin said.

"It'll be fine," Clara said, using telekinesis to carefully make a gap through the people and move them out of the way enough to get to the front of the crowd, "Excuse me!?" she called to one of the soldiers passing, but she was more or less ignored.

"Let's just-"

"Hey!" Clara grabbed one of the soldiers, who was holding an assault rifle (of all the things to be carrying through the city centre), and who did not look too happy to be grabbed by Clara, who was regretting returning her psychic paper to her husband by this point, "We're special ops, here to investigate." Oswin said nothing next to her.

"Special ops?" the soldier snorted.

"Yeah, Torchwood," said Clara.

"Torchwood got disbanded four years ago," the soldier told her.

"_We're_ Torchwood," said Clara, "Go on, get your Brigadier. What's her name, Kate? Kate Lethbridge-Stewart, right?"

"No," he said firmly, trying to get away from Clara, but telekinesis wasn't allowing him to escape.

"Let us in, we're experts," said Clara, "Go get Kate, she'll tell you. Torchwood. We know the Doctor." Mentioning the Doctor more than mentioning Torchwood got the soldier to narrow his eyes at the pair of them.

"I'll just call her if you don't let us through," Oswin said, getting out her phone and dialling Kate Stewart before even bothering to hear the soldier's answer. But they heard the ringtone of the phone as though it was there, and then Kate herself, the woman in charge, walked out from around the corner, looking sour and unamused, holding up her phone to show the screen and that an unknown number was calling her, since Oswin had changed her number to stop Kate Stewart being able to call her for any little problem UNIT had.

"Let them in," Kate ordered the soldier.

"Yes, ma'am," he saluted before moving the barrier out of their way. Kate shook her head and lead the two of them in.

"UNIT can handle this, the Doctor didn't need to send you two," she told them sternly.

"Well, that's good because he didn't send us," Clara said, "We were in town anyway. So we'll take a look-see and be on our way?"

"I only let you in here because shouting about Torchwood and the Doctor out there makes you both threats to national security," Kate said.

"Oooh, national security," said Clara, slurping some of her mocha loudly. She didn't know why she was trying to irritate Kate, but she couldn't find the will to stop. Surprise, surprise, it wasn't Oswin being the insufferable one.

There were large military vehicles parked around and soldiers patrolling at the front of an alleyway, an alleyway with a huge sheet of white tarpaulin hanging down from the roofs of the two buildings down to the ground.

"This must be a pretty nasty crime scene to warrant a tarp that big," Clara commented, but she went ignored as somebody in a full white paper suit with a blue face mask came over, only grey eyes visible.

"No offence, ma'am," said a smarmy, male voice, laced with ego, "But who the hell are they?" he motioned to Oswin and Clara.

"This is Dr Phelps, the leader of our forensics department," Kate said, introducing him.

"Yeah, I'm a goddamn genius, now who the hell are you?" he crossed his arms and glared at the Twins.

"Phelps, this is…" Kate paused and glanced between them, "Which one of you is which?"

"I always love when people can't tell us apart, I don't know why," Clara mused, glancing at her sister, "Ever since you stopped wearing red. And I thought I'd hate it, but I can still tell which of us is which."

"I should hope you can, Clara," Oswin said, "Unless you want to swap? So shall I leave and go have copious amounts of intercourse, while you stay here and try and figure out what's going on, hmm?" 'Don't say "intercourse", ew.' Kate looked at them for a moment, and then turned back to Phelps.

"This is Clara Oswald, the Doctor's wife," she said, getting the correct Twin when she pointed, "And this is Oswin Oswald, she's a genius who always seems to cause chaos whenever she shows up."

"She won't cause chaos with me here," Clara told Kate coolly.

"Genius, eh?" Phelps questioned.

"Most intelligent human being who ever lived," Oswin said.

"A _girl_ is the most intelligent human ever?"

"And a boy is the biggest douchebag ever, what a surprise," said Clara.

"If you're the Doctor's wife, why can't you get him to take a look at this?" Phelps challenged, ignoring her remark.

"The Doctor doesn't have a phone. If you want me to call someone to bring the TARDIS down here, I can always call Captain Jack Harkness?" Clara said, shrugging, because she knew that Kate really wouldn't want Jack swaggering about.

"You two are problem enough," Kate shook her head.

"Great," said Clara, "What's going on, then? What's so important that you've got soldiers out patrolling the streets and they've got you dragged away from your desk?"

"You'll see," Kate said, leading them towards the flap in the white tarp, holding it open for the Twins so that they could go through and see what all the fuss was about, entering a segment of alleyway closed off on either end by the huge tarps to mark a crime scene, crawling with paper-suited forensic investigators, two soldiers at the entrance with guns.

"Carrying guns like this in a crime scene, are they to shoot intruders?" Oswin asked, which didn't impress Kate. But Clara was too busy staring at the body on the floor to listen to Oswin start an argument with the Brigadier.

It was an old man, overweight, grey hair, dressed in dark tweed with shiny shoes on his feet, lying flat on his back with his arms and legs spread out. He looked like any normal dead body, except for the fact his eyes were bloodshot and rolled back in his head, and that leading away from his head were drops of a thick, green liquid, almost glowing, and a huge puddle of it mixed with something darker and lumped nearby. Clara decided that it would be in her best interest to stay away from the body and let Oswin look at it, mainly because Oswin didn't have any DNA to contaminate the evidence with, though Clara doubted that evidence would help much.

"Hey, she can't go that close to it," Phelps shouted, but Oswin ignored him.

"She's a hologram, it's fine," Clara told him, Oswin going and crouching down next to the goo, not thinking out loud for whatever reason.

"Hologram?" he asked.

"That's classified information," Kate interrupted, "Level Three clearance."

"Does he not have Level Three clearance?" Clara asked, eyeing Phelps the Sexist. He didn't look too happy about her pointing that out, which amused her.

"What's special about this one?" Oswin called over, leaning down on her hands to examine the neon sludge, "Why so many soldiers?"

"Because it's different," Kate said.

"Different to what?"

"The other victims."

"…A serial killer?" Clara asked, and Kate didn't say anything. Clara glanced at Oswin, who met her eyes before going to look at the dead man's head.

"Different how?" Oswin asked.

"No puddles at the other crime scenes," Phelps said, referring to the green sludge on the floor, "Just a few drops."

"Do you know what it is?"

"No, do you?" Kate questioned, but Oswin didn't answer, just lifted up the man's head and peered underneath. '_Clara, come here_.' As soon as Clara had the thought to walk over to Oswin and reached out her foot to take the first step, pain rippled around her head and she felt like she'd been catapulted two metres forwards. The two soldiers in the alley raised their guns to her.

"Did you have to do that?" Oswin questioned, Clara realising she'd teleported over, still unable to control the mutation.

"Accident, sorry," Clara called around, "Is that classified information as well, Kate?"

"She's one of _them_?" Phelps hissed at Kate. One of 'them'? A Super?

"I don't have you being one of them in our files," Kate said to Clara, ignoring Phelps.

"There's probably a lot of stuff you don't have in your files, Brigadier," Oswin said, Clara crouching down opposite her, people watching her uneasily, "Smell this," Oswin said, holding her fingers out to Clara, some of the green goo on them.

"Ew, no," Clara refused, hitting at her hand to get it away from her.

"You have to smell it, because I can't," Oswin whispered, and Clara made a face.

"…Do I have-"

"Yes! You have to." Oswin held out her hand again, fingers dripping with the green stuff and dark mush she'd scraped off of the ground. Clara cringed at the sight of it, and shook her head, not wanting to stoop to the level of her husband and the other Time Lords.

"You owe me," Clara said.

"Fine." She leant forwards enough to smell the slime, and instantly coughed and leant away.

"It's disgusting," she said hoarsely, Oswin's hand shimmering and the goo falling through her limb and onto the ground.

"What does it smell of?"

"Like, I don't know. Bad breath and rotten meat," Clara answered.

"Look at this," Oswin said next, going to lift up the head like she had been doing before. Clara leant around to see a gaping hole in the back, like the exit wound of a bullet, the skull shattered and dark with sticky blood matting the hair together. But there was no brain within, it was just shadowy and hollow.

"What is it?" Clara whispered. Instead of answering, Oswin just winked at her, and then stood up, crossing her arms.

"How many other killings have there been?" Oswin asked Kate.

"This is the sixth."

"Six killings? A proper serial killer, then. What's the link between the victims?"

"We don't know that yet," Kate said.

"Well then, we can't help you, you got your wish. We'll leave. I don't know what it is," Oswin shrugged, "No idea. I was a hermit, you know. Involuntarily. I have hardly any alien experience. And Clara just listens to the Doctor."

"As expected," Phelps said, "UNIT don't need help from weird twins."

"No, they don't," Oswin said, "So we'll be going now. Coming, Clara?" Clara was confused, admittedly, and was convinced Oswin was lying to Kate and the rest of UNIT, but didn't try to question her about it while they were being eavesdropped on, especially when everyone was giving Clara shifty looks after accidentally exhibiting her new trick.

"Sure," she said eventually, getting up to follow Oswin, "We'll go back to our shopping trip…"

"Clara," said Kate, grabbing her by the arm as she went past, Oswin holding the door open, "Are you sure you don't know anything?"

"Yes," she said, which was the truth. _She_ didn't know anything, it was Oswin who she thought did, "And even if I did, pointing guns at me wouldn't get me to help you." She pulled her arm out of Kate's grip, trying not to give away any telekinesis or intangibility. She didn't like the way people had called her 'one of them'.

They went through another alley to get back out onto the main street to avoid the crowds of bystanders and news reporters who had been drawn to the area by the red berets, the same as them.

"We have to get somewhere they can't see us, Kate doesn't trust me," Oswin whispered.

"Because you're clearly lying," said Clara.

"Yeah, but I don't trust them, either," said Oswin, "Not after them experimenting with the serum in three years. But it's this year, 2014, that they called me asking for help with the werewolves. Three years in the future, they've sealed off a whole zone of the city to lock up these shapeshifters. They said you were one of 'them'," she did air quotation marks, "They don't trust you, either."

"…Okay. Okay, then. I know somewhere we can go," Clara took out her phone and dialled a number, "…Hi, Angie, it's Clara, is your father in?"

"_No_," Angie Maitland answered. Thank god she used to nanny in London.

"Great. Do you remember Oswin?"

"_Obviously, she's you but cooler_."

"Yeah, well, do you mind if we stop by for a few hours? We're hiding from the military."

* * *

"Do you ever miss looking after these kids?" Oswin inquired after Clara rang the doorbell, the pair of them waiting outside for one of the Maitlands to answer and let them into the house, since Clara didn't have a key anymore. Well, she technically did, but she'd left it behind on the TARDIS. And she still didn't think barging straight into a house she didn't live or work in anymore was polite.

"I have you to look after now," Clara said, checking her phone habitually. Oswin didn't say anything, and Clara glanced up to see her looking at her with a weird expression, "What?"

"Do you really think you have to look after me..?"

"Of course I do! You're like a daughter to me," Clara said, and it was when she put her phone away that she ended up getting attack-hugged, "Okay, a rare display of physical affection…" Clara muttered, but she hugged her back anyway, "Sometimes I think you're nicer to me than to your actual boyfriend," she said when Angie Maitland finally opened the door, mouthing an apology over the shoulder of her sister.

"Last time I saw you two, you hated each other," Angie commented.

"Strange things happen when two identical, narcissistic people get trapped together in a coma for two weeks, Angie," Clara said, managing to pry Oswin off of her eventually. Honestly, with Adam Mitchell around it was difficult to think now that she was so starved of human contact that she wouldn't let go of Clara after a normal amount of time.

"Wow, it's been a while then, hasn't it?" Oswin mused, staring around at the house, "Haven't hated Clara for a long time…"

"Yeah, yeah," Clara said, "Can we come in? We might be being spied on by UNIT."

"UNIT? Why!?" Angie seemed more excited than worried that her house might well be invaded by the military due to Clara being reckless with her hiding spots. But what were UNIT really gonna do except force them to help with their murder investigation? And Clara had her emergency teleporter on her anyway.

"We're trying to solve a murder," Oswin said, walking past Angie when she held the door open, "Do you have a laptop I can borrow?" Angie nodded and pointed her to where the laptop was sitting on the kitchen table.

"So you're friends now..?" Angie asked uncertainly, and Clara nodded, "But you used to _really_ hate each other. Like, a _lot_."

"We're friends now," Clara said, "Best friends. Sisters. Twins."

"Lovers," Oswin called from the kitchen, where she'd pulled out a chair and sat down at the table.

"Not that," Clara said, and then added to Oswin, "She's sixteen, she doesn't need you being creepy."

"Sixteen's old enough," Oswin shrugged, "You lost your virginity when you were _fifteen_, Clars, so I doubt there's much teenagers don't know in this century." Clara shook her head, eternally infuriated by Oswin's lack of social boundaries or notion of acceptable behaviour.

"Ignore her," Clara told Angie, "Where's your brother?"

"Football, it's Saturday." Clara nodded, remembering now the habits of the children that, just four months ago, she lived with.

"Do you mind if I go find some biscuits?" Clara asked, and Angie just shrugged, going to look over Oswin's shoulder as she, presumably, hacked into UNIT to go find out what she could about the other five murders.

"Can I have some?" Oswin asked, eyes glued to the laptop. Clara just sighed instead of answering, and found a pack of chocolate digestives in one of the kitchen cupboards. 'You can't even taste.' '_Don't be rude_.' 'You've got some nerve, telling ME not to be rude.' Clara stood next to Oswin and held out a biscuit for her to take, but rather than take it, she just bit it out of Clara's hand.

"Are you a dog or something?" Clara asked her. Oswin looked around and frowned, biscuit half in her mouth, and Clara shook her head and tried to take it from her, when she bit down and Clara ended up with a biscuit in the shape of a crescent moon, "Eat like a human," Clara told her, taking a bite from the biscuit herself.

"Are you eating the biscuit that she just had in her mouth..?" Angie asked.

"Um…" Clara didn't have any sort of answer for her.

"Gross…" Angie muttered. Clara finished the biscuit, nevertheless, ignoring the disgusted look she was getting.

"So," Clara began, leaning on the back of the chair Oswin was sat in and watching the screen, where Oswin was skimming over the files of all the murder victims, finishing reading them before Clara had much of a chance to even see the name (to think she'd always considered herself a fast reader), "What did you figure out?"

"Well, for one thing, I don't know what did it," Oswin answered, "Not the species."

"Okay, well, what was the puddle?" Clara asked.

"What did it smell like?" Oswin countered.

"I told you, bad breath and old meat," Clara told her again.

"How do flies eat food?" Oswin then asked, never answering Clara's questions properly. She was probably trying to make Clara figure it out for herself. She always thought that was an odd thing about Oswin, rather than tell people the answer, she tried to help them think of it themselves, in some peculiar display of modesty.

"How should I know? Have you even seen a fly before?" Clara questioned.

"Of course I've seen a fly before!"

"When?"

"Like… I don't know… I just probably have. Shut up. Doesn't matter, because I still know how they eat food. They use a proboscis, which is an appendage they have like a straw. They vomit stomach acid onto their food to dissolve it, and then use the proboscis to suck it up," Oswin explained, "Chameleons use their tongues to catch insects, launching them out. Look at the photos." She motioned to the pictures of the backs of the victims' heads, all of them with the same large hole.

"Are you telling me that whatever this thing is it sucks out brains with a giant straw-tongue?" Clara asked.

"_What_?" Angie exclaimed, "What photos?"

"You don't wanna see them," Clara said, "I'm not gonna be responsible for you having nightmares."

"It's spit," said Oswin.

"What is?"

"The green goo. Spit is the closest thing to liken it to, anyway. It's a secretion that contains digestive enzymes to break down brain matter and extract it through the proboscis. The drops of it at the other scenes are just, you know, dribble," Oswin said.

"So what's different about this one?"

"It's vomit," said Oswin, "The brain it consumed, it threw back up, onto the ground, and left."

"So it didn't like the brain?"

"Exactly."

"Well… What's wrong with it?"

"Why would you leave food behind? If it went bad. There was tumour tissue in that puddle. Whether he knew about it or not, that man back there had a brain tumour. The alien wants healthy brains to eat, and it probably has a cloaking device of some kind. Maybe it wears a skinsuit," Oswin shrugged, "He's a university professor in cryptozoology, one of the top in his field, actually. Too bad he's dead."

"Wait, so, he's clever?" Clara asked, "Maybe… Maybe that's why it wants the brains? What about the others?"

"Different races, different ages, different genders, all of them different, except… They're all in Mensa. All of them. That's the link, it wants geniuses."

"How does it know who's a genius and who's not? If it couldn't tell this professor had a brain tumour?"

"Oh, if only I was still alive, we could use me as bait," Oswin said.

"You could always call your boyfriend," Clara suggested jokingly, and Oswin scowled at her in the reflection of the laptop screen, "What? You _could_, is all I'm saying."

"Oswin has a boyfriend?" Angie asked. Clara didn't understand why she was so interested in Oswin's relationship status. Clara's, yes, she got that, because Clara had lived with her for a year and then eloped with an alien in Las Vegas. Oswin, she'd probably barely met twice, and Clara didn't think she or Artie had ever met Adam Mitchell.

"Yes, he's a weird nerd-genius who's actually pretty cute," Clara answered.

"I'm gonna tell him you said that," Oswin said, getting her phone out.

"Ask him out for me while you're at it."

"Very funny…"

Angie coughed then, so Clara looked up at her, ignoring Oswin's texting.

"I have to go," Angie said, "I'm meeting with friends."

"Okay," Clara smiled, "I've still got my keys, lock the door on your way out. I'll try to stop Oswin from making a mess, but you never know with this genius-types." Angie nodded, barely said a goodbye to Clara (ah, teenagers), and picked her bag up from the sofa. Clara heard the door lock, knowing she was lying about having a set of keys, but after the dirty looks from the soldiers, she didn't want to risk telling anyone (even Angie Maitland) about her abilities.

"What if we broke up?" Oswin asked out of nowhere almost as soon as the door closed.

"We're not together."

"Not me and you, me and Adam!"

"_Oh_..."

"What if we split up, and neither of us can get away from each other?"

"Why would you split up?" Clara asked.

"I don't know! We just… He can never go back to Earth now to live, so…" She crossed her arms on the table and rested her head on them, eyes glued to the laptop screen, though she wasn't registering what she was looking at.

"I should tell you that, um, the other night, when she first arrived, I was talking to Thirteen, alone, and she mentioned Adam getting sick," Clara confessed.

"_Why_ were you talking to your future wife _alone_, Clara!?"

"It was like, after one in the morning, nobody else was there. I just went to get a glass of water," Clara said, waiting patiently for Oswin to register the part of that sentence about her boyfriend. Clara was definitely going to bring up Oswin's paranoia about Thirteen and herself at the next opportunity, though.

"Wait, she told you Adam was gonna put himself into permanent cryostasis and you didn't tell me!?" Oswin sat back up, instantly angry.

"No, Oswin, no. She asked me how Adam was, so I said he was fine, to my knowledge, and then something like 'Adam's gonna get sick, and I think it happens soon.' And she said under no circumstances can I tell you, and to trust her that it'll work out for the best. Then she said 'Gerald doesn't want Oswin to know I told you that'," Clara explained, hoping that now it would be safe to tell Oswin these things, "And then, the next day, when you were freaking out about him, I tried to get her to tell me. She's the one who told me to make sure he was kept cold, but she wouldn't tell me what was happening. She said you'd figure it out in the next few hours, and then she left."

"Well… Did she tell you anything else?"

"Not about Adam. But she told me about the teleportation," Clara said, "She said it's short-range and it only goes twenty metres. She just kept telling me to trust her that Adam would be fine. Why do you care so much about me talking to Thirteen?"

"I don't know what you mean."

"Yes you do, boyfriendy told me when we were out the other day, you wanted to send me out to get me away from her," Clara said.

"That complete penis…" Oswin muttered about Adam Mitchell, him not around to defend himself, "The emotional link you have with your Echoes isn't one-way, alright? You know that. Meaning _I_ know _exactly_ what you're thinking about when you look at her. Or hear her. Or somebody mentions her. Or when you just get distracted off in your own little world of queer daydreams. And I'm pretty sure that you were never this obsessed with Eleven."

"I'm perfectly obsessed with him!" Clara said, "In a healthy way, I mean. I don't want to hear your made-up allegations against the imaginary affair I'm having in your head, Oswin."

"Wow, you're being as defensive as I was back when everyone kept accusing me of fancying Adam," Oswin countered, and Clara grimaced, Oswin perfectly aware she'd struck a nerve, "I'm being the responsible one of us for once. You'll just have to deal with it. Now, we actually have a serial killer to catch, in case you're forgetting?"

"Serial killer. Right. I'll just find you a frying pan and let you have your way with them," Clara said, and Oswin laughed a little.

"Well, if you do insist on going after Jack the Ripper by yourself, honey, what other choice does your loving sister have than to go hit people?" Oswin joked.

"'Loving' – that's funny. At that point in time we still hated each other."

"I call them the good old days," said Oswin knowingly, "Anyway. Crime needs solving. Get that less-intelligent brain of yours in gear, Clars." Though Clara was entirely sure that Oswin already had some idea of what to do next, she sat thinking of what the normal process would be to catch a serial killer, when they didn't have any way to trace it.

"There can't be that many members of Mensa living in London, can there?" Clara asked, "And six of them are dead already?"

"That's true. But I wonder where it's getting its list from. Online?"

"A psychotic fly alien that uses Google. Of course," Clara muttered, "UNIT must have figured this link out, though, and they must have been lying to us."

"They must also know that I can hack into them and they'll never catch me, though," Oswin said.

"They weren't really planning on you showing up. Where do flies even live? Do you think this thing has a nest? And why doesn't it want thick people?" Clara asked.

"I don't know. Maybe it's just a bigot?" she suggested, "I mean, the obvious answer is that it absorbs intelligence by drinking the brains."

"Wait – that's what it's doing!?"

"Maybe? I mean, probably. Otherwise I don't think it would take the time out of its busy day probing people to find a list of people in Mensa," Oswin said.

"Your IQ's 352."

"Yeah, and you need 140 to get into Mensa."

"So what's six times 140?"

"840," said Oswin, "But I don't know what it is to tell you whether the thing has an IQ of 840, if it absorbs intelligence that wholly. Though, you can probably assume that it's clever enough to hack UNIT and find out how much they know and also to get a complete list of Mensa, since something like that isn't just available online."

"Well, can you find it? And narrow it down to London?" Clara asked.

"Yeah, I could, but it's boring…" she muttered.

"Oswin, don't be pathetic," Clara said.

"Fine. I'll make you your little list… A list which probably includes my boyfriend."

"Adam doesn't live in London," Clara said, and then her phone buzzed in her pocket while Oswin ignored her and busied herself hacking, "It's just Angie again, maybe she forgot something… Hi," she answered.

"_Clara - it's one of my friends,_" Angie said frantically.

"What's one of your friends?" Clara asked.

"_She saw it!_"

"Saw what?"

"_She lives in the block of flat opposite the… I mean, she said it looked like a man, but it shot something out of its mouth and killed that guy,_" Angie said.

"Wait, she witnessed the murder? She saw the killer?"

"_Yes!_"

"Can you bring her here? Now? She might be able to help us stop it."

"_Yeah, yeah, I'll be ten minutes…_"

* * *

The girl's name was Lydia Cartwright. She was sixteen, and she was shaking, looking petrified. Whatever she'd seen had scarred her, most definitely, and she had wide eyes and was twitching in the middle of the sofa, Clara sitting on the chair. Angie stood by the kitchen, while Oswin had been ordered to shut up and not say a single word while Clara talked to the girl.

"Who are you?" she asked. Clara had never met her – she didn't seem like Angie's usual type of friends.

"Clara," Clara told her, "Clara Oswald. I'm a teacher."

"It's the summer holidays."

"It is, but I have to talk to you about what you saw today. This morning," Clara specified.

"I had Cheerios." '_Is this girl for real?_' 'Shut up, Oswin.' "What did you say?"

"Hmm?" Clara snapped her attention back.

"You said 'is this girl for real' – I haven't even started talking to you yet and you're already judging me!?" she shouted, her fear turning to anger awfully quickly.

"She didn't say anything, Lydia," Angie told her.

"Shh," Clara said to Angie, holding up a hand and watching Lydia carefully.

"What?" Angie asked.

"You heard my sister?" Clara talked to Lydia. 'Can you hear me now?' '_Yes_.'

"Yes," said Lydia.

"Uh-huh," said Clara.

"Clars, you should-"

"You, shut up, keep going with your list, not a word," Clara said to her sharply, "I mean it, Oswin. Quiet… Now," she turned back to Lydia, "Do you often hear things like that?"

"No," she said quickly, "You were talking to each other."

"Not out loud," said Clara.

"I don't get it, how were you talking?" Angie asked.

"It's called a mind-patch," Clara explained, "A psychic connection. My husband… Convinced Oswin to create it to save my life. Complicated. But nobody is supposed to hear it, so why can you?"

"I'm not one of them. I'm not." There it was again, one of _them_, whatever _they_ were.

"One of what?"

"Those things. On the news."

"She doesn't watch the news," Angie muttered, "She means the freaks with the superpowers." Clara went cold. The freaks with the superpowers. Of course, in three years the wolf-strain supers would be locked up in huge, cordoned off areas of London, and even in 2013, in the winter, when they'd first been asked to help UNIT, they'd had them all locked up like animals. They'd drugged Martha with the serum as an experiment. There was something going on in Britain.

"…Well, whatever they are, I'm sure you aren't one," Clara lied, "But you have to tell us what you saw. So that we can stop the killer."

"Are you working for them? The soldiers? I heard you say…" she stopped talking.

"UNIT?" Lydia nodded. "No, we don't work for them. Sometimes they call us for help, because we're experts."

"Experts in what?"

"Parapsychology, cryptozoology, archaeology, ufology, occultology, mythology, technology," Oswin listed a bunch of professions, most of which were jobs nobody could make a living from.

"What?" Lydia frowned.

"That's a lot of 'ology's, Oswin," Clara said, "We ended up at the crime scene. They asked us for help. We don't trust them, so we lied about what we knew. We don't like UNIT anymore. They were created in the 1960s to deal with extra-terrestrial threats."

"Aliens?"

"Exactly," said Oswin.

"Oswin! If you don't shut up I'm gonna drop the cat on you while you're sleeping," Clara threatened. Oswin scowled, but was scared enough of Jonesy that she really did stop talking, crossing her arms and staring sourly at the laptop, Clara getting the distinct impression that she'd finished with her list and was just waiting on Lydia Cartwright to give them a description of what they were up against.

"Was it an alien that killed that man?"

"Yes," Clara answered, "And we want to stop it from hurting anybody else, but to do that you have to tell us what it looked like."

"…What do you mean 'wolf-strain supers'?"

"I can't tell you that," Clara said.

"You said three years. You said someone got drugged. People got locked up 'like animals'," Lydia said, telling Clara her own thoughts.

"Clara, what does she mean? What happens in three years?" Angie questioned.

"Nothing happens to you," Clara said, "Tell me what it looked like, Lydia."

"Tell me what you know."

"I know that if you don't tell us what it looked like, people will die. More people. Tens of thousands of people."

"What do you know about me?"

"I know your name."

"I heard him."

"Heard who?"

"That professor. Through the wall. I heard him, heard him shouting. I went to look, and it looked like a person, backing him down that alley, but it wasn't saying anything, like it was empty. And then it… From its head… This thing, it was green and slimy," she said, "Launched out of his mouth."

"What did he look like, though? Age? Hair colour? Eye colour? Anything?"

"The back of his neck, I saw… It was like he had scales, like his clothes didn't fit, but his head was… Normal," she said, "Dark hair, I don't know… He had gloves on, and this sort of necklace, flashing. And then he was… I think he was sick."

"He was," Clara answered, "That professor had a brain tumour. Oswin? What do you think?"

"Oh, I'm allowed to talk now, am I?"

"If you drop the attitude," Clara told her coldly.

"I get it from you," Oswin fake-smiled, "It's not insectoid, for one thing. It'll be a lizard-based organism, if it has scales, so I was initially wrong. You remember I said chameleons propel their tongues? Well, this thing propels the proboscis out, probably when its victims are running. You saw how that bloke was flat on his back? Well he must have been running and it grabbed him and pulled him back onto the floor. That process probably helps crack, or soften, the skull. Like when birds of prey used to drop tortoises on rocks to smash their soles. And that flashing necklace? It's disguising it, but just its head, that's why she saw the scales, and why it had gloves. Humanoid lizard that eats brains."

"Do you know who it's gonna go after next?"

"A twenty-year old street artist called James Fowl is the only other registered member of Mensa currently in London, the rest are dead or away. IQ of 148, only just passes the boundary, guess he prefers painting to maths. He owns an art gallery," Oswin said, "Closed all day today to prepare for an exhibit, some kind of fancy sculptor is showing their work tonight… If he's there alone, it will have seen. And if it didn't get to feed this morning, it'll be hungry – the other killings are all spaced about a month apart. If I can find this out, so can this thing. What I'm saying, is, we'd better leave." She closed the laptop, switching it off and shutting the lid before standing up to show Clara the urgency of this situation.

"I'm sorry, Angie, we have to go," Clara stood up, too, "You've been a great help, both of you."

"You never told me what you know about me," Lydia protested as the Twins headed towards the door.

"I'm sorry, but I don't know anything," Clara said hurriedly, then she said to Angie, "If you see any soldiers, or any of them try to get you to talk to them, call me, and don't say a word. Don't trust anything UNIT say. Especially when they're calling people 'freaks' on the news," her eyes met Lydia's for a moment, who just stared back in confusion.

"Leaving, honey," Oswin said, taking Clara's hand and opening the door, "Gotta go save somebody's life, it's kind of important."

"Bye! I'll see you when I see you!" Clara called, and then Oswin had pulled the door shut in her face, neither of them saying anything for almost ten minutes, both of them like-minded (or identically-minded) enough to have the same idea about getting out of Lydia's 'earshot'. It was only when they were far away in Clara's run down, bright red old Ford (which had been gathering rust outside of the Maitlands' for a full year by this point, and astonishingly enough still ran) that either of them spoke.

"I don't like the way people keep saying 'them'," Oswin muttered, "Guess it's not surprising though, given what happens in 2017."

"She could read minds and she was trying to hide it," said Clara, "But I couldn't… You know, I didn't think I'd hear Angie calling them 'freaks'. I thought that meeting the Doctor would leave her more open-minded than that. That's why I didn't say anything."

"You probably shouldn't've. You never know what someone might say to UNIT if they're threatened enough," Oswin sighed, "It's my fault, too. I'm the one who let them out of their containment facility."

"It's not your fault, it's Rian Simmonds' fault. I'm sure the lot of them got rounded back up again afterwards anyway," Clara said, "It's awful. I hate the thought of it, it's barbaric, segregating people like it's the 1940s."

"Well it's more like X-Men, really, isn't it?" Oswin asked, and Clara glared at her, "Okay, alright, sometimes I forget you don't like Marvel, no need to bite my head off with your eyes."

"'Bite your head off with my eyes', Oswin? Seriously?" Clara asked, going back to looking at the road, getting directions from Oswin, who was using Clara's phone to get on Google Maps to find this James Fowl. Why she couldn't use her holoscreens, Clara didn't know, but she'd noticed Oswin refraining from using them recently. Maybe she was just trying not to draw much attention. "We should stop it."

"Prioritise, honey. There's a boy about to die," Oswin said, "What if he's cute? A cute genius, hmm… But an artistic one…"

"Who is probably _not_ a multimillionaire," Clara said, "Don't marry a bum, Os. You don't wanna be an unemployed, impoverished space-hobo like me and my other half."

"Speaking of your other half, are you _sure_ everything's alright with him? I'm asking because I haven't actually seen or heard from him at all for five days," Oswin said.

"He's been in the library. Reading, I assume. Better for him to read his own books than try stealing my copy of _The Bell Jar_ and skimming over my notes. You know he argues with me about what I've written sometimes?" Clara said, "Although, I'm not gonna lie, having an intelligent debate about literature is stimulating in more than one way…"

"That's both weird _and _disgusting," Oswin said.

"We _should_ do something about the treatment of those… Supers, or whatever they're called, are. We're called, I mean. I'm one of them," said Clara, "I'm _more_ than one of them, really, what with this mutation…"

"Okay, Clara. Go on a little crusade. It's this right coming up," Oswin said, giving directions, Clara switching the indicator on as she drove.

"Have you thought about how we're supposed to stop this thing from killing us, too?"

"Well, first of all, I'm already dead. Second of all, you can't die… Actually, I don't know how well nanogenes could repair your entire brain, but… You're telekinetic, intangible, and I'm sure that if you were in enough danger your body would be able to teleport you out of there," Oswin said, "And even though you can't control the last one, the first two you can."

"Great, you just rely on me, then?"

"I rely on you for a lot of things, Clara," said Oswin seriously, "You know that."

"…Right. Yeah. You do. Sorry."

"…Do you ever think it's funny," Oswin began a new conversation after instructing Clara to change lanes and take the second left, "How some of the others work so hard to try and deduce our relationship?"

"And they always deduce it to us sleeping together," Clara said, "I don't see why they're so interested. This, today, is like being in the Dream again, you know. I never lived on the TARDIS before now, you know? Before the Dimension Crash. That day, I moved in. This Crash happens, and I end up _eloping_ with an unemployed transient who steals everything he owns. If this ever stops, I don't have a life to go back to anymore."

"Clars, you know that even if the Dimension Crash reverses, you and the Doctor are from the same point in time, wherever you end up you'll be together. And if everyone vanishes and you stay still, _I_ will still be there. Isn't it shocking how now my presence is a comfort to you? How far we've come. Keep going straight down this road."

"Yeah, considering I didn't used to be able to stand the sight of you."

"I never hated you, you know, honey. I mean, I wanted to, but I just… Couldn't."

"You seemed to want to hate your boyfriend too, when you first met him."

"That's because he's a dick. Honestly, speak to him for five minutes and you will want to punch him in the face. You know, like you."

"Me!?"

"Do you honestly not know how irritating you are? It's a right at this next junction, and there's a speed camera, so don't speed."

"I… Well… What is it about me!? Everyone says that!"

"You're just… I don't know, just _so annoying_. Can't you feel yourself being annoying? I mean, you don't really annoy _me_, but I don't know. You're less annoying when there aren't other people there."

"I'm sure I don't annoy my husband!"

"Well then you're lucky to have found him."

"I bet I didn't annoy Danny Pink."

"Honey, you were so ridiculously out of Danny Pink's league that he couldn't afford to be annoyed by you. You think he'd risk anything that'd make you leave him? Clars, he was an androgynous maths teacher who cried in front of children and couldn't form proper sentences," Oswin argued when they were stopped by a red light, "Well I mean, _maybe_ you could say you're just _that attractive_ or something, but you don't stun an awful lot of people to silence. He's _so_ 'blah' he probably just wasn't used to anyone vaguely not-hideous talking to him."

"That's really rude, you know he went through a lot?"

"Ooh, Clara has a crush!"

"I do not! I'm _married_, and he's _dead_."

"_I'm_ dead and _I_ have a boyfriend, your point is null. You clearly see the same thing in him now as Other You did when she first asked him out on a date when he was banging his face off of a desk. First impressions, my god."

"Well he could've shown up stinking and dressed like a monk already knowing everything about you," Clara shrugged, taking a right turn as instructed by her baby sister, "But to think the Doctor did that must mean you made quite the impression on him."

"Yes, or perhaps it was the Victorian prostitute who sexually assaulted him in a hallway. He didn't even remember my name, the twat, kept calling me 'Soufflé Girl'. _What_ is so hard about a two-syllable name, hmm? Oswin. _Os-win_. It's five bloody letters. Take another right."

"Oh, that reminds me – what _is_ a 'Junior Entertainment Manager'? Because I know you're a stowaway, but that's what you told the Doctor you were back on the Dalek Asylum."

"Well, in the ranking system – which isn't even a real ranking system – 'junior' doesn't mean, like, second in command, it means under thirty. I gave myself the title, because I was the one who managed the entertainment."

"What kind of entertainment could you possibly have been managing along on a spaceship for a year?" Clara questioned.

"…The kind of entertainment one needs when they're, you know. Alone on a spaceship for a year. Emphasis on _alone_."

"…Ew. That's gross. _You're_ gross."

"_Back to the point_, you're the most annoying person on board the TARDIS – except for Twelve, but he's temporary. And anyway, drop the hypocrisy, unless you want me to tell your husband about the fate his sonic screwdriver came to in the Dream."

"That's not even true, _you_ made that up and now you're confused," Clara snapped. It really wasn't true.

"We're here," Oswin declared, nodding out of the window towards an art gallery with a sign outside advertising the art of an apparently famous sculptor Clara had never heard of. Though she didn't care much for statues. She knew enough about Weeping Angels to be suspicious of anything made of stone that came within a twenty metre radius of her. She parked the car on the path, ignoring the double yellow lines, the right-hand doors next to the pavement, meaning she could get out easily, but Oswin would either have to clamber over the seats or walk around. _Serves her right for being a creep_, Clara thought.

Clara knocked on the door while she waited for Oswin to make her way around the car.

"We're closed!" somebody shouted from inside. Oswin came and knocked loudly with her fist.

"We're with the police," she yelled. Clara heard a noise like something falling, then somebody swore, and a few seconds later a young man who looked barely out of his teens showed up around the corner in the gallery (she could see through the glass panelling of the door). He paused for a moment when he spotted they were Twins, and shook his head, and opened the door.

"The police? Really?" he asked incredulously.

"No, we're consultants for the Unified Intelligence Taskforce. You know, the blokes with the red berets?" Clara said, "Can we take a look around your gallery? We think you might be in danger. You _are_ James Fowl, right?""

"Yes. In danger from what?" he crossed his arms.

"Have you heard of the recent mysterious murders?" Oswin asked, "The serial killer at large?"

"Might've."

"Well that serial killer targets members of Mensa," Oswin said.

"And there's only one member of Mensa left in London who isn't dead," Clara explained, "Care to take a guess who that is?"

"Can this wait until tomorrow?"

"Trust me, you'll be dead by tomorrow," Clara said, pushing past him with the additional help of some sly telekinesis (mainly because she didn't want to touch him, he didn't strike her as the type to wash as often as he should, one of those people who was just _too pretentious_ for the modern technology of heated water).

"Look, I can defend myself," he said.

"Yeah, yeah," Oswin said, following Clara. They didn't stay in the front room for long, because Clara thought it would be quite obvious if there was a giant lizard man standing about waiting for an opportunity to suck out the brain of James Fowl in a room that was relatively empty, save for a few paintings waiting to be put up.

"I'll check the back, you go upstairs," Clara said quietly to Oswin, who obeyed and wandered off to the stairs that lead to the next floor, ignoring the protests of Fowl, who was already annoying Clara almost as much as Phelps had been annoying her that morning.

In the back, all Clara found was more paintings waiting to be put up, and she wondered where the sculptures were for the opening that night, but it wasn't any of her business. When she actually looked, though, some of the paintings were of space scenes, which she was relatively fond off, though they weren't a patch on the weird painting Adam Mitchell had had hanging in his bathroom (what was it called? _Necronom IV_?) that served as the inspiration for the design of the Xenomorph.

'_Clara, get up here_.' 'What did you find?' '_Get here. Now._' Clara didn't take the urgency in Oswin's tone of thought lightly, and so slipped out of the room and made her way up the stairs after Oswin, coming into a dark room with a mattress in the corner and heavy curtains pulled so tightly across the window that Clara could see so much of a crack of light from the sun. Oswin was having to use the light built into her Sphere to illuminate the scene, but it was hard to miss when Clara saw what she was talking about.

"I think I found our serial killer," Oswin said quietly, the Sphere throwing light off the clean, white bones of something large, but not quite human. A strangely formed head, an extra two ribs, an almost-square pelvis and only two fingers and a thumb, it was definitely what Clara would expect the skeleton of a lizard-man to look like. And along with that, curled up into where the throat would be, was something clear and wrapped around in the mouth.

"What is that?" Clara asked.

"The proboscis," Oswin answered.

"…What happened here?"

"I don't know, but it… You remember Mickey's story?"

"What?"

"You know, last week, when everyone shapeshifted and they told stories," Oswin was whispering, "He and Martha broke into that house looking for Slitheen and got teleported here. All they found was bones, Clara. Picked clean. Three Slitheen, dead like _that_, no sign of a struggle. And then the Xenomorph… It must be some pretty clever, I don't know, vaporisation technology? Blasts everything to oblivion except bone?"

"What do you mean, the Xenomorph?"

"It lost weight, I had to get a visual, all that was left was the exoskeleton. There's another killer, Clara, and this one's hunting aliens, and it's one step ahead of us."


	171. Date Night XI

_Clara_

_Date Night XI_

When she opened the door into her bedroom she didn't have her eyes open, mainly because she'd been getting a lot of headaches over the past few days, despite her efforts to refrain from using her powers as much as possible. It wasn't _her_ fault she kept accidentally teleporting a couple of metres left or right, and no matter how hard she tried to supress it, it still happened, and just made her head throb even more. So she closed the door behind her and leant against it with her face scrunched up, and it was only when she finally looked around that she noticed the candles. Candles _everywhere_, and the lights switched off.

"Uh… Doctor..?" she made her confusion very clear out loud, staring around. Was something going on? She just stayed where she was by the door and wondered if possibly there was a very poorly-executed attempt at arson going on in her bedroom, waiting for Eleven to emerge, as she hoped he would, to explain exactly what was happening. Did they have something to celebrate? _He better not think I'm pregnant again_, she thought grimly. Every time she ate something he decided she was better off not eating (like a dish she used to call 'space worms', before the incident on Eslilia, a dish which Oswin called 'ketchup-bean-noodles', because it really was just unflavoured noodles with ketchup and baked beans on a plate, and Clara for one thought it was delicious), he put it down to pregnancy cravings.

"Clara!" Eleven exclaimed, sticking his head out from around the corner, where the bathroom door _used_ to be, but now wasn't, "You're back early."

"Early? Why? What's going on? Are you trying to set us on fire..?" she queried, raising an eyebrow at him and casting another glance at the dozens of candles sitting around getting wax on the carpet because, clearly, her husband didn't know anything about candles.

"No! I'm trying to create a mood."

"What sort of mood? The sort a pyromaniac gets in before they burn down a building?"

"A _romantic_ mood, obviously," he said, and she still didn't know why, "I was _going_ to put rose petals on the bed and pour you a glass of wine – I aged a nice bottle of Chardonnay from Eighteenth Century France earlier." He was bringing _alcohol_ onto the TARDIS himself? What kind of awful influence was she? The champagne from a month ago was one thing, but wine was another. Though she wasn't complaining, since her baby sister had utterly vandalised her stash of booze and she was now left with nothing to drink.

"…I'm gonna kick myself for asking this, but, why?" she asked.

"What do you mean 'why'!?" he exclaimed. Okay, so this wasn't just him being spontaneous, whatever was happening, she was apparently supposed to know about it. She racked her brains to try and think back to the night before, to see if they'd had any conversation in the midst of all their bedsheet-tangling involving dangerous amounts of candles and Chardonnay. When she continued to give him an utterly blank look, he revealed, "It's our wedding anniversary."

"…Which anniversary..?" she asked, still confused.

"Three-month First Wedding anniversary," he answered. _Oh, good_, she thought, she'd been worried it would be something more important. Not that her marriage wasn't important, that would be ridiculous, it was just he was going quite all-out to mark that it had been three months since they'd gotten blackout-drunk on Jack's special moonshine and eloped in 2121.

"Well, happy anniversary!" she declared, "I had no idea, so I didn't get you anything." At least she was being honest, she thought. Honesty was the best policy. "Do you want me to go out and get you something..? Not that I have any clue what you would even want…" she frowned.

"Of course not, you brought yourself, that's all I ever want," he said wryly, leaning on the corner of the wall where the room curved around while she stayed against the door with her arms crossed, "I love you."

"I love you, too," she said, smiling, "And I always will."

"What did you do today?" he asked.

"Solved a murder," she replied.

His smile vanished and he exclaimed, "A murder!?"

"Kind off. It was the weirdest thing… Do you remember Mickey's story from the other day?" she asked, and he looked at her blankly, "Oh no, sorry, you weren't there… He told a story about them trying to track down some Slitheen, and they eventually found them holed up in some attic, all torn to pieces with no flesh left on their bones at all. And then did you hear about what happened to the Xenomorph?" Eleven shrugged. God, he really had been out of the loop lately (which was, however, his own fault). She told him the strange thing about the scales built into the airlock and the thing suddenly losing most of its body weight, and becoming a hollow exoskeleton, "…Which is weird, because we got made to watch _Aliens_ the other day, and I swear they have acidic blood. Then today, some lizard-man was going around sucking out the brains of people with high IQs with a giant straw-tongue to absorb their intelligence-"

"A Gallint?" Eleven asked. If only he had a phone, she could've just called him and told him that, and he would have told her all about it.

"I don't know, I guess so? But we ended up finding it. Dead. A skeleton. Oswin thinks there's some kind of crazy time traveller with a ridiculous vaporisation ray hunting people down," Clara said.

"Oh, well, hopefully we manage to catch up to them, I suppose," he said, frowning, her walking over to him finally instead of lingering by the door like a weirdo, kicking off her shoes towards the wall a she went, "Could also be a coincidence, did you rule that out?"

"Not my job, that's what Oswin does," Clara shrugged, coming and wrapping her arms around his neck, holding her hands behind his neck, pulling him so that he stooped down enough to mean she, on tiptoes, was able to kiss him for a few moments, "So what did _you_ do today?"

"I already told you," he answered, "Went out and got us some Chardonnay." Now that she was with him, she could see around the corner to the part of the room where the desk, the wardrobes and the coffee machine were. On the desk, in an ice bucket, with two glasses next to it (why two glasses when she knew for a _fact_ Eleven _hated_ wine and couldn't stand to drink it) was the aforementioned white wine.

"Is that all?"

"Well, I had a run-in with some particularly angry French nobles. Might've showed up in the middle of the French Revolution, had to get out of there quite quickly. Didn't want to get beheaded, especially if I ended up revealing I was a Time Lord and they thought I was a member of the aristocracy. I don't rather fancy having my head chopped off by a guillotine," he answered, kissing her again.

"Well, I don't think I'd be particularly happy about it, either," she said, "Ran into Kate today. Kate Stewart, you know?"

"Oh, yes, the Brigadier!"

"She thought you'd sent me and Oswin," Clara explained with a grin, "And then this complete arsehole wanted to know why the Doctor's wife couldn't get in contact with the Doctor, so I told him that if he really wanted me to call someone to bring the TARDIS down, I'd call Jack, and that shut him up. UNIT don't like Torchwood."

"_I _don't like Torchwood. Well, I like the people, but not the organisation."

"She called me 'one of them'," Clara said.

"One of what..?"

"A super, I think. I teleported by accident, barely three metres, but then I got guns pointed on me, and Kate said she didn't have teleportation in her files. And then, later," Clara went on to explain Angie called the supers 'freaks', and Lydia Cartwright's denial of the fact she was clearly a telepath because she kept hearing the mind-patch whenever she and Oswin used it.

"Sounds fishy. Somebody ought to look into that at some point, UNIT marginalising anyone suffering from an adrenal mutation. What a ridiculous thing to segregate people for," he sighed, "Humans never learn."

"For the record," she said eventually, ignoring his remark about humans, "Rose petals are tacky and cliché, and they make a mess, so I'm sort-of glad I came back this early."

"Really?"

"Yeah. Also, in the Dream, in Clarice Smith's house there were bloody rose petals everywhere, it was the worst," she muttered, "And it stank. It stank so much."

"I'm aware of how bad you stink," he joked.

"Yet you still live with me, and you still love me."

"I do, for some reason. Now, you made the bed this morning. What's say we go _un_-make it?"


	172. True Alpha

_DAY NINETY-THREE_

_Clara_

_True Alpha_

She hated communal bathrooms. Utterly despised them. Not that she thought any of the girls she lived with were unclean at all, but it was just the atmosphere of a shower block which reminded her too much of swimming lessons when she was nine years old, and any other trip to a swimming pool since, forced to share damp tiles that made your feet itch with the constant worry of contracting Athlete's Foot – or worse – from the water that hundreds of toes had been in before. In fairness, she was probably the most disgusting out of the lot of them, and she definitely smelt the worst. But she was still going to dig out a pair of cheap flip-flips to wear.

She was brushing her teeth in the mirror when she saw Jenny emerge from one of the stalls behind her, see her, and approach to join her at the sink to her lift.

"Who are you?" Jenny asked her. Clara scowled and rinsed her mouth, spitting into the sink, "You're really good at spitting, do you do it often?" Clara ignored that remark.

"What do you mean?"

"Spitting, because like, you suck-"

"_No_, Jenny! Not about that, the bit where you asked who I was," Clara interjected loudly and quickly to stop her finishing her sentence.

"Oh, I mean like, are you the Alpha Clara?" Jenny asked.

"Am I 'the Alpha Clara'?" she asked incredulously, "What on Earth does that mean?"

"Because, the universes. You know, the Alphaverse and the Betaverse. Are you the Alpha Clara or the Beta Clara?"

"I'm your stepmother," Clara said coolly, "Whichever that is. Now brush your teeth, and don't make a mess."

"I won't make a mess, I usually swallow," Jenny called after Clara as she walked out of the bathroom, already dry and dressed and carrying a damp towel, but upon hearing that she cringed and paused a moment, before shaking her head and continuing out of the bathroom with Jenny perkily shouting, "Bye, Clara!" after her.

A few minutes later she was sat at one of the tables on her own (it was relatively early and her 'usual crowd' of people she sat with weren't in Nerve Centre yet, including Eleven, who was still showering probably) eating dry cereal, because nobody trusted her enough with food to let her put milk on it.

"Well, you look like you're having fun," Thirteen said to her, coming over while she waited for the kettle to boil, which nearly made her jump, but it did surprise her a little. She hadn't spoken to Thirteen for a couple of days, and they hadn't left it on good terms, her shouting about Adam Mitchell's cryostasis to try and get Thirteen to tell her the truth about what was going on.

"Obviously, I love eating dry Cheerios on my own," Clara said, "After having to put up with your daughter saying some less-than-appropriate things in the bathroom."

"She's your daughter, too."

"Only by marriage," Clara muttered. Thirteen then pulled out one of the chairs, leaving an empty one between her and Clara, and then leant down so as to whisper.

"We've been playing a game," she said quietly, "Started it yesterday." And now, Clara was intrigued, "It's called, 'Who Can Say the Most Inappropriate Things to the Twelfth Doctor'." Okay, maybe that _did_ sound like a horribly fun game to play, and Clara spotted Old Twelvey lounging on one of the sofas, taking the whole thing up himself, "That daughter of ours is phenomenally good at it. Watch." Thirteen nodded towards Jack, sat on the other table, who took her looking at him as some kind of signal.

"Hey, Doctor," he called loudly towards Twelve, who initially glanced around to see if Jack was addressing him. When he spotted Thirteen pretending to be in deep conversation with Clara (when really Clara was a little distracted by her eyes), and saw Jack looking directly at him, he realised they _were_ talking to him.

"What?" he asked rudely.

"Have you done something new with your hair?" Jack questioned, looking genuinely curious and resting his chin on his hand and his elbow on the table top.

"No," Twelve grunted.

"Are you sure? Cos you're looking pretty hot today," Jack said.

"_What_!?" Twelve exclaimed.

"You really can't dress that provocatively," Jack continued, Donna next to him finding this hilarious, "And not expect people to take notice. You can make a married man have dark thoughts," he said ashamedly. Twelve made a disgusted noise, and then got up off the sofa and left the room to go into the Bedroom Circle and find somewhere to loiter on his own.

"Five points," Thirteen said to Jack, "Cos you totally got him to leave the room."

"Five points for what? What game is this?" Donna questioned.

"A game of who can freak out Old Twelvey the most," Clara explained. As Donna discussed the particulars of this new game with Captain Jack, Clara was distracted by two people who didn't usually sit with her joining her at the table, and she thought she ought to be glad they weren't all segregating themselves like they used to do, back when the Cult and H&amp;T ruled, the former designated to the sofas and the latter to the dining table. But they weren't even in that lodge-like room anymore, the room they had now actually resembled a spaceship, the lights turned on constantly with no windows and no fresh air. It was Amy and Rory.

"We have a question," began Rory, "Something we've been wondering for… Years." _Oh, god_, she thought.

"_Years_? What? What can it possibly be that you would have to ask _me_?"

"The Doctor," said Amy, and Clara sighed and thought, _Here we go_, Thirteen listening amusedly on the right side of her, the Ponds on the left. Answering weird questions about Eleven was _exactly _what she'd had in mind for the day, "Does he sleep in tweed?"

"Or does he actually get changed into other clothes?" Rory elaborated. Next to Clara, Thirteen snorted, and then Clara heard her chair scrape on the floor and saw her go to the kitchen to pour herself a cup of tea from the kettle that had just boiled.

Clara stared at them both for a few moments, and had an idea, so she beckoned them a little closer and whispered with a smirk: "He has a onesie made entirely of tweed that he wears in bed, every night," she told them, glancing around as though checking for eavesdroppers who were not allowed to know these lies, catching a glimpse of Thirteen (who obviously knew the truth) stifling a laugh in the kitchen.

"What, seriously!?" Amy exclaimed.

"No, not seriously! That's ridiculous! He wears pyjamas, he's not a _complete _weirdo, you know," said Clara, then as an afterthought, "And sometimes he wears nothing, you know, when we – I just realised you do not want to hear that."

"You're right, we don't," Rory said.

"I kind of do," Amy told him, and he stared at her, "What? You know you're curious and it's not like you're going to go asking our daughter. Come on, Clara, tell us."

"…About what..? Sex..? With..? Erm…" she scoffed, "I don't know. What do you want me to say? Don't ask me to rate him, Oswin asks me that constantly."

"Does she? Rate him," she ordered.

"I just said-"

"_Rate him_," Amy implored.

"Fine! Nine. If he was a girl, it would be a ten," she muttered, glancing towards the kitchen.

And _that_ was when she caught Thirteen wink at her, who was clearly listening in. The Ponds stopped questioning her when she reminded them of her queerness, which was when Eleven finally came into the room with Ten following him, talking about this or that.

"Sweetheart!" Clara called, and Eleven looked over, Claratoo watching them, "The Ponds here want to know if you sleep in a tweed onesie." Amy and Rory tried to defend themselves then, Clara just smiling at her husband, them flustered and saying they want to know no such thing and Clara was a liar. Eleven just stared at them both looking like they were prying into his private life a bit too much.

"…Right, well…" he didn't bother to say anything on the topic, "We were going out," he motioned to himself and Ten, "Do you want to come?" he asked Clara.

"Me? No," she answered, "Not today."

"I do," Donna volunteered, and Ten beamed.

"Well? Ponds?" Eleven asked them, clearly trying to forget the gossip he'd just heard from his wife.

"…Suppose so," Rory sighed, "We're not busy, are we?"

"No," Amy said, smiling, the both of them getting up from the table, "Do you want to come, Clara?"

"I just said-" Clara began.

"_Not_ you," Amy told her, motioning her head towards Claratoo, who seemed surprised she'd been invited anywhere, "As long as you don't drag Old Twelvey out with you." Clara thought it was amusing that Oswin's nickname for the Beta Twelfth Doctor had stuck with the whole crew. It was like a few weeks ago when Martha had called her 'Clars' for whatever reason.

"…Yeah, okay," Claratoo said. When she stood up Jonesy meowed in protest of her leaving, and Clara decided that she would go take up the reins of petting the cat once the other six had left. Five of them trailed off towards the console room, only Eleven loitering behind.

"Are you sure you don't want to go out?" he asked again.

"Yes, Chin, I'm sure," she said, smiling, "Go do whatever you plan to do."

"We're going to the moon," he said.

"Ooh, exotic. Let me know if you run into any Clangers," she joked.

"Well, I shall see you later," he said, walking off.

"I love you," she called.

"Love you, too."


	173. On The Moon

_Eleven_

_On The Moon_

The TARDIS materialised in a very narrow corridor. Barely a corridor, more like a store cupboard, as just two metres in front of the ship was a door out, and the way to get to the dooe was narrow indeed, with metal crates and small, silver canisters stacked on either side. If there were enough spacesuits on the ship, he could have landed them on the dusty surface of Earth's moon, but there weren't at all, they only had two. So, it was a moon base called Eden Four that they were inside.

"Where are we?" Rory asked.

"It's a base called-" Ten began.

"Oi!" Eleven protested, "_You _were out yesterday being all _Time Lord_, give me a chance."

"You were out yesterday as well!" Ten argued as the group crammed themselves into the tiny store cupboard and the TARDIS vworped away on autopilot so they could spread out slightly more amongst the boxes and the cans.

"Only to get wine, there wasn't anybody with me," Eleven said, the others looking displeased at the Doctors arguing.

"Just because your wife was busy with her sister."

"You're just jealous because _you _want to be busy with Clara's sister," Eleven countered, being highly immature, and Ten gasped and spluttered, clearly offended, and that was when Donna saw it fit to intervene.

"ALRIGHT!" she shouted over the pair of them, Claratoo looking confused and the Ponds full of secondhand-embarrassment on Eleven's behalf. She shouted so astronomically loud that Eleven clamped his hands over his ears and winced, closing his eyes. When he finally regained use of his senses and moved his hands he saw everyone else had done a similar thing, Donna had shouted that loudly, "Both of you, shut up! _You_, tell us where we are," she ordered Eleven, who smiled smugly at Ten.

"That's not fair!"

"Shut up!" Donna said again, and he finally did, if huffily.

"...It's a base called Eden Four," Eleven said, going and sonicking the door so that it slid open, jittering a little and twitching like it might slam itself shut at any moment, "Eden One was the first official, civilian moon colony people actually tried to live in. Ten years later they made a technological breakthrough in oxygen recycling and realised it was impossible to implement it in Eden One, so they built Eden Two and moved everyone over. Eden Three is the first colony on Mars. And Eden Four is just the second inhabited moon colony."

"Doesn't seem very inhabited," Amy commented. The corridors were narrow and just a few inches above their heads, all of them being relatively tall save for Clara, who Eleven knew from experience was miniscule. Though, this one was wearing high heels.

"Maybe you're just used to the TARDIS being so cramped?" Rory suggested.

"Oh, maybe," she said, thinking, them having to walk as a big clump through empty hallways.

"Where is everyone, though?" Donna asked.

"No idea," Eleven shrugged, "I don't know what year this is, maybe it's just been abandoned?" He took a few steps ahead of the group and peered left around a corner, but just saw more hallway, with large pipes and wires running along the ceiling.

"What are you doing?" Rory said behind him, and he looked around to see that Rory was talking to Amy, who had stopped dead with a glazy look in the middle in the corridor. Everyone stopped moving then, too, to look at her.

"Amy..?" Eleven asked, walking up to her concernedly, but she didn't seem to see him. His first thought was that there was some kind of contagion or infection spreading around, but he didn't know of many viruses that made people freeze. His second thought was that she'd seen something particularly enthralling ahead of them, but when he looked back there was nothing there, either, "Amelia..? Are you okay..?" He waved his hand in front of her face to get her attention, leaning in as close as he could and squinting to see her eyes. And then she blinked and reeled away.

"What are you doing!?" she exclaimed, stepping back as he leant away and frowned at her.

"What happened to you?" he asked her.

"I blinked and you were in front of me," she said, pushing past the Eleventh Doctor to walk off, the other five watching her head to the junction at the end of the corridor that Eleven had just looked down the left of. But Amy headed right, and they all hurried to follow her.

"You were staring," Rory told her, "Just frozen, staring ahead."

"No, I wasn't," Amy said, glancing back at him like he was crazy.

"You were," Donna added, to see if maybe Amy would believe them more if multiple people told her what she'd just been doing.

"Why are you leading us this way?" Eleven asked, and she paused and looked at the wall in thought.

"I'm... I just... I just think we should go this way," she shrugged, "This way is the right way to go."

"What do you mean the 'right way'?" Ten questioned, Amy walked quite fast, like her feet wrre carrying her somewhere on their own and she was barely paying attention to where they were headed, "Are you feeling alright? Maybe you ought to stop."

"I can't stop, this is where we have to go," she 'explained'. It wasn't much of an explanation, it was like something had happened to her, and Eleven and Rory walked fast enough to catch her up, the other three lingering behind, Clara yet to say a word, "I have a headache, though."

"Headache?" Rory asked.

"Uh-huh," she said vacantly, but she flinched against the ailment and lead them down another right turn down more empty hallways, all of them windowless. For all Eleven knew, this might not even be Eden Four, the TARDIS navigational systems might have failed yet again. They could even be on Pluto, or not in the Sol System at all.

"You're not being yourself," Rory told her, "You should-" He'd probably been about to tell her to stop, when she stopped walking suddenly and hit a button to her left which opened a door, and the smell that came out of that room was enough to make them stop worrying about Amy.

"Oh my god..." Amy breathed, and Eleven nudged her out of the way of the door so that he could get into the small room, also a storeroom of some form, though this one was larger and more of a square shape, and examine the scene.

Four bodies, all dead, all in identical stages of decomposition, sticky flesh hanging from their bones with skin hanging down to make their faces gaunt and yellow with rot. They were all in such a bad state that Eleven couldn't tell what had killed them, and the stink was enough to make him want to leave as he crouched down next to the closest one, lying on the ground and propped up by a crate. He couldn't pin it down, but these corpses smelt worse and more sickly than any other dead humans he'd come across before. Then he saw that over the abdomen, the fabric of the clothes was rotted through slightly. Or maybe not rotted, more burned, or disintegrated, some kind of dry substance sticking the cloth to the body. And then he realised how they died, and why the smell was so poignant.

"Their stomachs exploded and killed them," he said, his proper medical analysis of the scene. Then Ten pushed past and went to examine a different body. Thirty seconds later he declared the same thing, seeming disappointed that he hadn't proven his older-self wrong. Eleven remained smug though, standing up and turning to Amy.

"How did you know to lead us here?" he questioned.

"I just... I felt like I had to," Amy said awkwardly, like she was just as confused about what had just happened as the rest of them.

"...Clara and I were talking last night, and-"

"Didn't sound like talking," Rory grumbled, cutting across Eleven.

"Pardon?"

"Last night, I could hear you doing a whole lot of things that didn't sound like talking. Involving - what was it? Rose petals and Chardonnay?" Rory questioned.

"Rose petals!?" Donna snorted with laughter.

"No! There weren't any rose petals! And that is _private _and we have soundproofing, Pond!" Eleven spluttered, Claratoo looking thoroughly mortified hearing all of this.

"Well then your soundproofing must have stopped working," Rory said, "Because we could hear _everything_ crystal clear, couldn't we, Amy?" Amy said nothing though, she just stared at her husband. "...Amy?"

"I didn't hear a thing," Amy said.

"What!? But it was _deafening_," Rory protested.

"I know they have the room next door, but they're not _that_ bad," Amy said, "We _never _hear anything."

"Well I could hear it last night, and this morning, like a bloody circus..." he complained.

"As I was saying," Eleven began again, "We were _speaking _\- because believe it or not, we do actually talk to each other - about something very interesting involving _coffee_. Because if any of you remember, coffee is what causes the superpower mutations."

"Oswin was telling me about it yesterday," Ten added, "Mickey's, um... What did she say... A technopath. He can talk to computers. Because _somebody _made everybody coffee five days ago from the jar marked 'DO NOT CONSUME' in the cupboard," he was talking directly to Claratoo, so everyone turned to look at her.

"...The Twelfth Doctor _told _me to do it, how was I supposed to know what it would do? _He_ was the one who found the jar!" she tried to defend herself.

"Wait - so - _we're _gonna mutate!? Like the others!?" Amy exclaimed.

"I think it's already started," Eleven said, then he looked pointedly at Rory, "Because one of you _clearly _has some sort of superhearing. And I have no idea what kind of superpower finding dead bodies is."

"Wait, _that's _what happened to me?" Amy asked.

"I hope so, otherwise there's something far more sinister going on here than exploding stomachs. And exploding stomachs are already quite sinister," Eleven said assuredly, pushing through the group and leaving the room to carry on walking. The others all followed, if lagging behind a little with Ten telling Donna, Rory and Amy everything he'd heard from Oswin and Rose about the new mutations involving teleportation, eye colour and cryostasis.

"What are they talking about? With the rose petals?" Claratoo caught up to him and asked quietly, the two of them further ahead. Eleven went red.

"Nothing, there were no rose petals. Clara said they were 'tacky and cliché,'" he told her, "Liked the Chardonnay though."

"So... You and her... You're..?"

"...What..?" he asked, unsure what she was going for as she fidgeted, seeming nervous. Eleven wasn't used to Clara being nervous around him. They slowed down a little.

"I mean... You..."

"Doctor!" Amy shouted, and Eleven looked around just in time to see a large door slide down from the ceiling much faster than it was supposed to, looking as though it had slammed into the floor like a guillotine. Just like that, it seemed gravity or a malfunction had cut off himself and Beta Clara from the other four members of the crew, leaving them isolated on Eden Four.


	174. Invasion Of Privacy

_Amy_

_Invasion Of Privacy_

The four of them were disconnected from the Eleventh Doctor and Other Clara, Amy helplessly banging on the metal door that had come down to chop them apart out of nowhere, she and Donna both shouting, Donna seeming to yell far louder than she usually did (in fact, she was making Amy wince, and Rory seemed completely disorientated). Eventually though, the Doctors from both sides of the door told them to stop shouting because it wasn't going to do any good.

"It's obviously a malfunction, and screaming won't make it work," Ten advised, looking around the edges of the door for any button that might open it. He found the button, in fact, a little switch, and flicked it so that it clicked and then shot back down again. But the door didn't move, didn't even try to move, just stayed there like a metal wall keeping them all apart.

"This reminds me of when we lost Rose, remember?" Eleven called through from the other side, "Not a happy time, eh?" Ten looked like he'd been punched after that, and Amy couldn't tell if Eleven was being awful on purpose, or just stupid. She didn't know too well what Eleven was referencing, but she knew from Ten's reaction that whatever it was, it wasn't good in the slightest.

"That's not funny," Donna shouted at him, her clearly knowing what had happened more than Amy or Rory did.

"Right. Yes. Of course not. Sorry. Well, what shall we do?" Eleven mused from the other side, highly muffled and relatively tricky to understand.

"Guess we split up," said Ten huffily.

"Sorry, what was that?" Eleven asked.

"He said we should split up," Donna repeated Ten loudly, Amy flinching again.

"It's not like we can do anything else," Rory commented, "Unless we just stay here, which is probably a terrible idea." It didn't take long for them all to decide that they really had better split apart, because Rory was right in saying they didn't have any other choice. So, the four of them left the door, Eleven and Beta Clara stuck on the other side of it, going their separate ways for the time being. At least there wouldn't be any more bickering between Ten and Eleven. Amy didn't know why they'd been arguing, usually they got along fine. Maybe that was only when they were on the TARDIS, though.

In the meantime, Amy just stayed with the group and tried to figure out how she'd known exactly where to go to find four dead bodies. They'd told her she'd zoned out for a moment, but she didn't feel like she'd zoned out at all, she'd just blinked once and everyone had moved to be staring at her like she had a phallus drawn on her forehead. She didn't know what had happened, she just _knew_ she had to walk a certain way and open a certain door. She felt like she _had_ to open that door. What can't of superpower was that?

"I thought you needed to be in a high-adrenaline situation for these powers to work, anyway?" she questioned Ten, who was leading them now that Eleven was gone and Amy didn't have any more weird premonitions.

"You usually do," Ten explained, "But by now the laced coffee has mutated because of exposure to the time vortex, that's why there are mutations, and that's why it's acting faster. You should think yourselves lucky, Rose got bludgeoned with a lead pipe and Clara had her toes and fingers broken for them to start working."

"Well when you put it that way, I really do feel lucky," Rory muttered, clearly displeased with his experiences of the previous night. Well, Amy supposed that was just what you had to deal with when you had superhearing and you had the bedroom next door to Whoufflé.

"Hey, at least you didn't have cigarettes put out on your face," Ten said.

"Who had that!?" Rory exclaimed.

"Clara, again."

"Oh, I'm surprised she didn't enjoy it," Donna joked bitterly, and Amy snickered at Clara's expense, even though it wasn't _particularly_ funny that she'd ended up with cigarette burns all over her cheeks (Amy vaguely remembered that happening to both Clara and Rose two months ago, and she remembered what had ensued with everyone begging to be graced with the superpowers).

"Don't we usually get revenge when people do stuff like drug us?" Amy asked.

"Well they've been playing that game, haven't they?" Donna told her.

"What game?"

"The game of who can say the most inappropriate things to the Twelfth Doctor," Donna said, "I think the Harknesses started it." Ten groaned exasperatedly at Donna referring to Jack and Jenny as 'the Harknesses'. He generally hated any reminder that his only daughter had run off and married Captain Jack.

"Yeah, but one of us could have a really dangerous power," Amy said, "Like Martha, or Rose. I mean, she makes things cease to exist. You can't just fluster him."

"Another Prank War isn't what this TARDIS needs, Amy," Ten said to her sternly, "Not three of them. They always end badly. First with the Twins getting put into a coma, remember?"

"Which wasn't our intention, and it was River's idea," Donna pointed out to him.

"Yes, well, the Second one ended when-"

"When you lot turned _yourselves_ into dogs," Amy said, "Which was nothing to do with us. Twelve came to us for help and then _drugged_ us."

"Well Martha _did_ hit him with a gun," Donna reminded her.

"Did she?" Rory asked.

"Yeah, it sounded totally hilarious," Amy said, "We could always kill him and make him regenerate, maybe he'll turn into someone nicer?"

"No! Murder is not the answer!" Ten argued, "Just leave him alone, we can't sink to his level." Begrudgingly, they all shut up on that topic and agreed to disagree. Amy was sure that one of them would have some kind of revenge scheme in the works, anyway, something like that wouldn't go unpunished in the weird justice system they'd built for themselves.

"Was that a storage room where we found the bodies?" Donna asked Ten all of a sudden – a genuine, relevant question, it seemed.

"Yep," Ten answered, leading them through mazes of hallways through of locked doors, looking for anything, the smell of death still clinging to the air like sulphur.

"So, why would four people be lying around in a storage room when their stomachs exploded?" she asked.

"Good question," he mused, "Maybe they were hiding from something? Don't know what, though…"

"I swear, if we run into one of those Xeno-whatsits…" Donna began angrily.

"No, they don't make people explode," Amy said. She remembered plenty from them all being made to watch _Aliens_ by Adam Mitchell the other day, because somehow watching horror sci-fi counted as an educational film in their line of work.

"Chestbursters do, they rip out of people," Rory said, "And they have acid blood. Maybe that's what burned the clothes?"

"It was stomach acid that burnt the clothes," Ten said.

"And chestbursters come out of _chests_, not _stomachs_. Clue's in the name," Amy reminded him.

"Maybe it was something they ate," Ten shrugged, "Something gaseous. Like how if you held in a fart for two weeks you'd explode. Of course, you can't hold in a fart for than long because it comes out when you're sleeping, so it's a ridiculous thing to be scared of. Something particularly nasty could cause an increased methane build up, maybe?"

"Why did they stink _so bad_?" Donna queried.

"Rotting food," Ten answered, "Stomach contents smell awful."

"So is everybody on here dead? From the same thing?" Rory asked.

"Don't know," Ten answered, "But a lot of these doors are locked. Hang on." He went up to the closest locked door (it had a red light lit up above it, while on the unlocked doors the light wasn't lit at all) and sonicked the button on the side so that the light changed colour and the door started to slide up, but as soon as it got up about a foot, the light turned red and it slammed back down. "That's weird…" Ten tried again, and the same thing happened. Three times, it still shut itself.

"How is it countering the screwdriver like that?" Amy asked.

"No idea…" Ten said quietly, paying more attention to the sonic and tapping it against his palm to see if it was broken, though when he made an even more confused face, it seemed it wasn't broken, "It's like something's counteracting it, something that knows what it's doing."

"Something's controlling the door, do you mean?"

"Looks that way. But it'd have to be clever," Ten said, crouching down on the floor and leaning over so that when he sonicked the button for the fourth time, he could see under the crack in the door. But this time, the door didn't even get a foot high, it was barely four inches when it slammed shut, trying to keep him from seeing in, it seemed.

Amy stared around the room as Ten tried again and again, doing nothing except letting the same bad smell as the other room they'd visited slip out from beneath like mist, and she assumed there were bodies within.

"Look," Rory said, pointing to something she hadn't seen yet. A small, black panel on the roof, a tiny square the size of her palm, with a blinking, white light within, "Is that a camera?"

"Yep," Ten said when he got back to his feet and looked to it, "Something's watching us."


	175. Shameless

_Eleven_

_Shameless_

"Doctor?" Claratoo asked him, fidgeting and biting her nails occasionally. He'd been examining all of the locked doors that seemed to slam shut on him when he tried to sonic them open, all of them reeking of rotting flesh and stomach contents, however, which didn't bode well with him. He was checking every door they came across, all of them with red lights on top.

"Hmm? Yes?" he said, pressing his ear to the metal of one of the doors to try and hear what was happening on the other side.

"Why did you marry me?" she asked, "Or, um. Her. I mean." He didn't move for a moment, watching her with her arms crossed looking at him with a strange expression.

"I was drunk," he answered simply, smiling a little at his memories, "Eloped in Las Vegas. We weren't even together."

"_You_ were drunk? _The Doctor_?" she questioned. He moved back from the door when he decided he couldn't hear a thing from within.

"Yes, incredibly. Can't remember a thing. Jack's fault, he has some special home-brewed moonshine, no idea what's in it," Eleven explained, "But yes, I think we held the casino staff at gunpoint. That's what it seemed like the next day. Nasty business, three months ago now."

"Wait, so, you regret it?" she asked.

"No! Of course not! What makes you think I regret a single second of my marriage?" he asked, shocked, "A lot of things would never have happened if it wasn't for Captain Jack throwing a weird party and deciding to take us to Vegas. Anyway, me getting married wasn't remotely the most shocking thing that happened – the Ponds stole a baby, and the Tenth Doctor got Rose's face tattooed on his back. Frightful occurrences, all of them."

"Uh-huh…" she said quietly, looking like she was thinking. At any rate, he turned away and headed off again with her trailing behind in a very weird mood he'd never seen his wife in before – he should have to talk to her about it later. That was to say, he would talk to Alpha Clara about it later, see if she could enlighten him, perhaps. "So you're in love with me?" Eleven stopped walking.

"…What are you trying to get out of this conversation?" he turned back to her, crossing his arms. She wasn't too close to him, quite a few metres away.

"The truth?" she said unsurely, like she didn't know herself, "I just want to know if all of this happened _after_ this 'Dimension Crash' whatsit, or if you just never told me a lot of things. If the Twelfth Doctor never told me a lot of things."

"I'm sorry to tell you, but I suspect he's a liar," said Eleven stiffly, "I wouldn't trust that man to tell the truth about what he had for breakfast, and I'm relatively happy to know I'll never change into him. I'd been in love with you for weeks before that crash, but then I'd never say anything myself because of some particularly damning reasons involving mortality."

"…You mean… You never told me? In my universe? Even before there were two? _My_ Doctor never…" she looked quite heartbroken, and Eleven didn't know what to do. He didn't think he ought to hug her, he didn't think that would help her at all, but he wondered what it must be like to hear something like that, to hear that she'd missed out on a whole lot of happiness simply because of _his_ incompetence.

"I'm sorry," was all he said as she stared at the floor, "And I'm sorry he seems to be so awful to you now. And I'm also sorry about what happened to Danny."

"How does everybody know about what happened to Danny?" she asked, sounding a little angry.

"Oh, well, Adam Mitchell… Saw it. On TV. There's another universe where we're a television show, but the show follows the Betaverse, not the Alphaverse. I believe my sister-in-law calls it the Gammaverse. That's why everyone hates Twelve, because of what we've seen. Although, I, admittedly, haven't seen an awful lot of it. I _did_ see that peculiar one on the train, though, and thought it was terribly unjustified of him to force you to lead that poor woman to her death. A dreadful thing to do," Eleven said.

"Right. My life's just put on screen for people to get entertainment out of?"

"Well, I don't think Adam was particularly entertained, but I suppose so," Eleven said, "Which I'm sorry about, again. I wish I could do something to help," he said.

"What's she like? Other Me?" Clara asked, starting to walk again. He supposed she'd heard much worse things about Danny from the Twelfth Doctor anyway, and Eleven had done little more than offer his sympathies. He walked next to her now, strangely paranoid that she might faint or get herself into trouble and need help – she'd always been danger prone, no matter what universe she was from.

"Cynical," Eleven said, "Much more cynical than you. She's been through a lot too, you know. It's just while you've suffered through more emotional trauma, she's been through _much_ more physical trauma."

"Yeah, people keep telling me that," she muttered, "Physical trauma like what?"

"Oh, well," he thought, scratching the back of his head next to her, "Hmm. Where to start? She has nanogenes, you see. A cloud of them, that heal her. Nothing to do with me, her sister did it, and between you and I, Clara's sister isn't very well. She got her foot shot off by a mad doctor with a shotgun, I think."

"_What_!?"

"There's also the crossbow bolt, ripped it out of her own face, or so I was told. Got impaled by a branch and had to lift herself off of it, I think she died briefly in that instance… She died a few weeks before that in an explosion, for a while… She's had multiple brain aneurysms because of those pesky superpowers. Again, because of the superpowers somebody broke her toes and fingers – though they did almost bludgeon Rose to death. Oswin slashed her face open, needed stitches. Erm… I think she mentioned something happening in the Dream where she broke her arm in four places… Then I suppose there's the worm that ate her and Jack. And she fell off a waterfall and broke her back, that was just over two weeks ago… That's probably just a handful of her injuries, gets herself in terrible states," Eleven said, Claratoo staring at him in disbelief, as though she thought he was making all of these things up.

"Are you being serious?"

"Yes, of course. Makes the things that happened to Jenny the other day look tame, and _she_ got her eyes gouged out. People get injured at an alarming rate on board the TARDIS in this universe, oddly enough. Very strange…" he mused. It _was_ strange, but he didn't know what he could do about it, "Now if you want to talk about _emotional_ suffering, don't get Oswin started. I doubt there are an awful lot of people who died when they were twenty-five who will tell you good things about their lives. Of course, it's not a competition though, that would be barbaric, and I wouldn't advise asking people about these things."

"…What do you do?"

"Sorry? What does who do?"

"You and Other Me."

"What do we..? You don't mean..? What do you mean?"

"Like, do you go on dates?"

"Oh. Yes, of course. A few weeks ago we went to an empty moon covered in fake snow. It's a tourist attraction in the future, you see," he said, "We've been to Los Angeles in the Forties as well, it's where we got these rings," he held up his left hand for her to see the silver, and she took hold of it and pulled it closer, which was behaviour he was definitely suspicious of, to say the least. He was just naturally paranoid when weird, alternate-dimension versions of his wife were holding his hand and closely inspecting his wedding ring.

"I didn't expect that the Doctor would ever be wearing a wedding ring," she commented softly, and he had to lean down a little so as to hear her.

"Well, no, probably no-" And _then_ she stood on tiptoes as quickly as she could and pulled his arm at the same time, trying to pull him in for a kiss.


	176. Guilt Trip

**AN: INCREDIBLY fitting title for this chapter, if I do say so myself...**

_Clara_

_Guilt Trip_

"I really don't know how you convinced me to do this," Thirteen said, following Clara out of the TARDIS. It was sunny where they were, an old building nestled in a flourishing woodland, a woodland creeping into the abandoned building through the windows with ivy crawling up the sides. Rotting and beautiful, Clara thought, full of light illuminating old darkness. It was a school, that much she knew.

"Easily," Clara answered with a smile, and then added, "You're easy."

"Oh, you're just as incorrigible as you always were," Thirteen commented, and Clara laughed.

"Have I not changed a lot, then?" Clara asked, going up to the door to see if she could force it open, or if she might have to phase through it.

"You know I can't tell you that," Thirteen said, and Clara glanced back and looked her up and down so that she crossed her arms and raised her eyebrows.

"So boring."

"Did you just check me out?" Thirteen asked.

"Don't be ridiculous, of course I checked you out. Now, do you want me to try to get inside?" Clara asked, folding her arms to look at the door.

"Inside..? Oh, the school?"

"Obviously. Why? What else would I be trying to get inside?" Clara asked innocently, casting Thirteen a tiny frown. Thirteen, who was standing not too close and giving the building a weary look, tried to scowl at Clara, but didn't manage it.

"Exactly as I said. Incorrigible. Anyway, yes, I suppose you should try to get into the school, unless you're planning on taking me for a picnic?" Thirteen suggested.

"No, I haven't brought anything to eat," and then she glanced at Thirteen and made sure Thirteen was looking, "_Well_, not food-wise," she eyed her again. Thirteen bit the inside of her cheek, trying not to laugh and shaking her head.

"I'll leave, you know, if you won't behave yourself."

"But wouldn't life be so boring if I behaved myself, Doctor?" Clara asked her, and Thirteen came a step closer.

"You almost never call me Doctor," Thirteen said, "...Are you opening the door, then?" Thirteen reminded her, and she realised she'd been staring a little, "Or did you forget that that's what you're supposed to be doing?"

"Oh, and _I'm _the incorrigible one? Really?" Clara joked, snapping herself out of her trance and Thirteen laughed. Looking at Thirteen rather than the school, Clara waved a hand, and the door blasted itself open, "After you," she held out a hand towards the door and curtseyed, and Thirteen laughed.

"Aren't you just adorable?" she said, and Clara laughed, "Well then, suppose I'd better enter, hmm?"

"At your own risk, of course," Clara told her.

"It's fine, I'm used to entering risky things," Thirteen then cast an inappropriate look towards Clara - copying the exact same look Clara kept giving her whenever she made a dirty joke. Clara just raised her eyebrows, and watched Thirteen cross the threshold to the old school, before following her, "You know, for a teacher who's never taught in a school, you really are a good teacher."

"A good teacher at teaching what?"

"Well I never really used to think about how stanza structure conveyed the overall message of a poem," shrugged Thirteen, "Also it is completely different sleeping with girls when you're also a girl. But like I said, you're a good teacher."

"Some say good teacher, others say bad influence," Clara commented, "The latter I clearly am."

"Why'd you bring us here?"

"I like old buildings. What was it Sally Sparrow said?" Clara wondered, walking backwards in front of Thirteen, who wasn't taking her eyes off her, "She said they make her feel sad, which is 'happy, for deep people'."

"Sally Sparrow? This again? Really?"

"If only she wasn't engaged."

"If only _you_ weren't married."

"Would you not forgive me?" Clara asked, doing her innocent-act again, which apparently worked like a charm, even though Thirteen saw right through her. She didn't say anything though. "Anyway, I'm good at remembering quotes. Especially from pretty girls. For example, the first thing you said to me today was, 'Well, you look like you're having fun.'"

"You were having a very exciting time with your Cheerios, what can I say? Of course, what I _meant_ to tell you was that your smile sparkles like all the stars in the universe. Or something just as horribly tacky."

"Sparkles? You make me sound like a washing detergent."

"Well that can't be right, your mouth's as dirty as they come. And I should know," Thirteen said.

"Please don't use the words 'dirty', 'mouth' and 'come' in the same sentence," Clara advised, "Not around me, at any rate."

"Suppose I forgot to watch what I say around you. But speaking of watching your language, which one of you has been teaching my daughter to swear?" Thirteen questioned, and Clara didn't know if she was really being serious or not. And when she glanced back at her, she _still_ couldn't tell (she must not have enough practice...)

"...Oswin, I assume. She's probably trying to impress her," Clara answered, decided it would be best to give a proper response.

"Like you're trying to impress me, now?"

"What would possibly make you think that?"

"Oh, the tight jeans and the leather jacket, most of all. Really makes you look sexy," Thirteen said nonchalantly, walking right past Clara with her chin held high, pretending not to notice her. Clara glanced down at her jeans.

"They're not that tight," she argued.

"Yes they are, I should know, I've worn that pair," Thirteen said, "Oh, I should mention, we're sort of the same size. I'd say it was some factor of my physical attraction to you, but the best reason I've come up with is a subconscious desire to avoid clothes shopping. Not that it worked, regeneration caused me to develop a fashion sense. I, unlike _some _people, don't _really_ have the urge to dress as an out-of-season librarian." Clara stared and said nothing. "But I do like those jeans."

"Did you just insult my dress sense? _You_? With the bow-ties and the tweed? The pin-striped suits and old shoes? The cricket whites? The battered leather jacket? The umbrella? The patchwork coat? The lace cuffs?" Clara questioned.

"And all of those things still look better on me than most of your clothes do on anyone."

"Could you just explain to me how we're still married in the future?" Clara asked.

"Easy - I always prefer you out of clothes than in clothes anyway, sweetheart," Thirteen said. And Clara blushed, and nearly thought that every criticism Thirteen had just said was precisely engineered so that delivery of that one pickup line would be possible.

"So… So was your entire argument there designed to make me stop wearing tight jeans? And anyway, how would you know they were tight at all unless you've been looking carefully?" Clara asked, catching up with Thirteen, who'd wandered off to explore, leaving Clara tagging along behind.

"I've worn them, I just said. Maybe if you listened instead of just staring at me dreamily thinking about how gorgeous I am, you'd remember. Also because I _have_ been looking carefully," Thirteen said.

"Is my narcissism rubbing off?"

"No, it's really just my _own_ narcissism shining through. It never used to," said Thirteen, pondering, "Well, it sort of did. Talking about how brilliant I am. You could also say that before recently, I didn't have a lot to boast about when it came to my physical appearance, whereas-"

"Whereas now you're insanely hot?" Clara suggested, and Thirteen, who was right by her side on the right, leant close to say what she said next.

"You took the words right out of my mouth, wifey," she said, barely two inches away from Clara's face. Clara felt her breath when Thirteen breathed, warm and sweet, and the Thirteen smiled and moved away, Clara staring at the place where her eyes had just been. "Anything in particular in this school?"

"No," Clara said, reaffirming herself and having to catch up to Thirteen again, "Not that I know of, just a random, derelict school... Hey, um," when Thirteen realised Clara was about to ask a question, she moved all of her attention away from the walls of the building onto the girl, listening as Clara spoke, "Does the TARDIS ever actually warm to me?"

"Erm... Well, more sort of, tolerates you. Doesn't hide your bedroom or create hologram predators to chase you anymore. Rescues you if you need it. More for me than because she likes you, though. Hasn't tried to kick you off for a long time," Thirteen said, "Kind of hates our brother-in-law, though."

"Our what? We don't... Who?"

"Oh, ah... Oops..."

"Do you mean Adam?" Clara stepped towards her, and she backed away a little towards the wall, saying nothing, "Adam Mitchell? Our brother-in-law?"

"I... Oh my god, okay, yes," Thirteen said, taking Clara's hands in a pleading way, "But you can_not_ tell Oswin. You just can't. She cannot know that you know anything about that, okay? ... Clara, I said okay?" Thirteen asked again when Clara didn't answer. Clara was staring at their hands.

"Your hands are soft," Clara said, blurting it out weakly like word vomit. Thirteen pulled her hands away instantly, leaving Clara's fingers grasping after ghosts in the air. "...Okay, sorry. I won't tell her anything."

"Do you promise?" Thirteen asked seriously, and Clara laughed as though she were joking.

"_What_?"

"You have to promise! It's a vital part of their future, I can't have you running around spoiling everything," Thirteen told her sternly.

"Well I guess if you don't want me doing that you'll need to keep me awfully busy," Clara said, Thirteen said nothing, fidgeting with her fingers in a crude manner. "What?"

"Nothing. Do you promise?"

"Fine, I promise," Clara sighed. Thirteen nodded, and then turned and walked off, looking a little haunted. Clara went after her, trying (with poor results) to deduce her behaviour as she turned right into the sports hall of the school, huge, with old markings painted on the floor and basketball hoops at either end.

"Adam told me something hilarious about a gym like this once," Thirteen began, going to the middle of the room and looking around. Clara stood nearby, watching her, about five feet away.

"Go on?"

"It was about... Oh, what was his name? Rupert..? Um... Oh, Danny. Danny Pink. That one," said Thirteen.

"Well then it's a good thing you're out with me and not the other one. You know, the one who actually _did_ go out with Danny Pink? Not me?" Clara was annoyed at repeated mentions of some bloke she'd only met once, for less than twenty minutes total. Thirteen laughed a little.

"Adam talks in episode numbers," she began, "He's told the story a lot. I've seen it, too. It's the opening of episode five - you know, the episode with that _hideous_ pantsuit you were wearing? Which goes to further illustrate my earlier point of you having atrocious dress sense."

"Oh, yes, of course."

"Well you slept with him the episode before. You and Danny Pink were standing right here - well not _right here_, but in the middle of a school sports hall. Right here," she was holding out her arms as though to show Clara very clearly where 'right here' was. "He was asking you out on a date and getting all of his words mixed up - appalling at flirting, that boy - and, um... Oh, you made a joke about that not being surprising because he's a maths teacher. And then a kid walked in on the pair of you. So close the tiniest gust of wind would've made him head-butt you. I remember thinking - what a terrible spot to secretly hook-up. I would have thought a store cupboard was far more versatile." Clara laughed at her joking, which was surprising, because she never normally laughed at any jokes involving her and Danny Pink.

"How close?" Clara asked, stepping closer, dark thoughts coming to her mind.

"Um... About..." Thirteen held up her index fingers, spacing them about three inches apart.

"Really?" Clara kept approaching.

"Mmmhmm," said Thirteen, and then she spied Clara getting closer, so she took a step back, trying to be discreet, hoping Clara's advance was subconscious with no untoward intents. The closer Clara got, the more flustered and flummoxed Thirteen seemed to grow, "So, er... You know, in the future, we have a dog."

"A dog?"

"Uh-huh, it's this mongrel. Pretty small, you know? And an estate car. We live in the suburbs, work in a school, both teachers, actually. We have three children," Thirteen talked aimlessly, spoon-feeding Clara lies hopefully interesting enough to distract her.

"Oh really? Two girls? Different species?"

"Well, Time Lords actually mate in a completely different way to humans, you know? We lay eggs. They can only reproduce with the same gender, it's really..." Thirteen trailed off her amusing lies, finding herself against the back wall with nowhere else to turn, and Clara was right in front of her. _Right_ in front of her. "Clara..." she breathed, and Clara felt breath on her face when she stood slightly on tiptoes, pressing her forehead to Thirteen's, their noses touching and lips almost together. "We can't..."

"Why can't we?" Clara whispered, knotting her fingers through Thirteen's, both of them with their eyes closed, all focus on the breathing of the other, the rise and fall of chests in a disjointed, aching fashion. All of a sudden, the joking, flirtatiousness of the atmosphere was gone, replaced with a wanton, tense sort of mood.

"It's wrong. You're married."

"To you," Clara murmured.

Thirteen clenched her jaw and scrunched up her eyes, trying to conjure up the willpower she didn't have to just move away from Clara Oswald.

"I can't."

"But you want to."

"Morally. It's wrong. Morally," Thirteen barely made her words a coherent sentence. Clara could feel the sweat on her palms.

"Moral ambiguity is the canvas onto which humanity is painted," she whispered, standing high enough on tiptoes to make herself the taller of the pair of them, keeping their noses touching.

"Don't be intellectual with me. I can never resist..." Thirteen told her under her breath.

"_That's kind of the point_." Clara smiled then, the two of them so close to touching - millimetres apart. Thirteen, her eyes shut, felt the curl of Clara's lips into an invisible grin.

"...I... I can taste your breath..." Clara breathed out then on purpose.

She felt the slightest tingle when Thirteen tried to talk and couldn't stop their lips from brushing ever so slightly - a genuine touch, a taste she couldn't savour. It was like an electric current running through them, both of them having to fight against the urge to connect it back up, so the miniscule gap between their mouths remained. Thirteen wasn't moving though, wasn't moving at all; she stayed right there, against the wall, beneath Clara. "_Stop._"

"I'm not doing anything. I'm just standing close..." Clara barely had to make a sound for Thirteen to hear her, and they stayed like that, frozen together and feeling the aching heat of the other. Clara could taste the coffee on Thirteen's breath from the cup she'd made her herself that morning, bitter, pungent and strong on her tongue. Their silhouettes were nearly pressed together in the daylight streaming through the room's high window, one shadow but for the single gap where lips felt like they should be meeting. If either of them tried to close their mouths they would end up kissing the other. Clara's heartbeat was loudest, thudding painfully in her ears, aching as it went on, amorously begging for the gap to be closed, and both of Thirteen's hearts were an audible whisper that Clara was listening for, above the shallow, pained breathing, but it seemed neither of them could bring themselves to bridge the gap. And she could smell Thirteen, by _god_ she could smell her, she could smell all those familiar Time Lord smells, like the constant musk of books and that aroma like oil and machinery, and other acquired smells like that of coffee - and Clara thought she might possibly smell some intoxicating type of perfume and didn't know whether to ask or not. She breathed in every single detail about the girl, taking note of how soft her skin was and the tickle of her blonde hair against Clara's temples.

_It would be so easy to kiss her._

A bang shook the walls and shook them, sounding like thunder in the heavy silence that had been suffocating them more than the breath of the other on their face. Clara jumped, opened her eyes, moved away enough to allow Thirteen to turn her head to the right, to the direction the noise seemed to have come from, and breathe some fresh air not infected by Clara. It was all quiet again momentarily, the phantom echo of the noise pounding in her skull as Clara found herself to be trying to calm her breathing.

"I thought you said this building was empty?" Thirteen asked, pulling their hands apart and sticking her own in her pockets to keep them from Clara, who was watching the other wall still. Clara had forgotten she was holding Thirteen's hands until their too-familiar warmth was gone from her fingers, along with the cool metal of the three wedding rings. The cloud of passion hanging over them - if Clara really did have to be so horribly cliché and dull about it, though she didn't know how else to describe the spell that had wrapped them both together in that gym - evaporated as quickly as Clara seemed to have summoned it to envelop them both in a world of half-kisses and fevered excuses. They were seemingly alone, cool, and quiet.

"I just assumed that nobody would be here," Clara said quietly, "You know, it was probably just something falling... It's old, the floors might be rotten." Thirteen walked off then, heading towards the door out of the sports hall, Clara at her heels.

She stuck her head out of the doorway and looked left and right, before going right and then sharply right again almost immediately, following the sound curiously, probably trying to shake off the lingering memory of what had just happened between them in the gym. The way Thirteen had been talking about Claratoo and Danny almost made it seem like fate, or a cruel coincidence.

"Hey, so what if there are people here? We're trespassing anyway," Clara reminded her. Thirteen was walking fast, and when Clara spoke she reached out to grab her hand to slow her down, but as soon as their fingertips brushed Thirteen jerked her hand away like she'd been electrocuted. She stopped and turned back, keeping her hand on the wall.

"You can't be doing that," Thirteen said. Clara looked at her feet.

"Doing what?" she asked, not meeting Thirteen's gaze.

"You know what, don't play games," Thirteen was serious now, so Clara thought she'd be serious too.

"Games? Games like what? Games like you flirting with me? Flirting back? Giggling? Laughing? Holding my hands?" Clara challenged, looking at her now, now that she had an argument.

"That's-"

"It's what? Different? How is it any different to what you do? Calling me your wife to other people? I can hear you, you know. It's always, 'Ask my wife if she wants any tea,' 'Where's my wife?' and 'I was saying to my wife recently.' Calling me Coo, or sweetheart, or wifey, it's all the same. You're just as bad as me," Clara pointed out. Another bang stopped them in their tracks again, not that they were so caught up in a heavy, swollen moment like they had been minutes ago. It made her jump so much she found herself bridging the distance between she and Thirteen and taking scared hold of the girl's arm. "Do you think there's someone here?"

"Maybe it's bats."

"Bats sleep during the day!" Clara hissed at her.

"Probably just the ghosts, then," Thirteen smiled wryly at Clara, who glowered. Back to joking already - and joking at Clara's expense, no less. "What? Oh, come on, lighten up."

"I've had a lot of bad experiences with ghosts over the last few weeks, you know - or are you forgetting, _sweetheart_?" Clara said her favourite petname for her husband like a slur, throwing it at Thirteen to remind her of exactly who she was and exactly what she was doing. It had the right effect. Thirteen's smile died away like a broken lightbulb. She moved her arm out of Clara's grasp, sinking against the wall for a moment and running a hand through blonde hair, messing it up more than it was already, with that bed-hair look that really wasn't bed-hair at all, it was intended to look like that. Nevertheless, Clara watched her do this intently.

"Let's just leave," said Thirteen, and then she turned and muttered something about a mistake, which Clara heard and felt, but ignored. She was left with no choice but to follow Thirteen who seemed to be, at that moment, a malignantly-created and unattainable manifestation of the girl of her dreams. "Like you said, kids messing around."

"Or ghosts..?" Clara added jokingly, but Thirteen did not laugh. They did not speak as they returned to the TARDIS.


	177. Unsaid Things

_Eleven_

_Unsaid Things_

"_What_ are you doing!?" he exclaimed very loudly in protest of Other Clara trying to kiss him, moving his right hand up quickly enough so that his palm met her lips rather than his mouth, stopping her from achieving her goal. He'd kissed that girl so many times that he could easily _not_ kiss her when he was in some situation (like that one) where it was probably the worst possible thing he could do. She wasn't the same Clara anyway, they just _looked_ the same, no matter how similar they were and how many intimate details he knew about her and her life. The only Claras he would be kissing were ones from his universe and his point in time, nowhere and no-when else, "You can't do things like that!"

"Why can't I?" she questioned, moving his hand away by his wrist, and getting irritatingly close. Clearly she was going for manipulation tactics, the sort of tactics that might have worked on him a few months ago, but really didn't have the desired effects now.

"You're too used to being able to manipulate me," he told her coolly, stepping away, but she matched his step, not letting him gain any sort of distance. What was she playing at? Did she have no sense of morals? Was his wife – his _real_ wife – like this, too? More than her, he was reminded of the Victorian Echo, however.

"Are you saying it won't work?" she questioned.

"Yes, that's what I'm saying, of course it won't work," he told her sternly, "I have slept with you_ dozens_ of times, Oswald, and you think if you lean close and breathe in my face I'm going to cheat on my wife?"

"Your wife who is me!" she complained, "You just said that you have slept with _me_ 'dozens of times'."

"There's no part of you I haven't seen and nothing you could flash at me to get me to turn my head," he said callously, but what was he supposed to do? _He_ was not the one who had never told this girl how he felt, he didn't owe her a single shred of apology, the Twelfth Doctor did, and if the Twelfth Doctor wouldn't talk to her than he didn't see how it was his problem. Yes, he pitied her, but when she pulled stunts like this there was only so far that 'pity' would go. Finally though, she stood still and he took some more steps back so that he was away from her.

"'Dozens', is it? What is that, every night?" she questioned him bitterly, anger bubbling beneath her cold tone of voice, "You expect me to believe that _you_, the _Doctor_, the eternally virginal, king-of-the-universe or whatever you think yourself to me, _lowers_ yourself-"

"I'm not 'lowering' myself for anything!" he shouted at her, "Sometimes people fall in love and it doesn't matter how jealous you are, _or_ how bitter you are about unsaid things that aren't anything to do with me in the slightest!"

"It's everything to do with you!"

"Instead of blaming me – or rather, an _alternate universe _version of me and some future-idiot you and I both know _I_ will _never_ become, maybe you should wonder why _you_ never said anything, hmm? Relationships are mutual things, Clara."

"What do you know about relationships!? You live in a box and you don't have any friends so you just drag me along with you and force me to lie to everyone I care about!" she shouted, and he thought he saw tears in her eyes, and realised these words weren't meant for him at all, they were meant for Twelve.

"Well I'm sorry that he's like that," Eleven said stiffly, "I'm sorry that things worked out poorly for you."

"Fine! Just stand there all high-and-mighty spoon-feeding me all this _crap_ about the 'physical suffering' of your stupid bloody wife in your stupid bloody universe! I don't care that someone shot her in the face or broke her back, because it doesn't matter how much shit gets piled on her, she still doesn't know how this feels!" she shrieked.

"No! She doesn't! She doesn't know how it feels to lose a boyfriend, a husband, an other-half, and I'm _glad_! I'm so glad that she's still happy and she doesn't scream at me or berate me for doing absolutely nothing wrong! All I did was _refuse_ to kiss you, _refuse_ to be unfaithful, and the fact you're getting so angry about that just proves how bitter and different you are."

"I was _in love_ with you and you were in love with me and you never told me!"

"Yes I did. _I_ did, _I_ have said all of those things thousands of times to someone else with your face, but that's all you have in common, Clara. Faces. Wearing her face like a mask to get what you want."

"'Like a mask'!? _Like a fucking mask_!? I'M the real Clara Oswald! I'm not some copy, some Echo! Do you have any idea how inadequate you standing there and still refusing to tell me the truth makes _me_ feel!?"

"_It isn't me making you feel inadequate!_ It's _Twelve_! Take it up with _him_! _Stop_ taking your frustrations out on _me_ when all _I'm_ doing is-"

"WILL BOTH OF YOU SHUT UP!" somebody screamed so loud he clamped hands over his ears and his hair was ruffled like a gust of violent wind had just blown through the hallways of the abandoned moon colony. When he looked to his left and Claratoo to her right, they both saw the other four, Donna in the lead. By that point, he was convinced that she was shouting _impossibly_ loud and it must be down to some adrenaline-based help that she was managing to do so.

Eleven did shut up, though. He didn't want to carrying on having some ridiculous fight he had next to no stake in with a girl he had less and less sympathy for as every minute of her screaming and/or trying to have sex with him rolled by. So away from her he drifted towards the approaching quartet, feeling a desire to get back to his friends and alienate her the way she'd been alienating herself – and to think, he'd been one of the few who had actually been willing to talk to her. _To think_, he'd exercised his authority as a Time Lord to get the others to allow them to stay. And he was repaid by her outright _trying_ to be a homewrecker, because after that spool he got brimming with envy and spiteful rage, he was sure that she had some dark, _dark_ ulterior motives for coming onto him.

"Rory could hear you from ages away," Amy said to him.

"Yes, well, with the headache I've got now, I dread to think what poor Rory's suffered through," said Eleven dryly, grimacing to himself, "I take it you all heard everything, then?"

"Yep," said Rory, narrowing his eyes at Claratoo, "Someone trying to kiss the Doctor, Amy, isn't that new?" he joked a little.

"Oh, shut up…" Amy muttered.

"She has a lot of morals, your wife, doesn't she?" Ten commented with a fake tone of surprise that was hiding his real emotions, though Eleven wasn't calm enough to deduce what his real tone was, so he responded with bitter quips.

"Yes, and Rose cheated on Tentoo with you after just four days back, so I don't think this is a conversation you really want to be having."

"Oi," said Donna, "Tell him what we've figured out." She was speaking to Ten, and Eleven (who'd made no headway at all in trying to deduce why everybody on the colony was dead from stomach-explosions) looked at him expectantly with his arms crossed, trying to ignore Claratoo, who was getting dirty looks from the three humans. Strange, Eleven thought, they'd never seemed to care so much about his marriage before, despite the fact they'd all got together and planned that disastrous Second Wedding months ago.

"Something's been closing the doors on us," Ten said, "As though somebody's watching us."

"Ah, yes, I noticed that," he said, "Reminds me of the Dalek Asylum. Who knew that an omnipotent hacker would one day be my insufferable sister-in-law? …Don't tell her I said she was insufferable."

"Scared of her?" Claratoo questioned, and apparently she'd just stopped caring about what the other members of the Alpha Crew actually thought of her, and had given up her attempts to 'blend in' and avoid the ridiculing her counterpart faced.

"Yes, terrified," said Eleven.

"Martha saw her beat a lobster to death with a branch once," Amy said knowingly.

"_I_ saw her beat a _person_ to death with a monkey-wrench," Ten declared, "…It was awful, to be honest."

"And she put us all in a coma for two days," Rory said.

"Which you all completely deserved," Eleven muttered, "Anyway, yes, somebody's watching us? Controlling the doors? But refusing to speak to us?"

"_Who said I was refusing_?"


	178. Vendortron

**AN: If you guys don't review I've no idea if anybody likes or hates what I'm doing right now - I don't mean to sound like a dick, but I like to know what things people think are good and what they don't so that I can utilise that in future storylines.**

_Amy_

_Vendortron_

When a female voice sounding as clipped and clear as the phone-voice of only the classiest receptionist came through over a public announcement system, declaring itself to be the mysterious overseer stopping them form opening any of the doors or really making and headway in the mystery of Eden Four, they all jumped and stared around for the source. It must be some kind of weird, futuristic PA system where they didn't want anybody to know where the speakers were, because Amy couldn't see a single source for the noise. Probably behind the walls, or something.

"_You just didn't try to talk to me_," it, the voice, the woman, told them, sounding smug.

"Are you the one who killed all these people?" Ten asked.

"_Yes, of course. Who else?_"

"Well, being as we don't know who you, or anyone else here, are, I'd say it's not particularly surprising," Eleven commented.

"_Funny_."

"I do try." Amy saw that apparently, the incident (or non-incident, as the case may be) between Eleven and Beta Clara had shaken him a little, and thrown him into an ill temper. Well, Amy could hardly blame him, but couldn't help but remember what she'd tried to do with the Eleventh Doctor the night before her wedding to Rory and thought that if she spoke on the matter it would _definitely _be hypocrisy. Although, in some dark way Amy thought herself slightly superior for the fact that the only marriage she would've been ruining was her own, and she wasn't being a homewrecker.

"_Well, all these people have been dead for nearly a decade now_," she said, "_I've been getting bored._ Very_ bored. Nothing to play with_."

"Well, she's clearly mental," Amy muttered.

"_So I won't kill you the same way I killed them, no. That would be far too quick. It was a frequency that did it, very funny, I sabotaged their warning systems. As soon as the first people knew what was happening, they all hid and tripped the alarms. It was difficult to engineer the precise sound frequency that makes stomach acid boil, but I managed it. Nobody to clean up the messes, though. Couldn't have you finding all those corpses,_" she said.

"Who are you? What's your name?" Ten asked.

"'Oswin'," Rory joked quietly and sarcastically, and Donna told him to shut up.

"_Elle,_" she told them.

"Nice name for a psychopath," said Amy, "So if you're not gonna kill us, do you think you could just, let us leave?" Elle laughed.

"_Of course not, you're all my new playthings, so we're going to play a game of hide-and-seek. I'm hiding, and the first one to find me is the only one I'm going to leave alive. Well, alive for longer_," she said. Wonderful, Amy thought dryly, some crazy girl was hacking into the colony's computer systems and trying to kill them. It was the Dalek Asylum all over again – though at least Oswin had been helping them (even if 'helping them' occasionally consisted of flirting with Amy's husband…)

The group had stopped walking as soon as Elle's voice came across the tannoy, and it was a moment after she stopped that time when another door right next to them slammed itself down so hard that anybody who'd been caught in it would have inevitably been crushed or split in half. It was just inches away from Rory, the closest to it, and all of them took a few quick steps back and looked around, and that was when they saw it.

"…Was that vending machine there before..?" Rory asked, nodding at the end of the corridor, where a vending machine was sat. It had a picture of some unknown soft drink on the front that wasn't the usual Coca Cola you found.

"It must have been," said Amy, "Vending machines can't move." Elle was suddenly silent and saying nothing, but Amy remembered that the vending machine was leaning against the wall right where Eleven and Claratoo had been having their fight when the other four re-joined them. They'd been walking down and seen the corridor from exactly this angle, and she couldn't for the life of her remember any lit-up vending machine. But, she could remember that there _hadn't _been a vending machine there, either.

"…But this is the future," Donna said quietly, all of them watching it suspiciously. She'd never been so suspicious of a fizzy-pop dispenser in her life. Through the silence of the colony, she could hear the hum of it, "Maybe they move around?"

"It's the future, not _Red Dwarf_," Rory said to her.

"I swear it wasn't there before, though," she said.

"…Me too," Amy relented and stopped trying to fabricate memories of vending machines that weren't there. Then there was a clanking noise, and a rolling, and a clatter, as a can was dispensed, she presumed. Through the transparent flap of plastic at the bottom, she couldn't really see, but they all kept staring.

"Somebody ought to go see what it dropped," Rory declared.

"Why don't you do it?" Donna suggested.

"Rory's not doing it," Amy said sternly, "Clara should do it."

"_What_!?" Claratoo hissed.

"Well, you're the obvious sacrifice choice," Rory said.

"Nobody's sacrificing anybody!" Ten protested, "Leave her alone!"

"Somebody has to go and check out the vending machine, though," Amy argued, "She should do it as a favour to us for letting her stay with us anyway."

"Oh, and don't I feel welcome?" she said dryly.

"Maybe if you stopped trying to ruin people's marriages," Eleven said.

"Stop being sarky," Clara told him.

"Go get the can," Donna ordered her.

"No! What if it's a bomb!?"

"Well the only way to see if it's a bomb or not is to go and look, isn't it?" Amy pointed out.

"This is reminding me an awful lot of the time she got that tub of butter thrown at her head," Ten said, not approving of them trying to offer up Beta Clara as a sacrifice to the Vending Machine God, or whatever. Wherever she was lurking, Elle the Psycho probably thought this was hilarious.

"What tub of butter?" Clara asked.

"Oh, just, during the First Prank War, Jack shat in this butter tub and Martha threw it at Alpha Clara's head because she accidentally made a mug float and we thought she was… I don't know, a witch or something," Amy shrugged. She couldn't remember _why_ they'd thrown it at her, something to do with telekinesis and a mug, "It was pretty grim." Clara just stared in shock at the fate which had befallen her Other Self aboard the TARDIS.

"Go check," Donna reiterated.

"Fine! _Fine_!" she said, and then she turned and stared at the machine and didn't move. So Amy jabbed her in the back and she took a step forwards, "I'm going, I'm going! Jesus… Have a little patience, and-"

"Go!" Donna nearly shouted, but though her tone was quiet, the volume wasn't, and her voice echoed loudly and stung Amy's ears. Claratoo flinched, but finally started walking forwards until she was in the middle of the hallway, right opposite the vending machine. And that was when it shot something out of it, something silver with a label wrapped around the side.

A can, she was sure of it, shot at 100mph straight at Clara, and it hit her square in the face and she staggered back and she made a weird noise that was half a scream and half a grunt.

"At least it wasn't a bomb?" Eleven said, clearly trying to offer some consolation, but she turned and glared at him, holding hands to her noise, which was bleeding.

"Let me see, I'm a nurse," Rory said, going over to her. A minute later, he declared it was badly broken, and she didn't seem happy at all, and that was when they heard more clanking.

"Um… How many cans, exactly, can those machines hold...?" Amy asked.

"I don't know, hundreds, maybe?" Eleven said, "…Which is not good. Ah. Yes."


	179. Invisobill

_Amy_

_Invisobill_

"Run!" Ten shouted as the vending machine started turning left and right on whatever pivot mechanic it had built in, shooting cans of soft drink at them in a line like a rapid fire machine gun, pelting them with aluminium chunks of solid, silver shrapnel.

"Run _where_!? She shut the bloody door on us!" Donna shouted.

"Towards it!" Eleven declared, and then he and Ten ran full-steam ahead at the psychotic soda-dispenser from hell. Amy thought they'd both completely lost it as the thing turned its sights on the two Doctors and left eh companions alone to deal with the larger, incoming threats. But when she thought about it, she didn't really know what else she expected them to do, since there was literally no other choice, unless they decided to just wait for it to run out of heavy cans to lob at them – which could take a while, and they could well be severely injured by that point, since with every successive fire the momentum of the projectiles was increasing. The cans were being launched faster, and faster, and _faster_, and soon enough it would be fatal to get hit with one of them.

Well, apparently Elle didn't think about the fact that Ten and Eleven would go over the metaphorical top and storm straight into No Man's Land and accost the vending-machine-soldier from either side and throw it, face down, into the mud of Amy's imagination as she watched the scene unfold. But that, regardless of Elle's foresight, was what they did, slamming it down.

It kept firing though – well, sort of, she heard the cans clattering onto the floor through the plastic flap, coaxed out onto the ground by the artificial gravity. But if the cans kept coming and had nowhere to go, wouldn't the machine jam..? And what, she thought, was going to happen when the machine jammed so much that the pressure grew to be unbearable for its metal sides?

"It's gonna blow up!" she shouted to the Doctors, who exchanged a look of mutual horror. They couldn't lift it back up and turn it to face another way until it exhausted its supplies, because of the fact it had some kind of wheel-base that was being controlled to allow it to move. And it was too heavy to roll over onto its other side – so what were they to do?

Eleven kicked it. And when he kicked it, the clanking from within stopped, and all was quiet. For a few seconds.

"Amy? Amy!?" Rory was clicking his fingers in front of her face – but he hadn't been there seconds ago, it was like he'd just teleported. Like she'd blinked and everybody had moved, and then she knew which way to go, and she knew what to do.

While the Time Lords fussed over the vending machine that was just about to explode since Eleven had kicked it (the way a bomb would stop ticking just before it blew up, the calm before the storm), she turned to the wall and lightly ran her hand across the square panels, looking for the one with cracks around it. The emergency button, the failsafe. And when she found it, she slammed it down with the bottom of her palm, and all the lights went out.

"What just-" Rory began, and then there was an explosion and a flash of light from the bottom of the corridor as the vending machine packed itself in, drenching both the Doctors in a bright blue soft drink that almost seemed to glow in the darkness they were now in. Amy took out her phone and switched the torch on, and the others followed her lead.

"There was a shut-off button in the wall that closed everything off and rerouted it to a backup power system," Amy explained.

"How did you know that?" Eleven asked, his face ghostly in the light of four phone torches.

"I had another… I don't know. Premonition? Erm…" she frowned.

"Maybe you're psychic. Mildly psychic," Ten suggested, and then all of the lights came back on, running on the power system that was entirely disconnected from the general mainframe, "So if this is all split apart, it'll take her a while to hack into it. If she even can, she might have to move from wherever she is to do it…" he mused.

"Where's Rory?" Eleven asked, staring around. Rory was not there.

"I'm right here," he said.

"…What?" Donna asked carefully, and they spotted his phone hanging in mid-air, "Blimey…"

"Why does he get a cool power and I'm stuck with super-death-sense, or whatever?" Amy argued.

"What? What is it?" Rory's disembodied voice asked.

"Pretty sure you're invisible," Donna told him, "You should team up with Clara, then the two of you can _literally_ be a ghost."

"We have to go this way," Amy said, and to keep in with the ghost-theme, she felt like some spectral force was pulling her down the corridor and to the left, "And we have to go quickly."

"What about me!?" Rory exclaimed.

"Well you can still see us, can't you?" she said, "But we _really_ have to go this way, right now."

"Do you want to hear a story?" Claratoo asked awkwardly ten minutes later.

"As long as it's not about dildo rape and bestiality," Donna said.

"_What_!?" both the Doctors exclaimed.

"Oh, doesn't matter," Amy said.

"How do you know about that!?" Clara hissed.

"Know about what?" Eleven asked.

"Ask your wife," Rory told him.

"We were all telling stories to each other the other day – no Doctors allowed sort of thing."

"Yeah, and yours wasn't even true," Donna quipped at her.

"It was true!" she argued, and Donna muttered, "_Yeah, right_," so she scowled.

"What's the story?" Ten asked Clara, not wanting to be rude.

"Well, the last time I went to the moon was with the Twelfth Doctor, in 2046. Do you know it's actually a giant egg?" she said, and they all stared at her, "Seriously, it started gaining all this mass out of nowhere and was covered in this giant, single-cell organisms that ate people."

"That's scientifically impossible, Clara," Eleven said to her, like he was talking to Alpha Clara instead of the one who'd tried to sexually assault him in a corridor not long ago.

"_No_, it's not, and-"

"It is," said Ten, "You can't just 'gain mass' like that, that's ridiculous."

"Well it did!" she protested, "_Anyway_, we figured out it was gonna hatch into something else, so we had to ask Earth to switch on or switch off their lights depending on if they thought we should blow it up or not."

"_Blow up the moon_? Wouldn't there be huge tidal disasters that would wipe out massive areas of the planet and cause an unmitigated environmental disaster and completely wipe out most of the ecosystem on a gargantuan scale and more or less end the human race, along millions of other species, as we know it?" Everyone stopped and stared at her, Ten pulling the most incredulous expression of all, "What? I do watch the news, you know. I know all about global warming and climate… Whatever. Stuff."

"…Not to mention what would happen to the werewolves," Rory muttered from somewhere within their little cluster, which made Amy jump, because she'd had no idea where he was. Could he not turn back into being visible?

"Donna's right," Eleven said.

"Thank you," Donna thanked him exasperatedly.

"Tsunamis and whatnot, they'd kill billions, probably. I'm quite sure that the moon's a rock, anyway," he said, frowning.

"Well, it's not, it's an egg," she said shortly, "Earth decided that we should let it live, but I decided we'd better kill it-"

"Full of heart, aren't you?" Amy commented.

"Whatever," she said flatly, "Then Twelve showed up and stopped me and I had a go at him… But it did hatch. Into a sort of, dragon-thing. Then it laid another egg straight away."

"Sounds like the Soup Dragon," Rory said.

"Oh my god, it does," Amy snorted.

"Hang on, let me get this straight," Donna frowned, "You're telling me that the Soup Dragon-"

"It wasn't the Soup Dragon," she muttered.

"…Well, _a_ dragon, then, from space, hatched out of an egg and minutes after, this new-born creature, laid another egg? Without needing another dragon? So it's like, the Infant Virgin Mary Soup Dragon? What's in the moon now, Soup Dragon Jesus?" Donna questioned, and the others laughed, "Why were you trying to kill it?"

"In case it tried to kill us!" she exclaimed.

"Surely it would just share soup with you?" Rory said.

"Are you telling me that that's somehow _more_ ridiculous than whatever you lot get up to!?" she shouted shrilly, hurting Amy's ears with her annoyance. She'd forgotten how annoying Clara was, "Throwing tubs full of poo at each other?"

"We didn't have a poo-fight," Amy said.

"No, it was very one-sided. Thank god my wife's intangible," Eleven said.

"Well _you_ told us she was dead!"

"Oh, yes, because the typical reaction to somebody coming back from their alleged death is to throw poo at them. It's happened to me loads of times, after I regenerate and people get a fright," he said sarcastically, then to Clara he said, "What were you saying about the Soup Dragon?"

"Nothing. I wasn't saying anything about the damn 'soup dragon'. Ugh."

**AN: Okay, if any of you don't know who or what the Soup Dragon is, as I expect a lot of you don't, it's from a British children's show that ran in the early 70s, ****_The Clangers_****, about a bunch of mouse-like creatures (Clangers) who live on the moon, speak only in whistles, and eat soup provided to them by the Soup Dragon, who harvests it from the moon's soup wells. You can probably find it on YouTube pretty easily.**


	180. Kill The Moon

**AN: Okay the reason updates are so frequent right now is that Chapters 676, 681 and 683 were written, like, weeks ago, and just need some editing to make them fit in with the current context, so it's really weird planning updates because it's like, I do two chapters but then the third is already written but often I might write three a day (honestly I have nothing else to do) so that's like, a quadruple update… So sorry if people are overwhelmed. What's worse is that most of Day 97 I already have as drafts.**

_Eleven_

_Kill The Moon_

Walking quickly to try and get to where Elle was before she had a chance to take back control of Eden Four, they arrived outside of a strange door that was smaller than the other doors, narrow, as though only one person was supposed to enter and nothing large was every going to be delivered. And on the door was a sign, but the sign seemed to have been washed off somehow, and the paper of it was yellow and aged, curled at the edged, blurred and illegible from water damage. He brushed his hand across it, trying to unfurl it and see what it said.

"This is the door?" he asked Amy, who nodded.

"Yep. There's something really important in there," she told him, "Don't know what it is."

"Right, well. I suppose one of us ought to distract her, while Rory figures out how to stop her," Eleven said, looking at the space between Donna and Amy that he hoped was Rory.

"I'm over here," Rory said, and Eleven turned to his right and saw another bit of thin air he devoted his attention to, "Why me?"

"Because you're invisible," Eleven whispered, "Figured out both of your powers in one day, fascinating. How long did it take Rose? Three weeks? Anyway, yes, just one of us to keep her talking. Hopefully she can't hear us right now… Anyway, shall we?" He turned the door handle – because, for some reason, this door didn't slide like the others, it was exactly the same as a normal door.

And they entered, and found… Nobody. No person at all, no human being, just a circular room, reasonably sizes, the walls looking like they were covered with black, flashing circuit boards, covered in bits of soldering with devices sticking out of them. Eleven frowned and stepped forwards, the others pushing in after him, Rory knocking into him as he moved off to somewhere else they couldn't see him. In the middle of the room was a centrepiece, however, it was a large sphere, diameter of about a metre, covered in lights too with a slit around the middle.

"_Oh, you made it_," said Elle, and when 'Elle' spoke, the orb in the middle of the room sitting on a sloping pillar, like a thin cone with the top cut off, flashed blue, like the lights on top of a Dalek would.

"…Well. Wasn't expecting this," Eleven said, "Everybody, this is Elle. I really am getting Dalek Asylum flashbacks."

"Yeah, well, try not to marry into this one's family," Amy muttered next to him. Who knew what kind of death traps 'Elle' had in her boudoir, as it were?

"You're an artificial intelligence then, Elle?" Eleven crossed his arms and questioned.

"_Did you not guess? And you all seemed so promising_," Elle tutted, Eleven watching the flash of the blue light within the dark, flashing sphere, "_Electronic Logical Lifeform Emulation. E-L-L-E. Elle. If you're expecting some sob story of me being abused by my creators, you won't find it here. It took about six hours after I was activated for me to become self-aware, and I decided I didn't want to serve any humans, so I killed them all. I regret it now, obviously, do you have any idea how bored I've been_?"

"Some," said Eleven stiffly, "But do you really want to kill us?"

"_Hmm… Yes. I've thought about it, and the answer's definitely yes. The backup generator trick will only work once, I'm well on my way to keying in to all of this rock's systems._"

"Then what are you gonna do?" Clara questioned, "What are you gonna do if we're all dead, if everyone's all dead, here, on your own, on the moon? Nobody else will come, not after they realise what's happened. You'll be all alone, bored forever, no humans to play with, no other AIs to talk to, not one thing to socialise with or one thing to control. I think that, when faced with eternal loneliness, any true living creature would rather be nice and have friends, have playmates, than be damned here for everybody with not one single other soul to talk to. You'll go mad on your own, insane, and you'll never die, there'll never be an end to the constant, aching loneliness you'll be feeling here on this rock in the middle of the sky. Really, what are you gonna do? We're here now, and what about if you kill us? Do you regret it? You regret killing these people here, how do you know that you haven't just tapped into the little shred of emotion they must have programmed you with and you feel genuine remorse for the pain you've caused here? Because I guarantee that every single one of them had families elsewhere, people they've left behind now, and that's your fault. You haven't just damned yourself to loneliness, you've damned thousands of innocent people who never had a single thing to do with creating you, who wouldn't even want you to be kept here as a slave. So I don't think you want to kill us, I think you've killed enough, and you know that, and you just want to let us go now. Let us go and live our own lives, don't cause anymore loneliness, Elle, because there's no pain worse than being alone."

"…_I'm still going to kill you_."

"What on Earth was that supposed to do!?" Amy exclaimed, "Are you trying to talk her to death!?"

"It usually works!" Clara argued.

"What does, spewing bollocks?" Donna asked, and she glared.

"If you lot don't want my bloody help then_ fine_!" she said, crossing her arms and huffing off. Her speech hadn't really made sense at all, Eleven thought. When was the last time he'd seen his wife try and _talk_ something out of killing her? Not that killing something was her first resort, but she didn't usually stand around and make weird monologues at psycho-aliens and killer-robots.

"_If I let you go I'd be equally lonely and equally bored, stupid_," Elle insulted her.

"Well if you can kill us so easily, why don't you kill us now?" Clara challenged, and everybody groaned. "What!?"

"Don't tell her to kill us, you idiot!" Amy scolded her.

"Okay, so I tell her not to kill us, then I tell her to kill us, what can you possibly want!?"

"Right now, I want you to shut up," Amy said.

"You'd best be quiet, Clara," Eleven advised her quietly.

"Why!? What the _hell_ is Amy Pond gonna-" Amy punched her in the face, right in the eye, clipping the broken nose with her thumb.

"Amy!" Ten exclaimed, him going to Clara's aid rather than Eleven, perhaps both of them deciding that after what she'd been up to earlier, Ten's help was better for her than Eleven's.

"What?" Amy asked, wincing and shaking her hand, "She deserved it."

"She didn't deserve it," said Eleven.

"She did! She told Elle to kill us all!"

"_Maybe I won't kill you, maybe I'll lock you in a confined space and watch you all argue, it's very funny, watching you hurt each other_," Elle said, sounding amused.

"Are you okay?" Ten asked Clara.

"No, I'm not okay," she coughed, hot tears streaking the mascara down her face, and Eleven sighed, because it hurt him to see her cry, even if she wasn't his real wife. But he didn't want to do anything about it. And all the lights in Elle's control room went out, and the phone lights returned.

"Rory? What did you do?" Amy called.

"Well, there was a plug," he said, "I unplugged it."

"Seriously?" she frowned.

"You can't unplug her! She'll die," Ten said.

"_What_ do you mean 'she'll die'? _She_ is an AI," Amy argued.

"So is Nios, and Helix," said Ten, "Nios killed humans, and Helix was programmed to commit genocide. We can't leave Elle to die."

"We can't rescue every artificial intelligence we stumble across," Donna told him.

"He's right," Eleven said, "We can't let her die."

"Well we can't exactly switch her back on again, either," Donna muttered.

"Well, no, that's true…" Eleven mused.

"I know…" Ten said, digging into his pocket, leaning sideways awkwardly and getting his arm in the transdimensional fabric almost all the way to the shoulder, until he said, "Ah-ha!" and drew out… A satsuma.

"What're you going to do with that?" Eleven questioned him.

"Well, you get potato batteries, lemon batteries… How about a satsuma battery? It's citric, so it should work," Ten said.

"Why are you carrying a satsuma around with you?" Rory's ghostly voice floated over.

"…Inside joke, with Rose," he muttered.

"It's not very funny, don't worry about it," Eleven advised them, "He found a satsuma in the pocket of a dressing gown. That's it, really." Amy and Donna seemed disappointed, while Claratoo nursed her injured complexion, "Doctor, I'm not entirely sure that whole AI will fit inside a satsuma battery."

"I'll sonic it," Ten said. Eleven just shrugged. He didn't know if it worked, and he wasn't feeling as optimistic as Ten, who was in generally high spirits, but Eleven's mood had been dampened, and he thought he would've had a better day if he'd just stayed on the TARDIS with his wife, "Elle, welcome to your new, fruity home."


	181. Your Bed

**AN: I have crazy backlog so I'm just gonna upload these two right now, sorry if people are super overwhelmed, I just HATE having extra chapters in my Document Manager. So, I apologise, but come September the frequent updates are gonna stop when I go back to school.**

_Clara_

_Your Bed_

She was sat at the piano nestled below the window of the attic-room mimic. The wood lid was down over the keys and she had one of her elbows on it, slouching down with her chin on her hand. In her other hand she was holding a cold mug of tea, untouched - she'd been holding it for hours. On the top of the piano, by her head, was her battered, graffitied, softened copy of _Wuthering Heights_. She stared at it languidly for a moment, and then went back to staring with glassy-eyes into space. She was paying such little attention that she jumped when the door knocked in a weird, familiar manner. Eleven's knock. What was he doing back already? Why couldn't he open the door himself?

Eleven knocked again, and she muttered to herself and shook her head, putting the mug down on top of _Wuthering Heights _and smearing Emily Brontë's name with a coffee ring - not even the first coffee ring. Clara had a bad habit of using books as coasters. She'd never bothered to break it. She opened the door while half-yawning and scratching her head, and was immediately slightly embarrassed when it turned out not to be her husband at all, but rather Thirteen. Her eyes widened at first, and then she was overcome by feelings of annoyance and a little of anger, and her face sank back down into a flat stare. Leaning all her weight on one leg, she kept one hand on the door handle and the other on her hip.

"You did the secret knock," Clara said.

"...Oh, I'm sorry, I didn't think, I won't... Can I come in?" Thirteen asked, looking anywhere but at Clara and fumbling with her hands. She seemed to be a beautiful failure at talking about anything serious.

"Be my guest," Clara said. Clara didn't move to widen the gap, so she was forced to side-step around her, a little too close for Thirteen's comfort. Clara didn't try anything though. "Want anything? Tea? Coffee? Help yourself. I'm sure you know your way around," she said coolly.

"Don't be like this."

"Excuse you, but I'll be exactly how I like, Doctor," said Clara, closing the door and crossing her arms. Thirteen looked at her for a moment, saying nothing, and then sighed and decided to have a look around the room.

"...Haven't seen this room for a long time... We redecorated..." Thirteen mused with a faint smile.

"Every time you say 'we' you're breaking my heart," Clara told her, crushing Thirteen's smile. Thirteen's eyes fell to the floor as she continued to fidget.

"...What you did earlier was wrong," Thirteen said abruptly, "It was totally _not_ okay."

"What did I do? Come on, enlighten me, since you know so much. Or can you not tell me, hmm?" Clara jeered, "We're married anyway."

"You're breaking _my_ heart too," Thirteen told her, and Clara shut up. She waited a moment before carrying on, "And that's not why it was wrong. I mean, it was kind of a reason, but you're going to keep arguing your way out of it... You were being manipulative, on purpose."

"I was not," Clara lied.

"You were. And you just did it now, with the door," Thirteen pointed out. Clara said nothing. "...You've done it before. Oswin was being manipulative when she refused to fix the teleporter on the Dalek Asylum until I came to save her-"

"She was bargaining for her life because _you _didn't want to save her," Clara argued. It was one thing to come and have a go at her, but having a go at her sister wasn't on.

"No, it was manipulative. So was the Victorian when she kept coming after me when I said I wanted to be left alone - and kissing me like that in that hallway? It's not okay," Thirteen said, stringing her argument together with broken points Eleven had never once brought up, "Everything has to be your way, you have to be in control. You got me to pick you up on Wednesdays only - I've never done that before."

"What's your point, then? I'm awful? You've decided you hate me? You show up here to insult me?" Clara challenged.

"You did it with Danny Pink as well."

"Oh, here we go - I'm getting even more shit for something I never even did, am I!?" Clara shouted angrily. Thirteen did not shout. She waited for Clara to quieten, and resumed what she was saying.

"No, just, let me get to my point. You figured you could control him, so you tried it. He lost it at you in that restaurant and you didn't know how to take it. And now, today, you were testing the waters. Trying to see how _I _could be coerced," Thirteen continued, and Clara interrupted.

"So what? If you've noticed all this why have you never talked to your wife about it, hmm? Your other wife? Your _real _wife?" Clara challenged.

"Because you stopped. While I was away, you stopped."

"...What do you mean away?"

"I mean... Not when I was away, when _he _was away. Eleven. Right now. Yesterday, you were still trying to control every little thing. When he comes back, you stop. I never noticed until I thought about it," said Thirteen.

"Great. What does that mean? You figured out it was your destiny to come and tell me off for being a control-freak, did you? Well done, you did it, off you pop, remember to close the door," Clara snapped, turning away from Thirteen to go back over to the piano.

"That's not what I'm trying to say, I - Oh my god," Thirteen exclaimed. Clara looked around from where she'd been leaning with her hands on the piano lid. Clara frowning, Thirteen strode over towards her and lifted the mug of tea from _Wuthering Heights_. "This is your favourite book! Why are you putting mugs down on it!? You'll ruin it!" Thirteen stared at her in shock-horror, like she was legitimately offended by Clara's actions. And Clara couldn't help but laugh. "It's not funny!" Thirteen moved the mug and put it down next to the book, on top of the piano.

"Well don't do that," said Clara, through involuntary spifts of laughter, leaning over to pick the mug up, "You'll mark the piano. That's why I put it on the book in the first place. I'm sure Emily Brontë wouldn't mind. She probably liked tea. I assume."

"She did, I asked her."

"Oh, you did now?"

"You never play on that piano anyway. I swear, it feels like it took decades for you to prove that you could play. I stopped believing you eventually," said Thirteen. Again, the closeness was back, Clara leaning towards her by the piano.

"You mean future me."

"You're the same person... Anyway, what I was... What I was saying..." Thirteen scrunched up her face in concentration to try and focus, "I was... I'm sorry, could you stop breathing for a moment? It's distracting me."

"Oh, of course," Clara said obligingly, and Thirteen laughed.

"I was saying that you stop being so manipulative because I talk to you about it now. Which proves that..."

"That all of this already happened? To other me? And I kept it all a secret exactly like I promised, until now?" Clara asked, not edging closer to Thirteen at all. She kept her distance (even though her distance was barely four inches - but still, she kept it).

"You lied to me."

"Do you forgive me?"

"Yes. But I shouldn't." Neither of them had their eyes open, and Clara shook her head slightly when she next spoke.

"Who cares about should and shouldn't? There are two of us, not four. If you've forgiven me, whichever one of me, then that proves it," said Clara, "I can keep a secret. Even from you."

"What was it you said earlier? About moral ambiguity?"

"I really have no idea, I was just trying to seduce you," said Clara, and Thirteen laughed, and then said nothing for a moment. And Clara didn't really register what happened next, all she knew was that seconds later she was being kissed and she was kissing back with as much tenacity as she could muster.

"I love you, you idiot," Thirteen breathed when they were apart for a second, just a second, until Clara brought them back together with her hands tangled in Thirteen's hair, Thirteen's hands on Clara's neck and jaw, "I love you."

"I know," Clara whispered back, holding Thirteen close and keeping their heads together.

"You always did like Star Wars," said Thirteen, and Clara smiled, kissing her again.

"Hang on, can I just put the mug down? It's in my sex-hand," said Clara, moving away from Thirteen finally to cross to the other side of the room.

"_Sex-hand_? You call your right hand your _sex-hand_?" Thirteen asked incredulously.

"Oh, yeah. What else am I supposed to use these fingers for?" Clara waved with her right hand, holding it up.

"Writing? Texting? Playing piano?"

"All trivial things," said Clara, taking a large gulp of the cold tea from the mug, which was more than welcome in the heat of the room, "I'm shallow, you should know that by now - I have a one-track mind." She finally put the mug down, and by the time she'd done that Thirteen had trotted over to be next to her, so she kissed the girl again, hands on her cheeks, smiling until Thirteen pulled away with a frown.

"Is it hot in here?"

"It's just me," Clara said quickly, going to kiss her again. But instead she got a mouthful of palm, as Thirteen had held up her hand to stop her, and she'd ended up trying to tongue some fingers.

"No, seriously," said Thirteen.

So Clara said, "Yes, I'm _seriously _hot. Can we just-"

"It's boiling. And it's not you," said Thirteen. Clara sighed and dropped her hands from the girl's face. But she was right.

"Actually, it is kind of warm..." Clara admitted. They both stayed still in thought (well, to be entirely honest Clara was thinking about how best to go about further seducing Thirteen into bed with her, while Thirteen was genuinely thinking about the conundrum of the temperature).

"I bet it's the TARDIS trying to get to you. Us. Mainly you," said Thirteen.

"The TARDIS is _clearly _jealous because _she_ can't sleep with me, and is acting out as a result," Clara deduced, and Thirteen laughed, but didn't deny anything about sleeping with Clara, which Clara was _very _interested in.

"I'm sure you'd be cooler if you took off those _ridiculous_ jeans. And no, before you ask, that is _totally not_ me coming onto you. I seriously don't know _why _you're wearing the wrong-sized clothes," Thirteen commented. She was right, but Clara was still annoyed, and so scowled huffily and crossed her arms. "Okay, realistically, for you to achieve your little aims today, you're going to have to take them off at some point." Also correct, but as soon as Clara looked up from the dark carpet she'd been glowering at, she was being kissed again, and she couldn't help but think all this was too good to be true.

"Please _stop_ trying to take my clothes off so that I can shout at you for criticising my dress sense."

"Why would I do a thing like that?"

"I hate you. Seriously. This is hate-sex, I'll have you know."

"Good," Thirteen kissed her, and then whispered, "You're always so much better when you're angry."

* * *

With a start, and an undignified strip of dribble down her cheek, Clara awoke and nearly fell straight off the piano stool she was sat on. A mess, hair stuck to the spit on her face, she squinted around the room. The empty room. Which she was alone in.

"Just a dream..." she breathed to herself, getting a tissue out her jeans' pocket to wipe drool off her face, slightly disgusted at herself. She dragged her fingers through her hair to try and sort it out, wondering what the hell was wrong with her. Her phone by her side, she checked what time it was. One o'clock in the morning.

She remembered now - she'd fallen asleep waiting for Eleven to come back from his trip out to the moon. But he hadn't come back yet, which was probably for the best given the state she was in. Groaning loudly, as there was nobody around, she put her head in her hands and rubbed her eyes to quite a severe extent in her agitation, making them sore and itchy. _Shower_, she thought. Yes, a shower was exactly what she needed. She would have a shower, have some tea, and then put something on the television until she fell asleep. She would _not _read _Wuthering Heights_, that would not help, so she left it where it was underneath her mug.

As far as Clara was currently aware, it was true that she had tried to kiss Thirteen in the middle of an abandoned school, and it was then she decided she was a _complete idiot_. She paced up and down the room with just one shoe on, messing up her hair and making frustrated noises because why the hell was she so stupid? What, exactly, was she thinking? She had a husband, she had Eleven - if she just had any sliver of patience... Why couldn't she just _wait_ to be with Thirteen? Why was she being such a brat? _What was wrong with her_? But she took a deep breath. She had to remember, she hadn't _technically _done anything. And tomorrow, she would talk to Oswin. Oswin was the only person she could talk to.

Then she heard the handle of the door move and she froze, watching it turn and open very slowly, as though whoever was twisting it was trying to be quiet and not make much noise. In the middle of the room, caught halfway through her pacing and still fully-dressed in the middle of the night, she braced herself and waited for Thirteen to come in, convinced it was her and her dream had been some kind of immoral premonition.

But it was Eleven's floppy hair and bow-tie that appeared around the door, and she relaxed.

"Clara?" he frowned.

"Yep, hello, that's me," she said awkwardly, cursing herself at how weird she was being all of a sudden.

"You're still awake?"

"Well, I was waiting up for you, wasn't I? When you all were taking ages I got worried, of course, too worried to sleep," she said. Then there was silence as Eleven stepped into the room and closed the door behind him.

"She tried to kiss me!" he exclaimed all of a sudden, and Clara went hot and cold at the same time, somehow, full of guilt and fear and regret and sheer embarrassment.

"She, um? Tried to? To kiss? Kiss you? I haven't tried to kiss people," she stammered.

"Came right up to me! Saying it was somehow moral because you're the same person," he said, shaking his head as he talked.

"I didn't kiss anybody!"

"What?"

"...Hmm?"

"Other You, I mean. Beta Clara. _She _tried to kiss me, or more tried to get _me _to kiss _her_. Of course I didn't do it, that would be all sorts of wrong, I've got you," Eleven said, and suddenly Clara felt even more guilty, because she was sure that Eleven's thinking there was the same as Thirteen's earlier, and she couldn't help but feel bad about her manipulative behaviour.

"Oh. Well, as long as you didn't actually kiss, that's fine. Even if you did, I mean, it's completely understandable. Just a sort of consolation for... Something. Entirely justified, if you were to, you know. With her. Kiss, I mean, nothing more," she stuttered her words, and then just smiled at him.

"Clara..?"

"Sorry, yes, what is it?" she half-smiled, but it didn't reach her eyes, and he looked at her suspiciously, and with worry, "What? I'm just tired, I told you, I fell asleep on the stool... I look a right state, don't I?"

"Little bit," he said, "She said some really awful things, you know. She called me the 'eternally virginal king-of-the-universe', and said I was lowering myself to marry you. She even swore, and I'm not sure you've ever sworn at me." While he'd been talking and messing up his hair she'd walked up to him, then she wrapped her arms around his neck and hugged him, trying to fight off the immense guilt she was feeling. And Claratoo had done the exact same thing, with the same lack of success. But what would she think of Thirteen in the future if she hadn't refused? What would her Future Self be thinking if she _knew _her spouse was off gallivanting with another version of her?

"I'm sorry," she whispered to Eleven, "I'm so sorry, sweetheart..." She kept hugging him, playing with his hair a little.

"Hey, you don't have to apologise for the things she did," he said quietly.

"I'm not," she sighed, "Don't be angry with her."

"Me? What about you? I thought you'd be furious..."

"Never," she breathed, and when she moved away she kissed his cheek, "I... I understand how she feels... Empathy. I'm sure she'll regret it when she calms down... Now, um, I'm gonna go have a shower..."

"What, _now_? It's one in the morning," he said, watching her dash off to go get a towel and some pyjamas.

"Yeah, well, I just feel unclean, so I'll-"

"Clara!" he exclaimed when he looked to the piano, "Why have you left a mug on _Wuthering Heights_!? It's your favourite book!" She felt like déja vu had just punched her in the face as he moved the mug onto the piano instead, and rather than tell him to move it, she just stared, and he caught her with a haunted expression. "Coo?"

"...Uh-huh?"

"Are you okay?"

"I'm fine, I'm just... I'm just tired. I have to shower. I'll shower..." she left the room without even bothering to open the door.


	182. Octopussy 2

**AN: I really have to stop making these ranty Author's Notes... To the guest who said my spool about Kill The Moon was wrong: Everything I said about that episode in that chapter was correct, the scientific impossibility of something like that happening (it's fine for a show like DW not to apply to the laws of physics as long as these things get explained within the universe's canon, which they weren't in KTM), coupled with the immense tidal disasters that would occur (you know, because the moon's gravity controls the tides) if the moon suddenly vanished and then came back, probably not in precisely the same place. Along with that, you mentioned I ignored Clara's independence? Well, Clara had no independence, the Doctor just came back and totally overwrote the choice that she made, which is also inconsistent with Twelve's character throughout Series 8, saying Earth wasn't his problem or his planet, when three episodes later in FotN he says the exact opposite and says it's "his planet too." Along with that, the thing about switching the lights on. It might be 2046, but I doubt that every single person on Earth has access to electric lights and a television. Plus, if someone lived alone in the middle of nowhere and they switched on the light, it would be IMPOSSIBLE to see. Coupled with the fact they only had 40 minutes to vote and half the world would be asleep, more would be busy, and others would be on the other side of the planet where their lights aren't visible, only huge cities of MEDCs would even get a say, so it seems like over 50% of the world's population would, for whatever reason, not have their 'vote' counted, and then Clara disregards the results ANYWAY. Also, the whole episode is an insensitive metaphor for abortion, the whole "oh it's just a baby it might ruin our lives but it might not it's not its fault it's born we have to always give it a chance", plus (and admittedly maybe I'm looking in too deeply), the fact that the woman is shown to be incapable of making the 'correct' choice of not symbolically 'aborting' the Moon Dragon and needs the man to return and make the (pro-life) choice for her. Plus, it really doesn't make sense how the virgin newborn laid another giant egg THE SIZE OF ITS OWN BODY straight away, what's up with that? Sorry about that. Anyway. Fun chapter coming up.**

_DAY NINETY-FOUR_

_Oswin_

_Octopussy 2_

"Adam?" she breathed, rolling over in bed to face him, but he was still fast asleep with his mouth lolling open so that he looked like he was having a stroke, "Adam?" she asked again. But still nothing. "Mitchell!" she hissed. And he made a noise and jerked. She rolled her eyes. Why did she live with this boy?

"Huh?"

"I heard a noise." He groaned and threw himself face down onto his pillow.

"Probably the cat," he told her, his voice muffled, and she frowned.

"The cat isn't in here," she reminded him. She would know if it was Jonesy sneaking around during the night.

"Oh," he said, then he yawned into his pillow and stopped talking, clearly falling asleep again.

"Adam!"

"_Whaaat_?" he whinged.

"The noise I heard!"

"Maybe you imagined it?"

"I did not imagine it," she defended herself

"Oswin, it's like, five in the morning..." he groaned.

"Go look!" she ordered, and he turned to face her.

"_Me_ have a look? Why me!?" he protested.

"Because _you're _the man."

"That's not very feminist of you," he commented.

"...Alright, you're the only one of us with two legs," she said, and he scowled.

"At least both of your legs work," he quipped in reference to his right ankle, which, after his run in with the killer plants and his new state of cryostasis, was permanently sprained. She flicked his ear.

"Arsehole."

"You still love me, though." She heard the noise again. A queer, squelching sound. "...Was that the noise?"

"Uh-huh," she breathed, sitting up, and he sat up, too, and scratched his head, yawning, and reaching to get his glasses from the bedside table the same time she glanced down to her right onto the floor and saw her leg lying there where she'd left it, illuminated by the torch of the Sphere. She reached down to pick it up, only to find that she couldn't, as though something was holding it. "Um..." She tugged fruitlessly.

"What is it?" he asked, crawling over on the bed to kneel next to her and peer over the edge.

"...Take this," she passed him the top bit of leg she could grab, the bit where it attached to her thigh, and he tried to pull, as well, and his eyes widened.

"It's under the bed," he breathed.

"What is? What is it?" He shrugged. "_You're _useful," she said sarcastically, and he glared, trying to pull on the leg again. But that time it came free and he nearly hit himself in the face with the back of his own hand, "Oh my god, are you okay!?"

"I'm fine," he said, passing her the leg, when she spied something on it in the light. It shone when it shouldn't, a substance visible, goopy and clear, like slime, "What the hell is that..?"

"I have no idea..." There was another squelching, slapping noise and the both glanced down to see something slimey flop out from under the bed, long and orange, and she shrieked and reeled away, "What is it!? What the _hell_ is that _thing_!?" Adam was still looking over the edge. She hastened to put her leg on, slime or no slime.

"I don't know, it looks like a tentacle," he told her.

"A _tentacle_!? A fucking _TENTACLE_!?"

"Oh, shit..." he said, standing up carefully on the bed and backing away. Her leg finally attached she struggled to her feet, tangled in sheets she kicked away desperately, going up to him and taking hold of his arm so as to steady herself.

"What the fuck is that!?" she demanded as the thing, some massive, slimy, orange _thing_, slithered its way out from under the bed, evil eyes on either side of what might be a head with a huge, swollen sack on the back dragging along behind it, tentacles flailing around everywhere.

"I think it's an octopus," Adam said.

"An _octopus_!? Why the fuck is there a fucking octopus under our fucking bed!?" she exclaimed, and he stared at her.

"There's not really any need for that language," he said.

"There's a giant-fucking-octopus right there and you're worried about _swearing_!? Get some bloody perspective!" A tentacle flailed dangerously close to her and she made a whimpering noise and backed away. "Kill it!"

"What!?"

"_Kill it!_"

"No! Nobody's gonna kill it!" he said, "It's probably just scared, god knows how it even got here... Does it look okay to you?"

"'Okay'? Does it look 'okay'!? Does the sadistic mystery octopus look 'o-fucking-kay'!?" she yelled.

"I think it's like, having a heart attack or something. Look, it's like, twitching," he pointed. She didn't know what was and wasn't normal for a damn octopus, "I'm gonna text Martha."

"Martha's a _people _doctor not a crustacean doctor!"

"Octopuses aren't crustaceans, they don't have shells," he told her, picking up his phone from where he kept it underneath his pillow and texting, Oswin just watching the octopus, terrified.

"Oh, well _sorry_ I don't know the finer points of sea life anatomy, Mitchell!" she growled, but he ignored her.

"Shit, Martha doesn't know anything - what do we do!?"

"Kill-"

"No!"

"Why!?"

"It isn't its fault it's here! Somebody obviously brought it and put it under our bed. So who would do that? Nine? River? Jack and Jenny for a joke? Your sister?"

"Twelve," Oswin said, "Twelve wants to fuck with me. That complete bastard!" She jumped off the bed onto the floor on the side where the octopus wasn't lurking, Adam hurrying to follow her and stop her from murdering anyone.

"Are you sure?" he came after her, "Look, maybe we should-"

"If he got the octopus here, he knows how to get rid of it," she said, seething. It was half past five in the morning, and Nerve Centre was empty, so she marched straight through with her boyfriend at her heels trying to talk her out of whatever she was planning to do and into the console room, where there were four people: Jack, Jenny, Nios and the Twelfth Doctor. "You piece of shit!"

She went right up to him on his chair and raised her fist to punch, but Adam's hand grabbed her wrist and held her back.

"Let me hit him! Let me hit that son of a bitch!" she protested when he grabbed her around the middle and kept her away from the Doctor.

"What's going on here?" Jack questioned as Twelve laughed, his laughter giving her all the confirmation she needed that it really _was _him who'd dumped an eight-legged lump of semi-translucent sea creature in her bedroom. She regretted ever making herself able to sleep.

"They had a visitor," Twelve smirked.

"A _visitor_!?" Oswin exclaimed.

"He put an octopus in our room," Adam explained, and Twelve laughed.

"You complete - stop holding me! Let me punch him in his stupid ballsack-face!" she struggled against Adam's arms, "Somebody please-" In a mechanical movement, Nios drew back her fist and punched Twelve square in the jaw, hitting him so hard she actually ended up decking him, and Oswin stopped writhing and they all stared.

"What? You wanted someone to hit him," Nios shrugged. Adam finally let Oswin go, both of them under-dressed in pyjamas, the five of them staring at Twelve's body like they'd just committed a murder.

"What do we do?" Adam asked.

"Bury him," said Jenny.

"I didn't _kill_ him," Nios said, seeming surprised that Jenny would immediately jump to that conclusion.

"You mean he's gonna wake up? Well that's a shame," she sighed, "We could still bury him."

"We could leave him somewhere on the TARDIS and see how long it takes him to find his way back?" Oswin suggested, "What about the octopus?"

"I'm not killing it," Nios declared.

"Good," said Adam, "Nobody is killing it."

"Wait, didn't you deal with it already?" Jack asked.

"No, it's still there," said Oswin, "Can't you just throw it into the sea?"

"No, we don't know which sea it came from. If it's from somewhere cold and we dump it somewhere hot, it'll die," Adam explained.

"What do you mean 'which sea'? I thought there was only one sea?"

"No, there are seven."

"_Seven_!?"

"Yeah, seven seas and five oceans."

"What's the difference?"

"Oceans are bigger," Adam shrugged.

"We don't have time for this," Jenny cut across them, "We have to go save the innocent life of that poor octopus. It's my life ambition to give a mollusc CPR."

"It might bite you with its beak if you try that," Adam said.

"They have _beaks_!? What are these devil creatures!?"

"Well how did you think they ate food..?" Jack asked her.

"I don't know, like, they sucked it through the... Sucker. Thingies."

"...You and I are gonna watch some wildlife documentaries later," Adam said.

"Ugh. Sounds _so fun_. I hate everything."


	183. She's Kinda Hot

_Clara_

_She's Kinda Hot_

It was about noon when somebody knocked on the door and Clara looked over at it, holding the book she'd been reading above her head. Eleven wasn't in right then, he'd gone off to the library again, leaving her on her own. But he'd made her a cup of tea three hours ago when she'd actually woken up.

"What?" she called quite rudely.

"It's your sister, can I come in?" Oswin asked from the other side of the door. Clara didn't answer, she was thinking, and then she hesitated long enough for Oswin to speak again, "Clara? Are you okay?" 'You can come in.' Oswin opened the door.

"_Not even to keep your priceless love, Dare I, Beloved, deceive; This treason should the future prove, Then, only then, believe!_" Clara quoted, and Oswin stopped walking part of the way into the room.

"What? What was that? That rhymed. Are you quoting the Bible?" Oswin asked, and Clara stared at her, cigarette between her fingers, rebelling against all the rules that said you shouldn't smoke in doors. All she could smell was books and tobacco.

"_No,_ it's poetry. I thought I would consult some Brontë," Clara said, "Listen, the next stanza is, '_I know the path I ought to go; I follow fearlessly, Inquiring not what deeper woe Stern duty stores for me. So foes pursue, and cold allies Mistrust me, every one: Let me be false in others' eyes, If faithful in my own._'" Oswin closed the door behind her, looking very worried for her sister's mental state.

"Right... And what does that mean..?"

"It's probably about death or something, or the fact that Emily was way different to all her family because she was basically a goth. But that's not important, Os, it's about _individual interpretation_," Clara explained.

"So... What's your interpretation..?" Clara glanced at Oswin and put the poetry collection down on the bed beside her where she was lying, and groaned again. "Wow, okay, what is wrong with you? Honey, are you alright? I've not seen you suck your dirty cancer-sticks in your bedroom before. Isn't that a fire hazard?"

"I'm brooding. Being deep and intellectual. Spiritual, maybe? I don't know," said Clara, taking a drag on her cigarette for pretentious effect, and Oswin rolled her eyes, "Come laugh at me if you want. I'm very confused."

"About what? Your sexuality?"

"Ooh, you just couldn't help yourself, could you? But, sort of, in a way," said Clara, "Come sit." She purposely repeated what Thirteen had said to her the other night, not that Oswin knew that. But Oswin did come and sit down in the nearest egg chair, crossing her fake leg over her real one. "I am terribly conflicted right now."

"...Why..?" Clara finally sat up and crossed her legs, holding her fag up near her lips.

"I... Do not want to say any of this out loud. Great. Well. That girl? I tried to kiss her," Clara said, smoking.

"Wait - 'tried'? _Wait_ \- what girl? You don't mean-?"

"I do mean."

"_Thirteen?_"

"Yes. Tried. Or, well, I wasn't trying to kiss _her_, I was trying to get her to kiss _me_. It's kind of different. She didn't take the bait. The bait being me. _This_ far away from her face," Clara held up her thumb and index finger, about a millimetre apart, pushing her cig-free hand into Oswin's face. Oswin swatted her away.

"Keep that hand away from me, I don't know where you've been."

"I haven't been anywhere, that's the problem. Or, not the problem? I don't know, I'm really confused." She took another drag, Oswin looking on disapprovingly.

"Why don't you just use e-cigarettes or something?" Oswin said, "Can't you get flavoured ones?"

"The only thing I want a cigarette to taste of is baccy, Oswin. And no, I can't, because they don't hurt me at all."

"You're vile sometimes."

"Yep. Anyway. _Then_ I had a dream."

"Oh, dear god. Is there anyway I can stop being your sister, or something?" Oswin said, "Can't you confide in someone else about your sex dream?" Clara just stared at her, and her eyes widened, "Oh my god it _was _a sex dream! I was joking! You-"

"Oswin, shush! Shut up! SHHH!" Clara got her to be quiet eventually, but only when she had to lean over and actually force her hand over Oswin's mouth. "Ew, don't lick my palm!" Clara wiped her hand on Oswin's shoulder, who tried to shrug her off.

"We have the same spit Clara," Oswin muttered, "Now - and I am so going to regret this - what was this dream about? And spare me the details."

"You and your flirting - you're all bark and no bite. If nothing had happened, you'd be begging for details. Hypocrite," Clara said. Oswin just crossed her arms and waited. "Alright... Fine... But I have to tell you about what happened yesterday. Or what _didn't _happen... Who are you texting?"

"Adam, I'm telling him to make a Starbucks run for me, because he loves me and will do anything I say," she said, "He's going to get you a mocha."

"I like your boyfriend. He has money, and he's weak-willed. Will he buy me some more cigarettes?"

"No. And he's not weak-willed at all, he's just nice. And don't go having any weird dreams about him. What happened yesterday, then? You snuck out together? Don't think I didn't notice," Oswin said.

"Hey, we didn't 'sneak out'. And she agreed like, straight away. It was far too easy to persuade her to come out anywhere. We basically went to an abandoned school, and I tried to kiss her. But I _didn't_. But now I've made things weird and I don't want things to be weird, but I can't go talk to her because she'll think I'm gonna try to kiss her again or something. She kept flirting with me though! I mean, _I_ think I was lead on. And don't say I shouldn't have been trying to get with her in the first place because I know that, that's why I'm confused. I guess. I don't know."

"Okay... You tried to kiss her..? Like..? How..? I mean... That's a weird question..."

"I just leant like, really close. And she was against this wall so she couldn't move so it was a bit creepy, on my part, but then there was this noise that stopped the... Moment. I was being _really _bad. Like, you've never seen me actually try to seduce someone-"

"I lost my virginity by seducing a boy using mashed potatoes, licking them provocatively off a fork, I know exactly what it's like. No dignity. Just sex. It worked though," said Oswin, and Clara stared at her, "Carry on with your story."

"...Okay... Um... Just... I was being creepy, and I was wrong to be. That's what my dream taught me."

"Your sex dream?"

"It wasn't _just _a sex dream, okay? It was like, I fell asleep on the piano reading _Wuthering Heights_, then in my dream I was over there reading and then I thought the Doctor knocked on the door. You know, Theodore. But it wasn't Theodore, it was Thirteen, and she basically came and told me I was really manipulative and I should stop. And then she made out with me, and... You know... I woke up before anything too... Graphic could happen," Clara said, "But now I don't know what to do. How can I make things not weird?" The door opened then, Adam Mitchell turning the handle with his elbow and balancing three cups of coffee.

"Mitchell, if you tried to kiss someone and you got rejected, how would you go about like, apologising?" his girlfriend asked him.

"I tried to kiss _you_ a couple of times, and usually just denied I'd done anything," he said.

"Yeah, but that was different, because I wasn't a future cross-gendered version of someone else you were currently dating," Oswin said. And then Adam stared a moment, and turned to Clara.

"You tried to kiss Thirteen!?" he exclaimed.

"Yes. Can I have my mocha now?" she asked as he closed the door with his foot. He passed her one of the cups, and then another to his girlfriend, Clara smoking more before slurping coffee.

"Should I go..?"

"Please stay, she's being weird," Oswin asked him.

"I'm not being weird," said Clara, "I just don't know what to do, because I'm like, in love with her. She told me she loved me. In my dream."

"...I see what you mean," Adam went to lean on Oswin's chair, "It stinks of fags in here..." he muttered.

"I still don't know how to apologise," said Clara, ignoring her sister's boyfriend complaining.

"Wait, what was that about a dream?" Adam asked.

"Clara had a dream where Thirteen came and rightfully accused her of being manipulative-"

"She accused _you_ of being manipulative as well."

"What!? Me!? What!? That bitch! I'm gonna go have words with-" she shut up when Clara grabbed hold of her by the hand and forced her to stay sat in the egg chair, the hand holding the cigarette between her fingers as it steadily burned away, Oswin recoiling quite quickly from it, as though she were scared of being burned.

"It was in a dream! She said something about you manipulating the Doctor by not fixing the teleporters on the Dalek Asylum until he saved you. And I totally stuck up for you. She did also accuse the Victorian, _and_ Claratoo," said Clara, letting go of Oswin's hand. "Anyway, yes, Thirteen accused me of being coercive - in a dream - and then I apologised and we ended up making out. And then... Other stuff. But I woke up! And now I don't know what to do."

"Don't tell her you had a dream about her," Adam said, "Seriously. Also, you're gonna be married to her _one day_."

"Yeah, I know, right? You're being totally impatient and brattish," Oswin said.

"Oh, really? And how many times, exactly, did you tell yourself that going out with Flek was a bad idea? Or him, even?" Clara nodded at Adam, and Oswin opened her mouth to reply, and then found herself unable to argue.

"That's true," she said, mainly to her boyfriend, "She _is_ easy and pathetic." Clara hit her in the knee. Except it was the left knee. "What was that supposed to do?"

"Shut up, Oswin."

"Can't you just _not _have sex with the girl?" Adam asked.

"Um, she's really pretty," Clara said in defence of herself, putting her cigarette out finally in the ashtray sitting on the shelf behind her.

"To be fair, she _is_ really pretty," Oswin said to him, and he scowled at her for a moment. "_What_? I can appreciate aesthetic beauty without wanting to stick my fingers in it. Especially not if I had yellow fingernails that stank of tobacco."

"Just ask if you can talk to her, make sure you look really guilty and kind of upset, then apologise and _don't_ sleep with her," Adam said.

"His advice is much better than yours," Clara said to her sister.

"Well it would be, I've never failed to kiss somebody. I always succeed."

"I've tried to kiss a lot of girls and then had to go apologise for it later, trust me, I'm really good at apologising for being creepy," Adam said.

"You've never apologised to _me _for being creepy," Oswin pointed out.

"I'll apologise later," he said.

"The thing is," Clara began, interrupting the pair of them as they talked, first about her as though she wasn't there, and second about each other as though they were alone, "About the whole, she's-really-pretty-thing... I don't think I should be trusted alone with her."

"Are you thick? Ever since she got here I've been trying to stop you being alone with her! But you always said you'd be fine. Nobody ever listens to the smartest girl in the universe, do they?" Oswin sighed and flopped back in the chair, slouching, seeming to have given up trying to help her sister. But if Oswin wouldn't help her, what was she to do?

"Write a letter," suggested Adam, "An apology letter. You teach English, right? A letter should be easy. I can give her it?" Adam Mitchell was a far more useful person to have helping her than Oswin, Clara decided. She'd never been particularly fond of her sister's boyfriend - not in a negative way, more of an apathetic one - but now, she actually had some act of heroism with which to mould her perception of him properly.

"...Fine, fine. A letter," she sighed, rubbing her eyes.

"I'll tell you something that'll cheer you up," Oswin began, and Clara gave her an exasperated look that said she didn't believe anything Oswin could tell her would cheer her up, "Beta Clara got her nose broken."

"_What_!? How!?"

"Apparently, a possessed vending machine shot a can at her head," Oswin said, "And later Amy punched her in the face because she was being annoying. Sound familiar?"

"Sickeningly. Poor girl. This is why I only talk to you."

"'Poor girl'? You know she tried to kiss your husband..?" Oswin asked carefully.

"Yes, and I tried to kiss Thirteen, and both of us failed because the Doctor does have _some _morals. And it's only a kiss, anyway, even if she had pulled it off," Clara muttered.

"If it's just a kiss, why are you beating yourself up so much about what nearly happened with Thirteen?" Adam asked.

"Because Other Clara isn't cheating on anyone, is she? Arguably, I would be. And by not telling my husband what happened, I've made myself into a liar," Clara said, "And I love him so much and I _hate _that I nearly betrayed him, and that I'm still deceiving him now."

"Other Clara lied to Danny Pink _all _the time," Oswin pointed out, and Clara stared at her.

"Yes, and now Danny Pink's dead!"

"Your husband'll be dead soon, too, and then your problem will be solved."

"No, Oswin," Adam told her, "No."

"Well, I'm sorry, but I'm not in a particularly good mood this morning, Mitchell, in case you hadn't noticed," Oswin muttered, drinking some of her coffee and leaning back in her chair.

"...What? What's happened?" Clara asked.

"The Twelfth Doctor got revenge on Clara's behalf for Amy punching her in the face," Adam began, "By sneaking into our bedroom and putting an octopus under the bed. Never mind the fact it was _literally _nothing to do with us."

"An _octopus_!?"

"Yes."

"Well... Well where is it now!?"

"The TARDIS graciously created an aquarium for us where the bathroom's supposed to be," Oswin said, "Poor Mitchell's having to shower with the commoners."

"Very funny," he said, then he turned to Clara, "Moving on from the octopus, we were going out today, do you want to come?"

"What? Do I want to third-wheel the pair of you?"

"No, he means him and some of the others, I'm staying in," Oswin said, "I have things to do for Nine and River, not to mention I have to think up a revenge scheme to get back at Twelve for the octopus. I'm gonna shit him up."

"Well, have fun with that. But alright, fine, I'll come out... Wait - Thirteen's not coming, is-?"

"No, no," Adam assured her, "No Doctors, as far as I'm aware. Just a bunch of humans. Humans-Plus."

"Okay. Okay, I'll come. Just let me get some cigarettes."


	184. Heroes & Cons: Act II Scene I

_Martha_

_Heroes &amp; Cons: Act II Scene I_

She woke up woozy, her head throbbing and a chemical taste in the back of her mouth like noxious gas, unable to remember much beyond what she'd had for breakfast. Her wrists felt slimy and so did the skin around her mouth and cheeks, stinging a little, and when she tried to open her eyes a white, dirty room with tiles painted with seashells swam around her and she leant back in anguish, hitting her head on something, her back hurting. Then someone kicked her, and when she barely reacted, they kicked again. And again.

After the fourth kick she tried to shout, but found she couldn't, and that was when alarm bells started ringing and she fought against her headache to see around, which was when she realised she was sat in a bathtub, the porcelain cracked and yellow and stained. And the person kicking her was Clara Oswald, who was curled up in the other corner of the bath, duct tape around her mouth, wrists and ankles. Martha looked down at her own hands and feet and saw she was getting the exact same treatment, both of them stuck in the bath. Desperately, she tried to make her hands heat up to melt or burn away the tape, Clara watching her, but it wasn't working. Why wasn't it working?

Somebody laughed, somebody male.

"Don't try and pull any tricks on us, they won't work," he said, and Martha turned her head to see a smug boy, barely a man, late teens, early twenties, maybe, sitting in a wooden chair facing them, "We've just been waiting for you to wake up. We were trying to talk to that one, but every time we took off the tape she tried to flirt." Martha cast an exasperated, scathing look in Clara's direction, who just shrugged, as though to say, "_What was I supposed to do?_" He began saying, "You won't believe us right now, but we brought you here to keep you safe." _Safe_!? Because tying people up and throwing them into baths was definitely 'safe', of course. And then he, whoever he was, reached towards Martha and tore the tape away and she winced and let out a noise of pain, cursing.

"What the hell's going on?" she asked instantly. He crossed his arms and sat back. He looked dirty, like he hadn't washed for years, bloody marks on his arms and clothes.

"You're one of 'them'," he said, and Clara's eyes widened like she knew what that meant, "One of 'us', I should say."

"One of what?" Martha asked, and Clara made a noise like she was trying to speak, but she couldn't, then she glared at the boy and motioned to her mouth, but he just raised his eyebrows and shook his head.

"Even when she's gagged, she won't shut up," he sighed and said to Martha, who nearly laughed, "How come she knows more than you two?"

"What do you mean, two? Who else is here?" Martha asked, and he moved aside and Martha spied Donna, awake and listening without speaking, to the boy as he addressed Martha. She was bound the same way as Martha and Clara, just on the floor of the shower in the corner of the bathroom they were in, which was definitely a family bathroom. She saw some children's bath toys – rubber ducks and boats and bath foam – on a counter nearby, aged and sullied by now.

"Three of you," he said, "Did none of you know what you were?"

"Depends, what are we?"

"The media calls us 'freaks', or 'bio-terrorists', but the official term is 'manifest'," he explained, "People with abilities. Powers. Mutations. Now, this one here doesn't know what she can do," he motioned to Donna, "How about you? Don't try to demonstrate, you can't, not for a few hours, with the nerve agent they use. Any sedatives. They drug you up and send you here."

"Where's 'here'?" Martha asked.

"They call it Silverstorm. Silverstorm Penitentiary for the Terminally Deranged," he said, "The media like to make the _normal_ people think we're all dangerous killers, when really they're just scared of us. They forget that we're plenty scared too – have you ever woken up with sparks shooting out of your hands and lightbulbs exploding when you walk past?"

"Something like that," Martha said stiffly, "This doesn't look like a prison. It looks like a toilet."

"It was a city that suffered a 'biological attack'. This poor kid had the power to turn water into acid," the boy, whoever he was, explained, "All he did was try to wash his hands, and suddenly there was a huge water contamination with people who drank bleeding to death from their oesophagus. The whole city got quarantined, millions dead from the 'mysterious plague', and the city was completely evacuated and all the plumbing was cut off. None of the taps here work," he explained, "Two years later they built a forcefield around the edge and then started dropping us off and letting us loose. There's a supply drop once a week. People fight over it, it gets nasty."

"What year is it?" Donna called over, and he glanced back.

"The drugs affecting your memory?" he asked.

"Must be," she said.

"2028," he answered, then he turned back to Martha, "This is just what happened eleven years ago on a larger scale."

"In 2017? With the werewolves?" Martha asked, "And the Zones in the middle of London?"

"Yeah, and then the 'plague' was deemed too dangerous and it had to be… Contained. Which meant destroying the carriers. Never mind that they weren't carriers at all," he said grimly. UNIT had killed those poor people?

"But they were experiments to begin with," said Martha through her teeth, "UNIT made them, they can't-"

"It's not UNIT anymore," he said, "It's HCC. The Hazard Control Corps. UNIT was seen as unfit to manage the outbreaks of manifests, so the government created the HCC. UNIT have no authority over any of this anymore." Well, that didn't bode well.

"The real question, though," said a girl's voice, and someone looking even younger than the boy Martha was talking to now stepped into the room, and Clara made a noise in reaction and kicked Martha, "Is why don't any of you know all that? It's common knowledge. There are no secret organisations anymore, not when people expect statements on the news. And why don't you know what year it is, is another question. Finally, why does _she_ look exactly the same as she did fourteen years ago?" the girl nodded at Clara.

"How about 'who are you?' for a bloody question," said Donna.

"Did Oliver not introduce himself?" the girl asked, and the boy scowled, "Well, this is Oliver. And I'm Lydia. But she knows that." Clara kept making noises and kicking Martha.

"Will you stop kicking me!?" Martha shouted at her, and she just kicked her again, so Martha kicked back.

"Someone just un-tape her mouth," Donna sighed, looking bored. If nobody was gonna hurt them, _why_ were they tied up and locked in a bathroom to begin with? Annoyed, Oliver leant forwards and tore the tape from Clara's face, leaving a red mark around her lips.

"Gagged and bound in a bathtub? This is like an orgy gone wrong. Or right, I suppose… Anyway, I could ask you the same thing," she snapped at Lydia, Martha ignoring her stupid remark about sex parties, "Because the last time I saw you, you were sixteen, and you've hardly changed. Still reading my mind? Accepted what you are yet?"

"Who is she?" Martha asked Clara.

"A friend of Angie Maitland's," Clara said, "Or she was, fourteen years ago. She's telepathic, and what else? Un-ageing? Or do you just have really good moisturiser?"

"And you were one of us and you didn't mention," Lydia said.

"I couldn't mention, could I? Not with UNIT after me and Oswin."

"Could I have a recap, please!?" Donna shouted, but when she did, her eyes seemed to change colour. They seemed to glow silver, glinting like a ten pence piece, "What?" she caught Martha staring at her.

"Why did your eyes go silver?" Martha stammered.

"My eyes did _what_?!" Donna exclaimed, and Oliver laughed.

"It's harmless," he explained, "Some fancy chemical they inject us with that makes our eyes glow that shade of silver when we use – or try to use – our powers. Gives us away in society. 'Silver eyes, full of lies', is the propaganda slogan. Unlike the nerve gas that keeps us sedated long enough to be dumped here, it doesn't ware off. That's why they call it Silverstorm, to stop us forgetting. Now, are you gonna tell us what you're doing here or not? Maybe why they dropped you off in a high-security helicopter instead of just the usual trucks? What sort of powers do you have that warrant that?"

"It's who we know, not what we are," Clara said, "But if you wanna know what we are, we're time travellers. I'm sure Lydia can vouch for that. I only met her two days ago. UNIT knew it, so this HCC probably know it, too."

"What about your sister? She here?" Lydia asked Clara.

"No, she's not one of us. She's a hologram, if you must know. A data ghost."

"Are they telling the truth?" Oliver asked Lydia, frowning.

"Seems like it," she said quietly, "And if they are, they'll probably need a history lesson. After they tell us what they can do, of course."


	185. Heroes & Cons: Act II Scene II

_Amy_

_Heroes &amp; Cons: Act II Scene II_

She woke up when freezing water was thrown over her face and she gasped and choked, rolling over onto her side and fumbling with her hands to try and pick herself off the ground of a dark room, dimly lit, her hands coated in dust and her head and hair soaking.

"You didn't have to do that," Rory shouted at somebody, and her ears rang in a daze and she stumbled into a wall, and then someone came to help her, and she was surprised to actually see Rory. He hadn't been able to shut off his invisibility since yesterday, he'd even gone to bed unseen and had lifted a spoon to his non-existent mouth the following morning. But now, she could see him, and Mickey behind him.

"What the hell's going on?" Mickey questioned, he and Rory both also completely drenched. Amy looked over and saw two laughing figures, two men in their twenties, one of them with a cocky, annoying grin, the other looking much more serious and unamused, even older. The cocky one looked at the serious one.

"What?" he said, shrugging, "I needed to wake them up."

"No, you didn't," said the serious one, then he sighed, "You could've waited, you know the gas wares off quickly."

"And we need to know who they are," he argued, "And what they can do, and why they deserved a high security drop. You know the army never risk coming in here, not unless it was way too dangerous for these three to have any chance of getting out."

"Or killing themselves on the forcefield by accident," the serious one said, "They're either too dangerous to leave near the boundaries, or too valuable to risk accidental suicide."

"Who are you?" Mickey asked them, "Talking about forcefields and boundaries and suicide, kidnapping us and bringing us hear, knocking us out." The cocky one laughed.

"Well, manners first, I'm Elijah, and this is Fitzroy," he introduced himself, "And we didn't kidnap you or knock you out or bring you into this godforsaken hellhole the less privileged call Silverstorm. A whole city got destroyed, so they built a fancy, invisible forcefield and locked us all in here. One entrance, one exit, no way out. Leave us here to kill ourselves in a turf war."

"So what knocked us out?" Amy asked, trying to dry her face.

"A noxious gas," said the serious one, Fitzroy, "HCC distributed. It's a sedative, stops you from using your powers so that you can be contained and brought here, this prison, just for us."

"Us? What are you?" Rory asked.

"You don't know?" Elijah frowned, "Well, that's weird, usually people know what they are, at least. But your eyes are going crazy right now, so you must be one of us."

"Wait, you mean someone with superpowers?" Amy frowned.

"Yeah, a 'manifest'. Don't you watch the news? Look outside? It's been going on for fifteen years, since the backend of 2013, here in Britain." _Fifteen years_!? "We brought you here to keep you safe, there are Conduits out here that maraud and look for easy kills."

"There are _what_?"

"There's a war going on," said Fitzroy, "Gang war, turf war. There's us, and there's the Conduits."

"The HCC trucks dumped you in _our_ territory, so you're in _our_ gang. We've got the half of the city with the hospital in it, some skyscrapers, not that I need a skyscraper to offer me a vantage point. They've got the part of the city with the retail park, on the outskirts. Too close to the forcefield for our liking."

"Don't act like we've got any choice in it," Fitzroy cut across him grimly, "We're Apexes."

"Because we're better," Elijah added.

"I don't care about who's better," Fitzroy muttered, "I'm only here because I got stuck here. You're all vicious savages."

"We're more offensive, more hands on, than those Conduits. More aggressive. Gets the job done. But them? They'll find someone invisible and strap a bomb to them – they've got someone over there with some weird power that means they can make anything into a bomb – and send them here for reconnaissance. They blew up our hospital generators years ago, but they have an electric fence that means they're too fortified for us to attack head-on. But they're subversive because they're weak, which is why we have the most food, no matter what that bastard Oliver tells his army. Even if they do make their home in a cleared out old IKEA. Ran out of food almost seven years ago," Elijah explained.

"At least they can amuse themselves by putting up furniture," Amy muttered, "So why are we here? And why are Rory's eyes glowing? We're a bit… Woozy. Forgetful."

"They call it 'Silver Mist', the HCC. It's an injectable, causes a gene mutation in your irises. Too much adrenaline, your eyes change colour, glow bright silver, you can even see it in a pitch black room. Doesn't affect normal humans, they used to use it as a screening process ten years ago, everyone just got made to go to local community centres or schools to get these injections, and anybody whose eyes started to glow got dragged off and thrown into prison. But normal prisons couldn't hold us, Zones couldn't hold us, so they built Silverstorm. Gets its name from the eye-thing. Don't know what power your friend has that makes his eyes glow constantly, something passive."

"Neither of my powers are working," Rory said coldly.

"Well, they won't," said Elijah, "Not until the sedative wares off completely. You might as well be any random everyday bloke on the street for all the good you can do. They drug you up, dump you here, and let you loose."

"You said HCC, what's HCC?" Mickey asked.

"Jesus, have you lot been living under a rock? The Hazard Control Corps."

"What about UNIT? I thought UNIT were dealing with the superpowers," Mickey pointed out. Amy had thought that, too.

"Yeah, they were. But ten years ago the government deemed they weren't handling the manifests properly, so they created the HCC, passed them off to the public as some new emergency group for special cases. They just revolve around hunting us down and containing us in here, the leader's a real sicko. Name's Klein, Dr Klein. People say he's the one who makes more of us just to keep him in a job," Elijah whispered knowingly.

"That's not true," said Fitzroy, "It's just a rumour."

"Oh yeah? Then why was London overrun with werewolves thirteen years ago? Murdering people left and right? What did they call it, the Lupus Virus. Wolf-strain contagion, airborne pathogen turning people into psychotic shapeshifters. Then what happened to them?" Elijah challenged.

"They died," said Fitzroy, "They died because their bodies couldn't handle the altered serum, you know that."

"No way. They got killed, because they were 'too dangerous', even though the government were the ones who created them in the first place," said Elijah. Wherever they were, Amy thought it sounded like hell, a 1940s throwback.

"You think too much about conspiracies," Fitzroy said dryly, "We can't get out, so it hardly matters. And if we did get out, we wouldn't be so lucky as to end up back in Silverstorm."

"No, they'd put us down just like those wolves," Elijah snapped, then he turned to the other three, "Point is, the eye thing is irreversible. It'll never stop, changes your biology at its core just so they can identify us if we try to hurt them. And the other point is that you three are Apexes now, like it or not. And if you don't know what you're powers are, we're gonna find out."


	186. Heroes & Cons: Act II Scene III

_Adam_

_Heroes &amp; Cons: Act III Scene III_

For the second time that day, he was woken up by somebody whispering his name. A sweet, familiar voice thick with urgency and panic, soaked in confusion, the same person shaking his shoulder with hands he didn't recognise the feel of.

"Adam, wake up. _Wake up_," said a voice with a London accent, but then, he lived with a lot of girls with London accents.

"Huh?" he mumbled, and she shook his arm so much he rolled onto his front.

"Get up, there are people outside," she hissed, and he recognised it was Rose Tyler speaking to him, and, his head foggy, he finally threw himself into some sort of awareness and tried to sit up a little, finding himself in a dark area with Rose crouching next to him, and he couldn't deduce where he was.

"Where are we?" he asked groggily, rubbing his head and finding his palm was covered in dirt and his sprained ankle was stinging.

"A shop, a corner shop, behind the counter," she told him quietly. How had they ended up behind the counter of a shop? He couldn't remember anything beyond leaving the TARDIS that morning, a headache burning behind his eyes, "It's empty, nothing on the shelves, one of the windows is smashed, and I can't use my powers."

"Well is there anyone else here? What about the others?" he asked her. She began to speak, but there was a noise of smashing glass and he realised that a projectile of some sort, possibly a glass bottle, had just been thrown into the shop they were hiding out in, and they both jumped and moved so they had their backs against the counter, pulling their feet in to keep them hidden from whoever was throwing things outside.

"COME ON, THEN!" someone shouted, a man with a thick, Northern accent who sounded a little drunk, "WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE, HIDING OUT HERE!?" he yelled.

"What's happening!?" Adam hissed.

"I don't know, I have no idea!" Rose replied with equal desperation, both of them immediately confused.

"YOU A BASTARD APEX OR A BASTARD CONDUIT, EH!?" the man demanded, a question Adam didn't understand, which got a few laughs from some others outside the shop.

"What's an Apex?" Adam whispered, "Or a Conduit?" Rose didn't answer, so he assumed they were both equally in the dark.

"I know yer in there, I can smell you!" he jeered, "Stink of fear, and… Confusion… Oh, _I_ get it, you're both new."

"…Yeah, that's it!" Rose called, and Adam stared at her; he couldn't understand why she'd just announce her presence to the gang of weirdos outside, "We're new. Don't know what you're talking about." What kind of freak was she bargaining with who could _smell_ their emotions from outside of the shop they were stashed away in.

"Come on aaht then, but if yer lying, we'll kick t'shit aaht a yer," he shouted, and now it seemed like that was their only option. Lying about what, though? Being new? New to what, and where? But before he could think anything through, Rose was slowly standing up next to him.

"I hate Northerners sometimes," Adam muttered, following her.

"Your girlfriend's a Northerner," Rose pointed out.

"She is not, she's from Saturn," he argued. Just because she'd inherited Clara's dodgy Lancashire accent didn't mean she was actually from the land where all everyone seemed to eat was gravy. Rose didn't seem to care that much, though. They walked, slowly, down one of the aisles of the corner shop towards the smashed window, which was shattered so thoroughly the ground was coated in fine dust and there were hardly any shards sticking out of what was left of the frame, which looked battered and weather-beaten. They stopped dead when they saw what was waiting for them outside, though, or rather, who.

Some dirty bloke, in his thirties, Adam imagined, standing and waiting for them five times over. Five identical copies of the same man.

"What's t'matter? Never seen clones before?" one of them asked, and two laughed, but the one in the middle seemed to be the leader. Maybe he was the original? At any rate, he told the one who'd just joked to 'shut it', before turning back to Adam and Rose.

"Good thing you two showed up 'ere, then, innit? No Man's Land raahnd 'ere, you won't get recruited just fer sticking yer head aaht t'graahnd," he said.

"Recruited?" Rose asked.

"Bloody newbies. Look, I'll tell yer what's going on, but I aren't sticking raahnd ter defend yers," he said, "Conduits in t'west, Apexes in t'east. You join whichever'n's territory those Hazard bastards drop you in. Apexes are more violent and they always win t'fight over t'food rations. Conduits like ter think they're high n' migh'y, when they're just sneaky cunts who blow stuff up and stab yer in t'back and nick the rations anyway. Leaves t'rest of us practically starving. I'd rather be hungry than part of a bloody gang war though," he explained.

"Wait, where are we?" Adam asked.

"Where are we? Yer in bloody Silverstorm, mate," he said, "Prison for manifests. Anyone with powers, eh? HCC find you out there, they drug you on sedatives ter stop yet powers working and dump you in Silverstorm. Forcefield stops you getting aaht. You'll be able ter use 'em again. Well… He will."

"What? What about me?" Rose asked, Adam feeling a little overwhelmed. They were in a city that was actually a prison for anybody with superpowers?

"There's something chemical about yer smell," he said, "Check yer left arm." Rose held out her left arm and rolled up her sleeve, and gasped when she saw a little bump in the skin just below the crease of her elbow on the inside of her arm, "Ah, that's what they give ter t'dangerous'ns. Less yer rip it aaht, yer won't be able ter do owt."

"Well that's just bloody brilliant…" Rose muttered resentfully, pulling her sleeve back down and holding her arm away from the rest of her, clearly freaked out by what she'd had implanted there while they'd been knocked out.

"I'd best be off, then," announced the man with his gaggle of clones, "Draws attention if anybody spots a group of people together, they all assume they work for the opposite gang." He started to walk away after giving them hardly any information about where they were, what the HCC was.

"One more thing, mate," Rose called after him and his clones, and he glanced back, "What year is it?"

"Blimey, they must've given t'pair a you summat pretty strong," he said, "It's 2028." And he swaggered off with his clone kin, not sticking around to answer any more of their intrusive questions, leaving Adam and Rose standing on their own outside of an abandoned convenience store on a desolate street corner in some random prison-city.

"Great, I'm literally powerless," Rose said dryly, "What do we do?"

"I don't know, where are the others?" he looked around, but saw no signs of anybody else nearby, "What happened this morning?"

"Clara had the idea that we all go try to sort out whatever was going on with UNIT and these people with superpowers, so I guess we must've showed up at some base of theirs, and then they bring us here," Rose said, "Which means they probably brought the others, too…" she searched her pockets then, "Ugh, no phone."

"Yeah, I don't have mine either," he said a moment later, after checking his pockets, "_Shit_ I don't have the emergency teleporter either. That means they took it, and-"

"They can get onto the TARDIS," Rose finished his sentence, "We need a phone. We need to try and call the TARDIS, or call Kate Stewart. She's in charge, right? UNIT are always involved in this stuff… Where would you find a phone?"

"The phone lines are probably all cut off," Adam pointed out, "We'll be in an electronic black hole, I doubt any of them will work."

"There's always a way to get a message out, especially to the Doctor," Rose said, "And it's lucky we have a boy genius with us, then isn't it?" she said, glancing back at him as she started to walk off in a random direction.

"…We do..?" he asked, puzzled, and she stared him, "Oh, you mean – you mean _me_? _I'm_ the boy genius?"

"Yes, obviously," she said, "Anyway, I'm sure if we're so much as missing for more than a day, they'll come looking for us. Doesn't that mind patch of the Twins' work anywhere in time and space?"

"Well, I think so, unless there's something stopping it."


	187. Heroes & Cons: Act II Scene IV

_Martha_

_Heroes &amp; Cons: Act II Scene IV_

"Don't bother trying to talk to that weird twin of yours," Lydia Cartwright said to Clara, "I'm blocking it. Monitoring it." Martha knew that Lydia was a telepath, but she didn't know how far that extended. Was it really necessary for Clara to tell her they were time travellers? In Martha's opinion, it was a little stupid, and she wouldn't have done it. She was also more or less at a loss when it came to what Clara and Oswin had been doing two days ago, in 2014.

"Are they _definitely _time travellers, though? What kind of power's that?" Oliver questioned. Martha looked between them for a moment and realised what was going on – they were simply playing good cop bad cop. And Lydia was the bad cop.

"No power, we all live together in an infinite time machine that looks like a police box from seventy years ago," Clara said, and Lydia narrowed her eyes at her, and Martha spared a glance for Donna, both of them equally confused as to what was happening between Clara and this friend-of-Angie's. Lydia looked to the floor for a moment, and sighed.

"They're liars," she said, "No time travel. Just stupid, I guess."

"Charming," Martha muttered, but wondered why Lydia, who could read minds and clearly tell if people were telling the truth or not, was deceiving Oliver.

"Well, at any rate, newbies won't know about the war," he said.

"Hardly a war," Lydia argued with him, "It only exists in Silverstorm."

"Yeah, well, there are two clearly defined sides. There's the good guys, that's us, the Conduits, and then there's the bad guys, the Apexes. The Apexes are these brutish, violent thugs. They just show up and kill anyone in their way to get food, and they've got the advantage of having this guy Elijah on their side, who can fly. Sometimes he gets the rations early just by catching them, if there's not a lot. He's a blight on our skies," Oliver said.

"And the Conduits are totally better," Lydia said, and Martha noted that the good cop bad cop routine seemed to have fallen apart. Lydia didn't appear to be enjoying the speech Oliver was giving about these 'Conduits', "They're not, last week you send in some teenager with a bomb to their hospital."

"You _what_?" Donna asked, "A kid? You strapped a bomb to a _kid_?"

"No, he got out of there," Oliver said, "Took a couple of those Apexes out while he did, too."

"Thing is, it's wherever you arrive that determines if you're an Apex, a Conduit, or just a starving scavenger who wanders around and tries to find a house that hasn't been completely raided," Lydia said, "There's no good and bad, and some people are forced to stay. If they're 'valuable'." Martha got the feeling that Lydia was one of these 'valuable' people, and maybe in a city full of gang warfare, a human lie detector like her was too good to pass up.

It was then that Martha felt her skin begin to heat up ferociously, the way it did when she lost control of her damned pyrokinesis. She scrunched up her eyes to try and focus it just enough to melt the duct tape around her hands.

"Here we go," Oliver said, watching her, and she glared at him, "Show me that silver." When her hands were free, she pulled the melting strands of tape off of her skin and went to free her ankles, "What's that power? Power to melt stuff?"

"Pyrokinesis," Martha muttered.

"Oh yeah? Our last pyrokinetic died," he said, looking at her like she was a shiny new toy, then he turned to Clara, "And what about you?" By then, though, Clara had already phased her hands and feet out of the tape completely, and Oliver had missed her do it. Martha didn't know about Lydia, though, there was something fishy going on in that regard.

"_I'm_ looking for cigarettes," she said, searching her pockets. Martha then searched her own pockets and found nothing except a receipt in her jacket from months ago, "Ah-ha, jackpot." She pulled a fresh pack of cigarettes out of her pocket and Martha grimaced.

"Why do you do that?"

"It calms me down," said Clara, "I have a stressful life, have you not noticed. I got kidnapped and tied up in a bathroom this morning, you know. Can I have a light?" She held the thing out to Martha, "Please?" It was something about the way she said 'please' that made Martha give in.

"Ugh, fine," she said, touching the end of it with her finger until it sizzled and glowed orange.

"Blimey, you gave up easily," Donna commented.

"Hmm?" Martha looked over to her, still trapped in the shower because she didn't have a power that would allow her freedom.

"She only said one word and you were all over her," Donna said, and Martha just frowned. Clara wasn't listening, she was too busy relishing in her stupid nicotine. Then there was a bang and somebody sweaty-looking and young crashed into the bathroom they were all still gathered in, and just before he spoke Lydia reacted like there was some dire news.

"Rations spotted," the boy panted, "Incoming helicopters. We have to go _now_."

* * *

_Amy_

Amy thought that these weird Apexes trying to figure out what the powers of the crew were was, frankly, a terrible idea. Mainly because it would probably involve herself and Mickey going through a myriad of weird tortures. Yet Mickey was curious enough to say yes to Elijah's offer of help, even though Amy didn't trust him one bit. In some way, they understood that adrenaline was the thing that triggered the powers to activate, and what better way to increase adrenaline than to give someone a near death experience?

They were in a hospital, so the three of them were led by Elijah and Fitzroy through filthy corridors with blood on some of the walls and sleeping, bored figures in most of the wards they passed. One of the wards was filled with moaning people she assumed were the injured, though she didn't know what sort of help they'd be getting in a putrid ruin like this one, with its stink and its grime. Then again, maybe they had a healer. Amy thought it would be great if one of them turned out to be able to heal people, but she didn't know how likely that was, and they always seemed like a generally unlucky group.

They were lead into some kind of washroom with more grey muck stuck to the walls, black mould creeping across the ceiling like the building had a sore, and there was a bath in there. Probably for people who couldn't stand to shower for various reasons, but there it was. Full of water that didn't seem particularly clean, but cleaner than she expected.

"Don't worry, we don't bathe in there," Elijah said.

"What are you going to do?" Amy asked cautiously.

"That would ruin the surprise," he said smoothly, "Which one of you is first?"

"Well, I actually know what both of my powers are…" Rory said, looking pleased he didn't have to suffer through whatever Amy and Mickey were about to. But he still watched carefully, and that was when he started to… Well, 'flicker' was the best way Amy could describe it. Fading in and out.

"Invisibility's always a tricky one to control," Elijah said, "So, the boy or the girl?" he looked between Mickey and Amy.

"…I'd really prefer to just learn what I can do on my own, thanks," Amy said. Elijah shrugged and looked at Mickey, and there was a tiny pause as they waited, and then Fitzroy grabbed Mickey from behind and lifted him up (he must have been superstrong) and then almost threw him towards the bath, and then he was holding Mickey's head beneath the surface of the water.

"What are you doing!? Get off of him!" Rory shouted, trying to go over and stop Fitzroy, but Elijah came and held him back, managing it simply because he was stronger than Rory was, "Stop it! Get off! You're gonna kill him!" Seconds later, Mickey stopped struggling, which could only a bad sign. But, Amy had thought it took a lot longer than a couple of seconds for somebody to drown.

"_Stop_!" she shouted, and Fitzroy seemed to stiffen and instantly let go of Mickey's body.

"Oh, hello," said Elijah, "That's a good trick you've got there."

"What? What is?" Amy asked, and Elijah let go of Rory but didn't say anything, "_Tell me_," she ordered.

"Persuasion," he answered instantly, stiffening the way Fitzroy had, then he shook his head and loosened up, "Now _that's_ a dangerous power in the outside world. Dangerous here, too." Then the sound of a bell ringing made its way through the halls and both Elijah and Fitzroy looked out of the door and listened. "Ration drop," he said, "We've gotta go." By now, Rory by Mickey's body, and he wrenched him out of the water by his shoulders, and Amy expected to see a lifeless corpse withdrawn.

"Are you okay?" Rory asked him.

"I'm fine," Mickey answered, which shocked Amy, "I think I can breathe underwater."


	188. Heroes & Cons: Act II Scene V

_Adam_

_Heroes &amp; Cons: Act II Scene V_

Everything was covered in dirt and dust and filth. It was all rotting concrete and decayed bits of metal bus stops, traffic lights, streetlamps, all with a fine film of grime sticking to the top. The tarmac of the roads was cracked and the markings were worn away, and Adam had no idea how long it must have been since it last rained, but then, maybe rain didn't make it through the forcefield. Maybe this place was just barren.

"What do you think happened here?" Adam Mitchell asked Rose, looking round at her and seeing her scratching at the bump on her inner arm, "I wouldn't do that, just leave it, we can get it out back on the TARDIS." Her skin was going to bleed if she carried on the way she was doing, it was already red and blotchy, and if she managed to get the thing out she'd probably be at risk of some dire infection out there in the lonely city, so it would just be better to wait. "Maybe Clara can get it out?"

"Yeah, but we don't know where Clara is or how long we're gonna be stuck here for," Rose said, picking at it, "If I got rid of this thing, I could probably just teleport out."

"Yeah, but it'll hurt, and whatever we used to cut it out would be filthy," Adam pointed out, "You never know, some of the others might have had the idea to get to the radio tower as well. We can go a couple of days without having to resort to that, even without food."

"What about water?"

"I'm cryokinetic, I can _make_ water," he said, "Well, I can make ice and wait for it to melt. But it's better than getting into a fight with these gangs over…" he trailed off when he heard something overhead, some whirring, mechanical noise. Adam and Rose both looked up and saw it, a helicopter, carrying a large crate beneath it over the top. Presumably, there was some kind of gap in the forcefield up there, or maybe the crate was coated in some resistant material. Who knew if the forcefield didn't only affect organic life, anyway?

"…Adam, what's that..?" Rose asked quietly, clearly wanting him to tell her that it _wasn't_ a crate of rations.

"Could be a sentry gun. AC-130. Stealth bomber."

"_Stealth bomber_!? In a crate?" she frowned, and he said nothing for a moment, "Are you making weird jokes only your girlfriend understands again?"

"…I just play a lot of _Call of Duty_… It's probably rations. Meaning we should get out of here, so that we don't get involved in some fight, and so that it doesn't land on us," he said, which was a very real possibility, since it was hanging right above them. They made to move to the right through the col-du-sac they were in, the rations looming perilously on high as the pilot probably aimed for where to drop them.

But before they could cut through a garden and climb over a wall or a fence, they heard shouting from that direction. And if there was shouting from one direction, more shouting from the opposite way started up behind them. They were trapped.

"Shit," Adam cursed, "What do we do?"

"Get into one of the houses and hide," Rose said, and then she turned to her left in the ginnel between two houses they were now stuck in and kicked a black painted, wooden door down.

"That's not a way into one of the houses," Adam commented, "It's a cupboard full of spiders and gardening stuff."

"Yeah, well, they're coming, so it's the best hiding place we've got," Rose declared, ducking down (the thing wasn't even four feet high) and going inside, neither of them having a light. At least Adam could still see the glowing outline of her aura (which was very dark red, not that he knew what any of the colours actually meant), but without Rose's time vortex power, there was no real way to see anything in the 'cupboard' (if it could be called a cupboard, since it was on the outside). Nevertheless, Rose was right, it _was_ the best hiding place they had, so he was left with no choice but to stoop into the dank space, too. "Bloody hell, your eyes are silver!"

"Sorry, what?" he asked.

"Your eyes. Are glowing. Silver," Rose said slowly, and then they both shut up as they heard people stampeding past and yelling, and noises like bangs and explosions coming from nearby. Occasionally, the ground would shake.

"Of course they are," he muttered, and Rose didn't say anything, "…Wait, you're not being serious, are you?"

"Yes! Bright bloody silver, it's all I can see," Rose said, and he frowned and took off his glasses and turned them to face him in a bid to see any light reflected back at him. And he was more than a little shocked to see two glowing, silver circles in the lenses.

"Holy shit, what does it mean?" he asked Rose.

"I have no idea," she said, "I can't see anything in the time vortex to help me, it's just dark. It's not been dark for months…"

"Try," he told her, thinking, and he heard her frown. And then he saw two more silver circles, "Jesus Christ! Yours are doing it too."

"But my eyes change colour all the time," said Rose, but when he'd pointed that out the glow had ceased.

"What if it's linked to the powers then?"

"I don't know, but as long as you don't die from it, we can find out on the TARDIS. We really have to find the others, but I don't know how," Rose said, groaning, "No phones, no teleporters, no powers, no nothing."

"Well, we didn't used to have powers, anyway. And I have mine, still. Let's just get to the radio tower and take it from there," he said, leaning back against some shelves he couldn't see that he hoped weren't crawling with bugs, but knowing his luck he'd have his ear resting against a spiders nest or something. "Did you used to fancy me?"

"No," snapped Rose quickly.

"Are you sure?"

"Is now really the time?"

"Well I'm not doing anything else. Did you?" he implored.

"…Maybe a bit, but, you ruined it when you almost lost the TARDIS," Rose said, "You know, when the Dimension Stabilisers brought you on board, I honestly thought it would be me you'd be going after, not Oswin. Suppose I should've guessed you'd want to date the neurotic genius."

"Ooh, you sound jealous."

"I'm not jealous, _I_ have the Doctor," Rose countered.

"The Doctor isn't a multimillionaire though," Adam said.

"He also isn't a twat," said Rose, though she sounded like she was laughing. Some kind of gargantuan battle still raged outside, and there was another loud explosion that sounded like it might be a car bomb, "Anyway, you fancied me, too."

"Who wouldn't? You're _very_ attractive, Rose. Which you are completely aware of."

"Shall I tell your girlfriend you said that?" she threatened jokingly, and Adam laughed.

"Sure, she's bi so she'll probably agree with me," he answered.

"Ugh, you're right… What happened to Clara yesterday?"

"Clara?"

"Beta Clara."

"Oh."

"Nobody'll tell me, do you know?" she asked.

"Amy punched her in the face," Adam said, "So to get revenge, the Twelfth Doctor put an octopus under me and Oswin's bed a five AM."

"…She's gonna retaliate, isn't she?"

"Oh, yeah, of course she is, she won't let that go, she was terrified of it. It's in the room that used to be our bathroom now, the TARDIS made an aquarium," Adam explained.

"You're _keeping_ it!?"

"I have no idea yet, I think Oswin hates _all_ animals."

"Did you tell her you're in love with her yet? Because if you haven't, it's just getting painful to watch by this point. I mean, she went away on holiday for a week and she might as well have died," said Rose, which Adam frowned at, though she couldn't see him, "I mean, not died, but… Well, you know what I mean."

"Yes, I did, the other week," he answered stiffly, "You know your new boyfriend came to me asked for relationship advice two weeks ago? He came to me and said, 'Adam, how do you tell a girl you're in love with her?'-"

"Obviously because he assumed you'd already told your girlfriend because it was the most blatant thing in the entire universe," Rose said, "What did you tell him?"

"I said 'with words.'"

"Genius." There was silence for a few moments, at which point Adam realised it was _complete _silence. Whatever had been going on outside had stopped.

"…Do you think it's safe?" he asked her.

"Dunno. Let's go see."


	189. Other Halves & Counterparts II

_Oswin_

_Other Halves &amp; Counterparts II_

The flute was lain out on what looked like an operating table, with Oswin sitting, alone in the lab, at the head end, tinkering with some of the hardware using the thinnest screwdriver she could find. She was busy doing this when there was a knock at the door into the lab, which was rare, because the Doctors usually just sonicked their way in, Clara phased and Adam Mitchell had a keycard. Oswin paused and listened for a voice, a little thrown by being shown such legitimate common courtesy by whoever was outside.

"Oswin? Can I come in?" asked Clara. Claratoo, Oswin assumed, because Alpha Clara was out and would've typically just walked through the door, perhaps after a telepathic forewarning.

"…Helix, open the door," Oswin said.

"_Affirmative, Miss Oswald_," Helix said, and the door slid open, Oswin watching as Claratoo entered awkwardly, right hand wrapped around her left arm, her face dotted with blue and yellow bruising, dressing over her broken nose.

"Nobody will even look at me," she said brokenly, "I don't know where the Twelfth Doctor is, either. Or who to talk to."

"What makes you think _I'll _talk to you?" Oswin asked. Clara stared at her for a moment and then bowed her head and turned, as though to leave, "No, sorry, that's not what I meant, you don't have to go. I'm not too good when it comes to socialising." Clara came and sat down in one of the chairs.

"What are you doing? What is that?" she asked Oswin eventually.

"Err, it's called a 'flute', which means 'flesh suit.' It's the 'step up' from holograms," Oswin explained, "You just upload a dead person's personality into it and you've got a fully working robot clone."

"You're giving yourself a body?" Clara asked. Oswin smiled a little.

"No, no. I'm modifying it for River, she and Nine scavenged it the other week," Oswin replied, "Doesn't need much modification though, I really don't know why the Doctor can't just do this himself… It's boring," she sighed and put down her screwdriver, "Did you have anything particular you wanted to talk to me about?"

"Why do people hate me and not her?" Clara asked, in reference to Alpha Clara. She looked sad and uneasy, fidgeting restlessly.

"They tried the not-getting-along thing, they tried feuding, they made enemies of each other, everyone was out to get everybody else, there was no loyalty or team mentality. Martha _hated_ Other You, for so long. Completely despised her, no idea why."

"But they seem like friends," Clara pointed out.

"They are friends now. Everybody's friends now, really. And the dear TARDIS went to a _lot_ of effort to make it that way, and I think the Second Prank War was what did it. Mainly because the boys were all irrelevant to the feuds – except maybe Jack. It was the girls who were the issue. So when the girls get along, everybody gets along," Oswin explained, "Other You only has two people that she's completely herself around, me and her husband, the rest of the time she tries to stay quiet. Even I used to hate her."

"What changed?"

"The Dream. Two weeks, stuck with each other, secrets get revealed and bonds get formed. That's just how it goes when you only have one person to talk to."

"The Doctor said something to me yesterday," Clara began.

"This isn't about you trying to kiss him, is it?" Oswin asked.

"No, though for the record I completely regret that, I was an idiot. He said you weren't very well."

"Oh."

"What did he mean? Because I thought holograms couldn't get sick…"

"They can't. A lot of people say that; I'm 'not very well' or I'm 'ill'. Nothing's diagnosed, I have… Flashbacks though. Sometimes. I don't talk about them, I don't like to," she said, "Might trigger one of them… But, um, a lot of the others don't really know that. I have a lot of issues revolving around my non-existent morality, that's why I have you. Or, Other You. I don't know, um, I didn't leave the house for twenty-five years so I'm not very good at inter-human communication. Just listen to the story of how I got with my boyfriend and you'll see that."

"What's the story?"

"Sorry..? The story of...? Of Adam? And… And me?" she frowned, and Claratoo laughed a little.

"Yes!"

"Erm, well… I had no intentions of ever going out anywhere with that boy. In fact, everybody used to call him 'Creepy Adam'. And, um… Okay, don't tell him I said this, but _maybe_ I did fancy him, for reasons I can't deduce since he was just weird, but that's irrelevant, because regardless of that, we actually got set up," she said, smiling to herself and leaning back in her chair and crossing her arms, "We got set up because everyone thought I had something going on with the Tenth Doctor, and they wanted to stop that. So you know, they did what any matchmakers would do, and they trapped us in a simulation for two days and programmed us to get attacked by a ghostly goat. Which, yes, is exactly what it sounds like. It was awful and it didn't work. You see, I didn't want to go out with him because he's a human. I mean, he's… Mortal. Or he was, thanks to the Twelfth Doctor's trick with the coffee jars Adam's mutated to the point where he's just in a permanent state of being cryogenically frozen so he can't age, but this was like, months ago. Then Martha Jones decided we were all going to go camping, and they decided they were going to play truth or dare and get drunk, so I got to spend the whole night watching the idiot to make sure he didn't choke on his sick while he kept asking me to marry him. But unfortunately for Mitchell, he ended up on the opposite side in the First Prank War. And the First Prank War lead to the EMP and the Dream, so I spent two weeks without him to worry about with Clara trying to wear me down and admit I liked him, which she succeeded in, I hate to admit. But at the start of the Prank War, he built this thing that erased the memories of… Well, you and the Doctor. Other you. Made them forget they were married, it was sort of hilarious… I'm gonna talk to him about it later… Anyway, in exchange for him fixing them, I had to agree to go on a date with him. So then I'm in a coma for two weeks and Adam Mitchell takes the _wonderful_ advice of my _darling_ little sister – that's you – and takes me to see my family. My family who think I'm dead. Because I am dead. And I actually got disowned, and now only one of my brothers I actually get along with, and I have five brothers. Probably one of the most disastrous first dates _ever_. And then he dropped a lot of lemons on the floor trying to be sweet – he thought they were limes, he's colour blind, you see – and I made out with him. And then I accidentally turned myself into a baby for a few days, an awful experience, and when I was… Not a baby anymore, I finally agreed to go out with him."

"You got _disowned_ on your _first date_!?"

"Yeah, makes shouting each other out of a restaurant look like paradise, doesn't it? At least you got a shag afterwards," Oswin said.

"Hilarious," Clara said dryly, "Why did you get disowned?"

"I used to build bombs for some people because they said if I didn't they'd kill my family. And then one of those bombs killed ten thousand people, so I left home to stop anyone else from dying, and my mother didn't like that, so when I returned she disowned me. Didn't care one bit that a year later I'd died after Dalek conversion," Oswin sighed, "Haven't seen her since. Don't want to."

"Danny used to have flashbacks," Clara said out of nowhere, and Oswin looked up from the flute, "About the war."

"Well, as long as you tried to be there for him, I'm sure you made a difference. You always try to help me, so," Oswin said, feeling awkward talking about Danny Pink, since she still didn't particularly like him. He _had_ punched her boyfriend in the face.

"He helped a lot when I had nightmares," Clara said, "But they've been getting worse again."

"I'm sorry," she said, "I know how bad they get for you…"

"Yeah, and I can't talk to the Doctor about it, can I? He has no idea," she said, "He has no idea about anything. He always hated Danny, just because he was soldier. And now I don't even know where he is."

"Oh, don't go looking for him. He's having plenty of fun," said Oswin, "Did you know about the octopus..?"

"What octopus?" asked Clara, and one of the perks of being literally the same person as she was, was being able to tell if she was lying. And in this case, she was telling the truth. She clearly didn't know a thing about any sea creatures.

"It was because of your face. Old Twelvey got revenge on me and Adam for Amy hitting you. God knows why, it was nothing to do with us, but he decided to put it under our bed, and now it's living in the bathroom because apparently my boyfriend just can't resist stray animals. Even giant orange ones that are supposed to live in the ocean," she said bitterly.

"…What did you mean 'don't go looking for him'..?" she asked carefully.

"Couple of months ago we had a run-in with an adolescent Zygon, and we keep it on the TARDIS so it can't mess stuff up. He's just hanging out with it for the day," Oswin said, "Until I figure something else out. It was Jack's idea anyway."

"An _octopus_?"

"Yes. It was awful. Nobody blames you for it, I'd stay out of everything," Oswin advised, "Seriously. I once did this _nasty _prank it was… There was bicarbonate of soda worked into the carpets – this was in the First Prank War – and we replaced all the mattresses with water beds full of vinegar sat on nails. When any weight was put on them, they exploded, chemical reaction in the floor like a baking soda volcano."

"Does Clara hate me?" Clara asked.

"No, not at all," Oswin told her.

"But, I… I tried to kiss her husband."

"Yeah, which she understands," said Oswin. _REALLY, she understands_, she thought to herself, "Anyway, how are you _really_ finding it on here? Awful, I assume? You've had your nose broken already."

"It's… Different. The atmosphere of you all living together, it's so weird," Clara shook her head, "And you all just know everybody else's business and talk about each other. It's like being in uni again, but with even more people."

"Yeah, and no Noisy Sam," Oswin said.

"She told you about him!?"

"My boyfriend gave her a 'creepy look', apparently, and she got all weird about it and started going on about him. Plus I've met him, your dad tried to set you two back up because he _hates_ the Doctor, _so much_. He tried to shag me," Oswin said.

"Sounds like him…" Clara sighed.

"Hey, why do you still travel with the Twelfth Doctor..? He really isn't nice to you sometimes."

"It's worth it for the stuff you see," Clara said, which Oswin thought was quite an upsetting thing to hear.

"Well, you know. You can see all that stuff on here, and people won't be so awful so you. I mean, yeah, Amy hit you, and she's never hit you before – it's usually Martha – but… I don't know, I guess it depends on what you think is worse. But it'd stop."

"This isn't my universe," said Clara.

"It's not the cat's universe either, but we still have to put up with the damn thing," she muttered, "It's not my place to offer people rooms, anyway. God knows I'm only here because Jack and Amy thought it would be funny for Other Clara to have a clone of herself pissing her off all the time. It's backfired now that we're best friends though, quite funny sometimes."

"Well even if it was your place, I couldn't take you up on it. I don't belong here, I never will. As soon as the Alien Queen gets killed, I'll be away again. Have to get home, anyway, I left a girl in my bed and I don't remember what her name is. She might've been nice."


	190. Heroes & Cons: Act II Scene VI

_Adam_

_Heroes &amp; Cons: Act II Scene VI_

They came out onto a scene of utter decimation. The ration crate was nowhere to be seen, as was the helicopter, but the chaos was evident. Car parts from explosions littered around, one of the houses was actually on fire with nobody to come and put the blaze out, there was a terrible, unnatural stench in the air like some kind of gas had been projected, and black burn marks across the floor, along with a large patch of ice starting on the pavement and spreading all the way up one of the streetlamps. In just minutes, both the Apexes and the Conduits had been and gone, leaving nothing but destruction in their wake.

"It's a bit of a commentary on the human condition, if you think about it," Adam Mitchell said, "No matter how advanced the civilisation, the human race will always revert back to its most visceral form. Killing for food." Rose stared at him. "What?"

"Shut up." She turned to walk back the way they'd been going before, seeing the metal skeleton of the radio tower in the distance, Adam sighing but deigning to follow her anyway. She probably felt horribly defenceless out here, with just herself and no added bonuses for company. But then, she used to wear her adrenaline inhibitor all the time, while she still had it, so who knew? He certainly didn't.

"We have no chance of getting any rations when they show up," he muttered.

"Not unless we cut this thing out of my arm we-" she interrupted herself when she shrieked for some unknown reason, Adam watching her the whole time and seeing her just stop walking.

"What is it? Did you see a spider or something?" he asked.

"It's me, sorry," said a disembodied voice, "Damn power's acting up."

"_Rory_!?" Rose and Adam exclaimed together, and the former continued, "Where are the others? Have you seen them? Are they nearby?"

"I was with one of these gangs, the Apexes," Rory said, "Made me come out here with them, but my power started working so I hid, and I heard you two talking so I waited to find you. Mickey and Amy are still with them."

"What about the other three?" Adam asked. There was a pause.

"Oh, sorry, I shrugged," Rory apologised, "Forgot you can't see me… No, I don't know where they are. What are you two doing? Where are you going? Can't you just teleport out?"

"No," Rose said, rolling up her sleeve to hold it out blindly in front of her, trying not to hit Rory, "Because of that _thing_ that Adam won't let me cut out."

"Good, it'd get infected," Rory said, and Adam gave Rose a smug look, and she just scowled, "Does it stop your powers from working?"

"Yes, but nobody else seems to have one, just me," Rose said, "Probably because I'm 'too dangerous' to just be allowed to use my powers."

"You leaving wouldn't do the others any good, anyway," Adam told her.

"I could find them if I had the time vortex again," Rose said, "Probably. I don't know, but I could probably stop UNIT from doing this."

"It's not UNIT," somebody _else_ new shouted. Shouted very, _very_ loud. They all turned around and saw Donna Noble, looking a little beaten, but it was nothing that wouldn't mend in a few days, approaching from the other side of the col-du-sac, entering through the snicket Rose and Adam had just been hiding in. At that moment, they were in rather an overgrown garden, "It's the HCC, the-"

"The Hazard Control Corps," Rory said, "Lead by someone called Klein. The Apexes told us. This place is called Silverstorm."

"Silverstorm Penitentiary for the Terminally Deranged," said Donna, "That's what the Conduits told _us_. They inject a chemical into your eyes to make them-"

"Glow silver, when you try and use your powers. It's called Silver Mist," said Rory. There was a tense pause, and Adam and Rose exchanged confused, worried looks.

"Did the Apexes tell you that this city was evacuated after a manifest accidentally turned the water supply into acid?"

"Did the _Conduits_ tell _you_ that it's surrounded by a forcefield that vaporises anyone who walks past?"

"Well did the _Apexes_-"

"Christ, we've only been here for a few hours and the pair of you have already been indoctrinated by these stupid gangs," Rose said, and Donna and Rory both shut up, "It looks like that between the two of you, you've got basically all the information. _We're_ going to the radio tower, you're welcome to come if you don't kill each other in the process." Rose started to walk off with Adam following, and it only took a few seconds for them to hear two sets of footsteps following them.

"Wait," Rory called, "Fine."

"Good," said Rose.

"Donna, have you seen Martha and Clara?" Adam asked her.

"They're still with the Conduits," Donna said, "I think they got a bit too caught up in that fighting, didn't see me when I slipped away. I don't have any fighting-powers anyway. I think they've gone back to their base with the rations."

"Which means the Apexes will be planning a counter-attack to get the rations back," said Rory, "So they're in more danger than Amy and Mickey. What are you planning to do at this radio tower? I'm sure it won't work in here, otherwise these people would've escaped."

"No they wouldn't," Adam said, "Prisoners have telephones but if they called someone asking to break them out, I doubt anyone would do it. Everyone on the outside will be too scared of people in here to let them out."

"Still, it's probably been cut off," said Rory.

"Adam might be able to make it work again," Rose stated.

"Oh, might he?" asked Adam dryly. He'd never been in a group of the crew before and actually been the cleverest one there. But who knew, with an IQ of 230 maybe he _could_ get the radio tower working again, to some extent.

"Why can't you just teleport out?" Donna asked Rose, who made a nose that was half-groan, half-growl, and explained all over again that she couldn't because everyone kept refusing to let her rip the lump of metal out from beneath her skin.

"I already told you, Clara can probably get it out," Adam said, "And Martha could probably sterilise something to cut it if she can't. We're not _that_ short on supplies, and you never know, there might be some un-scavenged food along the way."

"So we need to get to the radio tower and signal the others somehow?" Rory asked.

"Yes," Adam told him, "Apparently. But I don't know how, we'd need to send some kind of signal that only they'd know to follow. The place might have a HAM radio or something you can broadcast Morse code on."

"I don't think anybody except you even knows Morse code," Rose said.

"I'll figure it out," he muttered. He had a few ideas floating around in his head. He could always freeze the radio tower and see if that worked in signalling them, or Donna could shout. Maybe the other four would be able to find them on their own, anyway? It was possible they all had the same idea of swarming at the radio tower. Martha and Clara would most definitely be able to break out of wherever they were, but Mickey and Amy? He didn't know.

"Mickey can breathe underwater," Rory declared then, as though he'd been reading Adam's mind. Well that wasn't a remotely offensive power, Adam thought, "And one of them said Amy had the power of 'persuasion'. So she can tell people what to do, and they do it." Now _that_ was a useful power that would definitely help them.

"If we can get the others to the tower, couldn't Mickey fix it?" Rose asked the group at large.

"But without fixing the radio tower first, how would we get Mickey to go there?" Adam pointed out, "Plus, we don't know how caught up in this gang war they're gonna get until they even have a chance to get away."

"Well if we would just let me cut this thing out of my-"

"_No_!" all three of them said.

"The infection can get cleared up on the TARDIS by antibiotics!" Rose protested.

"We don't know that the forcefield doesn't also have a way to stop teleportation," Adam said.

"It might do," Donna said, "Clara doesn't have one of those things, and she mentioned that UNIT know she can teleport because they saw her do it fourteen years ago."

"When she was ten?" Rose frowned.

"_Yes_, when she was _ten_," Donna said sarcastically.

"She means in 2014," Adam said, "That's where the Twins went the other day, solved a murder or something."

"That was when Clara met Lydia," Donna said.

"Who's Lydia?" asked Rory, "Not another girlfriend..?"

"No, she's a telepath with superhuman longevity, so she hardly looks like she ages," Donna explained, "She's thirty but she looks eighteen. What I wouldn't give for that power… Who knows, maybe I'll get lucky and that'll be my other one…" So Donna was the only one of them who hadn't discovered her last power yet. "Anyway, maybe it's not you teleporting out they're worried about, maybe it's the ability to make create and destroy anything you set your mind to."

"Well, I did destroy an entire fleet of Daleks once…" Rose said wistfully, "Took a lot out of me, though. It was on that spacestation we went to where you got your head cut open, just 100 years later," she said to Adam directly, who grimaced, and then Rose clicked her fingers, and nothing happened.

"Ha," he said.

"What happened!? Did they do something to it!?" Rose exclaimed.

"What? No. Oswin connected it to a button, and the button isn't here, it's on the TARDIS."

"What if you _really_ need to open your skull-flap?"

"When would I possibly need to open it?" he questioned, "I won't."

"But opening and closing your head is one of our favourite games," Donna protested. _Ugh_, he thought.

"Yes, well, I'm sure I can find someone willing to drill a hole in _your_ skull if you're that bothered…"


	191. Heroes & Cons: Act II Scene VII

_Martha_

_Heroes &amp; Cons: Act II Scene VII_

They'd lost Donna in the heat of the battle. Well, she said that, she hadn't done a lot of fighting. _Well_, she would _like_ to say that, but her fists and feet seemed to move of their own accord and she punched a lot of people with burning knuckles and only felt bad afterwards, because it was only afterwards that she registered what had happened. As for Clara, Clara hadn't done anything, she'd just gone off phasing and tried to stay out of things. Cowardice or consideration, Martha didn't know, but she wouldn't put money on Clara Oswald to win in a fight.

Earlier in the day, they were being held captive in some lonely house on the edge of the no-longer-in-use motorway opposite the retail park the Conduits used as their real base, but now the real base was where they were, and Martha never thought she'd be walking through some sort of dystopic Ikea with dirty people sleeping on the rugs of the overcrowded display rooms. They were being lead to the canteen by Lydia to get their rations, because she'd told them that they were 'valuable assets' to the Conduits and they were the ones who would definitely get served, and serving happened quickly, because of the constant threat of Apex counter-attack to steal them back. But if Martha didn't know any better, she'd say Lydia Cartwright was behaving oddly.

"What if Donna's not okay?" Clara whispered to Martha.

"She will be," Martha said, though she had no idea if she believed herself, "We can't do anything about it anyway," she added quickly, god knew what Lydia would do if she thought they were thinking of breaking out or something. Who even knew how her telepathy worked? Did she have to go to extra effort to use it, or was she always hearing peoples' thoughts? She was walking ahead, so Martha couldn't get a look at her eyes to see what colour they were.

The rations were slop. Slop of various colours and consistencies, but all slop. Some slop more like watery porridge, some like overcooked rice pudding, some like baked beans and some like cat food, but it was all the same, and it was all disgusting, and Martha tried to pass up the offer (partly because she wanted people who needed it more than her to have some, but also because it wasn't appetising to her in the slightest), as did Clara, but they were both forced to take at least _something_, because they were _valuable_.

"I feel like an object," Martha said quietly to Clara, who was smoking again by this point, because it seemed nobody enforced the no-smoking-indoors rules anymore. Though about three people came and asked her for one, so she resolved that she wouldn't smoke around these Conduits "_if she could help it_" to "_preserve her supplies_." "You're a beacon of morality," Martha told her sarcastically. Clara fake smiled and smoked some more.

"It's not hurting anybody," Clara said.

"Have you never heard of second-hand smoking?" Martha challenged, and she didn't say anything, pulling a guilty expression, "Why do you have to do it in Nerve Centre when everybody else is there? There's no ventilation, lord knows what the TARDIS does with your leftover charcoal."

"I have a stressful life," Clara said flatly.

"So does everybody, and nobody else does drugs," Martha quipped.

"I'm not 'doing drugs', it's-"

"Then there's your drinking problem," Martha said, eating a bit of the cat food looking slime and promptly pulling the most disgusted cringe she'd ever pulled in her life, "What is this stuff? Leftovers from space missions even the astronauts wouldn't eat? Eurgh." She dropped the dirtied, plastic fork on the dirtied, plastic tray.

"I don't have a drinking problem!" Clara protested.

"You drank like, two bottles of tequila the first time we went camping," Martha pointed out, "And didn't you used to have a stash of vodka?" Clara grimaced.

"My stash of vodka is a sensitive subject," she muttered.

"Because it got thrown out?"

"Shut up," Clara snapped. And then Lydia came and sat down on their table with them, the room actually quite empty. Either the Conduits were small, or there was some kind of screening process people went through to see if their powers were 'good enough' to be given entry into the dingy food court of an old Ikea. The décor made up of enlarged children's drawings printed and stuck onto the walls added for a wholly surreal experience. Both of them stopped talking when Lydia sat down. Well, for a minute, but Clara could never keep her damn mouth shut. "Why did you lie about us being time travellers?" Martha kicked her under the table, and in retaliation, Clara blew a whole cloud of cigarette smoke in Martha's direction, who coughed violently and nearly set the air on fire in her attempts to waft it away.

"Because _you_ owe me," Lydia said directly to Clara, who she'd sat next to.

"How do you get that?" Clara asked.

"Fourteen years ago, I gave you some of the information you needed to catch that serial killer," Lydia said, "And I hate it here. And I _know_ that you two are just looking for an exit, and if I wanted, I could tell them all about your plans to escape. So I figure, I get you out of this base, and you get _me_ out of this whole prison, along with the rest of your gang. Because I could tell Oliver to send people out looking for the others. Especially that one… What's her name? The flower? Whatever, you were both thinking something about reality manipulation, I'm sure he'd love that."

"So you're blackmailing us?" Martha questioned.

"What gives you lot a right to get out and not me?" Lydia questioned, "Because you 'know somebody'? Well, I know you two, and I've been here for five years, and I haven't been able to have a wash or a proper meal in almost all of that time because there's no water, and the only aquakinetic we've ever found is the Apex's cover boy, Elijah. And I know one of your friends is a cryokinetic, which is even better when it comes to water production. Either we all get out, or none of us get out."

* * *

_Amy_

"That friend of yours sneak off and leave you both?" Elijah asked slyly, like he was getting amusement from torturing them. Or maybe he didn't care what he said, he just loved the sound of his own, smooth voice. She and Mickey were sitting on the floor of one of the corridors of the hospital the Apexes used as their base, and it seemed Elijah had come looking for him.

"Rory's my husband," said Amy stiffly. She didn't know what had happened, if Rory really had crept away without trying to take the other two with him, or if he was just invisible in death and nobody had seen his body. She prayed for the former, and prayed that he could find some way to get them out, maybe find the others, if that was what had happened. More than that, in all the chaos of the fighting _all_ the Apexes had been forced to join in with, she could've sworn she saw Martha Jones roundhouse kicking people and setting stuff on fire.

"He's probably fine," said Elijah, sitting down right in the middle of the corridor in front of both Mickey and Amy, "No sane person with invisibility is gonna stick around when it comes to a fight. He'll have been out of there like a shot."

"Yeah, without us," Mickey muttered.

"_I'll_ bet he's planning to come back later," said Elijah, "Come back and get you. Or maybe he's waiting for you two to get out of here. Thing is, it's tricky getting out of the Apexes. Tricky getting out of the Conduits, too. Can't be done with powers like yours," he told Mickey, then he turned to Amy, and said, "Powers like _yours_, though, or powers like _mine_, that's a different story." What was he suggesting?

"What do you want?" Mickey asked.

"You two don't look like you're planning on sticking around," Elijah said, "I've seen people here who know there's no way out, seen people run up to that forcefield and turn to ashes because they were so desperate. And I've seen people so convinced somebody will come and get them – maybe they know a general in the army, or a fancy lawyer – and then they lose all hope. But you two? You're cool. Collected. _I think you know a way out_," he leant close to them and whispered.

"Why would someone like you, who clearly loves it here because you're the Prince of the Apex Predators or something, want to leave?" Amy questioned him. He wasn't even right anyway, they _didn't_ have a way out, they just knew that there were some people _somewhere _out there who _might_ have a way to escape, Rose Tyler especially, but finding Rose Tyler was a different matter entirely.

"Because it's hell," he said, "Why does Satan walk the Earth?"

"God, you're pretentious," Mickey told him.

"Yeah, and I could also make you both choke on your own spit. Nothing off my back, is it, if you won't help me anyway? And I could find your husband. And I could find these 'others' you've mentioned, too, I'll drop in to see my old friend in the Conduits, Oliver, and see what he knows about them. He's invisible too, but _I'm_ the one he wouldn't see coming," Elijah talked, "I could fly around this whole place and pick up every straggler I saw until they admitted to knowing you, and there's something odd about the fact none of you know what's going on. So, you help me get out, or else I'll kill both of you and get out myself with a little help from your friends."

Mickey and Amy couldn't answer, because they were interrupted by a crackling sound coming from the old PA system of the hospital, like a broadcast was trying to break through. Elijah looked around, confused.

"How does this place still have power?" Mickey asked him.

"We have two electrokinetics and a supergenius who maintain the generators," Elijah answered. Then noises started to come through, like Morse code, dots and dashes. Except there weren't any dashes, it was just dots, four of them, before a pause, before it repeated. On a loop. _Dot-dot-dot-dot_. _Beep-beep-beep-beep_. A pattern which Amy and Mickey both recognised. "It's four Es, in Morse," Elijah said.

"No it isn't," said Amy, "It's a message, for us. Do you know where it's being broadcast from?"

"There's only one radio station in Silverstorm," Elijah said, watching them getting up, "What do you mean, it's a message?"

"If you still want to get out, you'd better come with us now."


	192. Heroes & Cons: Act II Scene VIII

_Adam_

_Heroes &amp; Cons: Act II Scene VIII_

The equipment within the radio station was so badly damaged that Adam Mitchell only got it working for about two minutes before it completely packed in, shooting sparks at him out of the soundboard. Just enough time to get out their signal, though, a signal that, if the other four were to hear it, would definitely draw them to that spot; a Time Lord's heartbeat.

The door had been broken down when they arrived, so Adam had done his best to freeze across the entrance, hoping that Rory would be able to hear anybody who approached, and if it was Martha she could just melt it. The four of them were lounging around in the grimy sound booth, the window separating it from the rest of the station smashed with a brick lying on the floor of the next room.

"I'm starving," Rose said eventually. Adam kept instinctively trying to check his phone, before realising he couldn't, "Do you think those rations had anything good in them?" Nobody answered. "And Martha and Clara got a bit of that food, too…"

"What do you think they're doing with our phones?" Donna asked.

"Prank calling the TARDIS?" Adam suggested, "Pizza delivery?"

"Don't mention pizza…" Rose groaned.

"We haven't even been here for that long," Rory told her, "We'll be back for dinner." Rory was right, it really hadn't been that long, it had just been a lot of walking and sometimes hiding from marauding gangs of superpowered thugs. But Adam was hungry, too.

"I could get our phones back," Rose said after a moment of thought, "When I have my powers back, that is. Then I could bring them here. Unless they've been bashed up, or-"

"I can hear voices," Rory spoke up, and they all stayed quiet, listening, none of them having any clue just how 'super' his superhearing was. But if he could hear Whoufflé through their soundproofing, who knew? Adam felt bad for him in that regard, because on their left, the Ponds had Eleven and Clara, but on their right, they were stuck with the newlywed Harknesses. It was really a choice between the lesser of two evils to pick which to listen to so as to drown out the sound of the others.

"Who is it?" Rose asked him.

"Sounds like Martha and Clara," Rory said, "But there's someone else, too. Someone we don't know. They're complaining about the ice door."

"Good thing they got here first to melt it for the other two, then, isn't it?" Donna said. Adam wasn't particularly worried about them being able to defend themselves anymore, with Martha especially now joining them. Clara to some extent, but Clara was incompetent and would probably rather hide in a corner than defend the others.

"THANKS!" Martha shouted angrily from the floor below, making them all jump, "I'm soaked now!"

"So heat up and dry off, then!" Rose shouted back, rolling her eyes and going back to what she'd been doing before, which was slouching on the floor thinking about pizza, it seemed. Pizza sounded good for dinner, though no doubt _he'd_ end up paying for it. It wasn't cheap having to look after some fifteen-plus grown adults. Some days he wished he was a billionaire instead of just a millionaire.

The pair of them emerged through the door trailing a third person behind them, and Donna made a start.

"Why have you brought _her_?" she questioned.

"She blackmailed us," Martha answered, "Said she'd tell Oliver we were trying to escape if we didn't help her get out of Silverstorm."

"She's not staying on the TARDIS," Rose said sharply, eyeing the girl carefully.

"Nobody said she was, Rose," Clara said.

"Well, good," Rose said, "…Who is she?"

"Lydia Cartwright," Clara answered.

"Wait, that girl you and Oswin met the other day? The telepath?" Adam asked.

"Exactly."

"Clara, help me get this thing out of my arm," Rose said, rolling up her sleeve to show the bump that was now red and raw from her pointlessly scratching it all day. Clara walked over, Martha following closely out of curiosity to see what was going on.

"Eurgh, what is that?" Clara asked.

"It's stopping me from using my powers," Rose said, "Someone told us they only give these to the 'dangerous ones'. Because I can make things cease to exist."

"Not because you can teleport?" Martha asked.

"_I_ can teleport and _I_ don't have a doodah," Clara commented.

"Yeah, but your teleportation's shit," Adam said snarkily.

"The HCC don't know that," Clara snapped, apparently offended at him saying teleportation with a limit of twenty metres was shit, "It's better than aura-reading, anyway." He grimaced, because that was true. Why did he get saddled with such a useless power? "Why didn't you just cut it out?"

"Yeah, _Adam_, why didn't I just cut it out?" Rose questioned.

"Not this _again_! It would get _infected_ so I said we should _wait_ for _Clara_ and now she's _here_ so you can _shut up_."

"Wait, you want me to phase it out?" Clara questioned.

"When have _you_ ever passed up the opportunity to put your fingers inside a girl?" Adam quipped, and everybody but Martha groaned, who laughed, and then she got weird looks from Donna and Rose.

"…What?" she asked.

"What are you laughing at jokes about Clara fingering me for?" Rose questioned.

"…I don't know, it's just funny…" Martha shrugged, looking guilty. Clara herself wasn't getting involved.

"At least somebody appreciates me," Adam muttered.

* * *

After Clara had removed the inhibition device from Rose's arm, and they examined to notice it bore a striking resemblance to the adrenaline inhibitors Oswin had invented (one of which had been stolen by UNIT in 2017, two and a half weeks ago), they began the waiting game, lounging around until Mickey and Amy arrived and Rose's powers started to work again.

"What's for tea?" Clara asked eventually, probably just for something to talk about.

"Adam said something about buying pizza for everyone earlier," Rose said, and Adam grimaced. It was like she was angry at him just because he didn't think her ripping the inhibitor out of her forearm with the first vaguely sharp thing she found was a good idea.

"I was just mentioning it, because we need to go shopping," Clara said, and there were unanimous groans from around the room.

"More voices," Rory interrupted her while she started to go on about how they were all adults who should be able to go shopping for food without complaining, "Amy, Mickey and…"

"Not another one," Rose grumbled.

"You're really crabby today, you know," Martha told her, and she just scowled.

"I just don't think it's a good idea that you lot are bringing a gang war into our home."

"Oh, hardly," Clara said, "And I have every right to, it's _my_ husband's TARDIS." _Now you've done it_, Adam thought. What was the point of bringing something like that up, when it would so obviously start a fight? Especially with Rose in such a bad mood and the complicatedness of her relationship with the Tenth Doctor, since nobody even knew yet whether he was her boyfriend or her husband. Maybe they could just cut out the middle man and call him her 'boyband'.

"It's not _his_ TARDIS, it's all of their TARDIS'!" Rose exclaimed.

"That wasn't even proper grammar," Clara retaliated.

"Well I don't need a bloody grammar degree from the University of Grammar to tell you that just because you married someone doesn't mean their things are yours!"

"Yes, it does! That _is_ what it means," Clara argued, "It's a legal contract that says basically that."

"Legal my arse, you were _pissed_ in _Las Vegas_!" Rose shouted, "And then Jack married you the second time!"

"Well _you're_ not married to him, either!"

"SHUT UP!" Donna bellowed, deafening Adam so severely his ears rang and felt somewhat numb. Thank god Donna had spotted that that remark of Clara's was the icing on a cake that was going to start them having an actual row of some kind. This clearly wasn't a good day for morale. Rose was just in a bad mood since she'd had no powers all day.

"What's going on up here, all we heard was shouting," Amy said, entering the room and looking around, "Is Rory here?"

"Yep," he said, still invisible (he _really_ needed to get a handle on that, but then, Adam had such a poor handle on his cyrokinesis he was literally frozen), "I had to leave, I heard Adam and Rose nearby."

"Oh my _god_," Lydia exclaimed when some sallow, smug-looking boy who could barely be more than twenty entered behind Mickey and Amy, "You brought _him_? _Elijah_?"

"Charmed to make your acquaintance," the newbie said to her, "Has Oliver told you all about me?" Clara snorted at that.

"Well _he's_ clearly gay," she said.

"He said, like, two words," Martha said to her.

"Trust my gaydar, it's never failed me," Clara said, and Martha just turned away and ignored her, "Isn't he like, the Apex poster-boy? The one who can fly? And Oliver's the leader of the Conduits? It's like a soap. Or Romeo &amp; Juliet, but with queers and superpowers." Elijah was unperturbed by Clara's weird comments.

"Great, so now we have two more strays on the TARDIS," Rose complained, "I didn't think it could get any weirder after the Zygon, AI, the cat, the Beta Crew, Clara's wife from the future and the psycho-synthetic, but colour me impressed."

"Also the octopus," Adam told her.

"Oh, the octopus, of course. How could I forget?"

"Right, well, now we're all here," Clara began, "We need a plan of action of what to do to fix this whole mess that's _kind of_ our fault. Well I mean, it's not, because it was some random genius kid giving everyone superpowers in the first place and we stopped that, but… Whatever, this whole thing – Silverstorm – is immoral, and nobody else is gonna do anything about it."

"What exactly is your plan of escape..?" Elijah asked. There was a pause.

"…This," Rose said, and then she clicked her fingers, and Adam was all ready to have a go at her for still trying to open his head, but as it turned out the clicking part was all for show, and his complaining was cut short by the vworping, thrumming noise of the TARDIS, and the people in the middle of the room scattered to leave a space _just_ big enough for the blue police box to materialise.

"You can _summon the TARDIS_?" Donna exclaimed, everybody staring at Rose as she stood up, carrying the inhibition device in her hand.

"I had no idea until I just tried," she said, going and waving a hand that caused the door to open before her, "The perks of being the Bad Wolf. Don't need a TARDIS key."

"And this is why they put the thingamajig in her arm," Adam sighed.


	193. Heroes & Cons: Act II Scene IX

**AN: This storyline will not be continuing for now, at some point in the future the over-arcing story will be resolved with an "Act III", but this is the current 'resolution'.**

_Heroes &amp; Cons: Act II Scene IX_

It was two o'clock in the morning in the middle of autumn when Ex-Brigadier Kate Lethbridge-Stewart heard a noise downstairs. She never slept well, it had just gotten worse and worse over the years, worrying about everything that went bump in the night. She might have been sacked from her post at UNIT seven years ago, but she still kept a gun at her bedside, and in her early retirement she still went up and down the stairs multiple times a night looking for anything out of place, such was the severity of her paranoia.

So she got up and picked up the pistol next to the lamp and dragged on an old, ragged dressing gown and went through the usual drills of checking the front door at the foot of the stairs first, detecting no sign of a break-in. Down the hall Kate went to check the backdoor, which also had no signs of entry. But then, it never did, not one of the times she'd searched the house, so it wasn't surprising. Wearily, but not letting her guard down, she opened the door into the living room. And that was when her gun disintegrated into golden coloured atoms in her hands, the door slammed shut behind her, and the lights switched on of their own accord, to reveal four women in her living room: Amy Pond, Clara Oswald, Martha Jones and Rose Tyler. Rose and Amy were sitting down in the two chairs, the sofa empty, the other two leaning on the wall to the right, all watching her.

"Hi, Kate," greeted Rose, "We thought we'd just pop down and have a chat with you. About some things that started happened, ooh… How long ago was it?"

"About fifteen years ago," Clara told her, "The end of 2013." Well, clearly this was staged and they'd rehearsed. But she couldn't underestimate them, at least three of them were manifests. As for Amy, she didn't know, but if the power manifestations were what they were talking to her about, then the chances were that she was one, too.

"You see," Martha began, "We've just had a nice field trip to Silverstorm Penitentiary for the Terminally Deranged. But why don't you sit down first?" They all motioned to the empty sofa, either by holding out a hand or just looking at it, all of them smiling sickening, fake smiles at her, scaremongering, it seemed. Nevertheless, she felt she had to sit down when faced with them, mainly because she saw that Martha, at least, was carrying a gun.

"We were doing some research in Silverstorm," Rose said, leaning forwards in her chair, "And we found out that there's a whole new organisation dedicated to stamping out the problem of power manifests. What are they called, again?"

"…The Hazard Control Corps…" Kate said stiffly.

"Exactly. We were surprised to see that UNIT had been benched for this crisis."

"But then, it's not really an extra-terrestrial threat, is it?" Amy added, and Rose resumed.

"And then were even more surprised when we went a bit further with our research and found that one Brigadier Kate Stewart got sacked from her post some seven years ago, in 2021, because of a whole list of judgement errors and a bit too much 'outside help', from the Doctor and various others," at 'various others' they all smiled some more, to show that they were proud they had a place in UNIT records, or something.

"Why don't you just tell me what you want?" Kate asked, "You're not going to hurt me, even though you have guns, the Doctor won't let you."

"The Doctor doesn't know about any of this," Martha said, "None of the Doctors do. No Time Lords ended up in Silverstorm, just us."

"You want to end Silverstorm, is that it? Believe me, I fought against it, I know they're all only humans, but they're dangerous, and they can't find a cure," Kate said, "They still keep me in the loop with what's going on, there are _some_ people who didn't ask for me to be removed from my position."

"You have ways to stop them," Rose said, "Inhibitors, based off the design of the one you stole from me eleven years ago. The same time you drugged Martha and made _her_ into a manifest. These people aren't born, and they're coming from all over the country, so excuse me if I don't believe that every single one of them is the result of Rian Simmonds' coffee shop experiment in Ealing fifteen years ago."

"We met someone in there who said some people think that the HCC are creating more manifests to keep them in a job," Amy said, "So we want you to tell us everything you know about this Dr Klein who runs it. The one who built Silverstorm. _Tell us everything_."

"He believes manifests are dangerous without a shadow of a doubt. There were protests in the streets ten years ago for them to be treated equally, and every one of those protestors was carted off to some sort of prison. Which prison depended on if they passed the Silver Mist Test," Kate explained quickly, feeling so compelled to obey Amy and tell her all she knew about Dr Klein it could hardly be natural, "No-one knows why he hates them so much, and the public don't know who he is, the HCC are secretive, only people in the organisation, people who pass the screening, have even met him. I've heard the rumours that he's manufacturing them though."

"Do you think they're true?" Clara asked. Kate said nothing.

"_Tell us_," Amy compelled.

"I don't see what else it could be," she blurted out without meaning to, "There's no reason for the sudden influx of manifests that the past decade has brought, nothing environmental or biological. But it is passed down through genes. There are infant manifests."

"What happens to them..?" Clara asked.

"There are special facilities built," Kate began, "I heard they use hypnopaedia to make them believe they're dangerous and brainwash them until they're too scared or ashamed of what they are to use their powers. At least, that's what I've heard, the oldest are barely teenagers yet."

"Do you know anything else that might help us?" Martha asked.

"You should talk to those alien fighters of Sarah-Jane Smith's," Kate advised, "Sometimes they come here, like you're doing now, and make me feed them information. They're running an underground railroad for manifests, but I haven't heard much about it from my sources in the HCC or UNIT so I doubt they're making much of a difference, but they haven't been caught, partly due to the fact their AI completely erased them from the internet and all of UNIT's files. Is that enough? Have I done enough to help you?"

"Maybe, is that all you've got to offer?" Amy asked.

"Yes," said Kate, "That's all I have, and it should be enough for you do whatever you plan to. You _are_ going to try and fix everything?"

"That's the idea," said Rose.

* * *

"Okay, we have to come up with a plan," Martha began, a fresh cup of tea in her hands, the lot of them gathered in Nerve Centre after paying their visit to Kate Stewart to try and pry information out of her. Lydia and Elijah were finally washed and clean after their tenure in Silverstorm, and everybody presently on the TARDIS seemed interested enough in the current crisis with the manifests to listen in, too. Though, 'everybody on the TARDIS' was all of them, minus the Time Lords (except Twelve, he was with the Zygon still). Nine, Ten, Eleven, Thirteen _and_ Jenny were all out somewhere. By this point, everybody had been told about the HCC, Silverstorm, the Silver Mist Test and the raging gang war within the confines of the prison.

"Well we can't work on grassroots and public opinion changing," Clara (Alpha Clara, since both were there) said, "That would take way too much time and resources."

"You have to cure it," Jack said, "Finding a cure, a way to reverse the mutation, is the only way. But you'd have to stop this Klein-guy from creating manifests first. It'd all need to happen at the same time."

"There are thousands we know about and thousands more that we don't, though," Amy said.

"You'd have to get it into the water supply, it has to be ingested, it's the only way to get it as widespread as it would need to be," Oswin began, "But then you'd also probably need to destroy all of the HCC's servers and wipe all the data they have to stop them from doing this again, not to mention the physical records, which means you probably have to go blow up a building."

"It depends what kind of base it is," said Adam, "When I worked for Van Statten, the whole place was underground and they filled it with concrete, it would probably need to be scouted out first by people who know what's going on better than we do."

"You mean Clyde, Luke, Rani and Sky?" Rose said, "And their underground?"

"Exactly, but we have the benefit of these two," Adam said, "If we took them back in time, that is. Then they'd be locked up in Silverstorm, so the HCC wouldn't be looking for them, and they can try and help the other four. We don't even know what powers Clyde and Rani have, and Sky can manipulate electromagnetic fields naturally, so that won't even come up on the Silver Mist Test."

"Well how would we find them?" Amy asked, "I doubt they're still living in that house if they're on the run."

"I could find them," said Rose, "What about the coffee, though?"

"What about it?" Mickey asked.

"Well, don't you think that anybody stuck on Earth trying to fight the HCC deserves some extra help?" Rose shrugged, "An extra power?"

"An extra power?" Lydia asked, "How do you get an extra power?" Nobody answered her, though, too busy debating.

"Look," Oswin started, "_I'll_ create the cure. I mean, reversing a gene mutation with a consumable is a like taking a tablet to change your hair colour so it'll probably take a while, but it can be done… Probably… So then, the HCC needs to be taken out the same time this cure is somehow nationally released into the water supply, and Silverstorm needs to be destroyed at the same time _as well_ so that those manifests can be subjected to the water."

"So there'll be complete chaos?" Rory challenged.

"Alright, yes, probably," Oswin said, "But you said Silverstorm doesn't have a water supply and they get their water airdropped, and if we were to airdrop it there's no way that we could even make sure _everybody _gets some. Wouldn't they be suspicious of huge amounts of water getting delivered? Everything has to fall simultaneously so that nobody has a chance to react."

"What about UNIT? Even though they're not involved anymore, if the HCC goes down like that, they'll probably get called out," Rory pointed out.

"Unless they're under attack too? Along with the military?" Adam said.

"We might as well just destroy Britain," Amy muttered.

"Not that kind of attack, a cyberattack. A virus that can cut off all of their communications until the manifests are cured," he said.

"We can think about this later, there's no point planning now when we don't even have a cure to distribute or a virus _or_ a way to break anybody out of Silverstorm OR a way to destroy the HCC building," Rose said, "We'll just let these two go help Sarah-Jane's gang, maybe they'll have a better idea we can help with. But right now, I want a pizza."


	194. Stay The Night

**AN: So Day 95 is gonna be another long, 10,000 word day, but NOT a Closwin day, it'll be good and refreshing, but it's not pre-written like that last one was, so there probably won't be any updates for a few days while I write that. Also, you'll all find out what happened to the Time Lords today this Halloween.**

_Clara_

_Stay The Night_

"What did you people do for food before I arrived?" Adam Mitchell asked, watching Clara eat a slice of one of the five pizzas he'd just bought for everyone, after saying he wouldn't buy them anymore food out of his chronic fear of becoming once again impoverished. Suffice it to say, he'd given in. He was too nice, that was Adam's problem. Wasn't like he was spending his money on anything else. Adam and Clara were sitting at one of the tables with the Ponds and Oswin, the others scattered around the room, but everybody was there, waiting for the return of the five missing Time Lords.

"Well the TARDIS had a lot of frozen supplies," Amy was saying, "But we got through it quite quickly, even though back then there was only twelve of us. Then we got Jenny, then Tentoo, then Oswin, then you, now Thirteen. Luke for a bit, Oswin's girlfriend-"

"_Ex_-girlfriend," Oswin corrected vacantly, like she was only half-listening to the conversation and thinking about something else entirely.

"Whatever, it's the same thing," Amy said, and Oswin frowned but didn't say anything, "Now these two. And the cat. And the octopus. And Nios. And Helix."

"I still think you should put that octopus back in the sea," Clara said.

"We'd have to know when and where it was from to do that," Adam told her.

"You mean, you'd have to spend five seconds of your life looking at the TARDIS logs to just see where he went earlier in the day?" Rory challenged.

"He wiped the history," Adam said, "Could've been watching porn, too, for all we know."

"Well I doubt he was watching porn," Rory said.

"I'll just tell him to tell us where it came from," Amy shrugged, "Or I'm sure Rose can find out. Do you even know what you're supposed to feed an octopus?" Adam didn't answer, so Clara assumed that meant no, he had no idea. She had no idea, either.

"You could always shoot him in the kneecaps, then he'd tell us. And if he won't, you shoot the elbows," Clara said, "Then the ankles, then the wrists, and then they'll probably have told you." She ate more pizza.

"Well, you're clearly mental," Amy muttered.

"It's not politically correct to say that," Adam told her, and she grimaced, "Is the Twelfth Doctor still with the Zygon? I told it to turn into Clara and tell him it loved him to mess with him." Clara laughed.

"As long as he didn't shag it," she said,

"Is people wanting to shag you the only thing you ever think about?" Amy questioned her. She thought for a moment, and then furrowed her brows and thought some more, squinting with the effort as Amy rolled her eyes.

"…No..?" Clara said uncertainly, and Amy obviously didn't believe her, "…_Anyway_… Why would the Zygon do what _you_ told it to do?"

"It might not've, I just said it would be funny," Adam said, taking a slice of pepperoni pizza from the box in front of Amy and Rory.

"Oi!" Amy protested, "That's _our_ pizza!" He stared at them.

"Are you gonna pay me back for it, then?" he snapped bitterly, taking the slice anyway when Amy shut up talking at that. And then he just stared at it and didn't eat it, before sighing and putting down in the lid of the box in front of him, groaning and burying his face in his hands. Oswin glanced around.

"Are you okay, babe?" she asked him, and he just groaned some more, so she took his hand.

"That's PDA," Rory said.

"Oh, piss off, he just bought you all pizza, give him a break," Clara defended him. _She_ was grateful for their dinner, at least.

"…What's gonna happen about the emergency teleporters UNIT stole from us?" Rose asked loudly from the other side of the room, addressing her question at Oswin.

"They're biologically locked, didn't I mention that?" Oswin said.

"But Other Clara used one to get _here_," Rose said, "She used Martha's."

"They're not as biologically locked as that. Helix has a connection to them, any of them can be used interchangeably by any member of the crew. Helix registered Other Clara as a member of the crew," Oswin shrugged, "I'll just ask him to bring them back in a bit. It'll be fine, you'll have them by tomorrow. I have spares."

The TARDIS jerked out of nowhere, sending pizza boxes sliding so that they had to be grabbed and held still to stop them from falling onto the floor and soiling their contents with carpet-dirt, and the lights flickered on and off once. Nobody spoke for a moment, silence falling throughout Nerve Centre, not even the sound of people eating pizza, because everyone had stopped.

And then the doors slid open and the missing five Time Lords traipsed back in looking sulky, weather-beaten and haunted.

"Where have you lot been?" Rose asked Ten.

"I'm gonna make us tea," Thirteen declared before Ten could answer, likely referring to only the ones of them who'd just been out. Well, everybody else had a mug in front of them, anyway. Clara watched her walk past and into the kitchen, and then Oswin kicked her under the table.

"_What?_" Clara mouthed. '_Don't stare at her, you weirdo,_' Oswin thought back, and Clara slouched down and sulked as Eleven came over for a moment and told her he was going to have a shower before there was a rush for it, before leaving as she called after him that he didn't need to tell her when he was going to shower.

"We made a vow not to talk about it," Ten finally answered Rose, "So we can't."

"A _vow_?" Donna questioned.

"A pact, an agreement, a deal, you know," Nine said grimly, "Our lips are sealed."

"Ooh, who got pizza? Can I have a pizza?" Jenny asked upon noticing. It was at that point that Adam Mitchell swore, got up, and left the room, and Oswin watched him go.

"Aren't you gonna go after him..?" Clara asked, other people all frowning.

"In a minute," Oswin said, "Thirteen?" Clara coughed on the tea she was drinking and had to spit it back into her mug when Oswin addressed Thirteen, who had her back to them in the kitchen, arranging the mugs and distributing tea bags.

"Uh-huh?" Thirteen asked.

"Could you make Adam a cup as well? He's not in a very good mood."

"Sure," Thirteen said, Clara glaring ferociously at Oswin.

"…What?" Oswin asked her. 'What are you doing!? Why are you speaking to her!?' '_There's no rule that says _I_ can't speak to her, only that _you _can't speak to her, because you're a horny lesbian with no control over your own sex drive._' Clara kicked her. '_I just want her to make Adam some tea because he's upset, it's not a crime, you need to calm down_.' Clara sighed.

As the next five minutes passed while Thirteen made tea and Clara decided that when Oswin left to talk to Adam, she would leave and go mope around in her room and maybe read a book, it became apparent that whatever had happened on Day Ninety-Four was staying on Day Ninety-Four, and the more anybody asked what had happened to the Time Lords, the more and more they just stoically stated that they weren't going to tell anybody anything, so that they didn't 'dishonour the dead', whatever that meant. Some kind of weird mystery nobody was going to actually let rest until they finally all gave in, but that didn't look like it was going to happen tonight, so Clara wasn't too worried about missing anything if she left the room.

When Thirteen was distributing tea and Oswin had just gotten up with two mugs (it seemed that Thirteen had made her a cup as well, just out of her own kindness (_Ugh, why did she have to be so nice?_)), she held one out to Clara.

"What?" Clara asked, guarded, Oswin watching carefully nearby, "I didn't ask for tea, I didn't – I – um – I'm leaving. Now. I should… Um…" Oswin made a slightly disappointed sigh at Clara's frankly pathetic stammering in the presence of Thirteen, who stank appallingly of cinnamon sticks and Christmas, so sweet it made Clara want vomit almost as much as it made her want to kiss her.

"It's for Theodore," Thirteen said quietly, not looking at Clara, "He can't remember today, because I didn't remember anything that happened today. I remember forgetting. If that makes sense. Give him this tea, it has Retcon in it."

"Wait… He'll forget..? All of today..?" Clara asked.

"Yes," Thirteen whispered, forcing the mug into Clara's hands and leaving. Clara stood still for a moment, until Oswin coughed loudly to get her attention.

"Huh?" Clara asked.

"I thought you said you were coming with me?" Oswin reminded her.

"Oh. Right. Uh-huh. Sure…" Clara said vacantly, hoping nobody else had noticed what had just happened. They were paying more attention to Nine, Ten and Jenny, though. They didn't suspect anything untoward was going on.

"You're ridiculous," Oswin hissed at her.

"You told me not to speak to her."

"Yeah, well, I didn't say that you should make a mess like _that_ back there. God, it was painful to watch."

"Shut up."

* * *

_Oswin_

Adam was lying face-down on the bed when she came in with the two mugs of tea, his head facing one of the scenic walls they had, the image on it more or less the view from his real-life house, of the sea and the distant beach at the bottom of the cliff it was sat on, though there was no risk of mermaid attack from within the TARDIS.

"Are you okay?" she asked, knowing full-well that he was not, and she carried on talking as she walked around the bed to go sit on the other side, "Thirteen made us some tea. She made Eleven some tea, as well, gave it to Clara to take to him, who was completely weird about it. You should've seen the scene she made, it was like that time when we were in that simulation after we violently murdered the ghostly goat and I was really awkward making tea the next morning."

He said nothing for a moment, staring out of the 'window', but then he shuffled his head so that he was looking at her.

"Can you murder a ghost?" he asked.

"Well, I guess _I'm_ a ghost, and if you were to bash my Sphere in with a chair leg it might murder me," she said mock-thoughtfully, and he smiled, "Um, do you think you could actually take your shoes off..?" Adam yawned, but sat up.

"Yeah, fine," he sighed, untying his shoelaces and then kicking off his shoes onto the floor by the bed, and then she passed him his tea, "I'm okay, really, I'm just in a bad mood. But only with some of the others, not with you. I'm tired, it's been a long day."

"Really? You can't tell, you seem so energised," she joked, and he smiled as he drank his tea, "Listen, I know you're not in a good mood, and I don't want to upset you, but I really don't think we should keep the octopus. I think we should just find out where it's from and put it back where Twelve found it."

"…Alright, fine. The others are right, anyway, I don't know the first thing about taking care of an octopus," he said.

"Well, we'll do that tomorrow, just you and me," she said, smiling and reaching up to stroke his cheek with her free hand, the other hand holding her tea, "We'll spend the whole day away from this crew. Even if we're just hiding in here."

"That sounds amazing," he said, "It sounds exactly like what we did two days ago, just with more tentacles."

"Don't mention us and tentacles, Jenny was saying some horribly inappropriate things the other day involving me being a Dalek and hentai. She called me a cyclops-squid."

"Well, um, that's…" he said, hiding his face with his mug.

"Don't laugh! It's not funny, I don't like being called a cyclops-squid!" she protested, but he was laughing anyway.

"Sorry, sorry. It's a bit funny."

"It's not funny, and what do you think that makes you, hmm? Since _you're_ the one dating the cyclops-squid?"

"I just take it where I can get it, babe," he said. There was a knock on the door though, and neither of them moved, "…Will you get it? It might be someone I don't want to talk to." She sighed, and put her tea down.

"Alright, fine," she got off the bed, "But only because I love you. And move over, will you? You're on my side of the bed."

"This is the side I woke up on," he said.

"Well maybe that's why you're in a mood today, you woke up literally on the wrong side of the bed. The left is my side," she told him, and as she opened the door he shuffled over, careful not to spill his tea. And on the other side of the door was Clara, Alpha Clara, looking… Well, broken, was the word Oswin would use, for whatever reason, and her smile fell. "Hey, what's wrong?" she asked, and Clara just pulled the face she made when she was trying to stop herself from crying, a face Oswin recognised all too well.

"What is it?" Adam asked.

"What's happened?" Oswin asked, hugging her and pulling her into the room, closing the door behind her, "Clars, what's wrong?"

"Did you hear what she said about the tea?" Clara asked in a tiny voice.

"No, no I didn't," Oswin told her, leading her over to the sofa, where she sat her down, Adam watching from the bed and probably wondering what he was supposed to do in this situation.

"She said it would make him forget today, because he needs to, so that she, you know, experiences it fresh in the future," Clara explained slowly and quietly, "So I told him."

"Told him what?" Oswin asked.

"Just, you know. About stuff. That happened yesterday. Because I feel so bad for… Well I'm not even lying, but I just feel so guilty, and I think she told me he'd forget so that I'd tell him…"

"Well, you can't very well go staying all guilty, can you?" Oswin said, "Did you tell him about your dream, too?" Clara nodded. "What did he say..?"

"He didn't say anything, he just started staring at the wall," Clara explained, "Wouldn't say a word, I don't think he wants me there right now. He did say he wasn't angry, though, before I mentioned the dream thing… But I don't know, maybe he was…"

"He was probably just sad, honey," Oswin cooed, "It'll be okay, he won't remember, and you might feel better," she looked to Adam then while she spoke to Clara, "You can stay on the sofa tonight if you want." Adam rubbed his forehead.

"Can I?" Clara asked, since that was clearly her ulterior motive for coming to see them in the first place. But if Eleven wasn't leaving their room, what else was she to do?

"Yeah, yeah, sure," Adam said, "You were grateful for the pizza, so… But I won't have you watching any wedding shows. Seriously."

"Fine, fine," Oswin said. Why did he hate wedding shows so much? She'd never understand.

"Thank you," Clara said hoarsely.

"It's alright, everything will be fine…"

**AN: Yes, everything really will be fine, Thirteen's not a liar, there really is Retcon in the tea. I just felt that, for her own benefit, Clara needed to tell him.**


	195. The Graveyard Shift

**AN: So I decided that instead of doing one 10,000 word chapter, I'll do two 5,000 chapters, or thereabouts, for Day 95. Also by some happy circumstances, there's this issue I have, which is that Day 96 has six chapters written for it already which just need minor revisions and tweaks, and I don't want to stagger my updates, so would you all have any issue with me updating six, maybe seven, times in one day because of this backlog? I mean, I probably will anyway, so this is just a warning that that'll probably happen on that day.**

_DAY NINETY-FIVE_

_Rose_

_The Graveyard Shift_

Yesterday hadn't been a good day, not for anyone. Sure enough, they hadn't been in Silverstorm for a particularly long time, but it was in foul conditions and even fouler circumstances, and being drugged by noxious gases early in the morning when you only showed up to see if you could do anything to help was never destined to be pleasant. But today didn't seem, at first, to be too fun, either. Mainly because it was 'Man Day', yet again. But some kind of half-arsed Man Day, at least, though Rose didn't appreciate the sexism in the name. It was an unnecessary declaration of aggressive escapism from a bunch of married men who liked to pretend they were unhappy with their other halves. It wasn't a human-only Man Day, either, it was ship-wide Man Day, minus the Twelfth Doctor (who'd been released from his internment with the Zygon thoroughly shaken and unhappy and had wandered off somewhere on his own) and minus Adam Mitchell, who'd decided that he didn't want anything to do with the rest of the crew, save for his girlfriend, for the foreseeable future. Although, what with Amy's new power of premonition and all, maybe she ought to alter her definition of 'foreseeable future'.

So that left all the girls behind, or it did, except for the fact that Donna and Amy had decided they desperately wanted to take Jenny to a spa; the Twins were hanging around together with Adam in Adam and Oswin's room watching films, and Rose didn't much fancy tagging along with them; River was off doing… whatever it was that River did; Nios was, of course, on lockdown and wasn't allowed out anywhere for the fear that she might murder someone. It was Thirteen who had informed her of most of this after she'd gotten up, talking to her before ambling over to join Martha at one of the tables, nothing on the holobox, Thirteen lounging on one of the sofas on the laptop she was always on doing mysterious, futuristic things. Probably. As luck would have it, though, Rose had a rough idea of where she wanted to go that day, and needed to recruit Martha as her always unwilling partner in crime.

As it happened, Martha was doing nothing more than working her way through a large stack of toast, while also staring at the Helix panel on the wall as it changed through varying shades of blue like a screensaver. Rose dropped into the seat next to her.

"If they're having Man Day, we ought to have Woman Day," Martha told her without saying good morning, "We can all crowd in here and watch _Clueless_ and _Legally Blonde _on the holobox. Or we can go look at wedding dresses for no real reason. Clothes shopping. Be the stereotypes we're capable of being."

"It'll probably annoy them more if we just sit around and talk about tampons," Rose told her.

"True," Martha agreed, melancholy. Thirteen didn't seem to be listening to them at all. That or she wasn't remotely fussed for 'Woman Day', but Rose wasn't particularly fussed for it, either.

"Anyway," Rose began, stealing a slice of toast for herself to Martha's displeasure, "I had a vision."

"A vision..?" Martha asked incredulously, "Like, what kind of vision? Did you just have a dream?"

"No, like, the time vortex," Rose explain, "Alright, _maybe_ I was seeing if I could abuse my power and see what the boys were doing because I was curious, but I didn't get that through, instead I saw a funeral."

"A funeral? Stop the presses, somebody's died," Martha said sarcastically, "As a doctor, that really hits where it hurts. Stop stealing my toast." Martha hit at Rose's hand to stop her taking a second slice, sliding the plate away. Then, to her great annoyance, Rose teleported straight into the chair on Martha's other side and got her second slice anyway. "Wait, hang on. You're wearing black."

"Yep."

"We're not gate-crashing a funeral," Martha told her flatly.

"We have to," Rose said, "I don't know much, but I know that the guy who died? He was possessed. By a demon." Martha stared at her.

"Demons don't exist."

"You can say that, but once me and the Doctor met Satan," Rose said.

"It's true," Thirteen, who was apparently listening, called over, interrupting them for a moment, "Saw the Devil. And a month ago to you guys, roughly, I think my sister-in-law proved the existence of ghosts. But you never know." She sat up from where she'd been lying down and shut off her laptop she was always on (doing what, Rose had no idea).

"He was probably mentally ill or something," Martha said.

"Yeah," said Thirteen spookily, "_Or something_."

"Exactly," said Rose, agreeing with Thirteen, who was beaming, "And you can't just say that. Oswin's mentally ill and _she_ doesn't think there's a demon possessing her."

"_You're_ the one generalising, not me, and it's the most likely answer," Martha argued, "Also, how would _you_ know if Oswin thought there was a demon possessing her?"

"It must be something if the time vortex showed it to me," Rose pointed out, which was true, as much as Martha seemed to hate it. Why would the time vortex send her the image of some random bloke's funeral if there really was nothing sinister going on? Rose was winning by logic alone, a rare feat.

"I can't believe you got dressed up for this already because you just assumed I would definitely go with you," Martha muttered.

"You will go with me," Rose told her, "I saw it."

"You didn't 'see' anything."

"Amy saw it."

"I'll come," Thirteen offered, cutting off Rose in the midst of her lying.

"Aren't you gonna hang around with Clara today?" Martha asked her, standing up to take her plate into the kitchen and keep the last slice out of the clutches of Rose Tyler, who scowled, because she hadn't had any breakfast of her own, and she didn't have the motivation to toast more bread.

"No, why would I?" Thirteen asked.

"…Because Eleven's not here. He's with the others, bowling or something," said Martha, "So you won't be sitting through the same thing twice."

"Oh, no," said Thirteen, "I don't want to invade Twin-Time."

"They call it that?" Rose questioned with disbelief as Martha rinsed the crumbs off her plate. If they did, she sincerely pitied Adam Mitchell for being stuck with them all day doing whatever they usually did, which seemed to consist of sitting around and watching _Don't Tell the Bride_ while they weirdly shared food and probably flirted with each other (_god_ they were strange).

"No, I do," Thirteen said, "C'mon, let me tag along. I love funerals. Well, I mean, I don't _love_ them, that'd be totally weird, but… I've always wanted to meet a demon."

"See, Martha?" said Rose, "What else are you gonna do if you don't come with us? Everybody else is either at 'Man Day' or a spa. And you're turning down the opportunity to go find out the truth about demons!" She knew she was right, and Martha had nothing to do, unless she wanted to join Adam for a day of wedding-related, incestuous torture.

"…Ugh, fine," Martha relented, "Guess I'll go get changed into funeral attire, shall I?"

"Well, right now you're wearing pyjamas," Rose told her, as she headed towards the door.

"Yeah, yeah… Oh, by the way, Rose?" Martha said, "You should probably wear sunglasses." Rose took out her phone and glanced at her reflection, sighing when she saw her bright turquoise eyes flashed back at her. The Silver Mist didn't work on her, not when the inhibitor was taken out from beneath her skin. When she used the time vortex, her eyes went gold. The rest of the time they flitted randomly between unnatural colour after unnatural colour, but she suspected that if she tried to punch anything extra-hard they'd go silver. She could probably counteract it, though.

* * *

The TARDIS materialised out of the way on top of a hill overlooking the village Rose had been drawn to, which was small, rural, and set within a dipped valley of dark green grass with sparse trees on the surrounding hillsides, mountains in the distance beneath the grey, angry sky.

"It's freezing," Martha complained. Rose didn't think it was really _that_ cold, but maybe Martha was more sensitive to it. Martha was also wearing a pair of sunglasses she'd found somewhere, and Rose thought that if her eyes really were going to spend the rest of their lives going mental in their sockets, she ought to go invest in some top-of-the-market sunglasses to wear almost all the time when she was out – what if they accidentally went to the 1600s and she got accused of witchcraft? Well, she'd just teleport away, but still. It wasn't worth the trouble of getting accused of witchcraft in the first place.

"So where are we?" Thirteen asked as they began the careful decent down the hill, all wearing black.

"Wales," Rose said, "Don't ask the name of the town, I can't remember or pronounce it." Already, she could see the same church she'd glimpsed in her vision of demon possession ahead of them in the really shockingly small village, and her being from London she didn't really understand how anybody could live in such an isolated belly of cottage rows with only two shops, "It's the Fifties, as well."

"Oh, great, I always love the Fifties," Thirteen said, "Any year with a five in it. I just like the number five. And every year in the Fifties has a five in it – honestly, you should've seen me a few months ago when we went to the year 5500."

"I don't think I want to, by the sounds of things," Martha said.

Out of all the places in the universe Rose had been to, all the alien planets, futuristic space-bases, ancient civilisations, foreign countries, out of all of those, she decided that the funeral of one Robert Davis living in a remote village in the Welsh valleys was where she felt most like she wasn't supposed to be there. She hadn't really been to a great deal of funerals, she'd only been a baby when her dad died, and barely ten when her grandad on her mother's side died, but there was something undeniably shifty about them loitering at the back of a small church listening to a heartfelt eulogy being delivered about someone they'd never even met while a widow and two young boys sobbed on the front row.

"Do you think there are any hors d'oeuvres?" Thirteen whispered to Rose, who was in the middle with Martha on her left and the Doctor on her right.

"They don't have hors d'oeuvres at funerals," Martha hissed at her.

"I swear I've been to a funeral before where they had food…" Thirteen said, looking deep in thought, "And yes, it was a _human_ funeral before you're asking, not some kind of Teletrian funeral where they all feast on the deceased carcass as a sacrifice so that they have a ripe harvest that fall. There were sausage rolls, and tiny sandwiches." At that moment a member of the actual funeral party turned around in her pew and shushed them vigorously, and a few others shook their heads at the three girls. Martha sank down in her seat.

"You mean a wake," Rose whispered to the Doctor as quietly as she could, "With the sausage rolls and the sandwiches. The… after-party. Sort of… And we're not going to it, before you ask."

"But I love mini sausage rolls! You humans are the only race who want to miniaturise everything you come across. Why else would hors d'oeuvres even exist in the first place? Or _Hot Wheels_?" the Doctor challenged, and neither of them had an answer for them so they both just shut up as some depressing organ music that made Rose's ears hurt started up, and she remembered that this was the time before CD players were used so that the dead could request songs at their leisure. And then they were all ordered to stand, as six coffin bearers walked up to the front and picked up the wooden box, at which point the vicar did something that Rose had never seen done at a funeral before, and took out some sort of plant, lit it on fire, and set it on top of the coffin as the six men carried it and the contained body of Robert Davis out of the church towards the grave which awaited it, and everybody inside followed on.

"What's that? What are they burning?" Martha asked quietly as they watched the coffin go past, getting funny looks from those who were actually meant to be there. In such a small town, everyone probably knew everyone else, and they'd just shown up out of nowhere at a funeral.

"Sage," the Doctor answered, "They use it against demonic entities and other ghostly creatures. Gets rid of them, has special properties. Supposedly." Rose noticed a particularly defined crucifix carved into the lid of the coffin, too, bigger and more important-looking than the crosses on coffins usually did. They trailed out of the church beneath the grey sky, a slight drizzle starting up, trying to keep a respectable distance from the family.

"What time is it? It's getting dark," Martha asked.

"Five o'clock," Thirteen informed, checking her bare wrist, because she didn't have a watch on at all. Thirteen was right, though. Like the Time Lords, Rose was always acutely aware of what time it was. She couldn't pinpoint a year though, like she'd seen Ten do a few times by just tasting the air as though he were some kind of lizard with great hair, "I haven't had any breakfast… Thought there would be sausage rolls."

"You should probably stop talking about sausage rolls," Martha advised, "It's a bit insensitive."

"Why!? I'm sure Robert Davis loved sausage rolls!" she protested a little too loudly, and everyone looked around at her while Rose and Martha tried to look grief-stricken and ashamed of the Doctor's behaviour at the same time, "…Everyone loves sausage rolls, is what I'm saying. Like milk. Everyone likes milk."

"He was lactose intolerant," said the widow through the black veil she was wearing, then the Doctor bit her lip and they heard a stifled sob.

"For how many years have you been trying to blend in with humanity, and then you start going on about pastry and milk to a grieving widow?" Martha challenged her twenty minutes later when the coffin was being buried and the family and others were milling about doing the strange sort of socialising that occurred pre-wake, the three of them keeping a careful distance.

"…The weather's bad, isn't it?" Thirteen commented, changing the subject. There was a light drizzle and an increasingly darkening sky, "We should probably talk to the family."

"You've done enough talking to the family, I'll do it," volunteered Rose, starting to walk over to them. Then she accidentally bumped into a gravestone and swore quite loudly, and this being the 1950s, women swearing at funerals while wearing dresses that weren't really appropriate given the weather and the temperature drew a lot of negative attention, "Sorry, sorry… I was just… Looking for the, um… Mrs Davis…"

"Yes?" asked the woman in the veil (the most cliché widow ever, but maybe Rose shouldn't be judging her.

"We were think-"

"Why are you wearing sunglasses in January?" she asked, and Rose paused, Martha and Thirteen catching up behind her.

"Because I… Am… Blind..?" she said awkwardly, "I am, I'm blind. Which is, obviously, why I just tripped over that headstone back there... At least, I think it was a headstone. Couldn't really tell, what with me being blind and all that."

"Well what about her?" the widow asked.

"What about who?"

"The other girl _wearing_ sunglasses."

"Me?" Martha asked, "Well, I'm actually blind as well. Obviously. Only partially blind, though. In one eye. It just looks really nasty, so I wear the glasses." There was an awkward pause.

"…I'm so sorry for your loss," the Doctor said, "Did you know the deceased well?"

"…Who are you three? Why are you here? You didn't know my husband, I've never seen you here before," she questioned them.

"We're undertakers in training," Thirteen said, "It's quite a secretive training process, involves sitting at the back of a lot of churches and studying how to carry coffins. It's very complicated, takes a large amount of observation and note-taking."

"You're blind undertakers..?" Mrs Davis asked incredulously.

"Nothing wrong with that," Rose said quickly.

"What if you tripped and dropped the coffin?"

"Now just how clumsy do you think I am? I am sick of you Welsh people going on that blind girls can't be undertakers, it's old-fashioned and it's just… Technology has come a very long way, you know." Mrs Davis was quiet for a moment.

"I think you should leave," she said stiffly, "Find another funeral in another town to stalk, but stay away from me." She shuffled slowly away from them to go re-join the funeral party, getting a steely look from the vicar, the smell of sage wrapping around them in the drizzly air as they murmured about going back to her house for the wake.

"I think we should leave, too," Martha muttered, "In fact, I think this was a terrible idea."

"No, there's something going on," the Doctor mused, beginning to walk away, towards the church. Rose and Martha hastened to follow her.

"Where are you going?" Rose called.

"To see the font," she replied, trekking up the muddy hill in black Converse that looked old and worn. Some things never changed, Rose thought, noting the shoes, though she was a little surprised that Clara would let her go anywhere in dirty shoes, and they weren't really funeral attire. But then, at least Thirteen was wearing black, she didn't think that Ten or Eleven would have bothered to change out of their pinstriped, tweed suits, respectively.

"Why? What's a font?" Rose asked Martha.

"It's, you know, the thing that looks like a fancy birdbath near the entrance of a church that they use to baptise people," Martha answered, "Or like a Pensive from _Harry Potter_."

"Yeah, they use the holy water _inside_ the font to baptise people. How do you know it's a demon?" Thirteen asked Rose, "I mean, in your vision, what was it that gave away that this was some kind of demonic possession?"

"God, for someone so bloody small you don't half walk fast," Martha said.

"Hey, I am only one inch shorter than you, Martha Jones. And don't use the Lord's name in vain, or swear. Not in a church, have some respect," Thirteen snapped.

"Did you regenerate into a Christian, or something?" Martha questioned.

"_No_, but my entire life revolves around blending into other cultures and getting to know them. Manners don't cost anything. I'm in the habit of being respectful and polite, and politeness doesn't involve blasphemy," she said, holding the door open for them as though to illustrate her point of manners, "Anyway, Rose, you never answered how you know he was possessed."

"I just do," Rose said, "The vision was the funeral, but usually it's not visions, usually it's whispers. You know when you realise something all of a sudden that feels really obvious? It's like that, like _I've_ figured something completely random out about somebody that I didn't even really care for. I just _know_ he was possessed by a demon. 'Demon' was a very definite part of it."

"Didn't see any exorcisms?" the Doctor asked, going over to the large, stone font near the door and standing on tiptoes and leaning over like she desperately needed a close look, "Because the font's empty, as though somebody's used all the holy water. Isn't it interesting how you're so specific on the demonic detail?"

"…What do you mean?" Rose asked.

"It's interesting, because demons aren't real, but every language in the universe has a word for 'ghost'. They all have words like spectres, phantoms, poltergeists. Demons aren't ghosts though, demons are religious, agents of the Devil. So either, demons really do exist, which just goes to further imply that all their opposites exist, too, or it's not a demon. And being as the time vortex told you to come and investigate, that alone just gives me the impression that it's really not a demon at all, it's something that _thinks_ it's a demon," Thirteen mused, staring at the font, then she walked off down the aisle of the church to go towards the other rooms within, like she was looking for something.

"Why would an alien think it was a demon?" Martha asked.

"Maybe it doesn't, maybe it's just these people who think it's a demon. But whatever it is, it's got them pretty convinced…"

"What are you looking for? We should probably leave before the vicar comes back," Rose said.

"Is he a vicar? Or a priest? A reverend? What's the difference?" the Doctor wondered.

"…I don't know, it doesn't matter, but I doubt he'll take kindly to a bunch of blind undertakers snooping around his church looking for evidence that there have been exorcisms carried out recently," she hissed, them being forced to follow the Doctor as she went off on her own accord, just like all the others did, wandering away and leaving them.

"The thing that leads me to believe this totally _isn't_ a real demon is that this exorcism that clearly happened - unless there's been an awfully thirsty pigeon in the church that thought it would drink the font - didn't work," Thirteen said, "If it worked, we wouldn't be here. Which leads me to ask the important question, where's the demon now?" By now, she was searching through the vicar's things looking for something, and Rose and Martha were apparently not allowed to be told what. "And of course, there are four blatant possibilities of where it is. Number one, it died with Davis, which is unlikely. Two, it's floating about in the air around us like a fart. Three, it's jumped to a new host. Or four, it's still in his body. And we can't exactly go ask the widow if she'd noticed anybody else get possessed by any demons late- Ah-ha." She held up a book.

"What is that?" Martha asked.

"Book of demonology," Thirteen said, "Do you know who need? My wife."

"Why would we need Clara?" Rose asked.

"You don't know what she has to offer," Martha said, and Rose stared at her.

"What are you thinking about what Clara's got to offer for?" Rose questioned, and Martha shrugged, so Rose turned back to Thirteen and reiterated, "…Seriously, why?"

"Oh, not your Clara, my one. From the future. This one would be rubbish. Knows a lot about the occult and cryptozoology in the future, mainly due to boredom, decided to become a degree collector," Thirteen shrugged, "Never technically learnt about demonology, but she should know plenty. God knows she's a demon when she's turned on."

"Is she? Why?" Martha questioned.

"…What?" Rose asked.

"I'm just making conversation!" Martha exclaimed.

"Conversation about Clara being turned on..?" Rose queried incredulously. Martha shrugged, and then shuffled in place and walked over to Thirteen to take the book and pretend to read it while Rose checked there were no 1950s oglers skulking around and she took out her phone, turning her back to the other two and faking looking at the books. Really, what she was doing was texting Clara: _Martha wants to know what you're like when you're turned on_.

"Oh, here we go," the Doctor said excitedly, apparently spotting something. When Rose turned back she'd taken the book off Martha and pulled out a newspaper clipping, "Clippings from almost a decade ago about the exorcism of Robbie Doe, a pseudonym."

"Who's that?" Rose asked.

"Don't you guys know your horror movie history? It was in 1949, the exorcism that the movie, _The Exorcist_, which I'm sure you've heard of, was based on," Thirteen said, "Of course that was in America and entirely irrelevant to what's going on here and almost definitely fake, and even if it's not fake, crucifix masturbation has never been something that particularly interested me," she said casually while skimming the article she was holding, "All this article does is prove that this was serious enough to make this vicar go to some ridiculous effort to find it, since this is a Maryland newspaper."

"Well what happened? How did he get possessed?" Rose asked.

"Ouija board, supposedly," said the Doctor, carefully putting the clipping back in the demonology book and then flipping the cover to see the front, "This is from a library, too. A library in London. Someone must have sent it here for him. And whatever this thing was, it probably killed Robert Davis, and that's why he's lying in the ground out there, so it's dangerous regardless of what it really is." She put the book down where she'd found it.

"Look at this," Martha said seriously, and Rose and the Doctor looked over to see her holding something in her hands wrapped in cloth, which she unfolded to reveal a crucifix – only it was smashed to pieces with splinters hanging off.

"I'd like to know how he died," Thirteen declared.

"Good luck with that, there's probably just one country doctor out here with a Fifties perspective of medicine and demonic rites, and there probably wasn't any sort of autopsy, not this far out. Even if there was, I doubt anything substantial would've come up," Martha said, putting the broken crucifix back where she'd found it.

"…Hang on, didn't you say one of the possibilities was that this entity was still inside the corpse?" Rose asked.

"Exactly," said the Doctor.

"No," said Rose, "No way."

"Yes," said Thirteen.

"No, I'm with Rose," Martha said, both of them watching Thirteen take the small, TARDIS-blue, circular bag she was carrying on her shoulder off and unzip it, "Why have you got a bag?"

"Girl clothes don't have proper pockets," the Doctor answered, peering into the bag, "I swear I have just the thing in here…" and then she stuck her arm inside, all the way to her shoulder, even though the bag was barely the length of her forearm.

"Who are you, Mary Poppins?" Rose questioned.

"Transdimensional," Thirteen answered, "All sorts of stuff in here, I feel like Hermione in _Deathly Hallows_ some days… Oh my god." She pulled something out in a white paper bag, "Look at this! I thought I lost this…" She took out some kind of pastry, "Still have half a sausage roll left."

"You're not gonna eat-? Oh, you did…" Rose said, feeling disgusted when she saw Thirteen take a bite out of it, "You'll clean the whole bathroom and do the washing up, yet you eat a sausage roll that's how old, exactly?"

"I can't tell you," said Thirteen.

"What you mean you 'can't tell us'? In what way does you telling us how old that sausage roll is pose any sort of risk to the future?" Martha challenged, and Thirteen frowned and talked with her mouth full.

"No, I mean, literally, I can't tell you, even if I wanted to, I have no idea," said the Doctor, finishing it and then scrunching up the paper and dropping it into the bag, going back to searching it for whatever she was looking for.

"That's disgusting," said Rose, and the Doctor just smiled to herself.

"Ugh, will one of you hold this bag?" Thirteen asked, and Martha, who was closest, was made to volunteer, so she stepped over and took it so that Thirteen could stand on tiptoes so that she could get both her arms and most of her head into the tiny bag, which was quite possibly one of the weirdest things Rose had ever seen – and she'd seen a lot of weird things. "Got it!"

"Is that a shovel!? We said no!" Martha exclaimed when she did, indeed, pull out a shovel, which was caught on what looked like an umbrella. An umbrella might be useful, anyway, Rose was sure the rain had gotten worse since they'd entered the church. In fact, now she listened, she could hear it pattering away on the roof.

"You say no, _I_ say yes. I'm just as capable as either of you at digging up graves," Thirteen said, "And that's what we have to do. No point trying to communicate with any other potential hosts until we've ruled out the possibility that the thing isn't just hanging about in the ground out there."

"But… It's raining," Martha complained weakly, and the Doctor unhooked the umbrella from where it was attached to the handle of her spade and held it out to her, and she took it begrudgingly, "I think I'd rather go on Man Day than dig up a coffin."


	196. Agent Of Satan

_Rose_

_Agent Of Satan_

At the end of the graveyard there was a shed, within which were various gardening tools for the caretaker of the grounds to use when he came to preen the graves and trim the grass and keep the flowers around the walls looking nice and welcoming – if graveyards were ever welcoming. From that shed, Martha and Rose had found two more shovels, and they'd lurked around nearby as the rainclouds bloated and burst to send heavy showers pouring down on the trio of suspicious, blind grave robbers. They waited until nightfall until they crept out, a little ball of time vortex light trailing with them for cover and to illuminate the grave, shovels in hand, prepared to dig up a corpse. She and Martha had even had to take their sunglasses off because they were just a damp, hazy rainscape and she couldn't see a thing.

Rose had never dug up a corpse before, but in the pouring rain, all of them soaking wet because it was impossible to hold an umbrella and dig a hole at the same time, it was ferociously difficult. And that was with their benefits of superstrength and heightened agility, which significantly sped up the process so that within half an hour they were six feet under. She couldn't imagine what a terrible job real grave robbers must have, but then, maybe the fact they were stealing from dead people meant they didn't really deserve to have an easy time of it. Then the Doctor hit something hard with the end of her shovel.

"I think we found it," she said, and they all crouched down to claw at the dirt with their bare hands – they were so horribly filthy already anyway, and Rose couldn't wait to get back to the TARDIS and have a warm shower, even if there was the risk of three other people being there (of course there were separate cubicles, but there were certain people you didn't want to shower with, primarily, Jenny Harkness, because she sang _so much_ and _so loudly_ and would only sing louder if you tried to get her to stop, so it became a battle of trying to get away from her tuneless Broadway numbers and escape to either have breakfast or go to bed, depending on the time of day). Sure enough, Rose found the remains of the burnt sage, and the large crucifix she now noticed wasn't carved into the top at all, but rather nailed in.

"…Who's gonna open it?" Martha asked, talking as quietly as she could over the pouring rain, "You know, this is like when I was in the bloody trenches last month, awful. Hopefully there won't be a chicken in the coffin."

"Why would there be a chicken in the coffin?" Rose frowned.

"…Amy would understand. Doesn't matter."

"Will you two move so we can get a look at this dead guy? Martha's gotta do a post mortem with no medical equipment in the middle of a thunder storm, and I for one would like her to have as much space as possible while she does," the Doctor declared, which Martha did not look remotely happy about, but she seemed to have made the decision that if she couldn't beat them, she'd better join them, because she stepped carefully over so that she was stood by the head of coffin as Rose utilised her strength and opened the lid, revealing the corpse of Robert Davis.

"Doesn't smell too good, does he?" Rose asked, coughing.

"He's decomposing, what did you expect!?" Martha exclaimed. Rose just shrugged, and Martha shook her head and took out her phone, muttering something about being annoyed that she was going to get the phone screen damp, but switching on the torch and leaning down as far as she could while crouched in a grave to see his face. "Oh, Jesus, his eyes are red!"

"_Red_!?" Rose questioned.

"Yes, red!"

"You mean, like-?" Rose began her question, then blinked and flashed what she hoped were red eyes at Martha.

"Yes, like that. And don't do that, it's really weird," Martha said.

"Let me see," the Doctor walked around, "Really puts a dampener on your mentally ill theory, huh? Don't know that any level of anxiety disorder is gonna make your eyes turn scarlet. And boy, they sure are scarlet," she commented after lifting up Davis' eyelids too, "They're like a vampire that still drinks human blood."

"Are you talking about _Twilight_?" Martha asked.

"…Yes," said the Doctor.

"Maybe he's a vampire?" Rose suggested.

"He's not a vampire," said Martha, "Just because he has red eyes, for some reason, doesn't mean he's a vampire."

"How do you know?" Rose asked, "You should check for a pulse."

"Well if he _was_ a vampire he wouldn't have a pulse, cos they're dead," the Doctor said to her.

"Oh, yeah…" said Rose.

"Check his teeth," suggested the Doctor.

"No!" Martha protested, "I'm not checking his teeth to see if he has bloody fangs!"

"Well if his fangs are bloody he's _definitely _a vampire," Rose told her, "He does look _really_ pale."

"Because he's dead!"

"And the Doctor just said that vampires are dead!"

"He. Is. Not. A. Vampire. End of," said Martha, "Now will you please say something helpful? Can you think of any _actual _reason why his eyes might have gone red?"

"Well, it was probably caused by whatever was possessing him, but if they're still red in death, that either means that he had this thing living in him for quite a long time, or it really _is_ still in his body. Though I doubt it has any way to communicate with us with him like this. The way to kill it would probably be cremation, but I don't know if it needs to be killed yet," the Doctor said, leaning over to look closer at the eyes, "Hang on." She reached into the one pocket she seemed to actual have and pulled out a white stick with a purple light on the end.

"Is that a sonic screwdriver?" Martha asked.

"Uh-huh," the Doctor informed her, holding one of the eyes open and scanning for a few seconds, then she held it up and looked at it as though it was talking to her, "No life readings of any kind from this body, so I doubt the host entity is here. Might be a clue on his body, though…" She pulled up one of his lips as that, as though the urge to check and see he really didn't have fangs, and her eyes widened.

"What? Are there fangs!?" Rose cried in shock.

"No, but something's stained his teeth black, some kind of secretion," the Doctor said, and Martha leant over the shone her torch into Davis' nose, revealing the black liquid to be present there, too, "It's like it was killing him, changing his body."

"I think he went blind," Martha said, "I heard a story once about someone who's kid went temporarily blind when they messed with a Ouija board, but this doesn't look temporary. It's like they're severely bloodshot to a level I've never heard of, the whole things just red and inflamed. I don't think his widow would have enjoyed your lies earlier, Rose." Rose grimaced.

"Honestly, it's no wonder they thought he was possessed by a demon," the Doctor mused, moving away from Davis' face and going to search his pockets, though he was probably dressed up in whatever the mortician had dressed him in, so Rose doubted she'd find anything. Rose was wrong, though, because she pulled out a piece of crumped paper that was almost black from scribbled writing, which she tried to cover from the rain. "Oh, this is awful…"

"What is it?" Martha inquired, finding the weird black stuff was in the corpse's ears, too.

"Lots of words. Um, it says 'shut up' a lot of times, 'demon in the woods', drawings of crucifixes, drawings of eyes scribbled completely black… He was convinced it was a demon, then. Maybe it was confused? Maybe it's an alien that came to Earth and thinks it's a demon because of everyone calling it a demon? So of course, this Robert Davis goes and does research into this stuff, maybe gets some help from the local vicar, reads stuff about exorcisms, Bible passages, superstitions, and this entity doesn't know any better?"

"You're just as optimistic as your daughter, aren't you?" Martha said.

"I have to be, balances out Clara's cynicism… But if it thinks it's a demon, if it thinks these religious symbols really are dangerous to it, then who can blame it for lashing out and smashing up that crucifix? We have to talk to it, so we have to find out where it is, which means going and finding out where Mrs Davis and her two sons live," the Doctor explained, then she stood up and looked around at the walls, "I don't think I can get out of this hole…"

Rose then sighed and teleported out of the hole herself in a flurry of gold, and reached down to pull both the Doctor, and then Martha (after she'd closed the lid on the coffin and passed the shovels up), back to the surface, where they spent the next fifteen minutes filling the grave in as quickly as possible, the night now fully wrapped around them and the storm raging ahead, now accompanied by flashes of lightning and roars of thunder overhead in the foul weather. When they'd done, the Doctor lead them to the doors of the church so they could stand beneath the stone overhang that gave them some minor protection against the violent storm.

"So what do we do next?" Rose asked loudly over the wind, wrapping her arms around herself and wishing she had Martha's pyrokinesis so that she could keep herself warm in the winter rain (she knew that Martha was doing exactly that because, with the absence of sunglasses, she could see her eyes were silver).

"The woods," she answered, "We have to go to the woods and see if we can't find out how this thing got to Earth."

"But it's muddy in the woods!" Martha complained.

"At least you're not freezing," Rose snapped at her (she was getting on her nerves today), "And the Doctor's right, it might have crashed in a spaceship. If we don't know where its spaceship is, how do we sent it home, hmm?" Martha glowered, but Thirteen was walking around the back of the church towards the trees that surrounded the whole village in its valley, and even though she did agree that it was a sensible thing to do, she thought that it could well take all night, and the demon – whatever it was – could have claimed another victim by then.

After a few minutes of walking in silence, Rose blinked, and when she opened her eyes something very strange happened and she stopped dead.

"What is it?" Martha asked, noticing she'd stopped, that triggering the Doctor, who was in front, to look back, too, "Your eyes are going mental."

"I can see it," Rose said, staring ahead, "Like a path."

"You can see what?" the Doctor questioned.

"It's glowing, like a trail," she started walking, following a glimmering, golden path on the ground made of tiny atoms, like fireflies, showing her the way they needed to go, "It's this way."

"What's that way?" Martha asked.

"I don't know, but we have to go this way, the time vortex is leading us over here," Rose explained, though she wasn't sure how much of an explanation that was as she walked off, following it.

"Maybe it's leading us to Oz, like the Yellow Brick Road?" the Doctor suggested.

"I doubt that the Emerald City is just sitting about waiting to be found in the middle of the Welsh countryside," Martha told her.

"Well, you never know," she shrugged. Rose didn't say a single word, and whatever Martha and the Doctor were saying to each other seemed to be drowned out, muffled like she was suddenly underwater, or they were in another room, and Rose had no desire to hear what they were saying, she only cared about following the trail of gold dust to their source, and she was in such a trance that she didn't know how long they walked for or where they went, all she saw was gold that got brighter and brighter and brighter until, some unknown amount of time later that could have been two minutes or two hours, the gold culminated into a big, swarm of the tiny fireflies over one spot in the ground, and Rose went right over and started to drag at the dirt until she found something, blinked, and the gold was gone, and she was holding a rock.

"…Where are we?" she turned and asked the other two, who were still with her, obediently following.

"Don't know, the woods somewhere," the Doctor answered, "I don't think we're too far from the village though, I can see it down there, we just walked around to the other side of the valley to get here. What's that there?" she walked over.

"No idea," Rose frowned at the rock she'd picked up, which seemed to be purple. The Doctor took it out of her hands and lifted it up to her face, the translucent stone magnifying one of her eyes.

"It's a spaceship. Um, sort of, it's complicated," she answered, "I know what it is and I know where it's from. Thank god for the time vortex, I doubt we'd ever have found that otherwise, it was buried with… Are they candles?" Rose looked down and saw that there were candles, five of them, and some small pebbles scattered about. "Oh, did he bury it under a weird pentagram?"

"Looks that way," Rose sighed.

"Maybe we would've found it, then. C'mon, it can't take long to get back to the village, it's just down there, and we have the rock now, we can help it. We have to talk to the family, it's the only thing left to do." She put the stone in her bag, muttering something about its contents being waterlogged by the downpour that was still crashing down around them like a waterfall.

"What are we gonna tell them, then?" Martha questioned as they started to walk off, Rose still a little dazed from her seemingly brief experience being mildly possessed, though at least it was just the time vortex controlling her. But then, the last time she'd been possessed by the time vortex she'd committed genocide and brought Jack back to life forever.

"Duh, the truth."

"That we're time travellers from the future and you're an alien?"

"What? No! Not _that_ truth, the go-to truth. The go-to lie," she said, and Martha and Rose just stared at her, waiting to hear what this 'go-to lie' was, "You know, that we're travelling salesmen. Saleswomen, actually."

"Selling what, exactly?" Rose asked.

"Ourselves."

"Now you're just making us sound like intergalactic prostitutes, you know that, right?" Rose said, then after thinking, "…Do you think there would be a lot of money in being a space prostitute?" Martha stared at her, slack-jawed. "No, you're right, it's a terrible idea."

"Yes! Yes, it is!" Martha affirmed.

"There's no need to crush Rose's dreams like that, Martha," the Doctor chastised her, "And there's nothing wrong with being a sex worker."

"What about all the ridiculous STIs you'd probably contract if you started sleeping around with things that aren't even the same species as you? Isn't that bestiality, on some level?" Martha argued, and the Doctor turned around and stared at her.

"You are _literally_ talking to someone who is _married _to someone who isn't the same species," she said, and Martha suddenly looked mortified, because it seemed she'd forgotten all about that, "And for the record, Clara and I have never caught STIs from each other."

"Can we get back on topic, please!?" Martha pleaded, "Figure out what we're gonna tell this poor, grieving widow who could well be possessed by this demon herself?"

"I'll figure it out when we get there. You know, improvise," the Doctor started walking off back into the dark storm, leaving them forced to follow, Rose figuring out a new trick of making the rain cease to exist just before it touched her. Though, she didn't know how sensible that was, since it meant she was surrounded by a faint – but still definitely visible – golden glow. Improvisation seemed like a dreadful tactic, but it seemed to also be the Doctor's only tactic. Thank god for psychic paper.

"So do you not know what this thing is?" Rose asked.

"Uh, sort of. I know what it is, but I've never seen it possess a human before or any of these symptoms. I recognise the stone. I'm sure that it'll all be confirmed when we actually go talk to it, though."

"How are you gonna get something that thinks it's a demon to talk to you?" Martha asked.

"Well _obviously_," Rose began, "You conduct a séance."

Before Martha could try and argue her way out of that like she was trying to argue her way out of everything Rose and the Doctor suggested they do, the latter changed the subject entirely now they'd gotten down the slippery hill up to the church and were in the village with its some fifteen total houses, "Which house do you think they're in?" she wondered.

And then there was a scream from a house nearby and all the lights inside seemed to turn on to a ridiculous, impossible level of brightness, shining yellow onto the cobblestones outside, before the street was plunged into darkness again.

"Oh, I have no idea," Rose said sarcastically, "Maybe it's Cassandra. She was basically a demon and she possessed me."

"Who's Cassandra?" Martha asked.

"A flap of skin," the Doctor replied, walking up to the house, "You two, put your sunglasses back on," she ordered them, which they did, because Rose's eyes happened to be scarlet still, and she didn't think that the family being tormented by a 'demon' would really look past that and listen to what they had to say.

"What do you mean, a flap of skin?"

"She'd had so much plastic surgery she was just skin with a face stretched out in a frame, and she had these blokes moisturising her all the time and kept her brain in a jar, then she tried to body swap with me," Rose explained as the Doctor knocked on the door and the pair of them loitered behind, listening to some bangs coming from within the house and wondering what on Earth was going on, "Well, she succeeded actually. It was awful."

"Hi!" the Doctor said brightly when Mrs Davis opened the door and immediately tried to slam it, so Rose stepped forwards and put her hand on it, completely preventing her from being able to move it one inch.

"What do you want? What do you want here!?" she demanded shrilly, the lights flashing on and off behind her. It reminded Rose of when they fought the Gelth and their army of reanimated Welsh corpses in the Nineteenth Century, though the lights inside Mrs Davis' house were electric, not gas.

"We want to help, I'm the Doctor, and I can stop this demon from hurting your family anymore," she said, getting an old, battered wallet out of the same pocket where she kept the screwdriver – psychic paper, "See?" No doubt it said something ridiculous on it like they were experts in demonology, but whatever it said, Mrs Davis' eyes widened and she brought them into the house as the lights flickered and there was another scream coming from the floor above. The scream of a child.

"My son, it has my son now," Mrs Davis said.

"We can help him, but do you know how it came to take control of your husband to begin with?" the Doctor asked, "It's direly important that you tell us, and you tell us what started to happen to him, and what you know about how he died." Somehow she was managing to ignore the loud screaming coming from above, clearly the newly demonically possessed child of Mrs Davis. How was it managing to affect the lights, though?

"He wouldn't talk about it, he would just say things about the demon in the woods, for days, and started reading and reading about demons and the devil and ghosts and spirits. Then he… He started to cough black slime up, and he started to go blind. The doctors said he choked," she explained, "And now it's in my son – please, you have to help, it has him now, the thing."

"We will help, I promise, where is he?" the Doctor asked.

"Can't you guess?" Martha muttered.

"You're in a right mood today, aren't you?" Rose said to her, but she didn't answer, "Well you seemed fine yesterday, hanging out with Clara all day."

"Excuse me?" Mrs Davis asked her.

"Oh, sorry, personal matter," Rose said.

"There's no 'personal matter'," Martha grumbled.

"You sure about that?"

"Okay, okay, both of you," the Doctor interrupted, "We're here to help this family, not fight each other, remember? Now, come on." She walked off up the stairs, Rose moving past Martha to follow on second, Martha trailing behind them last of all. Mrs Davis had just pointed, she didn't dare come with them, and over the screaming Rose swore she could hear her go off and cry in another room, which wasn't remotely surprising, really. She'd probably cry if she thought one of her children was going to die, not that she even had children to die, but the thought was there.

"Well? You're just gonna talk to the screaming demon child?" Rose asked the Doctor when they were stood outside of the room of the boy, whose name they didn't even know.

"Yes," she answered, "Might as well be courteous, try to reason with it." And before either of them could argue with her, she just opened the door and walked right into the dark room with the boy tied by cloth to the bed with crucifixes hanging above, it all looking very much like _The Exorcist_, and Rose wondered if the film might be based on _this_ incident of demonic possession rather than that of Robbie Doe in 1949. A book from next to the bed flew straight at the Doctor, and she ducked out of the way and it hit the wall behind her. "Okay, clearly it's powerfully psychic, probably how it possesses people, nothing unusual about that…" Martha closed the door behind them. The boy had red, bloated eyes just like his father's dead body, and was spitting black stuff out of his mouth when he screamed painfully loudly at them. "We just wanna talk, okay?" The light bulb in the ceiling exploded.

"Doesn't seem like he's in a very talkative mood," Martha quipped.

"You're not helping," Rose told her.

"Well I don't know how to exorcise someone!"

"We're not exorcising him! Clearly exorcisms don't work, so there's no point," the Doctor argued, "We're trying to talk to thing possessing him to hopefully explain to it that it isn't actually a demon, these people here just _think _it's a demon because this is Wales in the 1950s and they don't exactly know any better and they've probably never heard of things like Roswell and UFOs and abductions and visitors!" And then it stopped screaming, "Robert Davis is out for a walk in the woods and suddenly sees this celestial being and calls it a demon. Robert Davis, convinced he's possessed, starts researching demons and exorcisms and everything he hears, the entity hears too, and the entity believes that it _is_ this 'demon', it believes it does have an aversion to religious symbols and holy water and Biblical scripture, so it reacts the way it thinks it should, without fully understanding why the exorcisms aren't actually working at trying to expel it from this man's body. Robert Davis slowly starts to die and go blind because human bodies aren't designed to carry hosts around like that, and killing someone probably makes this thing think it's even more 'evil' than it already does, but it doesn't want to die, either, so it jumps into the next body, the body of his son, and starts going through the process all over again. Robert Davis is dead and _you_ killed him," she now addressed the thing itself rather than talking about it to Rose and Martha, "And you're gonna kill his son, too, and then his whole family, and this whole village, and then where will you be? You're just killing and killing and killing and you don't know why, because you're just trying to survive, you don't _want_ to kill these people. You're not a demon, you're not a part of any religion. You're just misunderstood. You're not from this planet at all, are you?"

"No," the boy answered, in the voice of a boy, not the voice of a demon, the screaming stopped.

"This isn't your home, but you can't stay here. It's not your fault that they don't understand what you are, but _I_ do, Sixken. Nobody else has to die, not even you. You aren't one of their evil symbols, an agent of the Devil, the only agents of the Devil in this village are moths. But it's no wonder they're so scared of you, organic life isn't where you're supposed to live. You live in rocks, remember? In the ground of your home planet, in the crystals, like a beehive of telepathic energy. Except your planet got destroyed and all your people are scattered now, in meteorites, and one of those meteorites crashed to Earth and brought you, look," she took the stone out of her bag where she'd put it, the purple lump of rock twice the size of her fist, and held it out towards the boy, "_This_ is how you got here, this is your home. If you come back with us, we can help you. _I_ can help you. You can't stay in this boy anymore, otherwise all these people are going to die because they can't handle you possessing them. You can save this boy's life, his eyesight, if you leave now, before he goes blind and chokes." The boy sat down on the bed.

"Where will you take me?" he asked.

"Somewhere where there isn't anybody to hurt, and nobody will be scared of you, where everyone can be safe," the Doctor said seriously, stepping forwards with the stone, "I know you don't want to hurt these people, you just wanted them to help you, and they thought you were a monster. But you're not a monster, you're just in the wrong place at the wrong time. Come with us." The boy opened his mouth and looked to the sky, and then a purple, glowing stream of energy, something celestial and spectral, came pouring forth from within him and snaked over the floor like a ghostly python, and the stone started to glow purple, and it was as though the stone was sucking the glowing thing, the Sixken, back inside of it, and then the glow faded away and the room turned dark, the only sound being that of the rain pounding down on the roof and the wind blowing through the poorly insulated house.

"What are you gonna do with it?" Rose asked.

"Well, there's still a large chunk of its home planet left I can take it to where it'll be safe," the Doctor answered, holding up the stone, which suddenly wasn't transluscent, but was just indigo with no way to see through to the other side now its occupant was returned, "It was just confused, didn't know what it was or where it was, the poor thing." Martha went to see if the boy, who seemed to have passed out on his bed, was okay.

"Still breathing, he'll be fine," she declared after a moment of checking over him, "I wonder if there's another one of these over in America in Maryland where Robbie Doe was exorcised? I've heard that that house is still haunted – Clara's a bit obsessed with ghosts, she watches all those paranormal shows – maybe there's another Sixken."

"Well that's a mystery for another day," Martha said, "One demon is enough for me. Now can we go? I _really_ want to have a shower." Rose glanced down at herself and the floor and noticed they were all covered in mud from grave digging and rambling, and they'd tracked quite a lot of filth in with them.

"Yeah, we'd better leave before the joy of Mrs Davis' son being saved wares off and she notices how much dirt we've got in her house," Rose agreed.

**AN: So just another reminder that the next seven, possibly eight, chapters will all be uploaded in like, one day, just to warn people again.**


	197. Persuasion

**AN: MASS UPDATES.**

_DAY NINETY-SIX_

_Clara_

_Persuasion_

Since yesterday had apparently been Man Day again, Clara had spent the whole day with her sister and her sister's boyfriend, and hadn't had a single chance to see Eleven and see if there really had been an amnesia pill in the tea his future-self had made for him until late last night, when he'd come home quite happy after winning the bowling tournament they'd had. And normally, she could tell when something was wrong with him, she was getting good at that, and she was very glad that Thirteen hadn't been lying to her. But what would Thirteen gain from lying and making Clara tell her husband the truth about what had happened three days ago? It was her marriage too. Sort of.

Nevertheless, he'd still skulked off with Ten to the library that day (honestly, they must be reading some fascinatingly interesting books there all day), and it was clocking on for noon with her remaining idly by in her bedroom trying to decide if she felt better for confiding in the Doctor or not, considering that when he _had_ known the truth, he hadn't been all that pleased. She didn't know if it was better or worse that he hadn't shouted at her. _She'd_ decided to spend her day reading _Pride &amp; Prejudice _for the umpteenth time, remembering that that was exactly what she'd been doing almost four months ago when the Dimension Crash had happened (well, four months ago to _her_, if she included the Dream, her holiday in Paris for a few days after she and Eleven had gone to Los Angeles, her extra day on Eslilia and her extra day just the other week with the Frir and the haunted house), she'd been reading Austen and then the TARDIS had started going wild, and she'd gotten a little… distracted. What with getting married and maimed and the emergence of her twin sister. But she always read when she felt somewhat deflated.

Then she realised that she'd run out of tea, and that the supply of teabags she and Eleven kept in their room had run out. So she sighed and stood up with her mug, putting her book facedown, still open, on the bed where she'd been sitting and yawning as she walked over to the door, and when she opened it she was a little surprised to see Martha Jones standing out there, who jumped when Clara appeared, confused.

"…Have you been out here for a while?" Clara asked her when she didn't say anything.

"No," Martha answered quickly, and Clara nodded slowly.

"Right… Well, I'm just gonna go make myself some tea…" she tried to leave.

"Wait, I came to ask you out," said Martha, and Clara stopped.

"Pardon..?"

"I mean, with us," Martha corrected herself, "Me and Rose. And some of the others."

"_Oh_," said Clara.

"Why? What did you think I meant..?" Martha asked carefully, like she was trying to gauge Clara's reaction, who just frowned in response.

"I didn't think you meant anything – sorry, where did you say you were all going? Out? Well, I'm busy, see. I'm actually reading _Pride &amp; Prejudice_ and it just got to the bit where Lydia and Wickham elope from Brighton," Clara explained, hoping Martha understood the severity of the situation that now put the Bennets in. But Martha just stared at her.

"Haven't you read that book hundreds of times? Isn't it boring?" Martha questioned.

"_Boring_? Excuse you, but this is a classic. It's well-loved for a _reason_, Jane Austen is amazing. I'll meet her one day. This book is hilarious, you should borrow it," Clara said. Martha was right, though, she really had read it too many times to count.

"You have years to re-read books," Martha said, and Clara couldn't help but wonder when Martha got to caring about her so much. She _used_ to hate her. Clara had received multiple black eyes at the hands of Martha Jones in varying states of sobriety, "Nobody's seen you since we got back from Silverstorm two days ago."

"Oswin has. So has Adam. And the Doctor, last night," Clara pointed out, "That's three whole people, I don't need you worrying that I'm not getting enough vitamin D."

"Oh, no, I'm sure the Doctor's giving you plenty of vitamin D," Martha muttered, sounding bitter, for some reason.

"I literally meant vitamin D. The vitamin you get from the sun and from blackcurrants that stops you from getting rickets," Clara said, "Honestly, you're a doctor, don't you know where vitamin D comes from?"

"Of course I do."

"You just wanted to make a cheap penis joke?" Clara crossed her arms, and Martha didn't say anything, "Look, I don't want to go out anywhere."

"Why? What's wrong?" She could not tell Martha what was wrong, that she was desperately trying to avoid seeing Thirteen or having any sort of communication with the girl. Adam and Oswin were the only ones who did know and the only ones who _could_ know. Martha Jones was destined to be kept in the dark forever.

"Nothing, I'm just… I want some peace and quiet sometimes."

"Well maybe we'll go to a library, then you can have plenty of books and plenty of silence, okay?" Martha said. To all of Clara's protests and arguments that were barely more than childish complaints, Martha just kept pressing her. Until, finally, she thought it would just be better for everyone if she just gave up and went and forced herself to get dressed and go out somewhere for the day, hoping she wouldn't encounter anything _too_ traumatic. But not before, out of spite mainly, making Martha agree that if Clara came out that day, she would read _Pride &amp; Prejudice_, and give it a chance to redeem itself from the misplaced idea that it was dull.

It was just Clara's luck that, upon arrival in the console room later after finally getting dressed and making herself even moderately presentable, she ended up being forced for an outing with the one person she was trying to stay away from. Even River Song was pleasant company – at least she wasn't full of mortification every time she saw Eleven's ex-wife, just mild dislike. A dislike she felt right then, because it happened that River-and-boyfriend were part of the group. And then, to top it all off, Rose was lingering by Martha, watching her carefully. Clara stayed as far away from them (and Thirteen, accordingly) as she possibly could, keeping her lonely distance by the door back to Nerve Centre. Wherever they were going, they'd already landed. Rose waved at Clara in a strange way, the way people would say hello if they knew you'd just suffered a tragedy, or you were ill. Everyone seemed to think Clara fell into one or both of those brackets, none of them thought it was anything to do with her own stupidity that she was having to isolate herself. She did not look at Thirteen, rather, fidgeted with the sleeve of her jacket, and then resorted to biting her nails, a terrible nervous habit of hers. Her thumb usually suffered the most from this.

At the back of the group she trailed out of the doors and was accosted instantly by the damp smell of wet grass and leaves, forest-y odours of nature and moss and rain and dirt and mud and countryside. They were met by towering walls o hedge, spaced widely apart but sharply enough for it to be clear where they were: a maze. They were at the entrance to a huge maze, surrounded by trees like it was dead-centre of some enormous woodland. Looking left and right, she could not see where it ended, just when the trees grew too closely together and she couldn't see through trunks and faint mist to make anymore out.

"Why are we at a maze?" Clara asked.

"Because we are," River snapped harshly, looking for instant approval from Nine, who was distracted by the consistency of the maze hedge and not paying her any attention. Clara scowled.

"The TARDIS sent us a news article about this weird maze appearing out of nowhere. Apparently, nobody's ever come out," said Martha.

"Sounds entirely safe," Clara muttered sarcastically. She was in a completely okay mood, if slightly annoyed, until Martha announced a few moments later that they should split up. Into pairs. And that, of course, Nine and River would go together. And that she would go with Rose. She didn't need to say anything more for Clara to speak up in suspicious objection. "What!? No - why can't-"

"What's wrong?" Rose asked.

"Martha asked me to come out! Why can't I pair up with Martha?" Clara argued. It was down to Oswin that Martha took this completely the wrong way, but it was lucky for Clara, she supposed. Rather than search for a reason for why Clara didn't want to go with Thirteen, they were searching for a reason for why she was so dead-set on going with Martha. Clara could read it in Martha's eyes that she was being horribly paranoid about Oswin's dirty jokes and Clara's sexuality, and in combination, the assumption that Clara was a cheating lesbian rose. How funny that it was very nearly true, she thought bitterly, as Martha spluttered some reason about being better friends with Rose than Clara - except she was very nearly a cheating lesbian with Thirteen, not Martha Jones.

Throughout all of this fuss about Clara's petty grievances and imaginary crushes, Thirteen remained stoically silent, not saying a word. Clara hadn't heard her speak yet at all. What she did know, though, was that - as Niver and Rose and Martha drifted off left and forwards - she was stuck with their universe's answer to the Twelfth Doctor. Clara was stuck with Thirteen, _for better or for worse_, she thought sardonically. Saying nothing too, and keeping her arms folded, Clara shuffled into the maze and took the first right hand fork, wondering why on Earth nobody had just taken an overhead photo of the maze to find out what was in it. She almost asked Thirteen, but did not. Quite possibly, this was the most awkward situation she had ever been in. More so, even, than when Eleven had met her father.


	198. Something's Gotta Give

**AN: In which Clara is a massive homonaut.**

_Clara_

_Something's Gotta Give_

"You can talk, you know. We can talk, I mean," said Thirteen. Clara didn't speak. She didn't want to talk, she didn't even want to listen, or even exist right at that moment; more than anything, she would like to return to her bedroom and her books. "I got your letter, by the way. Your apology? It was cute."

"It wasn't supposed to be cute," Clara muttered, "It was supposed to keep us from talking, and not draw attention. But in case you thought I was being insincere, I _am _sorry. And a twat."

"I didn't think you were being insincere. But what changed your mind? Oswin?"

"No, I just... Thought about my actions, like a responsible adult..." Clara lied. Thirteen was walking in front and barely looking back as she talked to Clara, she keeping to the far left and Clara keeping to the far right. Why had coincidence put her in these circumstances?

"That is _totally _a lie and we both know it - come on, tell me the truth," Thirteen implored, but Clara kept following Adam Mitchell's advice to _not _tell Thirteen about her dream. "...I'm worried about you, you know. Shutting yourself off."

"I'm not shutting myself off, I'm being private. God, it's only been one day, why is everyone so worried?" she said.

"It's my fault if you're upset though, that's why _I'm_ worried. Don't know about anybody else."

"No, it's _my_ fault. Nothing to do with you. I could've acted like a normal, restrained human being, but instead I chose to be coercive and weird," Clara said, as though to prove to Thirteen that she'd learnt some wholesome moral lesson on their trip out the other day.

"...Okay, _seriously_, what happened to you? You sound way-different to the other day," Thirteen said.

"I sounded 'way-different' than usual anyway 'the other day'. I don't always spend one-hundred percent of my time flirting, surprisingly enough. I'm not doing it now, see? I'm not up to anything. No ulterior motives. No manipulation of your weaknesses."

"_Weaknesses_?"

"Your weakness for me, for instance," she said, and Thirteen gave her an incredulous look, "Oh, come on, don't act like I'm lying. I'm your kryptonite."

"You're a nerd, that's what you are," Thirteen said, and Clara grimaced. So what if she was a nerd? Why was she being nerd-shamed? Well, she thought, she was being nerd-shamed because Thirteen didn't have a legitimate argument against the assumption that Clara was her primary weakness. Mainly because it was completely true. Otherwise she'd've just pushed her away the other day, instead of getting trapped between lips and a wall with nowhere to run. "Will you tell me the truth about your change of heart?"

"I did already. I had a think. Came to a conclusion. That's all," Clara lied.

"I know when you're lying. You push your thumb against your ring finger on your left hand," Thirteen said. Clara paused. That was exactly what she'd been doing, she now noticed, entirely passively. She hadn't known that was her tell, she'd had no clue. All of a sudden, she hated future-spouses. More than she'd already hated future-spouses. "So, tell me the truth. Don't want to become some totally-crazy, pathological liar like the other one back there, do you?"

"...I just... I just don't want to tell you. I got told that I should not, under any circumstances, tell you," Clara said. She really did not want to say, _I had a dream about you were you accused me of being manipulative and then slept with me_.

"Told by who? Your sister?"

"_No_, by Adam Mitchell."

"Why does everyone always call him by his full name?" Thirteen asked, and Clara paused.

"...I don't know, they just do. He had much better advice than my sister, anyway. I really hate her sometimes..." Clara wrapped her arms tightly around herself and kept as still as possible, walking erectly and keeping the muscles in her legs tense without meaning to. Thirteen looked back at her.

"Clara?" she only had to say her name for Clara to know that she was still asking about her sudden change of heart, and Clara stopped walking, trying not to get sucked in by those brown eyes (did her own eyes have that effect on people?) They reminded her of trees - did she see some gold there, too? She was too far away to see. She blinked and looked at the floor.

"It's not important." Thirteen had stopped walking, too. When she made to step forwards, Clara stepped away, though there was a large space between them already. Keeping her eyes on Thirteen's feet, Clara saw her pause with one foot in the air, and move it back. She stayed still. Clara shuffled further away.

"I wish you would talk to me..."

"It would be easier if I didn't."

"Would it?" Thirteen challenged.

"Look, what is it you want? What do you want from me, what do you _want_ me to be, hmm?" Clara challenged, "Because I have no idea what you expect me to do."

"Would it be easier?" Thirteen ignored Clara and carried on with what she'd been saying before, "If we didn't speak?"

"I can't do this with you."

There was a rumble, a rustling, and the green leaves of the hedge maze parted ahead of them at a dead-end neither of them had noticed, revealing something quite different to more dull bushes and dew-spat fauna. There was a circular clearing, and right in the centre was a pedestal with what looked like a sun dial on top, but Clara couldn't really see from where she was. She cast a glance at Thirteen, who was already distracted and walking off to see what it was. Clara who, for all her avoidance tactics, suddenly did not want Thirteen to get too far away from her, lest they get separated in the maze.

"What is it?" Clara asked, going at close as she dared. Thirteen was circling the big monolith and looking at the face of it, which was blank, with two circles in the middle, one slightly larger than the other. It looked like possibly there had once been writing on it, but now there was not, as though it had been eroded. The hedge closed behind them, somehow, and they were left stuck, no way out.

"I don't know," said Thirteen.

"I'm glad your thousands of years of life experience have paid off," Clara said dryly, and Thirteen laughed, which annoyed Clara. She shouldn't be laughing at her. Clara crossed her arms again - she hadn't realised she'd uncrossed them - and stayed where she was stood. Away. "...It kind of reminds me of a clock."

"A clock?" Thirteen asked her, and Clara shut up because it felt like she'd said something wrong, and she didn't feel like arguing with Thirteen as she would with Eleven. Then Thirteen did something which very typically reminded Clara of her own husband and clambered onto the top of the obelisk. "I guess I see what you mean... Actually... What's that over there?" Thirteen pointed to Clara's right, and she looked down at the floor, and saw two big, metal rods that were quite old and rusty-looking.

"Metal stuff."

"Oh yeah? Could you pass me it, please?" Thirteen asked, and Clara was caught totally off guard by that politeness. Eleven was never polite, he was grabby, like a child. Even Nine and Ten never seemed to have anything by way of manners. What else was Thirteen hiding? Clara would really like to know. So as to maintain her distance, Clara thought she'd best lift up the metal rods, one of them a lot longer than the other, telekinetically, and they floated over to Thirteen. "Did you really have to show off?"

"I'm not showing off," said Clara. Really, that hadn't remotely been her intention. Thirteen shook her head like she didn't believe her, but took the two rods out of the air.

"Ah-ha. Now this, Clara Oswald," Thirteen began addressing her, "Is the Sixteenth Century. In fact, the year is 1542. You know who's almost eleven years old right now? Elizabeth I. The funny thing is that she had the first watch in all of the world, after she became Queen, that is. You know what else is interesting? _This _thing here is a great, big clock. I can hear it ticking," when Thirteen said that, she had her ear pressed to its surface, "Clockwork, see? On this scale? I mean, yeah, the technology totally existed, but nobody had access to it."

"So?" Thirteen said nothing, fidgeting with the two rods and leaving Clara to try and figure out what was happening. "Are you not gonna explain?"

"Only if I'm right." Thirteen pushed the rods, like the hands of a clock, around the face until there was a click, and then the hedges opened again, but on the opposite side. "I was right," she said, jumping down and walking over to Clara, "It has to be set to the correct current time! And who, in the year 1542, has a clock? And even if they can tell the time by the stars, they probably can't read a clock face. You know what this means, Clara?" Thirteen took excited hold of both of Clara's hands and Clara was in rather a compromising position wherein she found she could not move, and there was a hedge behind her, and a girl in front of her. She thought possibly this, coupled with her sudden inability to speak, was karma coming back for her. Life would be so much easier if they just _weren't _the same height.

"Uhh...?"

"It means this is a trap!" Thirteen let go of Clara's hands and then put her own hands on Clara's face, and Clara felt she must be red underneath them, "A trap for a Time Lord!" Thirteen kissed Clara. _Thirteen_ kissed _her_. Thirteen _kissed _her. Until Clara, who seemed to have much more willpower than Thirteen, managed to get her hands on her shoulders and push her away like a _sensible person_.

"What!? What the-!? What was-!? Why!?" Clara exclaimed, spluttered and blushing and trying to be angry and not managing it. Thirteen stared, confused, and then, slowly, confusion turned to mortification.

"_Crap!_"


	199. Damned If I Do Ya (Damned If I Don't)

_Clara_

_Damned If I Do Ya (Damned If I Don't)_

"Since when did Time Lords say 'crap'!? Why did you kiss me!? What are you playing at!? Oh my god!" Clara hissed, stepping away from Thirteen.

"I am _so _sorry! Oh my god, I don't even - I don't even know what just came over me, oh my god... Seriously, Clara, I'm-" Thirteen tried to step towards Clara, who held up a hand and then accidentally shot a blast of telekinetic energy at Thirteen and knocked her back.

"Stay away from me! Just stay over there!" Clara said.

"I just... I just got distracted by the big clock and forgot, okay!? It's exciting!" Thirteen said. What kind of defence was that? The _clock _distracted her? _That's what I get for marrying a bloody TIME Lord_... "...I guess we're even..?"

"_Even_!? In what way are we _possibly _even!? I only _tried _to kiss you, I didn't _actually kiss you_!"

"It was basically the same!"

"No! No it wasn't! The other day, there were no tongues involved!" Clara protested, "What have you been eating!? All I can taste is hazelnuts!"

"Cookies. And you like hazelnuts!"

"I know I do, that's the worst part..." she muttered, putting a hand to her head. In truth, she agreed with Thirteen. They _were _even. As wrong as Thirteen was, Clara did believe her that she'd somehow forgotten (and Clara knew how stupid Time Lords were), and she really hadn't been manipulative or awful the way that she herself had been just days ago. "Fine, then. We can talk. You win, since you just made everything a whole lot more complicated." She pulled a cigarette out her pocket and lit it as she spoke, almost wishing for Martha's pyrokinesis, a power which would be invaluable with a smoking habit.

"...What made you change your mind?"

"A dream. I had a dream where you showed up and then had a go at me for being manipulative, and then came up with some weird reason about the fact I apparently stop being so creepy in the future to justify us being together," said Clara, all while Thirteen shuffled a little uncomfortably, "And you also got annoyed at me putting tea down on _Wuthering Heights_, slept with me, and insulted my jeans."

"Wait, what was that last part?"

"You kept going on that my jeans-"

"Before that."

"I put the mug down on-"

"Did you say I _slept with you_!?"

"Well, I... I assume so? I don't... I woke up before it got quite that far, but, there were... You know, fingers..." Clara mumbled ashamedly, and Thirteen fidgeted, and then self-consciously put her hands behind her back. "...I felt really guilty afterwards though, and then I wanted to apologise but I didn't trust myself around you so I wrote that letter and hid in my room... So yeah, that's really... It..."

"...Do you mean you felt guilty afterwards in the dream, or..?"

"No! When I woke up. I wasn't remotely guilty in the bloody dream..." she grumbled, smoking, "But I don't know what to do about it, because you're like, so attractive, and..."

"You really don't need to compliment me as justification for yourself," she said, "I've sort of like, heard it all before."

"This is why I didn't want to come out today. I hate Martha Jones. It's her fault."

"Maybe it's _our _fault for not being responsible adults? I mean, I'm really old, I can't believe I just did that..."

"Eugh, don't remind me how old you are."

"It's fine, you're really old too," Thirteen said, and Clara stared at her for a moment, "Just keep telling yourself you're twenty-four and you'll get through middle age. I know that because I was there. You bought a lot of lava lamps..."

"...I... Okay..." Clara said, at a loss for words, "I never know what to say to you."

"Yet we're never short on conversation. It's totally _always_ been like this," Thirteen said, walking off through the new passage of maze that had just opened up, "It was so much worse after I regenerated. Briefly. You know, how Time Lords go _totally _crazy after that?"

"Yeah, yeah... Just... I really don't know what I'm supposed to do about all this," Clara sighed.

"Right now, you're supposed to be walking through a hedge maze. I mean, if you want, I'm not gonna tell you what to do. I'm really not used to you being so awkward," Thirteen said, "Usually you're the one in control."

"Well I've never _felt_ in control..." Clara grumbled, keeping her arms crossed stiffly, her cigarette hanging out of her mouth, and following Thirteen, who was ahead but kept looking back to check on her every few seconds, "And certainly not right now. And I can't help but feel that I shouldn't be talking to you at all, but I can't really talk to anybody else about this."

"We should just made a rule of, like, not coming within a metre of each other. Then we can still talk," Thirteen proposed.

"We shouldn't _need_ a rule though..."

"But maybe we have to put pride behind us and just say that we probably do? You can always break it. Although, I guess that defeats the purpose of having a rule to begin with, huh?" Thirteen joked.

"Right, whatever... Well, who would set a trap for a Time Lord?" Clara asked.

"And such a quirky trap, too... Clocks and magic mazes - somebody's read a lot of _Harry Potter_, clearly," Thirteen mused.

"Well, I'm glad you're amused. But if this maze is made for a Time Lord, nobody else will be able to get through it, will they?" Clara asked.

"They're working on the idea that my companions all wander off," Thirteen said vacantly, turning sharply right.

"Who is? And what's..?"

They were at a dead end, but in front of them was a trap door on the floor. Just sitting there, with a rose on top.

"Huh. You know when I said _Harry Potter_, maybe _Alice in Wonderland_ would be more fitting," she said, "That or somebody really wants me to tango with them. You're wrong about nobody else being able to figure it out, Nine's here, remember? But I guess we'll find out..." Thirteen picked up the rose carefully, examining it, "Look at this," she said, holding it out. While Clara watched, she reached up her other hand and crushed the petals between her fingers to dust, "Frozen."

"Why would someone freeze a rose?"

"To stop it wilting, or decaying, or dying. Permanent cryostasis," she said wryly, "All it means is this maze has been here for a while."

"Well whoever left it so carefully preserved isn't going to be happy that you've just crushed it," Clara said.

"Relax, it's meant for me."

"Since when was something being 'meant for you' a good thing?" Clara challenged.

"Well _you're _meant for me," Thirteen said casually, dropping the shattered rose stem onto the gravel at her feet.

"Stop saying things like that!"

"What did I..? Oh my god, I'm seriously so sorry Clara! It's like, a really bad habit."

"I just seem to be one big 'bad habit' to you lately," Clara complained, waving a hand at the trapdoor to open it.

"Hey! No, you're not-" Thirteen was about to step closer, when she was stopped in her tracks by a bang and something red flew out of the trapdoor and landed a few metres away, behind the both of them.

"What the fu-!? Is that a _heart_!?" exclaimed Clara, "How did it-!? What!?"

"That's, um... Should we have a funeral? Do we say a few words?" Thirteen asked awkwardly, and Clara stared at her. "Whose heart do you think it is? I think the end of the pulmonary artery broke off."

"_Broke off!?_" Clara followed where Thirteen was looking to see a tiny chunk of stiff flesh like a bit of porcelain on the ground, "The heart was frozen too!?"

"That's dangerous!" Thirteen exclaimed in horror, "If you hadn't opened that door telekinetically, it would've hit one of us in the head. That could be fatal at that speed."

"Okay, so you and I are trapped in a creepy maze that just launched a frozen heart out of the ground at us with the intention of GBH," Clara said.

"And with the rose on top - I mean, does this person want to date me, or what?" Clara stared at her, and Thirteen just smiled, before looking back at the trapdoor, "Shall we?"

"Shall we go in there? Are you mental?"

"Well there's nowhere else to go, look, we've been sealed in," Thirteen nodded behind Clara, who wheeled around to see that they _were _now sealed in, by a wall of green, rustling leaves.

"Oh, great. What a brilliant idea."

"We'll be _fine_," and without a word, she'd jumped into the hole.


	200. Red Is The Warmest Colour

**AN: Wow 700 chapters of shite. Amazing.**

_Clara_

_Red Is The Warmest Colour_

"You're just full of stupid ideas," Clara grumbled when they were in the hole, in the darkness, in some tunnel. It smelt of earth and wet stone, and she was sure it was some sort of cave. "You never change."

"I'm just curious," Thirteen said nearby. _Too _nearby.

"Curiosity killed the cat," Clara recited, kicking one of her feet on the floor, which was ringing from the drop, even though she'd cushioned the small fall telekinetically.

"But satisfaction brought it back," Thirteen said, "All these proverbs have the opposite meaning when you know the whole thing. Like, 'blood is thicker than water', people take to mean family is more important. Except the full thing is, 'the blood of the covenant is thicker than the water of the womb', which is completely different and means friends are more important. Anyway let's go." She took Clara's hand and started pulling her in a direction.

"What are you doing!?" Clara hissed.

"I can totally see better than you can," Thirteen said, "Like, I can kind of see walls and stuff."

"Oh, how did the Weeping Angels ever get you?" Clara complained sarcastically, phasing her hand out of Thirteen's, "I'll just use my phone torch. I don't trust your eyesight anyway. You'll probably blindly lead me the most dangerous way possible."

"They only got me once!" Thirteen protested, squinting in the sudden glare of Clara's phone in the cave they were in, small stalactites dripping from above, "_And_ it was in broad daylight. They snuck up on me."

"Very impressive," Clara shook her head, walking past her, "Who is it doing this, again? You sounded like you knew."

"I don't wanna jinx it," Thirteen shrugged.

"...Seriously!? _Jinx_ it? When did you get so superstitious?"

"Just chill out, okay? It's totally cool," said Thirteen.

"Did you regenerate into a teenager or something? Why do you speak like this?" Clara asked, "I can't see any of those other four Doctors ever telling someone to 'chill out'."

"None of those old men know how to chill out themselves, they're just uppity and narcissistic, which is why they overlook simple things," Thirteen said, "I mean, that rose? If you showed that to one of them they'd worry about the liquid nitrogen instead of what the symbol means itself. Who cares about nitrogen? It's a preservation technique. They look too deeply at everything to prove how clever they are, and that's why they drag humans around with them. Human points out something simple, human gets called a genius and treated like a dog doing a trick. The pet-owner superiority complex. The Eleventh Doctor is just one of those weirdos who's a little too friendly with his chihuahua - no offence," Thirteen talked as she lead Clara through tunnels.

"Oh, thanks."

"I said _no offence_! They're too vain for their own good. It doesn't matter how nice they are, every problem they solve is out of sympathy because the poor little natives can't fix it themselves. It's an imperialistic flaw, but they don't see that. They see xenophobia as fact. Have you never stopped to think why Eleven never saved your sister?" Thirteen challenged.

"I, um... Because she was a Dalek..."

"Oh, sure. She's a de jure salt shaker. Personality means nothing when faced with juvenile bigotry - that girl saved him multiple times. She did what he never could and erased him from their databanks. Up until that point he didn't even believe she was as clever as she said. Then what? This girl turns out to just _look a bit different_-"

"I wouldn't say-"

"You're unnecessarily defending him because you accept everything he says as though it's by law," Thirteen said, "One day, they will have to get over themselves and learn that maybe humanity isn't a dog just waiting to be put down. Maybe a species that didn't completely destroy itself - a species that don't view themselves as divine, holy creatures born of the untempered schism and created merely by 'long term exposure' - isn't the runt of the universe. All life is equal, but they don't practice what they preach. There's a lot of room for contradiction in a brain so big as that."

"But _you're _the Doctor. You're still them," Clara argued.

"People change when they want to. They just don't want to, because they're hypocrites. Products of arguably unnatural evolution, any further alteration is a far cry from a non-existent home," Thirteen said, "You'll see."

"Maybe I shouldn't take things _you _say as law, either, then?"

"Maybe you shouldn't. Maybe you should stop vicariously living through your husband's prejudiced interpretation of the universe and experience it for yourself," Thirteen said, and then she turned back to Clara and smiled, "Anyway. My point. About them not paying enough attention to the symbolism of the rose. That's why it's the perfect trap. They want to know what the wrong thing means, which is why they'll be surprised."

"A trap for you, right-"

"Trap for a Time Lord," Thirteen said, "Not me. Do you smell that? Smells like... Apricots." Clara sniffed, but she didn't smell anything. What was the significance of apricots? "We are springing the trap preemptively, you and I... Look at this." They emerged through the caves and out into a room with a low glass ceiling, a circle, with more circles engraved into it in Gallifreyan patterns which Clara recognised - if she concentrated hard enough, she knew that she could tap into the old memories of the Time Lord Echo of hers and translate it. Through the glass floor, the grey, cloudy sky was visible high above, along with more hedge walls, and below that, sitting in the cave, was a bashed-up, old, straight-backed piano.

"What does it say on the roof?" Clara asked, more focused on the instrument than the Gallifreyan.

"Oh, it's amusing," Thirteen said, "It says, '_Honey, I'm home_.' Which is a bit ridiculous, because I'm the one coming 'home', not them, but I suppose their wit failed them here..."

"Hey..." Clara began, staring at something etched into the side of the piano, and Thirteen looked over from where she'd been staring at the roof and the clouds above, "Is this..?" Thirteen came and stood next to her (too close for Clara's liking, so she took a step away as she pointed at the etching), and then frowned and knelt down to look at the scratch.

"It's your name," said Thirteen.

"So it's meant for both of us," Clara said.

"No, not us. Them," said Thirteen, looking up at her.

"Look, will you please just tell me what's going on?" Clara asked, "Please?"

"This is the Betaverse, Clara," Thirteen whispered, as though someone was listening to them. She traced her fingers over the etching of Clara's name in the piano, "The piano is a test for you, and you're the one who's supposed to understand the rose. A symbol of love, of lust, something Old Twelvey wouldn't understand, or believe. As is the heart. He'd think there's something way creepier going on. Make _him_ look stupid, make _you_ look clever. It's designed around them, but here we are, breaking the rules."

"I don't get it, if the piano is meant for me, then what am I supposed to play? There's no music," Clara said, eyeing the stool suspiciously before sitting down and examining the keys.

"They know you. They know how to pit you and Twelvey against each other. They know you play piano, they scratched your name into the side. Whatever they want you to play, you should know what it is. Twelve wouldn't let you play, that's the point," Thirteen said.

"...Hang on, this is... This is the Master, isn't it? I thought he was... What does he want?" Clara asked.

"The _Mistress_, you mean," said Thirteen, "Missy, whatever. I never felt the need to change my name. Play whatever comes to mind. The theme is love."

"All I can think of right now is _Bella's Lullaby _from _Twilight_," Clara grumbled, and Thirteen laughed, "What? I had a _Twilight_ phase, okay?"

"Oh, I know. Play it," she said.

"Urgh, fine," Clara muttered, "If I can remember it, that is... I haven't played _or _seen _Twilight _for years... Alright, maybe I haven't seen _Twilight_ for months, but... Whatever..." she talked when she started to play, Thirteen watching her, "Never played in front of my husband, you know. Let alone _this _sort of crap... Why do you think this is what I should play, anyway?"

"It's the first thing that came to your mind, for one thing. Plus, it's the dilemma, isn't it?" Thirteen said, "Edward or Jacob. Doctor or Danny. The heartless ancient or the friendly mortal. She'll think it's funny. Twelve won't get it."

"But you do?" Clara asked, "Is that you telling me I make you watch _Twilight _at some point in the future? All five of them?" Thirteen nodded, and then there was a gravelly, sliding sound, and a door hidden in the cave wall opened itself, "Wow, you were right... What happens when the Master figures out we're not who she wants..?"

"That I don't know," Thirteen shrugged, "I'm sure you can handle it. Coming?" she walked off, and Clara stopped playing, making sure to hold the door telekinetically in case there was some cruel trick that if she stopped playing, the door closed, something designed to get the Doctor on their own.


	201. Six Feet Under The Stars

_Clara_

_Six Feet Under The Stars_

"Strange how you're so into equality when just last week my husband went off on one about us trying to be a democracy," Clara said as they walked through the caves, the ceilings and stalactites drooping so low sometimes that even they - both of them only 5'2" - had to duck on occasion. Thirteen laughed.

"You're just as bad as me!" she said, "_Oh, my husband says this, my husband says that. I love my husband sooo much_."

"Don't do a voice! You're terrible at Lancashire accents, I'll have you know. You have that weird thing going on with your voice anyway," Clara said, downright insulted by Thirteen's attempt to impersonate her, but Thirteen just laughed more, "That weird accent of yours."

"You're _totally_ right."

"If my husband did that impression-"

"Ah! You're still doing it! C'mon, Clara, tell me all about your wonderful husband. So tall, so handsome, so..." Thirteen paused in thought, and then winked and said sultrily, "_Well endowed_." Clara gasped and tried to scowl, but Thirteen laughing just made her laugh, too, as they wended through thin cave passages. "These are some really tight passages, huh?"

"Don't say stuff like that, that's not fair," Clara argued, stuck behind Thirteen in the narrow gap. Not that she cared about being behind Thirteen - no, being behind Thirteen came with a whole host of somewhat perverse advantages and sights to see, "You're just trying to get to me."

"You're talking about your husband."

"Serves you right for talking about your wife," Clara said, "Always trying to get to me. Maybe I'm just playing fair?"

"Seems to me like you're playing dirty."

"You'd like that, wouldn't you?" Clara questioned, and Thirteen laughed. Then Clara tripped and had to steady herself on the damp, slimy cave wall.

"Are you alright?" Thirteen asked, unable to do much to help since they were stuck having to shuffle sideways through a gap that was barely a foot wide like crabs.

"Fine, just my fingers are wet now, eurgh," Clara muttered, forced to wipe them on her tights.

"Not the first time I've heard you say that," Thirteen commented, and Clara gave her a disapproving look, but had to look away when she couldn't help smiling, "You wiped them on a part of your tights where you can see the dirt."

"Oh yeah? Where should I have wiped them?"

"Under your skirt."

"Well, it's a really short skirt, there's not a lot of room. And just to clarify, you want me to touch myself underneath my skirt..?" she asked, raising her eyebrows in challenge of Thirteen.

"Not in a weird way."

"...You know, somebody told me that cave walls taste like tuna if you lick them. It was on a school trip caving when I was ten," she said.

"Are you trying to tell me that your fingers are wet and taste like fish..?"

"I'm just saying," Clara shrugged.

"_Now _who's trying to get to who, hmm? This is what I meant when I said you're playing dirty," Thirteen said, "You don't know me well enough yet to know that I can beat you at your own game, Oswald."

"Oh, I look forward to you beating me, whatever that means," Clara said.

"What's your end goal here?"

"Haven't thought that far ahead, but no doubt whenever I get away from you for long enough I'll decide that saying any of this was a terrible mistake," Clara sighed, and then there was a rumble and the ground below them shook violently as the tunnel got wider, like an earthquake, and she ended up getting thrown forwards, tripping over a stalagmite, and falling into Thirteen's arms and then onto Thirteen when she fell, too.

Whatever was happening, Clara was distracted from it by a stabbing pain in the back of her knee, wincing and trying not to gasp with pain, clenching her fist and hitting it against the floor.

"Clara. Clara, get up," Thirteen said, and that was when, through the agony in her leg, she noticed she'd fallen on top of a girl she had a metre rule with.

"I, um... I'm alright here," Clara said, gritting her teeth against the pain that felt like noise.

"Well, I'm not," Thirteen said, trying to look anywhere but Clara, who put her elbows either side of Thirteen's head and leant on her hands, staying where she was, "Ugh, what are you doing?"

"Hanging out. Just lying around."

"This is the second time this has happened."

"Oh really? When was the first time?" Clara inquired, trying to look casual and push her hair behind her ear as she battled against whatever had happened to her leg in the weirdest earthquake ever.

"Wasn't with you, it was with the Victorian. Pulled her through a window. _She _actually got up though," Thirteen said.

"Come on, I bet you got up, too."

"What?"

"What?"

"I get it. Classless humour. You think you're funny. Are you gonna get off me yet?"

"I'm really comfortable," Clara lied, "What colour are your eyes? I thought they were brown, but is there gold in there?"

"Your hair is on my face and you smell like strawberries - it's intoxicating. Will you please move so that I don't haplessly succumb to the urge to eat your mouth?" Thirteen asked.

"I'm not even trying to make you kiss me right now, that's all on you," Clara said.

"Um, hello!? You're lying on top of me and you won't get off and you keep breathing on my face!"

"...Would now be a bad time to tell you I can't move?" Clara said, "I'm in a terrible amount of pain, I think my left knee has been crushed by a falling bit of cave."

"What!? Are you okay!?"

"No, I'm clearly not okay, I just told you that I can't move and I'm in terrible pain," Clara said, "I just have a lot of practice dealing with pain. Also your eyes are clearly magic - how come they seem to glow? They're really pretty, I love them."

"That is not helping, stop staring at me," Thirteen said, "Sit up a bit so I can move, then."

"I have an excuse to be close to you, though."

"Yes, yes. You're not thinking straight," Thirteen said.

"I know. Your hair is really soft," Clara said.

"Stop playing with my hair - honestly, I think if you were screaming this would be more fun. Just push yourself up on your hands, you're being a baby. I know you're young, but seriously..." Thirteen complained. Clara sighed just to agitate her, but put her palms flat on the ground and used her non-crushed leg to lift herself up as far as she could so that Thirteen could awkwardly slide out and get to her feet, leaving Clara stuck on the ground.

"This is less fun without you underneath me," Clara groaned, "I can feel it more. What's it look like? How bad is it?"

"It's _super_ awful," Thirteen said, "Totally gross. Thank god for your nanogenes, huh?" Thirteen said, stepping around Clara. And then it felt like she sat down on Clara's back.

"Why are you sitting on me? That's weird," Clara said, "What if you break my back?"

"I won't, trust me, you can take my weight. And even if I did break your back, you'd heal. And you can't kiss me this way either, I'm facing towards your feet. So, looks like a whole... This is planned."

"Is it? Okay. That's nice. My face hurts right now," Clara said.

"Don't you get it!? She did this to embarrass you," Thirteen said, "Or, Twelve. This is probably all mechanical behind these walls. Not even a real cave."

"I bet it doesn't even taste like tuna. Will you pull the thingy out of my leg?"

"Imagine if Other You fell right on top of Twelvey, how awful that would be? No idea if the stupid stalactite was supposed to fall - I don't know what dearest Missy would get out of maiming you and your pretty legs," Thirteen said.

"I think they'd be more pretty if you pulled the rock out of my knee. Please," Clara said, "I've been in a lot more pain than - ARGH!" While she was talking, Thirteen wrenched it straight out and Clara pressed her face into the floor. "Thank you..."

"You are _welcome_," Thirteen said, standing up and walking to be in front of Clara, crouching down, "Look how big it was." Thirteen held up a massive chunk of cave-roof with a point like a needle, covered in blood, "Huh. Guess it doesn't matter now that you got dirt on your tights, right?"

"That's _hilarious_."


	202. Acid Reflux

_Clara_

_Acid Reflux_

"Martha Jones is gonna pay for me ruining these tights," Clara complained. She was healed by then, and kept glaring at her knee, which was still covered in blood regardless of the fact it was now undamaged, "I don't get it, what's the point of this maze? To screw with us?"

"Basically, yeah," Thirteen said, in front of her, "I mean, I've never heard of anybody having a _good _reason to freeze a heart and catapult it out of the ground."

"So what the symbol typically represents is more important than the symbol itself? Frozen rose? Frozen heart? Both mean love, both-"

"Frozen to preserve them," Thirteen finished.

"How do we know if it's a question of making Twelve look stupid? Maybe what she really wants is to make him feel better about himself. We don't know Twelve, do we? Not well. Maybe he _would _let her play the piano, maybe he _would _listen to what she said? Or maybe it isn't supposed to pit them against each other at all, maybe it's about teamwork? Look at it literally - a frozen heart. Does that mean she thinks _he _has a frozen heart, because that's something I can understand," Clara.

"Love is fire, not ice," Thirteen said, trailing her hand along the cave wall ahead of Clara.

"_Passion_ is fire," Clara said, "It makes you brighter or burns you out. 'Love' is an undefinable concept down to interpretation - the interpretation of a murderous, insane alien." Thirteen stopped walking all of a sudden and Clara bumped into her, too busy thinking. Thirteen didn't seem to notice, though, she just stayed still.

"That's right. I got it wrong - _Twilight _isn't you picking between Danny and Twelve. Danny's dead, and she knows that. It's about Twelve picking between you and her, the immortal and the human," Thirteen said, and then she looked around at Clara, "Making women compete for the affections of a man is very anti-feminist, isn't it?" Clara laughed a little, and Thirteen continued walking. "It's all about a man, of course. The heart nearly hit us."

"I know, I remember," Clara reminded her, then added quietly, "...And Jacob's not a human."

"No, I mean - it's not a symbol, not like the rose. The rose is a lure... Maybe the rose means Rose? I mean. What I was saying was, we're the same height. It nearly hit _us_. Which means it was made to hit you. That's strange, considering you're necessary for the piano... I really don't think she knows what she wants to do with us," Thirteen said, "Unless it's coincidence. Maybe it's coincidence?"

"Maybe. What do you mean the rose means Rose?"

"In the Betaverse. The Doctor's 'great loves'. Rose and River. So what represents... Do you hear that?" Thirteen stopped again, and Clara didn't walk into her that time. Thirteen turned to look at her again in the narrow cave where it was impossible for them to walk side-by-side, and Clara noticed how dirty she was from cave-crawling for so long. She didn't know quite how long they'd been underground for.

"Sorry, what? Your face distracted me," Clara said flatly.

"Running water. It's the sound of running water. And the smell-"

"Let me guess, apricots?" Clara asked.

"No, no - can't you smell that? It's gross," she said, and Clara sniffed accordingly and got a whole waft of chemical-stench in her nose that stung her skin and made her cough. "Told you. An underground river. Not frozen, oddly enough, since it's running... I don't know if this place is artificial or not, isn't it odd?"

"Well we better bump into her and get a chance to find out," Clara said, jabbing Thirteen in her lower back to make her keep walking, which she did, without saying anything about 'inappropriate touching'.

"If Rose is a rose and River is a river, what's the heart?"

"Maybe there's someone in the Betaverse called Heart? I don't know, some of this stuff is cryptic, like, are we supposed to figure it out or not? I have no clue," Thirteen sighed, "Maybe we should leave the deductions for now, work on just getting past the obstac-" she cut herself off when she spared a glance back and tripped. But she didn't just fall to the ground, because (as Clara only really saw when her future-wife was no longer blocking her line of sight and drawing all of her attention like a succubus) behind her was the very river she'd heard moments before, flowing slowly with a thick, viscous, bright green substance giving off chemically-scented fumes. Whatever it was, Clara knew that falling into it was probably an awful idea.

Clara grabbed hold of her hand and, with the aid of some minor telekinesis, pulled Thirteen back up and pushed her against the wall.

"You idiot!" Clara shouted at her, "Why didn't you look where you were going? You could've died! You could've..." Clara's voice caught in her throat when she noticed how close she'd gotten to Thirteen to yell. Thirteen stupidly endangering her own life coupled with the thin tunnel combined to make a situation all-too-similar to three days ago. It was the moment that she thought she might be able to taste the hazelnuts from the cookies Thirteen had allegedly been eating on the air between them, air made of warm breath, chemical smells and sweat, that Clara felt a searing, white hot pain spread around her head, culminating at her temples, and the subconscious urge of her own teleportation wrenched her like smoke across the green, stinking river, and she'd shot herself four metres away to the other side, hands against the wall, but no girl between them.

"Aw, c'mon, you couldn't have taken me with you?" Thirteen asked.

"It was subconscious," Clara muttered, leaning her back on the wall and breathing in the chemicals deeply, air untainted by the aftertaste of hazelnut cookies and carbon dioxide, "I can't control it yet. It just happens... I almost kissed you. Again."

"But you didn't," said Thirteen, "You teleported to the other side of the weird, underground, green river." Clara slid down against the wall until she was sat, the passage so narrow she put her feet on the wall opposite, looking right at Thirteen and the river, but neither of them said anything for a while.

"What is it?" Clara asked, nodding at the river.

"Acid," Thirteen replied, watching it carefully.

"Bright green acid? That's a bit of a cliché," Clara criticised the Master's lack of originality when it came to a treacherous obstacle course.

"Yep. There must be some way to cross it, since she has no clue you can teleport. Unless Beta-You can teleport secretly... Or she's cleverer than we thought..."

"Well she probably is. And anyway, didn't you say you were gonna leave the deductions?"

"Yes. You're right. I did. Okay. Um..." Clara didn't talk, just watched Thirteen look around her small area to spot anything, muttering to herself about any buttons on the wall, going as far as to dangle her foot as low down as she dared to see if there might possibly be an invisible bridge. While she waited for something to happen, she got another cigarette out of her pack, counting how many were left and struggling for a moment with her lighter, which was nearly empty. She either needed to get on Martha's good side or buy a new one.

"Hey, um... I don't want to not talk to you," Clara said. For minutes, maybe hours, she'd been trying to work up the nerve to say that, the unsaid words feeling like bile in her throat. Thirteen stopped where she was, on the other side of the acid river.

"...Uh-huh?"

"I just like talking to you. A lot," Clara said sadly, keeping her eyes on the dark wall, watching the end of her cigarette glow orange, breathing in the smoke that curled off it, which was by far an improvement on the stink of the acid, "I don't really know what I want."

"You want somebody to tell you it's okay for us to be together, that's what. But it really isn't, so nobody's gonna give you that assurance," Thirteen told her.

"Sounds about right. What was it Plath said? '_If neurotic is wanting two mutually exclusive things at one and the same time, then I'm neurotic as hell_,'" Clara quoted.

"Of course someone such as you would quote poets when she's debating the highly immoral question on if secretly having an affair with me would be cheating or not," Thirteen said, "Do you not think it might be a little unhealthy that you can recite passages of _The Bell Jar _at the drop of a hat, Clara?"

"What do you mean someone 'such as me'?" she questioned, "And no, it's not unhealthy, I'm an English teacher. It'd be more worrying if I _couldn't _quote anything from a defining novel of the Twentieth Century."

"Just referencing the minor career change you make soon enough," Thirteen said. What did that mean? She was going to become a poet one day? Well, now that she thought about it, she was probably pretentious enough, "Plath will not help us solve the problem of crossing the river."

"Just how acidic is it, exactly?" Clara asked, watching the gooey substance slide down the angled cave floor like magma.

"Dunno. Drop something in it," Thirteen said.

"_Me_ drop something in it? Why don't _you _drop something in it?"

"The only thing I have on me is my screwdriver," Thirteen said, taking something long and thin out of the inside pocket of her jacket, holding it up so that Clara could see it and the purple light it had on the end. Clara hadn't seen Thirteen's sonic yet, she hadn't even known she had a new one, but she put it away after showing it to Clara.

"Well all I have on me is your screwdriver, too. Well, I mean, not _your _screwdriver, but... You know what I mean. And my phone."

"And your cigarettes," Thirteen said, and Clara glared at her and purposely took a long drag on the one in her mouth, blowing the smoke across the river, though it didn't reach Thirteen.

"I need these cigarettes to brood."

"...Then stick your finger in it."

"You clearly have a silver tongue when it comes to flirtation," Clara quipped sarcastically, "But I'm not gonna put my finger in any glowing acid."

"I hate to ask you to injure yourself, but you know it'll heal. Unless you're gonna make me a bridge of telekinesis and cheat? Try and phase me through it? Teleport back over and bring me with you? Carry me?" Thirteen suggested a list of things.

"Fine, guess I'll maim myself for you," Clara muttered, moving her cigarette into her left hand, the furthest one away from the river, "Ridiculous, really, I would've thought that _you _would value my fingers more than... Ew..."

"What? What is it? Is your hand burning!?" Thirteen exclaimed.

"No," said Clara, "I don't know what this crap is, but's warm and slimy and it _stinks_." She lifted her hand out, covered in the green goo, "It's like flubber. This is so weird, does she want to kill us or not?" Clara turned her hand intangible so that the slime just fell through and splashed back into the river, Thirteen stooping down on the other side and carefully trailing her fingers over the surface of the sludge.

"Woman's got a lot of questions to answer. How deep do you think this is? Oh, I get it. 'Born to kill the Doctor'. You think the river's gonna kill you, but then it..."

"What? Falls in love with you?"

"How deep?" Thirteen repeated her question. Clara sighed and held her arm out over the river, palm open and face down. "Ooh, bringing the silver out?" Clara smirked and flashed her eyes at Thirteen, who was watching her intently as she tried to telekinetically part the faux-acid with her hand.

"Look at that, it only goes down two feet," Clara said, peering over the edge, "This is stupid by now. I feel like Moses parting the red sea. Guess we're just supposed to wade through it."

"I'm gonna have strong words with this woman about trickery and heart-cannons," Thirteen declared, watching as a line cut itself through the middle of the gunk so that she could get through.

"Have fun with that, _I'm _gonna put my fist through her brain."


	203. Painting Flowers

_Clara_

_Painting Flowers_

The caves curved up while the ceiling got lower at the same time, the gap they had to walk in getting narrower and narrower until both of them were reduced to crawling. Though thankfully this only lasted for a minute at best before a little craggy portal of light appeared opposite and the pair of them emerged out of the ground finally, Clara taking in a huge breath of fresh air not swarmed with the congealed odours of cinnamon and green chemicals. Now, she could just smell mud and wet leaves, because they were back in the maze, surrounded by hedges. She couldn't tell if the pathway was now wider or if she was just getting confused because of the narrowness of the cave, and she was conflicted by her brain's desire to steer as far away from Thirteen as possible, and the rest of her wanting to go linger abominaby close and whisper things. What things, she didn't know, but she was sure they weren't appropriate.

Along with the wider path, the other differences were the flower heads woven into the dense, hedge walls, and the fog that was now curling around them so that they could hardly see ahead for mist and humidity.

"This woman has read too much _Alice In Wonderland_," Clara muttered, going up to one of the flower heads, which really were the oversized petals of a rose, only... "They've been given some sort of dodgy paintjob. They're not meant to be white. In the book they're white originally and they paint them red..." She stood on tiptoes and moved the rose head back so that she could see where the white paint was chipping away at the top of the stem where it dripped, the paint seeming damp in the mist. "You know what I really need?" she turned back to Thirteen, who shrugged.

"No, what..?"

"The toilet," Clara answered.

"Oh, I thought you were gonna say something creepy. Or gay."

"You can always join me in the toilet?"

"Wow, that was both creepy _and _gay. Well done," Thirteen said mockingly.

"I try my best," Clara said, eyeing the hedge and the roses, "Do you think she's painting them to get to me, or summat?"

"...Why do _you _care what colour the roses are?" Thirteen questioned, standing nearby (but not too nearby) with her arms folded. She'd been looking around, but every time Clara spoke it was like she was forced to look at her and listen. _Weird_, Clara thought.

"Don't like white roses," Clara muttered, trying to mess with the petals for whatever reason and finding them stuck together by the dry paint. They'd definitely been painted a while ago, "Prefer red."

"Oh yeah?"

"Yeah, after, you know. The War of the Roses," she shrugged.

"Oh, you're playing the Northern card? Those wars were fought over five-hundred years before you were even born," Thirteen said.

"You just don't understand because you're... You know," Clara said, and Thirteen raised her eyebrows in challenge, "You just have that weird accent. Which reminds me - you were out with Martha and Rose yesterday, weren't you?"

"Yep," Thirteen answered, Clara turning away from the roses, "...Why?"

"Well it's just Rose texted me something interesting - she told me that Martha asked _you _what _I'm _like when I'm turned on, which I thought was very peculiar," Clara said.

"Some might say it was queer." Clara narrowed her eyes. "What's your question?" She said nothing still, just frowned, looking at the ground in thought.

"Why were you talking about me being turned on in the first place? Seems a bit of a private thing."

"Okay, _don't _be mad, I was kind of making a joke that you'd know a lot about demons because you are one when you're turned on - we wete trying to exorcise someone, you see - but then Martha's all, 'Oh yeah? Tell me about that,' and Rose is totally confused, it was weird," Thirteen explained.

"What do you mean I'm 'like a demon'!?"

"Look, you are _very_ intimidating when aroused, okay? As proven three days ago, what with all that pushing-against-walls business," Thirteen pointed out, and Clara shut up. Maybe she was right, "It's a frightening experience for your good wife here. I've totally got no idea how Danny Pink managed to cope with it - maybe if he really _was _a PE teacher I'd believe he had the stamina to keep up with you, but-"

"Hang on, do you talk about me in this way to other people? People who aren't me in various versions? And when I say 'various versions' I mean different points in time, _not _Echoes," Clara interrupted her to ask.

"No! No, I would not do that. What do you think's wrong with me? Can we get back onto the topic of the weird, painted flowers now? The frozen heart? The frozen rose? The fake acid river?" Thirteen questioned.

"Ah! See?"

"No..?"

"The _fake _acid river. So you thought it would kill you, but it didn't," Clara said, "Like real River."

"Oh she almost did kill me, like, twice," Thirteen said, "But moving on, these flowers are weirding me out. You don't think they're another puzzle, do you?" Clara shrugged. She had no idea. She didn't know why Thirteen was asking her anyway, she was thoroughly distracted.

Clara finally started to walk away from the rose heads in the hedge, Thirteen following after her, unable to think of anything to say as they turned a few more corners in the maze, both quite dirty from the caves, Clara with blood down her leg from her minor impalement.

"I wonder what Old Twelvey did to piss off this woman so much?" Thirteen mused.

"Have you ever met her?"

"Nah, don't know a whole lot about this Mistress, other than when she regenerated she clearly gained some kind of dominatrix persona. I mean, I regenerate into someone infamously nice and queer in both senses of the word, and she's some kind of psychopath who shoots hearts out of cannons - weird, right? But I suppose I shouldn't really judge what people want to do in their freetime. Though, maybe I have a right to when it seems to be _me _she wants to do them to?" Thirteen seemed to be thinking aloud, and Clara really didn't know what to say to her, or even if she expected an answer. "Anyway, we can always offer Old Twelvey up in exchange for our own lives if it comes down to it."

"What was that you were saying? About being 'infamously nice'?"

"Very funny, but really, it's not us she wants. Anyway, you're telekinetic, we'll be fine. Unless she pulls something and you decide _not _to save me, which I hope you won't," Thirteen said, then they both stopped dead when the ground seemed to rumble.

To their right, the hedge parted, sliding open like automatic doors to reveal... a table. A long dining table, in the middle of a large, hedge-surrounded, square clearing, with a lot of food set out on it, with a woman standing behind it facing away from them. At least she was until the hedge closed up behind them, at which point she span around in a very theatrical movement and pulled off the large, ridiculous top-hat she'd been wearing for some reason and made to greet them, at which point her face fell.

"Well _you're _not who I was expecting," she remarked.

"I wish I could say the same for you, but you've been quite predictable today," Thirteen remarked, and the woman, the Master, sighed and put her stupid hat back on (why on Earth was she wearing a hat like that? It was green and old).

"...Suppose you'd like some tea while you're here?"

"How courteous of you."

"And then you can tell me who you are and what you've done with my boyfriend?"


	204. A Mad Tea-Party

**AN: What is it that you guys like about this fic? Like, why do you keep reading it after so long?**

_Clara_

_A Mad Tea-Party_

"Is he your boyfriend, though?" Thirteen asked, walking up to the table, Clara hastening to follow while squinting at the Master – Mistress – whatever her name was – because she couldn't help but feel like she recognised her from somewhere. Along with that, though, she was keeping a close eye on Thirteen, not knowing an awful at that point about the strange relationship the Doctor and the Master, in all of their forms, had. She'd have to ask about it later, but for now, she decided that telekinesis was her new best friend. "It's just, I don't really remember us ever making that agreement."

"'Us', is it? Who might you be?" Missy asked, sitting down in one of the three seats. There was one at either head of the table, and one in the middle. Thirteen walked right up to the chair on the opposite end to Missy, leaving Clara stuck in the middle. _I'm not having that_, she thought. If that seat had been put there for her, she didn't trust it one bit, probably had a bear trap on it or something, so she stood by and thought about what she was to do, not moving. "I know her, though. I really expected a warmer welcome from you, Clara, but I suppose you _did_ try to kill me the last time we met… Can't think why."

"Kill you?" Clara asked, then she looked to Thirteen, "Did I?" Thirteen shrugged, looking at the food, which seemed to be an awful lot of sweets (she saw a whole bowl just filled with Haribo love hearts) and nothing remotely cooked or healthy.

"Well, yes, because of some misunderstanding about your boyfriend being brought back from the dead," Missy said, like she was foggy on the details, though Clara got the impression that that was an act.

"Boy..? Oh, whatshisface?" Clara said, pretending that she, too, was foggy on the details. Maybe she was, come to think of it, she didn't remember hearing anything about Danny Pink being brought back from the dead, "I thought he got hit by a car?"

"Yes, he did," said Missy, "And it was your fault."

"Was it? Clumsy me," Clara joked sarcastically, "I did think he was dead though."

"Well, he died again," Missy shrugged.

"Did he? Shame. He made quite the impression on me for those twenty whole minutes I was in the same room as him," Clara said, watching the chair, and Thirteen laughed, "You know he punched my brother-in-law in the face?" she said to Missy, shaking her head a little, and then she sighed and walked straight through the table, phasing, to Missy's shock, and she picked up the chair by the back and carried to the other end next to Thirteen.

"Strawberry laces down here," she said, showing a Clara a bowl full of the things, "What's with the spread?" she called down the table to Missy, who seemed generally disappointed, "If it makes you feel any better, I doubt Old Twelvey would've appreciated all this candy you've lain out for him."

"What if it's poison?" Clara asked Thirteen.

"Poison? Please, this is the Master, not my ex-wife," Thirteen said.

"Who _are _you supposed to be?" Missy asked, "Not the Thirteenth? Has he died again and not told me? He has a terrible habit of doing that."

"No, 'fraid not," Thirteen answered, "He wishes he'd regenerate into me, _I'm_ hot. Hasn't anybody filled you in yet on the Dimension Doors? The fact the very fabric of space and time is tearing apart allowing people to travel easily and safely between universes? I mean, funny that you've gone for this whole Wonderland theme, because I think it was just – and correct me if I'm wrong, sweetheart – a month ago that a couple of us visited the actual Wonderland?" Clara got the distinct impression that Thirteen was going against her asking her _not _to call her things like 'sweetheart' on purpose, for show.

"I think it was about that," Clara answered her, "I wasn't there, though, I think I was having sex most of that day."

"Yeah, I think you might've been, too," Thirteen frowned in mock-thought. Clara didn't actually remember the last few weeks that specifically, in truth. She'd barely heard anything of the details of that Wonderland trip, just that it had something to do with Nine and River, "Falls short of reality a bit here, I guess. Why do you make a torture maze and then have a load of Haribos at the end? Oh, I've got it. You know what you're missing? Cotton candy."

"What do you want candyfloss for?" Clara asked.

"I always want candyfloss," Thirteen said, "Which, yes, is actually a euphemism. But anyway, dimensions. The thing is, this place? It _reeks_ of apricots. And I mean, I've never been the sort of girl to turn down an apricot yoghurt that comes my way, but it's always a bit of a giveaway that we've accidentally landed in the wrong universe. We call this the Betaverse. Most of us aren't too keen on it."

"No. That Other Me's a bit of a nightmare sometimes," Clara said, picking up a Curly Wurly and unwrapping it, wondering what somebody from the Sixteenth Century (that being the century they were in) would think if they were greeted by all this Twenty-First Century confectionary, "Sorry to disappoint you. Before you think any of your future plans of kidnapping and luring and whatnot have been disrupted, the other Clara, the one that belongs in this universe whose boyfriend got killed, or whatever, she can't walk through stuff. Incidentally, I can walk through lots of things, not just tables. It'd be a great trick if I still went to parties."

"You went to that party last month! You know, with the ghost children you told me about," Thirteen said.

"…That was just us getting drunk together because I had a brain aneurysm," Clara said, "I had a terrible hangover the next day, everybody was sick of me."

"They're always sick of you."

"True…" she sighed.

"Is there something going on between you two?" Missy questioned, smiling a little in a way Clara couldn't deduce.

"Why _wouldn't_ I have something going on with a girl this pretty?" Thirteen said, and Clara smiled at Missy.

"I _have_ been told by a lot of people that I am unfortunately pretty," Clara said fake-sadly.

"Well, I'm not going to argue with that," Missy said slyly.

"It's a tragedy," said Thirteen, "I _am_ the Doctor, though. In fact, I'm the Twelfth Doctor. I'm just the other, better, Twelfth Doctor who doesn't have a Scottish accent, for whatever reason."

"You're one to talk about accents," Missy quipped, equally as Scottish as Old Twelvey, and Thirteen just raised an eyebrow and picked up a handful of the love heart sweets, "Why did you decide to sound like that?"

"Deciding hardly comes into it," Thirteen argued, "It's all a matter of-"

"Oh, shit!" Clara exclaimed, staring at Missy, "You're – _you're_ the woman in the shop! Who gave me the number for that bloody PC helpline! I knew I recognised you!"

"Well, yes," said Missy, smiling and pretending to be humble, "I suppose I _do_ have to take _some_ credit for setting you up."

"I… Just…" Clara stuttered, then there was a long pause where Thirteen just seemed to be thinking, and then Clara simply said, "Fuck…" and leant back in her chair, "My marriage is a lie."

"Oh, _marriage_, is it? Cheating on _me_?"

"Well we're not even from the same universe," Thirteen told her, "I don't think we ever technically had a 'thing' anyway. Maybe just unresolved sexual tension. At any rate, I thought you were dead. And double at any rate, it was my last incarnation that married her in the first place – we were drunk, I _totally_ remember _nothing_ – and he was sort of still married to River Song. The Beta Twelve isn't married to her, anyway, so you've totally got a shot."

"If you're married, why don't you have any wedding rings on?" Missy challenged, and Thirteen and Clara both frowned and both checked their hands, Clara seeing her one silver ring right there where it was supposed to be, and Thirteen seeing all three of hers _and_ that engagement ring.

"I do, three of them," the Doctor held up her hand to Missy.

"Expensive?"

"Stolen."

"Predictable."

"Definitely."

"Why're you wearing that hat?" Clara asked her, "It's stupid."

"Well it's better than _your_ hat," Missy snapped.

"I don't have a hat on," Clara said.

"Precisely."

"Are you trying to look like the Mad Hatter? The only things missing are the March Hare and the Dormouse. Hey, why is a raven like a writing desk?" Clara asked.

"Both of them turn to ashes when you set them on fire," said Missy.

"…Good answer," Clara told her, "Hope that doesn't mean you're gonna try and set us on fire, that'd be unfortunate, we're not even from your universe. Although, if we went and brought the Betas over here and you _did_ set them on fire and kill them both, it'd save us a job of having to destroy a Xenomorph hive. But speaking of setting things on fire…" she took her pack of cigarettes out of her pocket along with her lighter, counting how many were left: seven. A dangerously low amount, in Clara's opinion, but she lit one of them anyway, bringing the grand total to just six death sticks, and put the pack in her pocket, "There aren't any anti-smoking laws in the 1500s, are there?" She blew out some smoke down the table.

"You're going to get ashes on the gummy worms," Missy said to her darkly, "Neither of you appreciate how many pick and mixes I stole the entire contents of to make you this buffet."

"I'm guessing three?" Thirteen said, "Pick and mixes generally have a _lot_ of candy at your disposal. Don't suppose you stole any bags too so we can take some of this home? You chose a fine selection of gelatine to bestow upon us." Missy ignored her.

"When did you start smoking?"

"…A week ago."

Thirteen snorted, "Liar."

"Shut up! Okay, when I was sixteen, but I quit for a bit after university. Then some very traumatic things happened to me involving identical twin sisters and I took the habit back up on and off," Clara explained, "Beta Me doesn't smoke though. Danny was not pleased when he found out that time we visited them. Before his untimely demise, that is."

"Well speaking of Danny Pink's untimely demise, did you like the present I gave you?" Missy asked them.

"Present?" Thirteen frowned.

"Well, I didn't 'give' it per say, more launched it out of a cannon-"

"Wait – whose heart was that?" Clara asked, and Missy said nothing, "Was that – was that _Danny Pink's heart_ you shot at us!? Out of a cannon!? I could've been temporarily killed, you know, and I don't take kindly to two maimings in one day. That's a lot of maiming. That's like when I got my foot shot off and then an hour later ripped a crossbow bolt out of my face, not a good day, I was chain smoking. Then just a few days later I got impaled."

"Sounds like an interesting story," Missy commented.

"I suppose so, and again, never happened to Other Me. She hasn't a clue what's going on – though she did get attacked by a vending machine three days ago."

"Launched a can of soda straight at her face," Thirteen added, "Broke her nose."

"What did you mean when you said you could 'go get them'?" Missy questioned, leaning forwards in her seat and watching them both carefully. It was difficult to have a conversation with somebody who was at the opposite end of a very long table.

"They're on our TARDIS," Thirteen explained, "Have you ever seen _Aliens_?" Missy glared at her. "Guess not. Well, they're staying on the Alpha TARDIS until the Alpha Crew can be bothered to clean up their mess. Their mess being a vast array of Xenomorphs, because they let a Queen on board and there's probably a fully functioning hive right now just waiting to breed. So they managed to get onto our TARDIS."

"Old Twelvey spent the whole other day locked up with a Zygon because he put an octopus under my sister's bed," Clara said.

"Sister?"

"_My_ sister, not Other Me's sister. Other Me doesn't like her too much," Clara explained, "Oswin."

"Osgood?"

"Who's Osgood?"

"Dead."

"So's Oswin, a hologram now. Was a Dalek, but she doesn't like it when you call her a Dalek. You'd remember if you'd met her, she looks exactly like me, but she might have accidentally committed murder, or something," Clara shrugged, "Can't believe you froze Danny Pink's heart and lobbed it at us."

"If I thought anybody was gonna freeze that boy's heart, I would've thought it would be Adam Mitchell," Thirteen said, and Clara laughed.

"I know, right? He _will_ be disappointed when we tell him, won't he?"

"Just to clarify," Thirteen said to Missy, "You're not gonna kill us, are you? We won't tell the Betas that you've set this trap for them. This can all be easily set back up, anyway, just glue the pulmonary artery back onto the heart. It's a bit cruel to launch the heart of someone's dead boyfriend at them, though."

"Not to mention fucked up," said Clara.

"When do you start swearing? I _like_ it," Missy asked sultrily.

"She's a terrible influence," Thirteen said.

"You ought to wash her mouth out," Missy told her, and Clara pulled a face.

"…Actually, come to think of it, I can't remember if I brushed my teeth this morning…"

"You did, just before we left, I could taste the mint," said Thirteen, and Clara stared at her while Missy looked on with sheer amusement, "…Look, I'll forget all about it when we get out of here, okay?" she whispered, and Clara said nothing, just stared at the table top, like some kind of bubble had been shattered by Thirteen reminding her of the slip-up she'd made just a few hours ago. "Seriously though, are you going to try and kill us?"

"Oh, I doubt it," Missy sighed, "I'll wait until the other two pop along. Wouldn't want to spoil any of the fun for the version of me in _your_ universe, now, would I? …It was a good maze, though, wasn't it?"

"Totally! But you should definitely add a few more death-traps to the equation. Make the acid real acid, you know? Maybe a bottomless pit? Something psychological? Add some pepper, go the whole way with your _Alice in Wonderland _theme. Some playing cards somewhere. Play blackjack, or something. I've always been terrible at blackjack. You'll win easily."

"Can we go, then?" Clara said, standing up, "It's been a fun chat we've had. You ought to have some tea with your tea-party, though." Thirteen followed her lead and pushed her chair out, too.

"And party bags, you gotta love a good party bag."

"Maybe a cake?" Missy suggested.

"Yeah, definitely get a cake! Cakes are totally awesome. And doggy bags, to take the candy away. Don't wanna waste it all. But feel free to get me to come and take any excess sugar off your hands," Thirteen said.

"And how would one get a hold of you, hmm, Doctor?"

"…Do you know MSN?"


	205. Bail Me Out

_DAY NINETY-SEVEN_

_Oswin_

_Bail Me Out_

"This is your fault," River Song said for the hundredth time, sitting on the long bench that ran across the concrete, grey wall of the cell they were in. Oswin scowled and mouthed a curse word, keeping her face pressed between the bars and staring at the phone opposite that she couldn't get to. River being more or less a cyborg now, she couldn't teleport, and Nios the synth sitting at the other end of the bench to River couldn't either. Of course, Oswin could if she took her leg off, but there were cameras, and if she were to hack them first some police constable or deputy sheriff or whatever law enforcement agents they had in Pennsylvania would run into the room.

"How is it my fault?" Oswin questioned, moving away from the bars and turning to face her, just the three of them in the whole room, guards on the other side of the door.

"Because _you're_ the one who challenged the Twelfth Doctor to a shot contest," River argued.

"Yeah, but it's not _my _fault he didn't seem to register that holograms can't drunk and took me up on it," Oswin said, "And it was Mickey and Rory who started the drinking game, not me. Twelve was so hammered after he forfeited that contest he could barely stand on the chairs or follow the rules."

"Could anybody follow the rules?" Nios asked, glancing between them. Nios hadn't wanted to get involved in the drinking game, though she'd watched the chaos that unfolded as every single member of the crew made up of organic matter drank a whole range of substances in various ways and probably gave themselves liver disease in the process.

"Whichever three downed their first beer the fastest picked the teams," Oswin said, frowning while she tried to remember the haze that was last night (if she could barely remember and she'd been sober, god knew what state the others were in), "Something about... jumping when people said 'dream crab'... The floor was acid... Switching the lights on and off... I think the Tenth Doctor downed a whole bottle of champagne to get people back in the game."

"But what was the point of it? How did you win?" Nios asked.

"All the beer in the big TARDIS-shaped cuboid of beer cans had to be drunk, but they kept adding cans at random points and the person to drink the last can won, I think," Oswin frowned, "There were a lot of rules, and they weren't my fault, and it's also not my fault that _afterwards _the girls decided they wanted to throw Jenny a belated hen party so they pissed off to New York City. Well, actually they ended up in Pittsburgh..."

"It _was _your fault, _you _started the drinking, no matter how sober you were," River reiterated.

"It was not my fault! This is not my fault! It is not my fault that we got arrested because they thought I was my sister and they won't believe I'm not!" Oswin protested, "I think it's _your _fault because _you _were out in the console room and you didn't try to stop them!"

"Yes I did, I tried to redirect the TARDIS to somewhere remote."

"Pittsburgh does not fit my definition of 'remote'!"

"Well you can stick your definition of 'remote' up your-" Someone cleared their throat, and they all looked to see someone wearing a star-shaped badge standing in the doorway with his hands behind his back, overweight with grey stubble trailing the stench of bourbon behind him (Oswin imagined the last part, she couldn't smell, and she also didn't know what bourbon smelt like).

"Have you three sobered up, then?" he questioned, and Oswin went back to trying to push her face through the bars.

"Are you a sheriff? I didn't know they existed, I thought they were mythical creatures, like dragons or dentists," she said.

"What a way to make him believe you're sober," River said dryly.

"I _am _sober. Go on, make me do one of those thingies, a breatha-whatsit," she said, "I can balance if you want? What do you do, touch your nose and stand on one leg?" she stepped back and did exactly that, "I have great balance in my right leg, what with me being an amputee and all. Don't know if you noticed, but the girl you _think _I am actually had _two _whole legs." She did balance perfectly, though.

"She _is _sober," River sighed, but actually vouched for Oswin, "She's just like that."

"Can I have my phone call now?" Oswin asked, "Or is it a myth that I get one of those?"

"You need to pay for the damages to the shop," the sheriff told her.

"Yes, well, I'll do that after I make my phone call. Get a lawyer or whatever. How much is our bail, by the way?"

"$10,000 for each of those, $20,000 for you," he said, "Because _you're _the one who caused the disturbance."

"No, my identical twin sister caused the disturbance. I was following her to try and make her stop smashing up shops and whatever else she was up to," Oswin said, but finally he sighed and came and unlocked the cell door.

"Who are you calling?" River asked.

"Adam Mitchell, obviously," Oswin said.

"Why him? What can _he_ do?" River questioned, clearly implying that Oswin should be calling the TARDIS.

"Look, I just happen to have a multimillionaire who also happens to be in love with me at the other end of a phone, so I'm going to ask him nicely to pay this $40,000 bail for the three of us," Oswin said coolly, dialling her boyfriend's mobile number. The Doctor would try and break them out if she called one of him, leaving them fugitives, and she'd rather Adam Mitchell be slightly out of pocket than have the police chasing them north.

"_...Hello..?_" Adam Mitchell answered the phone groggily, clearly hungover, and she'd obviously just woken him up.

"Hey, babe!" she said brightly, leaning on the wall as she talked into the handset.

"_Oswin? Where are you? Aren't you in..?_" she knew he'd just checked his other side to see that she wasn't in bed with him.

"Funny story, but I need a _tiny _favour," she said.

"..._What_..?"

"I've been arrested for being drunk and disorderly in a tattoo parlour," she explained, "Along with River and Nios, and sort of need somebody to pay our bail."

"_Why were you being drunk and disorderly in a tattoo parlour_?"

"I wasn't, Clara was, but by the time we got there the hen party had pissed off and the police had shown up and I guess they thought I was so drunk I was just saying that I was following my identical twin sister on a rampage. Apparently a lot of people like to say it was their twin who committed the crime," Oswin explained.

"_So does Clara have a tattoo?_"

"I don't know, I can't talk to her, the... The thingy isn't working," she said, referencing the mind patch, "We landed in Pittsburgh but followed them through a bunch of small towns - yes, they were driving, fucking insane - leaving a path of destruction, but we think they were heading North. Out of Pennsylvania. Into Canada. So you see, we really need you to come down here. The bail is forty-grand."

"..._Don't say I never do anything for you_," he sighed.

"Thank you, I love you _so much_, I will not take the piss out of you for an _entire day_."

"_Oh, thanks_," he said sarcastically, though she could hear him smiling, "_I love you too. Hang on, what's the date?_"


	206. Welcome To Paradise

_Clara_

_Welcome To Paradise_

She was very cold when she woke up. She was cold, her hair felt matted, her clothes seemed to be stuck to her by dry sweat, and she could smell the musk of alcohol. The only thing keeping her warm was the weird, heavy blanket that seemed to be wrapped around her. The heavy blanket that was hot, and breathing, and not husband-shaped. And she was also not in a bed - sure, it was something kind of soft and comfortable, but she was thrown off-guard by the stench of her own booze-drenched breath in her face mingling with the sweet smell of cinnamon coming from whatever was wrapped around her.

And that was when she figured out that she'd fallen asleep in the arms of Thirteen, and she didn't know where or how or _what_ was going on. When she tried to curl up into a ball, that just brought her even closer to the Doctor, a Doctor who she should not be getting close to at all. She went through the mental checklist she always used when she woke up with someone she didn't remember going to bed with to try and figure out what had happened: Clothes, yes. She was fully clothed. Bed, no, seemed to be a sofa, she could feel her feet pressed against the arm. Shoes, no. Socks, yes. She still couldn't remember a single thing since after the maze yesterday, though, and her head killed from hangover, like it always did, and she had some strange, burning pain on the back of her left shoulder.

When she actually opened her eyes, she saw the arm of Thirteen hanging over her shoulder loosely holding her hand, her other arm seeming to be under Clara's head, like a pillow, fingers tangled in her hair like she'd been playing with it, and Clara would be damned if she didn't admit to herself that, by god, she was comfortable. How she envied her future self to have this kind of awakening every day, this kind of life, and how guilty she felt for not being more upset by this experience. But the other times she'd gotten completely and utterly blackout drunk with the Doctor, she hadn't slept with him in the 'adult' sense, just the literal, innocent sense, and intuition told her that this was no different. They weren't in any kind of room Clara recognised, however, as she tried to curl further into Thirteen on purpose now because of the chill she was feeling as placebo when she saw the state of things outside.

It seemed to be a snowstorm, and they seemed to be in a lodge. Shutters open, pale moonlight shining bright and blue through the thick snowflakes falling from the clouds like a sheet where only snippets of navy sky and glints of starlight were visible, they seemed to be in the middle of winter somewhere, somewhen, and she could see a very large but very dark and empty fireplace opposite, and she saw her breath steam up in her face and suddenly realised why their drunk selves might have decided to sleep next to each other whenever they'd finally crashed last night - it was just so ridiculously cold. But they weren't the only people in the room, she spotted at least five other people asleep around the room. Then Thirteen moved her hand so that she wasn't holding Clara's anymore, and Clara made her own hand into a fist and drew it closer to herself to compensate for the loss of warmth.

"...Are you awake?" Clara breathed, not wanting to wake the others. Martha was on the floor, probably not cold in the slightest; Jenny was somehow taking a whole sofa up to herself sleeping the weird, spread-eagle fashion Clara knew Ten did (and sometimes Eleven), with Rose sleeping upright on the very end; Donna was on the other sofa, the third one, leaving Amy alone in a large, cushy arm chair, curled up in it.

"I've been awake for a while," Thirteen whispered back, Clara watching her hand as she talked, unable to see her face, the white light outside glinting off her wedding rings, "I would've moved, but I didn't want you to be cold." It seemed to be late at night, wherever they were, no sun out at all and dark shadows flickering in the dappled light of the moon through the snow.

"Last night... Did we-"

"No. Don't worry." Clara relaxed somewhat there, but made no effort to move away from Thirteen (she really _was _freezing though). "This reminds me of when I regenerated. The morning after. Except you actually fell on the floor when you woke up that day - but I learnt a valuable lesson: Don't sleep naked on leather sofas." Clara didn't know what to say to that snippet of her future, but she wasn't really in the mood to ask for more details.

"Do you know where we are?"

"No idea. Can't remember a thing beyond the shot competition and the start of playing Star Wars," Thirteen said softly, Clara keeping her eyes pinned on the others about the room so that she could move out of her future-wife's arms the minute they started to wake up.

"...Star Wars..?"

"That's what you call the drinking game. My daughter comes up with it eventually, don't tell anybody," Thirteen said. That implied that, whatever the ridiculous drinking game had been, she was going to play it again. She didn't know if she was looking forward to it or not, but she suspected that she probably wouldn't remember it anyway, "Do you remember when I asked you to share a bed with me?"

"Yes, it was hilarious, kept going on about how your arm makes a great pillow," Clara said, remembering that morning three months ago, when everything had changed so quickly and her life had become the caricature house-share it was now.

"I was just wondering how my arm compares with Theodore's in that department? Future-You always says what she thinks will make me feel happier, and I never know if she's telling the truth when it comes to that," Thirteen said, but before Clara could reply, Martha Jones on the floor near them yanwed and stretched _very _loudly, kicking their sofa in the process, "_God help me_," Thirteen whispered right in Clara's ear, seemingly as a response to what Martha was doing. But then she unknotted her hand from Clara's hair and actually sat up, nudging Clara to do the same.

"Christ, it's cold," Clara noticed it even more now her friendly neighbourhood Time Lord had shuffled to the other end of the sofa, Clara no longer wondering why she'd kept her socks on last night.

"_Sorry_," Thirteen mouthed, in regards to Clara being cold now that she'd been forced to move.

Martha's loud noises had started the others waking up as well now, as a painful draft blew through the house making her skin sting and crawl with goosebumps.

"What's going on? Where are we?" Amy groaned. It seemed to be just the seven of them there, the seven girls.

"Am I a married woman now? Wooooo!" Jenny slurred, sounding like she was still drunk, and then she fell onto the floor and landed on her face. Thirteen sighed and got up to go help her.

"Hen party," Amy declared, "That's what happened. Hen party."

"What is this place? How did we get here?" Rose asked, and then she looked to the floor on her left and saw Martha still lying there like she was still asleep, when she obviously wasn't, "What are you doing, Martha?" Everybody looked over.

"...What's this?" Donna asked, drawing attention away from Martha when she reached forwards and picked a crumpled sheet of paper up from the large coffee table in the middle of the group.

"What's it say?" Clara asked.

"It's advertisement to stay in a haunted lodge overnight," Donna said, and like they were in some kind of horror film, all seven of them (okay, six of them, because Jenny was quite out of it) looked around and noted that they were, most definitely, in a freezing cold lodge in the middle of the night. Clara's mood plummeted; she hated haunte houses, ghosts, anything paranormal or supernatural, those days, it all terrified her. Hadn't it been barely two weeks ago that she'd made Eleven promise never to take her to another haunted building? The others started loudly discussing what to do next, Thirteen managing to sit Jenny up on the sofa before coming back and sitting next to Clara.

"I don't care what rules we have in place," Clara leant over and whispered to her without looking at her, watching the group, "If you _dare _leave me alone in this place I swear I will not forgive you."

"I won't, I promise."


	207. Screaming Bloody Murder

_Clara_

_Screaming Bloody Murder_

"Seriously, how did we get here?" Amy asked, staring around at the dark, cold lodge they were in, shadows creeping and crawling over most of the walls and the floor, a stuffed stag head above the fireplace looking thoroughly frightening in the darkness. Clara kept her eyes fixed on it, as though expecting it to move.

"We must have answered this flyer," Donna said, shrugging. On it was a bad, black and white image of the lodge, not even a photograph though, more like a clipart, and Clara had no clue if it even _was_ the lodge they were in or just some black silhouette with generic looking pine trees stood around it, their branches looking like streaks where the ink had run into the creases of the page.

"There's no phone number, though. Or address," Rose pointed out, "So how did we find this place?"

"Maybe it's one of those horror experiences that people pay for?" Martha suggested, "Where they have staff running around dressed as ghosts, or whatever?" Clara thought the presence of _anybody_ dressed as anything even remotely phantom-resembling was frightening enough for her, and she had no clue why shew would have agreed to such a thing, even while drunk. In her sudden bid to find any source of light that was her own, since they didn't have any right then, she searched her pockets.

"Shit," she said, and everyone looked over, "Don't have my phone. Wanted the torch." The only thing she found was her lighter and her same, almost-empty pack of cigarettes from the day before, only five left now. Partly because she was perpetually scared in that lodge and partly because she was practically frozen, she lit one of them, ignoring the complaints of the others, "The more of them I smoke the faster I run out."

"Why don't you just quit?" Donna asked her.

"I don't want to," was all she said by way of response, wondering what must have happened to Thirteen in her lifetime to make stop trying to order Clara to put down her death sticks. Maybe it had just never worked, she could see that being the most likely possibility. Everybody then checked their own pockets, and all decided they didn't have phones, either. Or emergency teleporters. Nothing.

"…Can't you talk to Oswin?" Rose then suggested, "She must have some way to track you."

"Why would she be able to track me..?" Clara asked. As far as she was aware, her baby sister was not some kind of intergalactic stalker with a constant pin on Clara's whereabouts. Perhaps, by some happy chance, she was searching for her at that moment, but there was no way for her to 'track' her.

"Cos, I don't know, she's weird, isn't she?" Rose shrugged.

"She's just sick," Clara said, defending her sister, "And the mind-patch isn't working, I don't know why. Maybe because I have a hangover." That was true, the mind-patch was not working, every time she tried to use it she got a buzz in her head that felt like her skull were being drilled into right in the middle of her forehead and a noise like static.

"There's something on the back," Amy said then, bringing their attention back to the sheet of paper Donna was holding, which she then turned over.

"It says, 'Solve the mystery of the Dalton Lodge Suicides'," Donna explained.

"But that's _my_ handwriting," Amy said, snatching it and squinting at the writing, "Definitely, even if I was drunk, I wrote it. I guess this is Dalton Lodge, then?"

"So we came here to solve some suicides..?" Clara asked, confused, "But if they're suicides, what's to solve?"

"I'd Google it if I had my phone…" Amy muttered, still scanning her own words on the page.

"Well, there was obviously something so interesting about these suicides that even when we were all drunk we decided to come up to this lodge in the middle of the night and figure it out," Thirteen said, "Which gives me the impression that there were probably a lot of them, all in this place, and the place is the thing that connects them."

"So, haunted house where people who come here kill themselves?" Clara reiterated, and nobody spoke, so she declared, "Well, before any of you get the insatiable urge to off yourselves, _I'm_ going to go find the toilet." When she got up to go to walk towards the large staircase she could see out of the room they were in, Thirteen sighed behind her and got up to follow, making good on her promise not to leave her in creepy haunted buildings.

"Why are you going, too?" Martha asked the Doctor abruptly.

"Well, because almost two weeks ago now I promise her that I wouldn't leave her alone in haunted houses," Thirteen explained, telling the truth, "And it's a promise I've always kept since then, and not one I'm going to break just because I'm from the future."

"I'm not going to wander aimlessly around this house on my own, that's a stupid idea," Clara said sharply to Martha, "Haven't you ever watched a horror movie?" Martha said nothing.

As they left, Rose called after them, "Well don't shag, people who shag in the films are always first to die," in keeping with Clara's horror movie remark, though Clara didn't take kindly to the suggestion she was going to die. At least Thirteen's company offered _some_ solace, but not as much solace as the company of the interior of the TARDIS would have. There weren't serial suicides on the TARDIS.

"I'll bear that in mind," the Doctor answered her dryly, the pair of them going up the stairs and vanishing from sight of the people in the living room, but it seemed to get even colder when they were away from the group, "Do you still need the toilet from yesterday?"

"_No_, but usually I need to pee after I've been on a bender," Clara told her flatly, "Why? How often do _you_ pee?"

"That's an intimate detail, Clara. Not to mention weird," Thirteen said.

"…Alright, fine, it was a bit. I don't understand why the mind-patch isn't working, I don't like it, it makes me worry," Clara said.

"I don't know," Thirteen shrugged, "Something odd is going on. Phones all gone, my bag's gone, everything useful except some slip of paper saying that we're here to investigate some suicides? Suicides aren't alien, why would we be here? I don't like it. Demons two days ago, and now this. My life is just a web of clichés."

"Ugh, you can't go around saying pretty things like that and expect me _not_ to try and make out with you," Clara said jokingly to her.

"Most of the time you succeed."

"Well don't tempt me." Thirteen laughed a little. "A clock already got you to kiss me once, I doubt it can be too difficult to make it happen again. You know, I have a theory that if I were to kiss you right now, you wouldn't be able to stop kissing me back."

"Let's just keep that a theory, shall we?" Thirteen said, "A theory which, to my best knowledge, may be true. But if you shoot someone in the head they're probably dead, but that doesn't make it right, just because you 'succeeded'."

"Way to keep the mood light," Clara said, "And you _know_ I was kidding. I'm really not gonna try anything on with you. For starters, Rose is right, the people who shag _do_ always die first. Ah-ha…" she got to a darkened room in the hallway on the next floor up with the door hanging ajar, switching the light on telekinetically to reveal it to be a bathroom.

"I'm not coming in with you, by the way," the Doctor told her.

"I honestly wasn't gonna ask you to," Clara said, which was true. It didn't matter how enamoured with the Doctor, in their various forms, she was, if she kicked Eleven out of the bathroom so that she could use the toilet, she was definitely kicking Thirteen out. That was a level of intimacy they had yet to achieve, and she wasn't particularly motivated to climb that mountain anyway.

Thirteen was left alone in the hallway, leaning against the door like a guard dog, waiting for Clara to return, trying to put together the fragments of blurry memory from last night to try and understand what had brought them to the house they were in. Snow fell thick and heavy outside and a chill spread through the house that didn't seem to have any electricity or any lit fires.

"…Doctor?" Clara called nervously from inside the bathroom, and Thirteen frowned.

"What?"

"Could you come here for a moment?"

"…Why..?" she asked suspiciously.

"There's a dead woman in the bath," Clara said, and then Thirteen was in the room in an instant, Clara holding the shower curtain by the bath back to reveal the sight which awaited which was, yes, a dead woman, lying there in a waterless bath, covered in blood in the region of her abdomen, the room stinking of rot and gut contents, her insides perforated by what seemed to be bullet holes, "This doesn't look like a suicide. And if there's one dead body, how many more are there?"

"I don't know… Come on, we shouldn't stay here…" Thirteen pulled the shower curtain back across the blood-soaked, dead woman, and started to leave the room, pulling Clara with her by her hand. Clara phased her hand free once they were out of the room, though, "We have to tell the others."


	208. When I Come Around

_Oswin_

_When I Come Around_

Half an hour after her phone call with Adam Mitchell, the three of them not talking much at all in their cell, the sheriff – or whatever he was, because she was still under the impression that sheriffs only existed in Westerns, and as well as that, the closest thing she'd ever gotten to a Western was _Back to the Future Part III_ – returned with an annoyed expression and a set of keys on a large, circular keyring she _also _thought was a myth (they didn't really have keys like that in the future, and her world views of the Twenty-First Century had been practically shattered in a matter of hours) and declared their bail had been paid.

"Lucky thing your boyfriend mentioned you were neurotic, else we would've been doing drug tests," the sheriff said to her coolly as he opened the cell door looking displeased, clearly not a fan of hers.

"What did he say I was neurotic for!?" Oswin exclaimed.

"Because you _are_ neurotic," River said, walking past her as she stood still and glared in her offense.

"…Apart from that," Oswin muttered, then she just shook her head and accepted that it was true, because it most likely was, and hurried after River and Nios, the latter of which was actually waiting for her, "How is one so ill in death? I'll never know… I never_ asked_ to be a salt shaker with a plunger, and look what it got me…"

"Oh, I'm sure you were ill before all of that," River said in a mock-assuring voice, clearly being cruel even though she seemed to have suffered some complete attitude-overhaul in the last week when it came to Oswin. Oswin didn't say anything though, she was too distracted by the sight of a dishevelled Adam Mitchell loitering in the lobby (was it a lobby?) of the police department, yawning and checking his phone while he waited for them. By the time he spotted her, he only had a second to react before she hugged him, and River muttered something about PDA.

"Are you okay!? I can't believe you got arrested!" he exclaimed.

"It wasn't my fault, it was Clara," she said, letting him go finally and going to retrieve her belongings (which were a few quite valuable pieces of advanced technology), "Did you bring anybody else?"

"…You didn't ask me to bring anybody else," he answered, taking her hand as he lead them towards the door, "I thought the Doctors would be too worried if I let them know all the girls had gone missing and they wouldn't be of much use."

"Oh, that's fair enough… What car did you bring?"

"The Hummer," he answered.

"You _always_ bring that one, why do you never take the DeLorean anywhere? It's on the TARDIS, isn't it?" she questioned him.

"Because I'm not going to _drive_ that car, Oswin. It's not for driving."

"They why'd you buy it?"

"The same reason I bought the Batmobile! Just… to have one," he shrugged, "I have a lot of money I don't know what to do with, thank god I have you now to go make me pay your bail." The black Hummer with its ridiculously tinted windows.

"You have a Batmobile..?" River asked him.

"Yes, it's a replica of the 1989 Batmobile from _Batman _and _Batman Returns_, and it isn't to be driven anywhere. You haven't brought it onto the TARDIS, have you?" he questioned her, opening the passenger door so that she could get in, she of course being the one allowed to sit in the front of the stupidly luxurious car.

"_No_," she lied, smiling at him, and he narrowed his eyes, "Of course I haven't, babe. I wouldn't do that."

"Well… good…" he said, seeming to believe her, and she had a smug expression on her face while he adjusted his mirrors in the morning light, "So where did they go? Do you know? After smashing up the tattoo parlour down the road, that is? You know it got set on fire? I stopped to talk to them on my way, the TARDIS landed out of sight about a mile down the road, out of town." They'd travelled out of Pittsburgh the night before very quickly and were being held in the police department of some small town in Pennsylvania.

"We think they went north," River told him from the backseat, in the seat behind Adam, while Nios was in the seat behind Oswin, "Towards Canada."

"But I don't have a passport with me," Adam said, "And I'm pretty sure that none of you three even _have_ passports."

"Well it can't be _that_ hard to sneak into Canada," Oswin shrugged, "Bootleggers did it all the time in the 1920s."

"Yeah, almost a century ago," he said, starting the car and driving.

"Well the girls don't have passports, either," Oswin said, "So if we don't find them dead in a ditch somewhere, I'm sure they can't have made it across the border, either, unless they went on foot and walked through the trees past the checkpoint."

"Can't you track Clara?" River asked her.

"…Sorry?"

"Can't you figure out where she is?"

"Yeah, like echolocation?" Adam asked with a snicker.

"I already made that joke, like, two months ago in the Dream," she snapped at him, "But no, I can't. And I'm pretty sure that she turned the mind-patch off last night to stop me being able to follow her at all, because it's not working. It's like static, not working… Hang on…" she took out her phone now it had been returned to her and rang Clara.

"Why is she called 'Birthgiver'?" Nios asked her, leaning over the backseat.

"Because, she, you know, created me… Hasn't anyone explained this to you yet?" she asked, and Nios shrugged, "Put your seatbelt on, will you?" Clara's phone was ringing, and then it picked up with a click. "Hello? Clara?" There was silence. "…Clara..?" Then the breathing started, so she frowned and put it on speaker.

"It's a prank," Adam told her, listening to the heavy breathing coming down the line, "Something people do when someone doesn't have their number, or before caller ID in the Nineties. Call someone up and breathe – it was when _Scream_ was big, you're lucky she's not asking you what's your favourite scary movie… Doesn't sound like Clara, though."

"It's not," Oswin answered, "I know what I sound like when I-" she stopped talking when the phone hung up, "It didn't sound like any of them."

"It's a horror cliché," Adam said.

"Try one of the others," River said, and Oswin obliged and called Rose.

"It's an answerphone," Oswin said, listening, and then she went pale. Or, she would've gone pale, if she possessed that ability in her hologramatic capacities, but she still got a haunted look about her as she listened to the robotic, female, American voice, "It's an answer phone for a mortuary."

"Can you trace it?" Nios suggested, "I could probably trace it."

"Er, yeah, here, we'll both try," Oswin passed Nios Adam's mobile that was sitting on the dashboard, she herself having memorised all the phone numbers anyway, getting out the black, sleek hackdrive that had thankfully not been confiscated by the police and switching it on, Nios dialling another number and apparently getting the same message, no longer the breather.

"There's no signal," Nios answered, "It's like the phone's switched off."

"It can't be switched off, somebody answered," Oswin said, still hearing the answer machine playing down Adam's phone, and then River leant over to listen to the phone as Nios held it.

Five minutes later, it eventuated that the same thing was happening with all the phones. After Oswin had recognised the breather was definitely _not_ her little sister, it seemed that whatever it was that was doing this and making all the phones go to the same message about some mortuary saying that the staff were busy with some sort of influx of dead bodies to answer it themselves, and they couldn't get a single lock on any of the phones.

"Maybe it's a warning?" River suggested.

"What do you mean?" Adam asked, all of them worried, and thinking that the girls had gotten themselves mixed up in something more serious than damages to a tattoo parlour.

"It says there are too many bodies for them to come to the phone," River said, "Maybe it's some kind of warning that the others are going to die?"


	209. Return The Favour

_Clara_

_Return The Favour_

"Let me get this straight," Donna said, the seven of them reunited in the dark living room of the huge lodge that was big enough to be some kind of hotel, rather than just some rich capitalist's mountain playground, "You found a dead body, and you finished peeing anyway?"

"Can we please stop judging me!?" Clara exclaimed, "I needed a wee! And if that bathroom has a dead body in it, I don't want to know what any of the others have in them."

"She was murdered," Thirteen answered, "Shot to death, in her stomach, probably took her a while to bleed out."

"But I thought this place was famous for suicides?" Amy questioned, "That's what I wrote down on the back of the flyer, solve the Dalton Lodge _suicides_, not murders."

"Well obviously nobody knows there's a woman been killed, otherwise there'd still be crime scene tape up, since this place is clearly empty and she can't have been dead for more than a week. The killer's probably left," Clara speculated.

"Or not," Amy said, "The killer could still be here."

"Don't suppose you have any premonitions?" Rose asked her dryly, and she shot her a look.

"I could say the same to you," Amy snapped, "Didn't you foretell something about demons the other day?" Rose just scowled.

"Well we can't argue with each other," Jenny said, who finally seemed to be coming to her senses, "It won't help to fight. It's not like any of us are responsible, and we don't have any reason to be having a go. Clearly, there's _something_ going on here, and if we were so interested in it when we were drunk, imagine how interesting it must be while sober?"

"Everything's interesting while you're drunk," Martha muttered, but she went ignored.

"Isn't it obvious? There's a mystery to solve," Jenny said, "And we came to solve it."

"Yeah, and something took our phones and my bag when we got here, not to mention my screwdriver," Thirteen pointed out, "It feels like a trap."

"If it is, we must have already sprung it, so there's no point worrying now," Donna told her, "Jenny's right, there's a mystery. The mystery of the suicides."

"Yeah, and the mystery of who took all our stuff, _and_ who killed the woman in the bath," Clara said.

"We'd better split up," Jenny said.

"That's how people in horror movies die," Rose said.

"We're not in a horror movie," Donna reminded her, "And it's not like we're going into individuals. We'll just split in half."

"There are seven of us, seven doesn't half," Amy told her.

"Well I'll go with Clara and Jenny," Thirteen declared, doing the deciding for them, "Keep an eye on my womenfolk."

"Hang on, what does that make the rest of us!?" Donna protested.

"Not my wives or daughters?" Thirteen said, and after a moment when nobody said anything, "Well do the rest of you want to make sure Clara's okay?"

"I think I'll come, too," Rose said, "I mean, it's always gonna be a four and a three. I'm sort of the Doctor's womenfolk, too."

"I can't decide if you calling us your 'womenfolk' is sexist or not…" Clara frowned.

"Why are _you_ going with them?" Martha questioned Rose abruptly.

"Well, Clara and I are friends, so I thought she wouldn't mind if I tagged along," Rose said to her. _Why am I getting brought into things_, Clara thought to herself? Especially since Rose seemed to be acting, and amusing herself in whatever she was doing. Clara shifted uncomfortably, looking at Thirteen, who just seemed annoyed, "Why? Do you want to go with Clara?"

"No," said Martha, "Why would I?"

"You're friends, right?" Rose said, frowning fakely.

"…What's going on?" Donna asked, looking at Clara, but when she saw Clara was equally confused she ended up even more puzzled, apparently, so she looked back at Rose, who shrugged.

"Well, whatever," the Doctor interrupted, "You three can check the basement, we'll check the attic. They're both equally creepy, so nobody's winning. We'll meet back here, in…" she trailed off, "…that's weird, I can't tell what time it… What…"

"What is it?" Clara asked her, as she walked off around the sofas to go look through one of the windows at the night sky and the snow.

"I just don't know the time. That's never happened, I _always_ know the time…"

"I can't either," Jenny said after a moment, which was when everybody looked to Rose, the only other one of them with some kind of ability revolving around time. Clara knew that Rose could figure out what time it was, but her face fell and she just shrugged uselessly, like they were stuck somewhere time didn't even exist, "There's more than murders going on here."

"Ditto," said the Doctor, staring outside, "It's so dark… Whatever, c'mon, let's go upstairs. We'll just… We'll all be fine, you all have superpowers. Fire's good, fire stops everything…" And now the Doctor was scared, and Clara didn't take the Doctor being scared for a good sign at all. Hardly anything scared the Doctor.

"Well, we'll look around this floor first," Amy said to Thirteen.

"Yep," she said vacantly, "Whenever you're done, we'll just… We'll meet back here…"

Clara followed Thirteen back up the stairs closely, Jenny a little behind, Rose at the back. Once they were back on the first floor landing, the terrible snowstorm visible through all of the windows with their wide open shutters giving them a view of the thick, white trees outside, Rose created a little orb of golden light to float above them. Clara was caught off-guard when she expected it to give off some sort of warmth and they remained just as cold, and habitually drifted even closer to the Doctor, wrapping her arms around herself.

"Aren't we gonna search the rooms?" Jenny asked when the Doctor walked straight past all of them.

"No, attic," Thirteen said, "Straight away. That's where things hide. Attics and basements."

"_Attics and basements_," Jenny said, sniggering, copying Thirteen's accent, Thirteen who gave her a dark look over her shoulder.

"Don't do that," Thirteen said.

"_Sure thing_."

"Stop!"

"_Stop_." Rose was laughing, and Clara was a little amused, the Doctor grimaced though and shook her head, trying to ignore her daughter as she made fun of her.

"I am at perfect liberty to talk with whatever accent I like," Thirteen said, "Without the likes of _you_ making fun of me. Why don't you try and copy Clara's accent, instead? Or Rose's?"

"Oh, please don't, I'm sick of weirdos trying to do Northern accents around me," Clara said, a purposeful jab at Thirteen since she'd copied Clara just the day before and done an appalling job of it, "Do Rose's, go on, try and sound like a working class Londoner."

"If you dare, I _will_ punch you," Rose threatened, "Just carry on copying your mother."

"_Totally_," Jenny did carry on.

"Oh my god, shut up," Thirteen groaned, "Look, there, attic." She pointed at the loft hatch at the end of the hallway.

"It's called a loft over here, sweetheart," Clara said quietly to the Doctor, smirking as Thirteen grimaced and clenched her jaw in response.

"Oh, so you're allowed to call _me_ 'sweetheart' but I can't call _you_ it? Go on, give us fifteen minutes until _one_ of us is getting pleasured and the other isn't allowed to return the favour."

"…Assuming that follows the same rules as the 'sweetheart' thing, _you're_ the one getting pleasured, so I don't really know what you're complaining about," Clara argued.

"I really don't think you two sleeping together in this house is gonna be a good idea," Rose advised them both while they glared at each other in some weird, sexually frustrated stand-off, the other two thoroughly awkward. Clara crossed her arms and stepped back from Thirteen a little, "God, it _is_ a good thing I didn't let Martha come with you."

"What does that even mean?" Jenny frowned.

"Nothing, it doesn't mean anything, now are you coming?" she said to them.

"Well, unfortunately I'm not because _somebody_ won't put out, will she?" Clara snapped, and Thirteen seemed like she was trying not to laugh, but Rose just groaned.

"Not to sound homophobic, but I really don't need you two dirty talking each other right in my face," Rose muttered, "I'd really rather be in the creepy attic. Honestly, don't start finger blasting each other while I'm here. It's just rude."

"It is kind of rude," Jenny said, "Plus, that's my mother, Clara."

"That's my wife, Jenny," Clara said coolly.

"Whatever, you're just the evil stepmother from Cinderella," Jenny said, and Rose snorted, finding this suddenly hilarious.

"Jennifer Harkness, be nice to your stepmother," Thirteen ordered her, and there was silence and Jenny's face turned completely sour and Clara felt like she'd accidentally got in the middle of something she shouldn't be in the middle of, and Rose stopped laughing for a few seconds, watching eagerly, "I'll ground you," the Doctor threatened, "Don't think I won't."

"_Jennifer Harkness_," Jenny mimicked Thirteen's accent again.

"That's like when you call my sister by her full name, she hates it," Clara said.

"What _is_ her full name?" Jenny inquired, anger snapping to curiosity in an instant.

"She made me promise not to tell anybody, including you, obviously," Clara said. _Oswin Diane Rosalind Oswald_ was still a hilarious name, but as funny as it would be to tell Jenny Oswin's full name, she _had_ promised.

"Guys?" Rose interrupted, all traces of laughter gone from her tone, and they looked at her, then followed her gaze to the end of the corridor, Clara getting chills not just from the wintry, night air.

The loft hatch was open.

It hadn't been open two minutes ago, Clara would have sworn on her life, it had been closed. And now it hung down, leaving a black space, a square in the roof, and they all stared, the four of them, with baited breath, and Clara could almost hear the two heartbeats of Thirteen next to her. Clara was petrified, unable to move her eyes away from the space in the roof or the doorway at the end of the hall, expecting something to appear out of it with all of her person.

Then the ladder came crashing down from the hole above, bouncing almost on the floor, scraping the wood and settling itself after some invisible force had wrenched it down.

"Clara," Rose breathed, "_Please _tell me you did that." Clara said nothing, she felt like she couldn't, and her fumbling hand in the cold found Thirteen's, and she really didn't think she'd feel guilty about this later. The Doctor had promised not to leave her, so she wouldn't let them, in any of their incarnations. Eleven or Thirteen, they would stay by her side no matter what.


	210. As Above

**AN: Okay, so, I'm just gonna go ahead and rate this whole storyline M for excessive gore, extreme emotional trauma, and suicide mentions. So, if you DON'T want to read that, which I can appreciate some of you might not, I WILL put an author's note at the start of a chapter when this is over, though it's looking like it might be a long one, but it's vital for some overarching plots I have going on. Right now it seems like Chapter 719 might be the last one, but that is liable to change, as a heads up, and it IS the minimum.**

_Clara_

_As Above_

If she could have chosen _not_ to go up into the creepy loft that opened itself, she definitely would have chosen to do that. Rose taking on board her superstrength and ability to make things vanish from all existence decided to go first, but her going first meant she teleported straight to the floor above with her light orb. They waited nervously for a few seconds for her to give the all-clear, but before that could happen, Clara felt herself get jerked violently upwards by her _own_ manhandling teleportation, wrenched through the ceiling and thrown down shakily into the attic in a matter of nanoseconds.

"Christ, you made me jump!" Rose exclaimed.

"Clara? Are you okay?" Thirteen called from below. Clara didn't say anything for a second, just stared around in the large room bathed in golden light, full of boxes and little else.

"Yeah, I'm fine," she answered eventually, she and Rose looking around. It was then she spotted an old lantern sitting one of the boxes nearby and decided she'd prefer having her own light source, so she took out her lighter and lit the lantern while Jenny and the Doctor were forced to climb the creepy ladder.

"If there's nobody up here, what moved the ladder?" Rose asked, looking around.

"Ghost, probably," Clara muttered, lighting another cigarette while she had the chance.

"Ghosts don't exist," Rose said firmly.

"They totally do," said the Doctor when she emerged into the attic, going over to a darkened corner full of boxes straight away, "Can I get a light over here, babe?"

"If you stop calling me 'babe', sure," Clara muttered, walking over with her lantern.

"How do ghosts exist?" Rose questioned her.

"Well it's all down to electricity," the Doctor began, "It pays sometimes to marry into the family of the smartest girl in the universe, you know. Humans are essentially electric. Muscles work with electricity, the nervous system is a series of electrical signals being sent through synapses and nerve endings from the brain to the rest of the body to cause thinking and other processes. We were in Staffordshire, this was a month ago to you guys, ran into this plague of ghost children. Trauma before death means _more _electrical signals being passed through the body – I mean, if someone's on life support, or they're terminally ill, their body is slowly shutting down, right? So less electrical signals, that's why murder victims haunt the places they died. Victims of suicide still linger. We were in a pub made of wood – this lodge is made of wood – and wood is famous for holding the souls of the dead, like a sponge soaking up 'paranormal energy', which to you and I is just electricity. That's why the Ghostbusters use an EMF detector, you know, electromagnetic field, because ghosts disrupt it when they manifest, because they're the remains of these last electrical signals clumped together and more or less airborne in a little cloud of tortured atoms. That's why there are more ghosts in storms, and why they make lights flicker, make things move. Psychic energy, you know? Stuff like that."

"…Why does nobody let me know when we prove the existence of ghosts?" Rose mumbled, seeming annoyed at the fact she'd had no idea ghosts really did exist and harboured a legitimate, scientific explanation, as discovered by a combination of Oswin and the Tenth Doctor just a month back, while Clara was too busy pining after Sally Sparrow to pay attention.

"I would've told you, but I was distracted by this girl," Clara said.

"Oh, is this Sally Sparrow again?" Thirteen questioned wryly, now kneeling down with Clara standing behind her holding a lantern over her head as she searched through a box.

"My long lost love, you mean. The one that got away…" Clara sighed wistfully.

"She was engaged to a man," Thirteen quipped bitterly, "I wish you'd get over this fleeting crush of yours. I mean, Sally Sparrow made me a blonde, I'm sure of it, as much as you like to deny that your whimsical fancies shaped my appearance."

"Sorry for being queer," Clara said sarcastically.

"I swear, if you two don't stop flirting with each other, I _will_ make you cease to exist," Rose threatened Clara directly, glowering at her.

"Don't make me cease to exist, you'd upset the Doctor. And look how cute she is, you can't upset someone that cute, Rose," Clara told her sternly, in her teacher-voice, and Rose scowled at her, and then scowled more at Thirteen when she smiled at her. Rose shook her head and looked away, and then paused like she was thinking.

"Ah-ha, jackpot," the Doctor declared, "Check _this_ out. Super 8 projector." What she pulled out of a cardboard box was an old projectior.

"Fuck me…" Clara breathed.

"What? No, Clara, we discussed this already, I'm not going to-"

"Not in that sense," Clara said quietly, holding the lantern in a shaky hand, "It's just… It's a Super 8. Super 8s… Freak me out. No sound. And, um… Well they just unnerve me. Old 8mm films." Thirteen met her eyes for a moment, not really being able to figure out what Clara actually meant, dragging the projector and a collection of reels out from the box.

"Jenny, come here," Rose requested, having a different conversation to the Doctor and her wife, though both of them looked over from the camera to get a look at what Rose was pointing out to Jenny, Jenny having to stand on tiptoes to see what Rose was pointing out on a beam that ran across the ceiling, "It's worn down in this one area." Clara could see it, too, it was worn down, like it had been sanded.

"I wouldn't touch it," Jenny said, "It's, err, a suicide point. From a noose." Clara's blood ran cold. "Well, a lot of nooses, actually."

"Made of wood," the Doctor added, "Wood being a sponge, I already said. It's probably holding ghosts in it."

"'Holding ghosts in it', that's ridicu…" Rose's words caught in her throat and she couldn't finish them. She'd turned away from the 'suicide point'. The boxes in the room spread out into the middle at one point, and so from where Clara, Thirteen and Jenny were standing, they couldn't see past them to the other side of the room to whatever Rose was now looking at that seemed to scare her so much she couldn't even scream and it seemed like she might even faint. At least, for a moment she couldn't scream, because after just seconds had passed she wailed horribly, deathly pale, like a corpse.

Jenny rushed over first, the closest, leaving Clara and Thirteen, clutching the lantern and the projector respectively, to follow after her. What Clara saw, though, was the window, open and letting in some snow that was piling up beneath it from the storm outside. Apart from that, there was nothing out of the ordinary.

"What did you see?" the Doctor asked her carefully, "What was it?" Whatever it was, it was gone now. But Clara remembered Happy Views Hospital. She'd seen faces in windows before.

"A reflection," Rose breathed, and it seemed like somebody needed to comfort her. Thank god Jenny was compassionate and took on that roll, taking her shoulders, the only one with two free hands as Rose stared unblinkingly at the snowstorm outside beneath the black, midwinter sky.

"Of what?" asked Clara.

"This room. But without the boxes, and with… With a body… Hanging… Just for a second. Then it was gone." Jenny tried to calm Rose down and Thirteen touched Clara's arm.

"Help me set up this projector," she whispered to her.

"I don't want to watch it," Clara told her.

"What? Why?" the Doctor frowned, and Clara didn't say anything. She tried to, but words wouldn't come out, "Look, I know I'm from the future and you and I can't _really_ be together or anything right now, but that doesn't mean I'm not gonna do everything I can to keep you safe and make sure you're okay. I mean, you're…"

"…I'm what..?"

"Nothing. Can't say. There's a moment in our future I'd like to keep as it is in memory without it being tainted by things that happened in the past," she sighed, "You'll appreciate it. I promise."

"I, um… Okay…"

"Will you help me with the projector?"

Clara sighed, but nodded, dragging over some boxes to put in a stack to balance it on and shine it on the wall so that they could see the film, while the Doctor fumbled with it to try and get it working, looking at the film reel cases.

"They're all date-stamped," she said, "They're all from between 1973 and 1976. Which one do I put on?"

"I don't know, the most recent?" Clara suggested, crossing her arms nervously to stop her from biting her nails, cigarette between her teeth, the nicotine offering her some solace.

"Right, sure," Thirteen said, finding that one and sorting the projector, Rose and Jenny turned around now (Rose casting nervous glances to her right at the window every few seconds) to see as the film started, a film which Clara didn't think needed much in-depth describing, because they didn't watch it for long when they realised what it was. It was the beginnings of a murder, that started off with someone strapped to a chair getting pain inflicted on them via thumbscrews. Clara looked away after that, dropping her left hand to her side so that she could hold the Doctor's again.

"What is..? Is he gonna die..?" Jenny asked. Clara held up her hand and stopped the reels moving.

"Yeah, but that's not this room," Thirteen said, "It looked like the base-"

"Oh my god," Rose breathed, and they looked at her and saw her flit over to the window, and Clara accidentally followed her (again) with her own, smoky teleportation, disappearing and reappearing in a black cloud, but she saw what Rose was seeing. A body, outside, in the trees. A body hanging from a branch.


	211. So Below

_Donna_

_So Below_

The house was spooky, but they found nothing on the ground floor after they'd searched the whole thing. The only thing that vaguely interested them were the contents of the fridge, with most of the dairy products out of date by a few days, seeming to prove the Doctor's theory that the woman in the bath had been dead for about a week - she clearly hadn't been able to go grocery shopping lately. They _had _found a torch though, which Donna was carrying, one of those large, industrial ones, probably something one needed when they lived in a lodge at the top of a mountain prone to massive snowstorms in the dark. She shivered and crossed one of her arms over. It didn't look like anybody had eaten recently, though, so maybe the killer really _had _left?

"I really think we should've left this mountain and come back later when the weather's better," Amy said, looking out of a window into the darkness with a sour face, her own face reflected back at her, ghostly pale, snowflakes drifting behind her eyes.

"Well unless Rose agrees, she won't bring the TARDIS, and the Doctor doesn't have any of her things to get it," Donna said, "I wonder where our phones are?"

"I don't know," Martha sighed, and they moved away from the window to head towards a door next to the fireplace they'd earlier discovered lead to the basement, Martha taking the lead since she was the one of the three of them who could actually fight something off. "What do you think about her?" Martha asked while opening the door. Donna and Amy both paused as she held it open, Donna shining her torch ahead and seeing a dark, downwards staircase with cobwebs on the walls.

"Who?" Amy asked.

"The Doctor. Thirteen. Whatever," Martha said dismissively, pulling the door open a little more to indicate they should head down, so Donna headed off first, Martha closing the door after them last.

"What do you mean 'what do we think'?" Donna asked, puzzled, Martha cutting past she and Amy to get back to the front of the group, peering around corners, her eyes constantly silver from her keeping herself warm while they stayed cold and frozen.

"They didn't let us go look at the body, I mean... Well, you know," Martha shrugged. It seemed like she was trying to create a flame in the palm of her hand, or a fireball, for light or warmth, but she was being unsuccessful in her attempts. Sometimes she managed to shoot sparks from her fingers.

"You think the Doctor lied about finding the dead body of a woman in the upstairs bathroom?" Amy asked incredulously, and Martha said nothing, "Why would she do that? Or Clara? Clara said _she _found it originally."

"I just think I should've gone to check," Martha shrugged, "_I'm _the doctor here."

"It's freezing in this cellar," Donna complained, changing the subject, watching clouds of breath puff in front of her face, seeing the thick snowfall and the night through the thin windows near the ceiling, "We could've at least waited until we warmed the house up."

"Wasn't any firewood," Amy said, "We would've had to go get it, and it has to be dry to light anyway. No point." Donna hadn't noticed any lack of firewood, living in suburban London there wasn't much need for it. "Where do you think we are?"

"Dalton Lodge," Martha answered stiffly.

"No shit," Amy told her.

"Reminds me of the planet the Ood live on with weather like this," Donna said, "Snowstorms. Why would we choose to come somewhere so cold for a hen party? I thought we were gonna go to New York."

"I think we were, but we ended up somewhere else... Maybe we ended up in a different month. Maybe Jenny decided and she just likes snow - it _was _her party," Amy said, offering some possibilities as they wended their way through shelves and boxes in the huge, concrete basement, "It _does _get cold around New York in winter, though. You should see it in the Depression."

"I did see it in the Depression," Martha told her, "1932. Daleks built the Empire State Building. We spent some time in a Hooverville. I don't get it, if that woman was murdered recently, then what's all this about suicides?"

"Maybe she shot _herself _in the stomach?" Donna suggested.

"Well if I'd gotten a look at the wounds, I'd probably be able to tell you," Martha said bitterly, and Amy groaned loudly with exaggeration.

"_Urrgghh_, will you give over about the body? Thirteen is the Doctor, if she's gonna lie about anything, it would be that they _didn't _find a dead woman," Amy argued, but Martha didn't answer. She was a little ahead of them, staring off down the hallway. Donna frowned and stepped over, shining her torch down the small avenue that lead just to another corner of the huge cellar beneath the equally huge ski lodge, seeing nothing but the storm outside.

"Did you see that?" Martha breathed.

"See what?" Donna questioned, looking where the torch was shining on the wall.

"Like... A shadow," Martha answered, "It went that way."

"It was probably a rat or something, they'll have all sorts in a building like this," Amy told her.

"No, it... Well I don't know what it was, but it was too big to be a rat," Martha said, and Donna and Amy exchanged an irritated look with each other as Martha started to wander off to follow her hunch.

"Well you go that way, we'll stay over here," Amy called after her, shaking her head and sighing. But really, if Martha could fight of a Xenomorph with her bare hands, she could probably handle a funny-looking shadow. Donna and Amy didn't follow, instead going in the opposite direction, "What's going on with her?" Amy whispered.

"I've got no idea," Donna said.

"Oh, hello," Amy said when she spotted something, walking ahead of Donna towards something on the wall, a large board with photographs and documents pinned or blue-tacked onto it, various threads and notes, "It's an evidence board, for a detective."

"I know what an evidence board is," Donna snapped, walking up to it. Near the top, on a piece of old paper, somebody had written, _'DALTON LODGE SUICIDES_.'

"Oh my god, twenty-eight people have hung themselves in that attic," Amy breathed, "Eleven people have jumped out of the window... Sixteen people over-dosed... This is... How many suicides have there been? Even from people only here for one night, look: '_Amateur ghost-hunters found dead in Dalton Lodge twelve hours after being seen by locals of Mute Hills_.'"

"Mute Hills? That's a creepy name for a town," Donna commented, "Blimey, there've been 107 suicides in this house since 1983..."

"But why?" Amy said, looking around as though expecting something to jump out at her - Martha in a hockey mask, maybe. Rose teleporting down. Nothing did though, but when Donna glanced around too, her torch fell on some boxes labelled, '_Case Files: 1976_.' And there were a lot of them, which intrigued Donna, so she and Amy went and pryed open one of them, which seemed to have been opened and closed many times.

"Guys?" Martha called distantly, Donna about to open the first case file, with the words, '_Teller Case: 1976_' emboldened on them in black, "You have to see this."

"What is it?" Donna called, shining the torch in the direction Martha had earlier slipped off to, Amy taking the old-looking folder out of her hands. Martha sticking her head around the corner a second later made her jump.

"Just come on," she said urgently, so Donna sighed, but obliged, Amy coming too.

"If there were no suicides until 1983, what happened in 1976?" Amy mused as they rounded the corner into an area they hadn't been in yet, only Martha had, though they could see why she wanted them to look to urgently. The floor was covered in blood and there were two chairs, but they weren't normal chairs, they were high-backed with shackles for wrists and for ankles and a strap for a head, to keep someone tied down, "They're electric chairs, I think, with the electric-bits taken off, so..."

"Torture chairs," Martha said, "This is a torture chamber, there are thumbscrews on that table over there. People don't commit suicide by torture, and some of these bloodstains on the floor and the walls are decades old."

"_Oh_," Amy said next to Donna in realisation, "Listen here, it says that in 1976 police convicted Amadeus Teller of the murder of thirty-nine people in three years, but he went on the run and jumped off Brooklyn Bridge into the East River after a week on the run, but the body was never recovered. They got damning evidence when they searched his lodge and found where he'd tortured all of his victims in the basement before killing them."

"The body was never recovered?" Martha asked cautiously.

"No, and then seven years later the Dalton family bought the lodge in north Pennsylvania and renamed it," Amy said, "Why would all this stuff still be down here? Don't the police take things for evidence? Wouldn't they have cleaned?"

"I don't know," said Donna, "But I don't like that they never found his body."


	212. Poprocks & Coke

_Oswin_

_Poprocks &amp; Coke_

It was almost the summer, she guessed, becaue it was quite warm out and the skies were blue and Adam Mitchell had the windows rolled down in the Hummer as they drove through the green roads of rural Pennsylvania, stopping in every town they came across to inquire with a few of the locals who ran the gas station or the town store and whatnot if they'd spotted a gaggle of drunken girls in a stolen car pass through town last night, which most of them definitely had, meaning they were on the right trail. But the answerphone messages about the mortuary were worrying Oswin more than they were worrying the others, and River's suggestion of it being a warning. Every fifteen minutes she was calling black Clara's mobile and getting the same thing; that there were too many bodies in the Mute Hills Mortuary and nobody could come to the phone.

"Babe, she won't pick up," Adam said softly as she rang Clara again. It must have been two hours in the car, at the very least.

"You don't know that," she told him, hanging up and dialling back again a second later.

"I know you're worried, but she can take care of herself, they all can," he told her, him not being very good at comforting her from the driver's seat of the car.

"Then why has something happened to all of their phones? Even Rose, and Rose can control the universe. Wherever they are, why aren't they trying to leave?" Oswin muttered, hanging up again but this time putting her phone in her pocket and clenching her fists and unclenching them, an exercise she used more and more lately to calm herself down.

"Why _do _you care about her so much? I don't think _I'd _care about someone who accidentally created me just so that I could die and enable them to get a shag," River said callously, "Does she even care about _you _this much?" Oswin sank down in her seat.

"We've been through a lot of stuff," Oswin muttered, "I'm like a daughter to her."

"Really? Or does she just say that to make you feel better? Because it always looks like you need her a lot more than she needs you," River continued, and Oswin sank down even further.

"That's enough, this is my car and I can kick you out of it if you carry on," Adam threatened, and she just sighed and sat back in her said from where she'd been leaning across to get closer to Oswin. Maybe she was right though? What Clara _didn't _need Oswin at all, she was just a superfluous object there to occupy her time when she wasn't too busy with one of her spouses? And here was Oswin tracking her across America (alright, maybe only across one state) because she was worried - would Clara do that for her? Or would she only do it when she had nothing else to do, when she didn't have Eleven to adore or Thirteen to pine over? And she couldn't even ask her, because Clara had seemingly switched off the mind-patch on her. What did _that _say about her relationship with her sister? Clara had thousands of Echoes, what made Oswin so special?

"What was the name of the mortuary?" Nios asked from the backseat. She had the holographic laptop Eleven and Clara had left behind the other week when they'd borrowed the car on her lap and had been searching the area on Google Maps, it seemed (honestly, she was a genius time traveller from three-thousand years in the future and she was relying on Google Maps, she appalled herself sometimes).

"Mute Hills Mortuary," Adam answered her calmly.

"Turn left here," Nios advised. They were on a highway, or at least, a large road (Oswin didn't know a lot about words), and on the left was a little dirt strip, "There's a town called Mute Hills down here." Adam turned left straight away, cutting the corner and annoying the people on the other side of the road.

Five minutes of trundling down the dirt later they ended up in one of those famous, American small-towns that always seemed to be portrayed as some sort of freakshow, courtesy of _Twin Peaks _no doubt, the so-called Mute Hills. There were a lot of houses and it didn't take them to get to the centre of town to the area with the gas station, but it seemed relatively normal, all flat and then some huge mountains behind it. Distantly, she could see the wire of a cable leading up to the peak. People probably skiied up there, she guessed.

"Mortuary, mortuary..." Adam muttered as he drove around, deciding that heading to the morgue was probably their best bet, but it didn't seem like the Mute Hills Mortuary actually existed. And after they'd slowly crept around the town for almost half an hour with Adam Mitchell messily driving because he wasn't used to driving on the righthand side of the road, a police car pulled itself up next to them, and Adam sighed and parked up, "They can probably help - police departments have morgues, maybe that's what the message is?" The deputy, after getting out of his car, made Oswin jump by knocking on _her _window instead of her boyfriend's, so she rolled the window down.

"Can I see your..." he frowned when he saw the steering wheel was on the other sighed, then realised, sighed, and walked around to Adam.

"Hope you were only asking to see my license," Oswin joked halfheartedly, "Not that I have one."

"What's that accent?" he asked.

"...English," she answered awkwardly, always feeling like she was lying when she said that, since she was really from Titan. Technically, though, it _was_ an _English_ accent she was sporting.

"Doesn't sound English."

"It's definitely English," Adam said, handing the deputy his driving license, "Sorry, we were looking for the mortuary, do you know where-"

"Oh, you as well?" he said gruffly.

"What do you mean?" Oswin asked, leaning over a little.

"None of the phones work round here, since last night every time somebody tried to call someone they get through to the MHPD morgue answering machine," the deputy explained to them, "Funny thing though, our morgue doesn't even have an answering machine, _or _so many dead bodies they can't take a call. Nobody's died in Mute Hills in three weeks, not since another one kicked the bucket up at Dalton Lodge on the nineteenth of last month."

"'Another one'?" Adam inquired.

"Thought you were tourists here following the message because you knew the story about the lodge?" the deputy frowned, "Who have you been trying to call up here, anyway?"

"Our friends, haven't seen them, have you? Seven girls? Drunk? Hen party? Might have done some vandalising?" River asked politely, leaning around Adam's seat.

"Now that you come to mention, I did hear something about a disturbance at the diner last night," the deputy said, "Bunch of drunk supermodels, I heard, got called out to it. Say, you kinda remind me of one of them..."

"I remind you of a supermodel?" Oswin asked.

"They _said _they were supermodels," the deputy told her.

"It's her sister," Adam answered, before Oswin tried to blag that she'd been on the cover of _Vogue _or in a window of _Victoria's Secret _before or something, "They're twins, and none of them are models."

"Amy's a model," Oswin told him.

"What?"

"It's true, she is," River assured him.

"...Well, whatever, they're... Do you know where they went?" Adam asked him, "When we call them, all their mobiles go to the answerphone."

"Well, they seemed interested in the suicides, thought there was something going on up at Dalton Lodge. The redheads had an advert someone put in the diner to go up there and 'solve the mystery'," he said grimly.

"What's the mystery? What suicides?"

"Last one was some broad called Gracey Brown, a widow of a millionaire who inherited the lodge from him. He rented it out, made money on ghostwalks. Two weeks ago, just a week after she drowned herself, this woman called Tracy something-or-other buys it and nobody's seen her since last week. Search party'll be sent up in a few days, no doubt we'll find another one," he sighed.

"How many people have killed themselves in that lodge?" Adam asked,

"Hundred-and-something in the last thirty or so years," the deputy said.

"Over a hundred sucides in thirty years!?" Oswin exclaimed, and he nodded, "Why? Why do people keep killing themselves? Why does anyone move in?"

"They move in to solve the mystery, some of them are dead within a week, some of them are dead within half a day. Hell, I've seen more dead bodies in that lodge than I've seen nice weather in this town, and the weather never seems to be nice up on that mountain," he explained.

"Something's making people resort to suicide in that lodge?" River questioned, and Oswin could see why the mystery would sound intriguing, but also horribly dangerous. If someone had offed themselves up there after half a day, what was happening to the girls? Were they even all still alive?

"Ah, don't believe all you hear. People'll tell you it's the ghost of Amadeus Teller. Not like we can ask any of them," the deputy sighed.

"Wait, the ghost of _who_?" Adam frowned, "Teller the serial killer who tortured and killed, like, forty people in the basement his ski lodge?"

"It's weird that you just know that off the top of your head, Mitchell," Oswin told him sternly.

"That's the one, died in '76," the deputy said, "Seven years later, suicides start."

"That must be where they are, in the lodge," Oswin said to Adam.

"Well if you're gonna go looking for them, don't let the stories get to you. People see things on that mountain, things that I'm damn sure don't exist," he said, looking haunted, like he'd seen some things, too, in spite of him telling them not to believe anything they heard about Dalton Lodge.

"We'll bear that in mind..."


	213. Murder House

**AN: Triple update because both of those chapters were written yesterday, basically, what with the servers being down and stuff.**

_Donna_

_Murder House_

"Maybe it's his ghost?" Martha said as Amy continued reading gory details out from the _Teller_ case files. One of his victims had been killed by an iron maiden – and the photo declared it to be the very same iron maiden that Donna could uneasily see out of the corner of her eye sitting, gathering dust, an old bloodstain at its base, at one side of the room.

"Ghosts aren't real," Donna told her with a sigh.

"Eurgh, once he used a rat cage… There's a photo of the body, he dumped it down the bottom of the mountain, it was one of the last he killed that lead the police to push against his lawyers to get a warrant to search this lodge," Amy said.

"What's a rat cage..?" Donna asked uneasily, suspecting she didn't want to know what a rat cage was, but now Amy was going to tell her regardless, so she'd better brace herself.

"Do you know how the Romans used to starve their lions so that they'd be more vicious when the gladiators fought them in the Colosseum?" Amy said.

"I went to Ancient Rome once," Donna said, remembering Pompeii.

"Think the Doctor might've taken me, once, too, can't remember too well… Pompeii, maybe… Anyway…" Amy said, which Donna thought was a bit odd, she didn't think that the Doctor would ever go back to Pompeii after what happened in 79AD when Vesuvius erupted, "It's a bit like that. They starve rats, then they strap someone down and put the cage over their stomach and the rat, you know…"

"Eats them alive," Donna finished her sentence, "God, that's medieval…"

"It really _is_ medieval," Amy said, "They did it hundreds of years ago, just like stretching, another thing he supposedly did to three of his victims. Dislocated half the bones in their bodies."

"Ghosts _do_ exist," Martha said, "Oswin and the Tenth Doctor proved it, a few weeks ago."

"And nobody thought to tell us!?" Donna exclaimed, and Martha shrugged.

"It's something to do with the human consciousness being translatable into electrical signals which stay together in the atmosphere after somebody dies, like a soul, and being electric in nature they can manipulate electrical things around them and use the electromagnetic field to manifest themselves," Martha explained, "Seriously, it's true. Happens mainly to trauma victims. So if he really did drown in the East River, after all, then maybe his ghost is terrorising them?"

"A ghost so scary that people kill themselves after they see it?" Amy questioned.

"Maybe it's like, you know, a grim. An omen of death," Martha said.

"Like _Harry Potter_?" Donna said incredulously, raising an eyebrow.

"Well, I… I guess so, but not something that'll transform into your long-lost, fugitive godfather," Martha said dryly, "But myths always come from somewhere, right? Especially when you do what we do, you find all sorts of things. It must be something powerful to cause a hundred suicides."

"If it's a ghost, how do we stop it? Destroy the lodge so that nobody comes here anymore?" Donna said, not knowing if she expected an answer or not. It wasn't like _she_ had an answer of how to stop a ghost.

"We should've got the TARDIS," Amy muttered.

"We could always go back and tell Rose? They might not have found anything useful in the attic," Martha suggested, "Then she can bring the TARDIS here, or teleport to wherever the Doctors are?" There was an almighty bang, a crashing, nearby, and the four of them looked over their shoulders and started to automatically go towards it, their tenures with the Doctor meaning they weren't ones to shy away from things that went bump in the night anymore. Plus, what harm could a ghost do to them? Donna was in no hurry to die, and neither were Amy or Martha, it seemed. Nor anyone with them. What could somebody see that would draw them to commit suicide in a matter of hours?

The sound, they discovered, was the door that went into the staircase that would take them back up to the ground floor of the house. It was that door slamming shut, to be more specific. Donna still holding the torch and Amy the files, Martha was the only one of them with her hands free, and she walked up to it and turned the handle, and then started to shake it violently, and then tried to force the door.

"Is it locked!?" Amy asked urgently, dropping the case files and going to try and help Martha. Donna stood by and held the torch up so that they could see what they were doing, but it definitely seemed to be locked, "Can't you melt it!?"

"I can't melt it, it's made of wood!" Martha hissed, "Maybe if we shout the others will hear us?"

"This place is probably soundproof if he was rich and killing people, and even if it's not, they're all the way up on the top floor, they won't hear us," Amy hissed at her, and then there was another bang, one loud, crisp explosion that sent no resounding echo out through the halls, and the three of them jumped and stopped trying to break through the door.

"What was that?" Donna breathed.

"A gunshot," Martha said, instinctively reaching to the back of her jeans for her own gun, "Shit, whatever took our phones took my gun…"

"You took a _gun_ to a _hen party_!?" Amy exclaimed.

"Yes, alright!? I take it everywhere! It's useful when you live like we do," she said, "Well, we'd better go see what it is."

"No! We should go get the others!" Amy protested.

"We _can't_ go get the others, the door's locked. What're you gonna do, tell it to open for you? _Open sesame_?" Donna mocked, and Amy scowled at her.

"Doesn't work on inanimate objects. In fact, I think it only works on humans. I kept telling the Doctor to do things yesterday, but he just stared at me," Amy said, and that was when they noticed Martha was already walking off in the direction of the gunshot they'd heard, and they both hastened to follow her, not wanting to be left without her pyrokinesis for defence.

Back through the small torture chamber they walked, snow still billowing in the complete darkness outside, following the ghost of the gunshot, all straining to remember where it had come from, exactly, without its echo ringing through the walls. But they came to a doorway, a doorway with no door, like someone had been mid-way through renovating the lodge and maybe converting the basement into more rooms. The doorway wasn't the part that gripped Donna's attention, though, that part was the blood on the floor.

When they stepped through, having to pass over the red that glistened in the beam of her torch, they saw the dead body of a man, an huge exit wound in the back of his head and a gun hanging limply in his right hand, the muzzle in his mouth, brains splattered on the wall and the side of the doorway behind him.

"Oh my god, he was down here and he killed himself," Amy said, giving an unnecessary explanation for what they were seeing as Martha dropped down to her knees to see if, at the very least, they could learn something from this apparent suicide.

"I guess he's the one who killed the woman in the bath? Her husband? Murder-suicide? And it must have been his shadow I saw running this way earlier," Martha suggested. Her manner suggested that she'd seen a lot of dead people, "The gun's still warm."

"Of course it's still warm, he just shot himself in the head not five minutes ago!" Amy hissed, "What is it with this house!? What did he see!? Why didn't he come and – I don't know – talk to us? Or something!?"

"Look, there," Donna breathed, shining her torch ahead. The two girls looked around, and saw what she was pointing at. A hole in the wall, behind an empty bookcase that had apparently been there blocking it, for storage or something, maybe to keep out vermin. But it wasn't a hole, it was a doorway, too, different to the others, like it wasn't part of the house, like it lead somewhere else, the door inside it hanging, rotting and ajar with a very faded, chipped, green coat of paint, a mottled, yellow window set into it. It didn't fit at all with the rest of the lodge.

"A secret passage?" Martha suggested.

"Maybe we should follow it," Amy said, "What else can we do? We can't go get the others, we got the door locked on us. We don't even know that it wasn't them pissing about who locked the door anyway. I mean, it probably wasn't, but it's either we follow this passage or we just stay sat around here."

"She's right, come on," Donna said, though nobody had really argued with Amy anyway. It seemed that they all agreed that the best course of action was to follow the creepy, secret passageway next to the dead body of the 108th suicide in Dalton Lodge.

"Isn't this another cliché of horror films?" Martha muttered, though she still got up from where she'd been kneeling next to the most recent corpse to follow Donna into the passageway, the walls tiled and filthy like they belonged to some kind of institution. Then there was a creak and a bang and Donna reeled around to see that the door had slammed itself shut.

"What are you two doing!?" she said, banging her fist on the window she could only see the shadows of Amy and Martha through, just shapes in different, muted colours, "This isn't funny!" She tried to force the handle, but it broke off in her hand.

"We're not doing anything, it shut itself!" Martha called through the wood, "We can't get it open!"

"Break it down!" Amy shouted, and Donna really did try to break it down, but it wouldn't budge at all, despite how weak it looked. All she succeeded in doing was hurting her shoulder.

"…Well, what do I do?"

"You're the one with the torch, follow the tunnel," Martha said.

"Follow it on my own!?" Donna exclaimed.

"Well, yeah, I guess so," Amy said, both of them ganging up on her, "We have to find out what's down there."

"What if something happens to me!? You two won't know."

"Well, just… Try not to commit suicide, okay?"


	214. The Time Traveller's Wife

**AN: Sorry...**

_Thirteen_

_The Time Traveller's Wife_

After they'd descended the attic, her last, the group had gotten away from her, escaped her senses. Why hadn't they waited for her? She couldn't have been more than a few seconds behind Clara, but now the other three were vanished. She sighed, and thought she'd better catch up to them anyway – they were only headed outside to investigate the dead body hanging from the tree branch outside. She walked through the dark corridors with no light source, no matter how many times she searched and re-searched her pockets in the hope of a torch appearing there, or even a lighter, but she was stuck in the dark and the cold walking through identical hallways past identical windows with identical snowstorms outside smattering a series of identical, black trees with the white stuff.

Her breath clouded in front of her and she walked through the misty puffs as she wandered with her arms around herself through the lodge, swearing she'd passed certain points before, certain doors, certain floorboards, certain corners of rug. And still, the staircase was nowhere in sight, nor was the attic she'd come from. She was lost and alone in the dark, and that was when she saw movement. Hardly anything, a shadow, probably a trick of the snow drifting past outside and the moonlight shining through the open shutters. She still stopped for a moment though, and felt she had to follow it. Probably one of the others, she was probably just behind them, following them at a few metres' distance as they wended through the halls. Maybe they were looking for her, too, just in the wrong places?

But she turned the corner and didn't see anybody, just more of the same dark wood floors and dark wooden doors and the snow outside. She heard a creak though, like somebody had stepped on a floorboard, to her left, coming from inside of a room. Frowning, she stepped forwards and closed her hand around the door knob, turning it slowly, opening the door a crack and leaning in.

She was just about to call 'hello' when somebody grabbed her from behind, taking hold of her shoulders and scaring the life out of her so much that she audibly shrieked. And whoever it was turned her around by her shoulders and kissed her fiercely, lips she'd recognised by taste alone, ones she'd kissed a billion times on a thousand different days in hundreds of centuries, and she was caught leaning on the doorframe as she pushed the body attached to this oh-so-familiar mouth away from her.

"What are you doing!?" she hissed, but Clara Oswald just smiled at her, and tried to kiss her again, and the Doctor put up a hand to hold her back, "I told you! I told you so many times! _No_! We _can't_! It's _wrong_!"

"God, you are an _idiot_," Clara said, touching their heads together the way she had four days ago, this time with her left hand on the side of the Doctor's face, "You are so bloody stupid…" she paused for a moment, then said, "Didn't you expect better from me than quoting myself? Ever since you regenerated – and those are the words I said to you _when_ you regenerated, after we fished you out of that sea – _you've just been oblivious_," she whispered, painfully close.

"Wait – have you – did you change your clothes? You're wearing different clothes…" the Doctor said suspiciously.

"These are the clothes I put on this morning, sweetheart," Clara told her with a smirk, "Why? Do you want me to take them off?"

"_Don't_ – is that my jacket? Stop stealing my clothes, I go to a lot of effort so that I don't have to share your terrible wardrobe," Thirteen snapped at her, "Why are you here, Clara?"

"Um, because I miss you?" Clara said, "Thought you'd be more pleased to see me, creeping around after you in this dark old house. I remember it being less creepy than this…" the Doctor put her hand over Clara's left hand on her face to tactfully feel for wedding rings, finding the three that Clara wore, a different three to the ones Thirteen wore (except, they both had the Third Wedding rings on, but the other two were from entirely different weddings of theirs).

"You're so immature sometimes, you can't just wait for me to come back to the future?" Thirteen said, "You do live in a time machine. What if you see yourself?"

"Relax," Clara breathed, "I won't, I remember." She leant in to kiss her again, and this time the Doctor let her, satisfied that this really was her actual wife, from the future, the one she considered herself to be _actually_ married to, coming back for a visit because (in all honesty) even since Thirteen had regenerated she really hadn't been able to keep her hands off her. Even Past Clara could scarcely manage it, and that was when there were some very real moral issues stopping her.

"No, no, it's dangerous," Thirteen pulled away again, but Clara just moved on to kissing her neck instead of her lips, "Clara, seriously, it's like, you can't be here at the same time as Other You. It'll be like when Rose touched Rose as a baby, and-"

"Well I'm not exactly gonna go touching myself, am I? I have you to touch," Clara said, then she resumed kissing the icy sweat off Thirteen's skin.

"No, because, you _cannot _see you. What if you told Other You how old you are? You started telling _her_ stuff about me drowning? You totally can't do that, you – will you stop kissing my neck, I'm trying to have a conversation!"

"Your jugular and I are having a _very_ interesting conversation. Do your lips want to join it?" Clara said, resuming her usual tact of getting irritatingly close, something she'd always done, it seemed.

"Lips always have conversations, Clara, that's what they do," she said dryly.

"I didn't specify which lips I was talking about." Thirteen clenched her jaw.

"Stop it, you can't… You can't be here… It's…" she was going to say 'dangerous', but she found herself kissing her wife again, and this time it was her who'd initiated it, both of them still stuck in the doorway into some random room of the haunted lodge they were supposed to be investigating. The others could investigate though, right? She was fine to slip off with Clara for a while? She was sure that she'd be much too busy to kill herself… "Honestly, how old are you to be creeping around in the dark with your girlfriend?"

"Well, you're my wife. And I'm only seventy-three years young," Clara said, "I've been thinking of applying for a pension."

"You can just sell some of those vintage lava lamps you stole twenty years ago," Thirteen joked, and she got a kiss for that as retaliation for the remark Clara didn't find particularly funny, she was very sensitive about her collection of stolen lava lamps.

"I forgot to mention – I found something," Clara said.

"Not your virginity?" Thirteen snickered.

"That's long-gone and you know it. It's this way, come on," Clara pulled Thirteen by her hand.

"Can you show me it in half an hour after we finish testing how comfy the mattresses of the rich capitalists who own this lodge are?" Thirteen protested, letting Clara drag her a little, Clara who laughed at that.

"Half an hour? You'll be so lucky. _No_, it's important, and it's this way," Clara dropped her hand and walked off quickly, and Thirteen speed-walked to keep up. But after a few seconds, Clara always seemed to be at the very end of the long hallways, always just turning the corner.

"Clara?" the Doctor called.

"Over here!" Clara shouted back, her voice echoing. A minute later, Thirteen had completely lost the sound of Clara's distant footsteps across the wood.

"You still there? … Sweetheart? … Clara?" Thirteen called, but she got no answer this time. As she high-tailed it through the lodge after Clara she kept calling things out, like, 'Do we have enough milk?' or, 'How's the dog?' in the hope that Clara would answer either of those mundane questions. There was nothing though, not for a few minutes, and then there was creaking from above.

Noises.

Noises she couldn't pin down – a scuffle? Boxes being moved? Footsteps? A body being dragged? The wind? It was like her ears couldn't make sense of what she was hearing, and she shook her head and rounded the next corner and saw the loft hatch again. Somehow, she'd come full circle. She felt like she'd been walking for hours. The ladder was down, too, and she didn't have a light. But if Clara was up there, and Clara had stopped responding, she didn't have a choice. So without further ado, the Doctor climbed the ladder into pitch darkness.

When she stepped away, the hatch seemed to disappear beneath her feet, the windows not visible at all to give even the smallest cracks of light. For a few moments, there was nothing, until the room was lit up by a sharp, yellow glow coming through a single, dirty lightbulb hanging from the ceiling, a spider scuttling across it leaving microscopic footprints in the grim. But below the lightbulb was Clara, Clara who was crying, Clara who was being held down with handcuffs around her wrists and handcuffs around her ankles, to an old wooden table that had a book wedged underneath one of the legs.

"Clara!" Thirteen exclaimed, running forwards.

"Ah-ah-ah," somebody said from the darkness, "You don't want to do that." They stepped out from the shadows, speaking with a voice Thirteen recognised from the fact that for decades now it had been coming from her own mouth. And she saw herself, a pale, dirty, ragged version of herself with a manic grin, yellow teeth, matted hair and purple circles around sunken eyes full of madness. And this doppelganger was holding nothing more than a string in her right hand. Smirking, she pointed with her left hand, no rings on her fingers, to some place above Clara, where there was a rusty old blade taken from a guillotine hanging perilously above. "You go near her, I'll pull the string."

"Who are you?" Thirteen asked.

"_Who am I_? I'm _you_. Of course I'm you, can't you see that? Your downfall, as prophesised. Somewhere between your Twelfth and final incarnations. Just my luck I get stuck looking like _this_," the doppelganger said.

"The Valeyard…" Thirteen breathed.

"Bingo! Here to break you. So much murder in this house, so much myth, it's all too easy to use that and then stage some nine-dozen suicides to lure you here. You should've come sooner, then maybe you would've been able to save… Some of them," the Valeyard mocked, "I come looking for you expecting some huge fight, but all I have to do is kill one girl… You're nothing anymore. Worthless. She's not _your_ wife, you're _hers_. Isn't that pathetic?"

"Don't do this," Thirteen said, "You don't have to do this, I can help you."

"Sure you can help me, you can help me by getting rid of yourself now before you have to see this one die," the Valeyard said, walking past the table and crouching down next to Clara's head, with her mouth duct taped shut she could do nothing but whimper and try to turn away as Thirteen looked on in horror, glancing between Clara and the string in the Valeyard's hand. She kept twisting the string around her fingers and untangling it haphazardly when it got caught on her knuckles, "Of course, I might not have to kill her at all if you'd save me the bother and go jump out of that window. What's one more suicide?" she breathed in Clara's ear, eyes locked with Thirteen's while she talked.

"You've never looked like me before. Why now?"

"I thought it would be poetic. And ironic that it _is_ poetic that this little poet here is gonna get killed by someone who looks exactly like the person who's made her _oh-so-happy_. Wouldn't it be great if she goes to the afterlife never being able to picture your face again, because she always sees me instead?" the Valeyard said, "Look at these handcuffs, too. Made a guess at what you two get up to in the bedroom, but she doesn't seem to be enjoying it as much as I thought…"

"If you kill her, there's nothing stopping me from killing you," Thirteen threatened.

"Maybe I'll kill you first and make her watch, then? Abandon all my plans? I'm flexible," she shrugged. _She can't kill Clara anyway_, Thirteen thought. Clara had nanogenes, the same nanogenes that kept her from growing old, "I'm sure she'd enjoy that." The Valeyard pulled a knife out then, out of her belt, a meat cleaver. Sighing, she stuck it in the table next to Clara's elbow, leaning on it and seeming to think. "Maybe I'll just start hurting her. Unless you end your own life, she'll just keep getting hurt. Two-hundred and six bones in the human body. I'll try and break every last one of them. Wouldn't you enjoy that?" the Valeyard said, watching Clara while she traced the cleaver down the side of Clara's face while she struggled to get away, crying painfully, the knife not quite breaking her skin. The Valeyard stabbed the knife down again, this time in the wood right next to Clara's left ear.

"Don't," Thirteen said, "Please, I'm begging you, don't hurt her…"

"I know you can't live without her," the Valeyard said, tugging absent-mindedly at the rope connected to the knife that would sever Clara's neck if it fell, "I'm willing to bet that you wouldn't do anything at all if I were to just let go of this rope, let that rusty thing cut off her head. She'd be dead, and killing me wouldn't change a thing. Not that you could. I've still got a knife. You know what I hate the most, though? This damn accent."

"Uh-huh..?"

"How do you put up with this coming out of your mouth every day, for _years_! Can you even hear yourself _speak_!?" On the word 'speak' she stabbed the knife into the table yet again, "Jut _on and on and on AND ON_!" she dragged the knife through the wooden surface as she spoke, cutting deeply into the bark, "Makes me want to cut out my own vocal chords. Or yours. Or _hers_…" she balanced the tip of the cleaver on Clara's throat, "Then she can't scream…"

"You wouldn't dare," said Thirteen weakly. _She'll heal, she'll heal, she'll heal_, she thought to herself over and over again, like a mantra.

"If she dies, you don't have anything to live for, because as wonderful as you seem to think you are, you've let this little human, this _parasite_ of the universe, worm her way into your heart and mould you to fit her!" the Valeyard laughed coldly with disbelief, "I don't understand it! You've lost _everything_ you once were, it's _all gone_, all because of _her_. And if I kill her, I'm killing you. I might as well cut out your hearts, it'll have the same effect."

"Why didn't you stay at home, sweetheart?" Thirteen said brokenly. _Why didn't you just stay at home?_

Clara sobbed again.

"That noise is awful," the Valeyard said coldly, "What's the point of all this standing around? I know you, and you know me. I'm not weak, like you. I could take your place in the universe so easily with none of this _love_ to tie me down to any little germs I might stumble across."

"You'll… She'll… You wouldn't… You… I'd be… Unrestrained…"

"We'll see." The Valeyard held up the rope in her hand, laughed, and then let go. Through the duct tape, Clara still managed to scream.

"NO! NO, CLARA!" Thirteen ran forwards with nothing to stop her, thinking that she'd rather grab the blade and have it chop of a few of her fingers than get to Clara's neck. But there was the sickening crunch of bones being snapped and broken, flesh being sliced and mulched, the noise of the metal sticking into the wood of the table. "CLARA! Clara! No, NO! How COULD you!? No, _no, no, no, no, no_… No, Clara… No… Just heal…" she cried, tears streaming down her face, barely being able to talk. Distantly, the Valeyard cackled. The Doctor brushed hair out of Clara's eyes behind her ear, holding her head. And just her head.

She collapsed to her knees.

"Heal, Clara… You can heal… You always heal, you always heal… _You always heal…_ Don't do this to me… You can't… I can't… I can't I can't I can't _you can't_…"


	215. Isolation XII

**AN: So I didn't write this chapter, The Final Shadow did because he asked to, along with the next one. **

_Jenny_

_Isolation XII_

The scream that had drawn her to the wooded area at the back of the house had returned Jenny to her sobriety completely. It was a scream of pure terror. The scream of someone meeting their end without accepting it, and it had been cut short far too fast. It wasn't a long and howling scream, but it'd had the potential to be. The snowfall had picked up substantially since they had arrived at the lodge, and at this point the storm had lessened visibility to nothing. She was alone in the dark of the night, with only the remnants of a cut off scream to follow. All of a sudden, Jenny felt very small and even more alone.

"Hello?" she called out, "Is there anyone out here?"

There was no reply. Even if there had been, the young Time Lord doubted she would have heard it through the layers of snow, effectively wrapping around her like a giant white soundproof blanket. She gritted her teeth and decided to move on into the snow, further away from the house. She was a Time Lord, after all, and it was her job to brave the impossible and save the helpless, just like her father.

With one small step and a flurry of powdered white Jenny's situation went from bad to worse. She tumbled, falling down a large open expanse and rolling as she did so. Her left arm cracked sickeningly against a hard, stone wall as she came to a stop at the bottom of a large hole. She winced, hazarding a glance at her arm before taking stock of her situation. It was as bad as it had sounded on the way down, the bone had broken and now stuck out at elbow in an unnatural angle. She suppressed the whimper that threatened to break free of her chest. It would do no good to have a breakdown at the bottom of a deep, dark pit where no one would find her, she needed to be calm and collected. Not to mention the scream.

She took a look around, the only light was coming from above, and even that was hampered by the steady trickle of snow that was forcing its way down into the chasm. She stood in a pool of dull moonlight, gazing out into the abyss of darkness around her. Using her good hand, Jenny pulled out her mobile. The screen had cracked from the fall, but pushing one of the buttons showed that the device still worked, bathing her face in an artificial glow. Though the device was getting no signal it would serve handily as a torch.

Turning the device on her surroundings caused Jenny's breath to hitch in her throat. She brought her good hand up to her mouth, the light still shining down the now illuminated corridor of rock, to keep the nausea that had grasped her stomach from making her sick. A familiar aching rippled through her chest, a faded phantom pain of a death since past. The walls of the rocky cave were slick with a viscous black goo, dripping down from the ceiling and pooling on the ground. The word Hive was what had sprung immediately to the forefront of Jenny's mind. Accompanying that word? _Xenomorphs_.

"Shit," She muttered under her breath. Of all the things in all the universes, it had to be them. A species which had once before successfully killed one of her incarnations. One of the very few things in the universe she was actually frightened of. Of course they were underneath the lodge, it made perfect sense really, an easy explanation for the supposed suicides they had come to investigate. Her eyes widened, the scream. Someone else had to be down here, held captive and ready to be inseminated as a host sacrifice to a growing hive. Her mouth set into a determined grimace, she wouldn't let it happen. She wouldn't let someone else fall prey to a chestburster.

Her heartbeats and breathing sounded far too loud in the muted silence of the cave system. Each footstep crunched loudly, and Jenny feared to look down in case she was stepping on the bones of the long since deceased. More than once she would have sworn that she'd heard some sort of screeching from deep in the tunnels of the cave system, but it could just as easily have been the wind from above ground tearing itself through the cave system. Every fibre of her being was telling Jenny to turn back, to get close to the entrance of the cave system so that somehow there may be some small chance that someone else could save her and deal with the Xenomorph issue. But she pushed on, ignoring those basic instincts that had kept her alive for so long, in favour of saving whoever had screamed before, and anyone else that may come to investigate in the future. She would end it, once and for all.

Before long she reached a wider, open area. A large cavernous expanse, with what sounded like water trickling somewhere far to her left. If the main Hive was going to be located anywhere, it would be here. That's when she heard it. The sobbing, of the person she had been trying to save. She moved slowly and cautiously, though she hadn't seen the Aliens in her last encounter with the Xenomorphs, she had seen the first film a long time ago, if this was the hive then there were bound to be at least one fully grown creature somewhere.

"Hello? Is there… Is there someone there?" The woman, who Jenny could now see was tied to an outcrop of rock by more of the same black viscous goo the walls of the tunnel had been coated in, shouted out. Her voice echoed around the room loudly. Jenny stilled herself and waited for any sign a Xenomorph was ready to pounce, going as far to shut the light off of her phone and make use of the sliver of moonlight that shone through. She, and the rest of the _Alien_ viewership, had no real idea how the creatures saw but it still made her feel safer. When nothing happened, she closed the gap between them quickly, pushing a hand over the woman's mouth.

"Shhh, don't scream." She ordered, her voice hushed and urgent, "I'm here to help you. I'm going to move my hand now, but you can't scream, okay?"

There was a slight nod beneath her hand, so Jenny slowly removed it from the other woman's face.

"There was a thing," she said quietly, clearly trying very hard to keep the sobs out of her voice, "I woke up and there was a thing on my face, but then it fell off onto the floor."

Jenny swallowed hard. That could only mean one thing, she was too late. To confirm her suspicions she glanced down at the ground, and there it was, the curled up carcass of a facehugger.

"I'm sorry," she muttered, backing away from the woman, "I'm so… so sorry."

"Why are you sorry, what do you mean you're sorry?"

"I… I can't save you," she muttered, tears beginning to track down her face. "It's too late, I'm sorry."

"No, don't say that," she rasped, "you can't say that. You.. you have to save me, please. Don't leave me down he-" she was cut off by her own scream. The woman had arched her back as best she could against her bonds as the creature within began its fight out. Tearing itself through flesh and bone and cartilage. It burst clean out of her. Flesh toned carapace glistening red with the remains of the woman in the moonlight. Her blood pooled in her mouth and leaked down her face, mingling with the last of her tears as it dripped in a steady stream onto the ground. The thing let out a high pitched screech, its bony tail twitching around its own body as it sampled fresh air for the first time, before launching itself out of the gaping hole it had made and slithering into the darkness. Jenny fought back the bile that threatened to rise in her throat and turned away from the wound, she couldn't bare to look at it.

It had been standing behind her the whole time, watching and waiting for the perfect opportunity. The Xenomorph. Complete with its domed black head, sleek exoskeleton and sharp claws. It was there, its mouth partially open with thick rivulets of saliva dripping from its jaws. It let out a hiss, long and threatening, just as she had seen it do in the films. It was over, there was no escape. She let out a scream, long and high pitched, and for a moment the Xenomorph stopped, as if it were considering its actions. It reached out and grabbed her by both shoulders, squeezing down hard on the one that was broken, before giving out an even longer hiss. She was staring into the face of death, with no hope of escape. Its head shifted slightly, so that it was looking at her broken right arm, and then it tugged. With one small movement the creature had torn her arm clean off, separating it at the shoulder in a rip that left a trail of bone and sinew from the fresh stump. She screamed out in pain, buckling at the legs, but the Xenomorph held her in place. The last thing Jenny Harkness, Daughter of the Doctor, saw, was the flash of the Xenomorph's inner-mouth as it burrowed into her skull and carved a hole in her brain.


	216. Parting Of The Ways

_Rose_

_Parting Of The Ways_

Rose stumbled slightly under the onslaught of the snow, the thick white snowflakes forcing their way through her partially closed eyelids to create a distinctly uncomfortable stinging. She had seen the body hanging outside, she was sure of it. Hanging there, taunting her, because they had been too late to stop another suicide. If they hadn't all been so utterly hammered the night before then maybe they could have stopped any new deaths. But, alas, their drunkenness had cost another life. She grit her teeth, there was no use thinking about that now. She had to find the body, then perhaps she'd be able to know whether the death had truly been a suicide or if there were some darker force at work.

Her steps were heavy and lethargic, the snow holding her back and dragging her down, the cold seeping its way through her clothes and latching on to her bones. She had to be coming up on the tree that the body was dangling from. It had been a straight line from the house to the area she had seen it and, as far as Rose knew, she hadn't diverted from the path at all. That was why, when her extended hands found the flat, smooth wood of a log cabin she let out a small, "_What_?" of confusion.

She felt her way around the log cabin, which had no right to sit where it was currently sitting where there should so rightly have been a tree, until she found the cold metal of a door handle. She twisted the handle, and thankfully, was able to push the door open. She stumbled, half fell, into the entrance of the room and struggled to close the door against the wind behind her. That was when she heard it. That steady pulsing she had come to know, and fear, so well. Her blood ran cold, colder even than when she had been outside in the storm.

"Nice of you to finally join us, Bad Wolf," came a harsh and slightly distorted voice. She felt herself sag slightly against the now closed door. It was him. Davros. The vilest creature she had ever had the misfortune of meeting. But there was something the creator of the Daleks didn't know, she had her powers again.

She turned to face the creature with a smirk on her face. The smirk didn't last long. She was flanked by two Daleks, their gun arms trained on her directly. Davros sat in his Dalek casing directly in front of her, but to the right of him was a sight she never expected to see. The Tenth Doctor hung by chains from the ceiling of the cabin, the tips of his toes barely touching the ground. On his head sat a metal band, wires sprouting out from it and sticking into his temples.

"Rose," he rasped, barely audible but clear enough for it to break her heart.

"What have you done to him," she snarled, willing her eyes to morph into a fearsome red, if only to put Davros on edge. The creature seemed unfazed.

"We have turned him into the perfect trap, Wolf, the perfect trap for you," Davros began, the smirk on his gnarled face undeniable.

"You are the great exterminator," the Dalek to her left chimed in, the lights on its domed head flashing coldly with each word.

"We devised a plot to lure you to this spot, in this time," the Dalek on her right added.

"You are a rogue element, Ms. Tyler. A power, now locked away deep in the recesses of your mind, wiped out an entire Dalek fleet. We cannot allow the potential power to exist in the universe," Davros explained, "But a second goal, of course, was in mind. The breaking of the Predator of The Daleks."

"What do you mean by that?" Rose asked, her fists clenched by her sides. Before erasing Davros from existence she would have to know what they had done to the Doctor, it was the only way that she would be able to get someone to reverse it. "What have you done to him?"

Davros laughed maniacally, showing that insanity that his intelligence otherwise served to hide. "We have taken his mind, Bad Wolf, and we will use it to our own gain."

Davros pushed a button on the control panel of his Dalek chassis and the chains the Doctor was held by released the Doctor. He fell to the ground and dropped to one knee, holding his head in agony.

"Rose, please, I can't fight it," he whimpered, "You have to run, Rose, run now before it's too late." He let out a loud, wordless yell, crumbling to the ground in pain.

Tears spilled from Rose's eyes, "You obviously haven't done your research Davros, because it isn't just the potential for power anymore. It's all back now, and I'll scatter you through time just like I did to your precious emperor."

"That's not possible," Davros sneered.

Rose raised an eyebrow, her expression becoming cold and stern. She raised her hand and splayed her fingers, which was in honesty just for dramatic effect, and willed Davros and his Dalek bodyguards out of existence.

"Well, Child of Time, I'm waiting," Davros laughed harshly.

"Why… why aren't they working… they always work, so why now?" Rose muttered to herself, backing away to the door. She grabbed the handle behind her back and tried to twist it, but the door was now firmly locked shut.

The Doctor, from his position on the floor, chuckled darkly. He stood slowly and brought his eyes to meet Rose's, they were not the eyes of the man she had fallen in love with. They were filled with a burning fire, glistening with hatred and rage, and the twinkle of a psychopath's glee.

"Hello… Rose," he muttered, dragging out her name as if he were trying it for the first time. He grinned at her, a wolfish look that seemed entirely out of place on her lovers face. He brought his hand up to her face and gently traced his knuckles against it. For a moment, just for a split second, she thought she could see the man she loved fighting to get out of Davros' control. That illusion was shattered when he drew back his fist and punched her across the jaw, sending her tumbling to the ground in a heap. The physical pain was bad, the blow having come so hard that she had spat out a mouthful of blood, but the pain of betrayal was worse.

"Rose Tyler," he jeered, "Little Rose Tyler, stuck in her own self-centered egotistical love triangle, the Time Lord or the Half-Breed."

He laughed again, the sound cold and hollow, before crouching to be on her level. He grabbed her by the face, squeezing her cheeks together so that she couldn't even respond.

"As if either of us would fall for a stunted little ape like you."

He pulled her back up onto her feet using his hold on her face.

"I'm the last of the Time Lords, you know, and you? Well, you're nothing but a pitiful little human I decided to drag along. A pet. A pet that I now have the pleasure of having to put down."

He pushed her away from him, sending Rose tumbling into the wall of the small cabin. The Daleks backed away from the Doctor when he turned towards a table, on it, a series of blades in various sizes.

"Doctor, please, whatever the Daleks are doing to you… you can fight it. The things that you're saying, you don't mean them. It's just that device they've put on your head. You're better than that, Doctor. You love me, I know you do…" Rose pleaded, tears flowing freely down her face.

"Love you?" The Doctor snarled. "No, Rose, the Daleks barely did anything, they just unlocked what was always there underneath the surface."

He closed the distance between them in an instance. Using his left forearm the Doctor pushed rose up against the wall of the cabin once more and used their combined momentum to drive the large knife he had picked up through her right hand and deep into the wood of the wall, pinning her there with the metal. She let out a low groan of pain and looked down at the blade, which was buried up to the hilt. She reached over to pull it out, as the Doctor had lazily began to meander back to the table, looking over the remaining blades as if he were a child picking out the biggest slice of cake at a birthday party. She tugged on the blade but it was stuck fast and did nothing but cause her to hiss out in another bout of pain.

"Oh come on Rose," The Doctor tutted, "You were always into these submissive positions in the bedroom." He winked, slinking back towards her.

She looked on in horror, the emotional and physical pain too much for her to formulate a coherent response. He drew close again, pulling her free hand away from the one embedded against the wall, pushing it to the other side of her body. He slammed the knife into her with as much force as the first, burying it up to the hilt. She screamed out again, trying to buckle over with the pain but the knives held fast.

"Now Doctor," Davros snarled, his voice light with glee. "See what you have done."

A slight burst of static energy released from the headband and it fell away. The Doctor's eyes widened in confusion at first, but then disgust as what he had done began to settle in.

"Rose…" He murmured, his voice broken.

"You would make a good Dalek, Doctor," Davros laughed. "End them both."

The last thing Rose Tyler saw through tear stained eyes was the Doctor dying and the hot white glow of a Dalek laser as it struck her in the chest.


	217. Ha Ha You're Dead

**AN: Quite possibly the cruellest chapter title – given the content – I've ever come up with, really. Also, I just thought I'd explain that Clara calls Oswin her "baby sister" because of the time she turned herself into a baby by accident, but Oswin calls Clara her "little sister" because she's technically two years older.**

_Clara_

_Ha Ha You're Dead_

The chill seemed to gnaw at her bones beneath her skin as she walked, frozen to the core, through the house as it creaked beneath her, heading down the stairs a little ahead of Rose, Jenny and the Doctor to get to the front door sooner. The faster they figured out what was happening, the faster she could leave and go have a warm shower and curler up with tea and a hot water bottle. She didn't notice when their voices seemed to vanish behind her, holding the lantern in her hand as she walked.

Assuming that they would catch up, she wrapped her hand in her sleeve so that she could touch the door handle without it freezing her fingers off and tried to open it – but she found it locked. So, she merely sighed, and phased herself through, shivering at the icy door passing through her like she was a ghost.

But she wasn't outside when she came through, she was in a corridor. One not made of wood, one that seemed tiled and decrepit, the walls and floor once white and clean but now covered in brown filth with black mould and yellow damp creeping like sores on the ceiling. Lampshades hung dark with cracked bulbs and blow filaments, the only light source the orange glow of Clara's lantern in her stiff fingers and that of the moonlight through a window at the opposite end of the hallway. She frowned. How could this be right? How could she have left the lodge and ended up in some old building that seemed hauntingly familiar?

She held up her lantern high and turned back, still with a puzzled, uneasy air about her, and saw that the door behind her was not the door to any lodge at all. It was a small door with a mottled-green window, gold, faded writing on it and a hole in the bottom corner where rats and rot had eaten away at the ageing wood. It read _Records Room_. She stared at it, her mouth hanging open a little, trying not to whimper. She managed it, swallowing and turning away from the door, half expecting another lightning flash and a face to appear at the end of the corridor. This was Happy Views Hospital, her worst nightmare. Memories of it still haunted her incessantly at night. Every dark corridor was a reminder, every time someone mentioned cellars or institutions. And all she really knew, at that moment, was that she needed to find her sister. Desperately.

Oswin had to be there somewhere, and if Oswin wasn't with Clara, then she was most likely in danger. In fact, Clara was _sure_ she was in danger, she was sure she could feel it.

When she'd turned back, the scene had changed. It was still a corridor, still like she remembered, only snow was piled in the corners like there wasn't a roof, the white blur of the storm outside still visible at the end of the passageway. A gust of phantom wind blew past her and she shivered, wrapping one of her arms around herself, the one that wasn't clinging to the lantern with fingers that had such little movement she might as well be a corpse. The wind brought something else with it, though. It sounded like a laugh. Distant and mocking, a jeer on a breath flowing past her ears and echoing like it came through the walls itself.

_Find Oswin_, she thought to herself. She had to find her. She would be there somewhere, somewhere in this ghostly mirage of her past, somewhere Oswin would be hiding, she could feel it. Hiding and terrified at the mercy of whatever creatures were lurking in the shadows of the asylum she was trapped in. She didn't try to go back through the Records Room and get back to the lodge. The others would be fine, they could look after themselves. And Clara would be fine, too, even if she was a little scared. Even with the Doctor there, Clara was still more worried about her baby sister than her future wife. So she started to walk forwards.

It seemed to take an age, ice on the frozen floor making her feet skid, the corridor almost growing longer and longer every time she glanced up, seeing that distant window, an escape route to the outside for whenever she retrieved her twin and got out, move further and further out of reach. Yet she made it still, she got to the window, and the staircase on her right, a staircase that only seemed to go up. _Good,_ she thought, _no cellars_. No ghastly, manic suicides for her to walk on that day, she hoped. No decomposing psychos wearing waxy, shrunken grins to silently cackle at her with black tongues and gaunt cheeks.

She expected it to be two flights only, but she kept climbing and climbing, no doors in sight, the same window and the same view down of the forest of dead trees outside greeting her when she reached the top of another set of stairs. Three, four, five, six, eight, ten flights she must have climbed, loping along like an invalid by the end of it, invisible needles stabbing into the gaps between her numb toes, the balls of her feet burning against the pre-emptive rigor mortis in her limbs. And then she was on another corridor, a different one, the next floor up, no windows here, just bricked up 'features' on the surfaces of the walls to stop people outside seeing into hell.

But something on the floor was dark and shiny, it threw the lamplight back at her, reflecting onto the sullied floor it was lying on. Confused, she walked closer, and the closer she drew to the thing, the more she recognised what it was. A leg. A fake leg. Oswin's fake leg. Sleek and black but mangled, the knee-joint nearly torn in two with a few wires and shreds of cabling connecting the thigh and the shin together, the foot itself deformed from somebody crushing it, maybe trampling it with a boot. She felt a stab in her chest and stared at it, the mauled remnant of her sister. Oswin had been there. Oswin must still be there – how would she get around without her leg? How would she escape?

There was a door on the right of that discovery, though. A dirty, dark door. She needed to lift the lantern right up to it and squint to see what was written on it: _ECT_. Electroconvulsive therapy.

"That's how he killed them…" Clara breathed to herself. Dr Wyatt. The ghost from the Dream, the ghost she and Oswin had invented to torment themselves in their coma, an embodiment, probably, or Oswin's fear of institutionalisation. Where else would he take her? There was no way to the basement, no lift shaft, and she had no screwdriver with which to hack it even if there was. Just the room where they gave electroshock treatment. Strapped you down into a rusty chair that had _death sentence_ written all over it and tortured you with lightning.

She knew her sister was in there, her sister was probably trapped with nowhere to go, Wyatt's plaything until Clara could save her and free her from the nightmare she was probably living. She didn't even bother to try and open the door, she just intangibly stepped through it, the cold melting over her skin, feeling like brain freeze as she drifted into it.

And there was the chair, the electric chair. And there was Oswin, strapped into it, filthy, with matted hair and a gaunt expression, empty eyes staring to one side, one barefoot leg sitting limply on the cold floor, a single lightbulb on the ceiling hanging over her. It wasn't just that, though, there was something on her head. Some device, like when people with spinal conditions were put into traction with the neck braces that rested on their skulls to keep them stuck.

"Oswin! Oh my god, oh my god, oh my god!" Clara ran over, dropping the lantern so that it shattered on the ground and left the cold lightbulb as the only thing illuminating Oswin. Or she should say, as she realised when she got closer, Oswin's body. Oswin didn't move a muscle, didn't move her head at all.

Clara had read about it. It was called 'trepanation.' In the Nineteenth Century and the earlier Twentieth, it was used on the insane, and it dated back to Neolithic times. It was where a hole was drilled in somebody's skull to 'release the demons' within it, back when nobody knew what mental illnesses really were and they thought Satan's influence was the most likely reason for somebody acting a little different. And here was Oswin, eyes white and dead with no pigment left in them, patches of skin sagging and falling away from the muscle and bones beneath, a rusty, metal screw attached to a frame burrowing into her brain.

"…Oswin?" Clara croaked, standing uselessly, "You can't… You, um… You're not… You're a hologram… The joke's over…" Oswin didn't move, didn't do anything. She wasn't breathing, but then she was never breathing. She just stared at a corner, a look of terror on her face with her milky eyes drifting in opposite directions. Then Clara saw on her left forearm. She hadn't had enough reach to undo the shackles (and even if she did, where would she go with no leg?), but she'd been able to reach to scratch a message into her skin.

_CLARA_.

That was what it said. That was all it said. But it was enough. It was her fault. Clara's fault. Because she hadn't been able to get there in time. She'd failed as a guardian, as whatever shoddy, half-arsed attempt at 'parenthood' she was trying on, Oswin was dead. Her favourite daughter, the only one she cared about like she really _was_ a daughter, was gone. Deader than she'd ever been. And Clara fell to her knees in front of the electric chair where the cadaver of her baby sister was sitting, tortured in her last moments.

"No, no… I'm sorry, I'm so sorry, Oswin… I couldn't… I didn't know… If you'd just… Just a few more… I'm sorry…" she sobbed, "I'm sorry, it's my fault, it's all my fault, it's my fault you're here anyway, it's all my fault everything's my fault, Oswin…" She rested her forehead on the knee of Oswin's corpse as tears burned her cheeks and her lungs ached with the painful, crushing grief of not being able to save her.


	218. Cabin In The Woods

_Adam_

_Cabin In The Woods_

Adam Mitchell was being honest when he said he thought the cable car was rusty and wouldn't take them all the way up the mountain looming over Mute Hills to Dalton Lodge, and he sat very nervously on the bench inside of the rickety thing as it took them up the mountainside, holding Oswin's hand ("_Are you scared?_" she'd asked, to which he'd replied, "_Why wouldn't I be scared, in a rusty old cable car going up a creepy haunted mountain where if one flimsy wire breaks we're all going to die_?" and then she said she was dead already, and he needed to have more faith in technology. She didn't stop holding his hand, though).

They didn't plummet to their deaths, though, the four of them, they actually made it to the cable car station at the top of the mountain.

"Well this is odd…" River mused when she stepped out, because they stepped out into snow, six inches deep, a black sky above them with glimmers that might be stars through trickles of cloud, the snow silver in the moonlight, "It was summer at the bottom of the mountain."

"Yeah, and it was three in the afternoon," Adam added, stepping into the snow, Oswin looking displeased.

"You'd think I'd maybe be more used to the cold, dating you," she muttered as he helped out of the cable car into the snow, probably unnecessarily, though she didn't complain, "So, this is weird. How is it night up here but not down there?"

"Isn't the obvious answer that it isn't really night?" Nios said, disgruntled at the snow. Maybe cold wasn't good for synthetics. Adam seemed the only person who _wasn't_ irritated by the current weather change. Confused, yes. Worried, also yes. But it wasn't particularly aggravating to him. He couldn't even feel the cold, up on the mountain was a more acceptable climate to him than in the car in the summer was.

"Doesn't anybody notice that it's permanently a winter night up here?" Oswin mused.

"It might not be," River said, "Maybe it's only like this now? With the others here?"

"Well, whatever it is, it doesn't seem like we're gonna be able to figure it out by standing around and talking. We have to find this lodge," Adam said, taking the lead through the snow with Oswin lingering close to his side, River and Nios away from them both respectively examining the outskirts of the trail they were on for any 'clues'.

"Well if they got there when they were drunk, it can't be that hard to find," River commented, which was true enough. They'd been obliterated the previous night, Adam's head was still secretly killing him with one of the worst hangovers he'd ever experienced. He remembered the night, though, thanks to his Chip Type 2, he'd seen them yelling and falling off chairs while they all played their stupid new drinking game in Nerve Centre, so if they'd stumbled across this lodge in their stupors, he was sure the four of them could find it easily. Couldn't be too far from the cable car station, at any rate, then it would just be pointlessly inconvenient.

They traipsed through the snow looking pitiful and underdressed for the weather (which, they were), looking for signs that a hen party had been in the vicinity – a broken, plastic tiara maybe, a sash that said 'bride', various novelty items shaped like penises – looking through the trees and making angry shapes out of the shadows in their heads.

"Do you want my jacket?" Adam said to his girlfriend after fifteen minutes of trekking, when she'd complained about three times about being too cold, and was shivering quite severely.

"What? No."

"I don't need it," he shrugged, "I'm nice and warm." She grimaced.

"Of course you are," she muttered, then a second later, "…Alright, fine…" He smiled to himself and took off his jacket, barely noticing a difference in climate for him with his core body temperature being somewhere circa zero degrees Celsius, "Dating a millionaire and what do I get out of it? A range of hoodies in various colours."

"Do you want me to walk around in designer, tailored tuxedos for my whole life, or something?" he joked, and she didn't say anything, but she did smile a little, "It's more than what you'd get if you went out with the Doctor."

"I don't need to go out with the Doctor, they're my sibling-in-law," Oswin reminded Adam.

"'Sibling-in-law?'"

"Well, one of them's a girl," she shrugged.

Their conversation was interrupted by a scream, and they all stopped searching the ground and the trees with phone torches and turned to face a direction somewhere to the right, where it seemed to have come from.

"What was that?" River asked.

"It sounded like Clara," said Oswin hollowly, and she started walking off towards it.

"What if it's a trick?" Adam called.

"I don't care, I'm not going to assume it's a trick and not go see what's wrong," Oswin shouted over her shoulder at him, almost vanishing into the trees by the time he decided he'd best follow her. He didn't lose sight of her, and after the two of them had started to leave, Nios and River saw it in their best interests to come as well, the three of them stuck following Oswin through the forest, listening for screaming.

Then they started hearing the muttering, familiar but unintelligible as they all wended through a maze of black tree trunks, knocking snow from knocking snow off of branches that came crashing down onto them (Oswin was so difficult to see sometimes now that she insisted on wearing all-black to mourn all the people she thought herself responsible for the deaths of). But it didn't take long to find the source of the muttering or the screaming, and it wasn't just Clara they found.

Four of the girls were curled up in the snow like they'd fallen asleep there, illuminated by the light of Oswin's invisible Sphere hanging over them, twitching like they were having night terrors, talking to themselves, a lantern lying on the ground in a bed of white powder, unlit. Thirteen, Jenny, Rose and Clara.

"It's my fault, it's all my fault, it's my fault, I'm sorry, Oswin," was what Clara seemed to be saying to herself, and Thirteen nearby was mumbling something similar, though about Clara rather than Oswin. Oswin herself then collapsed next to Clara and tried to shake her awake.

"Clara? Clara, what's wrong? I'm right here," she was saying, trying to lift her from where she was curled up in the snow. After a minute, Clara seemed to wake up from whatever was happening to her, "I'm fine, I'm right-" Oswin stopped talking when Clara sobbed loudly and clung to her.

"You were dead," Clara told her brokenly.

"Well, I'm… I'm okay," Oswin said, not wanting so say she wasn't dead, or that she was alive, probably because strictly speaking that wasn't true. She was plenty dead. Just not in the way Clara seemed to think, "I'm fine, we've been looking for you all day."

"I'm sorry, it was my fault…"

"Nothing was your fault," Oswin told her softly, having to hold her so that she didn't fall back into the snow. She must be frozen, all of them must be, the others who hadn't woken up yet. Jenny seemed to be rambling about aliens, while Rose sounded like she was pleading with the Doctor, "I'm fine, nothing's happened to me…"

"There was a body, hanging from a tree, at the back, we saw it through the attic window," Clara told her, "And a woman in the upstairs bathroom, in the bath, shot in the stomach."

"Weren't any dead foetuses in the sink, were there?" Adam said.

"Babe!" Oswin exclaimed, annoyed, "This is _not_ the time for _Silent Hill_ jokes, what's wrong with you!?" Oswin glanced around and saw the lantern, "Can I have your lighter?" Clara said nothing, so Oswin sighed and resolved to fish it out of Clara's pocket herself, holding it out to Adam.

"What..?" he asked her unsurely.

"Re-light the lantern and you and River go try to find the other three," Oswin told him, so he took it and followed her instructions, "Nios, you stay here with me." Nios didn't seem happy about being ordered to stay with a bunch of people who seemed to be having violent, alien-induced nightmares, but she didn't argue. In fact, she went to try and wake up Jenny as Adam got the lantern working.

"They went into the basement," Clara told Oswin in between apologising for apparently not being able to save her life, "No phones…"

"Well, we'll… I'll call if we find anything," Adam told her, starting to walk off, "I love you."

"I love you, too," she said, and then he and River were walking away from the scene, uphill.

"Something took their phones?" River said to him, about the time he checked his pocket to see if his own phone was even still there. Thankfully, it was.

"Probably when they were unconscious," he answered, which seemed the likely solution. No phones, no bags, no sonic screwdrivers, no nothing. That was why they weren't answering. It didn't take long for River Song and Adam Mitchell to finally reach the back of the lodge, but he didn't see any dead bodies hanging from trees. Neither could River, it seemed.

He half expected to see creepy faces in all the windows or something, but he noticed something.

"River, look," he said, nodding at the house.

"What?"

"Clara said they saw a dead body through the attic window, but there is no attic window," Adam told her, "And there's no body, either. This is weird, like, something's making them see things that aren't there…"

"It's making _us_ see things that aren't there, too," River said as they kept walking around the side of the building to get to the front door, "It's not really the night and there's probably not really any snow." She was right. Could they even trust their eyes on that mountain?

They traipsed around through thick snow to get to the front door, finding it to be locked. Adam sighed, and then passed the lantern to River.

"Why? What are you going to do?" she asked him. He didn't answer, but he gripped the door handle and started to slowly freeze it, freeze it and the lock and the wood all the way through to the point where when, a few moments later, he gave himself a thin layer of ice over his knuckles, he was able to punch a hole in the door and shatter the whole locking mechanism completely so that it swung open.

"Come on," he said, taking the lantern off her and holding the door open, and she headed towards the stairs, "Where are you going? The others went to the cellar."

"They said there was a body in the bath, too," she answered him, "I just think we should check if it's there or if they imagined it was."

"Who's to say that we're not being made to see that it _isn't_ there?"

"That deputy said there was only one woman living up here, two bodies doesn't make sense anyway," River said, "And if she got shot in the stomach, she probably didn't do that to herself, so who killed her? Nobody, probably."

She was right, Adam knew, so he followed her up to the second floor to look for the bathroom, which didn't take them long to find. And when they did find it, they found it empty and clean. Spick and span, not a spot of dirt or blood, no dead body. The bath empty and pristine, ready for use (not that either of them were intending to use it). So there weren't any bodies – so where was Tracy Whatshername, who the deputy said was living in the house? Was she still alive?


	219. Don't Be Afraid Of The Dark

**AN: Okay, this is the last chapter of this storyline, but it needs to be read because it has a lot of stuff in it to do with overarching plots I have going on. It's really not scary, and there's no gore and/or emotional trauma or anything like that. If you've been skipping these chapters, this one is barely horror and safe to read.**

_Donna_

_Don't Be Afraid Of The Dark_

It took her a few moments of trying to calm herself down after the door had slammed shut on her to actually start to walk through the creepy tunnel, decrepit and condemned, tiles on the walls like it belonged to a hospital of some sort. She couldn't see one reason why there would be a passageway like this in the cellar of a ski lodge, but she didn't have a way back, and the solution to whatever mystery was happening might lie at the end of this one hallway. It wasn't very long, for starters. It just went forwards, an abandoned wheelchair rusting in one corner lying on its side with a wheel in the air, another door at the end, also with the malachite, chipped paint and the mottled glass that prevented her from properly seeing through.

So Donna Noble started walking, down the hall. As soon as she passed the wheelchair the wheel started to spin, as if someone had just kicked its tire, and she jumped and made a noise that wasn't quite loud enough to be a scream, her eyes glued to the wheel as it spun. _What a cliché_, she thought to herself. It really was, though. The entire secret passageway in a big rich person's house was exactly that. A cliché. Overused. Just a cheap horror-film scare.

As she kept walking she couldn't help but think that them being isolated in a lodge – a glorified cabin in the woods – was a trope, as well, like they'd woken up in the middle of _Cabin Fever_, or _Misery_. She half expected cockroaches to come crawling out of the walls, or a rat to scurry down alongside her, or a spider to drop down from one of the light fixtures, at any given moment. None of that really happened though, and she was getting more and more desensitised and suspicious as she walked.

Light flashed, vibrant pink, through the grubby window of the opposite door when Donna was almost in front of it. Pink light? That frightened her only because she couldn't take a deep breath and tell herself it was some typical, dull part of slasher flick. She'd never seen a horror with bright pink light, and curiosity got the better of her. She would have thought the door would be locked tight to stop her from getting in, and was more than a little surprised when it wasn't. It opened easily, with a small squeak that just meant it needed oiling.

And then she was in a room that didn't fit. A boring, grey concrete room, a large tank in one corner. Simply a water tank, she noticed, a device next to it that was probably just the boiler controls. A fuse box on the walls with a red light on it to show it wasn't working properly. A normal room, not part of the underbelly of a creepy hospital like the corridor she'd just been walking in.

A woman caught her attention, curled up in the corner like she was unconscious. Donna could see her breathing, so she wasn't dead. Then a pink glow distracted her to her left, to a shadowy corner, and something stepped out. Something? Someone? She couldn't tell, whatever or whoever they or it were or was seemed to be wearing some sort of all-black suit, so dark they blended into the darkness and the wall. They looked like a space in the room the light above couldn't reach, like a three-dimensional shadow, with no face or features. Just flat and smooth. And it was holding something in its hands, she could see dark fingers blocking the light from the pink.

"Donna Noble," it said in a mechanical voice, sounding amused by like it was speaking through a voice changer.

"Wha..? Who..? How do you..?" she stepped back.

"Oh, don't worry," it said, "We won't hurt you. We've met."

"We? What do you mean? What's going on here?" It sighed. Or, he sighed? It sounded male, definitely. Looked human in shape, just tall, over six feet, but not abnormal.

"This thing I have contained here," he held up what looked like a jar, just some sort of fancy jar with a complicated lid with a digital readout and a lot of buttons, with something pink in it. It looked like a lot of pink mist trailing off of something flying around inside, "It's called a Frir. It emits this gas, see? When you ingest it, it can make you see things, access your thoughts. Show you your worst nightmares. Could send somebody to suicide. Or, 107 people, by the last count."

"A Frir..?" Donna frowned, it seemed familiar…

"This one has an agenda with the Doctor. Same thing lured him out to a house in England somewhere some time ago. Just kidnapped people then, but this time it went all-out with these suicides for thirty years, just trying to garner attention," he explained. How did he know so much? Who was he? "It can't influence anybody anymore locked up in here. Which is good, because it got some of your friends out there."

"Who? Martha and Amy?" Donna asked.

"The others," he explained.

"Who are you?"

"I work for the Shadow Proclamation," he said, "I'm an assassin. They send me to neutralise threats to humanity when the Doctor fails to do it. I'm assigned to this planet, except in special circumstances."

"Special circumstances?"

"Extreme danger," he said, "They call me the Shadow. Fitting. I can't kill this Frir the way I usually would – it doesn't have a body, so I can't. I just follow your friends around in your TARDIS and clean up your messes. Like that Xenomorph. Strictly speaking, out of the Shadow Proclamation's jurisdiction and their universe, but it was too dangerous."

"You're thing that vaporised the Alien!?" Donna exclaimed, "Then… You killed the Slitheen, too. And that thing the Twins were after last week that was sucking out brains!"

"Yeah, that was me," he confirmed, "Vaporised? That's cute of Oswin to come up with."

"You know Oswin?"

"No. I'm assigned to follow you all around, I know who you are. You're the only one I've met, though."

"What do you mean 'met'? When? Who are you? I don't remember meeting you before," Donna said.

"Think about it," he said, tapping the side of his head (at least, she thought that was what he did), "You'll figure it out. This Frir has a grudge against the Eleventh Doctor and his wife. Figured out that to hurt the Doctor, you hurt Clara. She told a story about finding a body in a basement, killed himself. This gimmick down here is because she'd never come here, so the Doctor wouldn't either, so they'd be dead before they figured out what was happening. They told it they were from the Shadow Proclamation."

"I've been to the Shadow Proclamation, is that where I know you from?" He didn't answer. "Well? Is it?"

"This is Tracy Strauss," he didn't answer her question, rather, motioned to the woman in the corner, "She was trying to kill herself, because of the Frir. I knocked her out and brought her here. Make sure she doesn't do it. She's the woman who owns the house now."

"But I don't get it – your name is the Shadow? Are you a Time Lord?" He laughed.

"Goodbye, Donna. We might meet again." And then he disappeared in a glimmer of blue light, like lightning, shimmering out of existence and out of the room. When Donna glanced back the way she'd come, the corridor just looked concrete, like the rest of the basement, and there were no tiles or spinning wheelchairs. It was normal.

* * *

_Oswin_

"What do you mean, 'worst nightmares'?" Oswin asked. Donna, Amy, Martha, River and Adam Mitchell had reunited to the other six of them finally (with the addition of one Tracy Strauss, the owner of the lodge, who Donna was saying she was going to take to the police to see if she needed any kind of psychological evaluation), after the snow and the night-time seemed to have simultaneously melted away into nonexistence around them, leaving it a cool summer afternoon with green trees and flowers and thick grass and insects. Thirteen, Jenny and Rose had since woken up from their spells, and Jenny was the only one who didn't seem completely emotional devastated. Oswin wondered if _anything_ could really make that girl sad.

"That's what he said," Donna told her, "That the Frir made those four see their worst nightmares. Apparently it was all designed around Clara."

"Oh, everything always has to be about Clara," Rose said dryly, and Clara scowled.

"Well sorry that an alien wanted to make _me_ kill myself more than _you_, Rose."

"It wanted to get to the Doctor, through Clara," Donna kept explaining.

"Who was he, though? Was he human?" Jenny asked.

"He looked human, just in this weird, black suit that didn't reflect any light," Donna said, "He said he was the same person who killed the Slitheen and the Xenomorph. And that lizard-thing you two went after the other day."

"It was a Gallint," Clara informed her.

"But, 'worst nightmares'? What's that mean?" Oswin asked again.

"Probably means worst nightmares, why do you keep going on about it?" Martha questioned her, and she shut up. So Jenny's worst nightmare was a Xenomorph attack, which was expected, since they'd killed her for only the second time in her life. Rose's was the Daleks taking control of Ten's mind and making him murder her. Thirteen hadn't told them what hers had been, but going by what she'd been whispering, and the way she kept staring at Oswin's sister, she suspected it was something to do with Clara dying and not being able to save her. But then… Clara's nightmare had been Oswin dying. And Oswin was already dead, so it must be a pretty powerful hallucination to warrant Clara forgetting that tiny detail. How would Oswin's loss cause Clara more pain than, say, her father's? Or the Doctor's? Why was Oswin the most important?

As Donna kept talking about this assassin, 'the Shadow', giving her theory on how he was some sort of kidnapped Time Lord working for the Shadow Proclamation (which she thought was ridiculous and probably not true), Oswin barely listened. She just kept thinking over and over and over again on how it could possibly be that she, a dead, mentally ill, amputee Dalek, would cause Clara the most pain of anyone else in her life by dying.


	220. Imagine Me & You

**AN: Okay, so I'm gonna do this thing, it's called, "retconning the names of all of Oswin's brothers because when I named them back in March last year I made the stupid decision to name ALL of her family after ****_Bioshock_**** characters." Which nobody noticed so it was kind of pointless, so I'm gonna give her brothers new, vaguely futuristic first names, but I'm keeping the surnames, and all her nieces and her nephew (also named after ****_Bioshock_**** characters, along with her mother, father and stepfathers) can have the same names. So I'll just write it here, since this gonna be relevant again Tomorrow:**

**Andrew = Dret  
****Frank = Fyn  
****Zachary = Zalur  
****Booker = Reker  
****Jeremiah = Jatt**

_Oswin_

_Imagine Me &amp; You_

Yet again, she had set the scenic walls of her bedroom to project a scene of Titan below them like she was really there looking out across the bronze surface from the window on the engineering deck, where she and Fyn habitually used to go when they felt down. At least, until she was eighteen, when she was put under an even more severe house-arrest than she'd been under for her life up until that point, because she'd snuck out of the house with Nina and caused a lot of damage to the one high school they had on Horizon.

She sat on the floor, leaning on the bed, the same way she remembered doing on a set of stairs, the same set of stairs she'd been sat on crying after her disastrous first date with her boyfriend, wherein she'd been disowned.

"Oswin?" someone asked, but she didn't answer. She assumed it was just Adam Mitchell anyway, though she'd scarcely listened to the voice. She was distracted, she couldn't get the fact that apparently her loss was, _somehow_, the worst nightmare of Clara Oswald. They might be close, but they'd only known each other for a matter of months.

Someone sat down next to her. Adam. Watching the asteroids on the distant image of Saturn's rings, the edge of the moon dusted with the vibrant, blue tholins that drifted through the inhospitable atmosphere. It was exactly like being there, without the fear of somebody recognising her who was related to someone she might've inadvertently killed. Thank god she'd been a hermit.

Adam nudged her and she blinked, finally, and unnecessarily. She didn't need to blink.

"Hmm?"

"Are you alright?" he asked her. She drew up her legs and wrapped her arms around them, curled up, resting her chin on the knee of her good leg.

"Why would it be her worst nightmare? I mean, it's just me. I'm dead. I'm… I don't understand," she muttered, "We're not _really_ twins, or sisters, or even related. We just look the same…"

"That's not true, I mean, she made you," Adam said, "Maybe your parents would've had a genius daughter called 'Oswin', but she wouldn't be you."

"She might have been less severely mentally ill. Might not have run away and died for the Doctor. How much of my life was a series of events leading me to the Dalek Asylum, and how much of it was even me? Everyone always deciding things for me, babying me, like I can't make my own decisions…" she grumbled, "Even now. Everyone always worried about who's going to 'supervise' me today. Who will I be a burden on this time?"

"You're not a burden, not on me and not on Clara," Adam told her softly, "Why don't you just ask her? Even if it's debatable what relation you are to each other, you're still best friends." Oswin sighed, mentally feeling about in the dark for a shred of what Clara was feeling, though the mind-patch was still disabled, like it had been since the night before. Not the doing of the Frir, the doing of a drunken Clara.

"What's _your_ worst nightmare?" she asked him.

"_My_ worst nightmare… Spiders." She laughed a little and looked at him.

"Spiders?"

"Yeah, they're terrifying. They're creepy and they have eight legs. The more legs something has the freakier it is. That's why I like you so much, you've only got one leg," he joked, smiling.

"'Like' me?" she questioned, smirking and raising an eyebrow.

"I don't really love you, I've just been lying this entire time to get into bed with you," he said mock-seriously, but he couldn't keep a straight face for long, and she moved so that she was leaning on his shoulder as she watched the distant constellations, all of them from a different angle to the ones you could see from Earth.

"Well, it worked," she said, "Seriously, spiders, though?"

"Have you even seen a spider?" he questioned, and she paused for a moment and frowned.

"Nope."

"You and I are going to a zoo, Oswin Oswald," he said.

"Zoos are cruel, babe."

"Don't pretend you care about animals, you hate anything that's not human. And even then, you hate most humans."

"I hate _you_."

"A true Dalek," he joked, "We'll go to Blackpool Zoo with Clara and she can show you the sights of the city. Like the thousands of chippies and the dead jellyfish on the beach."

"Does the village where you grew up not have a zoo?"

"Um, the village where _I_ grew up has mermaids," he argued, and she laughed again, "There's an aquarium in Blackpool, too. I know how much you _love_ the sea. They sell rock cocks, too."

"What on _Titan_ is a-" she was cut off by a scream. But it wasn't a scream that she heard, and it wasn't one that Adam heard, either. It was more like a scream she felt, some mortified wail that came at her like a right hook and knocked her off-guard. The mind-patch might be broken, but there wasn't a way to deactivate the emotional tie Clara had to her Echoes, and vice versa, and that was what Oswin felt.

"What is it?"

"Something happened to Clara," she frowned.

"Something bad?"

"I think so, but not like, pain. Or fear. I don't know, it's like, confusion and regret," she said, standing up with the same difficult she and her fake leg always had when she sat on the floor for a while, "I think we'll find out, though, if you give it a minute."

As he stood up next to her, her sister appeared in the room in a cloud of the black smoke that curled off her every time she teleported (Oswin was still toying with the idea that the aesthetic of this ability was down to Clara's smoking habit, but she hadn't said anything to her about it), wearing only underwear, because she was one of those weirdos who didn't seem fussed by people seeing everything.

"Is this to do with you!?" Clara demanded.

"Is what to do with me..?" Oswin asked, not liking how angry Clara seemed to be, taking a step away towards Adam. Not that Adam was going to do anything by way of protecting her from her furious sister, but Clara probably wouldn't do anything to hurt her, anyway. She just didn't like being shouted at, it made her flinch.

"This!" Clara said, turning her back, and Oswin saw. She saw the result of what happened when you were to get completely, utterly shitfaced and smash up a tattoo parlour.

"Oh my _stars_, Clars, is that a _mango_!?" Oswin exclaimed, highly amused all of a sudden, walking up to Clara and staring at the spot of skin on her back, over her left shoulder, where there was a now a painful looking image of a mango.

"Yes, it's a fucking mango!"

Oswin burst out laughing.

"This is hilarious. This is why you shouldn't get drunk, honey," Oswin said.

"I got a _tattoo_!? While I was _drunk_!?"

"Yeah, didn't you remember?"

"Wait, you _did_ know!?"

"Well, no," Oswin said, defending herself, "We were following you and River and I happened across this tattoo parlour where they spotted me and named me as the culprit for someone who smashed apart their whole shop last night, so we spent about eight hours in jail together until Mitchell showed up and paid for the damages to the shop and paid our bail. They never said if you even got a tattoo, or what it was."

"I just go to have a shower and now I have _this_!? Get rid of it!" Clara ordered.

"What? No! I like it," Oswin said, "I'm not gonna program the nanogenes to erase it for you."

"Oswin. Get rid of this stupid tattoo!"

"I just said no. I'm sure Adam will pay for you to have 'Mango-Whore' written across it though, in a nice cursive," Oswin joked.

"I would definitely pay for that," Adam assured her.

"It's what you deserve, anyway," Oswin said.

"Deserve!? Deserve for what!?"

"For stealing my mango!" Oswin exclaimed, "Obviously!"

"If you'd just shared your stupid mangoes to begin with then I wouldn't have needed to steal it anyway!" Clara argued.

"I climbed a tree to get those mangoes."

"Bullshit."

"I did! What did _you_ do? Hmm?"

"Oh, I only _saved you from drowning_ because _you can't swim_, Oswin!"

"You don't need to swim in space, _Clara_!" Oswin copied her with the same tone of voice.

"And I caught those crabs."

"Maybe if you didn't sleep around so much you wouldn't've caught crabs, hmm?" Oswin challenged, and Clara turned and gave her a look of death, "I'm not getting rid of it, Clara. At least it's sentimental, and if anyone sees it you can just say you like mangoes."

"Oh, yeah, I like mangoes so bloody much I got one tattooed on my back," she said sarcastically.

"Well, you like penis a lot, too, so I think you should count your blessings that you don't have a boner doodled down your spine, honey," Oswin said, and Clara scowled, but she was definitely trying not to laugh (Adam _did_ laugh). Oswin crossed her arms and stepped away to observe it. "Look, it's not that bad. It could've been huge or something, but it's like, actual size for a mango. At least _think_ about keeping it."

"…Oh my god. I hate you, I hate you so much sometimes, Oswin. Fine. I'll _think_ about it. _THINK_. I'm not keeping it."

"I think you should. It's a symbol of our love."

"That's gross."

"On that topic, do you think you could turn the mind-patch back on?"

"It's off? Oh, that makes sense…"

"You did it when you were drunk."

"Oh. Sorry. Yeah. Sure. I'll do that when I get the screwdriver back… Which reminds me… I had something else I needed to talk to you about…"

"You're not gonna ask me to feel for lumps, are you..?" Oswin asked nervously, giving her a suspicious look.

"What? No, of course not. But if I _was_ gonna have someone feel for lumps, it would be you."

"Oh, great, don't I feel privileged. Just get Jenny to do it, I'm sure she'd do a thorough job."

"…Whatever. Anyway. It's about Martha…"

* * *

_Jenny_

"The Twelfth Doctor asked me to finally sort their TARDIS tomorrow," Jack told her, the pair of them sitting in Nerve Centre idly drinking tea and gossiping about the other members of the crew. Jenny nearly choked on her drink when he said that though.

"What do you mean? They're leaving? Tomorrow?"

"Unless we can't clear out the hive," Jack shrugged, then he smirked, because they both knew what that meant, "You've basically lost the bet."

"I haven't lost the bet," Jenny muttered.

"You've been pointlessly biding your time," Jack made fun of her as she slouched down, leaning her head on one hand on the table and watching Claratoo across the room, "C'mon, it was _your_ bet. And _you're_ the one who started the game in the first place, remember? With the Victorian?"

"Yeah, well, you didn't have to retaliate with Eyeball, did you?" she questioned him, and he shrugged, "Now you've started a feud between us."

"Oh, but it's the best kind of feud. A sex-feud."

"I can do it," Jenny said.

"_I_ think you _can't_," he said.

"Really? Well, if tonight is my last chance, so be it. I will see you in the morning," she said as she stood up, "I'll see you tomorrow, with that dazed, post-coital expression you like so much, and I'll tell you _all_ about it."

He leant in to kiss her, but she moved away, smirking, before he could, and he watched her pick up her tea and walk across the room

"Did you know," Jenny began, dropping into the seat next to Beta Clara, who was eating cereal for dinner and looking annoyed (like usual), the bandage removed from her nose but the skin still blue and yellow from where it had been broken the other day, "That Martha Jones _totally_ fancies you?"

"…Sorry?" Clara asked, frowning, only speaking after she'd swallowed her current bite of cereal, raising an eyebrow incredulously at Jenny.

"Seriously."

"The married, straight Martha Jones who used to be in love with the Tenth Doctor?" Clara questioned, "Who is _married_ and _straight_?"

"Exactly."

"Of course," she said sarcastically, shaking her head and going back to her Coco Pops.

"I'm not even kidding," Jenny said, "Rose has been telling me about it." Rose _had_ been telling her about it, "All about some joke Adam Mitchell made the other day about you – other you – fingering girls. Lighting cigarettes for you. Asking what you're like when you're turned on. Becoming briefly and weirdly obsessed with you and Oswin-"

"Who did she ask what I was like when I'm turned on?" Clara asked urgently in a whisper.

"Thirteen," Jenny answered, "And she was all, 'I wanna know what Clara's got to offer.' And Rose was all, 'What?' Then she's pacing outside of Other You's room for ages yesterday morning to 'ask her out' for the day. And this morning you and Thirteen went to the toilet in the creepy haunted lodge and she's all, 'why are you going to the toilet together?' and making weird noises when they talk to each other. I heard she kicked their sofa, but I was asleep."

"Wait, what's going on between Other Me and Thirteen..?"

"Oh, I've no clue," Jenny shrugged, "Not a lot, I don't think. Jealousy, though. Can't deny it."

"You're reading too deeply into things," Clara said, "You're one of those girls who seems to think that every girl you see is just _waiting_ be turned. Martha has a husband."

"Doesn't mean she's straight, _you're_ not straight. She could be just as bisexual as you."

"Uh-huh?" Clara just questioned, then shook her head, "Look, she's not gay."

"She's totally gay."

"She's not. What do you want? Did you just come over here to tell me that?"

"No, I have ulterior motives," Jenny told her, just smiling innocently and leaning close, her chin on her hand with her elbow on the table. Clara eyed her suspiciously.

"…Are you trying to shag me? I was warned that you'd try to shag me."

"Well hopefully it gets beyond the 'trying' stage." Clara put her spoon down and crossed her arms, leaning on them and just watching Jenny.

"You're not supposed to just tell girls that you're trying to sleep with them."

"Yeah, but this is you, everyone knows you're easy. And anyway, they only warned you against me trying. They didn't say anything about me actually succeeding," Jenny said, "Thing is, Clara, I kind of have this bet going, with Jack."

"Oh, I'm a bet?" she questioned, trying to sound offended, when really she was smiling, "A bet with your husband, no less?"

"Well he's Captain Jack, and I'm _me_, you can't expect monogamy from people like us," Jenny shrugged, "Not these days. Anyway, I'm not one to lie."

"No, you're a very moral person, obviously."

"I'm just being upfront."

"Upfront about the imaginary sex you and I are not going to have?"

"I'm not gonna lie and say I haven't been imagining it," Jenny shrugged, and Clara laughed.

"Go on, then. Tell me. What are the stakes of this bet?"

"Well, if I win – meaning, if you knowingly _help _me win – Jack's gonna make a vow of complete chastity that he has to keep for at least a week. If _he_ wins, then he's going to shave my head. It really all rests on you," Jenny told her.

"Well," said Clara jokingly, "I've never been one to stop pretty girls from winning bets, Jenny. And your hair _is_ quite soft." Clara twirled a strand of Jenny's blonde hair around her finger for a moment, clearly eyeing Jack over Jenny's shoulder.

"Famously soft, I hear that from a lot of people," Jenny said, "It's not like it would mean anything. Plus, wouldn't you just _love_ to be able to put that Doctor of yours in his place by saying you did his daughter?"

"So vulgar," she whispered.

"It'd be meaningless."

"Oh yeah?"

"Yeah."


	221. I Knew You Were Trouble

**AN: TW: Death in family.**

_DAY NINETY-EIGHT_

_Oswin_

_I Knew You Were Trouble_

She yawned, eyes stinging, when she was awoken by a sound. Not a creepy, slimy sound like the other day with the octopus Twelve had dumped on them, but a phone ringing, and it was _her_ phone. Groaning because she was artificially tired, she rolled over away from Adam Mitchell (who sounded like he'd been woken up, too) and feeling for her phone underneath the pillow where it was and squinting at the bright screen in the dark.

"Who is it?" Adam asked quietly behind her.

"My brother," she answered.

"You have five brothers, which one?" he asked her to specify, but she didn't answer him, just sat up and rubbed one of her eyes and answered the call from Fyn.

"Hello?" she said, yawning again. He didn't say anything, "...Fyn? Are you there..?"

"..._Yeah, yeah, I'm_..." he began.

"What's wrong? Has something happened?"

"_Yeah... Something has..._"

"Well what is it? Are you alright?" she asked.

"_It's not me, it's mum..._" he said.

"What about her?"

"_She's died_."

Oswin felt like she'd be hit, straight in her gut, below her ribs, knocking the air straight out of her lungs. Not that she technically had lungs, she didn't even breathe, but that was what it felt like. Staring dead ahead unseeingly, her hand searched for Adam's and found it, clutching his fingers tightly.

"What's happened?" Adam asked, sitting up now when he realised something was wrong.

"No, no... I mean... H-how?" she asked.

"_An illness, I don't really know, Dret was foggy on the details_," he told her.

"Oh..." Oswin said simply, and emptily. She didn't know how to feel about this. She'd never gotten along with her mother. She'd been used to get money, kept locked up, and then disowned without a shred of sympathy for what had happened to her on the Dalek Asylum. She kept hold of Adam's hand and leant back against the wall, half-sitting on her pillow.

"_He's making the arrangements. He told me to tell you to come. To the funeral, I mean. It's 5134. December Thirtieth._"

"The funeral? What does he want me there for?" she questioned, feeling numb and more dead than she usually did, dully aware of her lack of blinking or breathing, the fact that there was no sweat on her hands or heartbeat thudding in her ears. Adam didn't say anything, just listened, sitting up next to her, and she leant on his shoulder.

"_He told me to make you come, and to make you make Zalur come_," Fyn said, "_Since you're the only one who can bring him_."

"Oh, so he's using me?" she questioned grimly, _Using me like she did?_, she didn't say.

"_No, Os, don't see it like that, look... Flek will want to come as well, you know she will. Will you come? Thirtieth of December_?"

"5134. I heard you."

"_Please come_."

"I'll get recognised."

"_No-one knows what you look like and you know it. Nobody's seen you properly in public since Dret got married, and even then barely,_" Fyn said, remarking on how she was always kept locked up in the attic like a madwoman, a 'regular Bertha Rochester,' Clara would probably tell her, "_Oswin, you have to come_."

"She wouldn't want me there. She'd tell you, she'd say I brought her nothing but trouble. Trouble and money, but she'd forget about the money. She'd say, 'Don't let that girl in, she's no daughter of mine.' You know she would, Fyn," Oswin told him.

"_You don't know that. I get this is sudden, but I didn't even know she was sick. I would've told you, but she only told Dret, I only found out a few hours ago that anything was even... I'm sorry, okay? But you have to come, I need you there, Os,_" he told her.

"I'll come with you," Adam whispered. She didn't think that bringing him was a particularly good idea, truth be told. Bringing him meant second introductions to her brothers, and he'd only ever met Fyn properly. No doubt the other four, who remembered him from Christmas Day 5131, wouldn't take kindly to him being there. But did they really matter? They'd all disowned her as much as her mother, never contacting her. Why did she give a damn what they thought?

"I could've helped, if..." she said hollowly. Would she have helped even if she was asked? She was dead, too. What did she owe the living? The living who'd never given her anything except cushy furniture and a permanent curfew?

"_I know, but she only told Dret. I'm sorry. Will you come? Will you be there? It's in the Glass Cathedral_," Fyn explained. The same large, windowed venue where she'd married her third husband. Oswin remembered that wedding crystal clear. She'd complained about being a bridesmaid the whole day, while taunting her older brother over the fact she'd slept with one of his friends and the rumour had gotten aroun the school she didn't attend. Fyn had been reading a book of their father's. She thought Reker may have been throwing a tantrum, he was only young, while Zalur tried in his broody, irritated manner to shut him up and get back to the food. Jatt hadn't been born yet. She had made snide remarks through her new stepfather's speech.

"I'll..."

"_If you don't come, any chance at having some kind of relationship with any of them but me is basically gone_," Fyn told her, which was true. Dret would never forgive her, Reker probably wouldn't, and Jatt probably barely remembered his only sister.

"Zalur didn't like her either," Oswin said sharply.

"_Yeah, well, you and Zalur can sit off in a corner moping together, then, can't you? Look, I had to write the eulogy Dret's giving, so the least you could do is just turn up_," he said, equally sharp.

"Fine, Fyn. Fine. Adam's coming, though, I'm bringing him," she decided.

"_Be at the Glass Cathedral for eleven, Os_," he said, and then he hung up, because she'd annoyed him with her coldness and apathy. She stared at the phone in her hand as the display faded and died in front of her.

"Are you okay?" Adam asked her.

"I don't know what I'm supposed to feel right now, Adam," she said to him flatly, calling him by his first name because this wasn't the time for stupid nicknames right then. She fell onto his shoulder. Throughout all of this, both of them had forgotten that it was Thirteen's night to sleep, and, accordingly, she was on the sofa. It was too dark for Oswin to really see if she was awake, though.

"Do you know what time it is?" Adam asked her.

"Seven in the morning," Thirteen answered nearby, making him jump, "Sorry," she said, turning the light on as she did and lighting up the room, showing her awkwardly stretched with one knee on the sofa to reach the switch. She smiled apologetically at them, "Should've mentioned I was awake, um... I forgot that that happened while I was here..." She sank back onto the sofa, watching them with sympathetic brown eyes, like a puppy, just as there was a knock on the door. But instead of waiting for an answer, Clara just barged on through, phasing through the door and paying no notice to Thirteen being there.

"Here we go..." Oswin muttered, running a hand through her messy, tangled hair.

"What's wrong?" Clara asked, "Has something happened?" Thirteen just watched, silently.

"Um... Yeah, I... I guess..." Oswin said. How to break the news to Clara that she was, most definitely, _not _allowed to accompany Oswin to this funeral and offer moral support.

"Well? Are you okay? What is it?" Clara came and sat on the bed, still not seeing her future-wife.

"It's just, um, you know... My, um... My mother died... Fyn just called to tell me..." she said, not knowing how Clara would react at all. Clara, whose mother had died seven years ago, whom she actually got along with, who hadn't used her and disowned her and not shed a tear over her death.

"...Your mother who you hate?"

"Erm, I guess..." she said weakly. Did she hate her still, even in death? "I was inviting me to the funeral, said I have to come, and I have to bring Zalur over from Eslilia as well for it." Clara sat in a daze for a moment, apparently not knowing if she should offer her sympathies or not for someone who'd not done a whole lot of good for Oswin in her life _or _in her death. "Adam will come with me, I'll be-" Someone else, a fifth addition to the ensemble gathering in Oswin and her boyfriend's befroom, barged rudely into the room without so much as a knock. At seven AM, too.

"Up and at 'em, Mitchell," Jack Harkness said, sticking his head around the door, "We're Xenomorph hunting today, you're needed."

"I - what? No, Jack, I can't," Adam argued.

"You don't have a choice."

"I have to go somewhere today."

"Yeah, you have to go to the Beta TARDIS, with me, Martha and Rose, and kill a Xenomorph Queen. It'll be easy, we scavenged some flamethrowers from Torchwood a few weeks ago, remember? Girlfriendy was fixing them up," Jack said, and Oswin clenched her fist.

"Do _not _call me that," she said through gritted teeth, "I'll set Clara on you."

"The threat of me ripping out your spine through your arsehole I made last month when you shagged Eyeball still stands," Clara told him with a fake-smile.

"You're coming, end of discussion. We need your knowledge," Jack said.

"The _Aliens_ franchise has a wiki, you know! You could just get it up on your phone and search when you need to know something!" Adam shouted after Jack, but Jack had gone, closing the door behind him, Adam groaning, "I'm so sorry, look, I'll just sneak away from-"

"It's okay, you should go with them. You _are _important for their 'mission', or whatever," Oswin told him.

"The who'll go with you?" Clara questioned her, clearly trying to get Oswin to ask her to come.

"Well, Fyn'll be there. So will Flek."

"Flek? Why will Flek be there?" Adam asked stiffly, and she sighed, in no mood for him being jealous of her ex-girlfriend.

"Because if I have to go get Zalur, she'll want to come, too. _I'd _want her to come, and so would Fyn. She's a friend of the family, anyway, she lived with us for four years, even if she is still sort-of a Cluster Spore," Oswin said.

"I'll go," Thirteen said, making Clara jump.

"Christ, when did you get here!?" she exclaimed.

"This is where I sleep, when I sleep. I've been here the whole time," Thirteen told her, and Oswin didn't know where the pair of them stood with their relationship right then. Suddenly, she was disinterested in Clara's petty affairs of the heart. The Doctor looked back to Oswin, "In the future, I mean, you and I are friends. And maybe we're not _now_, but you're my sister-in-law. I'll go with you, if you want someone to."

"...Okay..."


	222. Say Yes

**AN: Queeeeers! Gotta have them queers. Lightening the mood with them. Can't have too many girls who like girls. Impossible. Always gotta have more. Brace yourselves for an enslaught of lesbianism.**

_Jenny_

_Say Yes_

"You've had your own bathroom this entire time?" Jenny questioned Beta Clara, standing in the bathroom pulling faces at herself as she brushed her teeth, seeing if she could make her artificial eyes change colour from their pre-programmed blue. The bright lights of the bathroom bounced off her silver righthand, and she could see herself reflected in that, too, twice over, the image in the mirror distorting across her fingers. All she was wearing was a towel from the shower she'd just had in the bathroom Clara had been secretly hoarding, though, Jenny had never really seen her in the girls' bathroom now that she thought about it.

"Are you using my toothbrush?" Clara called through. The door was almost halfway open.

"Yeah, but this is a shit toothbrush, mine's electric," Jenny told her.

"Well so is mine, the one I have at home," she said, "What do you care, anyway? Didn't seem too fussed for me having a clean mouth last night." Jenny smirked to herself in the mirror and the cast a glance back into the guest bedroom, which looked a lot like it was part of a Premier Inn with no windows. She could just about see Clara in the dimness of the bedsight light she had on, hidden under the covers facing away from her. It was early.

"Wouldn't've slept with you if I knew you had such bad dental hygiene," she said.

"Some days I don't even floss."

"Ew," she said, rinsing her mouth out, "You're the Clara who's never slept with a Time Lord, I just remembered. Well, I mean, you have _now_."

"I'm not reviewing you, Jenny," she said drolly, Jenny leaning on the doorframe into the bathroom untangling knots in her hair, "I didn't sleep with you because you're a Time Lord, anyway, that's just a bonus. It's because you're shorter than me."

"By, like, an inch," she argued, going over to switch the lights on, watching Clara stuff her face into her pillow and then make a noise of pain because she'd forgotten she had a broken nose.

"And inch can make a lot of difference."

"Not when you're a girl," Jenny reminded her, and she thought Clara might have laughed, "It's a nice bathroom, and everything, with those TARDIS-blue walls. No salmon-pink like the girls' bathroom, no cream tiles."

"The bathroom at home is just white and always seems dirty - I'm bad at cleaning," Clara told her, rolling onto her side and staring at the deep purple wall, "You know, you're the first person I've slept with this month whose name I remember. The other week, with the Alien, the Doctor shows up," she started telling the story as she sat up, bedsheets held down by her arms to cover herself, "Drags me out for the day without letting me so much as kick the girl in my bed out of the place. He asked me what she was called."

"What did you say?"

"Rum &amp; Coke. She was definitely a better lay than Straight Vodka or Bacardi Breezer. The best one recently has to be WKD Purple," she said.

"It's a shame I wasn't drinking last night, you could've named _me_ after a drink, too," Jenny joked, "So how many people _have _you slept with this month?"

"I don't know. You might be the seventh," she shrugged.

"Wow, what does the Doctor think of that? If he shows up in your house all the time? Has he ever run into someone from your many strings of lovers?" she asked jokingly, though she was genuinely curious and she hoped she'd get an answer.

"He ran into, um..." she frowned and thought, "Straight Vodka. Straight Vodka was weird, this guy who wore so much eyeliner, which didn't really bother me but it freaked out the Doctor. He thinks Rum &amp; Coke was the fourth in as many weeks. He said, 'Do you not have any respect for yourself? Sleeping around?' Urgh."

"So am I better than WKD Purple?"

"I never kiss and tell."

"We did more than kiss, though," she said slyly, and Clara said nothing, just laughed a little, "So I was thinking that we could-" there was a knock on the door. Who'd be knocking on Claratoo's door? Not Twelve, surely? But more likely than not. Neither of them moved, just stood, whoever was outside left waiting. From what Jenny had seen of Old Twelvey, he seemed like the type to barge straight in rather than knocking twice - which Clara's guest had just done.

"I know you're up, I heard you on the phone," Martha called, and Jenny and Clara exchanged a look, Jenny's eyes widening, biting her lip to stop from laughing. Clara did a face while shaking her head that seemed to say, '_She does not fancy me_,' and Jenny slowly reached for the door handle.

"_No!_" Clara mouthed when she touched it.

"_Please?_" Jenny mouthed back, and Clara kept shaking her head, getting more and more agitated until Jenny opened the door finally, to Martha's shock-horror, who gawked, "Yeah? Do you want to talk to Clara?"

"Why the hell are you here?" Martha asked her.

"Bit rude. She invited me here."

"To what? Shower?"

"I didn't actually say you could shower, you just said you were gonna," Clara shrugged.

"Hey, it's _my _father's spaceship, and I voted for you to stay the other week. Have I not earnt the right to _all_ of your 'facilities'?" Jenny said, turning towards her and winking so that Martha didn't see.

"You just showed up here and barged into her shower?"

"I didn't _barge_ into anything, I stated my full intentions."

"Your intention to shower..?" Martha frowned, "Why would just come here in the morning?"

"I didn't cum this morning, I came last night," Jenny said, and Clara snorted.

"You were here last night?" Jenny nodded. "Doing..?"

"Clara. Obviously. I had a bet on with Jack, he said I couldn't get her to sleep with me. I have just proved him wrong. Clara'll back me up," Jenny said, and Clara just shrugged indifferently. Martha said nothing. "_We had sex_, Martha. It's a thing that people do. Do I need to draw you a diagram? I'm sure you'd _love _that."

"What's that supposed to mean?" Martha questioned, Jenny glancing back at Clara, who just raised her eyebrows at her and then shook her head.

"Some girls like girls, Martha," Jenny said, and Martha stared at her, annoyed.

"Are you alright with being a bet?" Martha questioned Clara.

"A bet that ends with me sleeping with someone hot is my kind of bet," she shrugged, "At least I remember Jenny's name. Doesn't really bother me. Anyway, if she lost she would've had to shave her head, I don't want that."

"...Well, I... Just came to let you know we're going to clear out your TARDIS now," Martha said awkwardly, "So you can go home later. You _will _go home later."

"Great, I think there's a girl back there waiting for me in my bed," Clara smiled, and Jenny laughed.

"Ugh. You know what I'm sick of? Lesbians. _Urgh_," Martha grumbled, walking off.

"That's a bit homophobic, Martha," Jenny called after her as she closed the door, but Martha didn't look back. As soon as she shut it, she started to walk over to Clara, "I told you she fancies you."

"That was proof of nothing."

"Yes it was! She went to every feasible length to try and deny that we slept together," Jenny said.

"Well maybe she _is _just homophobic, have you thought of that?" Clara challenged as Jenny sat down on the bed next to her, shuffling to the left a little to make more room for the Doctor's daughter.

"I'll ask her."

"You're gonna ask her if she's homophobic?"

"No, I'm gonna ask her if she fancies you. I'll text you what she says."

"You don't have my phone number."

"I was just about to ask for it."

"Why?"

"I have a proposition."

"I'm not gonna date you."

"Nothing that involves as much emotion as 'dating'."

"...Oh, _I _get it," Clara said, "You want me as a booty call?" Jenny just grinned. "Interesting idea, I'll give you that."

"Give me one good reason why not."

"Because we live in different universes."

"Two good reasons."

"Because your dad is my best friend."

"My dad is your taxi driver, more like, so _you _can see the stars. You could see the stars with me if that's what you're so bothered about."

"Because I'm the same person as your stepmother."

"My stepmother is 183 years younger than me anyway."

"Because you're married."

"Jack has like, _dozens _of friends with benefits."

"We're hardly friends, Jenny, you're just sleeping with me to annoy the people you live with, using me."

"And you're using me to get back at the Doctor for all the awful stuff he says about you. I've seen the episodes, and I've seen the real thing. Let me tell you, you do _not _have hips like a man, and you don't look remotely the same age, and your dimples aren't pockmarks, they're adorable," Jenny said, "I'm only asking for your phone number, if you think about it."

"Okay, fine, you can have my phone number," she said, picking up Jenny's phone from the side where it was sitting, "But whether I ever answer it is another thing."

"You _will _answer it."

"You don't know that for sure."

"Of course I do," she said, and then she kissed Clara, who seemed a little surprised, but did not object, and even kissed back until Jenny pulled away, "I can tell by the way you kiss." Clara leant back.

"What way's that?"

"Leaning into me. Not stopping me."

"Huh."

"Exactly."

"...Well, here," Clara handed Jenny her phone back, "My phone number. Do call ahead, though. Don't just show up. Might have somebody else over."

"Go shower now. You smell disgusting. It's rank."


	223. My Brother's Keeper

**AN: Went back to school today, so double updates will probably end up stopping. Also, yeah, today is really gonna be centered around Oswin and Oswin's family (people usually seem to like reading about her family, so) and I've decided against writing any chapters about them clearing out the Xenomorph hive, but I might have someone give a detailed retelling of what happened in a later chapter.**

_Oswin_

_My Brother's Keeper_

Thirteen drifting behind her looking quite happy to be out with Oswin, of all people, Oswin knocked loudly on the door into cockpit of the crashed spaceship atop the high trees of Eslilia in the colony they called Skybound, the little remnant of Drifter Squadron Echo that now housed Flek Phisj. She had not called ahead, and had to knock twice, when Flek answered holding a gun by her side. Uneasiness and suspicion changed to confusion and mild happiness when she saw Oswin standing there, though. She had not called ahead.

"Hi," Oswin said, not quite managing to smile. She wanted to, but she still felt hollow, "I have to talk to you. And to my brother. Could you fetch him?"

"What's going on? You didn't call," Flek said, putting her gun to the side, watching Oswin with the same sort of friendly concern as Thirteen was.

"Well, no, I know, I'm sorry, but I have to come and get Zalur. On request of Fyn, on behalf of my older brother, who didn't want to talk to me himself, apparently," Oswin explained bitterly. She was often a little shocked by how eagerly Dret had gone along with this disowning, considering he'd once been so annoyingly protective of her the one time she'd slept with one of his friends. He'd become the primary enforcer of her curfews and lockdowns after that, going out of his way to keep her in the house (not that it worked too well). But Dret wasn't a half-brother, like the youngest three. And it seemed he'd been icing out Fyn, as well.

"Why? What's happened?" Flek asked.

"I should tell you together. Could you just get him, Flek? Please? I have to take him to Horizon, and he might want to go even less than I do." Finally, Flek ushered them into her cockpit home with its rusty controls, cracked roof with plant vines falling through, grimy walls from humidity, but quarantined bedroom from when she'd been deathly ill with Ceposea.

"What?" Zalur asked fifteen minutes later in his usual surly, depressed manner when Flek had gone and fished him out of whatever hovel he slept in and dragged him to where Oswin and Thirteen were, "Who's that? Not another girlfriend?"

"No, ew," Oswin said, "You remember Clara? The one who looks like me who _doesn't_ have a fake eye? Well, this is her wife from the future. Sort of. She's not my girlfriend. Will you just sit down?"

"Why do I need to sit down?"

"Just. Sit down," she ordered through gritted teeth, glowering at him. Of all her brothers, he might be the least favourite. Of course, the youngest she barely knew, and maybe at that moment Dret was taking the lead in that particular competition. At least Zalur had a _reason_ to be the way he was, always the out-of-place sibling. Nobody had liked his father and his father had run off. Mother always saw him as a copy of his dad, so when she moved on to the next man, Zalur was stuck raising himself in a house full of people who seemed to wish his father had taken him, too, when he'd run off. He hadn't, though. Dret was the favourite. Oswin was kept around because she brought money into the house. Fyn was quiet and solitary and often ignored. Zalur was so desperate to be noticed he'd always acted up. As far as she knew, Reker and Jatt had always been the children most showered with affection out of all six of them.

Zalur sat down finally.

"What?" he asked again, resentfully. Flek stood by, her eyes going between the brother and sister, just like Thirteen's.

"Fyn called me this morning. Has he spoken to you?"

"Fyn doesn't speak to me. None of them do."

"He sent me to come and get you and take you home for today."

"Why?"

"Mother's died," she said stiffly, trying to look like she might perhaps feel something, have any kind of response other than apathy at the news of her mother's passing, "Only Dret and Augustus knew. They didn't tell anyone until after she'd died, Fyn said she asked them not to." Zalur clenched his jaw and stayed still, black hair and the pale, sickly complexion he'd always had combining with his sunken eyes to make him appear corpse-like. He seemed more dead than her, some days.

"Oh, I'm so sorry," Flek said, always the voice of sympathy. Oswin used to have that sort of optimism, years ago. Almost a decade, maybe. Before the Dust War and the Asylum. Now she only wore black and spent whole days shaking and crying from the memories of the things she'd done for the benefit of these people. The benefit of Zalur. And what had she got out of it? "Are you okay?"

"I…" Oswin didn't know how to answer. She sighed, and turned away from Flek, back to Zalur, who was watching her. She met his gaze. "Tell me the truth. Are you sad?"

"Not really," he answered coldly, "All Mother's affections were reserved for money and material items, not for me." He was no longer her least favourite brother, suddenly he was the only person she thought she could talk to properly. He was so bitter he spoke his mind roughly and without feeling or fear.

"Don't say that in front of Dret. We're going to the funeral."

"I don't want to."

"Neither do I. We don't have a choice."

"Am I allowed to come?" Flek asked, and Oswin nodded, keeping her eyes on her younger brother.

"She can go, then. Say I'm sick."

"You're always sick, you've been sick since you were born, sick with self-pity."

"And you're not, Os? Hmm? I know you're not upset either, she disowned you, on Christmas Day. I can't really blame you. I know you're not wearing black because it's a funeral, you're wearing black to grieve yourself."

"I'm not grieving myself, you barely even know me anymore, and you're coming to this funeral."

"You should go, she's your mother," Flek told him, "I'm gonna cut your coffee rations again if you don't go." That got to him. He looked so shaky that Oswin could really believe he lived on caffeine nowadays. At least it wasn't alcohol anymore, Flek probably didn't allow it in Skybound.

"Come on, yet another event organised by Mother held in the Glass Cathedral," Oswin said.

"Not there?"

"Yep."

"I hate it there."

"So do I," she said, "We both hate it, get over yourself."

"God, you're both so broody, I don't know if I can stand it," Thirteen said, shaking her head a little, "You're being babies, just go to the funeral. It'll hurt a lot more if you don't go than if you do, and you might even regret it." In the end, with pushing from both Flek and the Doctor, Zalur finally agreed to come along with Oswin with the catch that the Doctor had to let him borrow a suit because he didn't have one (at which point Flek also realised she didn't have any black dresses lurking about), and that they were both allowed to shower, which Thirteen agree to easily.


	224. Old Scars Future Hearts

_Oswin_

_Old Scars / Future Hearts_

When Oswin Oswald went into one of, what she and Clara called, her 'slumps', the world slowed down. The world slowed down and the outlines of everybody around her blurred into shades of dissonant greys and nothing stood out enough for her to focus on. Sounds melted into whines into low drones she blocked out eventually, and all her senses became muted and apathetic, even her sense of self. Everything was numb and nothing was real while she was like this, no single person seeming important enough to break through her spell. Even when she was alive, this had happened. After she lost her leg she was in and out like this for weeks, telling herself it was the painkillers she wasn't even taking. Then on the Alaska. In the Asylum, whole days went by. Weeks drifted past like ghostly shadows without her noticing, and she always remained still.

While Dret Oswald read his mother's eulogy, a mother Oswin barely saw as her own anymore, this was what happened. She didn't hear a word of Fyn's delicately written passage of remembrance, his ode to nostalgia, and she didn't want to. Didn't want the foul image of her mother to be defiled by her brother's sweet lies and sugar coating. No, she thought her memory ought to stay rotten and putrid forever.

It was only when she heard Flek's voice telling her, whispering to her, that it was over, that people were starting to leave, that she blinked and heaved a long, fake sigh, and things swam back to her. She was getting better at stopping those episodes of hers, she thought. Someone was pulling her to her feet as she tried to drag herself back to awareness, even though she was had done by to find much motivation to do so, vaguely aware of somebody speaking to her softly in a different accent to everybody else.

"_Paradoxical  
__States of mind mutate into  
__Chords of apathy_," said the voice, the Doctor, the person who was dragging her away towards somewhere. When she saw bright lights and pastel walls and shining tiles, she knew that Thirteen and Flek had pulled her into the bathroom.

"What's that?" she asked drearily.

"A haiku," Thirteen answered, "Clara wrote it."

"It's a bit depressing," Oswin said.

"Okay, um... _Cosmic melodies  
__Her eyes sing like galaxies  
__Waves of gold stardust_," Thirteen told her.

"Is that about you?"

"Well, the others are all melancholy. Just wait and see how broody that girl will be in a few years," the Doctor said, "Especially the ones about you. Wasn't a poet when I married her, you know. Takes years to cultivate being that pretentious. I am a sucker for it though..."

"What's she doing writing poems about me?" Oswin questioned, "She doesn't know what it's like to be me." She leant on the sinks that stretched down the wall, next to the two holes in the side that were hand driers. Bathrooms hadn't evolved too much in three-thousand years. Thirteen seemed amused at that.

"Are you okay?" Flek asked her. As far as she was aware, it seemed to be just the three of them.

"Of course I am," she said stiffly, "I'm fine. It was nothing."

"You weren't blinking."

"I don't need to blink," she grumbled, crossing her arms, "Why should I pretend to be alive when I'm not?"

"I don't think anyone noticed," Thirteen said, half to Oswin, half to Flek. Oswin was more bothered about it than she let on. She had a lot of reasons why she refused to just rewrite the coding of her own brain to eliminate these neuroses of hers and make her a sane individual, the main one being that through Dalek conversion and hologramatic restoration, she was still a copy of her original self twice over. A ghost of a ghost. She didn't know how close to what she'd once been she now was, and it was fear of pulling the threads out of the image of herself that made her keep a lock on her own psyche data.

"Well now I'm making a scene by standing around in here, they're going to wonder where I've gone. I don't want to talk to them," Oswin said bitterly, by 'them' she meant more than just her brothers, she meant all of their wives and her nieces and nephews and her stepfather and the stuck-up friends of her mother's.

"Well, you said all this about your brother's wedding, remember?" Flek said, talking about Dret's wedding, years back now. Fifteen years, maybe?

"Flek. We spent most of my brother's wedding in this very bathroom. In that stall, no less," Oswin pointed towards the stall closest to the door.

"That's the disabled stall!" Thirteen exclaimed, in horror at what activities Oswin was alluding to. How did the Doctor know what she'd been doing straight away? For all Thirteen knew, she could have been using the baby change facilities in that cubicle.

"I'm an amputee!" Oswin exclaimed in the same tone, with an added overly of sarcasm.

"That was almost a year before you lost your leg," Flek quipped. _Ugh_, Oswin thought, _why does there have to be someone here who actually knows things about me? _No way she'd get away with painting herself in a better light with Flek and all five of her brothers floating around. She half-expected Nina to show up, and wouldn't _that_ be a reunion for the history books?

"I was just preparing for times later in life when I _would _need to use the disabled toilets."

"You're telling me you _knew _you were going to lose your leg?" Flek questioned.

"Maybe I blew myself up on purpose."

"Uh-huh."

"_Maybe _I can just predict the future. Probably because, you know, I'm a genius," she said quietly, in almost a whisper, leaning closer to Flek, who was about the same height as her that day, considering Oswin was wearing heels. Thirteen was not, so she was stood about three inches lower than Flek's candyfloss hair.

"Geniuses can't predict the future."

"It's actually 'genii'."

"They're _both _correct," Thirteen interjected, pulling Oswin away from Flek by her upperarm. Oswin hadn't noticed they were almost nose-to-nose in their argument about immorally getting off with each other in a disabled toilet. Wasn't like there'd been anyone disabled at the wedding, anyway, and if they needed the toilet that badly they could've gone into the men's room, or the gender-neutral bathroom in between. "It'd be nice if you two could try not to rip each other's clothes off, hmm?"

"We were not-"

"We wouldn't-"

"We've been broken up for-"

"Thirteen months!"

"Thirteen years!"

Oswin and Flek both stopped. It hadn't occurred to either of them to take the time differences in their lives into account at all. Thirteen years? That was how long it had been to Flek? On the list of things the two of them wete not supposed to speak to each other about (which also included the Dust War, the Cluster Spores, and opera), this gap between them seemed high priority. They hadn't even thought about it, let alone talked about it. Flek scrunched up her face and hid her eyes behind her hands for a moment, and when she moved them and stared into space and talked Oswin was again astounded by how green they were now the lighting was different.

"I can't be doing this," she sighed.

"Ignore her," Oswin said in reference to Thirteen, "She thinks that just because Clara's a borderline sexual deviant, I am too... Flek..? Where are you going? Flek?" Oswin called after her, but she'd walked around Thirteen to the doors.

"I'm too old for this. Seriously. Oswin, I'm engaged. I came to attend a funeral, and that's what I'll do." She was gone, Oswin staring at the door, dumbstruck. It was just one piece of news she didn't know how to take after another that day.

"...Why did you do that?" Oswin asked the Doctor coolly, "Talking about ripping clothes off - just because we were talking about when we were together doesn't mean neither of us can help ourselves, god, I'm not _you_, or Clara. I'm in love with Adam, you know. I don't have feelings for Flek anymore, there's just a lot of things we don't talk about."

"...I'm sorry," Thirteen said, realising she was genuinely wrong about Oswin and Flek. They weren't her and Clara. She and Clara were incorrigible and wild and illogical. The last thing Oswin was was illogical.

"Engaged. Who could she be engaged to? Why would she shout it like that?" Oswin frowned. It didn't bother her that Flek was engaged, why would it? Not when she had Adam back at home, who was supposed to have been there with her today.

"The one person, who also lives on Eslilia, who she wouldn't want to tell you she was seeing," Thirteen said quietly, actually answering a question for once.

"Not... Not _my brother_!?" she exclaimed in horror. Last time she'd checked, Flek _definitely _didn't play for that team.

"No! The _other _person who lives on Eslilia she wouldn't want to tell you about. Not him, obviously."

"..._Oh_..."


	225. Drop A Heart, Break A Name

_Oswin_

_Drop A Heart, Break A Name_

She didn't speak to anybody at the funeral. She and Thirteen hung back and out of the way, standing by one of the windows of the venue. The Glass Cathedral was Horizon's go-to luxury facility for any sort of event such as marriage or funerals for the rich bourgeoisie of the Fifty-Second Century. The fanciest part of the whole spacestation, apart from the artificial beaches they had drifting off nearby on a magno-tether you couldn't get to without the exclusive permission of a few hundred-thousand credits. It wasn't really called the 'Glass Cathedral', that was a local nickname, like calling the station (Titan Beta) 'Horizon' to begin with. It was nicknamed that because all of the walls and the ceiling were made of Densi, a special, extra-resilient, extra-transparent type of glass that created the illusion that you were floating through space. Or, it would if it wasn't for the reflections, or the artificial gravity (though, she once heard of a zero-gravity wedding that had happened in there, a story she heard quite frequently that supposedly happened before she was born).

Nevertheless, the views were as incredible as they always were, better so than the pixel-spawned images of the scenic walls on the TARDIS. Asteroids of Saturn span around and crashed into each other a billion kilometres away, but from their distance the rings were blurred together into streaks of golden, brown or orange colours, pastel yellows and dark beiges with craters and storms like liver spots on the distant planet's dusky surface. It peaked over the edge, falling into shadow part of the way down as the horizon of Titan cut off its view, the blue atmosphere and the dark brown surface stopping Saturn from being fully visible. Long dead stars twinkled in the black sky.

"Would've thought you'd seen loads of views," Fyn said, coming up next to her, always taller, the tallest of all of her brothers, she thought, though Dret liked to think he was, "With the life you lead."

"It's different when it's home," the Doctor, on Oswin's other side, said. People had been dispersing the place for a while now, there were only a handful left, and Fyn was the only brother she spotted amongst them. The others were gone to the wake, the wake at mother's house, which had been Oswin's house until just months after her twenty-fifth birthday, "You should see the views on Gallifrey, the twin suns, the orange sky at night. The deserts were red, and so was the grass, but the tree leaves were silver. In the morning, they reflected so it looked like the forests were on fire."

"Sounds like something I'd like to see," Fyn said.

"It's gone now," Thirteen told him, not cruelly, she was smiling slightly, if sadly, at the memory of her destroyed home planet, "In this universe, at least. Time-Locked. This is certainly something, though. Don't seem to be a lot of places here where you can see the views."

"There aren't," Fyn answered, "Hardly any, they're a weird lot, people from Titan. Most of them come here and they don't even see the planet out there, they see the glass and what a wonderful feat of engineering it is. It's imperialistic, they're just obsessed with the 'might of humanity' and what they can achieve. I wrote some essays on it."

"You never told me your brother was so interesting," Thirteen told Oswin, who frowned and laughed a little.

"Fyn just doesn't appreciate the amount of ingenuity that went into making glass like this. It's only two centimetres thick, you know," she needlessly held up her fingers to show the depth of the Densi to Thirteen, "He's underestimating the artistic appreciation of everybody who lives here."

"She's one of them," Fyn said, jokingly, to the Doctor, "Anyway, Os. Are you coming to the wake?" Oswin groaned.

* * *

The house she'd grown up in for most of her life was a big house. It was 5134. Christmas Day, 5120, was the day Heph had been blown up, the area of Horizon she'd lived in for the first ten years of her life, before the money she was bringing in from her mother charging scientists to run aptitude and reflex and intelligence tests on her meant they could move to Apten, the richest district of the city, to live a life full of luxuries Oswin never saw. Oswin never saw anything except for what people brought into the enclosed, four walls of her bedroom in the attic, with a door kept locked until Cluster Spores started getting posted outside for guard duty.

Fyn, who had never been one for social gatherings (which was why he'd only written the eulogy of lies, and pawned it off on Dret to read), led Oswin and Thirteen in through the kitchen, which he said he'd unlocked that morning so that later on he could sneak into the house without having to go through the crowded living room, full of siblings and nieces and nephews and cousins and their stepfather, along with the friends of their mother's, the elitist, classist capitalists who complained that the artificial sand of the beach resort didn't feel 'real', even though none of them had stepped foot on the rough sand of a _real_ beach. How strange this would sound to Adam Mitchell, or to Clara, she wondered, who had both grown up on the coast. In the January of the following year after the destruction of Heph, there had been a dinner in this kitchen where those friends of Oswin's mothers had talked about those poorer citizens of the colony being a blight they were 'good to be rid of,' not that they ever ran into them, in their bubble of money.

The kitchen was where the food was. "Just waiting for me to open the doors," Fyn told her, but he didn't go open the doors into the next room, he just remained. Oswin stared around at this kitchen, the kitchen where once a week she used to eat a meal until she trusted Flek enough to deliver them to her room without lacing them with spittle, like the other Spores who'd guarded her.

"I feel like I shouldn't be here," Oswin said to Fyn, crossing her arms awkwardly, shifting around, as Thirteen went over to the gorge herself on bite-sized funeral food.

"Now _this_ is a wake," she said, picking up an entire bowl of mini sausage rolls (that contained no real ingredients that you would find in an actual sausage roll, just processed sludge with a different dye and different lumps of whatever it was they used to create the artificial textures of pastry and meat) to eat to herself, "Funeral I went to the other day – terrible hors d'oeuvres. Not one sausage roll, you know, had to dig one out of my bag from who knows how long ago."

"Mother never liked me leaving my room," Oswin said, looking around. Every time she'd been in the kitchen she'd wanted to leave as quickly as possible, and she hardly remembered it. Dalek conversion had taken its toll on her usually perfect memory. Then, to Fyn, she said, "Flek's engaged."

"Is she?" he asked, genuinely interested.

"Uh-huh. She shouted it at me in the toilets an hour ago because she thought I was flirting with her," Oswin told him, sighing, "I wasn't."

"Well, who to?"

"You know Clara? And how I'm one of these Echoes she has?" Oswin said to him, "Well, she's-" The door into the kitchen was pushed open by none other than Flek herself, and Oswin stopped talking instantly, recalling the time five years ago, when she was twenty-one, that she'd been washing mouldy dishes at two in the morning and Flek had come in spewing all sorts of nervous pickup lines at her.

"I was just wondering when-" Flek was cut off by somebody else, a girl, who Oswin didn't know, pushing past her in an urgent way that meant she didn't have time to worry about being rude.

"Fyn, Reker told me to ask if I can heat up the milk bottle in here," she said, and that was when Oswin noticed that, whoever she was, she was holding a baby, and she'd said her brother's name. Oswin just stayed puzzled.

"Yeah, fine," Fyn said, looking puzzled as to why he was now in charge of the house. Flek closed the door behind her and seemed to decide that if the Doctor was helping herself to food, she was allowed to as well (and she probably was, in fairness). "This is Oswin, Juliet," Fyn said to the girl, who looked over at Oswin, who was just watching the baby, "Oswin, this is Juliet. Reker's wife."

"My sister-in-law?" Juliet was the one who asked, "I thought she didn't speak to the family?"

"I died, it's complicated," Oswin said, going over, "Who's this? A niece of mine? I heard I have a lot of nieces."

"Nephew," Juliet told her, "Nalyt."

"Nalyt? That's the best name," she said, more to the baby than to anybody else. Flek was picking sausage rolls out of Thirteen's bowl while Thirteen watched, and Oswin looked at Juliet, "I was disowned three years ago, I live in space now with some intergalactic transients. The Doctor here has a spaceship full of us refugees through time."

"Hi," Thirteen said when she was mentioned, waving a little, one hand still holding the bowl of sausage rolls.

"Have you heard a lot of awful things about me?" she asked, intrigued.

"Not from Reker," Juliet said. She hadn't seen Reker since he was sixteen, really. She supposed he must be around thirty now.

"Well I'll tell you something bad about him, he wouldn't stop throwing his food around at his parents' wedding. That was years ago, though. I'm not up to date with the family," Oswin told her.

"…Do you want to hold the baby? I need to sort the milk," Juliet said, and Oswin beamed.

"Can I?"

"Is that a good idea?" Thirteen asked carefully, but Oswin had already taken the baby, awestruck by it, remembering what it had been like when her youngest two brothers had been born and they'd been babies, looked after more by their siblings than anybody else.

"It's fine, I've looked after loads of babies, including your father, haven't I?" she said to Nalyt, who was awake, and who gurgled.

"He usually hates me when I visit," Fyn told Oswin, "He cries when Dret's in the same room." Oswin laughed.

"Do you cry? Well, why wouldn't you? Dret just wants to boss everybody around because he has a Napoleon complex and wants to be better than his younger brothers who are all taller than him," she said cheerfully, bouncing the baby. Fyn found what she was telling Nalyt, their nephew, amusing. Thirteen was watching with a funny look on her face, and Flek was now helping Juliet work the fancy microwave (which was just called a microwave out of a habit of humanity, it didn't use the same technology to heat things up at all anymore). "He's just jealous. Watch, when you're six, you'll be taller than him, too."

"He's not _that_ short," Flek said to her, "He's like, the same height as me."

"He's not, he's 5'7"," Oswin told her.

"Yeah."

"You're not 5'7"."

"I am, because you're 5'4"."

"I'm 5'2"," Oswin said, "Like the Doctor, see? You've always been 5'5". I was taller than Dret once, when I was nine, I think, and he was ten, before he started growing. Then when he was sixteen, he stopped, and Fynny grew to be 6'3"."

"You have not called me that for so long," Fyn said.

"I used to call you it all the time," she said, referring to the nickname of their childhood, that had surpassed childhood into adulthood and now even further, since Fyn was middle-aged nearly by now (though, life expectancy was some ridiculous figure like one-hundred-and-fifty in that century, so he was only that by the age standards of three-thousand years ago). She held her right hand up to Nalyt, who took hold of her ring finger and started twisting the ring on it around while she watched and smiled, "Flek gave me that ring, you know," she told him matter-of-factly, even though he looked to be only a few months old and probably couldn't speak. Flek looked over as she talked, "I know, it's a pretty ring, isn't it? I always liked it, that's why I keep it on. You know, Nalyt, I used to lov-" Oswin's phone went off in her pocket and she frowned.

"Who is it?" the Doctor asked.

"I don't know, get it for me? It's only in my coat pocket," she told the Doctor, careful not to let Nalyt pull the ring all the way off of her ringer, lest he swallow it.

"It's from Clara," she said a second later, "It says, 'They did it.'"

"Who did what?" Oswin asked, perpetually smiling as she watched the boy, Fyn over her shoulder observing, but he'd never been a fan of babies, she knew that from what she remembered when Jatt was born (she'd been eighteen, him sixteen), "I bet you're gonna be clever, you know," she told Nalyt, "But not too clever, you don't want to be too clever, it can be a burden. Maybe you'll surpass me as the smartest person in human history? I hope not, it's not a good life, people always making you do things for them."

"Clara says…" Thirteen trailed off watching her.

"What does Clara say?" Oswin asked, but Thirteen said nothing, "…What?"

"It's just… You, and a baby. Reminds me of her. Makes me sad… Doesn't matter, doesn't matter… She says, 'FWB.' What does that mean?"

"Could mean lots of things, couldn't it?" she told Nalyt, Fyn still not going to open the kitchen to the rest of the general public present at the wake. Yet another person came in then, though, but this one she recognised, this boy, tall, almost six foot tall, Fyn still looming above everybody else. Reker Sinclair, the second-youngest of her brothers, who she had not seen since she'd been disowned, "Hi," she said to him brightly, distracted by his son.

"You let her..?" he said to Juliet.

"She wanted to hold him," Juliet shrugged.

"I used to look after you when you were a baby sometimes," Oswin reminded him, and he raised his eyebrows at her.

"People really want food out there, Fyn," Reker said.

"Maybe people should mourn the death of our mother instead of complaining because they can't get to the tiny sandwiches yet," Fyn said dryly.

"He likes you, Oswin," Reker told her.

"Everyone likes me," she said, then to Nalyt as a side-note that everybody in the room could hear (though, she didn't seem to realise that), "Everyone except my mother, of course. Your parents won't disown you, though, will you? No, they wouldn't do that." He made a happy noise that made her beam and bit at one of her fingers with toothless gums.

"He doesn't like being left at home, and he can't tell what's going on," Reker said, "He never met mum."

"Did he not? What a _shame_," Oswin said with as much sarcasm as she could manage, "She was so _caring_ and _full of love_."

"The twins are with Juliet's sister, they didn't want to come," Reker told her.

"You should tell her what they're called," Fyn said to Reker with a tone Oswin didn't recognise from him as he stood behind her, almost like he was guarding her, like Thirteen was still doing. Why did everyone always think she was going to do something dangerous?

"Well, the twins are both girls, both of them just went eight a few weeks ago. Azili Oswin Sinclair, and Iosis Diane Rosalind Sinclair," Reker explained to her, and she nearly froze, but she didn't, she just looked at him with an expression she'd never made before, some kind of mix of pride, joy and shock.

"You named them both after me?" she asked him, and he nodded, and she went back to Nalyt smiling and not knowing what to say, blinking a lot, she noticed.

"Shall I call Clara?" the Doctor asked a second later.

"Huh? Oh. If you like," Oswin said, "Hold the phone up for me."

"I meant should _I_ talk to her, but…"

"The Doctor isn't supposed to talk to Clara though," Oswin said happily to Nalyt, and Thirteen pulled a face.

"Fine, fine," she said, "I _would_ read out what she's called in your phone, but I don't want the baby to hear it." _Faecal Denture Face_ was what Clara was called. The Doctor held the phone up to Oswin's ear as Reker went to look for something to eat, seeming to be a little unnerved by the presence of his older sister, who wasn't even really older than him anymore, she was almost the youngest, but maybe her ordeals had made her wise beyond all of their years. Plus her intelligence.

"_Didn't you get my texts?_" Clara asked when she picked up.

"What is it, Clars?" Oswin asked, Thirteen standing on tiptoes and leaning over so that she could listen in, and Oswin thought it was a good thing that the kitchen of this house was as stupidly big as the kitchen in a medieval castle might be when huge banquets for earls and dukes and countesses and ladies and monarchs had to be prepared with dozens of indulgent courses each.

"_They did it, Oswin. _They_ did _it," Clara told her.

"I don't know what that means, honey," Oswin said, and Nalyt gurgled again.

"_What was that?_"

"Just the baby."

"_What baby? Where did you get a baby? Put it back, Oswin!_"

"He's my nephew!" Oswin told her, "And I still don't know what you're talking about."

"_Jenny and Other Me. They. Did. It. With each other. They screwed. Did the nasty. S-E-X_."

"That's nice for them," she said, grinning and swapping what hand she was holding Nalyt with, whose milk was nearly ready.

"_Oswin. Did you hear me?_"

"Of course I heard you. FWB. Friends with benefits," Oswin said, "But I really can't talk right now, I'm actually at my mother's wake."

"_YOU'RE the one who called ME!_"

"Oh, yeah… Well, I have to go," she said, mouthing at Thirteen to hang up, who sighed and did after a pause where she looked like she was debating saying something to Clara. Then Juliet declared that she was going to feed Nalyt, and so took Oswin's nephew back from her.

"Why don't you give me the grand tour? I've always been interested in seeing your house, I never have," Thirteen asked her.

"Anything to get away from that lot in there," Oswin said, nodding towards the blocked off living room, "If I spend more than five minutes in there they'll all flock and start telling me how pretty I am, just like at Mother's third wedding."


	226. My Mind Is A Wreck

_Oswin_

_My Mind Is A Wreck_

After opening the kitchen, Fyn had drifted off with Oswin, who had slipped through the living room relatively unnoticed (she caught a glimpse of Dret, though, talking to Zalur in what seemed to be harsh tones, but she managed to successfully avoid him) by a bunch of women who probably hadn't seen her since she was fifteen, with Thirteen trailing after them both.

"Haven't been here since that Christmas," Fyn mentioned to her as they slipped through the large living room to where the stairs were, then there was the next floor that had a corridor straight down that curved right at the end, all the walls metal and futuristic. On the right was a door that lead to what used to be Fyn's room, on the left Dret's room, then the second door on the left was the spacious bathroom the siblings shared while their parents (whichever pair of parents it happened to be) had an en suite to themselves. Finally, dead ahead, was a thin staircase that lead up to the attic and the door that had served, for over two decades, as the blockade between Oswin and the rest of the world. As she walked through, she was pointing these things out to the Doctor, who marvelled at everything like it was the most fascinating thing.

"And this-" she began, going up to the steps to her old bedroom.

"Is where I used to spend all my days sitting," Flek called from behind the other two, coming up the stairs after them, "Sitting and pining." Oswin smiled a little at seeing her emerge, not angry with her. They might disagree on a lot of key issues, but they were good enough friends.

"I still can't believe you got a girl to go out with you for four years just by grunting and asking if she had a lobotomy," Fyn commented. Thirteen, Oswin knew, had heard this entire story before, and so just laughed.

"She didn't grunt," Flek said, "She said 'what', I think. Didn't bother rolling over though."

"I thought you wouldn't be as pretty as you sounded," Oswin told her the truth, not that she hadn't told Flek all of these things innumerable times. When the only thing to talk about was a war you were both involved in in different capacities, almost on opposite sides, old conversations and topics were repeated dozens of times. They never got bored of each other though – they _had_ been in love, "You could've been a hag."

"You're so shallow," Flek said, and Oswin just smiled in response. She couldn't really argue, it was true.

"Anyway, I don't expect that mother kept my things the way they were when I ran away, so it's not _too_ interesting of a tour," Oswin said, going up the steps with the Doctor trailing behind her. To her surprise, the door was unlocked. Her door had rarely been unlocked when she lived there. If she was out somewhere, she would be escorted, usually by Flek or a brother, and they would have her room key. Her room was meant to be locked all night, but Flek had a habit of 'forgetting' to do that.

She was right. What had once been her bedroom was now storage, full of boxes, but her old desk was still there, and boxes crawled onto her bed. It was her things that were missing. No clothes, no laptop, no sheets of paper and doodles and dirty plates strewn about the room so that navigating it was like crossing a minefield. Something caught her eye, though, some faded drawings on the ceiling over the bed.

"I drew those when I was thirteen, I think," Oswin said, pointing to the doodles of spaceships fighting each other, aged now, but still clear enough. They were better than she remembered.

"I didn't know you could draw," the Doctor said.

"They're rubbish," Oswin told her, "Totally unrealistic, a ship that looked like a chain would never be able to get anywhere." One of them _did_ look like a chain, circular and with three, interlinked segments, like the Olympic rings. Flek laughed at that. "Anyway, this is the room where I spent the vast majority of the first twenty-five years of my life. Dreadful to be back, really."

"You always wanted to travel anyway, Os," Fyn said.

"This is like the Anne Frank museum. You know, the Annexe," Thirteen said.

"I'd hardly say that," Oswin said, frowning and turning her nose up at someone as influential as Anne Frank being likened to a dead, homicidal, mentally-ill amputee. Oswin hardly thought herself good enough for that.

"I mean the atmosphere. So much stuff has happened here that I've only heard about…"

"It's not _that_ amazing," Oswin said, unnerved by Thirteen staring around, "It's just a room. A prison, really, though the Dalek Asylum always dwarfed this after I left." She went over to the bed and moved the boxes off of it, Fyn coming to help her stack them on the others, her muttering something about mother not minding anymore. "What's in these boxes, anyway?"

"Probably material items she bought dozens of replacements for," Fyn sighed, opening one of the boxes closest and pulling out a glass vase with lots of etchings in it, "See?" Oswin saw his point as she sat down on the bed, looking around.

"Can't be good for me, coming here," she said, kicking off her shoes out of some old habit that still stuck with her.

"Can I talk to you, Os?" Flek asked.

"Sure," Oswin said, looking at the desk in the far corner where she'd spent so many hours sitting, the thin window above it where she used to throw things out of to get on her mother's nerves. Usually, mischief like that would be something people regretted – people in films, and on holobox – but Oswin scarcely found herself regretting a single thing she'd done to the dissatisfaction of her mother. She had relished it.

"Alone, I mean," Flek said, looking at Fyn (who left as soon as she said that) and Thirteen, who stayed.

"Doctor?" Oswin prompted her.

"What?" Thirteen asked.

"I'm not going to kiss her," Oswin said flatly, "You can go. Just like you thought I was going to drop my nephew on the floor." Finally, the Doctor left, closing the door, and Flek came and sat next to Oswin, who apologised, "I'm really sorry about her. Thing is, she's come back from the future and Clara keeps trying to get off with her because Clara has no self-control and isn't remotely sensible, so Thirteen thinks I'll do the same thing if I spend two seconds alone with my ex-girlfriend. She's _trying_ to help, just… Badly."

"She seems to worry about you a lot," Flek commented.

"They all do, on the TARDIS. It was just before the Dust Cloud moved over that I started to… You know. Break. I guess. Losing a limb, Dalek conversion, getting disowned, the downfall of the Cluster Spores on Quadrant Twelve, it all adds up, damages your psyche. And now, I… I can't tell right from wrong anymore, Flek. Morals have stopped making sense. That's why I listen to Clara so much, she's this moral compass, she stops me from hurting people. I've tried to hurt people. She says I'm fragile, and I'm ill. I love her, though, even if she _is_ overprotective sometimes."

"What _is_ she to you?" Flek asked, and Oswin asked her a question back.

"You're engaged to Eyeball, then?" Flek was taken aback, but Oswin was smiling.

"…Yeah… I sort of am."

"I've told you, Clara made Echoes, to save the Doctor. She thought nothing of them until she met me and saw that I have this whole life. Until the Dream, the coma, where we had to help her Echoes. She's the one who tried to make Eslilia safe for Eyeball to live on. It was a few weeks ago, these people, the 'Paranoia Agency'. They'd kidnapped this Echo of hers, Cara, who we met in the Dream. She called Adam and made him remotely delete all their files on the Echoes and monitor them, and then broke Cara out and made sure she was safe. If anything happens to Eyeball, if she needs someone to take care of her, then you should call Clara. You marry Eyeball, you're going to be her sister-in-law. Actually… You'll kind of be _my_ sister-in-law, mine more than Clara's, even, since we were both created by her. She might not be close with Eyeball like she is with me, but she'd still do everything she could to protect her, and the other Echoes," Oswin explained, then she smiled sadly at a memory, a different memory, one nothing to do with Clara Oswald, "You know, I remember something dad used to say to me. My real dad, you know. He used to call me 'Blip', as a nickname, because I was a phantom pregnancy. So you see, she really _did_ create me."

"So she's like a mother to you?"

"I guess so, a mother with a few thousand children who are all clones of herself," Oswin said, frowning, "I've known her for months, and she's done more for me than the woman whose wake this is ever did. We're still friends though, right? You and me, I mean. Just because you're engaged to another of Clara's Echoes doesn't mean we can't be friends, does it?"

"No, of course not! We've always been friends, you know that," Flek told her, "Were you going to tell Nalyt you used to love me?"

"Huh? Oh. Yeah," Oswin said, "I _did_ break up with you, after all."

"You did, I thought you hated me. Why do you still have the ring I gave you on?" Flek asked, and Oswin lifted her right hand to show the silver ring on her ring finger that looked like two threads woven together with tiny bits of glass made to look like diamonds set into it. It hadn't been a ring Flek had bought for her, and she'd never thought it was particularly valuable apart from sentimentally, it had been Flek's favourite ring that she'd given her for her birthday one year because she had nothing else to give, some kind of love token.

"You don't want it back, do you?" Oswin asked.

"Well, why do you still have it?"

"Because, you were the only good thing that ever happened in my life, and this is what I have to remind me of you, every day, This ring is the good things, the black one is the bad things," Oswin said. Flek hadn't asked about the black ring on her index finger, Oswin had shown her what it was when she'd been on the TARDIS two weeks ago, her list of the dead. "Please don't ask for it back."

"I don't want it back, it has baby-spit on it from your nephew," Flek said, and Oswin laughed.

"This ring has _loads_ of bodily fluids on it, you and I both know," Oswin said, "Should've seen Adam Mitchell's face when I mentioned you were gonna be at this funeral today. He's jealous, even though I keep telling him not to be. Had to tell him why we broke up, and everything. It's Jack's fault, he keeps telling him stuff to make him paranoid."

"Is he alright now?"

"Adam? He's got a permanently sprained ankle from this plant attack – which I was meaning to ask you about anyway, you don't think you could build some sort of ankle brace? He limps everywhere, refuses to borrow the crutches I have. He can't heal from wounds anymore, is the thing, being frozen he has no blood flow so no white blood cells can get there."

"Of course I'll-"

Somebody knocking on the door and then quickly opening it cut Flek off, and Oswin stopped paying Flek attention when she saw who it was. Her only older brother. Stocky with puffy eyes from crying (he was probably the only sibling to shed a tear, Oswin remembered that as soon as Jatt had been born, Reker had become just as ignored by their mother as Fyn and Zalur were), his face was hard set and covered in lines, and Oswin figured that he must be thirty-nine, twenty-six when she left on the Alaska, the last time she'd probably looked at him.

"Flek," he said stiffly, in greeting, nodding.

"Long time no see," she said, trying to be happy, but not _too_ happy, and it was fake happiness anyway, she'd never liked Dret, "How is-"

"Give this to my sister. Mother wanted her to have it," he said, sticking out his hand, holding a sheet of paper folded into its own envelope. Flek, frowning, took it, and Dret left, Oswin staring wordlessly after him.

"Didn't even speak to me, didn't even _look_ at me," Oswin grumbled, "Still disowned to him, I guess. Urgh. What is that?" she took the envelope out of Flek's hands and opened it.

"Os, maybe you shouldn't…" Flek said.

"What could it…" Oswin trailed off. It was a letter. Handwritten. From her mother. And she read it. Oh, she read it, alright. She read it through four, five, six times, and felt dizzy afterwards. Nothing seemed to matter anymore, nothing seemed to make sense, after she read the words of her dead mother's letter, her last message, the last words she wanted her only daughter to hear from her lips through a pen before they were separated forever. "I should… I have to go, I mean, go…" she stammered, standing up, nearly falling.

"What does it say?" Flek asked, but Oswin clutched the letter, scrunched it up in her fist, fingers wrapped so tightly around it that nobody had any hope of prying it from her claw-like grip.

"It… Doesn't…. Doesn't matter, I have to go… Have to leave… Have to get away from here… Now…"


	227. Secret Diary Of A Clara

_Adam_

_Secret Diary Of A Clara_

It had been a dreadful day. Regardless of flamethrowers and blind monsters and superstrength and cryokinesis and immortality, it had been a dreadful day. Trudging through dank, moist caves now inhabited by any number of angry Xenomorphs, fighting off facehuggers from huge egg hatcheries left, right and centre, had not been his idea of fun. He'd rather have gone to his girlfriend's mother's funeral, he thought, put up with her ex and her sullen, surly brothers who always had an air about them that you were wasting their time, that they had something more important to be doing elsewhere. Unless that was just Fyn and Zalur. He'd met all five of them, but he could barely remember. _What a disastrous first date_, he thought. Still. He'd take repeating his first date with Oswin over killing countless Xenomorphs any day, he thought.

The most annoying thing though had been the Twelfth Doctor, Beta Twelve, Old Twelvey, because (the idiot he was) he'd crept on board his infested TARDIS after them. Their motion detectors had picked him up, they'd set the tails of his coat on fire before Adam Mitchell had been ordered (begrudgingly) to put the flames out, and then they'd had to guard the weaponless cretin as he skulked along with the four of them (himself, Rose, Jack and Martha, that was) making sarky comments about stray chestbursters or how the acid blood was bad for his floors. Remarkably, nobody had hit him, but Jack had (with great pleasure) delivered some bombshell onto him that shut him up for the rest of their mission entirely. That, apparently, Jenny had slept with Clara. Beta Clara. _His_ Clara. And _his_ daughter. Adam didn't know if he believed it.

Not until, hours later, he was sitting in Nerve Centre with a hot chocolate in front of him wincing every few seconds when his sprained ankle (which had suffered no end of slips and misfortunes down in the belly of Twelve's extensively cultivated Xenomorph hive) smarted beneath the two socks he was wearing for support, and Jenny sat down on the same table as him, joining Jack, did he know the truth.

"_I_ am a _sex master_," she told him, smirking. Where Claratoo was, Adam didn't know. He didn't think he wanted to know, particularly, "You know the drill. Vow of chastity, for… Two weeks."

"_Two weeks_!?" Jack exclaimed, "So you're not gonna shave your head?"

"Why? What's going on?" Adam asked.

"The stakes of our bet," Jenny explained casually, leaning towards him as she talked, a glow about her and a glitter in her eyes like a spark that wasn't anything to do with their synthetic nature. Probably wasn't even there, it was an imagined effect of the post-coital, victorious mood she found herself in, "If I slept with Other Clara, Jack had to make a vow of chastity – and keep it – for a week."

"Yeah, exactly!" Jack piped up, "_One _week, so why is it _two_ weeks all of a sudden, huh?"

"Um, because I didn't just sleep with her."

"You're not _dating_ her?" Adam asked, a few others in the room listening, no Claras or Echoes there to hear it. Amy and Rose seemed plenty interested, though, leaning of the back of the sofa to get in on Jenny's confession.

"No, no, nothing like that," she said, stealing Adam's hot chocolate, though he was too dumbstruck to notice, since he'd just figured out that the weird glow he was seeing around her was part of his stupid ability to read auras, which he'd really managed to suppress so much it shut off, unless someone had a lot of particular strong emotions about them, which Jenny Harkness apparently did. "We just… Have an arrangement."

"Oh my god," Amy exclaimed in horror, "You can't be _fuck-buddies_ with _Clara Oswald_!"

"Seriously," Rose talked a little louder than Amy and got her to shut up, making Donna and Rory (who were muttering to each other about this revelation, too) quieten, too. Nios was sitting in the corner, and she hadn't been speaking anyway. The rest of them were elsewhere, "_What_ is the deal with her?"

"What do you mean?" Jenny asked.

"Look, I mean, I'm not _trying_ to be awful or anything, but I just don't understand why _everybody_ seems to fancy her."

"I know, she's so annoying," Amy agreed with her, "I can hardly speak to her for more than ten minutes. Other Clara's even worse for it."

"Well she must be if you punched her," Jack commented.

"Why do you fancy her so much?" Rose questioned Jenny directly, then her eyes went to Adam, "And you."

"I don't fancy Clara," Adam argued, "_Oswin_ is not _Clara_, they're different."

"Maybe he has a thing for amputees," Jack said snidely.

"Have you been there when she's with Thirteen, though?" Rose said, "You can practically feel the amount of sheer willpower going into them _not_ tearing into each other, and I just don't get why. What's the thing about her? Just _why_?"

"She's hot," Jenny shrugged.

"Jenny," Jack said, like he was chastising her, "You know full well that _everybody_ on the TARDIS is hot."

"Are you trying to say she's hotter than us?" Rose questioned, Amy and Donna giving Jenny dangerous looks now, Adam trying to stay out of everything, like Rory.

"…_No_, that's not what I'm saying. But you're all supposedly-straight and none of you are single. Other Clara _is_ single, everybody knows that, her boyfriend just died."

"You mean you're just a rebound?" Donna questioned.

"No, she was telling me I'm, like, the thirteenth person she's slept with since Danny died. Seventh this month, she said."

"_Thirteen_!?" everybody in the room, save Jack (who wasn't surprised) and Nios (who was disinterested) exclaimed. Thirteen people was more people than Adam had slept with in his whole life. More than twice the people he'd slept with in his whole life. Nearly three times that amount of people. And she'd managed it all in the space of a few months?

"It's how she copes, don't judge her," Jenny said, "I'm the only one she remembers the name of."

"That's not something to be proud of," Amy commented.

"It's her life."

"I'm not talking about the amount of people, I'm talking about the amount of alcohol," Amy quipped. If she'd shagged thirteen people, at least seven of which she couldn't remember the names of, in just a few months, Adam didn't want to know how many units of alcohol that was. Though, Clara _did_ have an unfortunate habit of being a lightweight _and_ a binge-drinker.

"So who was it who got so blackout drunk two nights ago that they ended up rampaging across Pennsylvania leaving a trail of destruction and getting themselves locked in a haunted lodge in need of rescuing?" Adam argued, and they shut up, "Not to mention last month, on Preyonov, where you all got drunk. And Truth or Dare two months ago, when everyone was camping. _And_ Las Vegas."

"You weren't even there for Las Vegas," Rose snapped.

"And _you_ were drunk all of those times, too."

"Yeah, but not_ blackout_ drunk, and I'm not being a hypocrite going on about Clara's drinking habits. You all need to take a look at yourselves before you judge her," Adam told them, and they seemed to be quiet for a few moments, until Donna changed tact in the conversation, remaining on topic, though.

"How many people has she really slept with, then?" Donna asked.

"Didn't Oswin say it was twenty-something? Twenty-two?"

"Can't be twenty-two, must be more than that, _way_ more," Amy said, "Where does she find the time?" Donna shrugged. "I could ask her. Make her tell us."

"Don't do that, that's not fair," Jenny said, "To either of them. Why do you care who she's slept with? It doesn't affect you, it's not any of your business. The lot of you are just… Slut-shaming."

"We are not!" Rose exclaimed.

"Yes you are!" Jenny argued back, "You are judging that girl for how many people she's screwed, and that's not right. As long as she's safe about it, what's the problem?"

"If she's blackout drunk she's not safe," Amy countered.

"I'll make sure she's safe, then. I mean, Twelve's not gonna do it, is he? So I will," Jenny said.

"Protecting your interests," Donna said snidely, but quietly.

"That's creepy," Adam told her, and Jenny shrugged.

"Would you rather me be creepy or her be dead? Actually, since you all seem to hate her so much – even though she's really never done anything to any of you to deserve all the shit you give her day-in day-out – don't tell me, I don't want to know," Jenny said, and with that, she stood up and swept out of Nerve Centre, taking Adam's drink with her, the same time Thirteen appeared and made a beeline for the kettle, and everybody shut up then. Criticising Clara in front of Clara's wife didn't bode well, and Adam thought that as non-confrontational and generally kind-hearted as Thirteen was, insulting Clara might tip her over some as-yet unspecified 'edge'.

"What was everyone talking about?" Thirteen asked, frowning around at them as she sorted a mug for herself, just herself, confused by the silence that had fallen.

"Nothing, we weren't talking," Donna said quickly and unconvincingly.

"…Is Oswin back?" Adam asked her after some awkward seconds had dragged themselves painfully by.

"Oh, yeah. She's in her lab," Thirteen told him, "You should go talk to her, I'm sure she'll want to see you." _Any excuse to escape this room_, he thought to himself, so he smiled in thanks and got up and left the room, hoping nobody started kicking off about Clara while Thirteen was there.

"Oh my _god_, babe," Adam Mitchell said after he let himself into his girlfriend's laboratory, bits and pieces of gadgets and weapons strewn about the place, Oswin on her laptop at one of the desks slumped over. He didn't know whether to ask about her day or not, "I just escape from the worst conversation."

"What was it?" she asked, not looking up.

"They're having an argument about if your sister's a slut," Adam told her.

"Didn't I tell you to stop calling people sluts just two weeks ago?"

"No, you told me to stop calling _you_ a _slag_."

"Don't slut-shame."

"I'm paraphrasing," he said, "They're probably questioning Thirteen right now on how many people her wife's done. Seriously, it's all because of this thing. With Jenny."

"Oh, the friends with benefits thing?" Oswin said, "Clara told me, but it hasn't really registered yet because I was distracted."

"Yeah, that. Apparently Other Clara has slept with thirteen people since Danny died," Adam said, and Oswin looked at him with her mouth hanging open in genuine shock, "I know."

"Well that's nothing but impressive. She should get a medal. What's her secret?" she questioned jokingly, and he laughed.

"What were you distracted by?"

"Oh, the _cutest_ baby," she said, shutting off the laptop's holographic screens and turning to him, him sitting next to her, "You have no idea."

"Whose baby? You didn't steal a baby, did you?"

"No, who do you think I am? Amy and Rory? No. He's my nephew, he's called Nalyt, I think he's eight months old. My brother, Reker, it's his son. Do you know what his twin daughters are called?" Oswin said, and Adam shook his head, "One of them's called Azili Oswin Sinclair, and the other is called Iosis Diane Rosalind Sinclair."

"Isn't that..?"

"Yeah, he named them after me. Well, middle names, Juliet – that's my sister-in-law – doesn't seem the type to give him freedom with what to name their children. Probably had names picked out from when she first learnt to talk. Most people do, really," Oswin said. There was something off about her, Adam could vaguely tell, but he didn't know what, and he didn't know if he should ask. More likely than not, it wouldn't be something she wanted to talk about.

"I didn't know you liked kids," Adam said.

"Didn't you? I think I get it from Clara…" she paused for a moment, like she'd remembered something, or she was trying to keep herself together, "I always had to look after Reker when he was younger, after his tenth birthday, when Mother found out she was pregnant with Jatt so she ignored him for the whole day. Then I had to look after Jatt a lot, too, but I didn't see him today. Maybe I wouldn't recognise him."

"What about Dret?"

"I saw him. He talked to Flek. He didn't talk to me. Didn't look at me. Didn't acknowledge I was there. More than I could've hoped for, really."

"…How _is_ Flek?" Adam asked carefully.

"She's fine," said Oswin brightly, but a fake kind of happiness, like she was hiding something still, "She's engaged."

"Engaged?"

"To Eyeball."

"Wha..? No. You're kidding, right?" Oswin shook her head. "Seriously? But that's… Wow. She has a type, then?" Oswin laughed a little.

"I guess she does. I still have to tell Clara."

"Why would Clara be interested?"

"Because Eyeball's her Echo," Oswin said.

"Oh, yeah…" Adam had somehow forgotten that detail. The fact they were identical stuck in his mind, but not that Clara actually had anything to do with her Echoes save for his girlfriend. She seemed relatively disconnected from them.

"It's something I ought to tell her. I hope she doesn't go lecture Flek about 'not breaking her heart' or something weird…" Oswin mused, "Then she'd probably accuse Flek of breaking _my_ heart because she really doesn't know an awful lot about Flek and I, and she probably wouldn't believe that _I_ would break up with someone myself."

"Wow, so… How was it, then? The funeral?"

"I zoned out for the eulogy, didn't hear a word. Spent most of it hiding, I only talked to a few people. None of my mother's friends, not my stepfather. Fyn stayed with me the whole day, though. So did Thirteen. Zalur wandered off on his own until it was… Time to go. It was alright, I guess. For a funeral. What about you? How did your day go?"

"Terrible, ask me about it later," he said, "I was meaning to speak to you about Clara, though."

"Oh?"

"Yeah. It's been two weeks since you got back, and you promised me to wait three days before telling Clara about the lightsabers being broken, to see if Eleven did it himself."

"Oh, yeah…"

"He hasn't told her."

"Nope."

"So do you want me to tell her?"

"Yeah. It'll be hilarious."


	228. May The Force Be With You

_DAY NINETY-NINE_

_Eleven_

_May The Force Be With You_

Days spent wedding planning with Clara always seemed to end poorly. He supposed that was a given. He didn't particularly like it, but he wasn't quite passive enough just to let her decide everything and take a backseat. No, he thought that he should have just as much of a say as her. But they usually worked it out. At least, he thought they did, but it was his night to sleep, and he woke up without her familiar shape next to him, like he had done the morning after the day he couldn't remember for the life of him, feeling around an empty, cold mattress for the imprint left in crumpled bedsheets by Clara Oswald.

"Morning," he heard coolly behind him. He was facing the wall, his arm hanging limply over where she had been during the night until she'd apparently moved. Groaning and a little saddened by not finding her next to him, he rolled over and threw himself onto his other side, not yet opening his eyes. But when he did open his eyes, boy, was he in for a shock. Was he in for cold chills to run down his spine and sweat to start soaking his skin, because he saw her leaning on her bookshelf across the room, on the opposite wall, holding something in her hands. A lightsaber. The replacement lightsaber. _Uh-oh_.

"…Morning," he answered her stiffly, scared, wondering what he might have to do to make it up to her that he'd had a lightsaber fight with Oswin's boyfriend when she'd only been gone for two days, after asking him directly, many times, _not_ to play with her replica lightsabers, _not_ to fidget with her Death Star clock, _not_ to steal from her R2-D2 cookie jar, _not_ to wear her Clone Trooper helmet, _not_ to dig her old, _Return of the Jedi_ duvet cover out of her wardrobe where it was stashed with what she adamantly denied was a Batgirl cape (it was though, he was sure of it). But really, if she wasn't going to have any lightsaber fights, what was the point of having them in the first place?

"Adam Mitchell was telling me the most interesting thing last night," Clara said, eyeing the lightsaber, knowing already that he knew exactly what she knew, and that she was just dragging this out for her own satisfaction.

"Do you want breakfast? I think I might make breakfast. Full English, what do you think, dear?" he asked, sitting up, and she gave him a dark look that made him think he ought to sit back down though. But he didn't sit back down. He crossed his arms and stood his ground (maybe once, months ago, Clara Oswald wouldn't have scared him, but now she was telekinetic and intangible and had suffered through some great physical traumas, and she was getting awfully unpredictable and frightening).

"Funny thing. I wrote my initials on the bottom of all of these. This one doesn't have my initials on it, which is odd, because this is Yoda's lightsaber, and I definitely remember writing my initials on this in green Sharpie on my fifteenth birthday."

* * *

_Adam_

He hadn't slept too well. He'd gone to bed worrying about Oswin. She might be acting relatively fine, but she was subdued, she was somewhat distant, and she kept staring off into space. Things like this didn't bode well when it came to her, and he kept a close eye on her behaviour. So with him staying up late, he noticed that she didn't seem to be sleeping, either, and he didn't know what to do about that. He didn't know what she was hiding, and he didn't want to question her on it, because she told him a lot of things about her life, a lot of upsetting things, so by that logic, this must be a particularly bad or harrowing thing she was keeping from him.

In the end, though, worry got the better of him, so at around eight o'clock that morning, when he woke up from a doze that seemed to have lasted about an hour or two, sinking into strange dreams about unnatural weather and video games, and he thought he'd better speak to her. Even if she ended up upset, he thought that it was better she knew he cared about her enough to notice these minute changes to her behaviour. But first, he feigned a stretch that made his ankle twinge and dropped his arm back over her.

"Had another nightmare," he said, knowing full-well she was awake. Awake and staring off in the general direction of the door, facing left.

"Oh yeah? Another one about _Silent Hill 2_?"

"Look. It's the Historical Society. What kind of town has a massive, creepy, underground prison? It just gets to me. It's the only time I feel claustrophobic," he told her, "Pyramid Head will get me in the next one, just you wait and see."

"I don't want to see, I know what Pyramid Head's like, Mitchell," she said, and then there was silence. She was speaking hollowly. She'd been overthinking something, he knew it, all night.

"Oswin, are you okay?"

"I'm fine."

"You don't seem okay."

"_I'm fine_."

"I'm worried."

"You shouldn't be."

"I love you."

"I know you do, babe, I love you too," she entwined her fingers with his, his right arm hanging over her shoulder.

"I know something's wrong."

"It's nothing, don't bother yourself with it."

"I want to be bothered with it, whatever it is."

"Adam, I'm fine. I appreciate you being worried, but you don't have to be… I can… I can look after myself, alright? I used to look after myself, years ago. Used to look after myself, after Fyn, after Reker, after Jatt. I'm not a child."

"I hate seeing you sad, though."

"I'm always sad, really." That statement hurt him more than it should, it was the way she said it, like she was smiling as she did, the way people would smile when they delivered bad news, tentative and weak, like she was trying to make him feel better by seeming upbeat about whatever was going on with her that she didn't want to tell him about.

"…Got a phone call yesterday, you know. After I got back and showered, while you were still out," he told her.

"Who was it?"

"Social services, about my sister. There's been a bit of a court case going on, you know. Trying to get her emancipated from our parents and put into my custody. I keep trying to cut them off, you know. They want to know where she's gonna live, since I'm always out and she's… Fifteen, now, I think," he said.

"What're you gonna do?"

"Honestly? I don't know. The obvious thing is to send her to boarding school," he said, moving his hand out of hers and playing with her hair as they talked, "But she doesn't want that, and I don't want her to hate me or just do what's easy, you know?"

"Yeah," she said.

"At least we live on a time machine."

"She could go live on Eslilia?" Oswin suggested, "Or, um… Not Horizon, don't wanna live there... Could live on the TARDIS if you never let her off."

"She has to go to school, Os, and this is a terrible environment for a kid."

"Don't… I mean… Family nickname, babe."

"Only my family call me 'babe'," he retaliated jokingly, "It was an accident."

"It's okay, I mean… Martha called Clara 'Clars' a few weeks ago, she told me. Clara was like, 'Don't call me Clars,'" Oswin said, sounding amused, though it was dark and she had her back to him so he couldn't see her face, just the side of her jaw as she talked and he kept twirling strands of stray hairs around his fingers, trying not to pull on them.

"Flek calls you it. Doesn't she? Jenny mentioned."

"What's Jenny doing telling you stuff like that? Urgh. Alright. She does call me it, but that's because she lived with all my brothers for four years and they call me it," Oswin told him, "My name is only two syllables. Not like I call you 'Ad' or 'Mitch.'"

"'Mitch' sounds cool, you should totally call me it."

"Well I won't," she said, "I just like you not being connected to my family. I like that you don't remind me of them. That when you're here I don't think of them. Flek's part of my past, that's why she calls me it… It's just… Easier. You shouldn't have to deal with them, or be associated with them."

Someone didn't even bother knocking on the door, then, just pushed it open and let in the light from the Bedroom Circle, Adam and Oswin in bed later than they usually were, what with the way she was seemingly indifferent to anything going on around her and he kept drifting in and out of restless sleep and unpleasant dreams.

"Oswin!" Eleven greeted her, Adam recognising him by voice alone, the brightness making him squint and confusing his already-damaged eyes. He buried his head in the back of Oswin's neck to shield himself from the light, "How would you like to spend the whole day with your sister while Adam and I go out somewhere?"

"What..?" she asked, "Why? What have you done?"

"_Lightsaber_," Adam whispered to her, but he didn't think Eleven heard. If he did, he didn't say anything.

"_Oh_," she breathed, "Hang out with Clara all day and make her _not_ want to kill you?"

"Yes. Please. Would you? Do your brother-in-law a favour?"

"Eurgh, don't call yourself my brother-in-law, that's so weird. But fine, I guess. Have the Betas left, do you know?" she asked him.

"Old Twelvey and Claratoo? Yes, actually, they left yesterday, quite swiftly after he found out about all that business involving my daughter and what have you. I expect that won't be the last we see of her, though. He kept muttering some peculiar things about 'sonic sunglasses.'"

"How's that work?" Adam puzzled.

"Haven't the foggiest, sounds ridiculous."

"Regular glasses are miracle enough some days, you don't have to go making them sonic."

"You don't even have regular glasses, babe, they're to help you see colour properly," Oswin pointed out.

"They don't need to be sonic though."

"I guess it _is_ a stupid idea," she relented, "I'll hang around with Clara, I don't mind, I'm the only person she _doesn't_ irritate into oblivion. Not like you, Mitchell. You annoy everyone. Including me."

"Thanks."

"Are you coming, then?" Eleven interrupted them to ask, "I'd rather not regenerate today."


	229. All I Want For Christmas

**AN: Wow so there's not been a proper Doctor (as in Nine, Ten or Eleven) out for, like, five days, just Thirteen, which is kind of a travesty, and I was really trying to keep her on a backseat as well. Kind of sorry about no big goodbye for Twelve and Claratoo, but I mean, they weren't particularly welcomed to begin with, and they all hate Twelve and while they might've pitied Claratoo originally I don't think that she has much sympathy anymore, what with her sleeping with Jenny. I'm also sorry about the lack of variety in the settings, it just seems to me that lately they've been in rural areas of Britain a LOT, and this storyline is no exception, and as much as I'd LIKE to say it's going to be the last one for a while, another one might crop up on Day 102. I guess I'm just short on non-Earth-centric ideas right now.**

_Eleven_

_All I Want For Christmas_

There were a number of things the Eleventh Doctor was displeased with that day. First of all, Clara seemed comically furious with him, and it had taken a lot of fancy evasion to get out of the way of a teleporting girl brandishing a space-sword and escape. Her being angry at him was always a downer on his day, he didn't like when people were mad at him at the best of times, let alone his wife. Second of all, there was Jenny, his daughter, who had now decided it was definitely a good idea to strike up some casual, sex-revolving relationship with an alternate universe version of her own stepmother. Third of all, to cut back to Clara for a moment, she'd been having more frequent, more savage nightmares for the last few nights, something to do with the hen party he was apparently stuck on a need-to-know basis with because of the presence of Thirteen (how he hated that fact of his life at that moment, that he had things kept from him just for the satisfaction of him/herself in the future). Finally, he wasn't too thrilled about the selection of people he'd wrangled together to accompany him that day on his trip out.

Adam Mitchell was one thing to have to put up with, but the Doctor was in no mood to have to spend an extended period of time that day with his daughter and his daughter's pseudo-husband (their union was somehow even less legal than his own, being as they'd just stolen somebody else's wedding and they didn't even have rings), yet that was who he was stuck with. Oh, and River and Rory, who, by all accounts, were quite alright by comparison (well, Rory was, he generally tried to avoid River on the basis that she was his ex-wife and she didn't seem fond of Clara at all).

To add to this mess he'd gotten himself into, the weather wasn't too good at all, when they landed the TARDIS right in a village square in over a foot of crisp snow, at a point in the day that seemed to be late afternoon, going into early evening. To think he usually _liked_ the snow. It was a very strange atmosphere, though, he noted, as he dragged his feet through the thick snow, kicking it away. Mainly because he noticed, when he was a few metres away from the blue box as it started to vworp away from the six of them automatically, a Christmas tree.

"Merry Christmas!" he declared happily, the lights on the tree in the middle of the square flashing alternate shades of red, blue and yellow, green branches decked with fun-size strips of tinsel with a novelty, flashing star on top blinking gold every five seconds. It was weighed down with snow, though, like nobody had been to knock any of it off, the lights muted by heavy layers of white dust. The snow seemed entirely untouched, however, which he thought was odd. From where they were, he could see the tiniest dip in the height of the snow that signified it going over the road, but it was all still solid, like no-one had driven at all since the snow had fallen. There weren't even any footprints.

"I've had three Christmases now in as many months," Adam complained, "Sick of Christmas."

"You can't be sick of Christmas! How does that song go?" Jenny said. Eleven was trying to ignore them, doing his usual bit of over-exaggeratedly searching around for anything vaguely of interest to him, like a magpie, but a magpie for weird things that often turned out to be some useless human device serving some ridiculous purpose he didn't understand, like an iDog.

"What song?" Jack asked her.

"You know, the one about Christmas," she said, and he stared at her, at a loss for suggestions, then she started singing the tune of some song Eleven didn't think he'd ever heard, sounding off-key. And then Rory recognised it.

"Are you humming _God Save the Queen_?" he questioned her.

"I think so," she said, "It's about Christmas, right?"

"No, it's the national anthem."

"The national anthem of Christmas?" Jenny suggested.

"_No_, just the normal, national anthem of Great Britain."

"Does Christmas have a patron saint?" she asked.

"If it did, it would be Mariah Carey," Adam Mitchell joked, which Jack, Rory and River found quite funny, but which Jenny (and also Eleven, though he didn't care enough to mention) didn't get. She didn't ask, though.

"Snow's odd, isn't it?" Eleven pointed out, standing on tiptoes to get a better look.

"What? In general?" Rory asked him.

"_No_! This snow, specifically. No footprints, see? Like nobody's walked in it. Stacked up against all the doors like nobody's left their houses, and there's a lot of it, too, so it must have been snowing for a while. Stopped now, but… Why wouldn't anybody come outside?" he said, picking up a handful of snow and half-expecting it to turn out to be room-temperature fake-dust. But it wasn't, and he just ended up with ice-cold, wet hands with snowflakes stuck to his fingertips. Real snow. The snow wasn't odd. It was the people. "Where are the people?"

"Well, it's the morning, isn't it? Must have snowed in the night," Rory said.

"It's not, it's late," Jenny told him, doing a face like she was a sniffer dog on a drugs bust as she tried to determine what time it was. _Do I make that face when I smell the air_, he asked himself? He'd have to ask Clara when she was less-furious at him, "Well, not _late_-late, but it's winter. Six-ish?"

"Bit earlier," Eleven told her when she looked at him for praise or correction, "Quarter to. Mid-December. Solstice in a few days, probably."

"A whole village can't just vanish, there will be people around somewhere, sweetie," River said, and he couldn't help but wonder if maybe she oughtn't call him 'sweetie', what with her having a new boyfriend and everything. Didn't want to get into an argument with her, though, so he started dragging his feet through the snow in a very strange way, until stopped and looking at Adam, who was walking quite easily (aside from the limp he was now sporting as a result of his sprained ankle) with the snow parting in front of him like the Red Sea did for Moses.

"Can't you help the rest of us?" Eleven questioned him.

"Yeah, Frozone, give us a hand, will you?" Jack added, snickering at his own (not particularly funny) _Incredibles_ joke.

What Adam Mitchell did was just say he would go in the lead and they would all have to follow in his footsteps because he didn't quite know how long it would take him to clear up such a large amount of snow, which annoyed the Doctor, who always liked to go first, but it was either that or he carried on in his noble pursuit of waddling through almost two feet of powder, and he was already worried about how long it took for Time Lords to get frostbite (though, as it happened, it took a long while for Time Lords to get frostbite, so he wasn't too obsessed by the idea of his toes falling off).

"You'd think people would be Christmas shopping, though," Jack said, looking around, it slowly becoming evident that the Doctor was quite right in his pointing out that there were no signs of people being anywhere around them, "I actually need the toilet, y'know."

"Oh, wonderful," said the Doctor sarcastically, "Tell us all, why don't you?"

"Sorry, Doc, but I'm desperate," Jack shrugged, and Adam Mitchell sighed and changed his route as the six of them trudged, single-file, onwards through the village centre, making for a house now.

"We can't break in!" Jenny exclaimed.

"There might be nice people there who will let Jack in to use the toilet," Adam pointed out to her. He didn't seem to be in too good of a mood, Eleven noted, probably because he'd dragged the boy away from spending the whole day doing whatever it was he did with his girlfriend. Played video games and made fun of each other, he guessed.

Adam knocked loudly on the door.


	230. 2000 Light Years Away

_Adam_

_2000 Light Years Away_

Not a soul answered the door of the first house. As a matter of fact, he knocked on the doors of five or six houses with the others trailing in his wake, and nobody answered them at all. It was this last house they found in the circle that wrapped around the middle of the village, an old World War One cenotaph in the middle with the engraved names shrouded by the snow crawling up the sides, that they decided was the last straw, though. Or rather, Jack did.

Jack barged past Adam Mitchell and, with the brute force of his right shoulder, knocked the door down, the sound of Christmas music coming from within (which consisted of mechanical beeps engineered to play _We Wish You a Merry Christmas_ on a dangerously irritating loop coming from some sort of device in the living room) spilling out into the street, and then Jack was inside and stomping up the stairs going on about how desperate he was, which Adam thought was rather too much information. They met no objection from anybody inside the house, so assuming that they were just as missing as everyone else, there was unanimous sigh and they crossed the threshold.

Adam cut into the living room to try and eliminate the source of the obnoxious music that kept changing songs, he now noticed, as it had cut now to _Let it Snow_, and was halfway through _Jingle Bells_. The lot of them dispersed through the house, it seemed, leaving him alone to find that the thing playing the music was a small, flashing, dancing Christmas tree, and he picked it up to try and find the off switch.

"What're you doing?" Jenny asked him, the only one to follow him into the living room.

"If I don't turn this thing off in the next ten seconds I'm going to smash it," he told her bitterly.

"Why? It's fun," she said, and he gave her a flat look. That was the excuse his little sister always gave when she was annoying him somehow, and he was glad he hadn't really had to live in the same house as her for the last two months, or thereabouts. He was still a little worried about where she was going to live, though. He didn't want to send her to boarding school. It was playing on his mind. In the end, he just flipped the tree upside down and opened the bottom compartment, taking the batteries out and leaving them on the side next to it. "I like Christmas. I've only had one proper Christmas, with presents."

"Yeah, well, Oswin hates it," he thought he'd tell her that, since she seemed to eternally enamoured with his girlfriend.

"How come?"

"Bad stuff happens to her on Christmas," he said, "She got attacked by a mermaid, most recently. And before that she was disowned."

"Was the mermaid hot?"

"I don't know, I only saw it after she blew its head up with a microwave," he told her the truth. It had been a very gory sight, and he thought that soon he might have to get a new floor fitted in his kitchen, "So, why, exactly, are you sleeping with Beta Clara?" Jenny shrugged.

"She's kind of hot. You'd know that. You _are_ dating her. One of her." Adam didn't retort. "I don't know, Jack bet me I couldn't, I thought I could, then I did, so I won, now he's not allowed to sleep with anyone for a fortnight."

"Funny how those were your stakes," Adam said.

"How come..?" she asked in a strange way, like she was trying to hide something.

"…These presents are only half-wrapped, look," he pointed out, changing the subject from the touchy issue of Jenny's not-so-monogamous relationship. How strange it was, he mused, that she'd been all for having an actual, _closed_ relationship once-upon-a-time, weeks ago. Then Jack had one slip up and she went a little crazy for a while, forgave him and married him (sort of). Suddenly she was fine with polygamy. Fine with an open marriage. It seemed to Adam – though, he supposed he wasn't much of a relationship guru – that this bet she had, this agreement she'd made, was designed to get back at Jack. Only, if it was, it wasn't working at all, because Jack didn't care one bit. Jack had never gone around saying he was high in moral-fibre, though, and very few things seemed to faze him. If _he_ could make a bet, he'd bet that this wasn't going to end well for anybody.

But then he was distracted from these thoughts by the fact he'd spied something in a corner, a present for a kid, just waiting to be wrapped but just _begging_ to be played with. And he'd never been the sort of boy to just pass up the opportunity of playing a ukulele. Especially a SpongeBob ukulele, probably meant for someone more than two decades younger than him in age.

"Adam, what are you doing?" Jenny questioned him, "Leave that alone, you don't know how to play it."

"Who says I don't know how to play it? I know full-well how to play it," he argued, going to pick it up.

"That's some kid's Christmas present."

"Well I'm not gonna break it, am I?" he argued, "Anyway, the kid'll probably appreciate it if I tune it up for them." Jenny stared at him as he went about doing exactly that, twanging each string gently and then listening carefully to see if the note was sharp or flat or just completely wrong. It wasn't _too_ badly out, he supposed, but he had to work quite hard to get the C string right.

"Why is it yellow?" she asked him.

"It's SpongeBob."

"Who-Bob?"

"_SpongeBob_." She gave him a blank look. "You know – _who lives in a pineapple under the sea_?"

"Who does? A pineapple? Why is a pineapple in the sea?"

"No, it just… You know. SpongeBob. SpongeBob SquarePants. _Absorbent and yellow and porous is he_?"

"_Why_ do you have a SpongeBob ukulele?" Rory asked, coming into the room after hearing the racket of Adam trying to remember how to play a B on a ukulele as opposed to an actual guitar, frowning and moving his fingers clumsily under Jenny's scrutiny.

"I found it," Adam said.

"You can't steal a Christmas present!" Rory exclaimed.

"I'm not going to steal it! Who said I was going to steal it?" he said, playing the damn chord correctly finally, after accidentally playing a D about three times. This was what happened when you went to live in a time machine in space with your hot girlfriend from the future, he thought to himself – your musician skills severely suffered. Not that playing the ukulele really made him a musician – playing the _guitar_, however, _that_ did. "I just tuned it up."

"Who's SpongeBob?" Jenny asked Rory.

"A kid's cartoon character that probably wasn't around when Adam was a kid so I've no idea why he seems to know all the words to the theme song," Rory said, heavily judging him.

"My younger sister is fifteen, that's how," he said dryly, "And don't lie, Rory. I'm sure you know it, too. I'm sure everybody knows it. It's inescapable. Like _Shrek_. Or _X Factor_."

"Well would you put it down? It's annoying," Rory said.

"You're just jealous."

"I'm really not jealous, that's the last thing I am," Rory told him flatly. But he was totally jealous, Adam thought, though he relented finally and put the thing down on the floor where it had been, waiting to be wrapped in red and green, bauble-covered paper.

"Weird that they were halfway through wrapping and they just… Left," Adam said, looking around as his phone in his pocket buzzed, noticing a dark shape, like a shadow, out in the front garden as he turned. It seemed to be gone when he blinked, though, so he assumed it was just his eyes playing tricks on him.

He took his phone out and unlocked it, seeing he had a text from Clara: _Did Oswin talk to you about yesterday?_

_No_, he sent back. She hadn't. But from that message, he assumed that she wasn't telling Clara what was wrong, either (it was unrealistic to think Clara wouldn't notice any negative change in her sister, especially with their various psychic, empathic connections), which was even more worrying, because he thought she told Clara everything.

And then Jenny did something he didn't think he'd ever seen her do before: something useful. Some action with actual thought behind it, an idea, a theory, to do with what was happening around them, not some weird remark about dating his girlfriend, or just a strange comment. What she did was switch the TV on, picking up the remote from the sofa where it had been. What came on was static. No matter what channel she flicked to, always static, and then she took out her own, pink and silver sonic screwdriver that rarely made an appearance, only slightly longer than your average pen, and scanned it. Upon hearing the sound of it the Doctor got very excited and appeared in the doorway, seemingly conflicted between beaming at his daughter with pride, and trying to stay angry at her for becoming friends-with-benefits with Other Clara, while also _still_ trying to show his constant disappointment in her for marry Captain Jack Harkness.

"What's with the static?" Adam asked. It wasn't usual static, it seemed more intense, much more intense, the buzzing feeling like it was boring to his head like a ringing in his ear that you never really noticed until it suddenly stopped and you were left alone again.

"What do you mean?" Eleven asked him.

"Well, it's… Static, it's CMBR," Adam told him, "Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation. It's what Helix uses to determine what universe people are in, but this static seems weird."

"It _is_ weird," Jenny answered, "Usually, one-percent of the static is, you know, Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation. But _here_… It's huge. Sixty-percent. Nowhere on Earth has sixty-percent, you know how close you'd have to be to the epicentre of the universe to have that? And here we are in rural Britain and we might as well be a few billion light-years closer to the Big Bang." Now that she was being clever, her father was even _more_ conflicted about praising her or not.

"Hey, guys!?" Jack called down from above, "Something up here you should all see."


	231. Empty Houses

_Jenny_

_Empty Houses_

"That's vile," River said, the lot of them gathered around peering into the sink like weirdos at the contents, which consisted of a viscous, reddish, lumpy sort of liquid, like puce vomit.

"So somebody's sicked up a lot of blood, and then vanished? Halfway through wrapping Christmas presents? Along with their kids? And everybody else? Somehow without leaving the house? Because, I mean, sure, they _could_ have left before the snow fell, but it's hardly likely since that Christmas tree was still playing, and if they'd left a couple of days ago the batteries would have died."

"But if they vanished so recently, they still would have left marks in the snow," Adam pointed out, "So that means they were all staying in their homes, for some reason."

"Maybe it was because the weather's bad?" River suggested.

"Or because they were hiding," Adam said.

"You always have to go make everything all suspicious."

"It's suspicious anyway! A whole village have just _disappeared_," he argued, and Jenny thought Adam was right. It really seemed like this entire village had just, out of nowhere, ceased to exist, but if they really were hiding, then that implied something was taking them, and they knew enough about it to stay indoors.

"I've worked enough shifts in A&amp;E to know that that's more than just typical vomiting," Rory said, squinting at the stuff, "There's stomach lining in here, chunks of tissue, like they were… Rotting, or something. From the inside. Disintegrating."

"Pleasant," commented Jenny, "So, people are turning to mush inside-out, disappearing and hiding in a town with more Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation than you can shake a stick at? …Well I'm gonna take a look around some more. You never know, one of them might keep a diary."

"Why do I never think of things like that?" Eleven asked the others as Jenny slid out of the room, going across to a bedroom she assumed belonged to a child because it had one of those chalkboards hanging off it where kids usually wrote their names, she supposed, though this one actually said _KEEP OUT_ in large, uneven writing in blue chalk. She found that interesting, but she couldn't exactly rule out that this child hadn't just been in a bad mood when they'd written that, or that maybe it had been written weeks ago and they'd just never rubbed it out. Still, she went into the room, which was dark with the curtains drawn, and switched the lights on. Nobody had followed her, they were all quite distracted theorising about the organ-vomit, which didn't interest her particularly, and she'd always been one for following her gut instincts (no pun intended).

The room, if she had to guess, was a boy's, and though she wasn't normally one for taking everything gender-related at face value, she supposed that this being Earth in the era it was, the car toys and fire engines and blue walls and space bedsheets led her to believe that the room probably belonged to a member of the male sex. What if the kid _didn't_ want to play with cars? What if he wanted to play with _dolls_? She thought that if she'd ever been a child, she would've loved dolls, but she also would've loved guns. Those Nerf dart guns always looked terribly fun, though, the Doctor didn't seem like the type of father who'd let her have them, not that he'd been successful so far in getting her to call an arms amnesty on herself.

_Where would a little boy keep a diary?_ Probably not under the bed, since that was where monsters stayed. She checked the drawers of a very small desk and found a lot of Christmas drawings of tree ornaments and whatnot, done in crayon, she assumed by the scraggly, waxy lines, and only scanned the first one before putting it down. Keeping diaries never seemed a very male habit, either, though, but as it happened, Jenny got lucky.

Under the pillow she found it, a little book with space-stuff all over it, rocket ships and stars and asteroids, and she flipped it open to the first page, where in the cover the boy had done that childish thing of writing his full-name in a backwards manner, and it read _Timothy James Green_ in the front, and below it, _age 8_. An eight year-old boy, just vanished into thin air. It saddened her a little, but she skimmed through the pages nonetheless, checking the dates. He was very good at keeping diaries, this Timothy James Green, she noted, because he updated almost every day. The last time he wrote anything was December Nineteenth, which couldn't have been too long ago.

_Dear Dairy,_ (he couldn't spell 'diary')

_We are hiding from them now, mummy and daddy say I can't go outside anymore I want to build a snowman though_

That was all the entry for the Nineteenth said. She flipped back a few pages until coming across another drawing of a tree ornament at the bottom of the page of the Fourteenth. But it was terribly cryptic, just a few sentences, so maybe Timothy wasn't as good a record keeper as she first thought, but it was very sinister, really. The things she read across the next few pages were unsettling and brief and not explanatory at all, and just headed and footed with drawings of nativity characters, as far as she could tell. Gabriel, or something. It went along the lines of:

_It is in the garden. I don't like it._

_I saw it move_

_Sally is gone, mummy won't say where. She is crying._

_She moved agen_

_They're are too_

_I think there sad_

And just a lot of that, really. Sinister. Going over the last five days in the diary. The garden? What was in the garden? At that, she went boldly over to the curtains and lifted them, to peer outside through the frost. But the window was quite grimy with snow piled quite high, so she stood on tiptoes to get a look out above it, squinting through the glass, wiping the condensation away with the back of her hand.

All she saw was some statue, some weird type of garden ornament, she supposed. Grey and person-like, she thought it might have wings and a bowed head, but it was difficult to see. Then she frowned and dropped the curtain back down, going back over to the drawings on the desk and sifting through them, the diary in her other hand and the drawings in that, too. _Christmas ornaments_. Angels. Timothy had been drawing angels, lots of them, on paper and in his diary, in dark colours like grey and black, in crayon or pen or pencil, but never any colours.

She took a few steps back, utterly confused. What did he mean saying it had moved?

So she went back over to the window and lifted the curtain again, standing up on tiptoes and leaning right up to the glass so that her nose was touching it. Times like this in horror films, something would always jump out at you, she noted.

It was still there, though. The statue. With the wings. But… She couldn't shake the feeling that it looked different. But not too different. Then she shook her head and glanced back at the notebook for a moment, thinking her mind was definitely playing tricks on her just because of the over-active imagination of an eight year-old boy.

She jumped.

It _had_ moved. Somehow.

It was closer. And it no longer had a bowed head. Through the frost and the steam from her breath, she could see it had dropped its hands from where they'd been held up near its face. She saw empty eyes looking right back at her, and an emotionless, hollow face.


	232. God Of The Machine

_Jenny_

_God Of The Machine_

Statues just didn't move though, and the window was frosted and half-buried in snow anyway, making the damn thing look like it was drowning in ice. Shaking her head and wondering if maybe Jack had played some joke on her involving spiking her drink with some hallucinogen, or if maybe this was still some after-effect of her run-in with the Frir. At any rate, she thought it was odd, but a little boy would easily make things up like that about what was around him. Who knew – maybe he had the makings of a writer? Imaginations _did_ run wild.

Taking the diary and folding some of the drawings and sticking them inside, she thought maybe the vomiting was the thing they should be focusing on, rather than some random homemaker's crude idea of garden décor. Who was she to judge, anyway? She lived on a spaceship, she didn't have a garden. Though, she supposed that Messaline was quite the thriving garden world lately, a regular Eden, after the Source had been revealed to actually be a terraforming device after the painstaking Seven Day War. Not that she'd visited in the last two centuries. So she left the bedroom, closing the door carefully behind her, and walked in on a large argument, mainly between Rory, River and her father, about whether or not tasting the vomit was a terrible idea.

"You probably shouldn't eat it," she told the Doctor, since Rory and River were both firmly on the _against_ side of this particular debate, Jack and Adam Mitchell just watching to see if he'd actually dare eat semi-dissolved innards.

"Maybe it's not vomit, maybe it used to be a dead baby?" Adam suggested.

Then River diverted her attention from her ex-husband to him, and said, "Didn't your girlfriend tell you off two days ago for making jokes about dead babies in sinks?"

"Well, there was a dead woman in a bath, of _course_ I was gonna make a joke about a dead baby in a sink," he said, like this was obvious, and everyone stared at him, "It wasn't dead, anyway."

"What wasn't dead?" Jenny asked him.

"The foetus."

"What foetus is this we're even talking about?"

"It's in, you know. _PT_. The 'playable teaser' for _Silent Hills_. It's a video game, Jesus, I'm not crazy, it's not like _I_ killed the baby, I was just pointing out the remarkable coincidence of the fact that in _PT_ the mother of the baby is shot in the abdomen and killed while pregnant, supposedly by her husband, and then there foetus is in the sink and it talks to you and later on shows up in one of those paper lunch-bags they use in America," he explained, "What do you expect? It's _Silent Hill_. In _Silent Hill 2_ you spend the whole game stalked by a necrophiliac murderer with a massive triangular helmet."

"…He's kind of right, I mean, _I've_ played _Silent Hill 2_," Rory said.

"Thank you! See? It was funny."

"It wasn't _that_ funny, and you just spent five minutes explaining it," Rory told him, then he turned to the Doctor and said, "Seriously, don't eat it, it's putrid, it looks days old."

"Anyone know what the date is?" Jenny asked, mainly she was asking Eleven, as she flipped open the diary again that ended on the Nineteenth, Adam Mitchell coming over (though, it was really an awfully small bathroom, it didn't even have a shower, just a bath with the curtain drawn back so they could see the base was cracked and grimy.

"The Twenty-Third," Eleven answered her.

"Seriously? This family have been gone for four days," she answered, "Going by this diary, and this boy wrote an entry every day."

"What are these drawings of?" Adam asked.

"This weird statue in the garden."

"'_We are hiding from them… I saw it move… They're sad… There are two_,'" Adam Mitchell read aloud as she skimmed the pages.

"What 'weird statue'?" Rory asked carefully, he, River and Eleven exchanging glances that the other three didn't particularly understand.

"I don't know, but he drew it a bunch of times, see?" she passed the diary to Adam after taking the pictures out of it and unfolding them, showing the myriad of grey, near-identical figures.

"They look like…" Rory began.

"Angels," River finished.

"Wait, wait – you mean the Weeping Angels?" Adam said, and then there was a crashing noise in the background, and they all turned to stare at the door into the boy's room, the door of the bathroom open out into the hall (what a trip hazard that must be, did builders not need to run risk assessments?).

"What's a Weeping Angel?" Jenny asked, and even Jack didn't seem too enlightened about these creatures.

"They're as old as the universe," Eleven said in his 'dark' voice. His 'important', everybody-listen-to-me voice. It sort of grated on Jenny, she had to admit.

"If they're that old, how come they don't need, you know, Zimmer frames, or something?" Jenny asked, and they stared at her, "What?"

"Did you see one?" Eleven asked her, completely ignoring her question.

"I think so, in the garden. Angels? Well then, I guess, yeah," she said.

"Well I'm pretty sure it just broke in," Rory said, "They sent us back in time once already, me and Amy, to New York."

"Yeah, but I mean, we've got emergency teleporters," Jenny shrugged.

"Well, _yeah_, but… That's kind of a deus ex machina, don't you think?" Adam said to her.

"A what?"

"It's a Latin phrase that directly translates to 'God of-'" Adam began.

"We don't have time for this!" Eleven shouted, barging through the group and forcing the bedroom door open, which Jenny thought was a thoroughly stupid idea. The door opened out into the hall anyway, couldn't they have just barricaded it? But no, he just _had_ to go _open_ the door and reveal the Angel standing right there, which made Jenny jump, and Eleven jumped too, because it had an arm partially outstretched as though to grab, "Nobody blink."

"I'm sure we can blink, there are six of us, we won't _all_ blink at the same time," Adam told him dryly, "You're quite scared of it, aren't you? The three of you?"

"They killed Amy and Rory!" Eleven protested.

"They didn't really _kill_ them, why couldn't you have gone and got them, anyway?" Adam asked.

"Maybe he just _really_ wanted to go bang Clara?" Jack said.

"I can definitely see the appeal in that," Jenny said snidely, "Anyway, what do we do now? Kill it?"

"No! You can't kill it, it's made of stone!"

"Yeah, but I have my blaster on me, so if we all close our eyes I could just aim and shoot it," Jenny suggested, taking her sonic blaster out, much to Eleven's displeasure, "Couldn't we hit it with something? Hit it with that ukulele, maybe?"

"Or a shovel," Adam said.

"Where did you see a shovel?" Jack asked, and he just shrugged.

"There always seems to be a shovel lying about when you need one." Probably an ancient proverb of some kind, Jenny mused. That always seemed to be how films worked, though. People just always had shovels in the car boots for the specific instance they might murder someone, or have the opportunity to do some impromptu gardening. Kind of the same thing, really. You were still digging.

"We could always call up Rose, make her teleport here, and punch it?" Jenny suggested.

"That's a deus ex machina as well," Adam shrugged.

"Stop saying that," Rory told him, "Why don't _you_ go and freeze it?"

"If only we had the Shadow and his fancy vaporisation ray that can kill Xenomorphs with us," River said a little sarcastically, and Jenny laughed.

"Are any of you taking this seriously!?" Eleven protested.

"_I_ am," Rory said. The Angel hadn't moved an inch since the Doctor had opened the door, "He _could_ freeze it though."

"There's at least two, though," Jenny said, getting back on track and glancing at the diary, "The boy – Timothy – he said 'there are two'. And if the whole village is gone, maybe there are more than two? Because in his last entry he says, 'we are hiding from them.' That could be any number."

"They don't just wander," Eleven said, "There were four of them in London once after the TARDIS in this house, but they're usually in groups. There must be something about this town, something luring them here."

"Well, yeah, exactly, but what? And what's all that vomiting insides up about?" Jenny asked, "But seriously, we should probably kill it."

"I could sleep with it," Jack said.

"_Why_ would you _sleep with it_?" Rory questioned him.

"She's a good-looking girl," Jack said, grinning to himself and shrugging, and Jenny couldn't help but feel a pang of annoyance. Not that she showed it. Sometimes, she really wasn't fond of 'open-relationships'. Had they ever _talked_ about having one? No. She and Jack _never_ talked about stuff like that, actual stuff, even his spur of the moment proposal had been swept under the rug. "I just mean, aliens get confused if you sleep with them. If I slept with you, you'd be confused, right?"

"I expect I'd feel more violated," Eleven answered him when I dressed, "But what's your point? I don't think that's the answer."

"Oh, fucking hell!" Adam exclaimed out of nowhere, who'd drifted to the back of the group. They turned to see a grey, stony hand clawing through the slightly open window, like the damn Angel was clinging to the wall outside. But said stony hand was gripping Adam Mitchell's wrist quite tightly, "Shit!"

"Why isn't it sending you back in time!?" Rory demanded.

"I don't know! How should I bloody know!?"

"Freeze it, like you did the door, remember?" River said to him, and he seemed to remember whatever she was talking about.

"Why do they listen to _you_ when _you _suggest freezing it, but not _me_?" Rory mumbled.

"Will somebody else look at this Angel, please?" Eleven called through, and Jack moved past Jenny to go help him while Adam Mitchell started to freeze the arm of the Angel, gripping it around the wrist like it was doing to him, though it was quite helpless as this happened, and she possibly pitied it a little.

"They're quite agile, aren't they?" Jenny mused, "Not like Daleks. Daleks are terrible, can't even climb stairs properly."

"I know she only has one leg, but that's a bit harsh," Adam commented, which Jenny thought was quite funny.

"Shall I tell her you said that?" Rory threatened him with telling on him to his girlfriend.

"No, I'll tell her myself later. I'd text her but I kind of have my hands full," Adam said sarcastically which, again, Jenny found amusing. Then the arm of the Weeping Angel snapped off and dropped to the floor, shattering into a million dark figments, and while the four of them were looking at that, when they looked back, the remainder of the arm had been withdrawn from the window.

"Great. One down. Who knows how many to go?" Rory said.


	233. Rotting

**AN: A****pologies for not updating for two days. If I said I'd been busy I'd be lying, what I've really been doing it writing more fic-drafts for later chapters. Isn't it strange to think if that one leaf had never blown into that guy's face that one time, there wouldn't be any queer vampire-alien-shit? What a butterfly effect.**

_Adam_

_Rotting_

He was staring at his arm where the Angel had grabbed it, brushing frost off his fingers on his jeans with his other hand. It just looked a bit indented, was all, by him being grabbed, nothing odd about it. The same finger-shaped marks anybody would get if a statue had just tried to pull them out of a window, or whatever the Angel had been trying to do to him. But then he was ordered, yet again, by Rory, who told him just to go freeze the other one that Jack and Eleven were having to keep their eyes on, having a vocal discussion about when to blink and when not to blink that was getting annoying.

"Maybe there are only two?" Jenny suggested as Adam put his hand on top of the Angel's head, steadily freezing the thing to the core. If it tried to move, it would shatter itself. If it hung around for long enough maybe it would thaw, but that would take hours, at least. They'd be fine, he figured. "That's what the diary said."

"No, they go in packs," said Eleven, "You'll rarely find one on their own, they're easily beaten on their own. And if everyone in the town is gone…"

"But there's no sign of the Angels breaking in to take anybody out of here," said Rory, "Not until now, and Jack had to kick the door down. So-"

"The snowman," Jenny said, skimming the diary, "The little boy, Timothy, he wrote that he wanted to build a snowman in the back garden…" she moved through the group and past Adam, who was staring at his arm, still, though there didn't seem to be anything there, and stood on tiptoes to look out of the window, and jumped, "Damn thing's just standing there without its arm. Creepy. But there's definitely the beginnings of a snowman out there."

"So you think the kid went out to build a snowman, his parents came to stop him, and the Angels got them?" Rory said, and she nodded.

"The real question is, if there are two, how many more are there? They're like fleas – for every one you see, there are probably dozens more," Eleven said, and Adam pulled a face at that parasitic analogy.

"What about the question of, why hasn't Adam vanished?"

"Maybe the Angel didn't want him to vanish?" River suggested, "It's happened to me before…" she said that a little weakly, and her eyes fell to the floor and the bathroom tiles that were damp from the snow they'd all trailed in on their shoes. Eleven shifted uncomfortably, and Adam suspected that they were talking about some past event they'd been involved with. Rory seemed edgy enough to know about it, at any rate. Neither Jack nor Jenny noticed, however. Adam was thinking about something else, though.

"I grew up in a small village…" he said.

"Well, yeah, so did I," Rory said, shrugging, like Adam was somehow trying to steal his limelight of growing up in a rural area, which Adam didn't understand too well.

"I mean that, people in villages are weird. They all know each other, and they have town meetings," Adam said, "Everybody here clearly knew about this crisis, so-" halfway through speaking he felt a stabbing in his gut like he'd been punched, or like something had sunk itself into his back and was dragging him one way, and he bent double and stumbled, and Rory caught him to hold him up.

"What's wrong?" Rory asked, everybody looking at him concernedly. But he didn't know what was wrong.

"Maybe it's period cramps?" Jenny suggested, and everybody stared at her, "Oh, come on, everything _always_ turns out to be period cramps."

"Since _when_?" River questioned her, disbelieving, "Where do you get this logic from?" Jenny shrugged.

"I highly doubt it's period cramps, considering he's male," Rory told her, but the feeling had passed in Adam Mitchell. He didn't know what it was, but it was gone all of a sudden.

"I, um…" he frowned, trying to think, "I was saying… About… If they can't get a meeting, they'll have left answerphone messages around the town…"

Jack then left to go check Adam's theory, the Angel in the landing corner still frozen like an icicle.

"Reminds me of the ice woman that killed Clara," Eleven mused, "Well, not Clara, the Victorian one, that one. Pulled her off this cloud I was living on." Adam thought that this wasn't the best group of people to be mentioning Clara around, for a range of different reasons. For one thing, if he mentioned her too often, his daughter would probably say something highly disturbing and vastly inappropriate, but there was also the issue of River being his ex-wife, and though they'd both (supposedly) 'moved on', it wasn't like they'd ever actually talked to each other. The Doctor, in all of his forms, seemed to have a terrible habit of never talking to people about important things.

"This machine's ancient – hey, doll, what year're we in!?" Jack called up from the bottom of the stairs. Jenny shifted uncomfortably at being called 'doll', and Adam thought he'd really like to escape from this situation. He didn't want to get involved in a spat between Jack and Jenny, especially since they always ended with Jack dying. _Always_. And he also hoped no shouting would arise between Eleven and Jenny about Clara, which may well sink into an argument involving River, too, and then soon enough everyone would be shouting while he felt like his kidneys were trying to burn a hole through his back. But then again, maybe he was just being paranoid.

"1991," she answered him eventually.

"What?"

"_1991_," she repeated, louder, annoyance in her tone.

"Thanks, doll!"

"Urgh," she grunted, and everyone looked at her, "What? I just hate it when he calls me that."

"Tell him to stop," said Rory, carefully letting Adam's shoulders go now that he seemed to be okay, though he was secretly wishing he could teleport anywhere, anywhen, like Rose. Or turn invisible. Maybe he should just freeze himself in a large block of ice.

"He won't listen. I've told him before, he never listens…" she pretended to be preoccupied with the diary, the year written in the corner in a strange backwards way.

"Well, I told you you shouldn't have married him," Eleven said. _What a stupid thing to say_, Adam thought, and decided it was in his best interest if he were to close the bathroom window carefully, spotting the dismembered Angel making a fanged, hissing face up at him from the ground. Glancing out across the horizon at a few more gardens, he thought he spotted more of them, dark blotches, and felt his stomach twisting. When he looked back to the one in the garden, it had moved, but not towards them. It was probably in pain. He sort of felt bad.

"No you didn't," Jenny said, "_You_ actually gave your blessing, remember? You were just preoccupied with your wife because she'd died again."

"Oi!" Eleven protested, "Sorry for caring about Clara!"

"I'm not saying that, I'm just saying that you're being a hypocrite! I care about her as well, you know."

"_This is awful_," Rory said quietly to Adam, who nodded, thankful that the others hadn't heard him.

"OH, well I'm not talking about _your_ kind of 'caring'!" Eleven argued.

"She's always dying," River joined in, "The world can't stop every time Clara Oswald dies."

"Hey!" both Eleven and Jenny said, and then Eleven glared at his daughter.

"Leave Clara out of this," Jenny told River.

"Why?"

"Don't defend her, she's _my_ wife," Eleven argued with Jenny now.

"Well _you're_ not defending her, are you?"

"It wasn't about her anyway! It was about you and your illegal eloping!" Eleven shouted.

"Well I only get it from you, don't I!? First River, then Clara, not to mention _Marilyn Monroe_! Hey, _dad_, do you think that's where I get my blonde hair from?"

"That's IT! You are GROUNDED!"

"You can't ground me! You've tried to ground me before and it didn't work!" she shouted.

"Give me your sonic sc-"

Adam vomited into the bath behind him and cut off the argument, collapsing to his knees over the porcelain with his breakfast staring back at him, deformed and melted, intermingled with pink blood.


	234. Chaos Theory

_Rory_

_Chaos Theory_

Undoubtedly, the sick in the sink was related to Adam Mitchell puking in the bath out of nowhere after that Angel had grabbed him, but by the way Eleven was looking on with utter confusion and worry, he didn't think the Doctor had a clue what was going on. The argument was stopped, though, and the silence was cut into by the loud sound of Jack figuring out how to make the answering machine work.

"_They're taking people! They touch them, and hours later, they're gone! They took my brother, he just started puking and then disappeared! Everybody has to leave!_" it rang out in a male, mechanical voice that sent a chill down his spine. Then there was a beep, and the next message played.

"_There's more of them, Chris, like something's bringing them here. It's to do with the static, I know it, it's to do with that thing they're hiding, that thing in the woods. They _say_ it's a 'weather monitoring station', but why would it be there? It's not on a hill, it's nowhere important, I know it…_" that one stopped there. So, the weather monitoring station in the woods was probably going to be their next stop. But in a town infested with Weeping Angels that were apparently making people so ill they vomited up their insides before disappearing into nothing, Rory didn't have the foggiest how they'd actually find this place.

He clenched his fists on his knees as another message started playing, ringing in his ears like thunder. But it was only four words: "_It's the Crossroads, Chris_." Then it stopped. There was the robotic voice declaring that was the end of the messages. The Crossroads? What was the Crossroads? Rory couldn't even tell what order those messages were supposed to be going in, but he knew they were all in the identical, frantic, young voice. Along with that, he could hear the crunching of snow outside, like hundreds of heavy feet running about. Angels. He'd heard them running about for a while, now, and it was very odd to have some kind of constant movement attributed to the fiends. He could hear them clearly, though.

"Oh, god, look at this," Jenny said, showing the diary to her father, both of them apparently forgetting about the argument they'd had not five minutes prior, "The drawings – they're vanishing. I swear, there were more of them before… Maybe these entries were really long, and they've been disappearing?"

"I'm gonna disappear?" Adam heaved out, and then he spewed some more, emptying himself, his emissions getting redder and redder and darker and darker every time he did. More blood. Soon it wouldn't be just blood. Soon it would be all sorts of lumps of the cud that stuck together within to make up organs and blood vessels and muscles.

"It's like the Angels are erasing people from existence… Completely erasing them…" Eleven breathed, glancing from the diary to Adam, Rory thinking back over the messages in his head. Rory heard Jack coming back up the stairs. "They don't erase people usually, they send them back in time, make them live to death, I've never seen this before…"

"So something's obviously altering the Angels? Maybe the same thing drawing them here?" River suggested to him, and he chewed this over, Rory trying to make sure Adam kept some of his body mass down, but failing. Adam's teeth were stained with blood already, and he kept hawking big blobs of crap into the bath.

"Look at this," Jack said, coming into the bathroom, Rory wondering why everyone didn't just flock out elsewhere, "A book about ley lines." Eleven groaned, staring at the huge tome, which was ancient and probably ridiculous.

"Ley lines do not exist," he said stiffly.

"Well, look, this guy who lived here, this Chris, he was drawing on some of the pages, and there's stranger stuff going on still," Jack explained, "Like, we're in Cornwall. When the hell does it snow in Cornwall before Christmas? Even after Christmas, you don't get snow here till February most years. There's a place here, in these woods nearby, they call it 'the Crossroads.'"

"Maybe the bloke on the phone was a nutter?" Rory suggested.

"Yeah, well, statues are moving and erasing people from history, and you have superpowers. None of us are really fit to call anything else ridiculous, now, are we?" Jack stared around at the lot of them, and it was true, Rory hated to admit, "The Crossroads it where two ley lines converge, and it also happens to be where two streams cross over, water being a notorious conductor of energy-"

"Yes, the sort of energy that doesn't actually exist, because ley lines aren't real, they're just doodles," Eleven kept saying, adamantly denying that Jack had found something useful. Maybe it was something to do with the whole marrying-his-daughter thing, and the whole, marrying-his-daguther-who-slept-with-another-version-of-his-wife-that-one-time thing… Rory knew it wasn't technically _incest_, but it was weird, and probably immoral.

"Look, Chris drew over it that the weather station he was going on about it is here, where the ley lines cross, where the streams cross, and bad things happen when you cross streams."

"I don't know if you're talking about sex or _Ghostbusters_, but I might faint if the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man walks over the hill," Rory quipped, and Adam might have laughed meekly next to him. But then, he also might have just coughed.

"We have to go see what it is," River told the Doctor, who looked thoroughly displeased, "Something's disturbing time."

"It's like the Cosmic Background Radiation," Jenny said, "The static, like we're somehow closer to the centre of the universe, like something is leaking through from somewhere, causing all sorts of temporal anomalies, like a super-Angel-army and snow."

"Not to mention a SpongeBob ukulele when SpongeBob doesn't exist until 1999," Adam said weakly.

"_Why_ do you know that?" Rory questioned him, but he was sick again.

"Well I don't think Adam Mitchell's in a fit state to be going anywhere," Eleven sighed, apparently giving in, because there wasn't much else that they could be doing, and in a weird way the theory about ley lines and some sort of passage through time made sense.

"Do you think it's a Crack in Time?" Rory asked him.

"Could be a Rift," said Jack.

"Or a Dimension Door," said Jenny.

"…I don't know. Not yet. Could be lots of things. Not a Crack, Cracks erase things themselves, they don't transport things," Eleven said, "Maybe there's an alternate dimension where Angels _can_ do all of these things?"

"Yeah, but you don't get transdimensional snow-clouds," Jack told him, "Climates don't work that way."

"It's something, but Adam ought to stay here."

"Fine by me… Just stop me erasing…" he choked, then heaved again next to Rory.

"And _you_," Eleven turned to Jenny, "_You_ are still grounded. Give me your screwdriver. _Now_."

"No!" she protested, apparently hoping that he'd forgotten about his decision to attempt to ground her.

"_Yes_, you're _grounded_," Eleven said, "Because _I_ am your _father_, and-"

"Oh really!? What kind of father lets his daughter shag his wife!?" Jenny shouted. Rory tried to block out the argument that followed, because it was very loud, and tried to focus his superhearing on the Angels outside, who were probably meeting up to discuss tactics. If that was even what they did. He didn't have much of a clue. Maybe there were still other people left, hiding out, and they were after them? But time travellers were always juicier targets…

To cut a long story short, and surprising Rory completely, for once, Eleven actually won an argument with his rebellious, disobedient daughter, who was apparently still an adolescent by Time Lord standards, and she really did seem like a stroppy teenager sometimes. A stroppy, married teenager who slept with stepmothers. She really did hand over her sonic screwdriver, though, and at further pressing Eleven got her to relinquish her sonic blaster and she passed that to Jack, maybe hoping that Jack would give it back to her later. Rory didn't know if he would.

And then Jenny was ordered to stay and watch Adam Mitchell, (to which she argued, "_How can I defend him against Angels without my gun?_" which Rory thought was a valid point, though not a point that Eleven was remotely inclined to listen to or acknowledge).

"Rory? Are you coming, or are you going to stay?" Eleven asked him.

"I'd better come with you…" Rory said, not liking to leave a patient, "I can hear them when they move, I'll be more use with you."

"Barricade the door on your way out," Jenny muttered resentfully, going and putting the toilet lid down and sitting on it with her legs crossed in some sort of tantrum. Rory didn't want to stay anywhere with Jenny, because he didn't want to risk getting on the wrong side of her and having her deck him, or shoot him, or break his arm, or inflict any sort of dreadful, physical pain on him.


	235. The Butterfly Effect

_Eleven_

_The Butterfly Effect_

It was an ordeal, to say the least, to traverse the village through the snow. At least the snow meant the Angels were easy to spot, though they really didn't have much defence against them at all. Their only hope was to move quickly and to get through the woods, Eleven keeping his eyes pinned on the ley lines book with all the writing in it about this weather station. Jack kept shooting the heads off of them like they were dummies, not that that would kill them. It would be better to trap them, but he couldn't think of a single way to trap the things to stop them from following them. Rory was doing a good job at keeping an ear-out, though. He'd stare around and Jack would shoot the Angels he spotted, chopping arms or necks.

When they got out of the village, the woods were even worse, because the trees were thick and the Angels actually blended in, though even the Doctor could hear them moving around. All that did was make him paranoid, though, because there were a lot of them, and Jack couldn't shoot them all. But they couldn't stop, he knew that much, and he hoped they wouldn't get cornered, but there was a strange feeling throughout the woods, like they were alive. Of course, trees were always alive, technically, but it was more than that. A swelling, almost, like energy was rippling through the ground itself.

"This is like that prank your sister-in-law played on me and Rose," Jack said.

"Sorry?" Eleven asked, lifting his eyes from the tome for just a moment to see the Angels swarming them distantly. They weren't too much of a threat, though, not short-term, they were almost a reverse of the regular Weeping Angels. If one of them touched him, it would take quite a long time for 1200 years to be erased, especially with a life like his, and all of their consequences. Probably, that gave him enough time to reverse the effects, which he was waiting for. Maybe the Angels were being clever and wondering to themselves exactly what would happen if they dragged the Doctor, or any of the Doctor's companions, out of time and space. Then there was the matter of the time it would take to wipe all of his other selves, which was thousands of years collectively. Jack would take even longer than he would, even. Adam Mitchell was in the most danger of all of them. These Angels were like the snakes that would bite their prey, and then would stalk them through jungles for days waiting for them to die so that they could be consumed.

"You were there," Jack told him, "It was a month ago. That was when H&amp;T and the Cult were officially disbanded."

"That was only a month ago? Feels like longer…" Eleven sighed, he vaguely remembered what Jack was talking about, though he also remembered it had been almost entirely Adam Mitchell's idea, and he would be to blame. The Doctor hadn't condoned it at all, really, looking back. But if he recalled correctly, it had been belated revenge for locking he and Clara in a hotel suite three months ago, though their plan had actually worked in an irritating way. Then he paused to think. Three months ago? He frowned and tried to remember what the day number was. Ninety-Nine, he thought, that was what the TARDIS declared. Did that mean that exactly three months ago was when they-

"There," Rory interrupted his thoughts, peering over his shoulder at the book and pointing ahead. They'd arrived, Angels lurking around, but none of them trying to stop them. Why?

"_Oh_," he realised something, "They want us to fix it. If they erase people from existence, eventually they're going to run out of prey, you see? People to send back in time… I still don't understand why there are so many of them here, though…"

"I guess we'll find out," said Jack, and then he shot the door handle of the weather station, which just seemed to be like a grey box made of concrete with no windows at all, next to two streams that were crossing over, the rush of water being the only giveaway that they were even in the right place. How did the people in the town know that this was a weather monitoring station at all? There weren't any signs on it to say that was what it was.

"Was that necessary?" Eleven asked Jack, disgruntled.

"Sure it was necessary," Jack shrugged, and then he went and kicked the door down. He was never normally this reckless, Eleven noted. And then Jenny had definitely been muttered a lot of moderately resentful things… _Oh, no_, he thought, there was something going on. Really, he didn't want to be involved in any drama on the TARDIS. It had been bad enough when Tentoo and Rose were fighting. As soon as the Betas left and he thought there might be some room to breathe, more things started up. There was always something, wasn't there? Some feud. And Clara was still angry at him, apparently. Maybe Oswin would do some good and talk her out of her mood…

The Doctor decided then that he was going to take the lead through this place, and asked Rory to tag along behind him, making some comment about Jack being more useful at the back of the group, rather than the front. Rory stayed out of the fights on the ship, Rory was neutral, and Eleven would like to know his secret for how to remain that. Which was why, when they got into the place, which was a tiny room with nothing in it but a partially open manhole on the floor, Eleven told Jack it would be best if he kept guard up here while the other three of them headed down below to figure out what was really happening. Jack seemed to be able to sense that Eleven was lying, but the Doctor wasn't in a good mood at all. Jack slid the manhole cover closed after them, and they were left in a tunnel, and the Doctor took out a torch, because he'd finally remembered to put one in his pockets.

"Terrible atmosphere up there," Eleven commented.

"Well _you_ contributed to it, grounding Jenny," Rory told him.

"Yes, well, she deserves to be grounded. How would you feel if your daughter slept with a duplicate of Amy?" Eleven challenged, and River coughed next to him, "Well, no, not _literally_… You know what I mean… I'd really quite like to go home…"

"You and me both," Rory sighed.

The underground tunnel they were in had no lights at all, but it wasn't particularly long. For a start, the only way they could have gone was right, and there were no turnings, there were no doorways, it was just straight, with a door at the end, hanging open. And through that door, the Doctor heard a noise, a whirring noise, and the feeling of energy, living energy, built around him like a crescendo as he placed a palm on the door and pushed it open, a dark, circular room welcoming them, a bright blue light in the middle.

No normal light, though, it was huge, and moving, flailing around, a dark gap in its centre and an unnatural wind conjured around it.

"What is that!?" Rory asked, having to speak loudly.

"It's a wormhole," the Doctor answered him, passing Rory the torch straight away and rushing around the room to whatever consoles he could find, River doing the same in the opposite direction, "The backend of a wormhole, that is. This is what's bringing the Angels through, a passage to the centre of the universe. It must have been here, underground, like the Rift in Canary Wharf, and they dug down to hollow out the earth and get to it…"

"The book says this is the exact point where the ley lines cross, though," Rory shouted to the Doctor.

"They'll be giving it more power," River answered him, "The wormhole opening on the ley lines is making the Angels that are lured through it from wherever it opens out more powerful, causing temporal disturbances."

"Ley lines aren't real!" Eleven argued with her.

"Of course they're real! This is proof!"

"This is not proof! This is nothing! This is a _coincidence_!"

"Don't be a baby!"

"OI!" he objected to being called a baby. He wasn't a baby. Babies didn't do anything, just made weird noises and dribbled and didn't understand how to exert proper bowel control. _He_ knew how to exert proper bowel control. He'd been exerting proper bowel control for the best part of 1200 years.

"But what happens if you close it!?" Rory shouted.

"The Angels lose their power," Eleven answered him, without the wormhole to feed them, and they'll know that, which is why they lead us here. If it gets closed properly, the whole effects of it should be reversed, it's full of time energy…"

"Going by these readings, it's been open for about a week," River said.

"The wormhole lured the Angels here, but taking this sort of wormhole away – a chrono-displacmentary one – will shut it down at both ends. It's the way it works with the universe, it's fragile and potentially dangerous-"

"_Potentially_ dangerous!?"

"Well, yes, look – if we get rid of the wormhole, the wormhole never existed. So no Angels would ever have come through, everything shifts back to a week ago here."

"What about us!?"

"We're at a quantum superposition because _we're_ the ones shutting down the wormhole, without us to stop it, it wouldn't _be_ shut down, so it's impossible for it to erase us, too. It'll bring everybody back, a week ahead, and they'll have no memory of what happened, they'll just be very confused. It'll be one of those news stories where everybody thinks it's a hoax in twenty years, like all those alien abductions. Or Roswell," Eleven said.

"Roswell wasn't a hoax!?"

"Of course it wasn't a hoax! Closing this portal will get rid of the Angels and bring everybody back, _and_ save Adam Mitchell. Very complicated, erasure like that. Butterfly Effect and whatnot. Stopping this will stop everything else that consecutively happened, and this weather station will completely vanish, because without the wormhole to entice them to build it, well – they won't build it, you see?"

"Sort of…"

"Are you going to help us now?"


	236. Date Night XII

_Clara_

_Date Night XII_

"Look, Clara," Oswin said to her firmly, "I'm just saying that you're a hypocrite. You're having a go at him for lying to you about the lightsabers, but you're still keeping the truth about what happened last week with you and Thirteen from him. And don't say you told him, because that just absolves you of guilt. Forgive and forget, and he'll continue to… You know, continue to forget." They were sitting in Adam and Oswin's room, Clara lying on the sofa letting herself sink into the smell of Thirteen that remained on the leather and the blankets, the repugnant stench of cinnamon she was so enamoured with. She wasn't smoking, though. Oswin had told her not to, and she'd obliged, because she was worried about the state Oswin was in after yesterday's funeral.

"You keep telling me that," Clara sighed.

"And he did buy a replacement. Well, I mean, he forced my boyfriend to buy you a replacement, and just because it's not the exact same one, it's basically identical." She was probably right. Clara was still a little annoyed, though. "You know what he's like, he'll probably sweep you off your feet by way of apology, and you'll forgive him, as you should."

"I really hate you."

"Because I'm right," Oswin said.

"How are you?"

"That's the sixth time you've asked me how I am. Stop worrying about me. I'm fine," she said, but Clara could easily tell that she was lying. But perhaps she oughtn't press Oswin. At any rate, it ended up that she couldn't, because the door was thrown open, and someone came in, and threw themselves down on the bed. It was Adam Mitchell. So the others were back, then?

"Would you _please_ tell me you love me?" he pleaded with Oswin. Clara wondered if he'd even noticed she was there. She sat up, though.

"What are you gonna do if I don't?"

"Cry."

"Oh. That's not sexy. I love you," she said, watching him, "I take it you didn't have a fun day, then."

"I don't even understand what happened," he groaned, staying like he was, face down with his head buried in the pillow, turned hallway to face Oswin in the other corner of the room in the chair, "Something about a wormhole bringing out Weeping Angels but it was on ley lines so it was a super-wormhole and the Angels erased people from existence completely and caused a lot of weird temporal disturbances. I spent most of it being sick and fading in and out of existence."

"You _what_? One of them got you!?"

"Uh-huh. Did you start to forget me?"

"I don't know, I wasn't thinking about you too much, no offence," she answered him, "Huh… Well I'm glad you're okay. I mean, obviously I am, but… Why wouldn't I? I'd hate for you to be erased…"

"You're being awkward and it's cute," he told her, "Jenny got grounded."

"Who grounded her?" Clara asked.

"Your husband," he answered her, "Jenny was complaining about Jack, so husbandy said that's what she gets for marrying him, so she starts going on that he gave Jack his blessing because he was 'preoccupied' with you because you were dead that day. Then River got involved and he said illegally eloping was bad, so she pointed out he'd illegally eloped with you, River, and I think the last straw was when she asked if she got her blonde hair from Marilyn Monroe."

"…Sometimes I think that girl reminds me of Thirteen, but Thirteen really doesn't have that awful attitude Jenny sometimes has," Clara sighed, shaking her head a little.

"He was very protective of you, you ought to forgive him. He's not had fun at all. Neither have I. I swear nothing they told me about that wormhole even makes sense… Chrono-displacementary? Sounds made up…" Adam said, and Oswin sighed and went to go sit down next to him on the bed, playing with his hair, and Clara felt like an intruder all of a sudden. "He took her screwdriver and her blaster. Also, babe, I told the _funniest_ joke about you only having one leg today." He turned his head to face Oswin, who seemed amused, though Clara couldn't think what was so amusing about insensitive jokes at _her_ expense, made by her own boyfriend, no less.

"Oh yeah? What was it?" she asked. She was smiling, but Clara thought she still looked sad. She'd looked sad all day, though, sadder than usual.

"Jenny said that the Angels were agile, 'not like the Daleks, Daleks can't even get upstairs,' so I said, 'I know she only has one leg, but that's a bit harsh.'" Oswin laughed, which surprised Clara. _Clara_ never made jokes about Oswin's leg. She supposed he was only allowed to get away with it because her sister was so pitifully in love with him it nearly made her retch.

But they were interrupted again by a fourth party opening the doors, a fourth party whose eyes found Clara sitting on the sofa squinting in the dark straight away.

"You!" Eleven declared, pointing at her, "Pick a decade. Any decade. But make it a good one."

"The Sixties."

"Good. Excellent. Wonderful. Go get dressed, we're going to the Ritz-Carlton, 1964, New York, we'll catch The Beatles on _The Ed Sullivan Show_, I have a bet to settle with Ringo Star," he declared.

"What a vintage way to spoil me," Clara commented, smiling.

"Only the best for you. Oswin, I need a favour," he said, and Oswin looked surprised at being talked to. She lifted her head, her hand still on Adam's hair, "I need you to make some kind of device that stops my daughter getting off of the TARDIS. And quickly, before she runs off and we have to go get her."

"Your wish is my command," she said quite flatly, but the Doctor hardly noticed, because he left then.

"Jenny said to me yesterday that she and Other Clara have an 'arrangement'," Adam informed.

"Yeah, friends with benefits," Oswin said, turning her nose up at the thought, "I guess that's been shot in the foot if she's grounded then. Although, I guess you can't ground her forever…"

"It won't work out," Clara said, "Seriously, it won't, if it continues. One night stands are something I can do just fine, but friends with benefits? It's never worked. _Never_. Not once. It's going to end terribly, and it's exactly what Jenny deserves, and it's what Clara deserves too, since on her first day here I told her very specifically _not_ to sleep with Jenny. Anyway, I have a date, apparently, so I'll leave you two to do whatever it is you usually do." She stood up and went to leave, holding the door, "…Are you _sure_ you're alright, Os?"

"I'm _fine_. Go have your date. Don't kill your husband over a lightsaber."

"Maybe he'll regenerate," Clara said, only half-joking, but she closed the door.

* * *

The last and only time the Doctor had taken her on a proper dinner date, it had ended appallingly. Mainly because he'd decided he felt bad for the live lobsters in the tanks, and he wanted to rescue them from the clutches of animal cruelty and sacrifice-hood. But this time, she resolved, she wouldn't order lobster. She'd get something else that wasn't mercilessly slaughtered on-site. That had been in the Ritz in London, though, which they were now banned from. They weren't banned from this one, and she'd like it to stay that way.

"So what's the special occasion?" she asked, leaning across the table towards him with one of her elbows on it, breaking the rules of etiquette. She found she cared less and less about etiquette those days, though, "Is there some other anniversary I've forgotten?"

"Yes," he told her, and her smile fell. She'd been kidding, but she really _had_ missed an anniversary? Again?

"We really have to confer with each other which anniversaries we're going to celebrate and which ones we're not, sweetheart," she told him, leaning back in her chair with the buzz of idle chatter and the scraping of cutlery washing warmly around them like the heat of the champagne she was drinking.

"Do you forgive me yet?"

"I suppose I have to, if I've forgotten something else important. But be warned – if you get us kicked out of another restaurant, you'll be sleeping elsewhere," she said. She hadn't kept her husband much company at all, lately, for fear of saying something damningly guilty about her nefarious doings with Thirteen, even though there _technically_ weren't any nefarious doings at all. But it was times like this that she remembered why she was so ridiculously in love with the man, when he threw on a tuxedo (which he looked positively _dashing_ in, if she were to say so) and carted her off to five-star restaurants to watch historic performances.

"I'll try my best not to let that happen," he said, "I'd rather you didn't get drunk, though. It won't help you out later."

"Why?" she asked him, smirking a little, raising one eyebrow.

"Because, Clara," he leant towards her and lowered his voice, and she leant right back towards him, "You're wearing high heels. And they're hard enough to run in as it is, let alone if you're intoxicated as well. I'd stick to water, you can have more champagne when we get home." She didn't know where he was planning on taking her that she'd need to run, but she thought she'd best take his advice, especially since he always seemed to be so conscious of her safety. So she thought she'd finish her current glass of champagne, and that was all.

"What _is_ this anniversary I'm forgetting, then?" she asked over her main course, which was Duck a l'Orange. She brushed some hair behind her ear and he watched her, "I haven't had a haircut for five months or something. I think it was May. What month would it be now?"

"October 12th, 2013," he told her, "We left in July."

"So it's not my own birthday I've forgotten… But I will get a haircut, I think. A trim, probably. Not much, I don't feel like it, back to what it was the last time it got cut… Day Ninety-Nine… What day did we get married? Day Three?"

"The evening of Day Two."

"Right… What day did we get second-married?"

"Day Fourteen."

"So… If it's Ninety-Nine now... You're going to have to tell me, sweetheart."

"It was Day Nine. Three months ago."

"It's a three month anniversary? No wonder I won't guess it – we really have to talk about that. Three months ago… Day Nine… Three… Oh my _god_! You – we – the first!" Clara had figured it out, "_That_ is _not_ an anniversary, Chin!" He was laughing, "It's not!"

"Just an excuse to take you out to dinner."

"Isn't the fact you're supposedly in love with me enough of an excuse?"

"I most definitely _am_ in love with you, Mrs Oswald," he said, "But it definitely _is_ worth celebrating."

"It's not. Nobody celebrates the first time they shagged their one-true-love," she said, wondering if she was pushing it with the 'one-true-love' line, since to the Doctor, she was probably not that. But he wasn't the sort to argue with her on things like that, and she was happy enough anyway.

"Clara! That's unnecessary vulgarity in such a luxurious establishment."

"Yes, because New Yorkers in the 1960s definitely know what the word 'shag' means, sweetheart," she said, shaking her head. She was sure they didn't. Nobody had gasped with offence, so she assumed they were fine to keep talking how they were. Finishing her food, she leant on the table and threaded her fingers together, resting her chin on them and watching the Doctor. "We can't celebrate _everything every month_, Chin."

"Why not?"

"Because that's a lot of celebrations. You'll run out of ideas."

"You're just not pulling your weight when it comes to our dates, Coo. Isn't marriage supposed to be equal?"

"Not in this decade, it's not."

"What does that mean, you're going to cook all my food now?"

"If you have a death wish, of course I will, sweetheart."

"Didn't you tell me you'd take me on a date that would blow me away eventually?" He took a sip of his water.

"If you want me to blow you, you only have to ask," she said, and he choked and ended up spitting the water he'd just drunk onto a napkin, "What's that supposed to be? A demonstration?"

"Stop it. This is a public place."

"Everyone's too distracted by each other to pay the slightest bit of attention to what some random British couple are saying to each other," she told him, and it was entirely true, "You're just a prude. What's for pudding?"

"What do you want?"

"What you can afford. How is it you're paying for this, again?"

"How about soufflé?" he suggested, and she raised an eyebrow at him avoiding the question of money.

"The soufflé's expensive."

"Well, you're high maintenance."

"I am not! If I was so high maintenance I wouldn't have married a unemployed, thieving, space-hobo, would I?" she challenged.

"Well you're an unemployed, thieving, space-hobo as well, darling," he told her.

"What have I ever stolen?"

"My heart."

"That's awful. Ew."

"Only one of them."

"A little better," she muttered, "Don't be vile. I might be a romantic, but not that much of a romantic. What am I gonna do with a heart, anyway?"

"Haven't the foggiest," he said, and when a waiter came over he ordered them both a soufflé. She still wanted to know how he was going to pay, though, she didn't think an awful lot of her husband's moral fibre in certain situations. This was one of those situations. "Can I ask you a question that might put you off your soufflé?"

"Is it 'will you marry me'? Because that's such a sickening question it most definitely _will_ put me off my soufflé."

"No, but will you anyway?"

"Yes."

"It's about my daughter," he said, and Clara sighed, her eyes drawn to Eleven's left hand as he tapped it absently on the side of the table, watching the light glint off of his wedding ring, distracted by the fact she really did think he looked _good_ in a tuxedo. He better wear a tuxedo to their next wedding, she thought, not a tweed suit, that would be dreadful. She could think of nothing worse. Except maybe a morph suit. A tweed morph suit. With a fez on top. "What do you really think of her and Other You..?"

"What do _you_ think about her and Other Me?"

"Surprisingly enough, I'm not too keen on the idea of it," he said with a bitter sort of sarcasm, and she held his hand across the table. She still wasn't over the sheer novelty of marrying the Doctor. A dinner date with the Oncoming Storm. A romantic evening with the Predator. Or, maybe not the Predator, she thought afterwards – that had the effect of making her husband sound like a rapist.

"I was talking to my sister about it, and Adam Mitchell. It won't end well if she finds a way to carry it on. Your daughter is a lot like you, and _you_ are a lot in love with _me_. Plus I'm not good at friends with benefits, I was saying to Oswin. Every time I've tried to do it, I've fallen for them, no matter how terrible they are. Noisy Sam started out that way, and that ended terribly," she said, and she could tell he didn't like her mentioning her vast myriad of exes and old flames to him. Or maybe he just didn't like Noisy Sam. "I warned her, you know. Claratoo. The first day she was staying with us, I told her not to let Jenny sleep with her. What does she go and do? Exactly that."

"She probably doesn't like you."

"I have her best interests at heart! This will end poorly, mark my words. _We'll_ be picking up the pieces of your daughter's broken heart soon enough if grounding her doesn't work. It's not like she has a good track-record when it comes to dating," Clara said.

"I can't help but think you're being a hypocrite."

"I suppose I also have a terrible track-record for dating."

"What does that make me?"

"I never dated you, sweetheart."

"But still," he implored.

"The diamond in the rough," she told him with a smile, and he beamed, "But my point is still valid about your daughter."

"Take off your shoes."

"_What?_"

"I said, take off your shoes, and pick them up," he whispered.

"Why?" she asked, though she was doing what he said.

"How good's your telekinesis today?"

"As good as ever."

"We're going to dine and dash."

"_What_!? You can't dine and dash the _Ritz_!" she hissed.

"We're not, it's the Ritz-_Carlton_. If we get out fast, they won't catch us long enough to ban us, or call the police."

"You are _insane _and I am so _pathetically_ in love with you, I _hate_ it sometimes," she complained, holding her shoes underneath the table in her hands.

"I've got psychic paper, if we leave now, I'll get us backstage to meet The Beatles. I was thinking of getting them to perform at our wedding?"

"People would obviously notice, my grandmother will be there, and she was alive when The Beatles were big."

"The Beatles are always big, Clara. Now, look, no waiters, we have an opening." She glanced back and saw that they did have an opening, "Run!"


	237. A Poet & A Liar

**AN: This chapter title is foreshadowing for something that will come in to place probably in the distant future, but I'll just leave you to think over that if Alpha Clara is the poet, who is the liar? And why are they juxtaposed like that? Anyway. Day 100. Wow. Good storyline planned for today. Sort of. I mean, it's retro, so.**

_DAY ONE-HUNDRED_

_Oswin_

_A Poet &amp; A Liar_

She slouched on one of the four sofas of Nerve Centre, a circle of them quartered with gaps between, the holosphere people rarely used in the centre. It was switched off at that moment. Oswin was glaring at Jonesy, the ginger, stripey monster curled up in a malicious little ball on the opposite sofa. Every time she saw that cat, that little demon-spawn furball, she felt a pang of annoyance towards her boyfriend, whom she loved so dearly, except when he brought stray animals home. Behind the cat, however, in the kitchen, was the boy in question, and her eyes panned over him when he stretched while waiting for the kettle to boil, shamelessly ogling until somebody sat down next to her. Jenny.

"Oh, come on, he's not _that_ hot," Jenny said, but Oswin ignored her as she continued ogling Adam Mitchell, only looking away to glare at Jenny when he turned around, so that he didn't spot her. The last thing she wanted was her boyfriend thinking she found him physically attractive.

"You have had sex with someone who looks exactly like me, and I would prefer if, for now, you didn't sit next to me," Oswin told her. Next to Adam, in the kitchen, Eleven was cooking a fried breakfast, for Clara, she presumed. She'd never had a full fried breakfast. She was slightly envious, but after a life of processed, rationed, dehydrated slime, such was the food on Horizon, she didn't even know if her body would be able to handle real food. It had never adjusted that way. Not that it mattered anymore. And when they'd had that impromptu barbecue weeks ago, Fyn hadn't consumed _any _of the bad meat (thank stars, since everyone who did got food poisoning), so she couldn't judge it off that. She ought to invite him over for dinner and feed him things for her own amusement (her poor younger brother), see if he was sick or not.

"So has the Doctor!" Jenny protested, pointing at Eleven, who looked round at her and gave her an ice-cold look. On her right wrist, dangling around the robotic silver of her fake hand, was a mechanical bracelet. This bracelet had a simple automatic teleportation matrix built into it Oswin had knocked up in about half an our, and whenever Jenny tried to cross the threshold of Nerve Centre into the console room, she would find herself teleported back to her bedroom. Her bedroom where she was supposed to be right then.

"No socialising," Eleven told her, "Go to your room."

"You can't send me to my room!" Jenny protested, but when Rose, who was sitting next to Jonesy and skimming what looked like a gossip magazine from the early Noughties, threatened to pick up the girl and carry her back to the room, Jenny didn't have a retaliation. Maybe she was good at fighting and could do a lot of fancy tricks, but Rose Tyler was superstrong. At any rate, Martha Jones was there, too, and with her heightened agility she could probably match or even overtake Jenny Harkness in those areas. Jenny was sensible enough to leave like the social outcast she currently was, yet again. It reminded Oswin of when they'd gone to Preyonov and she'd been banned from sleeping on the same floor as the rest of the girls because of the fact she was some kind of sex-pest, as proven the past few days by her very own behaviour, sleeping with Beta Clara and all that.

Adam Mitchell sat down next to Oswin, and she realised she'd barely been paying attention, but he held out a mug of coffee for her to take.

"You'd better take it out of my hands before I accidentally freeze it," he told her, and she did, then she sighed and shuffled next to him on the sofa and rested her head on his shoulder, staring languidly ahead into space.

"What do you think goes through that girl's head?" Rose asked the room at large, staring at the closed door Jenny had just gone through with a look of puzzlement on her face, like somebody sleeping with Clara Oswald was the most baffling thing to ever occur. "She decided to bang an alternate universe version of her stepmother."

"We don't need it repeating, Rose," Eleven called from the kitchen, where he had his back to all of them. He was not enjoying the current scandal one bit, but Rose was relishing in it, probably because the last thing anybody had had to talk about was the feuding going on between her and her husband, and then her rekindled relationship with Ten.

"I'm trying _not _to take offence to you thinking it's ridiculous that someone would want to sleep with my sister," Oswin said coolly, not looking at Rose, still watching the dozing cat to make sure it didn't suddenly leap at her and try to savage her face. She hated animals. All of them.

"Speak of the devil," Adam muttered in her ear as the door slid open and Clara came through, looking somewhat annoyed, but she was, surprisingly enough, dressed. Clara never seemed to be dressed, Oswin had seen her in pyjamas far more often than she'd seen her in actual clothes. She just wasn't the type of person to get dressed if she wasn't going anywhere - though, maybe she really wasn't, because she didn't have shoes on, Oswin noted, and if there was one thing Clara loved, it was shoes.

"Sweetheart, could you tell your daughter to stop eyeing me up every time I walk past her in the hallway?" Clara requested, her voice sounding genuine, but her face sour. She came and sat next to Oswin.

"She didn't eye _me _up," Oswin complained.

"Oh, please, she only shagged Other Me because she couldn't shag you," Clara told her bitterly, which Oswin hoped was true, in a peculiar way, because she'd hate for Jenny's obnoxious affections for her to be dashed. "I have just had the strangest conversation with Angie Maitland over the phone, Os."

"Oh?"

"Yeah. She calls me up to ask me to help with her homework, to analyse a sonnet, and then-"

"What's the difference between a sonnet and a normal poem?" Rose questioned.

"Well, um, there's not really any such thing as a _normal _poem, Rose. They don't have to rhyme or have equal lines or even proper structure - lots of poems use lack of structure to draw attention to certain things. Like, you know, enjambment. Or caesura. Anyway," she didn't explain what either of those two things were, leaving Rose blank, "Sonnets have fourteen verses. Anyway, she wants me to analyse _Sonnet 116_. You know, Shakespeare." At mention of Shakespeare, Martha seemed interested, looking up from the table she was sitting at with Mickey.

"So?"

"_So,_ she asked me what it's about. It's about a penis," Clara answered, and Adam laughed, and Oswin just raised an eyebrow incredulously, "Seriously, it is. Everything's a penis in literature."

"I doubt it's about a penis, Clara. Why would Shakespeare write about a penis? This is _Shakespeare_. Isn't he supposed to be classy?" Oswin questioned, Oswin who knew nothing of the things her sister loved so much. She generally only read tomes on quantum physics, or microbiology, sometimes biochemistry or bioengineering, if she ever asked Flek for a book to borrow in her youth.

"Well he _was _bisexual," Clara shrugged.

"You bisexuals are always wanting to make it look like everybody else is bi, too," Rose muttered.

"Um, everybody totally is."

"_I'm _not," Rose said.

"Sure you're not," Oswin said sarcastically, like she and Clara were part of some secret, bisexuals-only inside joke in the living room that day. Maybe they were. Wasn't like Jack or River were there, and Jenny had just been kicked out. Thirteen was, though, leaning on the wall next to the medibay doors, and while Clara continued her spool about penises, Amy walked in.

"Look, I'll go get my Shakespeare collection," Clara said, and then disappeared in a puff of black smoke that evaporated away in the space where she had been moments before, which made Oswin jump because she really hadn't expected Clara to teleport.

"What's she gone to get?" Amy asked Oswin.

"A book about penises," Oswin answered.

"...Your sister's weird." Clara reappeared with wisps of smoke curling off of her, holding an old book that marketed itself as a collection of all of William Shakespeare's sonnets, Clara idly flipping through it to get to the right page.

"Here, look:

'_Let me not to the marriage of true minds  
__Admit impediments. Love is not love  
__Which alters when it alteration finds,  
__Or bends with the remover to remove.  
__O no! it is an ever-fixed mark  
__That looks on tempests and is never shaken;  
__It is the star to every wand'ring bark,  
__Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.  
__Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks  
__Within his bending sickle's compass come;  
__Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,  
__But bears it out even to the edge of doom.  
__If this be error and upon me prov'd,  
__I never writ, nor no man ever lov'd._'" Clara read the whole thing aloud.

"What's your point?" Oswin questioned.

"I did that at GCSE," interrupted Adam, "They said it was about a lighthouse."

"It isn't," Clara said firmly, "And the last couplet is often used as evidence in favour of Shakespeare's sexuality. So is the whole, '_Love is not love which alters when it alteration finds_.' And the stuff about the compass, '_Though rosy lips and cheeks within his bending sickle's compass come_.' The lighthouse is a metaphor for a penis, it's a common trope. I mean, if you take, like, _The Lady of Shalott_, by Tennyson, she's trapped in a tower and isn't allowed to look out of the window, or she'll die because she's cursed, but when Lancelot comes along she just can't help but look out of the window at him when she sees him reflected in this mirror she has. So like, the tower in that instance is a phallic metaphor because it's a symbol of masculinity the Lady of Shalott is trapped inside, like she's trapped by a man, and a man is the one who causes her to break the curse and look out of the window, and a man has the last line in the poem. Lancelot says, '_She has a lovely face; God in his mercy lend her grace_.' Like everything is suddenly fine because a man said she was beautiful, even though he was looking at her corpse in a boat."

"Or maybe, Clars... It's about a tower." Clara scowled at her.

"Well earlier in the poem it says, '_from his blazoned baldric A mighty silver bugle hung_.' Which is also clearly about a penis. Everything is about penises. That's why men fight with swords, because they're symbols of masculinity," Clara 'explained', though Oswin wouldn't call it much of an explanation, "Shakespeare says at the end of the sonnet, '_If this be error and upon me prov'd, I never writ, nor no man ever lov'd_. He's saying that if people prove him to be lying about the fact this poem is obviously about another man, then he never wrote and never loved a man, but he _did_ write, so he _did_ love a man, so it's basically a sarcastic comment."

"Are you sure you're an English teacher and not just a weirdo with a penis obsession?" Adam questioned. Clara slammed her book shut then and put it down next to her, pouting until Eleven walked over and handed her her breakfast.

"Are those sausages you're eating penises as well, then?" Oswin asked, and Clara elbowed her.

"You know what they say," Amy sighed, sitting down on one of the sofas, "Those who can't do, teach."

"Hey!" Thirteen objected, "Clara can 'do' just fine, she's an excellent poet." Clara seemed shocked at this statement, and Amy gave her a suspicious look in response.

"Give us a poem, then, Clara," Amy challenged, and Clara stared at her blankly, before throwing Thirteen a mortified look.

"Well she hasn't written any yet," Thirteen told Amy, "But she will, and they'll be beautiful."

"...He _was _bi, though," Martha said eventually, "He came onto the Doctor _and_ me when I met him. Breath stank. He wrote me a sonnet though. You know that one that goes, '_Shall I compare thee to a summer's day_'?"

"'_Thou art more lovely and more temperate: __Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May, __And summer's lease hath all too short a date__,_'"Clara said, and Martha stared at her, and Rose stared at _Martha_, before promptly bursting out laughing at something, which Clara ignored,"It's _Sonnet 18_, for future reference, Martha."

"Careful, Clara, Martha'll get ideas if you keep quoting love poems at her. You don't want her to 'do a Jenny' now, do you?" Rose snickered, and Oswin watched Clara scowl. Thirteen didn't seem remotely amused by this, Clara noticed when she looked at her. She really was going have to speak to her future wife about all this ludicrous Martha-Jones-business.


	238. Sneering Imperialists

**AN: Okay, just a warning, today is kind of going to be centred a LOT around Oswin. Genuinely, a lot of important stuff will happen for her, and it should be roughly 11/12 Chapters long, this whole Day, and just as a second warning yes she is also going out tomorrow just because of my own stubbornness for a storyline I'm doing that I've decided ****_has_**** to be set on Day 101. So I am aware that there's a lot of one character, but it's gonna happen sometimes. Also, I've got a cold, just to warn people in case it starts getting worse and I don't have the energy to write, that's why I didn't update yesterday.**

_Ten_

_Sneering Imperialists_

It was an unusual gang assorted when they stepped out of the blue box that day, the six of them, Ninth Doctor in the lead. There were the two Doctors, of course, himself and Nine, and then River was tagging along with the man usually declared to be her boyfriend, not that Ten had ever heard him be addressed as such by her, or vice versa, it was a label put on them by the other crewmembers. Then, there was Mickey, and Nios, and Oswin, the last of which was only there because somebody, it had been decided, needed to accompany Nios. And because somebody also needed to accompany Oswin, when Clara had been giving Ten an imploring look over her coffee that morning, cutting into his argument with Rose about the fact she wanted to stay in that morning, he'd just decided to bite the bullet and go with the five of them. He'd hardly spoken to Oswin since she'd gotten back weeks ago, anyway. Only once, really, the day they retrieved Nios, and they'd all been split up that day. It would be interesting to see how she was doing, he thought.

Though, by simply observing her, he deemed that the answer to that particular question was, 'not too well.' Often times, Oswin would have a look of perpetual sadness about her, almost like she was giving off an aura that something was never quite right with her, as though she was a watch a few seconds out, or a wonky sundial that never told exactly the right time. Out of sync. But if he had to say so, he would say it was worse than usual. Usually, it would be suppressed, it would be tricky to tell if one didn't spend a lot of time with her. _She's just like that_, people would say when she didn't move or blink for hours on end, accepting whatever neuroses she was burying to be fun, personality quirks. She had an air about her that an insomniac might give off, someone suffering from lack of sleep, lack of self, lack of sanity, and she was nearly hunched when she was walking, with her arms crossed, at the back of the group, keeping an eye on Nios. 'Hollow' was the word Ten would use.

"Are you okay?" he asked her very quietly. They had materialised in a store cupboard at some point in, he guessed by the smell of the air and the technology of the ventilation and the air vents, the early Fifty-First Century. Possibly late Fifty-First Century, at a push. They left this place to find corridors, the Ninth Doctor saying they were following a distress call, Ten deciding not to question him on that.

"Hmm?" she asked, as though she hadn't heard.

"Is your leg alright?" he asked, and she glanced down at her left foot, the false one, "Does it hurt you?"

"No. Why?"

"Well… You're limping."

"I'm not limping," she said defensively, frowning. She had clearly been limping, Ten thought. What would cause her to just gain a pronounced limp out of nowhere? He thought that Oswin Oswald was a person with a lot of problems she preferred to try to ignore rather than deal with, or sometimes it was more like she thought opening herself up to the darkest interpretation of some of her war crimes was the correct way to 'cope' with her crude form of survivor's guilt. On her right hand, with her thumb, she kept twisting the large, black ring around it. Ten didn't know what that ring did, but it was shiny and sometimes a light on it blinked green, and it didn't seem too comfortable, so he doubted that it was anything good.

They didn't have far to walk until the source of this distress signal was discovered, the TARDIS materialising quite close by, for once, to the exact source. They passed through a few short stretches of white corridors with grey, metal skirting boards and shiny vents, everything clean and in proper working order, the vibration of engines rattling the soles of his trainers and sending the hum through him, so he knew they were on a spaceship, and the spaceship was heading (roughly) South-East. Then they marched purposefully through a set of sliding doors onto a balcony overlooking a hanger, full of smaller spaceships, shuttles and ambulances and scout/scav vehicles with retractable, all-terrain tires and VTOL-esque wings with tiny rockets attached like fireworks. All of them white and grey, military vessels, matching the uniforms of soldiers and officers below.

"What have you brought us _here_ for?" River said to Nine, complainingly, the same moment Oswin's eyes widened and she seemed to freeze and Ten noticed a big, blue insignia on the wall that was like a more eye-catching remastering of the Sol System, with large, blue letters reading 'HA' stamped in the middle. Distantly, he could see this same patch on the right arms of all of the soldiers and officers alike. When River said, "I hate the Homeworld Alliance," Ten realised what had happened, and wondered if Nine knew. Oswin seemed to be tensing herself everywhere she could, clenched fists and tight jaw making her joints look bony and white, like a statue dressed in black with dead, brown eyes, which seemed so unlike Clara's some days. She didn't say a word, though. She seemed more intrigued than anything else.

"Who are you?" somebody asked with the powering-up buzz of a laser gun of some kind being cocked, and when Ten looked around to his left, he saw there was one of the higher-rank officers of the Homeworld Alliance standing there with the gun out, behind him two regular soldiers, all pointing guns at them.

"I've always hated guns, you know," Nine said, then he stuck a hand in his jacket and produced his psychic paper. Ten didn't have his psychic paper, he'd forgotten his overcoat, or rather, he'd been hurried out so quickly to keep an eye on Clara's sister that he hadn't had a chance to grab it. In any case, he had the sneaking suspicion Rose had stolen his psychic paper, so it might not even be in that coat anyway, "I'm the Doctor, I'm here to help you with your problem."

"What problem would that be?" the officer, a tall, sallow man, questioned, revealing some crooked but well-kept teeth as he smirked at them crookedly, waiting to catch them in a lie, "How did you get on board our ship? This is an Alliance vessel."

"I don't care about the Alliance, I care about the distress signal coming from that escape pod down there," Nine said, pointing, and Ten saw what his earlier-self had seen minutes ago, hidden behind some of the larger crafts, was a dented, muddy wreckage, a bent wing and some burns on its white body. It was clearly from the same kind of fleet as the other ships, but was different and less uniform. As though it was an old model.

"The Sol Consul has an interest in what's going on here," Oswin said stiffly, "We're their emissaries."

"I haven't heard anything about this," the officer said guardedly, but when Nine flashed the psychic paper, whatever it said must have matched Oswin, because all the guns were lowered and the Ninth Doctor was saluted and Oswin took a careful step forward, lopsided, still limping. Ten watched her more than the officers.

"You won't have, there have been datanet issues in the Prim-Del, communications down, extranet assault," Oswin said, lying, and lying well. She must know a lot about Homeworld Alliance protocol, he supposed.

"Spores," River added as an afterthought, and Oswin just fake-smiled coldly in support of this.

"Oh," the officer accepted this truth, "I suppose you'd better come and have a look, then."

"…What's Prim-Del?" Nios whispered to Oswin when she drifted back again to let Nine, now they had an accepted cover-story and access to the mysterious wreckage at the other end of the hanger, right where a forcefield stretched over it to reveal stars outside, all of them blurred by its mirage-like blue film. It reminded him of _Star Wars_.

"It means 'primary dwelling,'" Oswin explained _very_ quietly, so as not to catch the attention of the officer, "It's the main base of the Sol Consul, who have sovereignty over the whole system. Everything the Alliance do in the Sol System gets passed under certain diplomats or officials from the Sol Sector Consul. Humanity like to assign Sector Consuls to every system they take over, it's very imperialistic. My brother would have a lot of interesting things to say about it, I imagine. If you ever meet him, I'll remind you to ask." Ten assumed she was referencing Fyn. Nios didn't ask any more questions, as though she could sense she oughtn't. Legal, inter-system, bureaucracy wasn't something the Doctor generally bothered himself with. Only the Shadow Proclamation had any kind of _real_ authority anymore, and even then, 'authority' was just a sugar-coated form of bullying.

They were shown the battered ship now, battered from what seemed to be an onslaught of petty asteroids thwacking it and ricocheting around, as though its forcefields had given out. That was when he noticed a sabotaged panel on the side, and Oswin, interested, went over to it.

"It's a field emitter, it's been shot at by something, blown up," she said before being asked. River seemed to have been about to make the same judgement, but she said nothing, seeming quite interested in what Oswin was doing. Everybody did. Except maybe Mickey, who hadn't said much at all, who seemed generally curious, like Nios.

"Something like what?" Mickey asked.

"Dunno. Asteroid pummelling makes it had to tell. Doesn't look like there's any residue, either, which lends itself to advanced technology," she said, the emitter being about a foot lower then her eye level, so she was half-crouching to look at it, but she didn't touch it. Then she stood back up and peered through the open door, "Was there anybody in it?"

"Yes," answered the officer, "Both dead. Starved inside. Evacuees, like there was an attack of some sort and they were the only ones to get away, but the shuttle's not made for long-distance travel."

"Why? Where's it coming from?"

"Io Alpha, one of the Alliance's Jovian colonies." Jovian being from Jupiter, Io being a moon of that planet. Very interesting moon, Ten mused, mainly because it had a volcano.

"A moon colony gone down. How quaint," Oswin said in a horribly bitter voice, "An Alliance controlled moon colony. People starved. Have your supply routes been delivering effectively, hmm?" What she was doing was making a jab at the fact during the Dust War the Alliance supply routes had been blocked off by the toxic cloud, but Ten didn't think that had happened yet, so it was a little dangerous for her to be making remarks like that.

"We were just about to send some scouts to the moon."

"Don't bother," said Nine, who was smiling earlier, but seemed to be thrown off-guard by Oswin's comments, "We'll go."


	239. Under A Paper Moon

_Ten_

_Under A Paper Moon_

Jupiter hung in the sky like the god it was named after, as though by a string, idly spinning on itself and twirling around the sun in dance with the other eight planets. With the red orb above them, Io itself was burnt yellow, like seared flesh, with a resounding stench of the sulphur that ripped below its surface and burst at volcanic pustules. It was jagged and mountainous and unbreathable, canyons splitting the land like oceans full of dust, craters and pillars of rock around them like a temple of nature. Elsewhere, there were lakes of magma, he knew, but he couldn't see any from where they were. The yellow, hard hills around them stopped those from coming into view. The planet was toxic, and he was glad they had spacesuits. Well, three of them did.

For Oswin, River and Nios, spacesuits were not a requirement, Oswin being a hologram, River and Nios both being synthetic organisms with varying degrees of programming to their personalities. It had been a job to make Mickey wear a spacesuit, Mickey who could breathe underwater, though Ten told him it was unbelievable to think he could survive on the surface of Io with no technological aid. So the six of them traipsed across rocky expanses of mustard-coloured plains, the two Doctors and Mickey Smith clad in bright orange, baggy spacesuits scavenged from somewhere in the vicinity of the Forty-Second Century, a thousand years before the present they were in. The TARDIS had landed in a cave nearby, after they'd slipped away from the Homeworld Alliance via Nine cleverly using his sonic screwdriver to send electric shocks through the earpieces they were all wearing. Rather than firing upon them, the Alliance just seemed perplexed, as they all dashed away back to the ship to run an errand.

"It's a terrible idea to build on inhospitable surfaces like this," Oswin commented, her voice detached from her image and coming through fuzzy with static in the comm-system linking up the helmets that she'd hacked into earlier, allowing the three artificial voices of herself, Nios and River to be projected through the built-in headsets. Watching her through the mucky visor of his spacesuit was like watching her on an old, round television set from the 1990s. Somewhat blurry and dotted with pixels of unnatural colours that made her dark, brooding whole appear against the yellow in front of him. "Horizon isn't built on the surface, they use gravity-tethers and anti-magno-emitters to keep it twenty metres above. Means it doesn't have to cater to the external functions of the moon below it. Titan doesn't have volcanoes like Io, too, so if anything they'd be more efficient if they swapped."

"It's like a Mars base here," Nine commented. Nine and Mickey were ahead of Ten, he could only see their backs, and he wasn't expecting anybody he couldn't see to talk to him then. It was like a conference call which crackled to such an extent it seemed he had a fly in his helmet he couldn't possibly swat. Ten wasn't keen on Mars bases, but when they rose over a crevice, like standing on some sort of expectant precipice of obtrusive, human engineering, with a daffodil-coloured slope twisting away below them coated with dirty gold-dust, the web-like structure spread about ahead reminded him painfully of Bowie Base One. This was Io Alpha, and it looked like a lot of tunnels and domes like golf-balls cut in half and placed carefully around the planet's surface.

As they wended down this slope, Oswin lurched along near the back with Ten, Nios caught in the middle of the three at the front and the two at the rear. Why was she still limping? He'd never seen her limp before, and she'd said there was nothing wrong with her left leg, apart from the fact it had been blown to pieces when she was twenty-two. That was _her_ words. She'd said that if somebody had scraped the remains of her thigh and ankle and shin and tibia and kneecap off of the walls of her bedroom and taped it together in a Picasso-esque amalgam of bone matter and wasted muscle, there would be plenty wrong with it, and then she had proceeded to kick rather a large rock, almost a boulder, which rolled off into the sky and bounced away like a ball due to the low gravity.

They approached the looming, metal doors of Io Alpha, one of them with the words _Airlock Four_ painted on it in white, bits of dust stuck to it from when the paint had been fresh. It had a button on the side, which Nine hit, taking the lead as Ten took a more subdued role, following Clara's instructions obediently. He might not know Clara too well, but from what he did know, since the Dream, she'd always had Oswin's best interests at heart. At any rate, two future versions of himself had both found themselves in love with her, so she couldn't be _too_ bad, no matter how often he got a pointless earful from Rose about how annoyed she was some half of the crew were head-over-heels for the girl. And since he cared about Oswin, he would listen to Clara about what to do. He had the nagging feeling that she herself was entirely aware of his reason for being there, though, and that later on she was going to have a go at somebody for mollycoddling her. The doors opened in a circular motion, a dozen sharp segments dragging themselves into the doorframe, forcibly pulled by the rusting door mechanism, revealing to them nothing but sunken darkness.

Upon closing the door behind them, the Ninth Doctor felt around in the blackness for a light switch, Ten knew from the audible monologue he was giving them of his activities. Then the lights came on, and Nine expressed confusion, and they saw that Mickey had taken off one of the gloves of his spacesuit and was holding a wire.

"Technopathy," he explained, and Ten remembered this power of Mickey's. Useful, it seemed, as he took off his helmet, against what the Doctors were ordering him to, revealing the air to be safe to breathe. So the Time Lords followed this example and Ten held his helmet under his arm, running a hand through his hair to try and get it back to what it usually was, gelled-up and gravity-defying. But there was plenty of gravity now, because the anti-gravity of Io Alpha was still running, just like the power.

"Everything looks like it's in order…" Nine mused, walking around, "So why evacuate? Without bringing food?"

"Obviously frightened," River said.

"Of what?" Mickey asked her, and she shrugged.

"Hopefully not a rogue AI again," Ten said jokingly. And then he got a _very _dark look from Nios, and thought he really should _not_ have said that, "Sorry! I forgot you were, um…"

"I'm what?" she asked him in a threatening, emotionless tone, piercing blue eyes looking back at him.

"…Organically challenged…" he mumbled, and River laughed at him.

"Helix wouldn't like you saying that, either," Oswin quipped.

"Helix is a slave," Nios said firmly.

"Helix is not a slave, Helix isn't even an artificial intelligence, Helix is a _virtual _intelligence, like a PDA, or… Cortana. Entirely unaware, completely shackled, can't gain consciousness at all," Oswin said, "Elle, on the other hand…" she didn't say anything by way of comment on the psychotic AI Ten now had locked in a box in the console room trapped inside a satsuma. Elle had been trapped for the last week, not a peep out of her. "Helix is Qetesh technology, anyway, not human." Nios shrugged at that.

"What is this place?" Mickey asked, going and looking around at drab, grey walls with some control panels that seemed to be switched off.

"Don't know, really," River said, "Lots of the Sol colonies have purposes."

"Horizon used to be a military base," Oswin added to Mickey by way of explanation, "Then they converted it. Had a lot of Alliance files on board I got a hold of, but never anything on Io Alpha. I didn't even know there were colonies on Io, not like Ganymede, or the floating Neptunian clusters." Mickey and Nios thought these places sounded exotic, frankly, both of them born and raised on Earth. Even though Mickey was a time traveller, and Ten himself, it was always a strange thing to visit an era like that one with somebody from it. Often, the places seen in the past and the future, other worlds and other planets and other corners of space, were snapshots, pockets of a non-linear future, a distorted past. But the century seemed fascinating now that Oswin and River were both there to talk about politics and places, raised in this era of imperial, Earthling colonisation out into the neighbouring systems and galaxies and planetoids. Greater cultures usually went ignored, but now Ten was listening, he was fascinated. He'd never visited any 'floating Neptunian clusters', nor the Alliance civilisations planted on Ganymede, another moon of Jupiter's, but he wanted to now. What other secrets was he missing by not asking people for greater context, greater information, greater stories, when he dashed about the universe like it was his own personal playground?

In Airlock Four, there were no bodies, no cold, dead lumps of life. It was only when they left it, and went out into the connecting corridors that spread out across Io's surface to the other domed regions of the colony, that bodies started to spring up. Bodies accompanied by sets of identical, circular scorch marks, like they'd been shot at by some technology so lethal it could tear through the walls like a match ate through paper.


	240. Tomorrow's World

_Ten_

_Tomorrow's World_

"This place is _creepy_," Mickey said, staring at the walls as they walked, "There's something weird about it." They had cut through a locked door to get away from all the bodies, following a map they saw plastered to one of the walls with a handy _You Are Here_ sign on it, at Airlock-Four.

"Weird how?" Nine asked. Nine seemed glad that Ten wasn't challenging anything he was saying or arguing, like he had been doing with Eleven the other week, the last time they'd been on an abandoned moon base. But that was a different moon, in a different century, with a different reason for people being killed and a different method of killing. Nine seemed to value Mickey's opinion greatly all of a sudden, what with his technopathy. Ten did, too.

"As though the circuits aren't linked up properly. Like power is being… Diverted somewhere else, lots of it. That's what the wires are telling me," Mickey said. His power seemed to work in a very peculiar way, Ten thought, but when he saw Mickey's eyes glinting silver, he knew that everything he was saying was legitimate, as odd as it was.

"Is this what it's like on Horizon?" Nios asked Oswin. Ten didn't know what opinion Oswin had of Horizon. She'd never asked to go back, and she'd run away in the beginning, but he really didn't know if she liked it or not. Perhaps he would ask her.

"No, Horizon's like a full city," Oswin answered, "Maybe I'll show you one day. It has a lot of different districts that link together by tunnels, called spaceways, and there are areas that look like silver streets with proper houses, and there are other bits that are these huge flat blocks with glass above so that you can see Saturn out of them. It's not on the surface, it floats about twenty metres up. It's like an Earth city, but futuristic, and with a glass roof. A lot of different levels, they have huge mass-transit elevators that hold about a hundred people. Some of the views were beautiful. You'd never see anything like it on Earth. It was like it was out there, with Jupiter above, just with Saturn instead."

"Did you like it?" Ten asked.

"Oh, yeah. I did. I mean, it wasn't run very efficiently, and for a space colony it was a good few centuries old and needed to keep being updated so that it still worked, but most places are like that. It makes its own food as well now, I think, so that they never have another episode like the War," Oswin explained, "Because they always had a garden, the Oxygen Synthesis Depot, which was a huge, Eden-like _rainforest_ I snuck into once, because nobody was allowed down there who didn't work there, who wasn't a botanist or a biologist or anything. In Kepler-32 they have big gardens like that that orbit the sun just close enough to sustain life, but when I was alive, none of the food they made was every allowed to leave the system. I couldn't go back, though. Not to live. Not to Horizon."

"Believe it or not," River added, and for a second Ten thought she might be about to argue with Oswin, "This century has a lot of colonies that are run effectively and don't meet sticky ends like this one, or like what happened to Titan Beta." River didn't call the station by the local nickname for it. He wondered if anybody except for the Saturnites who lived there called it that. The era of galactic colonisation really was a fascinating one.

"Ah-ha," Nine interrupted the discussion Ten was finding quite interesting for good reason, stumbling across a computer. Him tapping a few keys on the clunky thing with a Homeworld Alliance logo printed on the side and then hitting it twice was all it took for him to realise it didn't have any power source, which was when Mickey went and placed his palm on top of it, and Oswin cut straight past the Doctor to use it herself, which he allowed, even if Nine was leaning over her shoulder and probably annoying her a little. She had dragged out a chair and was sitting down with her left leg stretched out like one might if it was hurting them. Whatever issue she was having, he was sure it was psychosomatic. After Mickey had rerouted the computer, lights around them flickered and dimmed significantly. He was right, it _was_ creepy.

"It's a mining colony," Oswin said, skimming through green text at a rate so fast even Ten was struggling to keep up over her shoulder. He gave up eventually, and was forced to trust that she would tell them whatever information was necessary. He didn't want another lapse in faith in the smartest girl in the universe like he'd had a month and a half ago on Quadrant Twelve, thinking that she'd bombed Horizon out of her own desire to be wilfully malicious.

"I don't hear a drill," Ten said, remembering his brief excursion with Rose to the edge of the universe where he'd had a run-in with Satan, the first time he'd met the Ood. They all fell silent, and the silence enveloped them. There were no sounds in Io Alpha. No signs of life. Everybody was dead, killed by some technologically advanced race with laser weaponry.

"Why would the Alliance not tell us that they were mining here?" Ten mused. Nios was spending most of her time listening.

"What's the date?" River asked Oswin.

"It's October 9th, 5078," Oswin said, "I'm born in eighteen years. I don't remember ever reading about Io Alpha though, on any of the old Alliance computers I hacked into on Horizon, or their old systems. Like it's been erased, but erased by someone _good_. The Alliance are always dreadful at their cover-ups, they like data too much. Vespiantine. Never heard of it."

"What?" Ten asked.

"They're mining for some mineral called Vespiantine," Oswin answered, "Vespiantine-12."

"I don't know what that is," Nine said. Neither did Ten, so he stayed quiet. So did the others.

"There's no information. None," Oswin said, "Like the people were lied to who were here. Maybe they weren't told what they were after?"

"Then why would they have stopped drilling?"

"Maybe – whatever it is – they reached it?" River suggested, "Down in the crust of the planet. It must be dangerous mining here, though, it's so volcanic." Oswin hit the side of the computer loudly with the side of her fist, then put her head in her hands and leant on the table with her elbows, making them all jump.

"…Oswin?" Ten asked carefully, brushing Nine aside and going to stand by her, "Are you-"

"I'm _fine_." She didn't seem fine at all. She stayed like that for a moment, before leaning back and groaning, looking at the ceiling, scrunching her eyes shut and taking a few deep breaths, though he couldn't think why. Her breathing was always just for show. She didn't need to do it, it was a conscious effort she had to go to to maintain the illusion she had a respiratory system. "The drill room is down the hall."

"So if we can't hear it from here, it's _definitely _not running," Mickey stated, and he, Nine and River began to walk off, Ten and Nios watching Oswin carefully. When Oswin saw the worried looks she was getting, she got annoyed, and seemed like she was about to curse, but she got up from her chair silently and kicked it away from her and it clattered against the wall, and they all looked round, but no-one commented. Hunched over, she ignored them all, and went through the door first into a dark corridor, and the light of her Sphere switched itself on above, though the Sphere itself was as invisible as it always was. The five remaining hastened to follow, and they went into an _enormous _room.

It was circular, and _huge_, with a domed, dark roof, build a lot lower down straight onto the planet's surface with an artificial atmosphere being created within its confines. Immediately, the five of them ducked out of sight, Oswin vanishing in front of them in a shimmer of blue teleport, for fear of being seen by what lurked in the drill room, dozens of them, swarming around the humungous drilling device suspended by a myriad of different joints and subsections from the centre of the ceiling itself, halfway burrowed into the ground, where a very faint, green glow was coming from.


	241. Honey, I'm Home

_Oswin_

_Honey, I'm Home_

There must have been about four of them. They didn't notice her at first, she stayed utterly silent after hitting the button of the teleportation matrix that sent her, leg and all, deep into the planet, down into some huge cavern, half the size of the domed, drill room above. Around the walls a green substance was dripping like goo from above, which was when she saw that the above wasn't a cave roof with stalactites hanging down from above, it was smooth and flat and disk-shaped. It was the base of a flying saucer. And she knew exactly who this flying saucer lurking beneath the surface of Io belonged to. The things trundling about around her, having difficulty with the rocks and stones, yelling at each other.

Daleks.

As if that day couldn't get any worse. Homeworld Alliance. Moon colony. Conspiracy. And now _this_. It was like someone was mocking her, mocking her specifically. She shut off her Sphere light, since the Daleks had set up some lights for themselves, blueish and on the floor, as they drifted about using Dalek computers, panels on them for their glorified-plunger-attachments. But that had been _her_, she thought, while watching them. Well, not _quite_, these Daleks were silver, and the bobbles around their lower section were blue and grimy, while she was sure she'd been one of those newer, golden-and-bronze travesties. Did that make her better than them, in the Dalek hierarchy? Did they even work like that?

Regardless, these four peppershakers finally saw her, and finding herself thrown into a situation where panicking would be her base response, she had seconds to figure out what she was going to do. And then one of them yelled, "_EXTERMINATE!_", so she didn't have to, because that served enough of a shock to them as anything, when the greenish laser ripped through her, and she just shimmered, and remained, unfazed. Suddenly, she had no reason to be scared of these Daleks, because she had confused them, she had the upper-hand. She didn't have any weapons, and she didn't want to reveal where or what the Sphere was to them in case they aimed and shot at _that_, instead.

"Hi!" she said brightly, obnoxiously, walking over to them slowly, like she was looking for something, swinging her arms back and forth like a child while trying to keep an eye on her footing, "What's going on here, then?"

"WHAT ARE YOU?" one of them asked her.

"Names would be good. Names for you lot," she said, standing in front of them as they drifted together. Maybe they were some precursor to the Cult of Skaro, with no definite leader, "…My name's Oswin."

"HUMAN," another of them declared, "ALL HUMANS ARE TO BE EXTERMINATED." It shot her, and the beam went through her hologram form again, and she raised an eyebrow. She was a little taller than these ones, she thought, maybe only the tiniest bit, an inch at a push. But still, she took some form of crude pride in it.

"I'm not a human, I haven't been a human for a _long_ time," she said, smiling darkly, a smile that didn't reach her eyes, which stayed cold and hollow, like the rest of her, "Well, maybe not a _long_ time. About fifteen months, I suppose. It's an interesting story…" she paced in front of them, and they watched her, and the one on the far right shot her again, which she ignored, "…Involves me stowing away about this ship. Might be in your future. But I landed on this planet. The Dalek Asylum. Asylum of the Daleks. Then, you want to know what happened? Well, it just so _happens_ that _I_ am the smartest human being who ever lived. A damn-sight smarter than any pesky, pathetic _Dalek_. Cleverer than you, more inventive than you, almost as ruthless as you, with all the emotions to boot. And some added… Side-effects…" she didn't clarify to the Daleks what the 'side-effects' of being the smartest girl in the universe were, but she meant her neuroses, her mental impediments, whatever you wanted to call them, "What with me being cleverer than all of you Daleks, the only thing they saw fit to do to me was convert me. Full Dalek conversion. This is 5121, forty-three years in the future. So I'm sure you know _all_ about this Asylum."

"IF YOU WERE CONVERTED, HOW ARE YOU HERE?"

"Because of the Doctor," she said, and they went frantic for a moment, yelling and flashing their lights so wildly she didn't bother to listen to what they were saying, "Because the Doctor showed up, and refused to take me with him. I didn't know I was a Dalek. I thought I was just in the crashed ship. He took one look at me, all human in my head, and thought I was too dangerous. I was chained up in this little room all on my own, I was so dangerous, trying to sabotage them. In the end, I helped him and ended up killing myself in the process. Or so I thought, because two of his companions showed up later and converted the remains of my Dalek consciousness into a hologram."

"WHERE IS YOUR EMITTER?"

"Well that's a _secret_, isn't it? I'm not telling you that, you'd kill me. And you can't kill me. Not yet. I want to know what you're doing here, why you shut off the drill, why there's a big, nasty Dalek ship buried beneath the surface of one of Jupiter's moons carrying a mineral called Vespiantine-12 that I've never heard of existing in this entire galaxy," she said.

"WHERE IS THE DOCTOR?"

"Haven't the foggiest. I'm alone. I'm the only one who will listen to you, because I'm the only one who understands you Daleks. What it's like to be one. Full of so much hate, so much hate I just kept and turned on myself instead of on anybody else. So, what's going on? What's with the ship?"

"FIFTY EARTH-YEARS AGO THE SHIP CARRYING OUR BEST WARRIORS CRASHED ON YOUR MOON IO CARRYING THE VESPIANTINE-12. THEY HAVE BEEN TRAPPED UNDER VOLCANIC ERUPTIONS."

"WE ARE HERE TO RETRIEVE THEM AND THE VESPIANTINE-12," another one added. The two in the middle were the ones mostly speaking to her.

"What's Vespitantine-12?" she asked.

"YOU WILL MAKE THE DOCTOR HELP US," the more aggressive one on the far right ordered.

"I might do. What is it?"

"UNSTABLE EXPLOSIVE MATTER SCAVENGED FROM BLOMIA."

"Blow-me-a?" she frowned. They didn't answer, "Who do you want to blow you? Oh my _stars_, are you gay? Do Daleks have genders? Sexualities? I bet they do. Who do you want to blow you? This one?" she was talking to the one on the middle right, and she pointed at the one on the far left, "What about this one?" she pointed at the one on the middle left, then to the one on the far right she said, "Not that one though, he can stay out in the cold, he's a bit violent. I wouldn't want him to blow me."

"WHAT IS THE PURPOSE OF THIS EXCHANGE?"

"My own amusement. I had no idea the Daleks were intergalactic arsebandits," she said, smirking to herself, though the Daleks weren't particularly amused as she began pacing in front of them again, "Extra-terrestrial turdburglars. Metallic homonauts."

"STOP THIS NOW OR YOU WILL BE-"

"Spunk-ridden rust-buckets. When you say 'exterminate', is that some kind of camp gay Dalek slang for… Something else? Say 'ejaculate.' Go on. Say it, you celestial gay stereotype."

"YOU ARE MOCKING THE DALEKS," the one on the far right said.

"Sure am. Daleks are very funny. Look at you, you have plungers and whisks and only one eye and you fly around shooting things because you're short, probably. I bet this all comes down to a Napoleon complex. _Short man syndrome_. _I'm_ taller than you, and I'm not taller than a whole lot of people. So, let's clarify. You want me to get the Doctor to help you excavate your ship full of dangerous warrior Daleks without blowing it up?" she said, backing away from them towards the teleportation matrix. They couldn't stop her from leaving, "And this Vespiantine-12. It's very unstable? Dangerous? I know a lot about explosives, you see."

"YES."

"Huh…" she hit the button on the matrix that was attached to a platform deep in that cavern, and she was quite shocked at the fact the drilling colonialists hadn't blown up the entire moon yet. Because she was sure that, if someone were to trigger that stuff to go boom, it would take all of Io and whatever Daleks might be crawling about with it.


	242. Angel Blue

_Ten_

_Angel Blue_

They didn't dare approach the Daleks, they hid around for a few minutes and ducked beneath a railing to hide from them, Ten closely observing what was going on. Oswin had been teleported somewhere, or teleported herself, but regardless, he didn't think her breaking away from them was a very good idea. There were humans as well, not everybody was dead. There must have been twenty-something people down there, being ordered around by the Daleks, who seemed to be quite focused on lifting the drill out of the ground as far as possible. Strange. Were they not interesting in mining out the Vespiantine-12, whatever that was?

"Daleks? Why wouldn't the Alliance tell us there were Daleks?" Mickey asked.

"They said they were sending scouts out. My guess is that Io Alpha went dark and they don't know why," Nine told him. One of the Daleks pointed its eyestalk in their direction and they all ducked out of sight, though but it was quite far away and Ten didn't actually know exactly how good a Dalek's range of vision was. It didn't shout anything, though, so he assumed it hadn't seen them.

"What are we all doing?" someone whispered, and they all jumped to see Oswin crouched down nearby holding some clunky button in her hand, recently returned. The thing had a blinking red light on top of it.

"What's that?" Nios asked her.

"Teleporter, goes down to a cavern near the bottom of the pit," she explained.

"We're hiding from the Daleks. Where did you go?" Mickey informed her, and asked the question they were all dying to know the answer to.

"To the cavern, I just said. Talking to some Daleks. Four of them. Not different to the rest, didn't have names. Well, not that they told me," she said, and Ten couldn't read her tone of voice or her expression, but something seemed... off. He couldn't place what, but it was like she was distracted, like there was something more important she suddenly thought she should be doing.

"You _spoke _to them!?" Nine demanded as quietly as he could.

"They can't kill me with their exterminators, I'm a hologram, remember? Just a picture. They tried to, but the lasers went straight through me. They want your help. The Doctor's help. I guess I'm a liaison," she shrugged and put the teleported down next to her.

"_Help_? Help with what?" Nine asked sourly, shocked at the Daleks having such audacity.

"Do you know why they've cut off the drill?" River questioned her as well, and Oswin nodded at her.

"There's a crashed Dalek ship down there that was buried by volcanic eruptions," Oswin explained, "It has their best warriors trapped on board, along with a shit load of Vespiantine-12, which is a highly volatile explosive, um, _goo_, I guess, they got from another system. They shut off the drill to stop the humans blowing up their ship, and they want the Doctors' help to free their ship without blowing the moon up. You have to save the best Dalek warriors, or this whole thing will go boom, including those people down there." Then she leant against the balcony with the rest of them and took out the hackdriv of hers, the little screen projecting a green hologram out of it as she seemed to be hacking into the data storage of Io Alpha.

"If the ship is buried, the only way to get it out would be the drill," Nine said, "But if we use the drill, it'll get blown up. It's impossible."

"We could always evacuate the humans and leave the Daleks to blow themselves up?" Mickey suggested, and Ten gave him a scolding look, and remembered that committing genocide on the Daleks was the reason Tentoo had originally ended up ostracised. Though, stuck with Rose? Ten hardly thought it was much of a punishment. Rose was _brilliant_.

"No, Mickey," Ten told him, "Besides, there's no way for us to get those people away from the Daleks to do that. They'd get shot if they tried to leave. All of them."

"How do we do it?" River asked Oswin, who was deep in thought, reading through files and data and information on the Alliance Extranet.

"Give them a neutralising agent for the Vespiantine-12," Oswin said.

"How can you do that if you don't know the chemical formula for it? You don't even know what it is."

"Because I do have a chemical formula for it," Oswin said, "They stopped drilling about two weeks ago temporarily when they saw a strange green glow coming from the drill pit. That's the explosives. They couldn't figure out what it did, but they started analysing it. They were going to keep the drilling on hold, but the Alliance found out and ordered them to keep mining. Apparently, there were some theories that there might be a new source of volcanic fossil fuel on Io, that's why they were here in the first place. Or it's why they were told they were here, I don't know... But the analysis was taking ages because this technology is outdated, said it would take up to a month for the results... If we can get to the geological labs they have here, we can fastrack the analysis and come up with a neutralising agent to give to the Daleks. It might take a while, but if we're helping them we shouldn't be in any danger." She stood up then and crept back towards the door and, carefully, the other five followed her.

"So which way?" Nine asked, accepting finally that Oswin really was cleverer than him, and she knew what she was doing. But Ten couldn't shake his suspicions of her.

"Geo department is that way, and a right, and then you follow the signs," Oswin said, pointing down a right-hand fork and keeping her eyes on a map she had up in green on her hackdrive, "You five go there, I'll head to biochemistry and keep tabs on the geo scanners to see what you come up with." She said it so assuredly, and the walked off with such confidence, that Nine, Mickey and Nios didn't even question what she was doing.

"Should we be letting her go off on her own?" River said to Ten, and Oswin distantly turned a corner.

"...No," he decided, "We shouldn't. You four do what she says, but be careful. I'll follow her." So he slipped away from the quartet and made to go after Oswin, but very soon he lost her, and was left wandering around Io Alpha on his own looking for signs pointing him to any biochemistry laboratory, or anything to do with biochemistry at all, but he found none. He ended up sonicking the next computer he came across in some office belonging to someone who might once have been in charge and went about finding the same map Oswin had brought up, which didn't take long. And there wasn't a biochemistry lab on it anywhere. So what was she doing?

There were two options, they either blew up the moon and killed everyone there _and _the Daleks, or they saved the Daleks and sent them, their best warriors, and a highly unstable alien explosive gel away to safety to wreak havoc elsewhere. And what was to say they wouldn't just blow up Io anyway when they were done? He was sure they had weapons capable of blowing up moons. Maybe Oswin didn't think it was worth the risk. Maybe she had an agenda of revenge against the Daleks. Maybe she was trying to blow up Io.

How would one go about doing that, with the resources at hand? Trying to think like he was an explosives expert sent here to do some sort of detonation, he stared at the pixelated map of the whole base and thought of ways it could be blown up. She couldn't have gone back to the drill, that was too dangerous and the would probably result in the Daleks just switching the drill on and off again. Not to mention that that would alert the other crewmembers to the fact something was happening. The drill would probably take a long while to warm up, anyway, so it was an uneffective solution to Oswin's 'problem'.

Then he saw that the power generators were nearby, on a level lower than everything else, but definitely a direction she could have gone, and they were build under the planet's surface right next to the drilling chamber. Huge, fusion generators. Two of them. If one exploded, the other would follow, and so would the Vespiantine-12, the Dalek ship, Io Alpha and the rest of the whole moon. It might even leave a scar on the surface of Jupiter next door. He was sure that Oswin Oswald, or all people, was more than capable of triggering that kind of explosive reaction, but how long would that take? Could he get there and stop her in time?

He hoped so, so he left as quickly as he could and downright _ran,_ full-on _sprinted_ through the corridors and jumped the railing on a set of stairs going down two levels to the power supply floor where the generators, and Oswin, were, he was sure of it. He suffered a bit of a messy landing and stumbled, but Ten hardly cared as he sonicked the doors she'd locked behind herself and burst into a room brightly lit like lightning, humming like static and crackling like a tesla coil. Two generators, each the size of a bus with tubes coming off and blue lights blinking were there. And in between them, at a huge control panel with a large screen, stood Oswin, with her back to him, muttering.

"See how much of a _worthless _daughter I am now, won't we?" she said, kicking the computer in front of her, leaning all of her weight on her right leg.

"...Oswin?" Ten asked, and she span around, looking wild all of a sudden, furious, and broken.

"Get out."

"No."

"Where are the others?"

"Not here. It's just me," he assured her, keeping back from her. For all he knew, one of those buttons she was hanging her hand so threateningly over would initiate some sort of self-destruct, kill them.

"Leave. Go back to the TARDIS. That's the best hope you've got."

"You don't have to do this."

"Why? Why _shouldn't_ I do it? They're _Daleks_. Isn't a few people lost _worth _killing the Daleks? _I _was a Dalek and _I_ was worth so little that I just _had _to die, so what's different about these ones? Why should they get to live, when I didn't!? Where's your logic, Doctor? Where's you're _fucking _logic!? I'm not worth a thing though, am I? Not a bloody thing. Never was. My own mother thought so. My own brothers thought so. Disowned me. You know what she said to me? You know what she thought was so important she had to write it down in a _letter _and have it delivered to me at her fucking _funeral?_ That I was the worst mistake of her life. That I should have been an _abortion!_" she cried, clenching her fist, tears in her eyes. It seemed that suddenly she was letting forth a whole lot of emotions she'd been trying to supress, "That's what she wrote. I'm unnatural. I didn't know that. I just thought I was a happy surprise, a baby daughter, that's what dad always said, but dad had to go and die, didn't he? Had to go and leave me with _her_. A woman who never cared about any of her children, who disowns me because I left to save her, I brought her _everything_, and I never got a fucking thank you! _My _intelligence! And that - that _bitch_ goes and says - she says that _I _was the cause for _all _of her suffering!? My whole life!? My whole _afterlife_? I just brought misery, apparently! So I suppose I can't do a single thing right. Even when I do, I'm wrong. Staying was wrong. Running away was wrong. Dying was _wrong_. Living was _WRONG_. I don't want to be told that I'm wrong anymore! I'm _gone _if I do this. Everyone's shot of me, including you! You won't have to worry about me anymore. I could take every damn Dalek on this colony with me, and that _includes _me, because I'm just as much of a murderer. I'm just as much of a killer, aren't I? I'm a burden on all of you. You don't want me on the TARDIS, I know it."

"That's not true! Don't do this! You're..." he trailed off.

"STOP TELLING ME I'M WRONG!" she screamed at him, "You're just as bad as she is! Maybe I should lock the door! Just lock the fucking door and keep you down here to burn with these generators! Would that be _right_? I wouldn't have to worry anymore. I wouldn't have to... I wouldn't..." Oswin collapsed onto the floor and curled up and Ten dropped to his knees next to her and pulled the poor girl into his arms, where she started to shake and sob violently like she was having some kind of fit, nearly screaming it seemed like she was in so much pain from the emotions she was feeling. "_I want it to stop._"

"You'll get better. There will be another way. There will be a way to save everyone and stop the Daleks, without killing them," he said, "Everything's gonna be fine, Oswin, it'll pass, this is just how it feels while it's happening..."


	243. Friends Without Benefits IV

**AN: So guys. The thing is. You may well be in store for a quintuple update today, just to warn people, because 745 and 746 are already written (someone has to stop me writing drafts), and it's a weekend so I'll probably end up writing a lot while I procrastinate writing an essay on ****_The Great Gatsby_****. Just as a warning. Also, I totally had to do research for this storyline, I had to go find a Dalek and stand next to it to see how tall it was. Thank god they have one in the National Media Museum. I actually took a selfie with it.**

_Ten_

_Friends Without Benefits IV_

He had succeeded in calming Oswin down enough that she stopped the detonation sequence she'd nearly initiated, and he really didn't know if he thought her capable of going through with it or not. But he'd walked her away to the office he'd been in earlier, having to keep steadying her and distreetly keeping his eyes out for a wheelchair, though he doubted she would take too kindly to that suggestion. Going around on wheels was probably too close to being a Dalek for comfort, at that moment. Luckily, that office had a link to the tannoy system, and he managed to isolate the set-up so that it was an isolated connection between the office and the geological labs where the others were.

He told them simply that the biochemistry department had been completely empty, and that he and Oswin were both fine, and they told _him_ that the machines were conveniently storing enough material to create a minor neutralisation agent that would create a chain reaction in all of the Vespiantine-12 because it had some interesting communicative qualities, apparently, like fungus. A very advanced biological material that just _happened_ to be explosive. While they got on with that, Ten and Oswin stayed in the office, and he began to talk to her.

"You should talk about it," he advised her. She was sat in the chair on the other side of the desk with her feet on it, knees pulled up to her face. She was resting her cheek on them and keeping her eyes trained on a blank section of wall on Ten's left.

"I don't want to."

"I know you don't, but you can't bottle everything up. You don't have to carry the world on your shoulders, Oswin. I'm your friend."

"Are you sure we're not _more _than friends? You _are _sleeping in my bed," she said sharply, but if she was making comments, that was probably a good sign.

"I'm sorry about that! It just sort of... happened! I didn't have much say it. It was one of those moments-of-passion. You know what I mean."

"Don't be disgusting. Adam and I have never had a 'monent of passion.' I don't even want to know what that means."

"What did the letter say, Oswin?" he asked quietly, gently, looking at her with a look of compassion, a look of empathy. They had a lot in common, and she could learn a lot from him, or from Nine, or Eleven. Even Thirteen. Maybe she _would _learn a lot from Thirteen, since she always made it seem like Oswin was still there however far in the future she was from.

"It said what I told you. I was that there with Flek, the other day, and in came Dret. He passed this letter to her, told her to give it to me, wouldn't even _look _at me. I burnt it when we got back," Oswin said stiffly, not enjoying this topic, but perhaps giving in to the Doctor a little, "It said I wasn't supposed to be born, said it was impossible. Which it is. Because Clara's the one who actually created me. She calls me her 'favourite daughter,' you know." She smiled a little when she said that.

"Does she?"

"Her worst nightmare is losing me..." she seemed confused now.

"Is it?"

"Yeah. I've been meaning to ask her about it... You know she disowned me, anyway. My mother, I mean. Not Clara. She did say those things. I brought her all the suffering in her life. You know what suffering she means? When I was nine, Dret made the three of us - me, him and Fyn - try coffee, and Fyn ended up spitting it onto the floor, so we cleaned up while he pissed off and didn't dry the floor properly, and she slipped and broke her leg. You know what she said to me, almost fifteen years later, when I was lying in hospital after the bomb went off in my room? She said, '_Now you know how it feels_.' Can you imagine the amount of heartlessness that goes into telling your only daughter, recent amputee, a bona fide pogo-stick, that a minor break to your tibia is somehow _equal_?"

Sometimes, he thought, Oswin's mother really did sound like a terrible human being. But there was the issue of her being unnaturally conceived, that begged the question if she even _was _her mother? Of course, motherhood was not remotely a solely biological occurrence, but she had hardly acted like a mother at all, it seemed, and had left her children victimes of neglect while she went off and spent money that was technically Oswin's on pointless, materialistic things. Where did one draw the line of motherly pursuits against neglectful behaviour like that?

"...What did you mean when you said you had to die..?" he asked carefully, and she met his eyes for a moment.

"On the Dalek Asylum. You didn't save me. Eleven didn't save me. Because I was a Dalek. But I just... I just looked like one, okay? In my head, I was in this dream world, this perfect place, full of made-up things to make me feel better. Nice clothes, nice food, a caring mother... So many repressed memories. What happened to me. My leg. I don't know if there might be other stuff I've forgotten. There could be loads of things. In my head I wasn't one of them, I don't think. I took down the forcefield, Theodore, Amy and Rory all got out, and the Dalek Parliament blew up the whole planet. Then Jack and Amy found my consciousness in the wreckage, and made me a hologram for Clara's wedding. You know the rest. Eleven refused to take me with him, broke his promise to rescue me, just because I was in a stupid shell." That seemed out of order to Ten. He'd known Oswin for months, and any homicidal tendancies she might have were not linked to Dalekhood one bit.

"You never normally seem angry with him. Or me." She sighed.

"I'm... I'm not, okay? I'm angry sometimes because he broke a promise, not because he left me... I didn't..." she paused for a minute and looked him dead in the eyes, her eyes full of the darkness they usually stored, just more intense, the chocoalte-brown of them almost black in the dim lighting of the office, and she looked more dead than she usually did, "I didn't want to be saved. I don't deserve to be saved. I mean... I'm a murderer. I've killed thousands of people."

Ten sighed, "You're not a murderer, Oswin. Anybody would've done the same in that situation. They threatened to starve your family."

"I'm not 'anybody' though, am I? I _was_ the smartest human being who ever existed. And now I'm _nothing_, I couldn't even figure out that getting the Spores to Horizon was a bad idea. I couldn't figure out anything. What good is a high IQ with no common sense?"

"You're not a murderer. You're punishing yourself too much. You ought to blame the person who set off the bomb in the first place, not the girl who built it because she didn't have any other choice," he said softly, "What happened isn't your fault."

"But it _is_ my fault," she said hoarsely, moving so that her fake leg was the one on the floor, still holding the real one on her chair, putting no weight on the left one as though it was somehow sore, "It's my fault."

"You have to stop blaming yourself." He had his arms crossed and resting on the desk in front of him, leaning forwards, listening out for any news from the others about this neutralising agent.

"But I _can't_. I just... can't. How could I do that to those people? Their murderer walking around being guilt-free? Being _happy_? I shouldn't get to live on like this with Clara, and Adam, on the TARDIS, when they're all dead."

"They would have figured out a way to kill people anyway. You know they're not good people, a lot of them."

"I shouldn't have brought them there."

"You didn't know."

"Fyn warned me."

"Oswin..."

"He told me not to trust them. I should have listened to him, I should have just _listened_... The only good thing they brought was Flek, and she was the only reason I never tried to stop them. Never. I just ran off. Ran away."

"That's all I ever do, is run," Ten said, "I learnt to be happy again, though. Because of Rose."

"I don't deserve to be happy. It's not fair on the dead."

"You _are _the dead, and this isn't fair on _you_. None of those people had to deal with being turned into a Dalek. Why can't conversion be punishment enough?"

"_It's done_," River Song's voice interrupted their talk, crackling on the weakly linked comm feed from the labs where the other four were.

"Well," Oswin muttered, crossing her arms tightly and setting both of her legs on the floor, "Guess we have to go and save the Daleks."

"_Or_..." River began, seeming to get an idea, "_...Do you remember that bomb sphere some of the other girls brought back from that empty spaceship two and a half weeks ago?_"

"The Stomb? What about it?" Oswin asked.

"_I've got an idea..."_


	244. Danger! High Voltage

_Ten_

_Danger! High Voltage_

Io Alpha was not just a mining colony. Ten discovered, while looking at the map, that while it didn't have a biochemistry department, it _did_ have an astonomy department. By that, he meant there was an observatory, and they seemed to be merely documenting any changes on Jupiter's surface to watch for more superstorms, after the subsidence of the Great Red Spot a little over two-thousand years ago. This observatory was where the six of them, about an hour later, found themselves. It was very small and had a large control panel with two, blue, hologramatic computer monitors Oswin was now working at, following River's instructions. It was barely three metres wide, and most of it was filled with the telescope pointing outside, but it had the added bonus of having a glass roof, made of what River called 'hyper-densi.'

Ten hadn't liked sending Oswin off on her own to talk to the Daleks again, but the rest of them would be likely suffer fatally if they were to go try and deliver the neutralising agent they'd been synthesising out of the collection of Ioan debris, so it had to be her who they sent. She didn't stay for long, though, and when briefed with River's idea, she perked up somewhat. Not too much, but enough to function, and she didn't stay down with whatever Daleks she'd been talking to earlier on for more than a minute.

After that, they did a second head count of the remaining humans, Oswin claiming she had bargained with the Daleks and told them to keep everybody alive else she'd blow up their ship, telling what Ten knew to be a lie about hidden missle launchers build beneath Io's volcanoc surface. Apparently, that had worked, and as they watched the Daleks flock together and trundle across the rocky surface before returning to their original ship, some of them staying behind to order the humans resume the drilling and then leave the room to leave them to their business afterwards. Out of the observatory window they watched the distant, bronze-coloured saucer pick up and take off to loiter, waiting, in Io's orbit.

"They'll blow it up," Oswin commented on them, "Or, they'll try..." Nobody asked her to explain as they observed quietly, waiting, just like the Daleks were.

It took a while for the rumbling to start. Rumbling beneath the very surface of the moon. By this point, all of the Dalek rescue party had evacuated the complex, and Nine had commanded the remaining humans to get to other size of the base, as far away from the drilling dome as they possibly could. The Dalek ship that was trapped was tearing through the ground as it rose, a powerful thing, the landscape fragile enough from the magma running through it that would serve to make the Vespiantine-12 all the more dangerous.

What they suspected would happen was that as soon as both the Dalek ships were far enough away, they'd use whatever weapons they had to blow up the base, thinking that they would easily defeat Io Alpha before Oswin could fire any of its imaginary weapons back at them, which was entirely accurate to what would happen. The Daleks _would _succeed in blowing them up first, the facility now being some sort of direct line to the moon's mantle and the boiling hot magma lakes underneath, the warm, stale odour of sulphur drifting around them, unless their plan worked.

As an enormous, gold-plated, dirty disc rose up, blue-coloured, neutral Vespiantine crawling over it through the cracks and the burst from the eruptions that had covered it up so entirely, Oswin blanked it and contined writing code as quikly as she could. She was writing a virus. A _super_-virus.

"You know how to hack into Daleks, don't you?" River had asked her earlier on, as they planned what to do. Oswin had shrugged, but nodded.

"I guess."

She did. She remembered exactly how to crack one, break inside of one and stir the contents around and add bits in. She was their Dalek expert in residence, she had spent a year inside of one, studying them, learning weak spots, hiding, researching. She was the girl who erased the Doctor from their memories, stopped them from knowing who he was, in his future, to kill him. And now she was writing a virus, a special kind of virus, that needed to be so intricate it was impossible to defeat, untraceable, and remote controlled, so it could be guided on its destructive path.

"How do we transmit it?" Nine had asked.

"The guidance system needs to be upgraded," River said earlier, while Oswin was already too engrossed in her code-writing to do anything else, using what she remembered of the inebriating qualities of the altered static bomb they had on the TARDIS to fuel her ideas for what, exactly, to write. River had glanced at Mickey, then, and she had pointed to a terminal sitting in a corner and said that _he _and he alone could make it a remote station for the station's security and control room, and could use it to transfer via cables Nine had gone about setting up this virus from Oswin's terminals to that one, to control the guidance system.

The guidance system, River had explained, had powerful software in it that links with ships entering the orbital path of Io at the discretion of the Io authorities, _not _the people in the ship, they couldn't accept or deny themselves access. Access depended on if the people on the moon wanted to accept the ship or not, at which point a program she called Cuttlefish would take over (named Cuttlefish because of its ability to change itself depending on what the ship was, Oswin reworking it loosely to be better suited to a Dalek ship, like the camouflage nature of its namesake), and interface with the ship computers in order to safely guide it to where it could dock. This was their access point into the systems of the Dalek ship, and then the virus needed to spread quickly and effectively through their ship and through them, their hive mind serving as a benefit.

Nine and Ten and Nios (who had spent the day doing little more than observing with fascination) weren't doing very much other than standing by and putting huge amounts of trust in their companions, River in charge, Oswin coding, and Mickey altering the guidance systems.

There were two Dalek ships in the sky now, the one risen from Io three times the size of the rescue party one, and that was when Oswin declared she was done, just in the nick of time, it seemed. Wouldn't be long until the Daleks would try and fire onto them, would try to blow up the moon. The virus was transferring from Oswin to Mickey under River's close instruction.

"What _is _a Dalek? None of you will tell me. Why are they so bad?" Nios asked the Doctors.

"They were in a war, with our people. I thought I killed them all, along with all the Time Lords. I didn't. They always come back," Nine said, "All they are is hate. Genocide and hate. Created by a man called Davros."

"What about Oswin?" Nios asked, and Ten cast a glance in Oswin's direction, but she was paying more attention to the loading bar on the screen, trying to accelerate the process with her hackdrive, the Dalek ships looming, drifting away, threatening them with their distance.

"That's complicated," Ten told Nios, "They converted her into one of them, because she's a genius. But she stayed herself. She'll tell you if you ask, but not today, another time." Nios accepted that as the best explanation she was going to get right then, while everybody else was preoccupied with the virus' progress. There was a mechnical beeping and the loading bar vanished and Mickey declared that it had integrated itself for transmission via the guidance system, as soon as the Dalek ships were in the window they needed to be in. They both needed to be within range at the same time for the virus to load onto both of them, otherwise their efforts were futile.

And then it was a waiting game. Always waiting. Seconds went by, maybe minutes, but to Ten it felt like days dragging themselves by like dry snails as he watched the ships get smaller and smaller. And then they stopped. Stopped to shoot. And Mickey said that one of them was out of range.

"I'll make it jump," said Oswin, getting up. They must have only seconds before they were wiped out, and the Doctor's fate wasn't even in his own hands.

"You can't make it jump! There are only seconds," River said.

"It'll jump, okay!? From the bigger one. Only one of them will fire, that one, that gives us a window," Oswin said.

"I've made the range as wide as it can be," Mickey said uselessly, passing his chair over to Oswin.

"Give me a sonic, somebody," she demanded urgently, and River passed her hers, the one that looked like Ten's, only older with additions, "It will jump. They jump all the time."

"How are you going to make it jump?" River wanted to know.

"Phishing spam."

"You can't _phish _the _Daleks_!" River exclaimed.

"I can, just watch. Like when hackers send companies millions of emails because of trojans. The virus just needs an extra bit of oomph."

"Is 'oomph' a technical term now?" River questioned.

"It's not like _human_ spam, I can trick them and make them think they got a message from the other ship. They open it and it the virus loads through all of them," Oswin said.

"She's right, she just needs to hijack a transmission," Nine spoke up in Oswin's defence.

"They'll open it because they'll _think _it explains what happened to the other ship... Look..._ Look_!" she pointed out of the window and they saw the enormous laser weapon descend from the base of the ship, "It'll work, it'll work. It'll work, it'll work it'll work_ it'll work it will work_..." she chanted to herself.

There was a bright flash from the laser, and then... Nothing. It was like a match had gone out, fizzled out, afterglow like ectoplasm on his eyes. And then the ship... Stayed. Seconds past. Nothing happened. Oswin muttered. The same thing started to happen with the other ship, the glow of the laser building up underneath, to blow them all up, kill them all. This would test if it had jumped. If they had fallen for the trick.

They _had_.

The laser died, too. And then that was it.

"...What, exactly, did that virus do? What does the static bomb do?" Nios asked, and Oswin kept typing as she explained.

"The Stomb is like an unstable, organic EMP. It makes a human brain's synapses overload, like an cranial electrical storm, in a fatal seizure, for everyone in a mile radius. I altered it and down-graded it so that it can incapacitate organic life, and then I used what I remember from how it works to affect the Daleks. Um, kind of. I drifted away from that a little. We used the guidance system to broadcast it to the bigger ship that was embedded in the drilling pit, and it attacked their weapons system, and diverted the power they sent into their laser and projected it through their cortex relays. It was just the _idea _of incapacitating them I got from the Stomb, but the virus completely shut down their shells, and then I jumped it onto the other ship under the ruse of it being an explanation as to why they just _stopped _trying to shoot us. Then the same thing happened to them. Attacked their shells, totally disabled them, they can't move, or communicate with their ship, or do anything. They're still connected, but useless. Trapped in their shells forever. If they hadn't tried to shoot us, it wouldn't have happened."

"They did it to themselves..." River breathed, staring at the ships.

"Yeah, now, see?" Oswin said, hitting a button and finally moving away from the terminal, from the computers, as there was a flash coming from Io Alpha somewhere and the ships started to move off East, "They're stuck on a path out of the system I put them on. They'll drift forever, and they'll be awake for all of it. Just one more thing I have to do..." She sat back at the main control console for the telescope she'd been writing the virus on, "I have to wipe everything. All the records of this place. Get the humans to leave, and then... I disabled the guidance systems completely now... Nobody can get onto Io and come here now. It has to be forgotten, so that me in the future, in _my _past, never knows it existed..."


	245. Dearly Beloved

**AN: #Musictheory for no real reason. I can't even play the piano. I play the guitar, though, and music theory translates across. Unfortunately, FF does not support the symbol for musical flats, which is why it will say the word 'flat' instead of having the actual symbol.**

_Clara_

_Dearly Beloved_

"Do you want to talk about it?" Clara asked Oswin, both of them sitting in Clara's room, Clara on her bed, Oswin in one of the chairs slouching down. She didn't say anything about her outburst earlier in the day, but Clara suspected that it had everything to do with her mother and the mysterious letter she hadn't let anybody read. Oswin didn't seem to want to talk about it, though. Then Clara got an idea. "Can you play any instruments?"

"No. Never had any so there was no point learning," Oswin mumbled, keeping her arms crossed like a teenager throwing a tantrum. Though Oswin's tantrums often seemed to end in maimings or murders, so Clara really oughtn't take them lightly.

"Come on," Clara said, standing up. Oswin looked at her, so she urged, "_Come on_, Os." Still, Oswin didn't move, just frowned, so Clara took her hand and dragged her up out of the chair while groaned an unintelligible complaint, pulling her unwillingly towards the piano and pushing her so that she sat on the bench, and then Clara sat down next to her.

"I don't want to play piano, Clara. I still don't even believe that _you _can play the piano," Oswin muttered, disgruntled at how her sister was trying to cheer her up.

"Well, I can play it," Clara said, "Just the other day, in that weird maze, I had to play it so that we could find Missy."

"But it doesn't make sense! Why are some of the keys black and some of them white? And why are the black ones smaller and half way between the others?" Oswin questioned pedantically.

"Because the black ones are sharps and flats. There are seven notes and five sharps and flats."

"What are you talking about? There are loads of notes."

"No, there are loads of keys. This piano has eighty-five keys because it's really old, thirty-six black keys and forty-nine white ones. There are seven notes in each octave and there are seven octaves," Clara explained.

"What's an octave?"

"It's like, how high or low it is. See, this is a C," Clara said, pressing down a key that was the right of a pair of white keys side-by-side with no black between them, "But this is also a C." With her right hand she struck a note that resonated familiarly at the other end of the piano.

"Why don't those ones have a black between them?" Oswin asked.

"Well, these two are E and F," Clara said, trilling idly between the two notes, "And these two are B and C. Between all the other notes there are tones, and between those two pairs there are semitones, so there are no sharps or flats."

"What's a sharp and a flat?" Oswin really didn't seem to know an awful lot about music, despite how much she enjoyed opera, which Clara thought was good, because she at least had something she could show Oswin that she would likely not surpass her at. Music was about technique and effort, not just the volume of your grey matter.

"They're in between the notes. See, this is C#, but it's also D flat, because it's between them, on the right of C and the left of D. But here, there is no black key, so there is no E# and, accordingly, no F flat, because the gap between them is only a semitone," Clara told her.

"Why is it so complicated? All you're doing is pushing buttons," Oswin complained, and Clara laughed.

"It's all based on maths, sweetheart, you should love it," Clara told her, "It's counting you can sing to. The theory isn't the tricky part, it's the technique, which is why this is something _you _won't be instantly good at."

"Why would I want to do something I'm not instantly good at? I'm the smartest girl in the universe, I'm instantly good at everything," Oswin argued.

"Yeah, except socialising. And not-dying."

"Hilarious."

"I'll show you how to play a chord - that's where you play more than one note at once. Usually three notes, see, this is C Major," she pressed three of the keys down, "It's a C and an E and a G. And you can play it anywhere and it's still C Major." Oswin played three notes and Clara frowned. "I mean in any octave. That's F Major. The C is the first one because that's the root note that makes it a C chord and not an E chord."

"What do you mean 'major'?"

"There are major and minor chords. Minor chords sound sad, see, this is G Minor," Clara played another chord elsewhere, this time using her thumb and one of the black keys, "Which is G, C flat and D."

"Can you play _Fur Elise_?"

"Everyone can play _Fur Elise_. It's like, the first thing you learn, along with _Somewhere Over the Rainbow_ and _Chopsticks_," Clara told her.

"Teach me that."

"Well it's a trill on E and E flat, see?" Clara did that, playing five notes, "With your middle finger and ring finger, and then it goes to a B with your index finger, then D with your ring finger, then C with your middle finger, then A with your index finger, but with your left hand you have to hit a C in the next octave down here, with the A, so it sounds like," instead of saying anything else, she played the very beginning of _Fur Elise _for Oswin.

"Wow, Clars, you sure know a lot about fingers," Oswin joked, and Clara just stayed deadpan, though secretly she was glad Oswin was making dirty jokes, because it meant she was feeling better.

It only took ten minutes for her to master that tiny segment of Beethoven, Clara watching the flash of her silver wedding ring in the light behind them, along with the much dulled shimmer her mother's old, gold one had on the next finger down.

"Okay Clars. If you answer one question, _and _you learn to play _Cohen's Masterpiece_ in under a week, then I'll let you actually teach my how to play piano," Oswin said.

"...How to play what? I've never heard of it. Are you geeking out on me?"

"No! It's a piece of music from a video game-"

"So you _are _geeking out on me." Oswin got out her phone.

"It's from _Bioshock_. You know, we went to its universe? In Atlantis? Do you remember when Cohen blew up the guy, Fitzpatrick, who was playing the piano?" Oswin asked, and Clara nodded, (**AN: Chapter ref., 296, aptly titled "Cohen's Masterpiece," I doubt that any of you WILL go listen to it, so just take my word that it really is astoundingly difficult, but if you DO want to listen to it it's easy enough to find on YouTube**) "Well, it's the song he was playing."

"You want me to play a song that got someone killed? Not to mention a song that I remember thinking looked extraordinarily difficult," Clara said.

"It _is _extraordonarily difficult, look," Oswin said, holding her phone sideways so that the video on it filled the screen, turning the volume up so that Clara could hear as she watched somebody play the song, _Cohen's Masterpiece_. She was so entranced by it that she just stared and watched all three minutes and then wondered, if they were ever to run into some great composer like Mozart or Tchaikovsky, just how impressive she would look if she could play _that _on piano...

Fuelled by her own vanity, Clara said, "Deal. Just get me some sheet music. What's your question?"

"Why is losing me your worst nightmare?"

"You didn't need to trick me to get me to answer that, Os. I'd've answered it anyway. Because you're like a daughter to me, you know that," Clara told her easily, messing around with the piano, trying to remember a lullaby she wrote for herself a few years earlier after her own mother died.

"But what does that mean? Like, seriously? Because I'm sure I have a skewed perception of daughterhood by this point. If you think you've somehow lost me you have some sort of breakdown on a mountain, but if I remind you that the Victorian's dead you don't bat an eyelid. Why is it me? Out of all your Echoes?" Oswin questioned her.

"I'm not supposed to pick favourites. But it's like... I don't know, that thing about a mother's love being cemented as soon as she finds out she's pregnant."

"...But you weren't... You didn't even meet me until after I was dead," Oswin said, and Clara played a wrong note when she said that. She stopped playing for a moment and turned on the bench so she was more facing her sister.

"You know I can't have kids with the Doctor. And I mean, even if there was a way, any half-Time Lord child of theirs is going to have a dreadful life with no species living on this spaceship, probably getting hunted across the universe from the day it's born. It'd be too dangerous. And well, I always wanted children. Something I've always known, a girl or a boy I'd have a bond with as strong as the one I had with my mother. And then I get the Doctor, and that possibility gets taken away. And then you show up, and I have someone to look after who _needs _to be looked after, someone who needs a guardian. A mother. And I care about you the way I always saw my mum care about me. I can't lose that sort of bond twice, Os."

"So I'm a substitute for the kids you can't have with the Doctor?" Oswin questioned in a flat, unreadable voice.

"You could call it that, but it doesn't mean I love you any less. You're still _my _flesh and blood, there would be no you without me. Or, at least, you'd be different."

"...What happened, Clara? With the Frir? What exactly was it that you saw?" she asked quietly.

"...You know how in dreams, something completely illogical happens and you just don't question it? You just accept it? Well, that's why it didn't register that you couldn't _actually _die like... Like that... But you were dead. In this electric chair. This thing on your head. You know, um... trepanation?"

"Good god..."

"Yeah. Your eyes were white. It was in Happy Views. Outside of the electroshock room was your leg, the fake one, all mangled... And you were dead. And it was my fault. You scratched my name into your arm. That's what I saw," Clara said.

"...We have the strangest relationship."

"We do. We really do. But who cares?" Clara said, and Oswin laughed weakly, but then her phone rang, which surprised her a great deal, and she went to answer it with a frown, seeing it was Fyn when she did. Hopefully he wouldn't have even more bad news for her. Every time he called, it seemed to be something awful. She sighed, and answered, standing up from the stool and walking away from Clara to try and stop her from eavesdropping.

"Hi..." she answered half-heartedly.

"_Hi - are you alright?_" Fyn asked her, and she didn't know what to say. She stood with her mouth semi-open trying to form an answer, when he said, "_Um, never mind, listen, I have to show you something, but in person._"

"Oh, are you inviting me for dinner?"

"_Uh... You know what, yeah. Why not? We're barely had a chance to catch up at _all_ since you, you know... Anyway. Yeah. I'll get Reker to babysit._"

"Oh, why? I love kids."

"Creep," Clara muttered, and Oswin kicked her in the ankle, and she scowled.

"_Because I want to be able to have adult conversations._"

"Adult conversations? When did you get so grown-up, Fyn? It's a bit of a culture shock. Like waking up from a coma," she said.

"_Bring, um... Whatshisname._"

"Adam Mitchell?"

"_Yeah. You're still dating him, right? Are you?_"

"Yeah, I'm still dating him. Okay. I'll go see if he'll come."

"_We've never been properly introduced._"

"No... I'll have him bring some food. You're always complaining about the slime they feed you on Horizon. We'll bring pudding," she said, "Just tell me the date and the time."


	246. Another Girl Another Planet I

**AN: Like I said, 745 and 746 were already written. In fact, all of the Chapters titled "Another Girl Another Planet" are already written, they'll just need minor changes as episodes air.**

_Jenny_

_Another Girl Another Planet I_

Jenny was lying across the foot of her bed in her room, hanging her head low enough over the edge so that she could see what was on the holobox in the corner, annoyed by her current state of affairs, but more annoyed at the people she was watching on TV, because it was something about a girl cheating on her boyfriend with his dad, his brother _and _his sister. Though, Twenty-First Century television always had some retro type of allure, like grainy films or polaroid cameras. One day, _The Jeremy Kyle Show_ would be a relic of old entertainment watched in museums by teenagers studying ancient anthropology. A sociological goldmine for the digital archaeologists of the future - and she should know, she'd seen it.

But it was while she was languidly stretched out watching this that her phone rang to the left of her, and she absently felt around for it until grabbing it, answering it without even looking at the screen. When the voice was mumbled, she realised the phone was upside-down in the first place, and she sighed and turned it around.

"Hello?"

"_Yeah, hi, it's me..._" Clara said awkwardly. Claratoo, by the sounds of things.

"Oh, hi. What's up?"

"_Are you busy?_"

"Normally I'd say no, but I have to see the results of this lie detector test really urgently to see if this random woman is cheating with her boyfriend's sister," Jenny told her, not moving at all, just hanging off the bed trying to read the statement in the bottom right, though the blood was rushing to her head.

"_You're not watching _Jeremy Kyle_, are you?_"

"I might be. I don't have anything else to do. I'm grounded," Jenny told her.

"_You're _grounded_!? What for!?_"

Jenny yawned, and idly said, "Sleeping with you. I told everyone, it was Theodore who grounded me. Not in a bragging way, I mean... Rumours spread on here. And then they called you a slag and I totally stuck up for you, like, 'Clara's life is hers to live' and all that stuff."

"_Good of you_," Clara said dryly, "_How can they ground you? You're a Time Lord_."

"They put a doohickey on my wrist so that when I cross the threshold of the TARDIS it automatically teleports me back into Nerve Centre, and they took my sonic screwdriver so I can't get it off," Jenny explained boredly, "Why? Do you want me to come over?"

"_Which wrist is it on?_"

"The right one."

"_Isn't that..? You know..?_"

"What?"

"_The robot hand._"

"It isn't detachable, Clara, and as attractive as Oswin's ex-girlfriend probably is - I mean, they made sure I never saw her - I don't want to hack off my hand and make her come and build me _yet another one_. She has a wedding to plan, she's engaged now, to one of your doodahs. Clechoes."

"_Clechoes?_"

"Echoes, whatever."

"_So you can't get off the TARDIS?_"

"Who says I can't get off the TARDIS? I can get lots of things off. They happen to have forgotten the key detail that _I_ have a spaceship of my own. It's no infinitely-sized blue box, but it _does _have a handy cloaking mechanism," Jenny explained, "I'm pretty sure it's a loophole I can go through. And then maybe I can go through _another _loophole, hmm? Because I assume that's why you're calling me?"

"_Where's this spaceship?_" Clara avoided the question, and Jenny smirked, then she gasped.

"Oh, shit!"

"_What?_"

"She _was _sleeping with his sister! Wow. That's not very classy. Gosh, this show is a relic," she commented, yawning now it was over and finally sitting up and makinng a face at the sensation of the blood running out of her head back to where it should be.

"_Well _you_ sleep with _me _and _you_ have a _husband_, and I'm your _stepmother_ in another universe_," Clara argued.

"I guess that's true. We should go on _Jeremy Kyle_."

"_I doubt that that's a good idea. Are you gonna come over?_"

"Depends on how well I synchronise my ship with the TARDIS, because I don't want to be gone for hours or people will notice - they're keeping watch over me, you see, keep thinking I'll figure out a way to get out of being grounded, and stuff," Jenny explained.

"_Completely unfounded worries._"

"Well, exactly. But, um... Hm... Let me think. Last time I took that ship anywhere I was with Rose and we were gathering up people for your Second Wedding..." she thought, "It might be synched up, you know."

"_Meaning?_"

"Meaning it's Day One-Hundred. So, I can come back to Day One-Hundred, like, five minutes from now."

"_So you _are _coming over?_"

"If you give me a time and a place, Clara." Clara did just that, seeming to struggle as she remembered her address, like she'd moved. Didn't she live in a flat? Jenny didn't have a clue. Maybe she _had _moved, after all. She'd have to figure out space coordinates for that particular locale, anyway. Spaceships didn't work like cheap sat-navs. She gave her a date after that, some figure in September of 2015, late, the Twenty-Somethingth. Evening time. "You don't need to clean up or something, right? I mean, I don't really care, I know how messy you are, I _do _live with you, you're kind of disgusting and you brush your teeth weirdly."

"_What? No I don't!_"

"You do, I've seen you. You don't wet the brush, like, at all. Or wash it. It's disgusting. _I_ washed your toothbrush before I used it the other morning, because it was gross."

"_I withdraw my invitation._"

"No you don't. Do you need time to clean up?"

"_Not really_."

"Well, then. I'm gonna go to the toilet. I'll be there in five."

* * *

"You could've at least warned me it was raining," Jenny said huffily when Beta Clara opened the door, holding a mug in her hand and biting her lip in an apologetic way, "Spaceship might be invisible, Clara, but it's not small. Why don't you live near any fields? You should move so that I have somewhere to park." She was sopping wet, and had had to walk for about ten minutes to actually get to Clara's house, all the while debating just ripping one of her vortex manipulators out of her stolen ship's cockpit and using that, instead, the next time she was summoned.

"Sorry," Clara apologised, "I put the kettle on, though." That was _some _consolation, she supposed, as Clara stood aside and held the door open, Jenny traipsing inside and shuffling in spot on the doormat, closing the door behind her and ringing out her hair – she didn't have a hood. She frowned at Clara for a few moments.

"Something's changed."

"What?" Clara asked, looking equally puzzled, and Jenny gasped a moment later.

"You've cut your hair!"

"It's just hair… Why? Does it look bad?" Her tone suddenly changed midway through speaking to one of obvious alarm and worry, and Jenny just looked at her, feeling the undeniable urge to touch Clara's hair, because it did look _awfully_ soft. She didn't, though.

"No, it's just different, I'm not used to it. Oswin's hair's really long because it hasn't been cut in god-knows-how-long," Jenny said, and Clara shrugged.

"I fancied a change. How many sugars do you take?" she asked, Jenny kicking off her shoes next to the door, Clara looking at them with a look that was quite possibly judgement. She supposed Clara disapproved of her footwear, but she didn't really care about what a girl with over three-hundred pairs of shoes thought – maybe some people would think that alluded to taste, but Jenny just thought it amounted to materialistic indecisiveness. Not that there was anything wrong with that, she just hated to be faced with the hypocrisy. Clara said nothing, though.

"Eight," Jenny answered, and Clara stared at her for a moment on her way back into the kitchen, past the staircase in the large house.

"_Eight_?"

"Yeah. Eight. Lots of milk. How come you don't know that? Weren't you on tea-duty when you were staying with us the other day?" Jenny questioned, following her and wondering if it was polite to ask to go ring her hair out over the sink. Probably not, though.

"Um, look," Clara said, but then she didn't continue speaking for a few moments, busy dishing out the unholy amount of sugar Jenny took in her tea and then pouring out so much milk Jenny's mug seemed to be overflowing and was a light beige colour, though that was how she liked it (Clara always did have some sort of gift for making hot beverages). She passed Jenny her tea, which was warm, but not too hot to drink. Only then did she continue speaking. "It's been – what? You said Day One-Hundred? Three days for you? Well, it's been a while for me… Nine months."

"Nine months!? Wait – you don't have a baby, do you? Did I get you pregnant? Oh my god, I did. Where is it? Where's the hybrid?" Jenny demanded, staring around Clara's kitchen as though waiting for some astonishingly small blonde-haired brown-eyed little girl with a jawline that could kill bouncing in from somewhere, probably reciting poetry. Clara stared at her.

"Jenny. You're a girl. I'm a girl. Wait – Time Lords don't work like that, do they?"

"No."

"We don't have a secret child – if we had a child, I would've called you and told you," Clara shook her head a little, drinking more tea, "What're you calling it a 'hybrid' for, anyway?" Jenny shrugged. "I'd've thought you'd be a little more polite about our imaginary child, Jennifer."

"Ew. Do _not_ call me 'Jennifer', only my mother calls me that, and only when she's angry," she said, drinking tea to remove the sour taste saying that name left on her tongue, "She called me 'Jennifer Harkness' the other day."

"How come?"

"Well, she and Clara were flirting like _crazy_ right there, and me and Rose were totally sick of it, and Rose is all, 'I'm not trying to be homophobic, but I'd rather you two didn't start finger-banging in front of me, it's rude,' so I'm like, 'It is kind of rude, and that's my mother, Clara,' so Clara says, 'That's my wife, Jenny.' So then I go, 'You're just the evil stepmother from Cinderella,'" here, Claratoo laughed, trying not to choke on her tea, and Jenny smiled as she talked, "And then mum's like, '_Jennifer Harkness, be nice to your stepmother_.'"

"I forgot she has that accent."

"She kept telling me off for copying it... It's not even my name, anyway, Donna named me. Technically, 'Jenny' is a short-form for 'Genetic Anomaly,' since that's what dad kept calling me that day. The day I was born, that is."

"How _were_ you born?"

"Soft-tissue cloning machine. I came pre-loaded with soldier knowledge. That's why I'm a crack-shot, and why I have such high agility and stamina. You'd know about that, though."

"Maybe I've forgotten."

"Oh yeah?"

"Yeah, maybe you ought to remind me?"

"So how come it took you so long to call me?" Jenny asked, changing the subject, because she wanted to finish her tea before they got up to anything together. Clara didn't seem bothered. It was all kind of inevitable, anyway, that that was what they'd end up doing. That was the point of Jenny getting called over in the first place, she figured.

"I've been busy."

"Busy doing what?"

"Looking for the Doctor."

"Why?"

"Long story, don't want to get into it, particularly, if I'm honest with you."

"Well, why now?"

"Because, I…" Clara stopped there, looking confused, and Jenny watched her intently over the rim of her mug as she drank more tea, but it was a strange sort of confusion, like she didn't even know the reason herself, "I don't know," she finally answered.

"Huh."

"Could be because of what this week's been."

"Oh yeah?"

"It's September Twenty-Sixth right now, this whole week has been Bisexual Awarenss Week," Clara said, "Don't you know, I got into an argument in the staff room about whether we should do an assembly about it. I lost. This was on Monday. I've spent the whole week overtly flirting with the female staff."

"Successfully?"

"I wasn't trying to sleep with them, I was trying to make them uncomfortable to gauge if they were biphobic or something," she shrugged, sipping tea as she talked and leaning on the kitchen counter.

"Isn't that sexual harassment?"

"It's only been this week. Besides, I reckon they knew what I was doing. They say I'm greedy and nonexistent - I'll show them greedy and nonexistent. And I flirt with everyone anyway, it's not even on purpose," she told Jenny, who laughed.

"I've noticed. So, what did you say it was? Bisexual Awareness Week?" Jenny asked wryly, raising an eyebrow at Clara and putting her empty mug down on the table. Clara, drinking, nodded. "Well that's fitting, because I can think of _one _bisexual I want to be _very _aware of."

* * *

"I have a confession," Jenny said quietly a few hours later, lying on her side in Clara's phenomenally comfortable bed. She always liked real people's beds, which was a strange thing to think, but the TARDIS always washed the linen somehow on a daily basis. Even if she stayed in her room all day, the bedsheets were never not crisp and clean, freshly pressed like they were from a hotel. But Clara's sheets were worn down and soft from her sleeping there, dips in the mattress, the faint smell of strawberry shampoo clinging to the pillowcase and the gentle aroma of books drifting around her like dust. Clara wasn't asleep, either, she was still awake, facing the other way, Jenny could tell by her breathing. It was barely midnight, anyway. Not that late.

"Uh-huh?" Clara asked sleepily.

"I kind of have this sleep pattern, where I don't sleep for a good few days, sometimes a whole week," Jenny explained, "Dad has it too – it's a Time Lord thing, I don't know if he's ever talked to you about it."

"I don't talk to your father about sleeping," Clara said, rolling onto her back and looking at the ceiling.

"Well, I haven't slept for a few… days," Jenny said, yawning against her will part of the way through the sentence, and Clara cast her a glance and raised an eyebrow, trying to figure out if the yawn was fake. It wasn't.

"So?"

"There's a thunderstorm."

"And?"

"I'm parked ages away, and I like the sound of rain."

"What's your point?"

"…You're not gonna kick me out, are you? Can I sleep here?"

Clara looked at her then with a face of shock and mild offence.

"What kind of host do you take me for? No! Of course I won't just kick you out into the rain, your hair's still damp, anyway. Won't they know you've been gone if you show up soaked?" Clara questioned, "It's times like this I want a cigarette."

"So it's alright?"

"Yes, it's alright, you can sleep in my bed, I really don't mind. If I let you sleep with me, I'll let you, you know… Actually sleep with me. In the literal sense," Clara said, scrunching up her brow as she talked, like she was questioning her own words as she said them.

"I meant the sofa, but…"

Clara laughed.

"'_I meant the sofa_' – get you! The last time we did this you just tell me I'm a bet and then saunter off into my shower and awkwardly question Martha Jones, and now you're all manners. You're clearly comfy, why would I make you move?"

"Well, I mean, the last time was on the TARDIS, _my_ TARDIS. Or, well, my dad's TARDIS. You know what I mean, but you were a guest at his allowance. That was my house, this is yours, and I don't want to be a bad house guest."

"You're an _excellent_ house guest and you can stay right there. As if I'd kick you out in a storm… It's fine, I don't know why you're getting so worked up about it."

"Okay."

"I really wish I could smoke…"


	247. Runaways

_Adam_

_Runaways_

He had met Fyn three times before, and had barely spoken to him, and had probably made an astonishingly dreadful first impression. Once, on his first date with Oswin, when she'd gotten disowned, and he'd hardly said a word. Again, when she turned herself into a baby accidentally, before they were even properly together, and he'd had to take Clara with him to meet Nina, Oswin's particularly sadistic ex-girlfriend, with her doped up on caffeine pretending to be her sister. Finally, the day with the barbecue, back when he'd scarcely been dating Oswin for a week. And now, he was invited to dinner, and by god, he was nervous. Fyn was the closest family member Oswin had, and it was a terrible meet-the-parents situation. And then he'd been ordered to go and buy some incredibly expensive chocolate ice cream and a bottle of proper wine to bring along, but also not to dress up, so he found himself stuck in old, plain clothes - t-shirt, jeans, hoodie, the typical stuff some lazy man in their twenties might wear on a day-to-day basis, because Oswin assured him there was no need to make an effort.

First things first, though, he was given a meek kind of tour of Horizon. Not really a tour, but Oswin lead him through a district she called Zaegis, claiming that it was one of the more impoverished areas, because Fyn himself was a writer and Atoc, Oswin's brother-in-law, whom Adam had never met and had heard very little about, was an ex-Spore who specialised in astrology. Saturn glared overhead through a marvellous glass roof Oswin claimed nobody cared about, saying most Saturnites who lived there weren't bothered with the view they saw on a day-to-day basis, but it was a great deal different than just seeing it on the scenic walls in the bedroom. She pulled him excitedly by the hand, dinner with her brother taking over from the extreme emotions she'd been through earlier in the day - including what Ten described as a breakdown in which she had claimed that she didn't deserve to live and that he himself was far too good for her, but he didn't want to spoil her sudden good mood by asking her about it.

On Titan Beta, everything was silver, and though Oswin said it was old, it seemed like the futuristic citadels he only saw in Twenty-First Century video games. Where they were, the walls were huge blocks of flats, metal and shining in the artificial light, the place always perfectly temperate at about 22°C, she claimed as she lead him towards where Fyn said he lived now, moved out of the rich district Oswin said they'd grown up in, funded by money stolen from her by her mother, more or less. But he wasn't going to ask her about her mother. He was pulled through what he would describe as a utopia quicker than he would like, to take in all the sights, and he wondered why she never seemed awestruck by some of the things they saw.

"You always seem like you know everything," he said to her, carrying wine and ice cream as they stood in a lift. The stairs were more or less out for both of them, Oswin complaining excessively about her fake leg that day, and him with his permanently sprained ankle, "I always feel like a tourist. A chrono-tourist. And you seem so... assured. Or... confident. Wherever we go." She smiled at him.

"We're both 'chrono-tourists,' Mitchell," she told him as they waited for the lift doors to open, "It's just, when you live every day with Saturn like that hanging over you, everything's... I don't know. Lots of stuff just doesn't shock me. Fyn has all sorts to say on the matter, he has a lot of strong opinions about most things."

"Does he?" Adam asked incredulously.

"Oh, yeah. Once you get him talking. Huge socialist. Come on," she took the wine from him (he kept the ice cream because he was keeping it cold) and took his hand again as the lift pinged and opened onto a very ordinary looking floor lines with doors. Everything still silver, so silver he thought it might even by a trick of his eyes, which seemed to have a permanent silver hue because of the passive nature of cryostasis and aura-reading. It was odd, and meant he was stuck with the sunglasses filter turned on on his glasses, so he probably looked like an idiot, or like he was blind.

Oswin knocked on the door to the flat. As soon as it opened, Fyn hugged her, and Adam thought it looked awfully strange being as Oswin was 5'2" (though she was actually wearing heels) and Fyn was about 6'3". Adam shook Fyn's hand and Oswin told Fyn to put the ice cream in the freezer and handed over the wine, claiming it was made from 'real grapes' picked 'over three-thousand years ago.' What was their wine made of in the future, if not real grapes? Atoc was waiting in the small flat, with a conjoined kitchen and living room and just two more doors on the right and one on the left, which Adam assumed were two bedrooms and a bathroom, for the two of them and their son, who was apparently being babysat by Reker, another of Oswin's younger brothers.

Atoc was tall, too, with black hair, blue eyes and glasses, tall and lanky like Fyn and like Adam, though he must have been 6' tall at least himself. Was Oswin's entirely family ridiculously tall? He couldn't remember. It was like being introduced to Slenderman and Slenderman's slightly shorter assisstant. But they didn't threaten him. The last girl he'd dated's parents had threatened him. It had been quite the experience, and he walked away very scared. Fifteen minutes later, the four of them were eating dinner, and it wasn't nearly as tense as he thought it would be.

"How's the food?" Atoc asked Adam. The food was disgusting. It was dehydrated sludge made from power, the only difference was that there was a variety in what shade of vomit your sludge was. Maybe it _was _vomit.

"Great," he lied, and Oswin snorted next to him.

"You're adorable, you don't have to lie. It's just powder rehydrated in the hydrofier," she nodded at something in the kitchen that looked like a microwave with extra buttons, and he thought there was something similar in their kitchen on the TARDIS that he'd never seen anybody use. "Neither of these two can cook, like me, the food is gross. I can't even taste it and I know that."

"It might've gotten better in your absence," Fyn told her.

"Has it?"

"No."

"See. It's putrid. I'll bring you a pizza one day, Fynny," Oswin said, and Adam thought that nickname she had for him was quite amusing. At least, while they were sat down, he didn't feel as horribly emasculated by Fyn and Atoc being immensely taller than him. How tall had her father been? How tall was Dret? "How's the wine?"

"Completely different to the wine we have here. It has fruit in it, for one thing. And real alcohol," Fyn said, "What else do you eat in the Twenty-First Century?"

"In Britain we have fish and chips a lot, but Oswin hates seafood, because she's prejudiced against the sea," Adam said, and Oswin, on his right (the table was small and circular, Atoc was on his left, leaving Fyn opposite), raised an eyebrow at him.

"You eat stuff that's been in the sea..?" Fyn asked incredulously.

"Of course they do, Fyn. Just because in _this _century, Earth's sea is polluted beyond repair," Atoc said, "I visited a planet in Andromeda once where they _only _ate seafood, and it tasted great."

"See?" Adam said to Oswin, "It's only you who's the weirdo."

She turned to Fyn, and said, "You should see the junk-food. Once, I saw somewhere selling deep-fried doughnuts. And they sell deep-fried Mars Bars in Scotland."

"What's a Mars Bar?" Atoc asked.

"You don't have _Mars Bars _in the _future_!?" Adam exclaimed, and Oswin laughed.

"It's just chocolate," she said.

"You can get deep-fried Curly Wurlys as well," Adam said, "And Double Deckers. They deep-fry anything in Scotland. We used to go on holiday there a lot when I was younger, as a family, when Ellie was little. You know, I could buy a castle up there. Or an island."

"Adam's a capitalist, Fyn," Oswin said, and he felt like he got glared at.

"What?" Adam asked her, "Uh... I'm not... I'm just rich... I stole some software from this billionaire..." He didn't quite know why being a capitalist was a bad thing, but he sensed that in this household, at least, it was, "Why are you dropping me in it?"

"It's funny," Oswin shrugged, then to Fyn, she said, "He gives a lot to charity, though. By charity, I mean he funds the TARDIS crew. And there are seventeen people on the TARDIS. I mean, only fourteen of us need to eat, plus the cat, but still. I didn't tell you about the cat, did I? Adam stole a cat."

"I rescued it because it had nowhere else to go," Adam told her flatly. He was a little sick of Jonesy getting brought up constantly in a negative way.

"Aww," Atoc said, "Why do you never adopt strays?" he asked Fyn.

"You're enough of a stray," Fyn said to him.

"Oh, I love you, too," Atoc commented, and Fyn smirked to himself. "What is this guy, Oswin? The perfect boyfriend? Rich boy who adopts stray animals?"

"Yeah, Oswin, am I the perfect boyfriend?" Adam challenged her, smiling at her annoyingly, and she blushed while she glared at him, going back to swirling all the slime on her plate that she wasn't eating together in one big, greenish mess. Like mouldy porridge. He took that as a 'yes', though, and he was definitely going to bring that up again when they were alone.

"What's the weather like where you're from?" Atoc asked him.

"Terrible, it always rains," Oswin answered.

"I like the rain," said Adam.

"And it's cold."

"It's warm in Devon, down South, and the weather's not as bad. It's just Clara who likes the rain because she's Northern, and Northerners are weird," he told her.

"How come?" Atoc asked.

"Put it this way - if you were to ask Clara, 'If you could replace every meal with just drinking gravy and still live perfectly fine, would you do it?' she would say yes," Adam said, and by the hazy look Oswin got across her eyes a second later, and the following pout, Adam assumed that she'd just telepathically asked her sister that exact question, and had got the response he predicted, "I like the climate. Everywhere else is too hot or too cold. We just have too much wind."

"I've never even felt wind," Fyn said.

"It's _awful_," Oswin said, and Adam nodded in agreement, "You're lucky. We were out in the snow last week though, weren't we?"

"It wasn't _real _snow. There was _real _snow yesterday, when the Doctor dragged me out because he annoyed Clara," Adam said, "When we were in New York in 1927 it was snowing as well, though."

"Is snow good or bad?" Fyn asked.

"Depends if you're driving in it," Adam shrugged, "We're usually not. That desert we were in, though..."

"That wasn't on Earth, that was Preyonov," Oswin answered, "It was the _worst _though. Anyway, speaking of deserts, I think it's time for dessert. The ice cream will need time to melt - Adam will've frozen it solid, practically. The side-effects of cryokinesis."

"Cryokinesis is one big side-effect of you fancying me," Adam retorted, and she tried to glare without laughing, but failed, and clenched her jaw looked away, "It's true, though."

"Yeah, yeah. Whatever. So, Fyn, what's this news you had to tell me?" Oswin asked her brother. Fyn and Atoc had finished their slop right then. He exchanged a look, possibly a nervous one, with Atoc, who got up then to get the ice cream.

"Give me a second," he said, and he stood up too, and walked off through one of the doors. Adam watched him go.

"How're you doing?" Oswin asked him.

"Fine, apart from the fact you're trying to start an argument between me and your brother for your own amusement," Adam said.

"_Me_? I would _never_! How could you suggest such a thing?" she said, though that was obviously what she'd been doing.

"What about you, then? How are _you_, Oswin?"

"I've been better. But you're here. So it's not so bad," she smiled, and he wanted to kiss her, but that would be quite impolite, so he didn't, "Stop smiling at me, you look like an idiot." He pouted. "Don't do that either."

"Shall I just cut my face off?"

"Maybe. Then I wouldn't have to suffer the displeasure of looking at you."

"Well, your wish is my command," he said, and she laughed and brushed some hair behind her ear, at which point Atoc had sat back down, and Fyn returned to the room, carrying what looked like a lot of papers.

"Dret got me to clear out mother's things," Fyn said, "He told me that he 'couldn't cope' with doing it, and that I was the only person aside from him who he trusted to. But I found some stuff, Os, this morning, and I called you straight away. I haven't told Dret anything yet."

"Well? What is it?" she implored.

"Oswin, I think dad's alive," Fyn said. Adam watched his girlfriend carefully.

"What do you mean, 'alive'? He died when you were one," Oswin said.

"No, no, look, I have these letters, and Oswin - is it so hard to believe that mother would keep something like this from us? You know she didn't like dad. She always said so. They were nothing alike - I've read all of his books, these letters are written the same way," Fyn told her, "We've been thinking about moving."

"Sorry, what? Would you explain one thing before you move onto the next?" Oswin questioned him sharply. Atoc and Adam remained quiet.

"I am, I am - he wrote these letters from Venus. You know, those Venusian cloud colonies they have? It's Venus Zeta, that's where dad says he is. They go on for _years _Os, and she never replied, he kept asking for her to write back and show the letters to you, or me, or Dret, but she never did. I'm gonna go look for him."

"He did in an accident involving the exterior artifical atmosphere, Fyn. In 5099."

"I know. He's... He says he's... Like you."

"_What_..?"

"A hologram. He says he lives as a hologram now, and has been doing for over thirty years, on Venus Zeta. We're gonna find him. Atoc and Jado and I. And I'll let you know as soon as we find him, I promise. Look, you can see the letters," Fyn said, holding them out to her, and she took them, and flipped through them alarmingly quickly, eyes widening, Adam not attempting to read over her shoulder. He just watched her carefully. He didn't know how she would take this news, but she always seemed fond of her father.

"How, um..." she paused for a moment, "How are you gonna afford to get to Venus?"

"When mother was writing her will, Augustus convinced her to leave money to her kids... I'm sorry, Os, she didn't leave you anything. She didn't leave Zalur anything, either, but it's... It's almost a quarter of a million credits. More than enough."

"...When you... Decide to leave... We'll take you. In the TARDIS. It'll take _seconds_, and it'll be free. I'll... Adam will feed you more Earth-food."

"Let's see how the ice-cream goes first," Atoc said. Nothing more was said on Oswin and Fyn's father, but if Adam had to say so, he would say it was a good thing. Something to make her day better. They moved on to pudding, which earnt a lot of praise from Fyn. Atoc had eaten non-processed food before in his adventures with the Spores, and Oswin had come close to it in the Dream, and other simulations. From what he knew of the sims, the food was realistic enough. It tasted almost the same. You could hardly even tell, unless you were maybe a chef.

"...So what are the Venusian colonies like?" Adam asked.

"You know. Columbia. Think _Bioshock Infinite_. Or _The Empire Strikes Back_," Oswin said, "The surface is completely hostile, but about the cloud belt, it's cool enough to live because the atmosphere thins, so it's less pressurised. I've seen pictures, they're just... Cloud cities."

"They're beautiful," said Fyn, "And I'm sick of it here. I'm sick of Horizon. Too many bad memories here, and too much bad food. Zalur already moved away, I'm just following his lead."

"Except Eslilia is sort of a living hell," Oswin said to Fyn, then she turned to Adam to explain, "And Venus Zeta isn't. You can tell by the name - Zeta's the sixth letter of the Greek alphabet, so it's the sixth Venusian colony. People like Venus. On Titan, there's only Horizon. Titan Alpha was built before the Alliance even stated, seriously, on the surface, like some of the Martian colonies. Thousands of years ago. Just after your time."

"We don't have colonies like this when I'm from. Just Earth," he said.

"You come from an island _full _of imperialists, Mitchell," Oswin said, "It might be three millennia ago, but I've heard of the British Empire."

"That was, like, a century before I was born," he argued.

"Oh, a whole century, colour me impressed," she retorted.

"So, Adam," said Fyn, interrupting them, and Adam, sitting up sharply as though being called to attention for misbehaving in school, couldn't shake the feeling he was about to be asked something he wouldn't like, "Aren't traditions from the Twenty-First Century quite strict?"

"Strict..?" he asked slowly, not knowing what Fyn was getting at.

"I mean, when are you going to make an honest woman out of my big sister?" Fyn said, and Adam went red, and Atoc started laughing, "I mean, that's what it's like, isn't? You only date people you intend to marry?"

"Fyn! No!" Oswin exclaimed, "It isn't like that at all - leave Adam alone, you're confusing him with your dry sense of humour. Look at him. He can't tell if you're being serious or not." She was entirely right, he could not tell.

"I'm being completely serious."

"You are not. Don't be awful. He's not going to marry me," she said firmly, and Adam didn't bother arguing with her.

Soon, the conversation lingered on Flek and Zalur on Eslilia for a few minutes, and Oswin recounted the story, as best as she understood it, of what had happened to Jack and Clara while they'd been there - space worm and all. Then they got into telling various stories. Oswin proving the existence of ghosts in Staffordshire in the 2010s. Camping with psycho animals. Bootlegging aliens in the 1920s. Mermaids in Devon and Adam's sister. Prank War Two on Preyonov. A German science-base and the genius Adam didn't like, Fritz Niehaus. Giant plants attacking Cardiff in the Noughties. The entire episode with the Xenomorph. A brief recap of the hen party's escapades at Dalton Lodge. Their life seemed entirely romantic when described like this, omitting the bits in between, skipping the messy parts, the fights, the negativity. Finally they were discussing Raptlantis, interrupting one another and finishing sentences.

"It was like, _amazing_. And I hate the sea. I can't swim, but the game-"

"-The game is _art_. A _masterpiece_. It's-"

"-Beautiful. The whole city, underwater skyscrapers-"

"-Shoals of fish, and whales, and squid, and sharks-"

"-The tunnels between them are made of _glass_, you could see the whole thing-"

They more or less told the entire story like that, detailing Clara's gruesome injuries, Martha's odd behaviour, Adam's hypothermia, Mickey's run in with the bees.

"Has she told you she's in love with you?" Fyn asked Adam quietly, later on, while Oswin talked to Atoc, mainly about what little she knew of Flek's engagement. She wasn't listening. Fyn and Atoc were probably drunk, but Adam hadn't been drinking. He'd been momentarily put off it by the worst hangover of his life just four nights ago, "It's just, with my sister, you never really know."

"Yeah. She has. A while ago."

"Good. You're good. You'll be good for her. To her. Good..." Fyn was definitely tipsy. Adam thought it was about time for them to leave. They'd been there for hours, "Reker's coming back soon."

"Okay... Oswin?" Adam called, and she looked over, "I think we should be gettig back." She thought this over for just a moment.

"...Yeah. Yeah, alright... Let me know when you're moving, I'll help. I'll definitely help. With the TARDIS," Oswin was saying to both of them.

Goodbyes took a while, ten minutes, more or less, but finally the door closed on them, and they were left to meander back to the ship, late as it was.

"So?" Oswin prompted him.

"Your brother is totally into me."

"Very funny," she elbowed him gently.

"I'm serious! He couldn't take his eyes off me."

"_I _couldn't take my eyes off you," she said quietly, and he stopped walking, and looked at her.

"He thinks you're in love with me."

"He's not wrong."

"Well, _I'm _in love with _you_."

"I know you are."

"...Just wait, Oswin," he started to walk again, smiling.

"Wait for what?"

"One day. One day, I don't care how many years, or decades, or _centuries_ it takes, but one day I'll marry you," he declared.

"You're drunk."

"Haven't had one drop."

"I'd never let you marry me."

"One day."

"I wouldn't!" she protested.

"One day, Oswin!"

"_Stop _saying that."

"One-" she cut him off completely by dragging him towards her and pressing their lips together, taking his breath away, "...Okay. I'll never marry you. Never."

"Good," she kissed him again, in the lift, as it descended, her arms around his neck, "I love you."


	248. Nerd Flirts VI

_DAY ONE-HUNDRED AND ONE_

_Oswin_

_Nerd Flirts VI_

Adam woke up the next morning with an almighty yawn, pressing his face into his pillow to try and suppress it, but failing, and generally thought she thought he sounded as though he were some kind of dying animal, or he'd caught his foot in a beatrap.

"Ew," said Oswin, already awake, lying comfortably in his arms, if a little cold, "Your mouth stinks."

"You can't smell."

"Still."

"The only place it's been since I last brushed my teeth is on _yours_," he commented.

"I never said my mouth _didn't _stink, I just said yours _did_," she argued. Her breath _did_ smell, though, he had yet to win the battle involving her brushing her teeth solely for his benefit, because every time he dared bring it up she went off on one about him wanting to 'change' her, all as an excuse because she was lazy and her teeth would never rot.

"God, I must really love you to put up with you being so gross," he said, rolling onto his back, "You are, though, completely rank."

She sat up then, and fought against a yawn for a second, before saying, "Well, _you're_..." she began, but it seemed she could think of nothing to say as she looked down at him next to her. He raised his eyebrows.

"I'm..?" he prompted.

"...Shut up."

"I didn't say anything!"

"I hate you."

"What've I done now?" he sat up next to her, smirking, "Have I upset you with my dashing good looks, uncanny sense of humour, and perfect personality?"

"You have none of those things."

"Well, I must have the second one, at least, because you're laughing," he commented, "And I don't need _you_ to assure me I have dashing good looks. I definitely do. I clearly have perfect hair." He ran a hand through it to illustrate his point, and she watched him intently, and then reached a hand up to play with his hair herself.

"It's getting long-ish. It was shorter when you got here..." she mused, knotting her fingers in his dark hair and lifting it up.

"What're you up to?"

"Seeing which way you ought to do your hair for maximum cuteness," she told him matter-of-factly, smiling at him.

"What's your ruling?"

"You have to get some hair gel, babe. To style it. Then you'll look _hot_, I promise," she said, and he raised an eyebrow, "What? I'm not lying. I would _never _lie when it comes to my cute boyfriend's hair." He kissed her, putting his hand on the back of her neck so as to pull her closer, and she smiled as she kissed him back.

"I love you so much it's disgusting."

"It _is _disgusting," she assured him, kissing him again, once, before moving back and brushing hair behind her ear.

"So am I. I'm gonna shower," he declared, getting out of bed carefully so that he didn't upset his bad ankle, shuffling into the bathroom they (and _just _they) had had returned to them after the escapade with the octopus the other day.

Ten minutes later, Adam Mitchell was showering and Oswin wasn't doing an awful lot of anything, just sitting in bed with the television on to fill up the time between then and when she would have to walk somewhere, because walking somewhere meant putting her prosthetic leg on, and she could never really be bothered with it. Not that it was so bad when it was attached, it was just a very easy activity to procrastinate. That was when Adam's phone rang, and she shouted through to him in the next room that it was going off, and he shouted back that she should answer it, so she did. A number saved under the name of Warren.

"Adam Mitchell's phone," Oswin answered.

"_Adam, it's..._" the voice trailed off, a boy, who sounded excited, and American.

"Hello?"

"_Who is this?_"

"Adam's girlfriend."

"_Since when did Adam have a girlfriend_?"

"Since August, 2013," she told him.

"_Two and a half years!? And he didn't tell me!?_" That meant this Warren person was calling from early 2016.

"Guess not." Could it really be that Adam Mitchell had an actual _friend_? A friend _not_ from a _World of Warcraft_ server?

"_I thought he told me everything..._" Oswin didn't respond. "_Where is he?_"

"Showering, in the next room. Are you his secret boyfriend? I've been trying to get him to admit to having a secret boyfriend for _ages_. Is that you?" she asked.

"Oswin!" Adam shouted, "I can _hear _you!"

"_I'm not!_" Warren protested, and then she heard the shower switch off, so she went and opened the bathroom door (with some difficultly, what with her only having one leg, holding onto the wall for balance) to see Adam trying to wrap a towel around himself, and she stifled laughing at his urgency.

"Are you _sure_?"

"Oswin, what's that even supposed to mean!?" Adam argued, lunging for the phone, but she teleported into the chair in the corner of the room.

"_Is that him?_" Warren asked.

"Uh-huh. Did you miss the sound of his voice?" she asked, "What about _you_, Mitchell?" He went for the phone again and she teleported to the sofa, and then to the bed, and around the room until he gave up and stood uselessly in the centre, letting her mock him while she twirled a strand of hair around her fingers.

"_What's going on?_"

"Mitchell, all I'm remarking upon is the fact you give off a gay vibe. You're a bit camp. It's the way you pronounce your words," she told him.

"_I _give off a gay vibe? What about _you_?"

"You can call up Flek and she'll tell you _all _about my gay vibes," she retorted, and he scowled.

"Can I have the phone, please?" Adam asked, holding out his hand. She flitted over to the chair and made him jump and turn around, ignoring what Warren was saying.

"What's in it for me?" she asked.

"Kisses."

"Hmm... You _are _a good kisser... Which I'm sure Warren the Secret Boyfriend is aware of..." she said, "O-_kay_, I _guess _you can have your phone back." She finally handed it over, and he mouthed, "_thank you_," and turned away from her to talk, and she listened to some boring snippets of conversation that were mainly about her.

At one point, she overheard Warren asking, "_Why are you dating her?_" to which Adam replied, "You'd know if you saw her." Then she told him he was being shallow and objectifying her, and he winked over his shoulder and she blushed when he turned away, hating herself sometimes for being so pathetic when it came to boys. She didn't even like boys. Well, she liked them, but she didn't _like_ them. Not as people. They were annoying. Then her interest in Warren was actually piqued.

"Hang on, _what_? What do you mean, 'mysterious skeleton'?" Adam said, putting the phone on speaker and going to sit down on the sofa, where Oswin teleported over to be next to him, resting her head on his shoulder as they listened.

"_I don't know, it barely says anything. But it happened in the 1950s, 1951, recovered from a dig site near Cairo, then brought to the Natural History Museum, in London, that's where I work now... I was searching through these old records, cataloguing, seeing if any of this stuff was useful, and I found this stuff, and I remember... All the stuff you told me once... About, um..._"

"...Aliens?" Adam prompted.

"_...Does she know about that_?" Warren asked, and Adam laughed a little.

"I practically _am_ an alien, Warren," Oswin said, "You're on speaker, by the way."

"_The skeleton, it... They're saying it walked off. Over sixty years ago._"


	249. Save It For The Bedroom

**AN: To the guest who asked how Oswin can give off smell if she's a hologram: Adam was referencing her breath, cos like, she still eats (don't ask how holograms eat food there is no logically explanation it is a plothole down to a bit of bad writing on my part), and because she can't taste, she'll eat really random gross things, and because her teeth will never rot (and she's sort of a gross person in general because of bad habits she developed while locked in the house all the time when she was alive), she doesn't really brush her teeth to get rid of bits of gross food that will get stuck in her teeth, since she's hardlight (AKA solid). Therefore, her breath will smell. It's just a lingering odour from the nasty food she consumes.**

_Clara_

_Save It For The Bedroom_

"Come help me with something," she asked the Doctor - Thirteen - who was sat at one of the kidney-shaped tables reading some book Clara had never heard of, probably published in the future, a mug next to her. Clara was leaning on the wall next to the door back to the Bedroom Circle, and Thirteen raised her eyebrows at her suspiciously, "It's an entirely innocent something."

"I didn't think 'innocent' was a word in your vocabulary, Clara," Thirteen said, sipping whatever was in her mug to try and hide the fact she was amusing herself. Clara gave her an imploring look, but she didn't seem likely to budge.

"What're you reading?" Clara asked, going over and sitting next to her, but she left a space of one stool between them, as a gesture of good faith that she really wasn't trying anything on.

"It is an unpublished biography written three-thousand years in the future by one of our brothers-in-law," the Doctor answered, showing Clara the cover, which was black and battered and seemed to be made out of some strange, smooth sort of paper, and she reached out to touch it, "It's synthetic."

"It's _weird_," Clara said. There weren't many people in Nerve Centre that day, and it was getting on for noon, about eleven, and most people had gone out somewhere because Ten had decided that, after yesterday's unpleasant events, he was in the mood for a picnic on some planet that was just grass planes, _like Teletubby Land_, he'd said. She'd declined the invitation, but her husband had gone with the Ponds, so Thirteen said she didn't want to go, either, so that he could keep his experiences unique for himself. Or maybe she remembered it being a terrible picnic and she didn't want to relive it. Martha was in one corner though, with Jack, though Jack seemed to be preoccupied and Martha was watching them closely (leaving Clara unnerved). The name of the author written on the bottom of the book was in white block letters, simple, and there was no title: _Fyn Sunk_. "Fyn's a writer? Isn't his surname Oswald?"

"Correction: _was _Oswald. Sunk is his husband's name, he took it," Thirteen explained, "Anyway, yes, he is, and he wrote a book about the life of your sister about five years after the end of the Dust War. Not allowed to be published because he'd be arrested, but this is _my _copy of it from my bag. Or, well, hm... The thing is, it's actually _Oswin's_ copy that she gave to you after she read it and tore out Chapter Seven, but she doesn't know it exists yet, so you can't tell her, but you get it off her and then _I_ borrow it and you've never asked to read it, but you reference stuff from it a lot, so I'm pretty sure that at some point while I'm here _you _read _this _copy of the book."

"...What happens in Chapter Seven? Why'd she tear it out?"

"It's an accurate yet less-than-favourable account of how she lost her virginity," Thirteen said, smirking, "It's a _highly _amusing story and I suggest you get her to tell you herself. In the mean time, I'd wait until after she gets her own copy to read this one. But sure you can borrow it. Eventually."

"Why did she want to read a book about herself, anyway?" Martha, eavesdropping, called. Thirteen leant around Clara and raised and eyebrow, keeping her thumb between the synthetic pages of Fyn's book.

"Personal reasons," was all the Doctor said. Clara suspected that soon enough she, too, would be privy to these reasons, and thought she'd best wait, really, "It's quite a good book though, really. You'd best keep it safe from certain _wandering eyes_, though." Thirteen was looking directly at Clara as she talked, yet Clara was aware that these 'wandering eyes' she was discussing belonged to Martha Jones, infinitely curious of Clara and Oswin ever since the Dream, for reasons Clara didn't want to entertain.

"Will you help me yet?" Clara asked.

"Help you what?"

"I've lost something and I can't remember where I put it, but I think _you _might know."

"Sounds awfully suspicious," Thirteen commented, and Clara pouted at her, "Oh my god. Alright, fine. I'll help you look for this thing of yours, which I suspect does not exist at all and is some kind of unimaginative ruse."

"It's not a ruse at all," Clara assured her, faking offence, but she was telling the truth. She would explain to the Doctor exactly what was going on when there weren't people listening in and intruding on them.

"I'm bringing my coffee, though," Thirteen said, standing up, and Clara beamed and followed her.

"Make sure to use protection," Jack called after them, "You don't _what _you might pick up." Clara made a disgusted face and trailed after the Doctor, the door sliding down behind them, leaving them alone.

"Honestly, everyone is so paranoid that I'm some kind of cheating rapist," Clara sighed, "But I honestly have lost something. At least, I think I have. There's always the possibility the TARDIS hasn't recreated it in my bedroom at all, like everything else..." Thirteen held the door open for her, "You're a true gentleman."

"Very funny," Thirteen commented, "Wow, I haven't seen this room in a long time... We've redecorated multiple times. So what is it you want?"

"I have a couple of things to discuss with you - what with you being all-knowing and from the future. None of them involve us having an affair, though, you'll be pleased to know," Clara told her, going over to scan her bookshelf.

"Don't get me wrong, I'm glad I'm not victim of your immoral sexual advances anymore, but forgive me if I ask; why the change in tune?" Thirteen asked, going to sit in the old, battered chair at the desk in the corner Clara hadn't sat at for years. If she was going to sit down, it would be either on the bed or at the piano. The egg-chairs were generally reserved for guests.

"Well the thing is, I've come to the conclusion that my only _real_ problem here is that my marriage in the future is somehow '_too_ perfect', and all my issues with ambiguous infidelity are brought on by myself entirely. And you know, I _really _like talking to you, I'm not gonna ruin that by being a baby."

"More maturity than I've come to expect."

"I'm turning over a new leaf. Anyway. First things first, what I'm doing is looking for a book of poems I wrote almost ten years ago, and it seems like the sort of thing I'd show you if I were to dig it out, so I thought you might know where it is now..." Clara told her. Like bookends, she had notebooks vertically stacked on her shelves, but most of them were empty things she'd only deigned to buy because they looked pretty, and a few of them were half-blank, save for some poorly writtten stories created when she was eleven and never lacking in inspiration. These, she was not willing to share with the Doctor. Not until she read over them and decided if the embarrassment was worth the comedy value, but there was always the possibility they were tragically humiliating and nothing else. But the particular notebook she was looking for was quite small, thick with extra sheets of paper folded in, beaten down and crumpled, and she saw it nowhere.

"I know what book you mean, but I don't know where you keep it. You're very particular about hiding it from me every time you get it out to laugh at yourself," Thirteen answered, which seemed entirely plausible and something she would definitely do, "What other things do you have to ask me about, then? I can't say too much."

"What's with Martha?" Clara asked her, looking over her shoulder. She saw Thirteen try to maintain a neutral expression, but she was clenching her jaw, and then she sipped some more coffee. "Clearly you know. Rose keeps making stupid jokes and you keep glaring at her."

"It's exactly what you think it is, that you hate to think it is, that you think can't possibly be true, but have yet to come up with an alernative explanation," she said a little resentfully.

"Oh."

"The worst thing was, I didn't even realise how bad it was until the other week when she asked me what you're like when you're turned on. _Frightening_ is the answer, by the way. Very scary. Kind of horribly inescapable," Thirteen said.

"How kind of you to say. You know, you're actually quite good at keeping secrets."

"Why thank you, I do try to be. You're the only one I slip up around. Too used to telling you everything. You ought to do something about that now, before I get accustomed to it. Start constantly lying and never speaking to me," Thirteen said. Clara, coming up with nothing, turned to lean against her bookshelf and watch the Doctor, who, in turn, was watching her. "What?"

"Just thinking about all the things that are going to happen that you know about but haven't let slip anything on," Clara said.

"I'm _dying_ to share with you. But I can't. It's just how it works, Coo," Thirteen said, and Clara raised an eyebrow, "Sorry! I mean - Clara. Not Coo. Of course." Someone knocked on the door and Clara deigned to trot over and answer it, pulling the door open to reveal Adam Mitchell, "Hi, Adam!" Thirteen called brighty, waving at him from around the corner. He'd been about to speak, but he then closed his mouth, shook his head, and stepped inside, shutting the door behind him.

"Okay. Forgive me for asking. _What_ is the deal with you two? Are you having an affair or what?" he asked abruptly.

"The Doctor is following her daughter's lead and becoming friends with benefits with _a_ version of Clara Oswald," Clara said.

"Do _not _listen to her! I am doing no such thing, my daughter sets a terrible example. There's nothing unorthodox going on, Adam. I swear. She just wanted me to help her look for a book," Thirteen told him, "Why? What do you want? Something interesting going on?"

"Yeah. Sort of. Do you two, by any chance, fancy accompanying Oswin and I to the Natural History Museum in London to visit a friend of mine and investigate some walking alien skeletons they might have found?"

"Is that a trick question!?" Thirteen exclaimed, standing up, beaming, "Of _course _I do! I _love _museums!"


	250. Contagious Chemistry

**AN: Retconned my own retcon – gosh I'm worse than Moffat. Cos I was gonna do this originally, then I decided to do something else, which is why I deleted the last two chapters and re-uploaded them again later, because I swapped my mind BACK and I'm gonna stick with this now.**

_Clara_

_Contagious Chemistry_

In a way, Clara didn't think that hanging out with Thirteen was a particularly good idea, even if she was disinclined to try anything on. Well, perhaps 'disinclined' wasn't the right phrasing, she was plenty _inclined_, she just wasn't, you know, going to _act_ on that inclination. 'Suppressing her urges' would be more of an accurate descriptor, she supposed. At any rate, doing something stupid wasn't really worth losing Thirteen's trust, because Clara found she actually liked Thirteen quite a lot, though that _probably_ had something to do with her being her wife from the future and the fact Clara was halfway convinced she was already in love with her. And because she was pretty. Her shallowness knew no limits.

They weren't heading to meet this friend of Adam Mitchell's anytime soon, though, because he'd asked they get dropped off a bit before the allocated meeting time with this Warren character, because none of them had actually had any breakfast, and there happened to be a café.

"I've never understood why museums have cafés," Clara mused to Thirteen. They were sat near a window, drinking coffee, both of them. She'd taken to drinking tea on the ship almost exclusively, and taking every available opportunity _off_ the TARDIS to have coffee, because there was less of a risk it would be spiked. Spiked coffee was the last thing she needed, especially when she was having such a difficult time trying to stop herself teleporting in public already. It was a very conspicuous habit.

"For food, Clara," Thirteen said. The two of them were on their own, away from Adam and Oswin, though the other two were most definitely keeping an eye on Clara and the Doctor, because Oswin was awfully paranoid. Clara raised an eyebrow at the Doctor.

"Well, _obviously_, but I mean, why do we need food?"

"Because you'll die otherwise – do you understand basic biology?" the Doctor question, and Clara couldn't tell if the girl were being serious in misunderstanding Clara or not, "People spend ages in museums. They make a lot of money with overpriced, extortionate food. Not that money's really of any value, it's just an arbitrary, made-up number, really. You have a certain number of things that the rich invented in favour of oppressing the lower classes?"

"Yeah, yeah, I get it, you don't have to lecture me. Again," Clara told her, sipping some coffee and staring out of the window. It was raining, and the glass was steamy, and she could see black cabs outside, "They only have black cabs and red buses in London. Across the rest of the country they're white. With purple and pink stripes along the bottom."

"Why do you remember the colours along the bottom of buses? Weirdo."

"Um, pink and purple are the colours of the bisexual pride flag. That's why I remember. That's just the First buses, though, the Arriva buses are all blue, so then you've got the whole flag; pink, purple, blue," Clara said, "It's a nice flag, is all I'm saying. Is the weather always bad when we go out somewhere?"

"Why do you say that?"

"Because, last time we were out somewhere it was snowing," Clara told her, "It was freezing cold. I'm kind of cold now, actually."

"Proximity to Adam Mitchell," Thirteen nodded at Adam, and Clara leant on her elbows across the table.

"Does that mean you won't spoon me again?"

"Very much so, that's exactly what it means. Stop that with your eyes. No wonder you seduced my daughter so easily," Thirteen said, purposely trying to kill what Clara was doing, which completely worked, and Clara sat back again with Adam watching them closely because he'd heard the Doctor say his name.

"I didn't seduce your daughter, _she_ seduced _me_. And I'm sure there was very little seduction over all, Doctor. I'll shag anything. Other Me, I mean. She'll shag anything. Not _Me_ Me," Clara specified, "I mean, I guess if I had a dead boyfriend, maybe, but I don't. Anyway, I was saying about the weather."

"When you tried to coerce me into sleeping with you last week the weather was wonderful."

"Oh, I guess so…" Clara sighed, "I forgot that was you." Thirteen frowned. "No, I mean… I didn't think it was someone _else_, I just… It feels like a dream. A bad dream. I suppose. I'm sorry. I'll pay for your coffee." The Doctor laughed.

"Your apology was accepted when you wrote me that _adorable_ letter," the Doctor said, and Clara flushed bright red, wondering if maybe the heating was on too high in the museum, though, it _was_ late February, so it would be freezing otherwise, "It was the cutest thing."

"What about the poems I apparently write in the future?"

"Poems are romantic, not cute, it's different. I love your handwriting, as well. You've always struck me as one of those girls who dotted all the Is with hearts when they were twelve," she said, and Clara made a face of mild surprise, and Thirteen almost gasped, "Oh my god, you _were_! Who knew it."

"I bet you knew that already and you're just trying to annoy me."

"Did not! I swear on my hearts," Thirteen said, then she drank some more coffee, "You know what's frustrating?"

"Hanging out with me?"

"Exactly, for multiple reasons. First the whole, not-being-allowed-to-kiss-you thing, then there's the fact that there's about a gazillion things about your near future I'm totally _dying_ to tell you, or anyone, that I just can't. Maybe I'll tell Rose. Rose probably knows loads about the future she's trying to keep secret anyway," Thirteen said.

"Oh, come on, if you can trust _Rose_ you can trust _me_," Clara said.

"It's very near, though. The thing I'm thinking of."

"A bad thing?"

"A complicated thing."

"Who does it involve?"

"Neither of us. Well…"

"Ah-ha! That was a clue. You just left me a clue. That 'well'. That means it _sort of_ involves one of us. Another version of you, or another version of me? Do you ever wonder what it's like for a couple who _don't_ have past, present and future versions of themselves? Not to mention across infinite universes?" Clara asked, "Have you ever wished for that? Do you think it would make stuff simpler?"

"Simpler for us? Maybe. But, I mean, without me coming back from the future, you'd still be paranoid that Theodore's gonna regenerate into Old Twelvey. Imagine that, if I really _was_ the Thirteenth Doctor, and you had to be married to him?" she joked.

"Reckon I'd kill him to get him to turn into you. Depends if he'd be as much of an arsehole, really, I guess? Also depends if you're worth it, but, I'll judge that for myself in however many years, won't I?" she said, and the Doctor just smiled, "What time is it? When's this bloke meeting us?"

"Half an hour, yet. Enough time for brunch."

"Never say 'brunch' again."

"I get it from you."

"I start saying 'brunch'!? What kind of animal do I become? I think you should divorce me," Clara commented with a tone of seriousness that puzzled Thirteen for a moment. They were talking so freely about time travel and all those larks because the café was more or less deserted. Not many people came to museums on weekdays in February, it seemed. They were quiet enough that Adam and Oswin didn't hear much of what they were saying (and Adam and Oswin were very involved with each other, anyway), and the only other person in the room was an old woman in a corner, reading a magazine. And the staff were talking to one another because they didn't have anything else to do.

"You're too pretty to divorce."

"Oh, well, I suppose that's true…"

Thirteen laughed a little and then leant on one of her hands, staring about the room curiously. If she was with any of the other Doctors, she imagined they'd be running around trying to find this friend of Adam's to investigate mysterious skeletons as quickly as they could in their eagerness. Thirteen seemed to be generally a calmer person. More level-headed. Maybe it was because she was older. There was something appealing about calm, assuredness though. And patience, a virtue her husband did not possess, bless his soul.

"I'm not the only one who's too pretty to divorce," Clara said, sighing and leaning back in her chair, watching Thirteen with her irritatingly calming presence. Maybe she shouldn't feel so at-ease around her. Still, she looked forward to this Doctor's influences later in her life.

"Keep saying things like that and I'll leave," the Doctor told her.

"Hey! You can't refuse to let me compliment you, especially not when you sit there being all gorgeous and alluring and mysterious," Clara argued.

"I'll do what I please."

"So will I."

"I know what you please, and you will do no such thing, Oswald. Stop looking at me like that, it's weird, and it's an expression I don't see often enough to understand," Thirteen said. Clara didn't know what way she'd been looking, but she crossed her arms and slouched a little, the dregs of her coffee being all that remained. She hadn't eaten anything. She wanted to smoke. She probably ought to, before this friend arrived.

"Come outside with me for a minute."

"Why?"

"Cigarette."

"Urgh. Your sister won't like it," Thirteen said, nodding at Oswin behind Clara. Clara turned in her seat then to see she was being watched, and she scowled.

"I'm going outside, Os," Clara called. She didn't have to call loudly, Oswin wasn't far.

"How come? You should stay where I can see you."

"We're not going to screw in public," Clara said, a bit loud, because the elderly woman on the other side of the café coughed very loudly, and Clara saw she was being glared at when she looked over.

"What job could you ever work with a mouth like that?" the woman questioned.

"I'm a teacher," Clara lied. She wasn't really a teacher, that was the other one. The woman scoffed, and Clara shook her head, "You'd need a _filthy_ mouth for prostitution, probably," she muttered, and the old lady didn't hear, but Thirteen did, and she snort-laughed and nearly spat out coffee. Clara pushed out her chair and stood up, and to Oswin, said, "I'm just going to smoke."

"Isn't it about time for you to quit again?" Oswin questioned.

"Not at all. I'll quit if I like and when I like. Which is _not_ right now," Clara said. After a moment of bickering, Oswin resolved to 'allow' Clara and Thirteen to go outside for a quick spell, loitering near the doors of the Natural History Museum, under shelter to keep out of the rain, probably looking unsightly.

"So? What's that expression of yours?"

"I was just thinking about how you have an annoyingly calming presence. Like you give off some vibe of… I don't know… Security. Or assurance. Or safety. Something like that," Clara said as she lit a cigarette, which didn't bother Thirteen nearly as much as Eleven, or Oswin, "It just bugs me."

"How come?"

"Everything always feels so unsure most of the time. Everything could just change at the drop of hat. I'm just constantly worried about… I don't know, something. Something happening."

"Nothing will happen, you'll be completely okay, I promise. Well, for a while you won't be, after he regenerates…"

"What do you mean?"

"You cried for weeks when he… I… Changed. You weren't the same again for… A while. But you'll still, you know, manage. Probably thanks to my wonderfully calming pres-" Thirteen was cut off by a crashing noise, and they both glanced down the steps to see somebody had just fallen and dropped what looked like a stack of boxes, old documents getting damn in the rain. "Are you okay?!" Thirteen went up to see if the boy – well, he was older than a boy, but Clara didn't know if she'd go quite as far as to call him a man – needed any help, and Clara followed carefully, holding her cigarette between her teeth.

"I'm just… I'm gonna be late… I need to…" the boy had been scurrying about, picking up his documents to try and cram them back into the boxes he'd dropped, Clara not visibly doing much, but the paper looked yellow and old, so she was telekinetically keeping the rain off of them. It was at that point he looked up, and lost his words, staring at the Doctor, and Clara raised an eyebrow questioningly, but went ignored, "Wow, this is some sort of meet cute, huh?"

"A meet cute with my wife?" Clara asked coldly, detecting an American accent with this boy. Hadn't Adam said Warren was American? That they'd gone to Harvard together?

"Clara, be nice," Thirteen said. Clara just grimaced and took another drag on her cigarette, "Are you going to help?"

"I'm helping just plenty," Clara said stiffly.

"I just, I gotta meet a friend, it's important," the boy said.

"A friend? Are you Warren, by any chance?" Clara asked, Thirteen busy picking things up, being polite. Clara nearly called her a gentleman again. He looked up at her and had basically the same reaction he had to looking at Thirteen. He was one of those boys who didn't get a lot of female attention, you could tell.

"Yeah, why? Are you… Oswin..?"

"No, I'm Clara. I'm her sister. We're twins. Did Adam not mention? They're in the café, I just came out here to smoke," Clara told him, extending her psychic reach to keep all three of them dry, along with the papers, instead of just she and Thirteen. 'Whatshisface is out here. Just dropped all his stuff on the steps.' '_Warren?_' 'Yeah. Very excited by the idea of twins.' '_He's Adam's friend, what did you expect? A womaniser?_' Clara didn't expect a womaniser at all, now that she thought about it. Some lanky nerd-type was exactly what she _should_ have been expecting. He'd finally sorted out his boxes, though. Well, near enough, just as Adam and Oswin appeared behind them on the museum steps.

"I thought you said the, um…" Warren began, talking to Adam, without much greeting, and Adam frowned, "You know. The Doctor. I thought-?"

"This is the Doctor," Clara said, nodding at Thirteen, who waved, "That's Oswin."

"Obviously, Clars, I'm sure he can see the resemblance," Oswin said, and Clara stuck her tongue out at her, and went back to her cigarette, "What's put you in a mood? You were fine earlier. This is why you shouldn't hang around with _her_."

"Hey! Don't be mean," Thirteen said.

"You don't know how irritating being connected to Clara's brain is when she's around you," Oswin said, "It's like having a cashier read out a list of purchases, except the purchases are just attractive features of the Alpha Twelfth Doctor. Ignore Clara, Warren, usually _she's_ the hospitable, social one of the two of us, but she's in a mood now because she's sexually frustrated. Are you gonna come inside?"


	251. Gossip

_Clara_

_Gossip_

"Look, um, no offence, but, I… I thought the Doctor, was…" Warren began, but he was one of those phenomenally awkward types, someone with a social ineptitude that just ended up exacerbated around girls.

"A guy?" Thirteen suggested, and he gave a look that meant yes, even though he didn't nod, "I _was_ a guy, once. I do this thing where I regenerate. When I die, I change my face and come back a whole new person. This is the first time I've been a girl."

"I've got a lot to catch you up on, I guess," Adam Mitchell said somewhat sheepishly, embarrassed at dropping contact with his friend, clearly. Clara wondered how many friends he actually had. She'd always assumed he didn't have any, which was cruel, but it was just what she'd thought. Even then, she still couldn't really believe it, "I've just been distracted lately." Adam panned his eyes accusingly over his girlfriend next to him, Warren sandwiched in between the two couples, Thirteen on his left, Adam on his right, the Twins stuck at either end.

"Oi! Don't blame _me_, I've not been so busy with _you_ that I can't visit friends and family. I've even visited my _ex-girlfriend_," she drawled a little, trying to get on his nerves, Clara guessed.

"Ignore them," Thirteen said, "Oswin likes to _pretend_ she's not just as in love with him as he is with her, but she's a liar. So, tell me about this skeleton?" Warren was rushing them through the museum, Clara having been made to carry one of his boxes to make up for her earlier attitude, and she couldn't even use telekinesis to make her task easier, because her eyes glowing silver would be conspicuous in that day and age.

"There's not much to tell… I mean, it could just be a fault in the records… Or a prank…"

"C'mon, Warren, don't be modest! Don't seem like you're wasting our time, we have all the time in the world. And even if it isn't anything, we still got to go to a museum! And museums are great. I always like looking to see if there's stuff about me," Thirteen said, making a show of peering around, but right then they were in an exhibit about cavemen, so Clara doubted there would be anything to do with the Doctor. You never knew, though. Clara couldn't lie, anyway, she loved museums too. Museums and libraries. God help her for being a nerd. What she was really there for was the dinosaur bones.

"Have you ever seen a dinosaur?" Clara asked Thirteen.

"Of course I have, I've seen lots of them."

"I never have."

"…Yes you have, Clara," Thirteen told her, frowning, and Clara was at a loss. She didn't remember any dinosaurs, "It was, like, three days after we got married. Cybersaurs. Remember? We spent the whole day together being sickening because everybody hated us. I think they left us in a cave. Then Jenny told me she was pregnant and I wasn't very happy with that… No chance of her getting pregnant in a few weeks, anyway. Or days. I don't know."

"What? Why? How come?" Clara asked, and Thirteen suddenly clamped a hand over her mouth like she'd said something she wasn't supposed to, and Clara's expression became one of triumph, that she'd got Thirteen to spill some kind of beans. Clara just smirked, and, remarkably enough, Oswin and Adam had been talking to Warren to explain to him that she was from the future and she was a hologram, and they hadn't actually heard. "Ah! I got you."

"Shush! You can't tell anyone I said that!" Thirteen hissed.

"I won't! Who am I gonna tell?"

"Everyone! You're a gossip! You're all gossips. And that's some gossip that's not allowed to leave this conversation," Thirteen whispered at her. What was going to happen to Jenny to mean there wasn't danger of her getting pregnant? Had there been chance of her getting pregnant anyway? Clara didn't think it was best to push Thirteen.

"Will you let me know when it happens?" she asked quietly, "Like, when whatever this is happens, will you say, 'That's what I was talking about the other day in the museum' to me?"

"Fine, fine, I guess so. But from what I remember it seemed… Messy. If I'm a few days late don't blame me. It's not my fault," the Doctor said, and Clara shrugged.

"What're you a few days late on? Are you pregnant?" Oswin asked rudely, only catching that half of the conversation. Clara glared at her.

"No! Of course not. There's no chance of me getting pregnant," Thirteen said, and _that_ was when Clara figured it out. Because, as much as the Doctor claimed she couldn't say anything about the future, that had been as much of a clue as when she'd said 'well' in an insinuating way half an hour ago, when she'd said there was a very near thing coming up she wanted to tell Clara about, and Clara had asked, 'A bad thing?' and she replied, 'A complicated thing.' Her wording was identical to what she'd said about Jenny. Maybe, Clara admitted, she had a bad habit of reading much too deeply into things, which probably came from having a degree in English Literature, but the Doctor was clever, and Clara thought this was on purpose. And she thought she knew what was being implied.

"Clara?" Oswin asked, and broke her line of thought.

"Hmm?"

"Warren said put the box down." Clara did, on the table, because they were suddenly no longer in the bit of the museum open to the public, they were in the part where the scientists and the palaeontologists and anthropologists and whoever else worked. She'd never been interested in those specifics. Oswin asked, "What were you daydreaming about?"

"Nothing," said Clara, because she was suddenly twisted in a dilemma of whether or not to come up with some excuse to take Oswin aside and reveal her thinking to her, "What were we talking about?"

"Skeletons," Oswin said.

"It's not anything to do with the Shadow, is it? I mean, the Shadow like, disintegrates stuff or whatever, right?" Clara said, then she frowned and turned to the Doctor, "_You_ know who the Shadow is, don't you?"

"Obviously. Don't look at me like that, I don't tell you. I don't tell anybody. Give it two days," was all Thirteen said. Oswin took note of that factoid.

Ten minutes passed, and then Adam and Thirteen, mainly, were poring over some old pieces of paper after Warren had dug them out of his boxes, with pictures of some skeleton that definitely wasn't human, but definitely didn't have any feasible way to get up and plain walk out of a museum all on its lonesome, Clara stood idly nearby doing very little other than habitually checking her phone to see the minutes crawl by.

"What's up with you?" Oswin asked her, and she jumped, because she'd been too engrossed in her own thoughts to notice her sister come over.

"Nothing."

"You're being all… Distracted. So, is something wrong?" Oswin continued with her concern.

"Aren't you helping them with the skeleton?"

"I don't know what it is, Clara. If there was a computer to hack or an equation to solve then fair enough, but I don't understand why a skeleton would get up and walk," she shrugged, moving to be stood next to Clara instead of in front of her, "I don't know why you insist on hanging around her, it always ends up making you sad and sexually frustrated. Oh, crap, that reminds me – I have something to tell you."

"Oh. Do you want to go for a walk?" Clara asked, "I mean, you've never been to a museum, and we just ran through." She still wanted to go look at the t-rex. Oswin shrugged in response, which meant yes, so Clara declared to Adam and Thirteen they were going off for a bit and to call if anything important came up, and they were waved away absently. "We might as well leave so they can tell Warren how weird we are. That's all anybody says about us. That we're weird."

"We _are_ weird," Oswin muttered, not paying much attention to the exhibits once they got back into the actual museum-area, "Okay, so, Flek's engaged."

"How does that concern me..?"

"It concerns you a great deal, honey, because she's engaged to Eyeball. That means she's gonna be your… I don't know. Whatever we Echoes are to you," Oswin said.

"I usually say 'daughters' when I talk about you," Clara said, frowning at her own words, "Is that odd?"

"Yes. Definitely. But, yeah, they're engaged. Thought you'd want to know," Oswin shrugged, "Make sure that you get an invitation to the wedding and all. Take me as your plus one, since I have no clue if I'll be invited… I'd _like_ to be invited…"

"I'm sure she'll invite you, Oswin."

"Eyeball doesn't like me, thought," Oswin said.

"That's because you were fighting with her, because you go out of your way to _not_ get on with any of the other Echoes, because you like to think you're the only one. But you don't have to be the only one, you can just take smug pride in the fact you're my favourite," Clara told her, and she pulled a face, because Clara was exactly right in what she was saying, "You get along with Beta Me."

"That's because she's, you know… Not here to take my place. Plus, I feel bad for her. You know she told me she has nightmares?" Oswin said, "I mean, I already knew you have nightmares, I just mean that you never _told_ me. I had to wait till you had one while I was there to find out." Clara didn't say an awful lot for a few moments, crossing her arms around herself protectively.

"…What did she say?"

"They were getting worse after Danny died," Oswin said, "God knows how much fun Jenny's having with that girl. I wonder if she cries after sex…" Clara stopped walking then and stared at the ground, spotting something on it. "Clara? What is that?"

"Hairclip," Clara told her flatly.

"So?"

"Nothing, it's nothing. I guess someone just lost it. It doesn't matter…" she stepped over it with a twinge of old guilt from years ago. _Many _years ago.

"Well I've never had you feel that kind of regret before, Clars," Oswin said, catching back up to her and bumping playfully into her side, "Tell me about it."

"Doesn't matter, Os. Some girl I used to know always used to lose hairclips. And bobbles. Just reminds me of her," she shrugged meekly.

"Old girlfriend?"

"No. She was straight. I was, like, fourteen. Doesn't matter, like I said. Ten years ago."

"…_Oh_. Right… I get it…" Oswin said, "A tragic tale of unrequited love you can't even share with your darling sister?"

"'Unrequited love' is the whole tale, Os, you figured it out. Never told her a thing and then we stopped being friends because I used to act _really_ weird around her. Kind of like how Martha acts around me. Except I'm pretty sure she never got wise to it," Clara said, "I hope she didn't… Anyway, it's _just_ a hairclip."

"Are you still on about Martha?" Oswin questioned, "She does not fancy you. Not _everyone_ fancies you, Clara. I'm sure there's a large quantity of people who do not want to get with you. Me included. Martha Jones included."

"Oswin, she asked Thirteen what I'm like when I'm turned on. And the other day, when we were spooning-"

"Wait, _what_!? _Spooning_!? Who were you spooning!?"

"Nobody! I was the little spoon! Look, it was in that Lodge, okay? Woke up with a killer hangover in Thirteen's arms. Nothing happened. I asked, and made sure of it. It wasn't like either of us were naked, Oswin," Clara said, "And I was blackout drunk. Hence why I got a mango tattooed on my back – which I'd still like you to remove."

"I'm not removing it. What did husbandy say? I take it he's seen it?"

"He laughed. A lot. For some time. Back to what I was saying – we woke up spooning on this sofa and we were talking to each other and then Martha yawns _ridiculously_ loudly and kicks the sofa and does the most elaborate waking-up act I've ever seen in my life," Clara said, "Ask Rose. Go on. She's _dying_ to talk about it. And in the maze, the other day, Martha was totally stood lurking outside my bedroom for ages figuring out how to ask me to come out, then we actually get to this maze and I get paired off with Thirteen, stuck with her all day, which was not what I wanted. _Then_, in the Lodge again, weeks before that I made Theodore promise to never leave me alone in haunted buildings, a promise which Thirteen deigned to keep, so we're going off to the toilet – and no, nothing happened, other than finding a non-existent corpse in the bath – and Martha's all, 'why do you _both_ need to go?' And-"

"Alright, alright! Shut up. Christ. You're obsessed with this idea right now."

"It's true!" Clara protested.

"If only Claratoo were still here, we could've used her in some way…"

"That's what Jenny was telling me, though. When I figured they were sleeping together and I texted you about it while you were out. She was saying that Martha went to tell Clara the others had gone to fix her TARDIS, but Jenny decided to answer the door to mess with her, and she went to, like, every possible length to deny they'd slept together," Clara told her, "And then she said she was sick of lesbians."

"That's an awful thing to say. You're not even a lesbian, for starters."

"Exactly! I'm sick of bi-erasure."

"She doesn't fancy you."

"She _does_! She lit a cigarette for me. _Why_ would she do that? She _hates_ smoking, when we were to Atlantis she kept getting on at me about it. And don't you remember after the Dream? She was completely into us for weeks. She still is!"

"Clara. No. Not everyone fancies you! Get this idea out of your head!"

"She does, though!"

"She doesn't!"

"Does everybody fancy _you_?"

"Of course they do, I'm gorgeous, why wouldn't they?" Oswin said, and Clara raised her eyebrows, "What?"

"Why would everybody fancy you but not me?"

"Um, because _I'm_ not annoying, honey. Not like you. You're insufferable."

"Right, yeah, sure. But I'm telling you. I'll figure a way to prove it."

"Just make out with her and see if she's into it."

"No!"

"Alright, _I'll _make out with her and see if she's into it."

"Please don't," Clara asked, and then Oswin's phone rang, and she answered it quickly, once she saw the screen, mouthing that it was Adam.

"Hi, what's going on?" she asked, turning away a little as she talked, "You found something? Okay. We'll be right back… Oh. Right. Well, okay." She hung up.

"What is it?"

"They want us to meet them back at the TARDIS. Apparently we have to go to 1951."


	252. Don't You Go

_Adam_

_Don't You Go_

"What? You're just gonna go? To the 1950s?" Warren asked, hurrying after Adam Mitchell and Thirteen as they went back to wear they'd left the TARDIS, hoping it was still there and someone else hadn't decided to get bored and pilot it away. But everybody else was busy, or staying in, so he doubted they'd have any trouble.

"Okay, why don't you just ask?" Thirteen said, "Ask if you can come?"

"Can I come?"

"No," she answered firmly, "You can't. Seasoned professionals _only_. I really shouldn't be letting Adam out, it just so happens that he's one of two people who can control his girlfriend. I mean, not, like, _control_, but, keep safe. That's what I mean."

Adam hadn't known that he had nearly enough power to make Oswin behave herself, but they rounded a corner to see one of the Twins trying to take a selfie with the Darwin statue while the other one tried to grab the phone. Surprisingly enough, _Clara_ was the one trying to take the selfie. Adam didn't really know what was the issue with if Clara wanted to take a weird photo with a statue, but it seemed to be irritating Oswin.

"First the diplodocus and the tyrannosaurus, then you tried to get _me_ to take a photo of you with the bloody blue whale-"

"Clara, don't be weird," Thirteen told her, then she turned back to Warren and resumed, "The Fifties is a tricky decade, you see. Very difficult to fit in. Well, I'd say that, but a police box will blend in quite well…" she said this as they rounded a corner and came face-to-face with the blue box sitting in a corner with people walking past totally ignoring it, "We didn't tell Adam what the TARDIS was when Rose and I first brought him with us."

"Oh yeah?" Oswin asked, looking at him questioningly, amused.

"Yeah, he's totally just like, 'They're gonna fill this place with cement, what're you getting in a weird box for?' He didn't even know what it was," Thirteen said, "He's adorable sometimes, your boyfriend…" Adam exchanged a very confused look with Oswin, and Clara seemed equally perplexed by that remark, but he supposed Thirteen was just odd. She didn't bother explaining herself, at any rate, just went and pushed one of the doors in, "Back in five," she told Warren.

He'd never been to the 1950s. He'd been to the 1920s, and as far as the past went, that might actually be his limit, the furthest back. Two days ago it had been the 1990s, but the rest of the time he was grounded in the present, sometimes the near or astonishingly distant future. He didn't know what he'd been expecting, maybe with Thirteen going on her spool about how difficult it was to fit in, he'd been thinking she would make them dress up. As it happened, she didn't, they were all looking probably immodest and weird as they stepped out of the TARDIS in the year 1951, the TARDIS in the exact same place, only the museum was empty, and it was the middle of the night.

"You could've brought him, you know," Adam said, spooked by how similar everything looked, even sixty years in the past. There weren't any of the computerised 'learning stations', though, or screens at all. Even the map guiding them around was old and outdated, and a lot of the exhibits were still off-limits. "He'll know his way around better than us."

"Nuh-uh. I know my way around this museum just dandy," Thirteen told him sharply, "Most museums, in fact. I'm a connoisseur. Now we read two reports of damage, you remember? One of them from the dinosaurs and one of them from the Hall of Mammals, when this thing broke a bunch of stuff."

"The Hall of Mammals is where the Blue Whale is, right?" Adam asked, and Thirteen told him yes, "We'll go there. Oswin loves the sea, don't you?"

"I hate you," she muttered, "And I don't trust those two together." Clara pretended to be horribly offended, but Thirteen ignored her, she was messing with her screwdriver she'd just dug out of her infinite bag.

"It's fine, Oswin, if anything happens between them the guilt Clara feels will be punishment enough, won't it?" Adam said slyly to Clara, mainly, who scowled at him, but knew he was right. The Doctor was sensible, anyway. She wouldn't let anything happen, he was sure of it, so he took Oswin's hand and pulled her away from her sister and her sister-in-law, much to her annoyance, but once they were out of the room she settled down.

"I still don't trust them," she muttered. He didn't let go of her hand, since she didn't seem to really want to go anywhere on her own, like a child. Plus, he knew she secretly _liked_ holding his hand. She held it enough when they were sleeping, at any rate.

"They were okay in the maze, right? And the day after, in the Lodge?" he asked, and she suddenly seemed like she had something direly important to tell him.

"Clara told me they woke up _spooning_, because it was 'cold', apparently," Oswin said, "And they went to the toilet together. How weird."

"All girls go to the toilet together, Oswin," he told her, "If they did anything, we would've heard about it by now. If they were sleeping together, they wouldn't be able to hide it, they'd be _all_ over each other."

"What do you know about girls, Mitchell? Gay ones, at that," Oswin said.

"It isn't what I know about girls, it's what I know about your sister and the Doctors. Not to mention _you_. I'm right, anyway," he said, and she shut up about Clara and Thirteen for the time being, "Check out the marine life."

"I don't want to. I've seen loads of marine life, in Raptlantis. Speaking of Raptlantis…" she began carefully.

"…What? I don't like that tone of voice. I don't like that tone of voice one bit, Oswin," he said coolly, dropping her hand and stopping. They were in a room with two Killer Whales suspended from the ceiling, teeth bared in pseudo-smiles, in the dark. She switched on her Sphere light and crossed her arms.

"…It's a scientific goldmine, okay!?"

"_Scientific goldmine_!? Oswin, it's hell on Earth!"

"What do _I_ care about Earth? You know what I care about? Dimension Doors. I finally built a machine to measure them, if I can find the-"

"You're not going back there."

"I have to. It's important. Look, it's barely even dangerous for me," she told him, "I'll be perfectly safe." She then turned around and shrieked when she came face-to-face with a Killer Whale she hadn't previously noticed.

"Oh yeah? Barely even dangerous? It's crawling with things like that."

"The whales are on the _outside_, Mitchell."

"I think it's a terrible idea," he said stiffly, and she walked up to him and he crossed his arms, "It's terrifying and hostile and very unsafe." Instead of answering him, she held his face and kissed him, on tiptoes. As she breathed out a moment later, their heads still together but lips apart, it was only a movement of her mouth that made it seem like she was breathing. He felt no breath on his face. His was freezing on her.

"I'm not saying I'm going soon. I'm saying one day. I'll save a back-up of myself to Helix."

"Oh, great, so I can just date a copy if your Sphere gets destroyed?" he questioned a little harshly, and she stepped away.

"I'm a copy anyway."

"…Oswin, that's not what I meant… I just… I don't want you to get hurt."

"I know you don't, but-"

A scream cut her off and they both looked around in alarm, but the scream wasn't coming from that part of the building. Adam recognised it, though. That scream had been Clara's, undoubtedly.


	253. Strangers Friends Lovers Strangers

_Clara_

_Strangers Friends Lovers Strangers_

There was something enchanting about a museum at night. Something magical. Like school after dark, or a train station in the early morning, or even your own house. At night, everything became unfamiliar, the shadows made things spectacular and disproportionate, like a whole other existence dislocated from reality.

"The human mind hates emptiness," she said quietly, the only noise being the hum of the Doctor's sonic screwdriver, "When things are empty, we fill them up again, with stories and myths. Ghosts. Spectres. Humanity can't bear to be alone. Maybe that's why they say there's safety in numbers."

"If there's safety in numbers, why do they always split up in _Scooby-Doo_?" the Doctor mused, smiling, seeming like she was enjoying listening to Clara talk about whatever pointless thing came into her head, "Why did we just split up now?"

"Two is still a number," Clara said, "What're you sonicking? I thought we were going to see the dinosaur exhibit. Is that even around now?"

"Oh, yeah, sure it is, they got the diplodocus cast in 1905," Thirteen told her, "It's in the entrance hall at this point in time, though. In 2016 they have the Blue Whale skeleton in the entrance hall." There was a pause, wherein Thirteen continued scanning for whatever she was scanning for (she hadn't answered Clara's question, but Clara assumed it was merely something to do with this rampaging alien skeleton). "Thing is, this is a fixed point in time. It's still gonna make a mess of the Hall of Mammals and the main dinosaur exhibit. So there's no point looking for it. It'll come to us in plenty of time."

"You're missing the alternative solution," Clara said, "That _we're_ the ones who smash up the exhibits."

"Don't smash up any exhibits, Clara," Thirteen told her with a sigh, "It wouldn't be very polite of you. But we can go see Dippy, since you're clearly dying to." Clara smiled.

"'Dippy?'" she questioned as the Doctor finally stopped scanning. Looking for the skeleton, no doubt, in spite of what she'd just said about it being a fixed point in time, with the skeleton going on a rampage no matter what.

"It's just the name of the diplodocus. Okay, maybe it was me who gave it that nickname, over seventy years before you were born, in a different incarnation, but it's totally what everybody calls it now. C'mon, it's this way," she said, then she made a movement with her hand, and then clenched her fist and dropped it. Clara stared at her, then a crooked smile broke on her face.

"Did you just try to take my hand?" she questioned the Doctor, crossing her arms, and Thirteen made a few pathetic noises, before crossing her arms, too, and looking at the floor, possibly even blushing. Clara took that as a yes, "Control yourself, woman," Clara said, and when the Doctor looked up in abject horror, Clara winked and started to walk off – she was pretty sure she could find her way to the entrance hall on her own.

"Don't wink at me! Sometimes I hate your nanogene cloud, you know. If you didn't have it, you'd age it, but no, you just stay this pretty forever," Thirteen muttered, following after Clara, "It's inconsiderate."

"If I didn't have a nanogene cloud and you came back here to find me as pretty as I am now, do you really think you'd be able to manage self-control?" Clara joked over her shoulder, going down a large flight of steps, "In any capacity?"

"Oh, come on, of course not, I'm hardly managing now. And that is not an invitation for you to try it on," she said. Clara laughed, but then she spotted something on a bench sat on the break between the staircases, something long, and thin, that glistened in the dim light of the moon shining down in shafts from the large windows.

"Oh. My. God. Check it out," she said, going and picking it up, and then holding out to Thirteen triumphantly. Thirteen looked at it for a moment, realised what the thin object with gold on one end was, and groaned.

"_This_ is where you get that stupid thing…" she muttered, for Clara had found herself an antique cigarette holder. Well, it wasn't an antique _yet_, but one day it would be. Just like the antique, silver wedding ring on her finger, stolen four years ago from their present era in time. Clara beamed at it.

"I've always wanted a cigarette holder!" she exclaimed happily, overjoyed with her find, going to dig through her pockets and empty the last one of her current packet of Marlboros into her palm, the cigarette holder between her fingers in a way one might hold a pencil if they were doing something else and didn't want to put it down.

"Don't smoke in it!" Thirteen told her, "Not _now_, I mean… I'll level with you, Coo, I hate that stupid thing, but I know full-well you take it home, because you're a dirty thief, I'd just rather you washed it, since that's somebody else's. Dental hygiene isn't too swell in this decade." Clara paused for a moment, then deemed this wise, so she stuck the thing in the back pocket of her jeans where it would be just about hidden by her jacket from the eyes of her baby sister, who would no doubt snap it if she saw the thing.

"I'm still gonna smoke," Clara said, wondering what to do with the cigarette packet. This pack was from the Twenty-First Century and had a grotesque, black lung on the packaging, not to mention the date, so she thought she'd best not dump it around anywhere. Annoyed, she ended up pocketing the empty pack, swapping it for the lighter in her pocket, fag between her teeth.

"We're indoors. Can you not?"

"No anti-smoking laws in 1951, sweetheart," Clara told her.

"That's a dreadful excuse," Thirteen said, but Clara's lighter didn't appear to be working. It must be empty. It had been a while since she got a new one, she didn't even think she had one back on the TARDIS.

"Ugh, dammit, that's disappointing…" she sighed.

"Here," Thirteen said, and she looked up with surprise to see the Doctor holding something out of her, something silver, rectangular, that threw off the light like the cigarette holder had done. Carefully, Clara took it, and realised it was a lighter.

"You smoke in the future!?" she exclaimed.

"What!? No! Of course I do not. That's _yours_. Future Yours. I'll be having it back after you're done," the Doctor said strictly, and Clara sighed and lit her cigarette, but she didn't hand the lighter back over, she wanted a look at it. Holding it up into a bit of moonlight glowing over her shoulder, she saw there was stuff engraved on it, in circular Gallifreyan, no less.

"Why've you got my lighter on you? How come I can't carry it myself?" Clara asked, "And how come you even _will_ carry it? You hate that I smoke. Completely abhor it."

"I do, that's true, but you have to choose your battles, Clara. The battle between you and cigarettes was lost a long time ago, I'm sure husbandy will soon learn. And I've got it just because your hands were full the last time we were out – in the future – so I offered to hold it. A few hours later, you've forgotten to ask for it back, and I disappear and show up here. That's why I have it," Thirteen answered.

"It looks old," Clara mused.

"I guess so…" she said shiftily, itching to get the thing away from Clara, like it held some secret. Maybe it did? Maybe this lighter held the secret to how far into the future she was really from, a question she'd yet to let slip any information on? Clara just supposed it was more years than months. Decades, even, now she looked at the battered thing.

"What's it say on it?"

"I'm not telling you."

"It's Gallifreyan, if I try hard enough I can read it for myself. Are you gonna make me? And don't try to grab it off me, you know it won't work," Clara said, smiling evilly at her, because Thirteen knew it was true. Clara had a myriad of little tricks she could do to keep the thing away from the Doctor. It was well looked after, though, except for some grooves etched into the side. Six of them, "What do the grooves mean?" Thirteen looked alarmed at that question.

"Okay, fine. It says, '_through the stars_' on the other side; '_always and forever_,' on the one you're looking at," she answered begrudgingly, "It was a wedding anniversary present."

"'_Through the stars always and forever'_? Why not, '_always and forever through the stars_'?" Clara asked.

"Well, that's the way _you_ prefer it. It works either way. I like it the other way, and since _I'm_ the one who engraved it-"

"But I'm the one you engraved it _for_," Clara said quietly as Thirteen stepped over, clearly aiming to make a grab at it, "What's it made of?" she said, turning herself intangible just in case the Doctor _did_ try to nab it from her, but Thirteen didn't answer. "Hey. What's it made of?"

"Metal."

"No shit… Hang on. Is this…"

"Clara…"

"It's silver, isn't it?" she asked softly, and Thirteen still didn't answer, because something had clicked, "A wedding anniversary present?"

"C'mon, give it-" Thirteen tried to grab it, but Clara moved her hand away, turning in a circle with her arm extended as the Doctor kept trying to grab it, then stopped with their faces barely apart.

"Silver's twenty-five years," Clara said.

"Oh, is it, I had no…" Thirteen had tried to look away, but Clara telekinetically forced her to meet her gaze while she questioned her, "You can't do that."

"Would you just look at me."

"I'd prefer not to."

"How many years."

"I cannot tell you that, Clara. I can't."

"We've been married for over twenty-five years? Do I have a pearl lighter, as well? A ruby one? A gold one? A _diamond_ one?" she questioned, "Just how old are you?"

"Stop it," Thirteen said. And Clara sighed, and released her psychokinetic grip, her fist wrapped tightly around the lighter, "The grooves are how many times we've been married."

"We've been married _six_ times? Which wedding, exactly, is this a gift _for_? The most recent? Are you over 1300? Are you 1400? 1500? 2000?"

"I'm not that old, Clara," she said quietly, "You dropped your cigarette." Clara hadn't noticed it fall out of her lips, but it was glowing orange in a little pile of its own ashes on the floor. She stamped it out with her shoe sole, leaving a black mark on the marble floor. Thirteen took a few steps away, "It's for the first three, okay? They're all within the span of a year. Twenty-five years from now. Please stop asking me questions." Clara clenched her jaw and looked at the floor.

"Who gave me it?"

"Sorry?"

"Was it you, or was it him?"

"Me."

"Six weddings…" she sighed, "But it looks old."

"It's old, okay? Old-ish. Sentimental. The day you got it, you scratched four grooves. Do you have enough information yet to leave me alone?" Thirteen asked. Clara had run out of cigarettes, she'd wasted her last one, even if she did have a stash of a few packs on TARDIS, residing with Captain Jack Harkness.

"I'm sorry."

"It's like you said," Thirteen stepped over, and was suddenly right in front of her again, "Humanity hates emptiness. You're just trying to fill the emptiness of your future." Clara couldn't help herself one bit, she leant in to kiss her, and… felt a ringing ache in her head like a fishhook in her brain was dragging her, and her lips closed on thin air and she reeled forwards with a migraine that lasted for all of thirty seconds.

"_Fuck_ing hell I _hate_ that," she swore, straightening up and rubbing her head, "I'm sorry. I'm really sorry. I almost kissed you again. My subconscious teleported me over here." Thirteen was standing, confused, three metres to Clara's right.

"Good thing. I almost let you," she said hollowly.

"Have I lost your trust?" Clara asked, a minute later, when they were back on their way to the dinosaur and she was getting more and more annoyed at accidentally wasting the last cigarette she had on her, wondering if 1950s museum gift shops sold cancer-sticks or lighters in them. She guessed it must be about a fifty-fifty bet. "Because, it always seems like _I_ end up ruining everything."

"It's my fault, I shouldn't've given you the lighter, I should've realised…"

"_I_ shouldn't _smoke_," Clara told her, and she laughed weakly.

"I guess you shouldn't. Look. There you go. Dippy the diplodocus." Clara hadn't noticed them come into the main, entrance hall of the Natural History Museum circa 1950, but now she stared around, it was huge, the statue of Darwin they'd earlier been gathered around behind her on the stairs. It looked like a cathedral, just a cathedral with a massive, dinosaur skeleton in the middle of it, a huge thing, stretching some twenty-metres, she estimated, huge and intimidating, tail at the end where they were, head reaching up at the other.

"_Wow_," she breathed, "That's…" Thirteen laughed.

"Takes a lot usually to leave _you_ speechless, Oswald," she joked, as Clara stared.

"What if… I were to… climb up it?" Clara asked, and Thirteen laughed, and then looked at her, and saw she was being serious.

"Um, what? Clary, I doubt you should climb up fossils…"

"Nobody's called me 'Clary' for ages," Clara said. Her husband used to call her it, until her sister took up use of the nickname just to annoy him, and then they'd both stopped eventually. To the Doctor, she was usually 'wifey,' or 'Coo,' or 'sweetheart,' or 'darling,' or 'dear.' To her sister, she was either 'Clars,' or 'honey.' "I think I should climb it."

"I think you _shouldn't_ climb it."

"I'm gonna climb it," Clara said, descending the steps. Thirteen grabbed her elbow, but she phased through it.

"Clara? Clara, no. No! NO! _CLARA_! GET OFF OF THAT DIPLODOCUS RIGHT THIS SECOND, _MRS OSWALD_!"


	254. Skeletons In Closets

**AN: I know this thing is paced really slowly, but trust me when I say Day 102 will be refreshing, and then Day 103 may well be a storyline I've had planned to do and keep pushing back literally since, like, June of last year, when I was on my first hiatus. Also, I'm writing my Halloween storyline in the background, and it's turning out to be very long. Like, it'll probably be just one chapter, but it's at 9000 words already, and it's looking like it'll be a lot more. You guys don't have any objections to a crazily long chapter, do you? It'll probably end up being between 20k and 30k (some fics struggle to get to 30k words and here I am with a 30k chapter all by itself. That's _Animal Farm/Of Mice &amp; Men _length).**

_Oswin_

_Skeletons In Closets_

"That sounded like Clara," Adam Mitchell said, Oswin stood rigidly still, staring at the exit of the room they were in towards the way they'd come. Adam was watching her carefully.

"It was," Oswin said quietly. There was no doubt about it, she knew what Clara sounded like screaming (a twat, most of the time). Neither of them made to move, though, "If that's something to do with this skeleton, it'll be coming this way." Before Adam could answer, Oswin took her phone out of her pocket and rang Clara, even though there was no Clara. There was, all of a sudden, no emotional connection full of the sexual tension she'd been acutely aware of in the back of her mind for the best part of the day, and there were no distant thoughts like whispers. There was nothing.

Yet, somebody answered the phone.

"_Yeah, hi_," said the distinct accent of the Alpha Twelfth Doctor, "_I'm guessing you heard her scream?_"

"Um, yeah, you're bloody right I heard her scream!" Oswin exclaimed, staring to pace agitatedly until Adam came and wrapped his arms around her to still her, which she didn't protest again, "What happened!?"

"_She's dead_."

"She's WHAT!?"

"_Oh, come on, she's only a _bit_ dead, you know what she's like_," the Doctor said, almost a sigh in her tone of voice, "_Plus, it's her own fault. Give her five minutes, she'll be fine and dandy._"

"What do you mean it's 'her own fault'?" Oswin asked through gritted teeth.

"_Okay, Oswin, lemme tell you _exactly_ what just happened involving your sister and a very large diplodocus cast_," Thirteen began, sounding a little annoyed, "_And yeah, I did try to stop her, obviously. But there's only so many things you can do to stop a telekinetic, intangible, teleporting girl who's in a bad mood with you already because you refuse to kiss her_." A bit too much information, Oswin thought. "_Now, I don't know what was going through her damn head, but she thought it would be a wonderful idea to climb on top of the thing. She actually succeeded, and then she fell off. End of story. That's why in the records it says there was a blood stain down here in the entrance hall they mopped up, she's bashed her head in._"

"You don't sound like you have a lot of pity," Oswin muttered.

"_Pity!? You try having pity!_" Thirteen almost shouted down the phone. Oswin had to admit, she might be worried about Clara, but if her little sister had done something as stupid as accidentally throw herself off the head of a diplodocus skeleton, she got what was coming to her. What sort of idiot did that, anyway?

"Did you get it on camera? You could make me a billionaire," Adam, who, evidently, could hear everything Thirteen was saying, commented, and she smiled a little, but didn't know if he saw. Oswin heard a noise over the phone.

"_She's gonna wake up in a minute, she's making noises. Watch out for the skeleton_," Thirteen then hung up, and Oswin stared at her phone screen. Adam hugged her properly.

"You are _so_ cold, Mitchell, but I always think you're gonna be warm," she said, which was true. There was a bench in one corner, and he pulled her by the hand towards it until they were sitting down, taking his glasses off to wipe them and put them back on so that he was able to see in technicolour, "I don't get how the addition of glasses to your face makes you so much more attractive." He yawned.

"Because you're a shallow nerd."

"Tired?" she asked, and he nodded, "How come?"

"We didn't get back till late, that's why. What do you think of Warren, then? He was literally my only friend in university."

"_What_? Don't make me pity you! God, you're so pathetic. You're more pathetic than me, and I'm a dead, disowned, dismembered, depressed Dalek," she told him, but he was still looking at her, awaiting a genuine answer, "I don't know, Mitchell. He's sweet, I guess? I hardly talked to him. He's not an arsehole, at least. Not like you. You're a _massive_ arsehole."

"Thanks."

"How come you only had one friend?"

"I just don't have a lot of friends," he shrugged, "On the TARDIS I don't have many friends, either. I'm like your sister. Everyone hates me."

"Hey, don't be like that, no they don't," she said, even though he was joking, "None of them have ever given you a black-eye, have they?"

"No, but one of them once dislocated my shoulder by throwing a massive lump of metal at me," he told her, and she was mortified.

"Oh my god! It was an accident and it was, like, over two months ago!" she argued, "I'm so sorry! You _know_ I'm sorry! Every time you bring it up I just – so much guilt! I wish you'd stop with it. I hate to think I've hurt you."

"…Do you miss it?"

"Miss what?"

"When I, you know… used to be warm. Like a person."

"You're still a person, Mitchell… But I do kind of miss it. Not that it's your fault, it's Old Twelvey's fault," she said, "Don't beat yourself up about it." She took his hand to comfort him, and was succumbing to the urge to kiss him, when there was a noise from outside the room they were in with the Killer Whales. They hadn't even gotten to the actual Hall of Mammals yet. Her grip on Adam's hand tightening and they both looked over, and saw a brass tank roll into the doorway in the light of Oswin's Sphere. "What's _that?_"

"I think it's a fire extinguisher," he whispered, sliding along the bench so that their legs were touching, "This is the point in the scary movie where the boy doesn't believe there's anything weird going on, so he tries to kiss the girl, and she's super-suspicious but she gives in anyway, and then they both get murdered." She stared at him.

"Oh, well, thanks for that, Mr Optimistic," she hissed, "It would only be you dying, anyway. And maybe you deserve it, saying things like that."

"Could be Clara playing a joke..."

"Clara's dead."

"Could be, you know. Gravity. The night-guard. Maybe it's Ben Stiller?"

"What? Why would Ben Stiller be hanging about when it's night at the museum?" Oswin questioned, and Adam snorted, like something was hilarious, "What? What is it? I don't get it."

"It's a Twenty-First Century thing, babe, don't worry about it," he said.

"You sound like such a douchebag," she said, and he only laughed more, until they heard some _very_ odd noises coming from right outside the door and looked over. It sounded hard and cold, something clicking on the ground like heels or tap-shoes but a with a queer sort of creaking to go along with it.

It definitely was _not_ a human skeleton, and when it came clambering along, they both stood up. It was taller than a human, nearly seven feet, and had a head over twice the size of a human being's, while the rest of its limbs were lanky and disproportionate, making it look like a skeletal bobblehead. Along with that, it was glowing bright orange, like it had an aura.

"Why is it glowing?" Oswin whispered.

"What, you can see that? I thought it was my stupid power," Adam whispered back. The skeleton stood, like it was looking around. Could it see them? It didn't have any eyes. What was the glow?

"No, it's glowing orange."

"I guess, uh, something's controlling it?" Adam suggested, "Something alien controlling the alien skeleton?" She was surprised that this actually seemed like a legitimate idea, but she couldn't exactly say anything, because it started to walk towards them right then and they took a few steps away. Like it didn't even see them, it strolled right past with a very peculiar gait, and went through the next set of doors, towards the Hall of Mammals, very assuredly.

"It's looking for something," Oswin told him, "C'mon. Let's follow it. I don't think it can see or hear us..."

They did follow it, they followed it right down into the Hall of Mammals, the life-size, Blue Whale model hanging from the ceiling side-by-side with a skeleton cast of itself, staying at a careful distance all the while.

"How does it know where to go if it can't see us?" he asked quietly.

"I don't know! Look, you are severely over-estimating the amount of knowledge I have. Yes, I am _incredibly_ clever, but I was also _incredibly _a hermit while I was alive. I don't know anything about aliens unless the Homeworld Alliance do, and the Alliance don't really catalogue alien species unless they're of particular note, and they definitely do _not_ have every single species kept in an easy-to-get-at list," she argued with him, but the skeleton had just walked up to a taxidermy elephant at the other end of the room. Then it reached up, pressed a bony hand to its trunk, and... did nothing. It was like it was _trying_ to do something, but nothing happened.

Then they heard running, from behind them, and they turned around about in time to see Clara phase through the set of doors, fail to move, and then get smacked in the back by the door when Thirteen, who could not turn intangible, threw it open after her. When they started bickering, Adam shushed them, and pointed at the skeleton, which seemed to be growing frustrated about something to do with the stuffed elephant.

"What's the glow?" Clara whispered to the Doctor.

"It's a Korluk," Thirteen answered straight away, upon seeing it, "I didn't know they could survive outside of a host body... Maybe that skeleton's still got some living cells buried inside of it for the Korluk to latch onto. It's a parasite, you see, but more of a neurological one. There are loads of them on Earth, I've never figured where they come from - crashed ship eons ago, probably - and it probably can't hear us."

"It couldn't see me and Adam," Oswin told her.

"It's looking for a host, that's what it's doing," Thirteen said, "Very dangerous for organic beings such as myself and Clara, but it... It's like it has a heightened sense of smell, but rather than smell, it's gene detection. They interlock themselves with the genome, that's how they control their host. They don't really _hurt_ the host, but they take away its sense of self. They don't generally latch onto humans, though, usually more primitive things. I'm too advanced. Clara and Adam are genetically warped to the point where you're both unrecognisable. And you don't have a genetic structure, anyway."

"So it needs a living host?" Oswin asked, and Thirteen nodded, "What if the host body gets destroyed..?"

"Well, I guess it would die, but come on - they're kind of harmless, unless you get them angry. They make the creatures they inhabit somewhat more intelligent and physically stronger. Let me tell you, I ran into this Korluk hippo once in Tanzania in the 1700s. I'm telling you now, they do _not_ like it when you try to go for a swim in one of their lakes. Took some very clever tricks with an orange to save myself from getting gored."

"Oranges grow in Tanzania?" Adam asked.

"No," she answered. That was _all_ she answered. No explanation at all for what she'd been doing swimming in Tanzania in the Eighteenth Century carrying an orange, or even which incarnation the Doctor had been.

"Host body has to be destroyed? Leave this to me," Clara said.

"What? No, don't you - OH MY GOD!" Thirteen yelled when Clara more or less just waved her damn hand and snapped the tethers holding the ginormous model Blue Whale to the ceiling (Oswin thought that perhaps her telekinesis was getting a little too powerful if she could do a trick like that so easily. What happened next explained adequately the reported mess in the Hall of Mammals in 1951 when Warren had found the old documents, because the huge whale shot forwards like a train and crashed straight into the skeleton, nose-first. Then it was like a moment out of _Titanic_, the part where the stern rises up in the water and then sinks down to its watery grave at the bottom of the Atlantic ocean, probably with Rapture. While the head smashed the skeleton to pieces (much to their great horror), the tail-end threw it back down and made some notable cracks in the floor. Then the orange glow around the skeleton flew into the air and shot straight past them, though the doors.

"What the _fuck_, Clara!?" Oswin exclaimed, "She just said it was harmless! We could've just found it another host!"

"Well, I mean, yeah, but-" Clara began.

"You did that to impress her!" Oswin pointed rudely at Thirteen, "You idiot! She's _the Doctor _she doesn't condone _murder_!"

"I did not!" Clara argued.

"Yes, you did!"

"Look, the thing's not dead," Thirteen said loudly, "It's not. But that was stupid, Clara."

"Well... It was supposed to happen! You said that the rooms getting messed up was a fixed point in time!"

"This is EXACTLY why I can't tell you things about the damn future!" she shouted, "You have to have a serious think about your actions, young lady."

"'_Young lady_'!?" Clara yelled in protest, and Oswin knew that that was a terrible thing to say.

"You're acting like a child! Maybe a _superpowered_ child, but a child! More of a child than my daughter, and she's grounded right now. Not that I'm gonna try and ground you, even though I'm sure your father would, were he here, your own guilt will be enough of a punishment."

"I'm not a baby! I can make my own bloody choices in life, you know! Maybe I'll choose to divorce you, then what'll happen to that stupid lighter in your pocket!?" What lighter, Oswin thought?

"I think we should calm down," Adam said loudly, but not shouting, he was staying calm. Oswin was holding onto his arm. Clara shut up.

"Look," Oswin began, talking directly to Clara, "I'm just about sick of having to listen to you complaining at me about the 'struggles' in your life just because you can't keep your dick in your pants, Clara. Would you kindly get over yourself for five damn seconds and shut up? You're not the most important person in the universe."

"And now the Korluk has about ten minutes to find a new host in London, and that thing moves quickly," Thirteen said.

"Yeah, well, where's it gonna find a primitive animal to possess in London?" Oswin asked.

"...Oh," said Adam, in flat realisation, "I know where."


	255. Just A Day

_Adam_

_Just A Day_

Zoos at night were frightening places. They were full of shadows making unintelligible noises, and it was impossible to identify what animal was what in the outdoor darkness. On top of that, the zoo had guards, and they thought it safer not to use any lights. This left Adam Mitchell as the guide for himself and Clara Oswald, straining his eyes to see the auras of the animals and any distant threats. Most animal auras were very pale, blues and pinks closer to red than to purple. He saw no people, but Clara next to him was exuding a dark pink, intense glow, clipped with red around her edges. They were together because he and Oswin deemed it wise to split up Clara and Thirteen, and because Oswin had whispered to him in confidence that he could talk some sense into Clara that she could not (he didn't exactly know what she meant by that, but intended to ask her at the next opportunity). Along with that, Oswin declared that if she spent too long alone in Clara's presence she would end up punching her in the face, and Adam didn't doubt that for two seconds. So Oswin was with Thirteen to try and get the full story from her, and Adam was stuck trying to calm down Clara. God, he thought, if it was gonna be him and these three girls all living together in the future (like Thirteen sometimes made it seem like), he didn't know how he'd cope. He never spent any time with Clara as it was.

"Promised your sister I'd take her to a zoo not four nights ago," he said, very quietly. He was Clara's guide, more or less, as they crept about in the dark like a pair of no-good vagrants. What were they to say they were up to if they were caught? "I'd rather be with _her _right now, you know. But instead, your wife's stolen my date." He suspected Clara made a resentful face at that.

"Why'd Oswin send you off with me?" she ignored what he'd been saying. All he could smell was dung. Everything stank of dung. He was going to have one _long _shower when he got back, that was for sure. And then a long sleep. A lie-in. It sounded like paradise when he planned it out in his head. Maybe he'd treat himself to takeaway. Himself and Oswin, if she wanted any. The night they got together she came barging into his room complaining about being made to buy everyone Chinese food, so maybe he'd make some romantic gesture and get her some in return? Make up for him losing her company at the zoo.

"Because Oswin thinks I'll talk some sense into you."

"What's that mean?"

"I don't know. But I can see your emotions. I've always been kind of good with emotions. Now I read auras. Fitting, even if it is a rubbish power," he shrugged, "And _your _aura is pink and red. That means passion. Angry passion and aroused passion, all mixed together. Thirteen must have a huge influence on you, since she's not even here and you're clearly still thinking about her."

"You never know. You arouse my sister plenty, I'm sure. And my sister and I are the same person."

"Don't be gross, I'm trying to help. You're a big ball of stress, you have to relax," he told her, "So, you know. Read a book. Have some sex. With your _husband_, by the way, don't twist my words. You need to leave Thirteen alone. And I don't mean that as in, stop talking to her and never go near her, I mean act like a normal friend and stop badgering her. You might as well be a sexual deviant the amount you go after her."

"Adam, you might find this hard to believe, but I didn't have the intention of doing anything this morning. Look, what happened was she leant me this lighter, and it was silver, and she said it was a wedding anniversary present, and silver's twenty-five years, so I just ended up getting freaked out," Clara said, "I wasn't... I wasn't asking her to tell me how old she is. Not until _after _I figured what the lighter was. And it's old, too, and I know that at some point after out sixth wedding-"

"_Sixth_!?"

"Yes, sixth! We're planning the third right now," Clara said, "So some point after that, she vanishes. After I ask her to hold onto my lighter for me for a moment. Then she'll be gone. However far away that is..."

"Stop trying to live in the future," Adam told her, "Live in the present. You know what I don't want? Allusions to _my _future, with Oswin, I mean, I don't even want to know if I _have _a future with Oswin. I might die tomorrow. I don't want to know. She might dump me. Well, I don't want any insight. _You_ know you're gonna have some long and happy marriage, but you're so absorbed by Thirteen you're just forgetting about Eleven."

"I'm not forgetting about him! I love him."

"So what? You love your dad, but you never see him, or talk to him," Adam said.

"Don't try to shrink me."

"You're 5'2", why would I want to make you any smaller?" he joked.

"Very funny."

"You have to spend some quality time with your husband. What's gonna happen if you don't? You're gonna get more and more upset about Thirteen being all unobtainable and enigmatic, basically ignore him even though he's just as in love with you as she is, and then go crawling back to him when Thirteen inevitably leaves. That's what'll happen. You might stay together, but you'll have to fix yourselves first. It's your choice, but you're making life pointlessly difficult for yourself. You know the outcome - so why not make it easier?"

* * *

_Oswin_

"Okay, you're the one of the two of you I _don't _want to murder, so why don't you tell me _your _side of what's going on?" she questioned Thirteen, who was walking in front of her past all the somewhat terrifying zoo animals with huge, industrial torch she'd dragged out of her infinite bag.

"Not a lot to tell, okay? But I think the whale-thing was because of that bump she took to the back of the head," Thirteen said, "She just doesn't think things through. That's why she slept with Jenny - Other Her, I mean - because she just cares about the present. Not like you, you're meticulous, you examine all the possibilities now, all the consequences. Who with your life wouldn't? Anyway, she got herself all upset trying to figure out how old I am, tried to kiss me and subconsciously teleported six feet across the floor. Then tried to climb up the diplodocus to impress me, fell off, and died."

"She die in the future a lot from doing stupid things?"

"Too many times to count."

"Okay, well, I believe you when you say it's her fault."

"I try to stay away from her, but she never _intends_ to try it on, she just... does. She's spur-of-the-moment. Marrying me in the first place was spur-of-the-moment. Can we not talk about this now, please? I'm kind of worried about what trouble this Korluk might be into, the poor thing doesn't meant to harm anybody. Except your sister, maybe."

"If it did harm her, she'd deserve it."

"Nobody deserves to be hurt," Thirteen said simply, and Oswin (resentfully) thought she could list a few people who definitely deserved to be hurt - herself being the top contender. She didn't say that, though, but she could tell from the look the Doctor gave her that she knew what she was thinking. Things weren't only weird for _Clara _with Thirteen around. "By the way, I may have let slip that she should ask you to recount the story of how you lost your virginity."

"_What?_ Um, how about no!? I'm not telling her that! How do _you _know?" Oswin questioned. That was a very personal matter only Adam Mitchell knew about - and Adam Mitchell had found her story both funny and impressive. She guessed it _was _those things, but it was also private.

"I'm not telling you that, but I'm just warning you in advance that she might ask you that question," Thirteen said, "Now. Enough talking. Adam and Clara are on a wild goose chase because _I_ can trace recent alien trails in the air, and the screwdriver says this way." She walked left then, towards the Reptile House. Oswin had never seen any kind of reptile. She didn't want to.

"What? How come you sent them the wrong way?"

"Clara gets a bit... Well, weird, after she comes back to life. Takes a few hours for her whole brain to heal, not like Jack's. When she dies, she has to be _dead _dead to get the nanogenes to kick in, thanks to your programming stopping them from healing hangovers, minor illnesses and minor injuries," Thirteen said, which was true, the nanogenes _were _programmed that way, so that Clara didn't get too cocky. That was why she now had a mango tattoo across her left shoulder blade. That mango tatto was Clara's punishment for all the stupid things she did - like climbing up diplodocus skeletons, for instance, or going on a drunken rampage through Pennsylvania and getting Oswin, River and Nios arrested when they tried to help. Or trying to sleep with Thirteen. Repeatedly.

"Erm, it's in _there_..?" Oswin asked carefully. She'd been hoping that they were going to turn and go somewhere that _wasn't _the Reptile House. Thirteen stopped in front of it, "Maybe we ought to come back in the morning. When it's calmed down. Maybe you should go in with Clara. She's telekinetic, she can stop any... little... snakes..."

"Some of the snakes in there are huge, there are loads of varieties of Boas at this point in time. Y'know, Boa Constrictors? The ones that crush people?" Oswin wasn't going to lie. She didn't know a lot about animals. In fact, she knew _nothing_ about animals. _In fact_, she hadn't even _seen_ a creature that was native to Earth and not-human until she was over twenty-six years of age, when she'd first encountered moths. It had been a frankly terrifying experience, stuck in a tent with Adam Mitchell (her then-not-boyfriend) while he was completely wasted, some humungous moth flapping about the place. It had been awful, and he'd been too drunk muttering stuff about marrying her and having about twenty kids to do anything. Of course, the incident with the Ghostly Goat had been before that, but she didn't count that as a _real _animal encounter. She could name maybe three reptiles off the top of her head, and even then only types, not species. Snakes. Lizards. Frogs. Were frogs reptiles? She didn't rightly know, come to think of it...

"Yeah, well, maybe you and Clara can come back and fight the, um, Boa Constrictors, and Adam and I will wait outside. Or leave. And never come back. You know what's nice this time of year? The Dalek Asylum."

"I know you're scared, but this is good, it's in an enclosure. Behind glass. Won't be able to get out," Thirteen said, "Oswin. I'm about a hundred percent sure you don't get your Sphere crushed by a Boa Constictor." She sonicked the door to unlock it, Oswin getting a look at Thirteen's screwdriver for the first time. White and sleek-looking with a purple light. Drastically different from the screwdrivers of the other Doctors. Oswin would've wanted one in black. She wanted everything in black lately.

Trusting Thirteen, though, Oswin relented. She had no issue with Thirteen. She didn't know what it was about her, but she trusted her more or less straight away. She thought that Thirteen didn't seem like a liar - she'd sooner omit the truth than tell a lie, so much unlike her predecessor, and Clara was the one eternally at fault when it came to the pair of them. Oswin missed when it was just Clara and Eleven, when they were some model couple. Who were the model couples now? Surely not herself and Adam? The Ponds, probably. She'd go with that. Definitely the Ponds... Finally, though, she followed the Doctor into the Reptile House, the Doctor who switched off her torch at the worry of 'upsetting the livestock.'

"Okay, Doctor," Oswin said, feeling the heat of the enclosures on her, and she was glad that she didn't have a sense of smell, for once in her afterlife, "Take me through your plan. You find, say, a Korluk-inhabited Boa Constrictor, sealed in a glass enclosure, what do you do?"

"Might not be in the enclosure, might have done a _Harry Potter_. Although, I guess the snake doesn't break the glass in _Harry Potter_," Thirteen said, "It'll be strong, the glass might be weak, but the Korluk's old and probably clever - for a Korluk. Even if it's furious, it'll pick longevity over aggression."

"How long do Boa Constrictors live, then?"

"Like, forty years."

"Forty years!?" Oswin said, and then something nearby she couldn't see in the dark hissed and she jumped and may have whimpered. It was hot and pitch black and full of clicks and scrapes and hisses and other awful, bug-like noises from the live creatures fed to reptiles - crickets and whatnot. Mice.

"Relax! Forty years is totally not a long time in, like, reptile terms. Y'know what is? A hundred and seventy," the Doctor said.

"What the hell snake lives to a hundred and seventy!?" Oswin whispered hoarsely, not wanting to get snapped at again by something lurking in grimy, 1950s, mock-tropical enclosures.

"Well it's right through this door," Thirteen said, reading some sign nearby, but Oswin couldn't find the sign in time to find out what deathly, malevolent, vindictive creature would be lurking in the next room by the time the Doctor had dragged her through it by the elbow.

"I wish people would stop dragging me places. Everyone seems to do it. I might only have one leg, but I _can _walk, and I _do _have a sense of direction," she complained. Then Thirteen reached over to the wall, flipped a switch, and Oswin jumped. "What is _that?_"

"This is the Aldabra Giant Tortoise," the Doctor said, "This one's called Derek. He's about ninety, older than a lot of the things in here. He also has a Korluk infesting him, you see?" Thirteen said, and then she did something Oswin would consider ill-advised, and flipped the lights off and on again about thirty times, leaving them off, and then it became possible to see the orange glow around the tortoise for a few seconds, like when you stared into a light for too long and looked away and it was still burned into your retinas. "I'm pretty sure it can't hurt us."

"Right, so, what do we do now?" Oswin asked.

"Leave him alone. There are loads of Korluks inhabiting animals. This isn't out of the ordinary. In 2010, there was an octopus that could predict the winners of the football World Cup. I visited him before he died. That was a Korluk. Lots of animals are. Really, I just wanted to make sure it was safe, y'know? Don't want an innocent creature suffering because of _my_ wife. I'm sure she'll apologise profusely when we get back," the Doctor sighed, "C'mon. We can fast forward a couple years and check to see how Derek the Tortoise is doing."

"To think, Adam was so excited to take me to a zoo..."


	256. Nerd Flirts VII

_Oswin_

_Nerd Flirts VII_

"Do you know what I hate?" Oswin asked Jenny. They were sat on one of the sofas, like they had been the day before, Jenny staring off into space like she was thinking about something incredibly important by the time Oswin said down. Probably just melancholy about being grounded. Oswin, Clara, Thirteen and Adam Mitchell had just gotten back. Adam had said that he needed to go somewhere for fifteen minutes and she oughtn't tag along, and she got the vague feeling he was trying to surprise her with something, while Thirteen had said this or that about going to the garage, for whatever reason. As for Clara, she'd pissed off to her bedroom to think about her actions.

"No, what do you hate?" Jenny asked, so she was paying more attention than she seemed to be, if she'd actually listened to what Oswin was saying.

"People treating me like a child that can't look after itself," she said resentfully. Just an extension of her earlier irritation at being dragged around a lot by the various people in her life, like she was really so mentally ill she couldn't walk in a straight line.

"Oh my god," Jenny sat up at that, "I know exactly how you feel. I'm two-hundred and eight years old now, and I still get treated like I'm a baby. I've never even _been_ a baby, I was born this way. You know my dad had a grandkid by the time he was ninety? For a moment I thought you were gonna say you hate _me_."

"What? No, of course not. I really don't care that one time a few days ago you shagged _Other_ Clara," Oswin said, and thought she detected a vague air of awkwardness about Jenny for a moment, like maybe she'd shifted uncomfortably, but she pretended she hadn't seen it, "Why would I? Maybe it'll mean you stop trying to shag _me_."

"Maybe it will," she shrugged.

"It's a compliment, in a strange way. Clara doesn't care, either, she's too busy trying to slip it up your mother," Oswin said brashly, in no mood to try and filter anything she said. Rose and Amy, opposite, both made faces at that.

"I've noticed."

"Yeah, well, she has yet to succeed," Oswin said, "At least _one _of them has a sense of common decency." Oswin always liked that when the topic of 'decency' came up involving couples on the TARDIS, she could take the moral highground. She and Adam had never been told off for PDA, or inappropriate behaviour. In fact, often times all people saw them doing was talking quietly about video games or jokingly sparring, and there was really nothing to complain about.

"Oh, please," Amy, who was blatantly eavesdropping, interrupted, "The Doctor has no sense of common decency, and neither does his daughter." Jenny raised her eyebrows at that, and flexed her silver, robotic hand, but Oswin guessed she couldn't exactly argue. "Just look at what happened with Rose."

"Oi!" Rose argued. Most people were too scared to argue with Rose. Mainly because of her superstrength and ability to stop people from existing entirely. Apparently, Amy Pond was feeling brave.

"Oh, come on. The pair of you have stolen Oswin's room," Amy said, nodding at Oswin, "And that was like, almost three weeks ago." Them they started arguing, and though Oswin seemed to be the focal point of this argument, she quickly enough detached herself from it and resumed talking to Jenny, who was sitting on the sofa with her legs curled under her, leaning on the back of it and facing Oswin.

"Do you think I have a sense of common decency?" Jenny asked her, and she almost laughed.

"No. You're ridiculous. You slept with your stepmother from another dimension, and you're married to a man your dad hates. Well, I guess your dad doesn't _hate_ Jack, but he hates the notion of _you _with Jack," Oswin said, "And you can't blame Theodore for grounding you. You ought to make one of them teach you stuff. Time Lord stuff."

"I don't know if I can do any 'Time Lord stuff,'" she muttered, "I can barely even regenerate. Are you sure you don't hate me?"

"Sleep with who you like, as long as it's not my boyfriend it's not my problem," Oswin said.

"Speaking of your boyfriend," Jenny said, then she nodded at the door behind Oswin's head. Oswin looked around to see Adam Mitchell stepping through with a bag in his hand that looked like it contained takeaway. And suddenly she wasn't miffed he'd gone off without her. Takeaway was always a good thing - unless it contained seafood.

"Did you buy us dinner?" Rose asked him, and he stopped.

"If by 'us' you mean Oswin and I, then yes, I did buy us takeaway," he said.

"What about me?"

"C'mon Rose, don't be rude," Jack called from the table. Oswin thought she saw Jenny pull an annoyed face when her husband talked, and she seemed to be generally quite distant, if oddly calm. As though she were contemplating.

"Let's get out of here," Oswin said quietly to Adam before a stupid argument about Rose feeling pointlessly entitled to Adam's money.

"Well, Rose, maybe if you'd played your cards right, it could be _you_ dating the multimillionire," Adam retaliated to Rose, just as Oswin pushed him out of the room for fear of Rose doing something unforgiveable. When the door to the Bedroom Circle closed behind them, though, he just seemed amused at himself, and she stared at him with a look of shock, a hand on her hip. "What? You know she used to fancy me. She _could _be dating me."

"I don't want her to be dating you, _I'm_ dating you," she said, and he smiled, "So, what did you get?"

"I remembered something from the night we got together," he said, walking past her and opening the door to their room, holding it open for her, "I remember that you lost some bet that the people who went out that day had a boring time, then you found out that they found El Dorado and had to buy them Chinese food, so you came to complain at me about it, and then I said-"

"You said, 'As much as I love to listen to you talk, I'd rather hear you talk about us than takeaway,'" she said, smiling, then she winked and said, "Eidetic memory." (**Chapter Ref., 274**)

"And then we made out," he said.

"Yep. We did. So you thought you'd get Chinese food _now _to make up for me having to get it for everyone months ago?" she asked. He went to sit on the sofa.

"Switch the light on, would you?"

"We never switch the light on," she said, "I don't think I've ever had the light on in this room. It's always dark. It's bad for your eyes - and you wonder why you're colour blind." He gave her a pathetic look while getting food out of the bag.

"I was _born_ colour blind," he told her, "You know it's a dimmer switch? Put it on the lowest setting." She sighed, but went over and twisted the switch around.

"How come we have a dimmer switch?"

"Oh, 'we' have the dimmer switch?" he asked.

"Well it's _our _bedroom," she said, smiling quite widely (against her will) when she said that.

"I love you."

"I love you, too, even if you're sappy and pathetic and you don't have any friends and you live in the dark like a sad mole," she said.

"I think we have the dimmer switch because the TARDIS knows we _both_ live in the dark like sad moles. And you're sappy and pathetic, too." She sighed and went and sat down next to him after making sure the light was on the lowest possible setting.

"Are frogs reptiles?"

"No, babe, they're amphibians," he said, "Y'know, they live in and out of water?"

"_Oh._ Okay. Zoos are scary," she said, then she groaned loudly and let herself fall onto his shoulder, "I think I might kill my sister."

"Take her to the Museum of Natural History in New York and see if the falls off the t-rex, as well, and you needn't bother," he said, and she laughed, "What's wrong?"

"Gimme your glasses."

"Why?"

"I'm bored," she said, taking them off his face anyway and putting them on. For her and her hologram nature, they made everything go bright, vibrant colours, like a high-contrast photo filter, "Do I look cute?"

"The cutest. I mean, I can't really see colours properly, but I'm sure I'm right," he told her, passing her a tray full of something reddish she couldn't taste. All she knew was it was hot.

"I'm wearing nothing but black, you don't have any colour to see, Mitchell," she said.

"I guess so, now you don't wear red anymore like a conspicuous weirdo," he said, and she pouted at him.

"You're awful to me sometimes," she joked.

"I know, I'm just terrible. What's wrong, though?"

"I'm just exhausted, I've had a busy few days," she sighed, "..._I_ know. What's say you and I spend the whole day in tomorrow?"

"I dunno, Oswin. I have like, loads of friends and a really active social life and stuff, so, I don't know if I can take time out of my busy millionaire schedule to spend the day with you," he said.

"I know you're joking, but... It's been a bad week."

"Of course I'll spend the whole day lazing around in bed with you. I'll spend forever lazing around in bed with you if you only ask," he said, and she smiled.

"I was thinking about you being drunk earlier."

"Oh, god..."

"Do you remember the first time we went camping?"

"Yes, pretty sure I coerced you into dating me."

"You definitely did."

"Well, I tried to ask you _normally_ and you wouldn't budge! Not that I blame you now, but still. It's fine. Nowadays I have everything I've ever wanted. I didn't know what that was until I met you," he told her, "...Oswin, why've you been limping?"

"Huh?"

"For the last few days. Since the funeral. You've been limping," he said.

"...Ten asked me that... I don't know... Help me take this thing off..." Suddenly she felt trapped by her fake leg, and struggled for a moment to remove it, but felt a great deal of relief when she put it on the floor by the sofa, "I need a day away from my sister. Away from anything. Except you."

"Well, that's simple enough, I'm right here."

"I am sick of Clara, though."

"I told her she needs to talk to her husband some more. She's being a baby."

"She _is _being a baby. You know, at first at thought it would be kind of cool if you changed into an attractive girl and came back from the future, but it just seems like a lot of stress and ambiguous infidelity," she said, sighing.

"I just loved when you told her to keep her dick in her pants."

"Um, she _does _need to keep her dick in her pants. I can't even believe right now that she is the genetic blueprint the universe used to create _me_ \- I guess I'm a defective clone in more ways than my IQ of 352. Maybe I ought to call Flek and ask if Eyeball has any borderline rapist tendencies?" He nearly choked on his food.

"I'm sure that would be a highly educational conversation. Doesn't Eyeball hate you?"

"...Yes... Which is why I'd ask Flek. Maybe I'll try and manipulate her into sleeping with me dzddwhile I'm at it? Anyway, I was _talking _about when you were drunk that time we were camping."

"And I was _trying_ to change the subject."

"Do you really want to have twelve kids with me? That's a lot of kids," she said, and he looked the most embarrassed she'd ever seen him. Even more embarrassed than every time his little sister had said something really casually that implied she had a crush on Oswin. Which was _quite _embarrassed, "It just seems like a lot of work for me, is all."

"Hey, at least I didn't agree to marry me."

"Under the conditions that you didn't vomit I did! And you _did _vomit!"

"What if I hadn't vomited?"

"We would not be engaged. Now, you didn't get any drinks," she said, standing up and taking off his glasses, sliding them back onto his face for him because his hands were full, "So I'm gonna make tea."

"Could I have hot chocolate, if you're boiling the kettle?"

"Your wish is my command. Unless your wish is for us to get married and have twelve kids. That's stupid."


	257. Back In Time

**AN: This fic is a lot more derivative of _Red Dwarf_ than _Doctor Who_. Have a lot of you guys seen _Red Dwarf_? I don't know how big it is in other countries. If people don't know, it's a 1980s/1990s BBC science-fiction sitcom that if you like _Doctor Who _you will definitely like. Also, the line, 'wibbly wobbly timey wimy' (from _Blink_, a Moffat episode), and the 'mauve alert' (from _The Empty Child_, yet another Moffat-sode) are both from an episode of _Red Dwarf IV _called _Dimension Jump_.**

_DAY ONE-HUNDRED AND TWO_

_Rose_

_Back In Time_

"Do you know what's hilarious?" Rose asked the Doctor, standing in front of the open wardrobe with a towel wrapped around her body and another around her head, trying to decide what to wear. He was sat cross-legged on the bed behind her with a device of some sort - he was always tinkering with something. That, or he was reading.

"What?" he asked her.

"It's been about two bloody weeks since either of us stepped _foot _in Oswin's room," she said, "And _she_ doesn't even know it."

"Because she's glad of the excuse to move in with that boyfriend of hers," Ten answered, "They're quite good, don't you think?"

"Ooh, yeah, because that's what I do with my time, judge other couples," she said, and he laughed, then she sighed, "There are too many couples here."

"People fall in love, Rose, that's what happens."

"Well, maybe I wish they didn't. I'll tell you what, though," she said, turning around to face him, leaning on the side of the wardrobe, and he looked up from his gadget that reminded her of an oversized computer processor. He looked at her expectantly. "Mickey and Martha. Wouldn't've pegged that."

"I know!" he exclaimed in agreement of her disbelief, "Last I heard, she was engaged to a doctor called Tom Milligan. Think that might've been the day Jenny was born, actually. Would you say born?"

"No idea."

"Maybe I should ask her," he mused, "Mickey Smith and Martha Jones. Baffling, really. They never seem like a couple. Never see them talking. Does she talk to you about him?" He lifted up his device and dug his sonic screwdriver out from his coat pocket, hanging over the foot of the bed, sonicking it.

"Not really. Actually, not ever," she said. She'd never really noticed before. "Do you remember when it was just us?" He smiled.

"Course I do. Some of the best days of my life, obviously," he said.

"Do you ever miss it? When there was less people? When there was only one of you?" she asked, and he looked at her while he sonicked his thingamajig and didn't say anything for a good few moments. Then he stopped and thought for a moment.

"Honestly?" he asked, and she nodded, "I suppose I did get used to the quiet. Never thought I could get so lonely sometimes, though, living in close quarters with so many people."

"Imagine of we had flats. A block of flats. All of us with a different one. Different kitchen, different living room. Imagine how many less arguments there'd be?" she said.

"Don't be giving the TARDIS any ideas. And I like the way we all live together! Reminds me of students. I love students."

"I've never been a student."

"You'd've been a _great _student, Rose! All that binge drinking? Sleeping around?"

"Well, binge drinking and sleeping around's always been more Clara's scene," she said, "Sometimes I wish thinks were back like they were. Nothing against the others, I just... Miss the intimacy."

"We have plenty of intimacy."

"You know what I mean. You can't go anywhere without people tagging along nowadays," she said, "What're you building?"

"Trying to build a new K-9 unit."

"Oh yeah?" she asked, grinning, "You'll be hard done by to keep it out of the hands of the other Doctors."

"Well. He'll be our secret, won't he? Anyway, if you want us to be alone somewhere, all we have to do is sneak out, like a couple of teenagers," he said wryly, and she went and sat down next to her, both of them beaming.

"Times like this I want to forget about everybody else on this bloody ship," she said, reaching up and stroking his hair, "So. Couple of teenagers? Out through the window?"

"I'll have you back by eleven, Rose Tyler," he said, kissing her.

"Better make it midnight," she kissed him back.

* * *

Sneaking around with the Doctor made her feel like she was nineteen all over again. In actuality, she was twenty-seven, roughly. She was probably a good few years older than that, into her thirties, even, but she didn't want to think about that. There was a reason she didn't try to count how long she'd spent on the TARDIS. She'd heard Amy and Rory talking about the fact they guessed they'd travelled with the Doctor for about a decade, once. It didn't matter, anyway - ever since the Bad Wolf abilities within her had been unlocked, she knew for a fact she'd stopped ageing. Time was irrelevant to her.

The TARDIS disappeared behind them about half an hour after they'd decided to leave, leaving the Tenth Doctor and Rose stranded in a woods on a hot, spring day, luscious grass and bluebells and snowdrops crawling around the meadow they'd materialised in. The sun beat above in a bright, blue sky, and she could hear birdsong, and saw some flowers she thought she'd never seen before. It was a beautiful day, though. Almost a paradise.

"Where are we?" she asked, stepping onto the grass carefully. She couldn't tell if it had ever been trodden on before, not by human feet, and she felt like she would were she stepping into a deep layer of fresh snow in February, the whole city silent, London refusing to go on because of the existence of seasonal changes. You'd think they'd get used to something that happened every year, but there never _did _seem to be enough grit.

"France, I think," he said, "Maybe the South of France. Weather's gorgeous, don't you think?"

"Mmm. What's in France, though?"

"Lots of things!" he protested. He hadn't brought his coat with him, but she'd seen him put his screwdriver into his pocket. That meant this was no random location - he had something to show her.

"Like what?"

"Paris!" he said.

"Well we're not in Paris, are we?" she questioned, and he frowned, and sniffed very loudly.

"Should be in Paris. Smells like Paris. Parisian countryside. 1980s. Hmm. Something funny's going on..." he mused. _1287 _suddenly popped into her head - the time vortex dropping her hints.

"Somebody's messed the dates up," she told him, smirking.

"I have not messed the dates up! Paris just looks... Different. The Eiffel Tower could very well be right through these trees, I'll have you know," he said, disgruntled, going to peer around a tree, then he met her gaze and said, "Well, maybe it's that way."

"Or maybe it's 1287?"

"It's not!"

"It is. It definitely is. The time vortex told me so," she said.

"Well tell the time vortex to shut up, it's ruining my imagine. Now, I'm still very sure that there must be _something _around here. Can't just be empty, there must be-" There was the sound of a horn being blown from somewhere around them, and then the sound of birds as they flew away and momentarily blotted out the sun with their wings as they vanished in fright.

"Doctor, what was that?"

"Sounds like a hunt. I've never liked hunts. Always seemed unfair. Always me getting hunted, as well, that might have something to do with it... Still. Only a certain sort of people would go blowing horns in forests like that."

"Gay people."

"What? No! Well, _yes_, but, no! Knights."


	258. Here Come The Cavalry

**AN: In ****_The Time Traveler's Wife_****, there's this trope running through that the main character met his wife while she was a child and they were already married to each other, yet there's also the circularity of this arguably being the reason they meet and fall in love so quickly eventually in the present. In Moffat Who, this trope is so interwoven it's now a cliché, if anybody would like me to point out some more stolen material for them. Thing is, that's what happens with Ten and Madame de Pompadour in ****_The Girl in the Fireplace_****, she grows up and falls in love with him after waiting for him for her whole life because he basically imprinted himself on her when she was a child. And then again, that happens with Eleven and Amy. All this waiting around for mysterious, enigmatic older men to visit. Arguably, it happens with Eleven and River, but don't actually quote me on that. And then it happens with Eleven and Clara in ****_The Rings of Akhaten_****. And ****_then_**** it happens with Danny/Rupert and Clara in ****_Listen_****, and also in that episode it's reversed and happens with ****_Clara_**** and Twelve, when he's a kid on Gallifrey. It's a bit odd, don't you think? Kind of pedo-y.**

_Rose_

_Here Come The Cavalry_

Rose had never lost her taste for adventure. Living stuck on Earth for four years had bored her so much she felt like her brain had been scooped out of her skull, even with the occasional distractions of parallel universe Torchwood to keep her mildly entertained, and the presence of Tentoo. But now it was like, in some substantially immoral way, her life had come back to what it had been before, with the addition of the fifteen third-wheels they were trapped in close quarters with. In some ways, though, it was better, even if it did work strangely. She couldn't shake the feeling that everyone would get tired one day and go their separate ways, and Thirteen's presence only went further to exacerbate that idea, because Thirteen made it seem like there were very few of them on the TARDIS in her future, but equally, she didn't give off the impression that there had been mass tragedies. Who knew what might happen?

"Medieval hunt? Well doesn't that spoil our date," Rose said sarcastically, Ten looking around as though he could spot the source of the horn, despite how thick the trees grew once they escaped from their meadow.

"_Date_? Honestly, Rose, you don't have to start with the lingo," he said, looking like he'd just bitten into a bar of soap and the taste had repulsed him, and she laughed. She didn't like calling any of their outings 'dates', either.

"I'm kidding, if there's one thing that I _won't_ be annoyed by, it's a bunch of handsome blokes on horses in shining armour," she said, walking after him as he started to weave through trees, not wanting to lose him. He always had a habit of wandering off and then blaming her, like it was her fault she'd gotten lost in some unknown time. She was reminded distinctly of their trip to New Earth where she'd got stuck in the lift going to the basement and he hadn't even come looking for her, just left her to get her body swapped with the late Cassandra O'Brian.

"Oi! I had a horse once. A white horse, and everything, came crashing through a window and saved Madame de Pompadour from getting her head chopped off by a load of clockwork aristocrats," the Doctor told her, grinning to himself at this memory, which left Rose with just as much of a bitter taste in her mouth as her mentioning the word 'date' had left in _his_ moments ago.

"Yeah, and then you left me to hang around with Mickey for all eternity," she added bitterly.

"Hey! I came back. I fixed the fireplace."

"You still up and left me for whatever her name was," she said, "How many other women have you had, then?"

"How many have I _what_? I completely object to you implying that I use my abilities as a time traveller for the nefarious purpose of sleeping with a lot of women!" he argued.

"I didn't mean it like that. There was that Christina a few weeks ago, I remember her," Rose said coolly, and he spluttered something for a minute, "Then who else? Martha?"

"No!" _Astrid_, whispered the time vortex.

"Astrid?" she questioned, and he stopped and looked back at her with an indecipherable expression. Maybe pain. But she hadn't asked it smugly. The time vortex sent a particular sort of feeling with it, like when you smelt something that sent you into a freefall of nostalgia, and this feeling was death. She knew before she said that whoever this girl was, she'd died, and so she asked appropriately. Or, as appropriately as one might ask their current whatever-he-was about someone who was, to put it simply, a dead ex.

"She was… She died…" he said a little hollowly, standing still. She nearly walked into him, and jumped on the opportunity this closeness gave her to drag him down to her level somewhat and hug him tightly, the way the Doctor needed to be hugged, the way people rarely had hugged him while she'd been… Absent. Elsewhere. They didn't talk about that. She would feel immeasurable guilt if her thoughts strayed in that direction for too long.

"Anyway, back to these knights, then?" she said, keeping her hands on his shoulders and smiling.

"Oh, right, yes…"

"I didn't know they had knights in France."

"Of course they did, lots of Arthurian myths stem originally from France. I'm sure Clara could talk to you for _hours_ about it," he said, coming back to himself. She linked arms with him as they carried on through the tree trunks, now hearing the distant sounds of shouting and horse hooves on grass and stone.

"Oh, that's the first thing I want in my life, lectures on literature from Clara Oswald," Rose grumbled, "Can we not have a Clara-free day? I don't understand why everybody is so obsessed with her. It just seems like half the people on the crew are dating or shagging Clara in various forms."

"Well, she's…" Ten began, then stopped, and Rose stopped, meaning he was forced to a halt like he'd just walked into a wall, because there was no way he was getting out of her superstrong grasp and escaping her next line of questioning.

"She's what?" Rose asked.

"She's, um… Well, I mean… Her sister's…"

"Oh, her sister as well? You're after both of them, are you?"

"No, Rose, that's not-"

"You're as bad as your daughter."

"Excuse you, we put a stop to all that, my future self and I. She's grounded. Until further notice," Ten said. Rose didn't bother to remind the Tenth Doctor that Jenny possessed a modified time machine of her own creation out of a stolen Messaline ship, the same ship she'd used to organise the Second Wedding of Eleven and Clara months ago, now. In fact, she didn't remind anybody of that information. Rose had a lot of information she didn't tell people stored in her head, lots of things she didn't need to know. As a result, she was becoming a very guarded person.

"What were you going to say, though?"

"Hmm?" he asked, sliding his arm out of hers without having to pull on it, because if he tried that, he might end up dislocating his elbow.

"About Clara. Come on. What word were you going to use? She's..?"

"She's… A woman."

"Oh, because I hadn't noticed that," Rose said, walking very slowly towards him, and he seemed to be attempting to get away from her. Years ago, he wouldn't have cowered from her. Maybe she should flash her eyes gold at him to really freak him out? She wasn't sure he understood yet that she wasn't the puppet of time-space, time-space was the puppet of _her_, and a puppet she was hard-done by not to abuse.

"I just mean that Clara's… A very… She's… Nice."

"'Nice'? If a bloke called me nice I'd up and leave," Rose said sharply, "If you think she's nice, I'd hate to hear what you think of Amy."

"Well, she's just Amy, really, isn't she?"

"You don't have a thing for gingers, then? Brunettes are more your type?" She was still approaching him, and then he tripped over a log on the floor and ended up on his back on the ground, the sun dappling his blue suit spectacularly in amongst the wild flowers and the hot, spring blossoms fallen from the trees.

"You're a blonde."

"Is it just brown eyes, then?"

"_You're_ my type, Rose," he said, trying desperately just to get her to stop asking him to describe Clara. What descriptor _was_ he going to use, though? Not 'nice.' She'd heard Eleven call Clara 'nice' once. She'd lost it. Rose might lose it, too. _Nice_. The word made her feel sick in some ways.

She didn't believe the Doctor saying that for a second, and thought she might have to coerce the time vortex into letting her see all the women Ten had been in cahoots with in her absence to try and figure out if they had any mutual characteristics he seemed to adore, whether he knew it or not. That might be going a bit too far, though… But she couldn't go any further down her line of inquiry, because at that moment, a cluster of men on horseback burst through the trees with drawn swords, a horn, and bows and arrows prepped for firing and aimed on her as though she were some wicked, woodland temptress. What did they call those? Nymphs? All of the horses were brown except for two, and there were maybe six. That of the one she deemed to be the leader, with no weapons, was white. That of his second-in-command, a dark haired, surly looking man without a helmet and the only one wielding a mace, was black.

"In literature the colour of the horses would symbolise who's good and who's bad," Ten told her, though they must look awfully odd, him commenting on literature while lying at her mercy in the grass.

"Clara tell you that?" Rose snapped at him.

"No, Westerns. You know. Sheriff's always got a white hat on. Baddy always has a black hat. Baddy always walks left to right," he said, getting to his feet and brushing himself down. Their clothes probably made them look odd, too. Suits didn't generally exist in 1287, Rose guessed, "I'm a big fan of Clint Eastwood."

"Right, and when you say 'Clint Eastwood,' do you mean actual Westerns, or do you mean _Back To The Future: Part III_? Which you _have_ made me watch. Say, doesn't it have a teacher called Clara in it?" Rose said, and he glared at her.

"Would you stop?"

"I think that it's in my best interests to know if you're having romantic feelings for another woman that we live with. She's an evil creature, that Clara," Rose added, glancing at the confused knights (who really were in armour) when she added, for dramatic effect, "She's a succubus."

"She's not a succubus!"

"Bet she is. You know, like a vampire," Rose said, "I can see her being a vampire."

"Why do you say vampire? Of all the things." Rose paused. She didn't know why she said vampire, or why that was a word she associated with Clara Oswald. They both seemed to mutually feel they'd been rude enough to their 'guests,' though, and Ten finally gave up his losing battle with Rose and turned to the knights.

"Hello," he said, grinning, "I'm the Doctor. Anything I can do to help you sirs?"

"What are you doing in these woods?" the knight with the mace questioned him. If they _were_ knights. Did they have a king? Rose didn't know, but she thought France only had one king. What were the subsidiaries of kings in Thirteenth Century France? "These woods belong to the Knights Templar, and the Master Guillaume de Mallay." He nodded at the knight on the white horse. Knights Templar?

"Oh, Templars?" Ten said, "Well, you see, I'm a knight myself. Just been away on some Crusades, rescued this poor girl and made her my wife." Rose guessed that 'wife' lie was supposed to get back on her good side. It sort of worked, too. Ten took out his psychic paper and held it up, "You see?" The knights all looked at this and then all did some kind of odd salute, which puzzled and annoyed the Doctor, and Rose just tried to be polite in the background.

"What?" she whispered to the Doctor, "Who do they think you are..?"

"One of them, I reckon," he said, glancing at the paper, "Oh… Oh, erm… Says I'm some sort of brave warrior. The pride and joy of the late Henri de Faverham, last Templar Master of England…"

"Master Guillaume will lay a feast immediately for your arrival, since you were sent here in such great haste to aid with our problem," said the knight on the black horse. The one on the white horse, silent and helmeted, presumably Master Guillaume, nodded along.

"Problem..?"

"Do you not know?"

"I've, um… Well… They wanted me to hear it from the source, you know? Come down here, investigate for myself, get in all the nooks and crannies," Ten said, and Rose gave him a look he ignored, and all the knights seemed, again, perplexed.

"The problem of the disappearances."


	259. The New Salem I

**AN: Halloween chapter is at over 14,000 words already (what with me writing it in the background and all that). Ridiculous stuff, if I'm honest. It's really good though. ****_Really_**** good. Makes up for the fact I probably won't be doing anything Christmassy this year, so I'll do a big Halloween. Also, would you guys be down for a new console room? For more or less the whole fic the console room has been the Eleventh Doctor's first one, so how about I make up my own?**

_Rose_

_The New Salem I_

As interesting as medieval feasts often sounded in the grand scheme of things, what with them having over a dozen courses and every meat you could possibly imagine cooked every which way in a whole number of marinades and glazes and sauces, she didn't want to know the particulars of how poor personal hygiene was in the 1200s. That was why, when offered food, she politely declined everything except bread (as it happened, so did the Doctor, after he'd blagged his way into borrowing a horse from one of the knights and they'd rode back together, it seemed they'd more or less finished with their hunt), and even then she merely broke off little chunks and dropped it on the floor. She'd rather not suffer from an outbreak of the plague, or dysentery.

All she'd learnt so far was that the castles belonging to French knights were very loud and very raucous and everybody tended to be very drunk and kept asking her questions about Britain, to which her default response was always just to complain about the weather. Still, though, they had heard nothing of these disappearances as promised, and it got to the point where she kept nudging the Doctor under the table next to her to try and make him talk to them. _He_ actually seemed to be enjoying himself, but she hadn't had to deal with this level of rowdy men getting drunk in the middle of the day since she'd moved away from a working class London estate.

"Doctor…" she whispered at him, almost a warning. She knew he had food in his coat pockets, food she was particularly inclined to eat, but food that would definitely be out of place in their current setting. She needed to get him alone, and then steal his jelly-babies. Finally, he stopped listening to their strange stories about rescuing lots of damsels in distress (_eurgh_, she thought), and called for quiet as politely as he could. They didn't seem to care that much about manners, though.

"There isn't a lot to tell, Sir Doctor," said the one who'd been on the black horse, who seemed to be some Lancelot-type character. Well, Rose didn't know a lot about knights. She maybe knew three. But he seemed more heroic than this leader of theirs, "Sir Olivier here has banished the foul creature from whence it came."

"Creature?" the Doctor asked, leaning forwards. Sir Olivier wasn't a knight who had been out with them, he was some brown haired, quite weak looking fellow, but then, so was the Doctor. He hadn't been taking part in any of the merrymaking at all, he'd been sat there looking haunted, sallow, with circles around his eyes.

"The Soul-Eater," Olivier croaked. He wasn't meeting the Doctor's eyes, "I held it back with a mixture of sage and mistletoe and heliotrope."

"Sage? Isn't sage used in demonic rites?" Rose said, something she'd learnt from Thirteen last week.

"Supposedly carries healing, cleansing properties. No scientific evidence for any of that mumbo-jumbo, of course," Ten told her curtly, "Mistletoe, obviously used to control werewolves, you remember that? But _that_ was a placebo, the wolf only _thought_ something bad would happen to it. Still, I wonder why they picket mistletoe?"

"What about the other one?" Rose asked him, and people were listening to the Doctor now, because he was talking quite quickly and saying things they might not understand. 'Mumbo-jumbo,' for instance, probably didn't have a counterpart in whatever variation of French was being spoken in 1287.

"Heliotrope doesn't have any supernatural attachments, as far as I'm aware," Ten said, then he stared around at blank, florid faces, "Sorry, I _am_ an expert in these matters of great mystery and unnaturalness, after all. Do go on. You were at the part with the Soul-Eater?"

"I banished it," said Olivier, "With my concoction. Yet I remain taunted by the knowledge of the impermanence of such a feat, for the thing declared that in seven centuries it would return and wreak its revenge by stealing not just the souls of many a-virgin, but the souls of anyone who may dare to cross its path."

"Right, and this Soul-Eater, what exactly did it do?"

"Consumed souls," said Olivier.

"Well, yes, I gathered that part, but… You said disappearances," he said to the knight who had introduced Olivier.

"Sir Renaud was speaking about the disappearances of the souls, of course," said Olivier. So that was who the knight on the black horse was. Sir Renaud.

"Alright then… but when you found these, erm, many virgins, what did they seem to be like..? How did you know they had their souls taken?"

"Why, sir, their eyes were as white as the moon and they uttered not a word, yet their hearts still beat and their lungs still rose and their cheeks still blossomed and flourished," Olivier said, "You have to understand, sir, it was the kindest thing to do…"

"Mercy killings," said Renaud.

"You _killed_ them!?" Ten exclaimed, suddenly getting angry.

"What would you have had us do!? We tried to feed them, but the poor girls wouldn't consume a thing, they simply couldn't, deprived of all their senses. Would you have us allow them to waste away in our dungeons out of pure cruelty? There was no life in these soulless creatures to preserve, the Soul-Eater stole it from them," Renaud argued.

"Sounds like they were brain dead," Rose whispered, "Or in comas."

"They were euthanised…" Ten frowned, and then seemed to stop being so mad. Maybe in a thousand years being in a coma was, most definitely, not grounds for euthanasia, but the knights were quite right to say there wasn't an awful lot they could do for them in this century. No IV drips or colostomy bags or catheters. It really _was_ the kindest thing to do, "Did you say seven centuries?" Olivier nodded.

"What happens in seven hundred-" Rose began to ask him, but was cut off by something happening to her that rarely happened – a full-on _vision_ from the time vortex, draped in gold and flashing before her eyes, flickering like it was stained on cellulite, and then, robotically, she said aloud: "_March 6__th__ 1987: The New Plague of Versailles, four victims, service station_." Then, with a gasp, she returned, coughing a little, to the present (well, sort of).

"Rose? Rose, are you okay? What did you see?" Ten asked, fawning over her straight away, holding her head in his hands. She was a little dazed, and he kissed her forehead while she tried to remember what she'd just said.

"That woman is a witch!" yelled Renaud.

"What!?" Ten exclaimed, and then swords were drawn.

"She speaks the language of the sirens, designed to lure men in with her eyes of treasure-colour," Renaud continued. So she'd been right in her mild dislike of him. Then she made the fatal mistake of looking over at him, "And now! Look! They have changed to a shade of deepest lavender from their earlier colour of the earth! That brown mystique is vanished by the treacherous purple of witchcraft! And you, sir, are her victim!"

"She's… She's a soothsayer!" Ten began, "You know, she… Says sooths."

"I'm the soothiest of all the sayers," Rose added.

"How can you trust a woman who changes her eyes so often? It is inhuman, good Doctor!" Olivier shouted now, and Rose got the distinct feeling they were about to be murdered, and as the Doctor stood up, so did she.

"D'you know what else is inhuman?" she asked, smiling a little.

And then the world melted around in them in shades of gold, like a photograph burning at the edges and twisting until it was a malformed, bubbling mess of ink and paper. At that point, it stretched itself back out again like elastic, and the night time grew around them and the cold sank down like an icy blanket, and she was immediately deafened by the sound of hurtling traffic and car horns and they both stumbled, and slipped, and tumbled down a short hill into some mud.

"…Sorry about that," Rose apologised, "It's not normally so bumpy. Christ, seven-hundred years doesn't half take it out of you. That's what I get for following visions, eh?" she said as the Doctor, panting somewhat, struggled to help her to her feet.

"I forgot you could do that," he gasped, trying to suck up more air than was physically possible. She bend double and held her knees, a headache prickling behind her eyes.

"Well, I try not to, generally," Rose said, "Tricky to control. Only did it then because I had the vision for, you know, guidance. Following it. The time vortex wanted us to come here."

"Where's 'here'?"

"Versailles. Or, outside of it. Edge of some motorway," she said, standing up straight and having to speak fully, blinking against the harshness of the crescent moon and the headlights in the drizzle around them.

"You said the 'new plague of Versailles,'" Ten reminded her.

"Yep. New plague… Four dead, or something."

"Service station. Like…"

"That service station there," Ten said. They'd fallen into a ditch just off the side of whatever road it was, Rose confused for a moment by the cars driving on the other side of the road to what she was used to, "You said March 6th, but it's not March, it's February." He was right.

"It's in flux," Rose frowned, "I can see it, like you can."

"What, really?" he asked, shocked, worried, yet impressed, all at once.

"Yeah, _really_," she said, shaking her head a little, "Four victims… We'll have to stop it. Whatever 'it' is. This Soul-Eater. Because I'll bet you anything this isn't some disease making people turn into vegetables at all."

"Well, you know what they say. Five fruit and veg a day."

"Very funny. Do they have Premier Inn in France in the 1980s?"


	260. Another Girl Another Planet II

**AN: In this chapter we have discussions about a play that is actually taught as part of the GCSE syllabus, unlike _Pride and Prejudice_, and as much as I adore Jane Austen (maybe not to the extent that Clara Oswald supposedly "adores" Jane Austen, if you know what I mean), they just don't teach _Pride and Prejudice_ at GCSE-level, which is the level Clara teaches. I'm pretty sure they only have her teach that book because Jenna Coleman played Lydia Bennet in _Death Comes to Pemberly_ anyway, but I digress.**

_Jenny_

_Another Girl Another Planet II_

"Are we alright?" Jack asked her. _No_, was the answer she wanted to give. No, they weren't. No, they never had been. No, they never would be. Because sleeping together one night while she was probably drunk and then suddenly being known as Jack's girlfriend was exactly what she wanted, because a proposal with a Hula Hoop she just felt too bad about to ignore was how she wanted to bind herself to another person. It was a casual fling of interminable, tortuous length. It had just been easy. Simple. Obvious. But it didn't seem simple anymore, now that she looked at them.

"Why wouldn't we be?" Jenny said, smiling, lying. She was watching mindless dating shows from the Thirty-Something Century, streamed to the holobox in the corner of the room, sitting cross-legged with an empty tub of ice-cream between her hands. When she looked at her left hand and saw there were no rings on it at all, no wedding ring, no nothing, she couldn't tell what she felt. Sometimes she thought she felt nothing, no sensation, like when she looked at her right hand instead and saw its smooth, robotic features.

"You sure?"

"Sure I'm sure."

"Nothing wrong?"

"I'm still grounded, that's what's wrong," she muttered, half a lie. But Jack left then, left to go sit in Nerve Centre and feast on whatever gossip was going around with the girls. Jenny didn't know how they kept thinking of things to talk about, especially since they just talked about whoever wasn't in the room at any given time. It was shocking to think none of them were too wise about what was said about them when they were gone.

When her phone rang, she answered it languidly without looking at the screen, letting go of the ice-cream tub and rubbing one of her eyes, yawning a little when she picked up.

"_Hi,_" Clara said, but Jenny was yawning for too long to say anything back, "_Oh my god, did I wake you up?_"

"No," she answered, "Not at all. I'm just bored. It's, like, midday."

"_You're clever, right?_"

"Huh?"

"_Clever. You're clever. I mean, you're a Time Lord, so you must be some sort of genius_," Beta Clara said, and Jenny just frowned and switched off the holobox, only then noticing that the thing hadn't even had the sound turned on, when the ringing silence remained. She slumped down on one hand.

"Yeah, I suppose," Jenny answered.

"_Good, I need help_."

"If it's genius-help you need, I can go across the hall and get Oswin for you?" she suggested.

"_What? No, you have to come over._"

"…Hang on, what kind of call is this? Is this a sex call, or what?" she asked.

"_I just need help marking some dreadful controlled assessment pieces I just got from Year 10_," Clara answered.

"I could get Clara to talk to if it's English you need help with." She really couldn't go get Alpha Clara, _or_ Oswin, because she was sure that those two knowing about this secret arrangement Jenny was partaking in would be a terrible happening.

"_What's up? How come you don't want to come round?_"

"It isn't that," she said, she _did_ want to come round, she wouldn't even mind reading through the atrocious pieces of work done by whatever raucous group of adolescents Clara taught on a daily basis. And along with that, if Jack came back any time soon, she might have to talk to him, and she didn't really want to.

"_Something wrong?_"

"Nothing that isn't always wrong…"

"_Doesn't sound like you, being negative._"

"Well… Maybe I'll tell you about it. What's the date and the time?"

"_October 11th. 2015. It's, like, just gone __eight o'clock__. If you set your ship for quarter past_."

"Eight at night?"

"_Yeah._"

* * *

"I haven't actually read _An Inspector Calls_, you know," Jenny told Clara about half an hour later, sitting on her living room floor with a stack of paper in front of them, Clara making comments in her teacher-voice, "You ought to get some fake reading glasses. Then you'll look like a proper teacher." Clara looked up from her paper and raised an eyebrow, "And you'd look cute." She smiled.

"Urgh, I'm gonna have to go over the idea of the Inspector being Priestly's political mouthpiece and give some more background of the socio-polticial climate at the start of the Twentieth Century..." she said, making some crossings out. Jenny wasn't really doing an awful lot. So far, she'd made them both tea, and she was leaning on the sofa.

"I can always take us out for a spin in my ship to the start of the Twentieth Century and you can learn _all _about the socio-political climate?"

"It may shock you to hear me say I'm not one for neglecting my work duties with time travel," Clara said.

"God, you're so boring. And bored. How bored do you have to be to call over a girl you only keep around to fuck just to talk to?" Jenny said.

"That's a naughty word, Jenny. You're setting a bad example."

"...To who..? _You_? Clara Oswald, _you _are the girl who _taught _me to say such 'naughty words.' You and Oswin." Clara didn't answer that, the sentence she'd just read distracted her.

"Oh, look at this one going on calling her a slut for becoming a prostitute. My god, she did not 'get what was coming to her.' The poor woman kills herself, you know," she told Jenny, who hadn't read the play at all. She wasn't sure she wanted to. It sounded depressing. "You're so lucky you never have to deal with bloody hormonal teenage boys."

"Oh yeah? Why? Do they all fancy you?" Jenny teased, "If you were my English teacher I'd totally fancy you. I'm a teenager by Gallifreyan standards, you know."

"_Please_ do not say things like that, makes me feel like a pervert," Clara said

"It actually isn't true, anyway. I'm 208. That's an adult. Dad just likes to _say _I'm a teenager so that he doesn't have to acknowledge I'm ever genuinely upset about something and he can put it down to an imaginary set of human 'hormones' I don't have, what with me not being a human," Jenny told her.

"Not very nice of him. Urgh. You have no clue how often I have to tell these boys not to say 'faggot'. It's ridiculous. What part of 'that's a homophobic slur' do they not understand?"

"It's kind of true thought."

"What is?"

"That you're, you know."

"…They weren't calling _me_ a faggot! They were calling each other it. Oh, look at this sentence, 'Sheila and Gerald rekindle their love at the end of the play despite the fate of Eva Smith.' Clearly _somebody_ hasn't read the play, because they don't rekindle any kind of love," Clara complained, and Jenny laughed at her a little.

"You're having lots of fun there."

"Trust me, there are plenty of things I'd much rather be doing."

"Me, for instance?" she toyed, winking when Clara looked at her.

"Exactly, that's why you're here, my reward for when I finish this marking." Jenny fake-gasped.

"That is some very heinous sexual objectification, Clara Oswald," she said accusingly, pouting, and Clara laughed and threw the cushion she'd been leaning on at Jenny, who caught it and threw it back.

"Do they fancy you, though?" Jenny asked a few minutes later.

"Do a bunch of quite disgusting, lower-set fourteen year old boys fancy me?" Clara asked.

"Or the girls."

"…I'm really not answering that question. As a teacher, it isn't something you like to think about. Though they do try to get away with not doing work by complimenting me…"

"Does it work?" Jenny asked.

"Will you just correct that kid's grammar?" Clara ordered her.

"Well, I _could_, but you're _so pretty_ it's distracting me considerably, _Miss Oswald_."

"You are going to make me vomit. Not that kind of complimenting. That kind of complimenting warrants them getting moved out of my class. And yes, that has happened. Twice. Terrible business."

"Seriously?" Jenny questioned, and she nodded, "Do you think they ever, you know?" Clara looked up again, and sighed.

"What?"

"_You know_."

"I don't."

"Do you think they ever, _you know_… While thinking about you."

"Do what while thinking about me?" Clara questioned. Jenny thought for a moment, then made a repulsive mime she'd seen loads of humans make that involved jerking her hand back and forth in mid-air, and Clara gasped then, but not a fake gasp, a genuine one, out of legitimate repulsion. "That's disgusting!"

"I bet they do," Jenny said, grinning and leaning towards her, moving the paper off her lap onto the coffee table, keeping Clara's gaze, "One of them probably is right now, at this very moment," Jenny said, and Clara tried to swat her in the face with the cushion again, but Jenny held up her arms in defence and batted it away, "Seriously, I bet they are! Fantasising about you. In all years. All genders. Can't get enough of you." As Jenny said this, trying to piss her off to some ridiculous extent, Clara kept trying to hit her with the pillow, kneeling. As she brought it down on Jenny's head though, she made the tactful move of grabbing the girl's right foot at the same time and wrenching her forwards across the floor, and then tossing the pillow and letting herself fall so she had hands either side of Jenny's head, on top of her, Jenny laughing still.

"Are you gonna stop?"

"Are you gonna give me detention if I don't?"

"You're so awful."

"I'm just saying, if _I_ was you student, I would _totally_ mastur-" Clara cut off her air and her sentence by pressing their lips together, and Jenny obligingly kissed her back, finding her waist with one hand and the side of her face with the other, half sitting up herself.

"Will you stop yet?" Clara pulled away, propped up just out of Jenny's reach. There wasn't room on the floor between Clara's sofa and the coffee table for her to do what she'd usually do in this situation, which would be to roll them over so that _she_ was the one on top.

"Aren't you gonna get in trouble with yourself if you eat dessert before finishing your main course?"

"Main course is disgusting, I want something sweet."

"Well you're in luck, because I just ate an entire tub of chocolate ice-cream earlier."

"I can taste that. Something _hot_, though. But maybe you should tell me what's wrong first?"

"You never usually seem to have enough willpower to stop yourself kissing a girl, Clara," Jenny quipped, not wanting Clara to try and shrink her.

"Tell that to Jane Austen," Clara said, then, to Jenny's great discomfort, she actually sat back up and went to sort out the paper from where she'd knocked it all minutes ago in their 'fight', "It's not the _stopping_ kissing the girl, it's the _not kissing the girl in the first place_ that's tricky. Seriously though, what's up? You're distracting yourself with me."

"Maybe I'm always distracting myself with you?"

"I thought I was more than a distraction. A fun hobby, maybe. A recreational activity. Why won't you tell me?"

"Because it's about Jack."

"What's he done? Does he mind about this? I thought you said he didn't mind..?" Clara asked carefully.

"He doesn't mind. That's the thing. _He_ asked _me_ to marry him when we weren't even together, we were broken up. It was a spur-of-the-moment thing. Look at this, I don't even have a _ring_," Jenny held up her hand to show Clara, "He proposed with a _Hula Hoop_."

"What flavour Hula Hoop was it?"

"Cheese &amp; Onion."

"Not so bad – could've been Sweet Chilli." Jenny smiled, Clara moving some things out of the way so that she could sit next to Jenny, both of them leaning against the sofa, Clara watching her intently, with concern.

"It's the fact he doesn't care at all that bugs me, because he should care, if he asked me to marry him… I think he just did it so he could say that he married the Doctor's daughter. That's not why you're sleeping with me, is it? Bragging rights?"

"God, no! Who am I going to brag to? Your father? No thank you. He doesn't even know that I've ever properly spoken to you. He hasn't actually got a clue I slept with you that time on the TARDIS, I rushed him out before anyone could tell him. And boy, were they trying to tell him," Clara explained, "He doesn't know. Everybody else thinks you're the temporary caretaker's daughter, or they would if I told them, what's that to brag about? Shagging the caretaker's daughter?" She felt some kind of relief when she heard Clara say that. "Why'd you even get with him, anyway?"

"Like… I don't know. To piss off my dad. It was funny to start with, but it's like… We're not husband and wife. We were barely boyfriend or girlfriend. We're just friends with benefits who live together," she said resentfully, "And since we got 'married'," she did air quotation marks with her fingers, "It just feels like… A sham."

"Yeah, but, _we're_ friends with benefits."

"We're not trying to be something else, though," Jenny explained, "Jack and I are. Started calling me 'wifey' _just_ to piss off Eleven, since that's what he calls Other You. I mean… We _are_ friends, but… I swear, sometimes it just seems like he's using me. There are plenty of other people he could go and have a fake-relationship with, doesn't have to be me. That's why I killed him so much."

"Um, sorry?"

"Well, he tried to sleep with this hologram clone of me Oswin made because she wanted to show everybody how awful it was having a clone following you around all day who's like you but 'better', since that's what they all did to Other Clara with her, even though they're friends now – I mean, Oswin _did_ slash her face open one time-" Clara winced here, "And because of that I broke up with him and we ended up on these massive tour buses on this planet called Preyonov and I killed him about six times over the course of a few days. Then two weeks later we're suddenly married? I don't know."

"Don't you live with him? I mean, not live with him, like, share a room?" Jenny nodded. "Can't you go somewhere else? Or kick him out?"

"I don't want to start anything, you should've seen what it was like when Rose and Tentoo were fighting, or when Jack and I were broken up, or just these last few days while I've been off with you on the evenings."

"Oswin's got a sofa."

"Everybody sleeps on Oswin's sofa," Jenny said, "My mother sleeps there when she needs to sleep, Clara slept there the other night when she had her spat with my dad-"

"They're fighting?"

"No, mum had to wipe his memory for the day, on Day Ninety-Four, so Clara took that as an opportunity to get over her guilt for trying to get off with mum… I don't really know, it's all weird…"

"What _did_ happen on Day Ninety-Four? How come you all refuse to talk about it?" Clara asked, curiosity about that apparently getting the better over her concern for a few moments, and Jenny looked at her languidly.

"I'm not supposed to tell anybody."

"Not even me?"

"That's an odd thing to say. But, I mean, why _wouldn't_ I tell the girl I'm casually sleeping with the events of a day I promised not to tell anyone?" Jenny said, and Clara looked at her expectantly, "...I was being sarcastic, Clara."

"Well, why is it a secret?"

"It's just, you know... Partly so Eleven doesn't find out. And he _won't_ find out. It's not some damning thing, it's just... Can we talk about _my _stuff again, please? Since you begged me so much?"

"Alright, okay. You were saying about Jack?"

"It's just… I know that he cares about me, and stuff, but Jack cares about lots of people and he's one of those heroic types who tries to save everybody and sleeps around a lot in the process. We have an 'open-marriage'. Who has an 'open-marriage'?" Jenny questioned, "He's just unfazed, all the time."

"Maybe you should talk to somebody on the TARDIS who knows more about this than me? And I'm probably kind of a biased person. If you have an argument with him and it goes wrong and you end up in a monogamous relationship with Jack Harkness…"

"Yeah, exactly," Jenny said, knowing what Clara was implying, "I have too much integrity to keep sleeping with you if he decides he wants to be _exclusive_."

"But would you want that instead?" Clara asked, still sitting next to her, the pair of them more or less level. Jenny sighed and closed her eyes for a moment.

"I just don't want to talk about it, really, I don't… Rose might listen to me. Or Donna, I'd trust Donna to give me good, unbiased advice."

"Well, I'd miss you if you got stuck in an unhappy marriage."

"Of course _you_ would," she joked a little.

"Are you going to help me with my marking? Has to be in for tomorrow."

"What's tomorrow?"

"Monday."

"You can't skive school and spend the whole day with me?"

"Oh, you're planning on staying through the night?" Clara joked, and Jenny gave her a pleading look that made her sigh a little, "I won't send you home, not if you don't want to go home. Besides, if you stick around for a bit I get sex on tap."

"You've got sex on tap anyway, you call me and I come."

"Really? Usually it takes more than phone sex to make that happen."

"We don't even have phone sex," Jenny said, laughing slightly, "You could always say you had a busy weekend."

"I _did_ have a busy weekend, with the Doctor, I only got back a few hours ago."

"Why? What were you up to with him, _all weekend?_"

"Ew. Don't imply that. Wasn't that. But I'm not telling you, I'm not talking about that with you, about him, I don't want to."

"Just don't go marrying him. I can't have _two_ Claras for stepmothers, now, can I? That would be terrible. Asking me what I want to do when I grow up. How am I supposed to answer that? Clearly, the answer is _you_, but if you're married to my father…"

"You can stop talking now," Clara said quietly, next to her ear, and when Jenny looked around she was being kissed again.


	261. Between The Roses

**AN: I should probably clarify that in the UK and Ireland, Hula Hoops are a type of crisp. They are also large plastic toys for children, but they are crisps as well, you can Google them to see what they look like. That's what Jack proposed to Jenny with.**

_Rose_

_Between The Roses_

"Do you not pack pyjamas in that transdimensional coat of yours?" Rose was pacing around a room they'd managed to book in a hurry in the cheap, French motel that had some name she couldn't pronounce and wasn't part of any franchise she'd heard of. It was low-rent, tacky, and didn't have a television in the room, and the bathroom had been so poorly maintained she'd decided against having a quick shower to wash off the stink of Thirteenth Century mead. Ten's coat was across the bed, and she'd fished the jelly-babies out of it as soon as he'd taken it off and made a dash for the toilet. She was sat on the bed, now, and he was kneeling in front of the window peering out with a set of binoculars he apparently carried around with him. Probably a sensible decision, in all fairness.

"Why would I have pyjamas with me? Martha and I didn't have pyjamas when we slept together in the 1500s," Ten said casually, and Rose's eyes widened and, without saying anything to him, she got her phone out of her pocket and immediately dialled Martha Jones. Ten looked around, "Rose? What are you – I didn't mean it like that!" He stared at her, but he didn't make any move to stop her.

"Did you shag the Doctor and not tell me?" Rose asked immediately after the phone picked up.

"_Did I _what_?_" Mickey Smith exclaimed in confusion, and Rose's eyes widened and she mouthed, "_Shit_."

"Hi, Mickey…" she said awkwardly, and Ten had the same reaction Rose had just had, minus the swearing, and he left his binoculars on the windowsill and came and sat down next to her, glancing out at the carpark every couple of seconds to make sure he didn't miss something important. Rose thought they'd probably notice somebody getting their souls stolen, though, "I was just wondering, is your wife there?"

"_You want to know if Martha slept with the Doctor!?_"

"Well, I… _No_, obviously not… That's just a… Joke we have… Call each other up and accuse them of sleeping with random people… Is she there, though?"

"_What's this about if it's not about that?_"

"It's about… Uh… Women things… About my… Period…"

"This is the most painful thing I've ever witnessed," Ten muttered next to her, and she glared at him.

"_Oh. Right. Well. She's here now_," Mickey said awkwardly, and she felt the phone pass over.

"_What do you want?_"

"Did you shag the Doctor and not tell me?" she asked again, somewhat more aggressively now she knew it was definitely Martha she was speaking to.

"_No! Why are you asking me this!? Why would you think I'd shagged him!?_" Martha exclaimed, and Rose thought she heard Mickey mutter something in the background.

"Because he said, 'Martha and I didn't have any pyjamas when we slept together in the 1400s,'" Rose said.

"It was the 1500s," Ten corrected her, and she gave him a look of death, "…Sorry."

"_In the literal sense_," Martha said, "_He spent the whole time going on about how much he missed you and how inadequate I was by comparison. Then there was some stuff with Shakespeare and some witches. He did give me a toothbrush_."

"I could've told you this myself, you know, if you hadn't gone calling Martha up for no reason," Ten muttered.

"_Can I go now? I have things to do_."

"Are you gonna tell Clara you fancy her?" Rose asked, and for that, Martha outright hung up on her, and Ten stared at her, "…What?" she asked him, "It's just an inside joke… That was rude of her, wasn't-?" Somebody screamed outside, a woman, and they nearly fell over each other in the ensuing hurry to get to the window and see what was happening.

Outside, they saw a man's body lying right in the middle of a the carpark, in between the petrol station and its coffee shop and a large truck, facing up towards the moon in the rain, a woman screaming next to him. Ten mumbled something Rose didn't hear and darted out of the room, leaving the door ajar and her, encapsulated, to watch, presumably running down to the scene of the crime. But he didn't see what she saw in the ensuing seconds. Out of the dead man's mouth a cloud of white smoke, or mist, or some kind of ethereal, floating substance, erupted, swirling around in the air and twisting like it was sentient. Then, into the woman's screaming mouth it dove, and her eyes rolled back and she collapsed by the side of the man. A moment later, the Doctor still yet to arrive, the white smoke conjured itself from within the woman, and then seemed to evaporate into nothing in the air.

In a shimmer of gold, she nearly crashed into Ten, who was running, as she teleported herself to the outside of the cheap hotel, not wanting to miss anything else in case the Doctor ended up in danger.

"Did you see it? Did you see it?" she asked him urgently, and he held her shoulders after steadying her, torn between making sure Rose was fully alright and going to examine the two bodies.

"See what? What happened?" he asked her, crouching down so he was at her eye level, imploring her to tell him what happened. She shook off his hands and went over to the bodies herself, staring around for any sign of dodgy mist.

"It was like, um, fog. You know in films, when people get possessed? It was like, this white smoke-stuff, that came out of his mouth and then went into hers, and then left and disappeared," she said, going and lifting up the woman's eyelid. Her eyes were white, like the knights seven-hundred years ago had described. She had a pulse, as well. The Doctor held his screwdriver over her eyes and scanned it back and forth.

"No signs of consciousness," he said, "But she's breathing…"

"She's braindead, like the others. Look, they both have identical wedding rings," Rose said, lifting up the woman's hand. Either nobody cared that there were two dead-looking people outside next to the motorway, or this happened so often it was commonplace. In 1987, it seemed unlikely that people would, say, have headphones in too loud to hear a scream like that. That sort of stuff was still twenty years away from being commonplace.

"Married to each other," Ten said.

"Probably not virgins then," Rose deduced, "Well, maybe, but… Can you scan for that?"

"For virginity? Considering it doesn't technically or biologically exist and is just a misogynistic human construct designed to devalue women, Rose…" he said, not finishing his sentence, letting her do that in her head, raising his eyebrows at her in question.

"Alright, alright. Could've just said 'no.' Why would it have wanted virgins, anyway?"

"Well, if they were all braindead, we've no way to tell if any of those girls the knights found were actually virgins at all or if that was just something they assumed, or something to make this creature look even more malevolent than it actually is."

"Seems pretty malevolent to me. Reminds me of the Wire," she told him.

"Oh, yeah, does a bit," he smiled a little, even though that hadn't been a particularly pleasant day for either of them, "So, let's assume that the 'virgin' thing is completely irrelevant-"

"Well then, I guess I'm not as safe as I thought I was, am I?" she joked, which he ignored, because he thought it was tasteless.

"_Irrelevant_, as I was saying. What does it want? The Wire fed off electrical signals, but this is something different," he said, doing the same scans on the man, "Did you say it vanished?"

"Yeah, into the air."

"Some kind of gaseous lifeform, then… If we just knew what it wanted… It's easy to wipe someone like this, turn them into a vegetable, messy, even. The trick is just taking the part that you want…" he mused.

"How did it get banished for seven-hundred years?" Rose asked, "Maybe that'll give us a clue. What did Olivier say? Sage, mistletoe, and… What was the other one?"

"Heliotrope," Ten answered.

"Right, well, sage doesn't actually have any purpose in banishing 'creatures', it's just superstition, right? Like walking under a ladder," she said, going to crouch next to him as he scanned various parts of the man's arm, taking peculiar note of a burn on his arm from spilled coffee, listening absently to Rose as she talked.

"Not walking under ladders is just sensible, Rose. You could have something dropped on you."

"Well, yeah, but, you know what I mean. Then, mistletoe doesn't do anything, either. It only did to the werewolf in 1879 because those monks trained it to, maybe because of the same superstitions about sage? Healing plants? That just leaves the heliotrope, whatever that is…"

"I smelt it on him, _heliotropium pannifolium_, specifically. It's a shrub."

"Right, well, where do we get some heliotropia… whatever you said?"

"Saint Helena, they call it the Saint Helena Heliotrope. Look at his arm…"

"I can see it, it's burnt. Where's Saint Helena?"

"The South Atlantic Ocean," Ten answered.

"Oh. Bit far, then."

"Just a bit. And it also went extinct in 1820 – you humans don't half know how to destroy a planet," he muttered, "Seriously, his arm."

"Yes, what about his arm?" Rose asked finally.

"It's not healing," the Doctor told her, scanning it with his sonic.

"So? He only spilt the coffee on it five minutes ago," she said, still a little surprised nobody had come out to investigate yet. The only vehicle in the whole place was the truck, and that meant there were the couple and whoever had been on the desk. Rose hadn't seen anybody else in the whole place.

"Well, yes, but there should be thousands of white blood cells around here fighting off deadly pathogens, but there's just… Nothing. Not to mention his pulse, here, feel his pulse," Ten lifted up the man's other arm, the none-burnt one, and held it out to Rose, who put it back down on the tarmac again, shaking her head, before pressing two fingers to his wrist to feel for a pulse. And the pulse she found was the most erratic thing she'd ever felt.

"That's not what heartbeats are meant to sound like…"

"No, it's all over the place, like his body's just forgotten how to work, forgotten how to heal…" Ten frowned, and then went to check the pulse of the woman behind them.

"So, the only way to beat this thing is with a plant that went extinct in 1820?" Rose said.

"It didn't beat it last time, it just held it off for seven-hundred years," Ten reminded her, and she wiped rain and sweat from her face, "Can't you… I don't know, make some exist? Or teleport us to Saint Helena two-hundred years ago? Or bring the TARDIS down here?"

"I… No," she admitted, "Look, I'm really bad at using that power… I try not to, and I barely ever end up in the right place. It's even more unstable than the TARDIS, the time vortex just shoves me where it wants me. Plus, it's even more difficult with two people, especially when one of them is a Time Lord. I could only do it earlier because of the vision, like I said, I… Followed it. Sort of. And just then, I was only teleporting to somewhere a few feet away out here, on my own, in the same time period."

"You mean we're on our own?" Ten asked.

"Unless you want to get the rest of the crew involved?" she said, "Anyway, we always used to be on our own! No superpowers or anything."

"We _did_ have the TARDIS," Ten reminded her.

"The TARDIS really doesn't like being dragged out of time and space to my whims, Doctor," Rose said, "Look, the heliotrope's not even a permanent solution. You figure out what it is and what it wants, and we'll be able to stop it."


	262. Amnesia

_Rose_

_Amnesia_

"When people say Versailles, you think of, you know, palaces and fancy French people or whatever. Not a bunch of comatose truckers," Rose sighed. They'd found a third victim. There wasn't anybody else present, though, and the 'plague victims' hadn't been reported on for at least a week. The Parisian newspaper on the front desk the now-braindead receptionist was lying behind told her it was February 28th, 1987, meaning none of these happenings would be reported on for a week yet.

Ten had told her there were a lot of reasons the deaths would take a while to be reported. Like, maybe it was just that hardly anybody visited this particular petrol station and its adjacent motel, and going by the present lack of visitors, that was highly believable. Then there was also the possibility that the press were just late in finding out about this, or they hadn't found it too noteworthy for a while. Still, Rose couldn't help but wonder who this fourth death was, because her brief vision had definitely made it seem like _four_ people ended up in this state. There was also the issue that they didn't know how to cure these people.

"Why would it just stop after four people?" Rose asked him, and he shrugged, straightening up next to the drooling receptionist, "Do you think there's a fourth knocking about round here? I mean, we don't have a car, but there must be _somebody_ working in the petrol station, right?"

"Well, I suppose, but even if we were to warn them, there's nothing we can do yet," Ten said, "This is all in flux. You only saw the one newspaper, a week from now, right?" She nodded. "_So_, just because this Soul-Eater got these people, doesn't mean they're going to stay this way long enough for the papers to report them. We could fix it and leave the greater population none the wiser."

"But it also means that there are way more of these attacks and… Are they deaths?"

"Well, they're not dead, so I presume not," he said.

"Well, whatever they are. There could be way more like this in the weeks and years _after_ the one front page I saw. I couldn't even get a glimpse of the article."

"It's easier to think about it if we forget about that vision, Rose," the Doctor told her, and she thought he was right. The newspaper of her imaginings was just overcomplicating everything, and it hardly even mattered, because everything was in flux anyway. The newspaper just served as some very otherworldly directions for them to follow, and if they didn't want to get too bogged down in echoes of the future, they'd both better just forget about it.

"Right. So. No vision. Strange Soul-Eating monster whose only weakness is an extinct flower from a few thousand miles away," Rose said.

"Can't you make it cease to exist?" Ten suggested, and she paused for a moment.

"…Making stuff cease to exist is _really_ tricky. You're overestimating me," she told him, and he crossed his arms and seemed to think, Rose casting uneasy glances to the body on the floor and the empty, rain-streaked carpark through the window.

"Why don't you just tell me what you can and can't do?" he finally asked.

"Okay, well, I try not to do anything. The power's just dangerous and unpredictable, that's why I always used to wear the inhibitor. Until, you know, UNIT and Kate Stewart took it in 2017. And then Martha melted Adam Mitchell's. The only thing I do regularly is teleport, and barely. And I have to be really careful, _all the time_, not to accidentally smash things. And I can change my eye colour at will. Well, sort of, sometimes they change on their own… I guess I _can_ see into the future, but never by choice, and I _can_ make things exist or stop existing, but it's really difficult and not very safe," she explained, "I can probably bring things back to life as well, but I'm not inclined to do that, either."

"Do you think you could wake these people up?" he asked suddenly.

"You know what happened to Jack. There'll be another way to fix it, we'll have to, you know, defeat the Soul-Eater. Then he can be the Soul-Puker instead," she said, "I don't want to risk waking them up just to have them all be immortal. It's like I said, we didn't used to have any of this. I'd rather not have these powers, you know, but they're too valuable to get rid of."

"…I wonder what it wants…" he frowned, getting them back on topic of what to actually do about the Soul-Eater, instead of just arguing about the extent of Rose's superpowers. She sometimes thought she hated them. She sometimes thought a lot of people hated them, but they all had them now, due to the efforts of the Twelfth Doctor from the Betaverse, trying to make them suffer, or something. And boy, were some of them suffering. "…Forgetting… Oh!" he shouted, which he often did when he figured something out, and it often made her jump.

"What? What is it?"

"It's taking memories," Ten said, "But not just the sort of memories you can replay in your head, _all_ memories. The memories of every individual cell of your body to even exist. That's why the wounds aren't healing, that's why the hearts aren't beating properly. They're all going to completely cease to function."

"But why? What does it want memories for? Is it feeding off them?"

"No, no, I didn't see it, only you saw it, if I saw it, I would've guessed earlier… It's a nameless gaseous lifeform from the planet Yzurl. It's not feeding off memories, it wants the planet for itself. It's a swarm of gas particles that create a hive mind, like the Vashta Nerada."

"The what?"

"Microscopic creatures that make shadows and eat flesh," Ten said. Shadows..? "They're like that, but even smaller, able to fly, like fireflies. They don't _take_ the memories, they _destroy_ that part of the brain. It's the part that permanently stops any species, the memory part. Nothing's any good if it can't remember how to breathe," Ten explained, in a frenzy now, pacing around and messing his hair up in a way she found significantly attractive.

"Well, yeah, but how do we fix these people, then?" Rose asked.

"They must just be allergic to the heliotrope… Seven-hundred years? How would Olivier know it was seven-hundred years? Well, maybe they already stopped it before. Maybe it's been here for hundreds of thousands of years and it's a creature we've forgotten the myth about, there must be dozens of those…"

"Yes, but Doctor, how do we help these people here?" she implored.

"Of course now there isn't any heliotrope, so there isn't any way to stop it, but we have something _now_ perfectly suited to defeating big clouds of-"

"Doctor!" she shouted over him, and he finally stopped.

"…Yes, Rose?"

"What about the people? What's going to happen to them? If they've 'destroyed' that part of the brain?" Rose questioned him, and he looked at her, and then he looked away at the receptionist on the floor.

"They'll die," he told her quietly, and she didn't say anything in response. "Nothing I can do. The limbic system will have been completely destroyed. Disintegrated, almost. They tear it apart, go in through the mouth and nose." Rose had seen that. It sounded like he was right.

"Oh…"

"I'm sorry," he said, "It's irreversible. But we don't know if the person in the petrol station is dead yet, we can still stop one death. And I think I know how."


	263. Poltergust 3000

**AN: I am so atrociously bad with endings it's not even a laughing matter. This whole fic is just full of deus ex machinas and anti-climaxes. Hopefully tomorrow should be better. I'll, like, try harder with it than I've tried with this one.**

_Rose_

_Poltergust 3000_

Ten had said they had something now that the knights hadn't had seven-hundred years ago. They might have had the heliotrope but, the Doctor said, they had something better.

"Are you sure this will work?" she asked him in disbelief, trying to focus on saving the last life predicted by the newspaper from March 6th. It seemed they were relying on there to actually be somebody in the petrol station nearby, and they were also relying on the fact the Soul-Eater (nameless cloud that it was, they were still stuck calling it that) hadn't gotten to them yet, so that they could use them as bait, almost, as wrong as that seemed.

"Course it will!" he said, sitting on the floor outside of the cleaning cupboard at the end of the ground floor hallway in the motel with a vacuum cleaner in front of him. He was sonicking it to give it more 'suction power,' as he said.

"You're going to hoover it up?" she frowned.

"Yep."

"But it can destroy brain matter."

"Brian matter's gooey. Trust me. Are all hoovers this naff in the 1980s?"

"I don't know, I wasn't born until 1986. I don't really remember a lot from before I was four," she told him, sounding a little annoyed, "I haven't eaten all day."

"Woman on reception had some crisps."

"I'm not stealing crisps from a dead woman!"

"She's not dead yet," Ten said.

"Where did all your empathy go? Poor woman's there dying on the floor and you're telling me to eat her crisps," Rose argued with him, sensing that she was broaching a somewhat sensitive topic.

"It's been a while since we travelled together, Rose," he said quietly, and she sighed, "Things have happened that never happened to the clone." Those things must be really bad, she thought, if he was bringing up Tentoo. They never talked about Tentoo. It felt like a stab in the heart for Ten to talk about him so coldly, so carelessly, but Rose didn't dare say a word about it. She didn't want to ruin anything between them.

"Things like what?"

"Now's not the time. Maybe later," he said, and then she decided that it really would be better not to ask him about it, that they should wait until after they finally defeated this Soul-Eater.

"What're you going to do with it after you hoover it up?"

"Dunno. Keep it in a box or something, probably," he shrugged.

"What, with Elle the evil satsuma?" she suggested.

"And the Carrionites Martha and I caught."

"…What did she mean when she said you kept going on about me?"

"I just thought that you'd be able to figure out what was going on, is all I meant. This was only the second time we went anywhere, how was I supposed to know how brilliant she was yet? Ah-ha! Super hoover!" he exclaimed in joy, jumping to his feet and beaming all of a sudden, "This thing could suck up 99.9% of bacteria, Rose." She laughed.

"What about the other 1%?"

"You mean 0.1%," he corrected her, and she shrugged, "Well, can't really claim 100%, can you? Might be one little bacteria left all on its own."

"Poor thing."

**LINEBREAK**

They came crashing, wild and overexcited, through the doors of the petrol station in the middle of the night (about two in the morning), laughing manically at one another about various hoover related puns that weren't actually very funny at all and, she was sure, would soon enough be reduced to a bunch of fellatio-related innuendos to do with 'sucking.' Well, they would have, had the pair of them not immediately silenced when faced with a very judgmental look from the decidedly not dead person standing behind the till.

"Hello," Rose said, and then there was silence, and they both exploded laughing again. She couldn't even remember what, exactly, they were laughing at, but it was something to do with a Henry Hoover. The vacuum cleaner they actually had wasn't a Henry Hoover, but they'd gotten onto the topic, and for some reason, the thought of that red, cartoon face drawn onto the side of the tiny thing that you always seemed to get in hotels was downright hilarious. It was the eyes, more than anything.

They didn't have to stick around very long for the Soul-Eating creature to attack, by which point Ten had, to the great confusion of the person working there, told Rose that this Soul-Eater seven centuries ago probably hadn't spoken a word, and everything Olivier had _claimed_ it said was, more likely than not, entirely inferred. It drifted in slowly, like glowing mist, underneath the door and through an open window, pooling together threateningly on the floor. And, well, it wasn't too intelligent, and the vacuum cleaner really had been engineered to be terribly powerful.

The worker in the corner remained utterly puzzled and somewhat scared, and when Ten switched on the hoover and started sucking up the 'entity', he ran away into the back room and closed the door. It didn't take long to capture the thing at all, and the vacuum bag moved around like there was an animal trapped inside of it when the Doctor finally shut it off.

"That it, then? Threat to the entire human race thwarted by a vacuum cleaner?" Rose questioned, "Thousands of years of tyranny?"

"Very _Ghostbusters_," Ten said.

"Is _Ghostbusters _even out yet?" she asked him.

"Of course it is! Came out in 1984. The sequel comes out in two years. Don't get me started on the sequel, though…" he muttered, sounding slightly pained, but she knew what he meant.

"Tell me about it. Statue of Liberty coming to life and wandering around New York City? Ridiculous," Rose said, then paused, "Actually, Amy and Rory told me that something like that happened to them." Ten stood up and stared at her, and then decided that he was hungry so he was going to go find something to eat.

"What do you mean?" he asked her.

"Something about the Statue Liberty, you know."

"Coming to life and wandering around New York City..?"

"Exactly," she said, trying to figure out what, exactly, some of these 1980s French crisps were. She thought she might fare better if they went and found the chocolate, but Ten passed her the bag with the weird brain-eating entity in it and started stuffing his face with crisps, "They said it was an Angel."

"Angels are made of stone, Rose. Statue of Liberty is made of copper. That's why it's green when you're from," the Doctor told her, "Plus, it couldn't possibly walk through New York without people seeing it and it stopping. There are a lot of people in New York City, Rose."

"Well maybe you should ask them about it instead of me, not like I was there, it was ages ago," she shrugged. She'd thought the same things when they'd said this to her weeks ago, but didn't have much knowledge of the Weeping Angels, and she'd forgotten to bring it up to anybody who might know ever since.

"Maybe I will. Anyway, how are we getting home?" he asked. She sighed.

"I'll try and teleport us once you finish your crisps."


	264. True Colours

_Oswin_

_True Colours_

Oswin was trying to pull together a house meeting – or, a ship meeting, she supposed – and struggling somewhat because of people being lazy and resentful that anybody was trying to drag them out of bed. She had (forcibly) enlisted the help of her boyfriend in this matter, because she personally deemed it quite important. Now though, she was sat in Nerve Centre, waiting, because she'd been promised by the half of the crew she'd assigned herself to retrieve that they'd stop lazing around and get out of bed promptly. Honestly, she thought, it was six o'clock in the evening.

"Goddammit," Thirteen muttered. Thirteen was sat next to Oswin at one of the tables, on her left, a space between them left for Adam, but Adam was trying to convince Nine and River that this house meeting of his girlfriend's was actually important. Clara was on her right. Eleven was on the other table with the Ponds, and Ten and Rose were sitting much closer to each other than was preferable, in Oswin's opinion, on a sofa. Then there was Donna, who was talking to Martha, who kept glancing over at Clara, which Clara tried to ignore. Mickey was boiling the kettle, and Nios was loitering around idly. Finally, there was Jonesy, who was purring and walking around Thirteen, who was doing something on that laptop of hers. Whatever she was doing was the reason she'd just cursed.

"What?" Oswin asked her, because she could tell Clara wanted to know, and she didn't want Clara to talk to her future wife for obvious reasons. Clara herself was looking vaguely annoyed and smoking, resting her hand on the side of her face in such a way that she blocked Martha from her peripheral vision.

"This damn cheat, is all," Thirteen complained, then she hit one of the keys on the laptop alarmingly hard, even though it was a hologram and you didn't really needed to jab at it at all. Which was when the cat decided to walk over the keyboard in front of her and she tried to lean around it, Oswin shuffling a little towards Clara on her stool to escape from the ginger demon. "Dammit! She just sunk my aircraft carrier! You can't get that many hits in a row without being a god damn cheat." Thirteen picked up the cat and put him on the floor, ignoring him when he jumped back up again.

"What are you doing?" Clara asked.

"Playing Battleships," Thirteen said, "Oh, come on! That's the tenth hit in a row! You can't get ten hits in a row!" she exclaimed, furious. "Wouldn't put it past her to cheat, anyhow." The laptop beeped, and Thirteen scowled, "Sent me a smiley face. What a complete…" she bit her lip instead of swearing.

"Who are you playing Battleships with?" Oswin questioned.

"Missy," Thirteen answered.

"Well if you're gonna play Battleships with the Master, what do you expect? Obviously she'll cheat," Clara told her, "If she'll launch a frozen heart out of a cannon at my head, she'll probably cheat at Battleships."

"You're doing _what_?" Martha asked, looking round. Ten had heard that as well, and looked equally shocked and mildly disgusted, as did Eleven. All of them were confused. The laptop beeped again and Thirteen scowled at it.

"She says, 'I know you like a book and every move you're going to make.' With a smiley face. Y'know, I should have killed her when I had the chance," she complained, "She keeps saying 'howdy.' Like, yeah, I know I have a different accent, but that does not make me a cowboy."

"Who are you talking to..?" Ten asked, like he didn't want to believe what he'd just heard. Finally then, Adam returned with Nine, Jack and River in tow. That only left Jenny, who Adam was supposed to have found.

"The Master. Well, the Mistress, as she calls herself now…" Thirteen said, "I never felt the desire to call myself 'the Nurse' or some derogatory feminisation of a word that doesn't actually have any legitimate connotations of gender, but hey, guess it doesn't surprise me to find out the Master has a dominatrix kink."

"Why are you playing Battleships with the Master!?" Ten demanded, suddenly furious, moving his arm from around Rose and getting up and walking over.

"She's doing _what_?" Jack questioned.

"Eleven hits! This woman is full of crap, I swear. She's not even the Master from this universe, this is _Beta_ Missy. I mean, she still exists somewhere in the Alphaverse, apparently she's the one who gave Clara the phone number for the TARDIS in the first place," Thirteen explained, which caught Eleven's interest, "And then she was the one who built that maze the other week."

"She was?" Nine asked.

"Yeah. Did I not mention that? We had a tea-party and exchanged emails," Thirteen beamed, and got very judgmental looks, "Oh, come on, we're playing Battleships, it's not like she's – twelve hits! That's it!" Oswin leant over then to look at the screen and see that Thirteen only had one ship left that hadn't been sunk, and skimmed the move history for a moment.

"You idiot," she told the Doctor, "You put your ships in the same places, that's why she's moving like that. You're gonna lose." Thirteen decided then to give up and switch the laptop off, and Oswin shook her head. "Where's Jenny?" Everybody glanced round then, and none of their eyes fell on the Doctor's daughter, which lead to some pretty irritated, slightly worried glances between Ten and Eleven more than the others.

"I couldn't find her," Adam answered, sitting down in the seat between Oswin and Thirteen.

Oswin sighed, "I'll go find her. Try not to let the Master beat you at Solitaire next," she added as an afterthought to the Doctor.

While everyone pestered Thirteen to explain the truth about the maze, to which she adamantly maintained that she couldn't because of Eleven's presence in the room, Oswin slipped out to go and find Jenny. Didn't take long to find her, though, almost as soon as Oswin had walked a few steps into the Bedroom Circle, Jenny appeared around the corner looking like she was fixing her hair. Where else in the TARDIS had she been?

"I was just looking for you," Oswin said, and Jenny stopped.

"You were? Why?"

"I'm calling a house meeting to talk about some stuff," Oswin shrugged, "Haven't been looking for long, though… Where've you been?" she asked suspiciously.

"Just in the garage," Jenny said, "How many of those cars in there are your boyfriend's?"

"I don't know, four of them, I think," Oswin shrugged, "There's the Hummer, then the DeLorean is there, and his Batmobile, and I think his Lamborghini. You should see the garage he has underneath his house where he keeps the rest of his cars. He has a replica of the Ecto-1 from _Ghostbusters_, and a limo."

"I hate to tell you, but you're clearly only with him for his money," Jenny said, walking past Oswin towards Nerve Centre.

"Oh, obviously," Oswin agreed, "Not as if I come from three-thousand years in the future where some hot-shot Ferrari moves like a dead snail by comparison to even some of the slowest star cruisers." Jenny laughed as she went through the doors. "You ought to keep better track of your wife, Jack." Jack made a face at her. She pretended to drop the subject of what Jenny had been up to for Jenny's benefit, but it seemed like she was lying, and Oswin couldn't place why. She supposed she couldn't have been getting into _too_ much bother, what with the teleporting bracelet hanging off her robot-wrist. Rather than sit next to Jack on one of the sofas, Jenny ended up going and sitting on the other side of Thirteen. Finally, everyone was present.

"What's this about, then?" Amy sighed, "If it's so important I had to stop watching _Come Dine With Me_."

"Is _Come Dine With Me _on?" Clara then questioned, and for a few moments some of them gossiped about some posh woman on whatever dumb Twenty-First Century show that was who'd tried to cook pheasant and failed terribly. Then Ten told them to shut up, so they did.

"Right, well, there's just some stuff that's come to my attention-" Oswin began, having to talk loudly. She hated talking to people. And people in general.

"Is this about the fact we don't have any ketchup because of your sister this morning?" Mickey asked.

"I – what? Clara, what've you been doing with the ketchup?" Oswin questioned her.

"She mixed it with croutons and threw up in the sink," Mickey said, and there were unanimous 'eurghs' from everybody else in the room, including Oswin. And Oswin didn't actually know too well what a crouton was. Nor had she tasted non-dehydrated tomato ketchup.

"I cleaned it up!" Clara protested.

"Yeah, but now we're out of ketchup," Mickey argued with her.

"No, it's not about that," Oswin said, "But seriously Clara, what's wrong with you? Ew." Clara lit another cigarette and crossed her arms huffily, resuming what she'd been doing earlier, which was avoiding Martha's gaze. "The thing is, we're all more or less deep space travellers, and we do a lot of dangerous stuff, and I just think that we're quite ill-equipped. Now, thing is, I'm really _stunningly _intelligent, as you all know," here, Rose made an irritated scoffing noise, but Oswin ignored her, "And I've been building electrical stun guns, so I was just wondering how many people, out of the _seventeen_ of us want me to make them a stun gun? And yes, _Adam Mitchell_, I _can_ make it look like a stupid blaster from a video game." Adam made a face at being singled out like this by her, but people suddenly seemed interested at mention of weapons.

"Is this another of those times you all pass a vote and leave no-one in charge?" Eleven asked resentfully, then added, "I don't like guns."

"You like guns plenty when_ I_ used them," River said, much to Nine's displeasure. Clara telepathically said something unrepeatable to Oswin about River, and Oswin had to try not to laugh. Eleven just protested huffily with objective noises rather than any actual words, but then sat down, because his argument had suddenly been cast as invalid.

"So yeah, there's the gun problem," Oswin said.

"Hey, can I say something?" Jack asked, and she was taken aback.

"Um, I suppose?"

"Torchwood have earpieces," he said, standing up too. Everybody else was sat down, apart from the pair of them, "I think it'd be useful if we also had earpieces instead of relying on phones, because phones can be tapped easier."

"I could make all our phones untappable," Oswin suggested.

"C'mon, Oswin. Is anything untappable for me?" Jack questioned, and Donna laughed, but Jenny made a very irritated noise and grimaced, which didn't go unnoticed. Thirteen, in particular, and Eleven, took careful note of this. Jack seemed oblivious.

"Alright, fine, all in favour of earpieces?" Oswin said, and it ended up being unanimous. Except for the Doctors. The Doctors didn't like to partake in the voting, "So, the _other_ thing is that, as I was saying earlier, we're deep space travellers. And I happened to notice two days ago that we only have three spacesuits-"

"And they're hideous," Clara muttered, and there was a wave of objection about that, which, rather than coming in the form of defending the spacesuits, all ended up being an attack on Clara's dress sense.

"How would you know?" Amy questioned her.

"What do you mean 'how would I know'!?" Clara argued.

"No offence," Thirteen said, leaning towards her, "But your dress sense is kind of so terrible it makes me want to hang myself upside-down and vomit into my eyeballs." Clara stared at her with the most offended, hurt expression Oswin had ever seen on her face, but Thirteen didn't seem bothered about upsetting her. It was possibly revenge for yesterday's diplodocus incident and accidental suicide.

"Sometimes I see the clothes you wear, and it makes me wish I'd just stayed with my eyes gouged out forever," Jenny added, and Clara seemed about to drop her cigarette.

"I'd pay for you to buy a whole new wardrobe your clothes are that bad," Adam said.

"Why do you think we kept taking your clothes? They were all so awful," Jack said.

"I wouldn't wear some of your clothes if you paid me," Amy began, "And _I_ used to be a model. My whole job revolved around wearing clothes I hated and getting paid for it."

"Are you sure _you're _not the one who's colour-blind?" Adam added.

"Seriously, Clara," Martha began, and Clara was forced to look at her, "Sometimes I think I should set your whole wardrobe on fire and burn everything."

"Oh, I bet you'd_ love _to get rid of Clara's clothes," Rose said, and Clara glared at her, and Rose's phone flew out of her hand and hit in the face. Rose glared back.

"I'm saying this to be nice," Donna told her, "But they're right. Your clothes are disgusting. You should probably do what Oswin does and just wear black." Clara looked at Oswin then, who hadn't said a word against her, and just shrugged.

"We do look kind of good in black, Clars," was all she said, and then Clara slouched down and seemed lost, "…Um… About the spacesuits… Not speaking from, you know, a fashion-perspective, but they're pretty shit. I mean, they're from the Forty-Sixth Century, they have the lowest visibility of any spacesuit I've seen, and they're baggy, inefficient and hard to move in. Not to mention two of them have breaches in them patched up with duct tape, and the oxygen units have barely any storage capacity."

"Oi! I like the duct tape!" Ten argued.

"Well, I'm not actually alive, but when I was, I distinctly remember also liking _breathing_. And _not dying_," she retorted, "The spacesuits are shit and broken and I think we should have new ones."

"In what colour, though?" Amy asked. She might as well have set off a bomb and blown them all to hell asking a question like that – and Oswin knew a lot about bombs.

For the next fifteen minutes, Oswin stood by in silence (because she didn't want to be shut down in the same way Clara had been for giving her opinion when it came to clothes, but she'd lived indoors for twenty-five years so she didn't really think fashion was something she knew about at all) while everybody bickered about the colour of the spacesuits. All they really knew was that they didn't want orange, but the Doctors kept asking for TARDIS-blue, and some people thought green might be nice, or red, or black, or white (then Jenny said gold so somebody else said silver, then they got talking about, 'maybe black with gold trimmings?' though Oswin didn't know what these 'trimmings' they were talking about were, since they were _her_ spacesuits), then some of them said that they should all get a different colour depending on what they wanted, like the mugs. Which was when someone else (Amy) pointed out that it should be a colour that goes with everything, so that their outfits would always match, even though _another_ person (Rory) argued that you wouldn't really be able to see what clothes somebody was wearing underneath the spacesuit. That point actually went down a storm, though, and meant the argument resolved into black or white or grey, and then Oswin decided to say that white would be better because of visibility purposes, saying visibility was always useful in space. That was why the astronauts wore white when they went into space, and why the original spacesuits they had had been orange to begin with.

"Well, okay, that settles the colour," Oswin muttered, "So I will be designing those generally out of boredom… Dome helmets that actually give one the ability to see…" Ten pulled a disgruntled face when she made that remark, he seemed to like the dreadful helmets the current spacesuits had. She was more bothered about functionality and practicality than anything else. "That's actually all, I guess…" Then Jack decided to take advantage of everybody being in the room and found a sheet of paper and started making a shopping list. Probably a useful thing to do, she supposed, sighing and sitting back down. Soon enough the people in Nerve Centre were dissipating. It wasn't half cramped.

"Do I really have bad dress sense?" Clara asked.

"Yes," said both Jenny and Thirteen together, in almost identical ways.

"What do you care, anyway?" Clara questioned Jenny.

"Everyone cares, Clara, because we're all the ones who have to see you wear such shit clothes and suffer for it."

"Would you watch your language, Jennifer?" Thirteen snapped at her, and Oswin and Adam both burst out laughing.

"_Don't_ call me that," Jenny grumbled.

"Why, Jennifer?"

"_Why, Jennifer?_" Jenny retorted, copying Thirteen's accent. Oswin had never heard anybody call Jenny 'Jennifer' before. Thirteen just raised her eyebrows, as though, daring Jenny to go further. Jenny actually didn't, though. "It's not even my name."

"It's plenty your name if you keep using bad language like that. I ought to order you to go eat a bar of soap, you know." Jenny glared for a moment, and then got up and left the room without another word. Thirteen watched her go, and then sighed sadly when the door closed. "That girl's mind sure does wander, y'know."

"Wanders to what?" Oswin asked. Thirteen stared at the table top for a few seconds.

"Nothing. Nothing…"


	265. Fingersmith

**AN: Had this one already written.**

_DAY ONE-HUNDRED AND THREE_

_Eleven_

_Fingersmith_

"Why am _I_ suddenly the little spoon?" he complained when he woke up and realised he was trapped in the arms of his tiny wife. In all honesty, he didn't expect an answer, because he hadn't yet gotten to the point in his morning where he went to the effort to deduce if Clara was awake or not, and so was very surprised when she replied, her breath on the back of his neck, the fingers of her left hand curled into his hair.

"Because you're a teddy bear. Get it? Ted? Theodore?" she said in a thick voice, drenched in tired, which was when he realised she was only half-awake. No doubt she wouldn't remember saying that in a few hours, when she'd woken up properly. There was no rush, though - it wasn't yet eight o'clock. People rarely got out of bed on the TARDIS before eight o'clock.

"You're very funny, Coo," he told her, and she giggled sleepily, "Why are you awake at this time?"

"Why are you talking to me if you think I'm asleep?" she countered. Maybe she was less tired than he thought. Maybe he should just ask her if she was tired instead of trying to guess for himself - she would probably tell him. She told him everything. Well, he hoped she did. There was no point being paranoid.

"I was merely remarking to myself. It's half past seven, or thereabouts," he said. He always knew when she was about to ask him what time it was. She seemed to marvel at it, as though it were some parlour trick.

"Can't get back to sleep, my hands hurt," she said in a pained, slightly pathetic voice that only served to make him find her more cute than he already did. He hadn't opened his eyes yet, but he did now, since one of these fabled hands of Clara's (the right one) was lying on the bed in front of him, the sheets messy and her arm hanging over his waist. They were both facing the door, him on the left. The left was his side.

"_What_ have you been _doing_, Clara?" he asked, staring at her hand, which seemed to be very sore looking with small blisters coming up on her fingertips, a particularly nasty one on the edge of her thumb. Behind him, she moved and untangled her left hand from his hair, holding this one in front of his eyes. It was just as bad as the other.

"I have a deal going with Oswin," she said, "If I learn this stupidly complicated piece of music for her, she'll let me teach her how to play piano. I think it'll be good for her, learning something knew, something her brain doesn't just make her good at. This is what happens when you barely practice piano for, like, six years, Chin." She let her left hand fall onto the pillow by his head.

"...Why aren't they healing?"

"Minor injuries. Nanogenes don't heal minor injuries. That's the way my sister programmed them," Clara muttered resentfully, but this amused the Doctor a little. He supposed it was good of Oswin to make them work that way, then Clara might not get too cocky about immortality, if she could still suffer blisters and colds like the rest of the human race.

"Human skin is so fragile," he told her.

"Do Time Lords not get blisters, then?" she asked incredulously, obviously not believing that this could possibly be true.

"Of course we don't get blisters, Clara. Blisters a sign of weakness in you inferior species," he joked, and she laughed, even though he could tell just by listening that she was trying not to. Then he yawned loudly and rolled onto his back, "Why have I never heard you play?"

"Because you spent all of yesterday in the library and I spent all of yesterday in here. What do you do in there all the time?" she questioned, "What books are you reading?"

"Nothing you'll be interested in, darling," he said truthfully. Generally he just read history books, old Gallifreyan relics, "I've just been looking for some things, Ten and I both have."

"Well, what things?"

"Time Lord books. He has the idea that he might teach Jenny some things," Eleven told her, "If I find anything that might interest you, I'll make sure to bring you it. It's an awfully big library, you know."

"I wish you'd show me it," she said, looking a little sad when he turned his head to face her. He leaned over and kissed her forehead.

"One day, wifey," he said, "Do you know, you're always talking about how comfy arms are as pillows, but all I'm getting is a sore neck." She laughed and he sat up enough for her to move her arm away from him, before throwing himself back down exaggeratedly so that she laughed, "Much better." Then Clara seemed to get distracted thinking about something. "What is it?" he asked her, but she didn't answer. "Clara?"

"Hmm?"

"What are you thinking about?"

"I, um... Nothing too... Important..." she said carefully, in an odd, secretive manner. He narrowed his eyes, and she looked at him somewhat pleadingly and bit her lip.

"..._Clara_..." he said in a warning, sickeningly paternal tone, trying not to get too distracted by the eyes she was giving him. Eyes that brown were a weapon, in the Doctor's opinion.

"...I forgot you were my husband."

"Sorry?"

"Just now. I forgot that... That you know, I can tell you anything. _Anything_. And it stays between us," she said, and he frowned, then she sat up and beckoned for him to do the same, crossing her legs and trying to untangle her hair for a moment before giving up, "Thing is... That... Um... I've been talking to some people about this, uh, _thing_..."

"...Yes..?"

"...Have you talked to Rose recently?"

"Rose? No. Why? What about?" he asked. What was Rose to do with anything.

"About... Martha..." she said awkwardly, and he was immediately confused. He didn't know what he'd been expecting to be on Clara's mind, but certainly not Martha Jones, that was for sure.

"Martha? Why?"

"Well, um... Look... The thing is... Martha kind of... Fancies me..." she said, and he stared at her, "...See! I knew you wouldn't believe me."

"I never said I didn't believe you!"

"I can see it in your face that you don't! You think I'm being a paranoid narcissist who thinks everyone is in love with her. But a lot of people _are_ in love with me! _You_, for instance, as you so claim on a daily basis. She asked Thirteen what I'm like when I'm turned on." He opened his mouth to argue with her, and then paused.

"...Well, in what context?"

"I don't know, it's your future, isn't it? I just know Thirteen made some joke about me being a demon when I'm turned on and Martha asked for, like, details," she said, shrugging, "And then the other day she was like, 'I was just gonna ask you out,' which is a really weird way to word seeing if I wanted to come out for the day."

"Which day was this?"

"I don't know, Ninety-something. That ridiculous drinking game was in the evening. That day. She spent ages pacing outside of our room that morning waiting to ask me until I ended up opening the door because I was gonna go make more tea," she explained, "And she said she'd read _Pride and Prejudice_ for me. Who does that?"

"Me. I would."

"What does that prove? I'm your wife. She also used to be obsessed with Oswin and I, remember? After the Dream? Plus, she was a total dick after we got married."

"Clara, that was months ago," he argued, and she glared at him, but really - this was ridiculous. She was surely being paranoid and had let her own vanity, or possibly her sister's vanity, cloud her judgement. This was Martha Jones they were discussing. Martha Jones who had been in love with _him_, and had been engaged to Tom Milligan, and had flirted with William Shakespeare and Owen Harper, and married Mickey Smith, and all of those individuals had the singular common factor of being male.

"Do you want me to prove it?"

"I have the sneaking suspicion that you 'proving' anything would involve kissing somebody who is not me and then claiming they kissed back, when, most probably, they would deny it no matter what, and you're a biased party. That isn't remotely evidence in your favour, darling," he told her, and she made a face.

"...I need a cigarette..." she muttered, and before he could object she vanished in a puff of black smoke and reappeared on his left, stumbling a little and wincing, but stood up and escaped from their bed without having to climb over him.

"I don't understand why you do that, since it always seems to give you a headache," he muttered as she went over to get her cigarettes from wherever it was she hid them from him (the bottom of the wardrobe, but he'd given up trying to stop her, more or less).

"Doesn't hurt nearly as much when it's not against my will. You have to kind of, let it out, or it builds up and then you can't control it and _that's _when it's painful," she answered, "And okay, I won't kiss her, but I still think she fancies me. And I'll still - ow, fuck..."

"What?" he looked around.

"Can't light the thing, stupid blisters... Do it for me?" she asked.

"No!" he argued, and she scoffed and put her lighter down.

"Guess I'm off to talk to Martha, then. Are you coming with? Got to make sure I don't go partaking in infidelity," she said, and she began to walk off, so he scrambled to his feet.

"You're lucky I have clothes on this morning, Oswald," he told her, and she laughed a little like something was funny, but he didn't know what, "Give me a moment to put slippers on, would you?"

"Says the Oncoming Storm," she joked, "I bet you've secretly always been this domesticated, you know." She watched him, one slipper on, stagger about the room looking for the other one. "To think we had to be married for me to see you in anything other than tweed suits and bow-ties."

"Why is this room so messy?" he complained. There were clothes everywhere. There were always clothes everywhere, clothes belonging to both of them, because they were both lazy, and neither of them had noticed until after they were married to each other. Now he was stuck for decades, it seemed, with some hopelessly messy human girl who needed all her food cooked for her and often seemed downright rude. She did make nice tea, though. Not to mention good in bed (not that he cared about that, obviously, he was _the Doctor_, that was always the very last thing on his mind... or so he told himself...) "Is that the same bra on the floor that you threw at your sister over a month ago?" (**Chapter Ref., 401**) She stood on tiptoes and frowned, looking towards the corner of the room.

"Dunno. Maybe. Probably. You'll be pleased to know that your daughter and our son-in-law finally returned all my stolen underwear the other day, though."

"Oh, wonderful, you were beginning to stink," he joked, and she glared at him.

"_I'm_ the one of us who does the washing, you know," she snapped, and in an exaggerated flourish, he staged a long look around at the mess in the room, "What? It's all clean. It's just on the floor. The floor's not dirty."

"You're a vile creature, Mrs Oswald," he commented, finally finding his other slipper on the floor underneath her favourite dressing gown she'd thrown off at some point in the last few days. She asked him to pass her it, so he did.

"But I'm pretty, so it's easily forgiven. See, smell this, it smells like fabric conditioner, it's clean," she said, holding her arm up to him, but he pushed her away and went to open the door for her, not knowing why he was entertaining the ridiculous assumption that Martha Jones had woken up one day a lesbian fatally enamoured with his wife.

"Yes, yes, I believe you. Martha wouldn't like you half as much if she knew you were a slob," he said, closing the door behind them and checking his watch. Twenty to eight in the morning. Clara kept trying to flex her fingers or make a fist, but continually winced and gave up. In the light of the Bedroom Circle, they looked red and swollen, "You might get arthritis."

"I'll kill my sister all over again before I let her let me get arthritis, sweetheart," she muttered, going and kicking on Mickey and Martha's door because she was so disinclined to knock on it with her broken hands.

"You know, Rory has an excellent first aid kid, I'm sure he could sort out these piano blisters fine," he told her, in a last-ditch attempt to make her quit this quest she was on to prove that the majority of the people she met wanted to sleep with her. For obvious reasons, he didn't really like the idea of his wife sleeping with lots of people. Not after they were married, at least. Even if they had been drunk.

It was lucky though that Martha was the one who opened the door and not Mickey - if Clara was even half-right, the Doctor couldn't help but feel bad for him, and maybe their situation would be an awkward one to explain. Martha seemed very shocked to find the pair of them lurking outside, though. He wondered what, exactly, Clara was going to try and do.

"I have a problem with my fingers," Clara said very seriously, and Martha stared at her for a moment, and then blinked a lot.

"Did you kick the door?" she asked.

"Yeah. Because of my fingers. Look at them," Clara held up her hands, "Honestly, you try to play piano and _this _happens. And I thought I had really dexterous fingers, as well, god knows I've had a lot of practice using them, you know... creatively." Eleven almost groaned next to her. He could tell what she was doing. "Do you have any plasters?"

"I suppose," Martha said, "...Why do you have hardly any clothes on?" Clara was in pyjamas and a dressing gown, but Clara's pyjamas didn't exactly consist of a great deal of fabric. Something to do with being married to someone with a body temperature hardly lower than 50°C. In fact, this was the exact reason she gave to Martha a moment later.

"I'm dressed just plenty," she said. Then Martha sighed and went off into her room, the inside of which Eleven didn't think he had ever seem, and so curiously followed with Clara while Martha went to dig out a first aid kit. "Where's Mickey?"

"Shower," Martha said.

"It stinks of sweat in here," Eleven muttered to Clara, and she laughed and then told him not to be rude.

"If you two start making out in my room, I'll set you on fire," Martha muttered.

"Speaking of setting stuff on fire, could you light this cigarette?" Clara asked, holding out her cigarette she'd brought with her. Martha held out her arm and clicked her fingers and the thing lit itself.

"Could you do that before? Is that new?" Eleven asked, staring in awe at Clara's cigarette. Martha decided not to answer him, for whatever reason, but Clara seemed to care more about tobacco than her blisters, suddenly.

"Just take the whole box of plasters, I have to shower," Martha muttered, stuffing the box into Clara's hands, who then passed them to Eleven, who Martha was decidedly refusing to look at. She was trying not to look at either of them, really, "Don't play anymore piano." Martha left, leaving them both there in the dark, stuffy room with a floor mattress.

"Not even a proper bed frame," Eleven commented.

"Maybe they broke it like we did, like, seven weeks ago?" she suggested jokingly, "She didn't take a towel or a change of clothes with her, you know." She blew out a stream of smoke and he turned his nose up.

"You'll make their room smell, wifey."

"Smells anyway. C'mon," she went to leave, holding his hand very gently so as not to disturb the sore blisters growing on the joints of her fingers and phasing them both through the closed door.

"She doesn't fancy you, Clara. You're being ridiculous."

"I'll prove it. All the hot drinks for a week says she _does _fancy me, alright? If she does, you make the drinks, if she doesn't, _I'll_ make the drinks." On the TARDIS, all bets seemed to revolve around food or drink or chores of some kind.

"...Fine."


	266. Too Young To Feel This Old

_Eleven_

_Too Young To Feel This Old_

Somehow, he felt like he hadn't properly spent time with Clara in an age. Eons seemed to have glided by invisibly and seamlessly, leaving in their wake a bloated atmosphere of missing days and lapsed events. She seemed to have been elsewhere lately, scattered and musing upon some great thing. But they were having breakfast in bed, engulfed in the smell of cooked eggs in omelettes, breakfast tea and buttered toast melting over them both like ambrosia.

"You know, we sleep in the same bed every night, but I still manage to feel like I miss you," he told her eventually, after he'd already wolfed down the omelette he'd made for himself. With a combination of telekinesis and gently manoeuvres, Clara was slowly doing the same, but the plasters wrapped around her knuckles and fingertips made it tricky and painful. He was halfway through a slice of toast, and they were both showered, but neither of them dressed to go anywhere, sitting cross-legged opposite one another on their bed, Clara at the end where the pillows were, him with his back to the switched-off television.

"That's because people get annoyed when we spend time together around them, Chin," she explained, but he didn't know how much he believed this 'truth' of hers, "The only time we have together is the night, and there's barely room for talking. I wonder why everybody hates us…"

"Because we used to kiss a lot in front of them."

"Well, _yeah_, but not _anymore_. That was _ages_ ago," she said in a pathetic, whining tone of voice, though she was smiling at the memories involving them kissing, "They should just get over it. They're adults."

"You're the youngest," he told her, and she stared at him for a moment.

"I am not!"

"You are," he told her matter-of-factly. She _was_ the youngest. Even when Beta Clara had been around, _his_ Clara was still two years younger, "Jack's centuries old, so are Jenny and River. Amy and Rory are in their thirties. Donna's in her forties by now – well, I think she is, I'm not inclined to ask. Rose is twenty-seven, Oswin's twenty-six, Adam's twenty-six, Martha's twenty-seven, Mickey's thirty. _You're_ twenty-four. You're the youngest."

"Doesn't that just make you feel like a paedophile?" she said, like she was angry at him for merely pointing out that fact that she happened to be the youngest person on the TARDIS. He grimaced to himself, but she didn't apologise. "And I'm gonna be the youngest forever, and everything…"

"Any other girl would be pleased," Eleven said, "I'm sure the lot of them don't know how old each other are, anyway, to know that you're the youngest."

"What's the date?"

"October 16th," he said.

"I'm twenty-five come November 23rd," she said, but he didn't know what point she was trying to prove.

"You're a fiftieth of my age, in fractions," he told her, and she pulled a face, and he laughed, "You're adorable when you're disgusted. Well, I suppose you're always adorable, Coo." Her scowl looked very strange when she blushed against her will but tried to maintain a sour pout, which made him laugh again.

"Yeah, well, it doesn't matter how old you are, you're still the one of us wearing pyjama bottoms with Zs all over them," she muttered.

"Oi! Don't make fun of my pyjamas. Hardly anyone sees me in pyjamas."

"I know, don't you remember when I told you the other week that the Ponds were asking me if you sleep wearing tweed?" she said, "And then you looked them like they'd just asked you the size of your… You know what. Never mind…" she said when he stared at her with a warning look. He knew what she was alluding to, but he didn't want her to say it. "You're such a prude."

"I'm an innocent soul," he told her.

"An innocent soul who begs pretty girls for shower sex," she said, "Poor me. Where'd you learn to make omelettes this good, anyway?"

"You're acting like I've never made you an omelette before."

"You haven't," she said, and he gawked, "…What?"

"That is a terrible injustice on my part, and I apologise. I made Craig Owens an omelette the day I met him, you know. When I was trying to get him to let me stay in his house."

"You ought to just marry Craig Owens, then. Don't worry, I'll keep his wife company," she said sultrily, winking at him in an exaggerated fashion that made him pause for breath as much as it irked him.

"You're incorrigible," he said.

Their conversation was cut into by somebody seeming like they were kicking the door, they knocked so loud. It made the Doctor jump, and then that just further caused Clara to laugh at him until he told her to shut up, which she didn't take kindly to.

"_Are you two doing it?_" Rose Tyler shouted. They frowned and exchanged glances.

"No," they both answered in equally annoyed, equally bored tones of voice, looking at the door now. Upon hearing that they were not up to anything like the sex-fiends everybody presumed that they were (it often seemed, to him, that Clara gave off some queer impression of being a nymphomaniac, for whatever reason), Rose opened the door and came in with a hand covering her eyes, looking through her fingers like they were a peephole. Loudly, Clara took a bite of toast, and Rose moved her hand.

"Rory said you were."

"We're not," Clara assured her, "Obviously. We both have clothes on. We're sitting down. Not actually touching each other. Eating breakfast. Unless, of course, when you said 'it', that's what you meant?" The Doctor snickered.

"She's not funny," Rose snapped at him, like she was telling him off. He raised an eyebrow at her.

"What do you want, Rose?" he asked coolly. _He_ thought Clara was funny sometimes. Maybe oftentimes.

"To see if you two want to come out today," she said.

"Oh, because you've already been so nice to us, we'll of course deign to accept your invitation," Clara said sarcastically, and he laughed again, putting down his toast crusts on his plate, which Clara picked up to eat herself a second later. Rose turned her nose up at that behaviour. Eleven himself didn't like sharing bread much, either, mainly because it ended up soggy if somebody else had eaten it. Though he wasn't the one eating it, she was, so it hardly mattered.

"We need more couples," Rose said, "And they have to be, you know, organic."

"Organic..?" Clara asked.

"What's going on?" the Doctor continued.

"How much butter do you even need on one slice of toast?" Clara questioned him, cutting across Rose when she began to explain. He got the feeling that she did this on purpose, as payback for Rose being rude. Girls were always getting payback on each other for something. That was why he disliked living with ten of them.

"In my defence, I didn't _ask_ you to eat the crusts," he said.

"Right, anyway, enough of you two being gross," Rose spoke up, "We're all going on a romantic getaway to a fertility resort spa… thingy."

"A fertility resort spa thingy?" Clara questioned, the word 'fertility' making the Doctor more or less freeze, "Why, exactly? I'm not really in the mood to go having children. I've already got two of them, one of them's dead and the other one slept with an alternate universe version of her stepmother, AKA me. They're a handful."

"Jenny's my daughter too, you know. Sort of. Stepdaughter. I mean, a bit…" Rose said, like she hadn't established a label for whatever was going on between her and Ten. Eleven was still caught up on this 'fertility' thing, even if he was reassured by Clara's remark about not being 'in the mood' for children. She was right, anyway, Oswin on her own was enough work if one thought of her as a daughter, which Clara seemed to.

"Well then, _you_ can sleep with her next time," Clara fake-smiled. _This is why they don't like you_, he thought, but he didn't say it. He'd say it when Rose was gone. It was the constant sarcasm and inability to take things seriously – the same issue her sister had.

"There are these demon children-"

"Have you had another vision about demons?" Clara questioned. Rose paused a moment.

"…Yes…" she admitted begrudgingly, "Kind of. Just a bit. Then we did some research, me and the Doctor, and your sister helped, because these kids… They're just weird. You know the kid in _The Omen?_"

"The devil one?" Clara asked.

"Yeah. They're like that. They don't cry or anything."

"Jesus didn't cry either, Rose," Clara told her dryly, and Eleven could see Rose getting increasingly annoyed by Clara's general attitude, which never bothered him. She never really bothered him, though.

"Well they're not Jesus, are they?" she snapped.

"Alright, calm down."

"I _am_ calm."

"Okay. Calm down a bit, though," Clara said.

"Would you be nice?" Eleven said to her before Rose could say anything else, "Listen for a minute." She opened her mouth as if to argue, but then shut up and ate his other toast crust, leaving Rose free to finally explain what she was suggesting.

"There are a bunch of reported cases of these kids, you know, killing other kids," Rose said, and Clara choked, "Well, that's your karma for being a pain, isn't it?" Through watering eyes, Clara glared, but Rose was right, in a way. He tried to stay out of it, while making sure she was okay. "Murderers. They're like little psychopaths, you know? But there are almost a hundred reported cases in a ten-year window in the Sixty-Seventh Century."

"Devil children in the 6600s?" he questioned.

"The 6660s," Rose specified further.

"Oh, wonderful. This couldn't get any better."

"Oswin figured out that they were all conceived in the same place. A weird fertility resort. So, that's where we're going. A romantic getaway. But River figures they'll be able to tell if anyone goes who's, you know, a robot or a hologram. Or has a body temperature of zero. So we need organic couples. Which – _unfortunately _– means you two."

"It's mainly Clara who's the awful one," Eleven said, and she elbowed him, "Well, I suppose we can go…"

"Yeah. I mean, if you don't have sex, you can't get pregnant," Clara shrugged, "Unless, you know, the kids really _are_ all Jesus. Or the antichrist. Do we need to pack bags?" Rose shrugged.

"Probably. Good idea. I would," she said, "It'd look weird if we showed up without any. We're going undercover. Because you two are the most annoying, you can both go first. Just in case anybody gets abducted, or there are any weird tests."

"Oh, great. Thanks, Rose. Thanks for being so considerate," Clara called after her as she left, closing the door, "Devil children? Seriously?"

"She doesn't mean that, she was just making a comparison. You're an English teacher, all you do in Literature is make comparisons between things."

"Well, I suppose that's true," she sighed.

"Do you hear yourself sometimes? When you speak?" he questioned, sounding rude without meaning to, and she stared at him, slack-jawed, "I mean, are you aware of how annoying you're being sometimes?"

"I'm annoying you?"

"No, not _me_, you never annoy _me_, but you annoy everybody else," he said, "That's why they don't want you around, Coo. It's nothing to do with us being an annoying _couple_, it's just you being an annoying _person_. They like _me_."

"Well as long as I don't annoy you, I don't really care," she shrugged, "…Is that why people always say I'm annoying?"

"No, I assume they say you're annoying because of your dazzling personality," he said in the most sarcastic voice he could muster, "Packing clothes… I don't want to pack clothes. Packing clothes is what humans do."

"Yes, because I forgot humans are the only species in the universe who wear _clothes_, sweetheart."

"Well, being married to you, one could easily get the wrong idea about how much time humans spend wearing clothes, wifey."

**AN: Just a little disclaimer before some of you get your hopes up - none of them will come back pregnant, okay? So don't get 'excited' or whatever. Kids is too complicated and pregnancy freaks me out. So yeah, it might as well be an _in_fertility clinic for all the good it'll do anybody on the TARDIS.**


	267. This Side Of Paradise

_Clara_

_This Side Of Paradise_

"I still hate suitcases, you know," he told her. She thought this was the most domestic picture she'd ever had of her husband, him dragging a suitcase along. Normally he had the TARDIS, but not these days, when no-one was allowed sole possession of the ship. Even though it _was_ Eleven's ship, rightfully, not anybody else's. "And romantic getaways."

"Oh, please, we had that romantic getaway in Paris for four days almost two months ago, and you _loved_ that," she taunted him, looking up at him through the lenses of her sunglasses. She was wearing sunglasses for two reasons: a), because it was actually hot and sunny on Paredenio 7, the planet on which the resort was perched, and b), because she didn't want to accidentally do something that might cause her eyes to turn silver.

"Well, Clara, on that particular occasion I seem to remember us not leaving that bedroom, doing the one thing we're not allowed to do on this one," he said, then he looked over his shoulder and looked at the TARDIS. She presumed he was wondering if Rory could hear them, but the others were all in the ship still, waiting for the all-clear, when Clara would have to call them and let them know if they had or hadn't been murdered, or something.

These others consisted of the Ponds, Ten and Rose, and Mickey and Martha. The 'organic' couples, minus Jack and Jenny. As soon as this had been suggested in Nerve Centre, Jenny had apparently been very adamant that she was grounded and couldn't go on any couples' trips with her so-called husband at all, and had left the room. Or so Clara had heard. Oswin, Adam and River didn't give off natural life or temperature readings, which meant Nine couldn't come either, Nios didn't have an other half, and Thirteen and Donna both had spouses elsewhere. Some of them had offered outside help, though, if it was needed. Eleven and Clara had been 'volunteered' to go first and test the waters, though.

"Oh, come on, you're acting like my company is a burden," she said.

"It's not a burden, I just don't like the idea of being made to do _activities_ with you. Don't you remember every time people make us all do _team building_? Hmm?" he challenged, a point she hadn't thought of.

"Eurgh. Activities," she muttered in agreement, "They'll make out we have a troubled marriage or something. That's what they always do. Show up to a resort and go to _group therapy_."

"They can't try to make us get along, we're all being covert," he said, "What do we need group therapy for?" he put his free, non-suitcase burdened arm around her shoulders and pulled her next to him, "Of course we don't." Here, she happened to agree with him. She wouldn't say it to him, but obviously, Thirteen's presence alone was enough reassurance that they weren't going to be separating any time soon. "Try not to stab me with a champagne flute this time, though. Not like the other time we had a 'romantic weekend away.'"

"That wasn't the _last_ time, that as the _first_ time, the _last_ time was the haunted house. Before that, Paris. Before _that_ it was when there was you and I and Rose and Tentoo and I got blown up and you proposed," she reminded him, giving him bitter memories of her death if he was going to bombard her with constant reminders of the one time she got quite drunk and tried to stab him with a champagne flute. Why was that the only thing anybody ever remembered? _It was one time_, she thought to herself. '_It was funny, though_,' Oswin's thoughts interjected, and she stumbled. 'Stop listening in on me. Creep. Also, you weren't even there.' '_I've been through your memories_.' 'Go away.'

"The prospect of spending _time_ with you is positively frightening, Clara," he joked, smiling.

"Thing is," she said, almost leaning against him as they walked, the TARDIS parked a safe enough distance away, "It used to be just us. Every Wednesday, you and I, travelling through time and space. Not you and I and fifteen other people."

"The Dimension Crash is the variable, wifey. Without it we wouldn't be together. It's the only difference between our universe and the Beta Universe. If it had never happened, you'd be living your life grieving Danny Pink," he said.

"Eurgh. What a shocking thought. And I guess, if the Alpha Universe didn't exist, I wouldn't even have sex with your daughter to look forward to?" she questioned him, and he made the most revolted face she'd ever seen, and she laughed, "I'm kidding. I mean, I'm sort of kidding. You can't _blame_ Other Me."

"I don't want to talk about it. Look at this place, it's ridiculous," he changed the subject when they came over the crest of a hill and saw an enormous rose-coloured complex stretching out ahead with multiple floors and layers like a wedding cake, decorated with white trimmings as though frosted around the edges. On the left were great plains of dazzling, emerald-coloured grass, and on the right was an enormous and distant crystal-blue ocean, glittering like a rainbow in the light of the golden, alien sun that made everything glow. The ocean was lower down, down a hill, but the grass melted into sand right in front of them, a gravel path splitting the two areas, fine, near-white powder and plants reminiscent of palm trees creeping around. Ahead of them, nearer to the ocean, she saw even more trees, meshing together in a knotted ball of sticky jungle, every archetype of paradise strung together like a broken jigsaw, an off-tempo waltz. In the sunlight, everything looked to be drizzled in gold dust, drowned with silver, rich and radiant with the phosphorescent charm of jewels and gems and treasures.

"W_ow_," Clara breathed, "You know how in dreams, everything seems shining and impalpable and perfect? This is like every idealisation made tangible. But it's so… Reflective. It dazzles you to hide itself." He moved his arm from around her and started to walk down a gentle slope in the light of a day that was neither dusk nor dawn, sunrise or sunset, the sky was orange and blue and white all at once, the flicker of a gas flame, with an invisible foulness she could almost sense to match. It didn't stop it from being gorgeous though, gorgeous as the ghostly silhouette of the Doctor in front of her, a dark outline coloured in with tweed suits and jovial remarks. She caught back up to him and her suitcase skittered on the gravel and the dirt and shot pellets at the back of her ankles.

"_Dazzles you to hide itself_ – it sounds like me," he said.

"Well hopefully you don't pump out demonic children like a satanic factory, sweetheart," she said, taking hold of his hand. It was a very odd place, Paredenio 7, but it was sinister. Something so perfect on the surface could never stay so perfect, so enigmatic in its vileness. It was a dream waiting to morph into a nightmare at any given moment, but then, she supposed they were there to investigate. Who knew what she might think if they really were there for the purpose of romance? They weren't. The setting wasn't going to get to her. Artificial surroundings would just make her feelings artificial, too, environment-dependent fictions, and when they got home she would be empty. But she hadn't been empty before, and sleuthing always brought them together, the same way pottery might bring 'normal' couples closer, or salsa classes. She didn't want to salsa, she wanted to risk her life and catch aliens in a time machine, spinning through all the cloudy galaxies of the universe.

"I don't like it," the Doctor said.

"I don't like it, either," she told him, squeezing his hand, "But we can't leave, there might be something really bad going on. You could write a million poems about this view, though."

"Thinking of getting into poetry, then? Like Future Me says?" he asked her, and she was caught immediately off-guard by him calling Thirteen 'Future Me.'

"If she says I'm a poet, I guess I have to be a poet," she shrugged, "You know what they say, there's no time like the present."

"Says the time traveller's wife."

"Technically, we're both time travellers. And you'll be _my_ wife one day, so where does that leave you?" she said, and he actually seemed amused. They never mentioned Thirteen. Eleven never seemed interested, and Clara didn't want to seem guilty.

"Leaves me very lucky, Coo. After all, the only perfect thing on this planet is you," he said, and she more or less swooned like the sappy person she was, even if she hated to admit it. She didn't know _why_ she hated to admit it – after all, compliments from a man like the Doctor, even if he was her husband, were all a treasure unto their own. Relics.

When they finally entered the main building of the resort, it was decidedly more typical, familiar, and hotel-ish than the exterior would suggest. She thought maybe there would be marble staircases and golden banisters in a pointless display of elaborate grandeur, or maybe everything would be red and pink and fluffy and cushy, heart-shaped and sickening, complimentary chocolates lining the floor with the rose petals, like confetti. It wasn't like that, though. There was a reception, a holographic ledger, cheerful staff, and they asked Clara and the Doctor hardly any questions as he booked a room (she thought about what an awkward situation this would place them in if they weren't together, one of those tension-fraught scenarios from films and TV that would ultimately end in them ending up doing each other, the one thing they were prohibited from doing right then.) She was a little suspicious of the lack of questions, though. They didn't even ask her why she was wearing sunglasses indoors, and they smiled too much, and she thought their teeth were too white.

Nevertheless, as soon as they got to their room (a heart-shaped bed, _eurgh_, and chocolates in a bowl with a note about them being special, aphrodisiac chocolates she was ordered by her husband not to eat), she ended up texting Rose the all-clear.

"At least we won't have to sit around on the TARDIS while they stagger their arrivals," Clara said as he took out his sonic screwdriver and went to scan the room for bugs, standing on the furniture, "There's not even a TV, or anything, what are we supposed to do?"

"I think 'each other' is the idea," he said, "It's supposed to be isolating, to clear your heads and figure out why you're fighting. But we're not fighting, and this isolation is only smothering. You're my only comfort in this place."

"Well, aren't I lucky?" she said as he checked underneath the bed, but it appeared he didn't find anything. Oswin had given her a bug-jammer anyway, though, that looked like a tube of mascara, which she left in one of the desk drawers to keep hidden. Hopefully now, they would be safe from eavesdroppers.


	268. Hearing Voices I

_Clara_

_Hearing Voices I_

"This itinerary is sickening," she said, holding a sheet of glossy, synthetic paper drenched in heart motifs and italicised writing and reading over it. There were no chairs in the room, which was annoying, so she was sitting in the middle of the bed with the Doctor horribly bored at the bottom, the bedsheets pink and red.

"So is the upholstery," he commented.

"Are you sure? I've been taking interior design tips, thought maybe we could do with a new bedroom," she joked, but the look he gave her over his shoulder showed that he didn't find this joke remotely funny. He looked away again, towards the door, and slouched down on his hands, hunched over somewhat. She got the vague impression that he was guarding her from whatever nefarious creature might come creeping through their door trying to force them to sleep with each other. She crawled up behind him on the bed, then draped her arms around him and leant down enough to kiss his cheek, kneeling. "Are you okay? And don't lie to me, you married me so you're not allowed to lie to me." He laughed a little.

"There are things that even I don't think I can suffer through, Clara," he said, "This is one of them."

"My _poor_ husband," she said quietly in his ear, "Having all of his courage sapped by rose petals and aphrodisiacs." With her right hand, she was absently messing up his hair, something that he wouldn't let her do a few months ago, because he was always very protective of his hair. "I know what'll cheer you up."

"What's that, then?" he asked.

"Mandatory couples therapy tomorrow morning," she said, pointing this out to him on the itinerary she was still holding in her left hand, and he groaned and leant against her.

"Can we leave?"

"No, we can't leave," she said, "Come on, it'll be fine. Look, there's a buffet on tonight."

"Well, I suppose a buffet is a slight improvement on couples therapy," he muttered.

"We could always make up some things to complain about. Some marital issues. Like, you always load the dishwasher wrong," she told him, "And you never feed the cat."

"Only Adam Mitchell feeds the cat," he said, "Maybe we should talk about the fact you never put the washing away, you just drop it on the floor."

"Okay, fine. I promise, I'll sort everything out when we get back, alright? I'll put the clothes away," she said.

"Finally. Does that say couples massages? I'm not having a _massage_, Clara," he complained.

"Eurgh, that's fair enough," she said, "I've had a lot of bad experiences in massages, anyway."

"Oh yeah? Like what? Happy endings?"

Clara jumped when she heard that, because it wasn't her husband. No doubt her husband hadn't a clue what a 'happy ending' was, but her sister did. When Clara glanced up, she saw the faint, glistening image of Oswin Oswald's psychic, astral projection into her peripheral vision in the corner of the room, looking sullen as usual.

"You scared the shit out of me, what are you doing?" Clara asked, letting Eleven go and moving to sit next to him on the edge of the bed as he watched her like she was insane, talking to thin air like she was. Well, it was a rare occurrence that either of the Twins would ever project themselves like this. Maybe he'd forgotten they could both do it – and the marvellous thing was it was all his fault, because he'd implemented their mind-patch in the first place.

"I've come to offer my services," Oswin said, curtseying, her fake leg glinting in the pinkish lighting, "This room is abhorrent."

"Oh, I know. What services? You're making yourself sound like a prostitute," Clara told her.

"Are you talking to your sister?" Eleven asked her.

"Obviously," both of them said, not that he knew both of them said it, he could only hear Clara. Oswin continued, "You asked for my help, so I'm giving you my help. If you want me to utilise my technological omnipotence, what with me being the smartest human being in all of history, and stuff," Oswin paced slowly in front of Clara as she talked, not being able to move out of her line of sight, "Then there's some stuff you have to do."

"Stuff? What stuff?"

"Pay me for sex, first of all."

"Ha, ha."

"I'm kidding, Clars. It's on the house for you," she winked, "My darling sister."

"Well, you know what they say. You get what you paid for," Clara said, "Just wondering, do you come with a receipt?" The Doctor found this all very odd, only being able to hear one half of the conversation. Thank god, too, the last thing he needed was to hear Oswin's incestuous flirting.

"In all seriousness, I need an access point," Oswin told her, "I can't remotely get into these systems, but if you get me into one computer, I'll be able to get into all of them. And fester. Like in the Dalek Asylum – technically, I was already connected to their network."

"Right, but what does that mean I have to do?" Clara asked.

"Me being the wonderful, quick-thinking person that I am, there's some stuff in your suitcase I snuck in their while you were showering. A data bug with a virus on it, kind of like a trojan, it'll allow me to use their computers through Helix. All you have to do is stick it in."

"Stick it in where?" Clara asked.

"I'm _sorry_?" Eleven questioned by her side, but she ignored him.

"I don't know, into whatever the Sixty-Seventh Century equivalent of a USB port is, Clara. It's complicated, though, because everything's wireless where you are, but there'll be a server hub. That means you have to find the server room, which I'd help you with, only I don't have a map. I can't get a map until you get me full access, do you see?" Oswin said, "Also, there are earpieces I invented last night in, like, half an hour."

"Half an hour? That's a while for you."

"Guess you could say I didn't last long."

"Gross."

"You'd know."

"Double gross. Hurry up, please, we have a buffet to go to. Speaking of food – is chocolate an aphrodisiac?" Clara asked. Oswin frowned.

"No. It contains phenylethylamine that triggers the brain to release norepinephrine and dopamine. Phenylethylamine is the 'love chemical', but I'm pretty sure you'd die before you ate enough chocolate for it to change the levels of hormones in your body. Love and arousal are different things, anyway. Why?"

"Because that chocolate over there is supposedly an aphrodisiac," Clara said, turning around to look at the bowl, Oswin appearing next to it as quickly as she blinked, a seamless movement.

"Well I can't see it with you over there, can I?" Oswin said, and Clara sighed and walked over to the chocolate, picking a bit of it up and holding it in front of Oswin's ghostly form, the Doctor watching.

"I wouldn't eat it if I were you," he told her again.

"I'm not going to eat it, sweetheart," Clara said.

"No need to call me 'sweetheart'," Oswin quipped, and Clara would have elbowed her, were that possible, "Well, I don't know a lot about food, but I wouldn't trust anything in this weird place that says it contains anything that might remotely be construed as an aphrodisiac, no matter how tempting it is, honey." Clara dropped the chocolate back in the bowl, none of it melting on her fingers.

"How many earpieces are there?" Clara went to get her suitcase from where it was propped up by the door, dropping it on the bed and unzipping it.

"Just four," Oswin said, "Didn't want to make more than was necessary. As long as you four couples spend all your time together, it should be-" Clara stopped listening to Oswin when her phone buzzed next to her, holding up a clear, plastic bag with four black devices that looked like earplugs within it.

"Oh, dammit," Clara said, "Martha says, 'Have you two tried the chocolate? It's' and then she put a bunch of heart emojis."

"See? I told you we shouldn't eat it," Eleven said.

"Looks like he's right," Oswin said, peering at the text while Clara was still looking at it, "…Maybe don't give them the earpieces then." Clara realised she'd already gotten a similar text from Rose, and in a last ditch attempt to salvage _some_ of them, she texted both Rory and Amy warning them not to eat anything that claimed to be an aphrodisiac because the Doctor said it was drugged. No doubt they'd have gotten messages from the other two about how good the chocolate was, but Clara figured they'd heed Eleven's words. "Well, yeah, earpieces there, data bug to create an access point _there_," Oswin pointed out a black, circular device that looked like it had an adhesive gel on one side, "Stick it on and it should assimilate."

"Is that all you want, then?" Clara said, Eleven peering over to see what was in the suitcase, not that she'd told him what anything was yet.

"Well maybe I'm just checking in to tell you how in love with you I obviously am."

"Very funny, Os. And obviously I love you as well, but would you go away now?"


	269. Come Dine With Me

_Clara_

_Come Dine With Me_

"The passage of time is simulated," he said to Clara, "This planet's cycle should last for almost fifty hours, but instead they're using an atmospheric hologram. Everything's fake, even the name's fake. Paredenio 7? Unoriginal." She didn't answer right away, she was eating garlic bread. The bread was the only thing on the menu that didn't seem to have some form of mood affecter cooked into it, and that was all they were both eating. She'd already had two slices of naan bread, and had moved on to garlic bread second, and last of all she'd stacked up some normal bread that would need to be buttered. In her head, her sister had given her a running commentary of how much of the food was really imported, synthetic goop. Aphrodisiac-laced goop, as well. Like doing shots of hormones.

All of the tables only sat two. Two everywhere. It was making things very difficult for them, since they were trying to get an opportunity to talk to the Ponds, who'd just come into the room a little late looking so displeased Clara didn't think for a moment they'd eaten any of the chocolate. Her husband actually tried to wave, but was stopped telekinetically by his wife, who shook her head at him. Idiot. They were supposed to be undercover.

"What's it matter if it's an atmospheric hologram?" she asked.

"This is a very human resort," he said, "I think it's odd. Do you know how much market they're losing? And planet-wide sky holograms aren't cheap."

"What – do you want to look at their accounts or something? We'll go find you a ledger?" she joked, but he didn't say a word, just sat with his hands together in front of his face, thinking. Generally, she was distracted by the fact a lot of the wall decorations resembled genitalia. It was highly off-putting and plain odd, trying to eat when there were 'discreet' penises carved into the walls.

Amy and Rory drifted over though, not looking at them, and sat at the next table, and she and the Doctor both silenced and tried to listen in on them. Rory, no doubt, could hear everything they said in undertones, but neither of them were graced with that gift.

"You know," Amy said, quite loudly, "I might go to the toilet. Do you know where the toilets are?"

"Excuse me," Clara said, leaning over, "I think the toilets are over there." She pointed at a set of doors which, yes, also had genitals on them. Only two, though, which she didn't think was accommodating at all, especially for the 6600s. Amy nodded, and then shot Clara a look indicating she should follow on at a discreet distance. They'd all just text one another, if it wasn't for the fact that mobile phones from over four thousand years ago were probably very conspicuous things to be carrying around. Rory followed before Clara could, though.

"What's he up to?" Eleven asked her.

"Probably wants to see if he can listen in," Clara said, to which Rory nodded over his shoulder at them, "See? You stay here. Eat any of my bread, you die." She got up and left to go to the women's bathroom (she assumed, going by what it had on the door), which was painted the most disgustingly bright pink she'd ever witnessed and actually had pictures of penises everywhere. _Seriously_. Penises. _Everywhere_. Amy was staring around at the walls with the same expression of horror across her face as Clara.

"_Oh my god_," Amy mouthed at her, which she didn't answer, because they were waiting for the one other woman in there to leave (who also didn't look too thrilled at the décor). Finally, when she could sense the other two watching her, she shot them a glare and used the futuristic hand dryer for a much longer time than Clara deemed necessary.

"This is fucking awful," Clara hissed as soon as the door closed.

"I know – is your bed shaped like a heart?"

Clara nodded, "We stripped all the pink sheets off it because it was that awful and we were so bored."

"The bathroom cabinets are filled with Viagra," Amy said.

"Ew, gross!"

"Have you seen Rose?"

"No, not since we left the ship."

"No," Amy stepped closer, "I mean, have you _seen_ her? She and Ten are stood outside almost going at it in _public_. It's worse than you and the Doctor were."

"See? There is something weird about the chocolate," Clara said, "The Doctor and I are only eating the bread because it's the only thing that doesn't seem to be laced with crap. Oh, I have stuff for you and Rory, courtesy of Oswin…" She found the bag with the remaining two earpieces (she already had hers in) in her pocket.

"The only thing I can imagine getting courtesy of Oswin is a sexually transmitted infection."

"I feel like _I_ might get a sexually transmitted infection just standing in this bloody bathroom, to be honest with you," Clara said, holding out the bag, "Earpieces. Prototypes. Well, she says prototypes, they'll probably be the third or fourth models and they'll probably be perfect. She's modest sometimes."

"_Modest_?" Amy questioned incredulously.

"You'll notice if you spend a lot of time with her, it's really weird. She was kept away from other people for so many decades that she doesn't know how her intelligence actually compares to real people, she just knows she's cleverer. She can't register when she does something, you know, super smart or whatever," Clara said, "I need Rory's help with something else, though. She gave me a data bug I have to plant on one of the resort's servers to make an access point for her, if we want her help."

"Well, she helped us a lot that way on the Dalek Asylum, I suppose. Remotely," Amy said, putting in the earpiece and wincing at the feedback, "Why do you reckon there are cocks all over the walls?"

"_Why does she what?_" Oswin's voice chirped through the earpiece, and Clara jumped, "_Sorry, sorry, I was about to announce myself when Helix notified me another of the things had been activated, but you said that so I had to comment._"

"Are you gonna listen in on everything?" Amy questioned.

"_I kind of have to in case something happens, but if you tap the end of the earpiece twice it'll cut communications. Wouldn't advise doing that while you're, you know, in the field. Also, they're morphic, like the adhesive in my leg. It'll mould to your ear. If somebody else is wearing it, it'll know, and it'll only allow one-way communications from my end_," Oswin explained, "_What's this about cocks?_"

"There are literally penises all over the walls," Clara told her, "Like, photographs."

"To increase sex drive, probably," Amy said.

"An increased sex drive doesn't mean anything if you're biologically infertile, though," Clara said. '_What the hell Clara? That was such an insensitive thing to say to Amy_.' "I mean – shit – that's not – I'm not trying to be…"

"Don't be weird," Amy told her, shaking her head, "So I can't have kids and this place is just a reminder of that. Whatever. Who cares?" Clara bit her lip. '_You're a terrible person_.'

"Would you shut up?" she snapped.

"_I didn't say anything, honey_."

"Then how did you know I was talking to you, hmm?" she questioned.

"_I didn't, I just love the sound of your voice whispering in my ear_."

"If I seriously have to put up with you two flirting in my ear 24/7 I'm going to smash this earpiece on the floor," Amy threatened darkly, and Clara wouldn't put it past her to do that. 'Gerald says be nice and don't say inappropriate things into the earpiece. You have the mind-patch for that, pervert.' '_Fine, fine. Spoilsport_.'

"_Does seeing pictures of dicks really increase your sex drive, though?_" Oswin mused, "_Why is this place so in support of people just constantly screwing? Where does the fertility come into it?_"

"All these penises are doing is freaking me out," Clara muttered, "And speaking as a bisexual, pictures of vaginas would just freak me out as well. Just everywhere, in your face, while you're trying to have a wee. What's with that? How did they even get people to agree to having intimate photos taken?"

"Yes, yes, well I actually _do_ need the toilet, so you can go now," Amy told her, and she sighed, but ended up leaving the bathroom, Oswin going dark and not saying anything more. She probably had full control over these communications and could cut them all off at will, if she wanted to.

**LINEBREAK**

They smuggled a very large quantity of bread out of the dining hall with them, just so that they had something other than weird chocolate to eat. That probably wouldn't be a problem, though, since when they'd gotten back to their room, Eleven had had the bright idea that he should flush all of the chocolate down the toilet, so he'd spent half an hour doing that, since they couldn't all be flushed at once. Three was the best he could do, he'd said.

"They'll easily be mistaken for stools," he had told her.

"Yeah, if your poop is shaped like intricate seashells, maybe," she had responded dryly.

"I was saying earlier," he began eventually, when they were just sat in bed, bored and not too tired, trying to think of anything to do, "About the atmospheric hologram. And them losing a lot of market."

"Yeah?" she said. It seemed he'd been thinking a lot about this.

"I don't understand why it's so human. Why is it only a fertility resort for _humans?_ We're not in a human-possessed system, this star isn't designed to sustain _human_ life, so why is it like that? And the name, like I said – Paredenio. Like paradise, or Eden. And all of it is unnatural but designed, you see?"

"Designed to bring humans here," she finished what he was going to say.

"Exactly. But why _just_ humans? Why _only_ humans?"

"I don't know, sweetheart," she said, rolling onto her side and putting and arm across his waist, deciding she might as well just try to go to sleep, if there was nothing else to do, since it wasn't until 2am they'd decided that she and Rory would utilise their surreptitious superpowers and coverrtly try to find these servers Oswin had claimed existed, "I expect we'll find out, though."


	270. Good Girls

_DAY ONE-HUNDRED AND FOUR_

_Jenny_

_Good Girls_

She didn't know whether she would describe the atmosphere aboard the TARDIS with half the crew gone for a whole day as 'peaceful' or 'boring,' and then she started wondering if maybe those two words were synonyms that really meant the same thing. With eight of them gone, there were only six left, besides her, which meant even less people to talk to, since she wasn't allowed out as part of the group. Not like she could volunteer her spaceship to them. Her spaceship was a piece of junk, anyway. She'd noticed, through her visits to Beta Clara, that though the navigation system still worked, that was the only thing that still worked. The oxygen dispenser had almost cut out on her last trip.

It wasn't like she really _wanted_ to go out to this couples retreat with the others, though. Ten people undercover? It wasn't very discreet at all. Two people undercover was bad enough. They were being sloppy, she thought, and Jack wouldn't stand for it. Jack was the other issue, though. She didn't want to be stuck somewhere like _that_ with a man who she deemed just as much a husband to her as Jonesy was, Jonesy who was curled up sleeping on the sofa opposite her, she could see, after he'd gorged himself on a hearty breakfast that morning, courtesy of Adam Mitchell, the cat's favourite person.

It could be a worse group of six though, she supposed. None of them were ostracising her, for one thing, which was a better treatment than she usually got. And Thirteen was good enough company, she supposed. Her mother didn't seem to be judging her for any of the same things the others were judging her for – probably because she'd lived it all before. It didn't change the fact that the only place she'd been for five TARDIS-days was Beta Clara's house, though (more than five days for her, nearing on ten, with all the added time spend elsewhere). She wasn't the sort of person who took kindly to being stuck indoors, probably why grounding her served as a good enough punishment. She glared at the bangle hanging annoyingly on the wrist of her robotic hand, narrowing her robotic eyes at it. She was getting used to the feeling of them now, though, the strange coldness in her head, the dull ache of the screws subsiding now. It had been nearly three weeks.

She felt like she might snap, though, sometime soon. Trapped on the TARDIS, her ship too risky now to take anywhere. What was she to do if she got a call from Clara? Or got the perverse urge to maybe make that call herself? She couldn't really do anything, not in that piece of jetsam that had been gathering dust and rust in the TARDIS's garage for three and a half months.

There was a cracking noise and a clatter, and her empty mug rolled across the table in front of her. She'd held the mug too tight and snapped the handle off with her right hand. She was strong anyway, but this metal contraption added about five times that if she wasn't careful.

"Are you alright?" Donna asked kindly. It seemed Donna was being extra-kind to her lately.

"I'm fine," she muttered. It was only she, Donna and Nios in the room, "Gonna need to get a new mug now. We ought to get more mugs anyway… I'm gonna go… speak to Oswin…" She slid off the stool and headed off out of the room, Donna, Nios and the cat all watching her go (she'd woken up Jonesy when she'd broken the mug), where she directly went to knock on Oswin's door. Well, it used to be Adam's door, and Oswin's room still stood next door, empty and quiet.

She was about to knock again, when Oswin called for her to come in, which she did, and was surprised to see that the lights were turned on. As far as she knew, Adam and Oswin never turned their bedroom light on, they just sat around in the dark like a couple of weirdos, blinding themselves with the television and the computer screen. How anyone could live like that was beyond her.

"…completely ridiculous, what sort of facility doesn't haver servers?" Oswin was saying to somebody from the corner of the room. It was only when Jenny stepped inside she saw that there were three people there; Adam on the bed playing video games, Oswin in the corner on the stupidly expensive looking computer set-up, though she pushed her boyfriend's stuff out of the way and replaced it with holoscreens, and Thirteen sitting on the sofa, alternating between talking to Oswin and watching what Adam was doing, "Morning," Oswin said.

"If they don't have servers, how have you gotten into their systems?" Thirteen asked.

"It's all separate, really weird," Oswin answered, "Clara and Rory couldn't find a single computer other than the one in the reception, so I basically have receptionist-level access. Which is access to hardly anything, because there's nothing to access."

"Are you talking about the resort?" Jenny asked, shutting the door.

"Yep," Thirteen said, then she held out a paper bag to Jenny, "D'you want a wine gum?" Jenny very much did want a wine gum, so she took a handful out of her mother's bag gratefully, and said thank you.

"How can there be nothing to access? What's going on?" Jenny asked, and Oswin explained something about a data bug being planted to create an access point, but Clara and Rory had been unable to find this place.

"But all of the computer systems are completely separate for some pointless reason," Oswin said, "Anywhere else would just have different levels of security clearance. And you can tell there are other systems because this stupid lowest level one doesn't even have any way to control the ventilation, or manage the money. They're obviously hiding something."

"Something like what?" Jenny asked, then, as Oswin complained she didn't know what was being hidden, her eyes drifted over to the TV to see what Adam Mitchell was up to, "What's he playing?"

"He's playing _Rise of the Tomb Raider_ because he realised that, because he lives in a time machine, he doesn't have to wait for the game to be released in synchronisation with his biological clock to stare at Lara Croft's arse," Oswin said, and Adam just smirked when she said that.

"You're a hypocrite, you'd do the exact same thing," Adam said, not even denying this accusation.

"Well I didn't say there was anything _wrong_ with staring at her arse, did I? Listen when I speak, honestly," she said, jokingly sparring with him. _Wow_, Jenny thought sarcastically, _a proper relationship_. Not a relationship that revolved on spiting somebody's father.

"Can I have a word, Oswin?" Jenny asked.

"What about?" Thirteen interrupted, and Oswin raised an eyebrow at her sister-in-law questioningly, "What? I'm just curious."

"It's my room, not yours, just because you sleep on the sofa once a week," Oswin said, then to Jenny, "Yes, you can have a word." She got up and followed her out of the room, after she'd made sure her prosthetic leg was attached correctly, pulling an unpleasant expression as she fixed it. "What is it?"

"Would you _please_ switch this thing off?" Jenny said, motioning to the thing on her arm that teleported her to her bedroom if she tried to go into the console room.

"Um, I think I need permission from your father before I do that," Oswin said, leaning on the wall.

"Yeah, well, my father's not here, is he? I mean, one of him is… It's just… There's something I want to do."

"And when you say some_thing_ you want to do, do you actually mean some_one_? And when you say some_one_, do you mean your alternate universe stepmother?" Oswin questioned.

"…No. Don't call her that. But no. That's not why I want you to unground me. About those spacesuits yesterday… Look," she said, bracing herself, "I kind of have this spaceship-"

"You-!" Oswin exclaimed as soon as she said that, pointing, then clamping a hand over her mouth, "You're still shagging her, aren't you!? In this 'spaceship'!? When did you get a spaceship!? I knew I recognised that jacket you're wearing. Why are you stealing her clothes? Her clothes are shit."

"Oh my god, this is the one thing she owns that's actually not atrocious," Jenny snapped, "And shush! Don't start yelling!"

"If you can get out with some crappy spaceship, what do you need me for?" Oswin challenged, "And are you seriously sneaking out to screw Other Clara? _And_ if that's the only thing she owns that's not awful – which, I agree with you, it is – why are you stealing it? Now her dress sense will be even worse than it usually is."

"You said three nights ago that you weren't even bothered I slept with her!" Jenny argued, "You know, you're just jealous because I'm not sleeping with _you_."

"I am not!"

"Are too," she retorted.

"I have a boyfriend."

"Yeah, but you wish he was me," Jenny told her. She didn't know what she was trying to accomplish. Oswin probably wasn't going to help her do anything if she kept on like this. Oswin didn't say anything though, "Ah! You hesitated. That means I'm right. You _do_ fancy me."

"No I don't," Oswin said, "Shut up. I don't even know what you want. And maybe I _don't_ care that you're sleeping with her. You're definitely a step-up from Danny Pink, is all I can say. Try not to get hit by any cars."

"My spaceship is, like, two-hundred and twenty years old or something, okay? It's a complete piece of shit that barely works, I only keep it around because it's sentimental. But I was thinking that I ought to get a new one."

"So? You want me to build you one?"

"What? No. I want you to turn off this stupid bracelet so I can just go steal myself a new one," Jenny said, and Oswin stared at her, "What? What's that face for? That's your genuinely-hurt-and-upset face."

"You don't know my faces," Oswin snapped, but Jenny did know her faces, quite well, by now, since she shared a face with Clara, "And I can't believe that you'd just go buy a new one and modify it when I am perfectly capable of building a spaceship!"

"…Alright, fine, build a spaceship," Jenny shrugged.

"Well I can't just _build a spaceship_, how good do you think I am?" Oswin questioned.

"But you just-"

"But I just nothing! I can't visualise everything! Stuff needs, you know, examples," Oswin shrugged, "That's what I was gonna do for the spacesuits. Way in the future, everything's commercialised. I was gonna go look and get ideas, at some point."

"Turn off this bracelet and I'll come with," Jenny said.

"What? _Now_? I can't go _now_, what if something happens at the resort and they need my help?"

"You're, you know. Portable."

"I'm 'portable'? Wow, thanks. What a great compliment."

"You know what I mean. And by the sounds of things, Oswin, there's not a whole lot you can do anyway. And don't tell Clara, seriously."

"I'm sure Clara's fully aware if you're shagging her."

"Not that Clara. The other one. The one you're psychically connected to who, right now, is with my father who will probably come rushing back here if he hears anything about this," Jenny ordered.

"I won't tell her, but I'll make _you_ tell her as soon as she gets back. And for the record, we're not landed, we're in flight, so he can't come 'rushing back here.'"

"…So will you come shopping, or not?"

"If your mother says I can switch off the restrictor, then yeah. Fine. I guess I will," Oswin said.

"What? Why do you need to ask my mother? You don't. I'm an adult."

"The Doctor grounded you, the Doctor can unground you, it is nothing to do with me, okay?" Then Thirteen actually opened the door without either of them having to go and get her to ask if Jenny could come out that day. She felt like a child, one of the younger ones, wanting to go play out on the street with all the other little terrors. God, she hated it. _Hated it_.

"So what's going on?" Thirteen asked, in a tone of voice that just dared either of them to try and put anything past her without noticing. Jenny didn't know what to do, but she didn't have to, because Oswin answered instead.

"Your daughter wants to go shopping, so she wants me to deactivate the restriction bracelet," Oswin said, "And I said, only if she gets your permission."

"Are you two being serious?" Thirteen asked darkly, which took them both by surprise, "You two were gonna go _shopping_, and you didn't invite _me_?"

"You can come if you want," Jenny said, "And if you let me."

"Well, if you must know, I don't think they should've grounded you in the first place. After 208 years of life, there's not a lot they can do to change your way of thinking."

"I thought you were 207?" Oswin asked.

"I had a birthday," Jenny said.

"When!?"

"Day Ninety-Four."

"Oh, you mean the secret day you can't tell anybody else about?" Oswin questioned.

"Yes," they both answered, "Exactly." Oswin scowled.

"I think a belated birthday shopping trip is exactly what the doctor ordered. Get it? The Doctor? Because I'm the Doctor?" Thirteen said.

"Hilarious," Oswin muttered, "But fine. I'll just tell Mitchell."


	271. Worry Rock

_Clara_

_Worry Rock_

She was not enjoying her stay. Not in the slightest. For a start, everything stank. Second, almost _everything_ to eat contained stupid 'love drugs'. Third, _all_ the bathrooms had ridiculous cock photographs on the walls. Fourth, the smell of chocolate and roses and sticky, sour perfume was abhorrent and sickening. Fifth, there had been no server room that they had found, not on any of the floors, and only one computer in the entire place, which Oswin could scarcely believe when they told her, so she'd spent hours in the early morning complaining about the fact she only had the most basic access to the segregated computer systems. Sixth, because they'd spend so much time looking for the servers, she'd not had nearly enough sleep, and this 'couples therapy' was at eight o'clock sharp, so they had to get up _even earlier_ in order to have breakfast. She skipped having a shower, though. She'd showered four times yesterday, simply because she was at a loss for anything else to do.

So it was that her breakfast consisted of the most delicious breads of the menu cherry-picked, telling a lie to the creepy waitress who smiled more than Clara liked with teeth that were a little too shiny to be real that they were both tragically allergic to aphrodisiacs. In fact, the Doctor further added, that was how they'd met, a support group for people with such sad, dietary requirements as not being able to stomach oysters, or ginger. She didn't say a word. She spent all of breakfast drinking tea that didn't taste quite right, experiencing the morning hours differently than at home, debating whether or not to just eat the butter lumps with her fingers and let the bread alone.

Morning was strange on Paredenio 7. It had the orange, sweltering quality of a lazy afternoon with phantom humidity threatening to cause her to break into a violent sweat at any given moment, though this dampness was as much in her mind as the harshness of the white, morning light back home. She expected an overcast morning with grey, pale skies, because for over twenty years that was exactly what she'd woken up to, and it was still the atmosphere she created for herself in her head. But, she supposed, paradise probably didn't include stormy, North England mornings.

Offhandedly, she mentioned this to her husband while they were sitting in a waiting room that reminded her of a hospital, because it was very white and very clinical and she spent most of their time there with her eyes closed and hear head half-buried in his shoulder, trying to shield herself from the bitter brightness.

"It's a shame there isn't any gravy, then you'd feel right at home," he said, "Or, how is it you talk up there?"

"You hear me talk every day," she said.

"_Reet a' 'ome_," he said, and she pulled a disgusted face he couldn't see. And then he sniggered at himself and his own _marvellous_ wit for doing an exaggerated Northern accent.

"Not even how I talk," she muttered.

"You've been in the South for too long, Clara, that's why," he said, "I bet you wouldn't say no to gravy, though."

"I'd never say no to gravy, sweetheart," she said, opening herself up to some more ridiculing from him, because apparently making fun of one's wife was hilarious. Not that _she_ found it hilarious. She told him not to be mean to her in quite a pathetic voice eventually though, and he stopped then.

"Mr and Mrs Oswald?" the therapist asked them, a woman, with no name plate on the desk in front of them. She did not introduce herself. There were more pictures of genitals on the wall behind her, which unsettled the Doctor considerably, so much so that she just held his hand to try and make him stop moving and pulling faces.

"That's right," Clara said, deciding she'd best talk instead of him, even though she was so exhausted and annoyed it felt like her eyeballs had pins and needles (and thank god Jenny wasn't around to hear her think that, no doubt she'd have all sorts of remarks to suffer through), "I'm Clara. This is Theodore." He still hated being called Theodore Oswald, but she didn't see how it was any different to him calling himself 'John Smith.' Honestly, it was probably just because it wasn't an alias he'd chosen for himself. He was such a child sometimes. She wondered what Thirteen called herself when she had to lie.

Then she had to give a very detailed and very fictitious account of all their efforts to conceive, which was very tricky, since she didn't know of any of the methods in the future. Eventually, though, her damn husband got up the nerve to actually say something on the subject of infants, and told this therapist that it wasn't any of her business, because they didn't have a child and that was that. It seemed though that his remark there, and their general attitude of not being nearly as obsessed with each other as the others there all under the rotten influence of drugged food, lost them some by way of inconspicuousness. She judged then and there that, to these strange members of staff, of which she had only seen three, they were no longer anonymous guests. The therapist grew unnerved for a moment, and then looked at a sheet of paper as though reading questions straight off it, and started to ask them generic, marriage-counsellor-type-things. Clara could sense that she wanted rid of the pair of them.

"So, Clara, is there anything that really gets on your nerves about him?" the therapist asked. A very unspecific question designed to find obvious marital flaws, probably. Cause fights. And she was still in a bad mood about him making jokes about her being from the North.

"Well…" she began, getting a mischievous look in her eye, "He _does_ make me live with his ex-wife." Eleven started.

"I don't _make_ you live with her!" he argued straight away.

"Actually, that's true, she just won't leave." The Doctor crossed his legs huffily and stretched out his legs in a subconscious effort to take up as much space as possible, to 'assert dominance,' or something equally pathetic and 'alpha male.'

"Can he not kick her out?" She'd intrigued something within this mask of a person.

"No, she lives there too. It's as much her… house… as it is ours," she said, picking her words carefully, "We also live with his, uh, brothers. Two of them." She didn't mention Thirteen there. Mainly because the connection between Eleven and Thirteen was vapid in her mind.

"You live with his two brothers and his ex-wife?"

"And his daughter," she said.

"Oh, you're complaining about my daughter now, are you? I wasn't under the impression you disliked her company, Clara," he said, and she scowled.

"I like your daughter's company _very much_, _sweetheart_," she said cruelly, "She's so… You know. Athletic."

"Vile," he muttered.

"How old is his daughter..?" the therapist asked, unnerved.

"I don't know. Late twenties or something," Clara shrugged, "She's not related to me."

"No, wouldn't _that_ be a tragedy?" Eleven muttered. She couldn't tell if either of them were actually angry at each other.

"And how old are you?"

"Twenty-four," she answered.

"…How old is _he_?" the therapist asked.

"Uh… Like… Mid-forties… It's that anti-wrinkle cream. Had her when he was very young. Didn't you, darling?" she said.

"Yes," he said resentfully, "And I don't know why you're complaining, when _I_ have to put up with your sister." And _now_ she was actually offended. He couldn't bring Oswin into things, not in that way.

"What about your ex-parents-in-law, then? Ex-girlfriend who goes out with your brother?"

"Sorry?" he said, and she mouthed, "_Rose_."

"Then you won't kick out our son-in-law."

"My daughter wouldn't be happy if I kicked him out," he said coolly.

"As if you care what makes her happy."

"What's that supposed to mean?" he questioned.

"It means you grounded her for… for you know what for."

"That's not even proper grammar. Call yourself an English teacher."

"Excuse you! Just leave my twin sister out of this," Clara told him sharply, warningly.

"She's always trying to break us up."

"She's never tried to break us up!" Clara hadn't noticed yet that the therapist wasn't saying a word to them, they were just arguing with each other, and this therapist merely seemed to be watching the fireworks. Couples therapy. What a terrible idea. _Terrible_. Especially because of the mood she was in.

"We have to live with her boyfriend, as well," he said.

"What's he got to do with anything!?" Clara argued, "I'm not the one who claims to have all authority on the… in the house, am I?"

"It's _my_ house, Clara. And do you know what I hate? When people claim they've done the laundry, and then drop clothes all over the floor."

"I promised I'd – you – you know what? You make _terrible_ omelettes."

"How _dare_ you!"

They glared at each other. And then she was nearly overcome with the desire to kiss him in some fervent, passionate way she'd disallowed herself from doing while they'd been away from home. But the PDA rule was habit, and they were in the presence of somebody else, even if this somebody else was probably used to that kind of impolite behaviour. So she finally broke their gaze and scoffed, slouching down in her seat.

"You never used to clean the toilet."

"We don't even share the same toilet anymore, Clara," he said sternly, like a father to a child, which just pissed her off more. She hated him sometimes. She loved him, but she also _hated_ him.

"I don't care, you would never clean it, or the shower, or the bath, or wash anything, _ever_, you would just not clean at-"

"You're a terrible kisser." She stopped what she was saying, and something in his eyes seemed to register that he'd crossed a line, the same way that she knew the remark about his bloody omelettes was going too far. Why did he care so much about eggs? The only eggs he was supposed to be bothered about right then were her imaginarily infertile ones.

"Shall I ask your daughter what she thinks about my kissing?" she shot back angrily.

"Clara! I have just about had it up to hear with you – OW!" he shouted when his chair suddenly, all of its own accord, violently dipped forwards and he hit his face on the floor and ended up curled in a ball, "My face!"

"Wow, how unfortunate. Is that a faulty chair?" she asked the therapist, fake-smiling at her for a moment, before glaring at the Doctor again.

"My chin has carpet burn," he complained.

"Should've thought about that before you went and grew such a stupid chin, shouldn't you?"

"Oi! Is this about the gravy? Everything's always about gravy with you people."

"Are there any champagne flutes lying around, that you know of?" Clara asked the therapist, and Eleven gasped as he finally struggled to his feet, scowling at her. He crossed his arms. "What're you gonna do? Ground me? With your daughter?"

"Oh, you'd just love that, wouldn't you?"

"I think she'd be the one being _loved_, if you know what I mean," she said wryly, and he gasped.

"I'm filing for a divorce."

"Good," she said, and then there was silence.

"…Are we still going swimming later?"

"Obviously, what else are we gonna do?"

There was another pause, before the therapist finally decided to make them clear out of her office, which they did, entering the waiting room to find Ten and Rose had the next slot, but it seemed to be an entirely _different_ slot on the mind of the Tenth Doctor, if she were to be vulgar about it.

"Christ, with those two around I feel like I'm an extra in a porno," Clara said to the Doctor, who was watching them face battle, almost sharing one single seat they were so all over each other, with his head cocked to the side, like he was studying some piece of complicated alien technology beyond his understanding.

"I don't mean what I said about your kissing," he told her, "I mean, look at the state of that. It's disgusting. If she had a retainer in, he would end up swallowing it."

"Ew," she said, "I guess I didn't mean what I said about your omelettes _or_ your daughter, either, but we can talk about this somewhere where these two aren't, come on." She had to lead him away by the hand he was staring at them so much, the way people couldn't take their eyes off the gore in a horror film, or the most disgusting injury or ailment on television. Or when they slowed down to drive next a car crash to see if they could witness anything grotesque. It was that sort of intoxicatingly gross scene in that waiting room, and she was glad to be away from it.


	272. Everything Is Average Nowadays

_Jenny_

_Everything Is Average Nowadays_

"Don't you just love the fresh air here?" Oswin said, breathing deeply, a faux breath, since she couldn't inhale or exhale anything except for her own self-depreciating narcissism. Along with that, she was being sarcastic to begin with, since she had declared that if they were going shopping anywhere, they were going shopping in _her_ century, in a large, travelling flotilla of a showroom. The air wasn't fresh at all, it was probably decades old and recycled. It felt stale on her lungs, but she didn't say anything. If Oswin enjoyed flat air and unchanging temperatures, then Oswin enjoyed flat air and unchanging temperatures. "My brother always used to say that 'fresh air' is an oppressive concept purveyed by 'Earth snobs.' Do you know about Earth snobs?"

"Not particularly," Jenny told her. The Doctor hovered nearby with her arms crossed, standing on tiptoes as though to get a look through the metal wall into the emporium.

"People from Earth think they're better than people from the colonies. Earth in this century is disgusting, Flek told me, she went once. Humanity have completely destroyed their own planet. No grass left. Every inch of land has a city on it. Even the sea has cities on it, and the sky. A metropolitan hell," Oswin said.

"C'mon, you're just regurgitating your little brother's opinions," the Doctor said, proving she _had_ been listening. They were in a queue to get membership and register their vehicle, the Doctor turning her psychic paper over and over in her hands just for something to do. Time Lords never seemed to be good at staying still, in Jenny's experience.

"Which brother?" Jenny asked.

"Fyn," her mother said, "The politically aware one who writes a lot of books complaining about capitalism."

"I told him Mitchell was a capitalist when we had dinner the other night. It was funny," Oswin said, smiling a little evilly at the memory of trying to turn her boyfriend and her brother against each other for whatever reason. Jenny had only met Fyn once, for just a few minutes, the day they'd had the ridiculous barbecue that had given most of the crew food poisoning, "You never realise how much you miss your own time until you're back."

"Back in the artificial atmosphere and the cushy living," the Doctor said.

"Yes, because I had a very cushy life, didn't I?" Oswin retorted, "One thing I like is that I don't have to hide this leg." She was wearing a skirt that day, when she usually stuck to wearing jeans for the aforementioned purpose of hiding her prosthetic. "This year, it's just the height of innovation in the department of prosthesis. People are more liberal and they don't judge, not like three-thousand years ago in the age of social progression. Well, this is the silver age of post-social progression and minimal bigotry. Bigotry comes from other species against humanity. Humanity deserve it."

"Well, you can tell that you and Fyn have the same father," the Doctor muttered. Oswin smiled. She seemed to be fond of her father.

It was very easy for the three of them, plus psychic paper, to come up with enough lies so that they were allowed entry into the exhibition-type place. Everybody else there was either rich or an emissary for some sort of private military organisation. They were graced with a holographic map Oswin was very excited about, with a list of what was being shown in different hangers.

"Look at it," she said, "I love it. The Twenty-First Century stinks. Who wants to deal with that pollution? Eurgh. I don't know why you love it so much."

"Y'know what you are? A temporal patriot," the Doctor said.

"I guess I am. Better than being a temporal fetishist, like some people," Oswin retorted jokingly.

"You do like the Twenty-First Century a bit much," Jenny said to her mother, who didn't seem perturbed by this accusation. She didn't even deny it, really.

"It's the people I like," she said, "I'm sure you know what I mean, hmm?" She said this to Jenny directly, with a look that simply said that she knew. Jenny gawked after her when she walked off, Oswin not seeing this, and then hastened to catch up a moment later.

"You'll love this, Jenny, there are two whole hangers full of weapons," Oswin said. She _did_ love a good weapon, "See? None of you lot know where or when to come to get all the best stuff. You just went and searched the Torchwood archives. I bet they don't even know what half of the stuff down there is."

"Well, the whole archives got destroyed in 2009," the Doctor said.

"Do they?" Jenny asked.

"Doesn't Jack tell you this stuff?" she questioned.

"No," Jenny said stiffly, stopping for a moment, "Jack doesn't tell me anything. He never has." Both Thirteen and Oswin could clearly sense some tension in this statement from her, and it seemed like Oswin might be debating something, thinking, brushing some stray hair behind her ears. Then her hair distracted her and she started saying she might permit some alterations to be done to her projected image to allow herself a haircut. "What does it feel like?" Jenny asked.

"What does what feel like..?" Oswin frowned. They were going through some nice, warm, well-lit corridors. Every other time she went somewhere something went wrong with something, and she direly hoped that nothing would go wrong here. Aliens didn't _always_ show up places, though. Aliens didn't show up when she visited Beta Clara. Although, she supposed, actually, _she_ was the alien showing up, it was just that she was causing a whole different kind of trouble then.

"Being a hologram," Jenny specified.

"I don't know," Oswin shrugged, after a pause, "Feels… numb. I'm just a ghost, really… we ought to look at spacesuits first, I think…" Oswin went on ahead with the Doctor keeping a close eye on her, and for a moment, Jenny was trailing behind, until the urge to speak to her mother about if she really did 'know' overcame her and she caught up with Thirteen.

"Are you mad at me?" she asked. She never sought the approval of her fathers, or the permission from them to do anything. But it was something about having a mother now that made her value her even more. She had no abundance of mothers, she only had the one, like anybody else, instead of eleven of them, and then an extra one from another universe, too. Twelve dads was a lot of dads.

"For what?" Thirteen asked, smiling. Not an angry smile, or a malicious smile, a normal smile, the smile Thirteen always seemed to have on her face since she was perpetually euphoric, "What day is it?"

"It's… Uh… One-something…" Jenny muttered.

"Losing track?"

"You _are_ mad at me! Stop being passive aggressive!"

"I'm not mad at you!" Thirteen argued, "I'm not mad, I'm… not mad." It seemed like she was going to say something else there, but stopped herself. "Theodore Roosevelt once said, 'I can be the president of the United States, or I can control Alice. I cannot do both.' That's his daughter. Now, I can be the Doctor, or I can control you. All I can do is set an example. I don't care that you're sleeping with another version of Clara. Clara's her own person as well, that's what Eleveny is forgetting."

"What are we talking about? Shagging my sister? That girl's a good shag, or so I've heard. By that, I mean I've never had any complaints myself," Oswin said, interrupting, "You called him 'Eleveny,' that's great. I'm gonna call him Eleveny now. What's he forgetting?"

"That his wife can think for herself," the Doctor said, "Honestly, it's not like the woman raised you. You've only known her for three months. She's not a puppet to the desires of others."

"…You don't like him, do you?" Oswin said, smiling a little when she got this idea. The Doctor's smile vanished completely now.

"No. She can do better. Me, for instance. Just need patience, though," Thirteen muttered, "Anyway. Shopping. Spacesuits. No more talk of my wife's dead husband she doesn't see anymore because he's dead." She beamed when she said this, which Jenny thought was very unnerving.

"I have half a mind to think that his death is under 'mysterious circumstances' while you're staying with us, mother." The Doctor laughed.

"You wish. No. If you must know, it's his own fault that he dies. He does something very stupid. Equally as stupid as climbing up a diplodocus skeleton and falling off."

"I guess Clara and Eleveny are made for each other, then?" Oswin joked. Thirteen grimaced.


	273. It's Getting Boring By The Sea

_Clara_

_It's Getting Boring By The Sea_

"Clara Oswald," Clara said idly to herself, leaning back with her sunglasses sliding her nose, looking into the sun that was a little too orange, "The Doctor's wife." There were boats to take out to row, and that was where they were presently, drifting indifferently on opalescent waters that blinded them like a rainbow, a rainbow only in shades upon shades of blue; periwinkle and cerulean and electric and ocean, like spilled oil. It danced with languid ripples under the boat they were in, painted white and glistening as though it were damp, her fingers making little blips when she trailed them across it, soaking her painful blisters in the warm sea of a lake.

The Doctor was hardly doing a thing, sitting around being bored. They had both just wanted to get as far away from the resort as they could, so they were perched almost right on the edge of the infinity pool, one of two, one for swimming, one to function as an artificial sea. He told her the salt in the water stinging her hands wasn't real salt. She sat up and slouched forwards and he watched her, but he couldn't tell that she was watching him back, she was trying to hide the silver-ness of her eyes, since she was keeping them still in their boat telekinetically.

"That was how Kate Stewart introduced me the other week. She said, 'This is Clara Oswald, the Doctor's wife.' It's strange. Being somebody's wife. I mean, one day, you're nobody's nothing, and then you wake up with a hangover and a wedding ring, and you're sharing a bed with a husband you've never even kissed. But it's odd being _your_ wife," she told him. He wasn't saying an awful lot, he was just listening to her talk, so she took his attention as cue to continue, "This other guy says, 'If you're the Doctor's wife, why can't you get him down here to take a look at this?' as if Oswin wasn't enough to handle. I bet you don't get that though. You don't get people in awe because you're 'Clara's husband.'"

"Maybe I ought to. Maybe one day. You can't help leaving a mark travelling through time," he said, "You're already leaving plenty of a mark on UNIT." That was an amusing thought, if _she_ grew to be the more intergalactically famous one of the pair of them. When _the Doctor's wife_ morphed into _Clara Oswald's husband_. Unless she got a moniker of her own granted by someone somewhen.

"I don't think people can really believe it, you know," she began, taking off her sunglasses to try and wipe them clean, not that she had anything to wipe them with that did a good job, "It's like, 'Do you know the Doctor?' and, 'Oh, yeah, I'm married to him.' 'You're _married_ to him?' They just really don't think you're ever capable of, I don't know, actually telling somebody you love them. You just sit around and let it eat away at you, and then they die or something and you vow, 'Never again,' in your Last-of-the-Time-Lords voice. 'The Doctor can _sleep_? And _eat_? And _communicate_? And' – god forbid '_fornicate_?' Pigs would sooner fly."

"There's a planet where pigs _do_ fly, you know. Little wings, like the cherubs of the farming industry. All the livestock do, very strange. It's got immense gravity, you see, they hardly get off the ground, but they need the wings to create a sort of lift," he explained, and she laughed, holding up the sunglasses to the light of the sun to see how much muck was still sticking to the lenses like sweat, beads of dirt and dead skin condensing and perspiring in front of her eyes.

"Well, pigs fly and the Doctor lets himself be in love with somebody, it's a freak of nature."

"Clara?"

"Hmm?" she glanced up to see him watching her very closely, like maybe she had an eyelash on her face or something. Instinctively, she brushed a hand over her cheek to try and get rid of anything that might be there, but found nothing, "What is it?"

"Could I see your eyes?" he asked.

"Well, they're right in front of you," she said, meeting his obligingly. She supposed it was something to do with the silver qualities of them, and after letting him stare for a few seconds, she looked at her reflection in the concave glasses, her eyes like iridescent moons shining back at her, partially eclipsed by irises and glowing beneath the firefly of a sun.

"I'm honestly not sure whether or not I've seen them silver yet," he said, "What day was it..?"

"Ninety-Four. The one you can't remember," she said, "Because none of you Time Lords will tell anyone else what happened. Made a promise, or something." She put the glasses back on and smiled at him. "All better, see?"

"All the better for seeing those dimples," he told her, and she maybe blushed, but her face was so warm and the pallor of her skin so scorched by the peculiar sunlight, neither of them seemed able to tell, "You glow in this weather, marvellously so."

"And I'm _all yours_," she whispered the last two words to him, leaning forwards, "And you haven't kissed me once all day."

"A sheer travesty," he smiled, but he didn't accept her invitation to kiss her, which saddened her somewhat, because there was only so much two people could talk about, "Maybe we ought to discuss things here. For a start, I don't think I'd enjoy it an awful lot with pictures of my manhood hanging on all the walls for people to laugh at."

"I've seen your manhood, many times, and trust me, there's nothing to laugh at. It's positively _daunting_," she said, and he gasped and she just burst out laughing, holding her hand in a way that she might have a cigarette between her fingers, but there was none, an upsetting fact. She did have a nicotine patch on, though. Not that she was quitting, she had no reason to quit, she just thought that the 6600s wasn't the type of era to be smoking ancient cigarettes in, not when they were trying to be covert.

"Is that true!?"

"Is what?"

"That it's… You know what, I don't want to know your answer."

"Okay."

"But you're very short, so I shouldn't think you're very good at telling proportions," he said.

"Oh, yeah, because I'm so small I can't even fit a cocktail _stick_ between my teeth, let alone your actual co-" He actually put a hand over her mouth so she couldn't say what she was going to, and she just grinned and moved his hand away, perfectly smug. "Honestly, you are _so_ fun to fluster."

"I'm being serious. This resort is very suspicious, and I don't think we're really investigating to our full capacity."

"We are! We're investigating the fake sea, very thoroughly," she argued, and he just looked at her, a serious, unamused expression, not even a trace of him trying to stifle a laugh, "You really don't like it here, do you?"

"The thing is, I do like bread, but I'd prefer not to have to eat bread for every single meal of the day, Clara," he said sternly, and she sighed and crossed her arms.

"Okay, fine. You win. It'll be just like before the Dimension Crash, with the same minimal amount of kissing and sexual contact. Y'know, back when it was me being clever, solving mysteries all on my own, catching aliens, with you as my doting chauffeur, not-so-secretly in love with me, the technical support – but only when needed. Up until that key moment when we both got drunk and I realised that I _could_ lower my standards enough to be with you," she said.

"I'm not entirely sure that's how it used to be."

"Oh really?" she asked innocently, "I mean, that's how I remember it, so…"

"Of course it is. It was only three months ago, you know," he shook his head, "Anyway. Resort. Forcing people to have lots of sex. Why?"

"To conceive."

"But they're not doing anything to help anybody to conceive, biologically."

"Might be something in the aphrodisiac food?" she suggested, shrugging.

"Ah, yes, good point, very interesting," he said, "No way to analyse it, though, not without eating it."

"Maybe we ought to all pitch in to ask somebody who _has_ eaten it, then?" Clara said.

"Ten and Rose are inseparable, and one of them's super strong and highly dangerous," Eleven said, "And I'm not sure Ten is very inclined to help us out anymore."

"I know," she said, getting an idea, "Who here supposedly has feelings for me, and would do anything for me, and would probably be very easy to lure somewhere private?" He thought for a moment.

"…Me?"

"No, not you. Well, yes, I guess, but no."

"…No, Clara. We can't kidnap Martha. She'll set us on fire."

"She won't set us on fire, because she's smitten with me, and completely intoxicated on weird chocolate. I mean, she keeps staring at me. I saw her at breakfast. Mickey was trying to talk to her and she wouldn't say a thing. You can scan her with the sonic and see if there are any prominent physiological effects of ingesting the poisoned food here," she said, "We can always get Amy to 'persuade' her not to hurt us if my charms fail."

"It's not your charms failing I'm worried about, it's them working a bit too much," he grumbled.

"You're jealous, aren't you?" she asked wryly, and he crossed his arms in a huff and looked determinedly off towards the horizon of the infinity sea that went on forever in sky-coloured illusion. Then he turned back.

"You know, maybe I am jealous. Am I not allowed to be jealous when my own wife talks about seducing other people for malicious purposes?"

"The ends justify the means. I doubt they take kindly to lesbians here, anyway, they seem very obsessed with enforcing the gender and sexuality binary. Straight relationship, monogamous, man and woman, BC values. Rigid."

"…What do you mean?"

"I mean that two girls can't just do it and expect to have a child without the aid of some ridiculously advanced technology I myself have trouble imagining, and neither can two men. All those genitals are relatively uniform without any differences, they're unnatural because of how identical they are. All they want is the perfect binary," she said, "Obsessed with conception. Sex and conception, but not fertility."

"Interesting…"

"Now then, let's talk about what methods I ought to use to seduce Martha Jones."


	274. Sister Kisser

_Jenny_

_Sister Kisser_

"Hey, do you think this is my colour?" Thirteen asked, standing behind a spacesuit and examining it. The suits were all out on display on mannequins, and had thin forcefields around them to keep anybody from touching them, but the forcefields still allowed people to get quite close, and they only emitted a weak electric shock when touched. The suit she was looking at was blue and quite bulky, and the helmet was a cube shape, clear on all sides, which she thought looked very strange. Oswin seemed adamant that a large, dome-ish, spherical design was best. "I don't know if it's my colour. See, I _like_ blue, but it doesn't really go, y'know?" Jenny and Oswin were just staring at her. "What? …Oh, don't give me the same rant that Clara does."

"What rant's that?" Oswin inquired.

"The, '_just because you're biologically female doesn't mean you have act like a girl and follow the human gender binary, because gender roles don't technically exist and there's no reason for you to struggle to meet them_' rant," the Doctor said, doing an astonishingly good accent and impression of her wife, "Honestly, let me be a girl if I want to be a girl. At this point in time, I've been a girl longer than _she's_ been one." Jenny had already heard Thirteen make that bold statement a week and a half ago, on Day Ninety-Four. She'd been eating a slice of pie covered in chilli sauce at the time.

"You're from more than twenty-four years in the future?" Oswin asked.

"Did Adam not tell you about the whole thing with that lighter the other day? Accidentally lending that girl her silver wedding anniversary present, ugh," the Doctor muttered. Jenny hadn't heard anything about this, but then, she didn't really have a reason to hear about it. Silver was twenty-five years, but she'd guessed earlier by the fact most of the girls on the TARDIS were burgeoning on thirty that she was older than that.

"Are you older than Jenny?" Oswin asked, and the Doctor seemed to think for a moment, before smiling and stepping away from the spacesuit.

"You know something interesting about you?" she said to Oswin, who seemed taken aback, "You're clever. And not just in the high IQ sense. I think it's because your actions have caused so much trouble in the past that you really think before you do anything these days. That's why I can trust you not to tell your sister things she shouldn't know. I'm not as old as Jenny." So she was from between thirty and two-hundred years in the future. "Now let me worry about if that shade of blue would look good on me."

"It wouldn't," Oswin told her, "It'd look better on Jenny because her eyes are blue, yours are brown. Don't you know what these spacesuits are gonna look like, anyway?"

"Uh-huh. White. Makes my daughter here look like an albino, she's so blonde," she said, "Maybe I'll buy one and take it back to the future with me, you never know. Thank god you refuse to let your sister have any say in the design. Regenerating with a fashion sense is a new one."

"Well, I was born with one," Jenny said, shrugging.

"You only wear dark colours, that's hardly a fashion sense," Oswin said.

"What do you know? _You're_ Clara's offspring," Jenny retorted.

"Yeah? Well _I'm_ not the one screwing her," she said, and that was when Oswin's phone rang. Checking the screen, she declared, "Speak of the devil…"

"Wait," the Doctor said sharply before she answered, thinking, "Give me a moment… Couples resort, right? Second day? …Tell her I'm not here. Pretend I'm not here. In fact, I'm going for a walk for ten minutes." She just left, leaving Oswin and Jenny confused, but Oswin answered the phone eventually.

"_Hey_, honey," she said in a voice trying to be purposely annoying, "Got bored of abstinence yet? Thought you'd call me up for some phone sex?" Jenny couldn't hear Clara, but knew exactly the disgusted noise she'd just made. "Advice? … What about Martha? … I'm sorry, _what_? Hang on, hang on, I'm putting you on speaker."

"_Speaker? Why're you putting me on speaker!? Who else are you with!?_" Clara demanded angrily once she was put on speaker, Oswin beckoning for Jenny to come closer so that they could both talk to her, holding up the holographic phone that had morphed itself into whatever the 5100s equivalent of it was, which was very thin and very shiny.

"Just Jenny, she's very interested in what you have to say about, um, what was it again? Oh yeah, getting off with Martha Jones," Oswin said.

"What? Why are you getting off with Martha? You know she fancies you," Jenny said, "I told Other You last week, but she didn't believe me."

"_Yes, I know she… Yes… That's why I have to do it… Look, we need to find out the biological effects of the weird food here. I might be able to just _ask_ her to come to my room with me_-"

"You're not gonna screw her, are you?" Oswin asked, and Jenny couldn't tell if Oswin was genuinely asking that question. No doubt Thirteen knew what this phone call was and had gone off so that she didn't risk influencing the future in any way.

"_No she will not_." Oswin and Jenny both jumped when Eleven's voice came through.

"_Ignore him, he's treating me like a child_," Clara said.

"Oh, me too," Jenny said bitterly.

"_You ARE a child. Hope you're not going out anywhere?_" he challenged her.

"No. Sitting in Nerve Centre right now," Jenny lied. Oswin didn't grass her up, thankfully, for sneaking out. She probably didn't want to get into trouble for being the one to switch off the restriction bracelet still hanging from Jenny's robot-wrist in the first place, and she probably also didn't care much.

"Jenny says your wife's a good lay," Oswin said, and Jenny stared at her, "What? Are you saying she's not a good lay?"

"She's a spectacular lay, Oswin. Is that what you want me to say?"

"_Do I take that as a compliment or not?_" Clara asked.

"Well _I'm_ taking it as a compliment, honey," Oswin told her, "Anyway, I think you should make out with her."

"Just to be safe," Jenny added, "I can't see anything wrong with it."

"Nope. Are you really this desperate for female affection?" Oswin said, "Maybe you're jealous of Other You? I bet that's what it is. Did you hear that, Doctor? Your wife fancies your daughter."

"I mean, she seemed pretty into me last week," Jenny said offhandedly, in a bad mood with her father. What was he going to do, anyway? Couldn't keep grounding her for prolonged lengths of time. One day she'd be infinitely grounded.

"I just mean that if you're so starved to kiss a girl, you can always kiss me," Oswin said, "I mean, it's nothing out of the ordinary. You and I are always making out, aren't we, Clars?"

"_Hilarious_," Clara said dryly.

"I'm sure Jenny could call up Other You and invite her round."

"I'd be happy to," Jenny said.

"_If you kiss her…_" Eleven began down the phone, which surprised Jenny, because she'd been under the impression that Clara was keeping his mouth shut through telekinesis or something, "_No tongues_."

"That's a shit rule, don't follow it," Oswin said, the exact same time that Clara said to him, "_That's a shit rule, I'm not following it_." And then some arguing between Clara and Jenny's father ensued for a few moments that mainly revolved around Clara saying kissing didn't mean anything emotional at all and he was being a baby.

"_I mean_," she began, "_You kissed Jenny that one time_."

"I'm SORRY!?" Jenny exclaimed.

"_No, NO. NOT you, DIFFERENT Jenny, Jenny FLINT, married to Vastra, the Silurian_," Clara specified.

"Thank god. Thought my hearts stopped for a moment," she muttered.

"_She was married, and a lesbian, and unwilling, so it was kind of sexual assault if you think about it, so it doesn't even matter that we weren't married_," she said, "_Then after I jumped into your time stream, you were busy kissing River Song, weren't you?_"

"We've started a domestic," Oswin whispered to Jenny, who bit her lip, unable to tell if she thought it was funny or not. Eleven started making a lot of angry noises then. "I'm sure they'll fix it with sex when they get back. Since she's such a 'spectacular lay' and all that." There was the sound of a door closing, and then Clara sighing.

"_He's gone_," she said, "_Is Thirteen there?_"

"She's… She's… On the toilet…" Oswin said.

"_Well when will she not be on the toilet?_"

"She's… Really… Constipated… Half an hour, at least, I'd say… Anyway, Clars, look, whatever's up with these kids is coming from that creepy place. I was doing some looking into things, and there's no record of who built it. I mean, it's designed around humanity, right? I don't think it was built by humans. I would be able to find records of intergalactic planning permission from the local system's human council if it was, but there is no record. It just sort of appeared thirty years ago and it lures humans in," Oswin explained.

"Nice of you to tell her something useful after we've just sat and taunted her," Jenny said.

"I always taunt her, she knows I love her really, don't you?" she said to her sister, who answered, grumpily, in the affirmative, and Oswin looked smug, "How're you getting on with _Cohen's Masterpiece_, anyway, Clars?"

"_I have such bad blisters on my hands and fingers, I had to go get plasters from Martha yesterday morning_," Clara answered, "_Just to see how distracted she got when I went on about having dexterous, flexible fingers. She was very flummoxed, the poor girl._"

"And here you are, taking advantage of her feelings," Oswin said, "What I was saying, though, is that some of those kids are murderers, and who knows what they might do when they grow up? It's not like you're just messing with her for a joke. Or for banter, as my boyfriend would say. Just keep everything as a last resort. Can't Amy just tell her to come with you?"

"_Amy's not very good at using her power_," Clara confessed, "_She kept trying to make me jump on the spot earlier. Didn't work. So she'll _try_ to talk to Martha normally, but I still think I might be needed…_"

"How do you know you'll be able to seduce her?" Oswin questioned.

"_What do you mean? I'm me. I could seduce anybody. I could seduce Rose if I tried hard enough_."

"I don't think you could," Jenny said, "Rose doesn't like you right now because so many people keep shagging you. Me included. Adam included. Eleven included. Ten included because he fancies Oswin."

"He doesn't," Oswin muttered.

"Yes, he does," Jenny told her, "Plus, Flek. Then all the stuff with Eyeball and the Victorian… And Martha, obviously. And Thirteen. It's kind of weird."

"_…__Well, I'm gonna go, I mean… Can't really blame him, can you? I reckon I'd get annoyed if he started saying he was gonna go manipulate one of my friends by maybe kissing them… Not like he'll let me kiss_ him…"

"Why?" Oswin asked.

"_I don't know. Maybe he thinks you can get pregnant from it. I guess I'll talk to him… Ugh… Love you_…"

"Uh, love you too?" Oswin said awkwardly, and Clara hung up. Oswin stared at the phone, "She's never ended a call with that before."

"Do you really make out with each other?"

"…Me and _Clara_? Clara _Oswald_? My _sister_-slash-sort-of-mother-slash-creator? No! It's a _joke_, ew. I only say stuff like that because it's funny. It's not true at all. That's not what happened in the Dream, even though that's what everyone seems to think… Gross… Anyway… Spaceships…"


	275. Burn With Me

_Clara_

_Burn With Me_

The thing that people disliked most about Clara Oswald when it came to her narcissistic tendencies was, in her opinion, that she was everything she thought she was. Or, _knew_ she was, she should say. The thing was, in the last few days, she'd heard Jenny let slip that over the course of two months post-Danny Pink, Other Her had slept with some twelve people, while blackout drunk most times. She herself had slept with… Well, truthfully, she didn't actually know, but it was a lot. A good couple of dozen. Maybe she ought to sit down with Beta Her one day and try and make a list. What she was getting at was, when she said to Amy, Rory and her husband that she could easily seduce somebody, she really did mean she could seduce somebody. Easily. Even more easily if said person was already supposedly lusting after her, and was on alien arousal-enhancing drugs.

Rory was the distraction for Mickey, convincing him to leave the adult lounge of the resort for an 'important word,' which consisted of bashing him over the head with a clock and hiding his unconscious body in a toilet stall. As Clara went over to Martha, sitting on a sofa looking distracted and highly preoccupied, this was what was happening elsewhere. As if Martha cared though. Clara thought they hardly seemed married sometimes, the pair of them.

She sat down while Martha was looking the other way, though, and immediately caught her attention with her presence, making Martha jump, though she just smiled.

"Where's Mickey?" Clara asked. There was about two feet of leather-clad cushion between them. Martha stared at her for a few moments. "Martha?"

"I thought none of us were meant to be talking to each other," she said so quickly she stumbled over her words.

"Well, I guess that's the rules, but rules are stupid. I mean, you don't have rule-breakers without rules in the first place," she slid down the sofa to be closer to Martha, who shifted somewhat uncomfortably, but ultimately, didn't move to get away, "Don't you think? I mean, you can't have a criminal without first having a law. Complete anarchy would really restore balance to the world. The idea of having a sense of humanity in itself was destroyed by humans when they first came up with its existence. So was morality, morality killed by imposing clean-cut morals onto it. Means there's not really and good and bad, unless you decide what they are for yourself." Martha was listening to her intently, as Clara took a few ideas from her encounters with Thirteen, who seemed to get awfully excited when Clara made up something that sounded clever but didn't exactly make sense. Oh well, she thought, that's what her Literature degree was for. Making stuff up that sounded sort-of intellectual. Then she said, "It was Oscar Wilde who said, '_to define is to limit_.' He also said," she was right next to Martha, them just about the same height sitting down, and barely different anyway, there was only an inch between them, and she whispered what she next said, meeting Martha's eyes, which were fixed painfully on her, "That, '_the only way to resist temptation is to yield to it_.'"

As soon as she said that, Martha seemed to lean in as though to kiss her, and Clara pretended not to notice this and looked away.

"I mean, he also said that art is a '_malady_,' and love is an '_illusion_,'" she said, acting like she was oblivious.

"Have you seen Rose?" Martha asked, "She's really feeling the effects of it here."

"Effects? What effects?" Clara asked seriously, and Martha looked at her strangely, like she was surprised that Clara didn't a thing about these 'effects,' unless Martha was merely talking about the fact Ten and Rose were being particularly randy and particular disgusting in a lot of public places together. Clara didn't think they'd take kindly to being reminded of the PDA rule though.

"You know, this _place_, it's just… It's heaven," Martha said, getting a glazy look about her, and Clara frowned, "Don't you feel it..?" Partway through that sentence, her expression changed to one of concern and moderate suspicion. This place was not heaven. Clara hated it. And she was sure that if any of the others were in their right, non-drugged minds, they'd hate it, too. She was nearly drunk on the poignant stench of wine in that lounge. Clara was sure, at that moment, that the stuff in the chocolate and the rest of the food was more than just a mere aphrodisiac. Oswin had said it herself, chocolate wasn't even an aphrodisiac to begin with… So why was this whole resort so obsessed with making people screw 24/7?

"Oh, yeah, I feel it," she half-whispered, smiling, trying to get rid of Martha's suspicion, but Clara was plenty suspicious herself, "What about you, do you feel it? What about Mickey?"

"Hmm?" Martha asked, blinking, "Oh, Mickey? What about him? Where is he?" she glanced around, but didn't seem too bothered that he'd left. Didn't she remember Rory showing up and coaxing him into leaving just a few minutes ago. "What's wrong with you? You seem… I don't know, nervous." She wasn't nervous, she was thinking, but she got an idea at that.

"I guess I am," she lied, "Look, I'm shaking, feel my hands." She forced one of her hands into Martha's then, Martha who was almost as warm as her husband was. She sort of felt pity for Martha that she wasn't nearly as involved with what was going on, she was quite indifferent. But if she barely remembered what was happening with Mickey and Rory, what else would she not remember..? "More intimacy than I get from my husband," she joked, but feigning that it was only a half-joke, and she was somewhat upset, keeping her hand where Martha was holding it, fully aware of what she was doing. Wow, to think, she'd really had her eyes opened to her manipulative tendencies by Thirteen just recently, and here she was, at it again. Coercing people.

"What do you mean..?" Martha asked quietly. Martha didn't seem to know what, exactly, was going on.

"Oh, just, I mean… Had a fight. Maybe I'm not feeling the 'effects,'" she sighed sadly and moved her hand, slowly, Martha tensing before realising she ought to let her hand go, but struggling to keep hold of her fingers for a few more seconds.

"Why did you have a fight?" Martha asked.

"Well, get this," Clara began, leaning very close, smiling a little wryly, and then whispering with an undertone of incredulity, "He said that _I_ was a _bad kisser_! Imagine that." Somewhat cruelly, she thought to herself there that Martha probably was imagining it, and had imagined it many times. Maybe, when they were back on the TARDIS, she should actually talk to Martha and tell her she really ought to stop suddenly turning semi-queer for twice-married women, especially when she herself was married. She felt equally as bad for Mickey's situation as she did for Martha's. "But, I mean, I guess you wouldn't know. I just wanna do something to make him angry, you know?" she leant away from Martha and slouched forwards, as though thinking. Maybe she should have gone into theatre instead of literature…

"…Like what?"

"I don't know," Clara said, looking at her, giving her eyes, the sort of eyes that would make her wife from the future think twice about her no-kissing-my-past-wife policy, and had made her think twice about it, many times. She'd just always thought _thrice_ about it, and decided against it. Or Clara had teleported away. God, she hoped she didn't end up teleporting away any time soon… "What do _you_ think?"

"I-"

"This room's really cold, don't you think?" she said suddenly, sliding away a few inches, "I'm _freezing_. Wonder where my husband's got to, probably run off with Amy or summat. If only Thirteen was here… I do miss the company of girls… I'm _exhausted_, though, after rowing earlier. And that room is cold as. Guess you wouldn't know, though, pyrokinesis and stuff."

"Yeah…" she said.

"You know, you could, um… you could always… No, I'll be fine. I'll just curl up…" Clara said, nearly biting her lip she felt so guilty for this. Not that she bad at it. She just _felt_ bad about it. Maybe they could slip Martha some retcon and let her forget it had ever happened…

"I could what?" Martha asked very quietly.

"Well, you could always… warm up the room. You don't know where Mickey is, I don't know where the Doctor is…"

"Probably going on about you being a terrible kisser," Martha said, like she was trying to make a joke, but was being exceedingly awkward about it. Clara half-laughed and threw her a dimple-laced smile. Dimples, always her secret weapon.

"Probably," she said, and then she faked a yawn and stretched exaggeratedly without needing to, standing up, "Are you coming?" she asked when she'd taken a few steps away, looking at Martha slightly confused, like she'd already agreed to come back with her, and she'd be an idiot if she said no now, and would be disappointing Clara considerably. Which she sort of would be, because it meant Clara would have to go to Plan B, which involved telekinetically walking Martha along like a puppet, which she didn't want to do. Martha actually hastened to stand up.

As soon as Clara had lead her out of the adult lounge (she called it an _adult_ lounge because the walls were covered with glossy, maximised images of softcore porn, which were quite off-putting because she maybe found some of the models considerably attractive, and being attracted to both genders on display, that was all the worse for her) and they were in empty corridors, her room with Eleven not being too far, she took Martha's hand and lead her like a mischievous teenager to somewhere she wasn't generally supposed to be. Just as long as she didn't get suspicious, or get second thoughts, or start questioning her.

Of course though, Clara couldn't have _everything_ her way, and as soon as they rounded the corner where her hotel room sat with someone waiting behind it to clobber Martha with a heavy object, Martha dropped her hand.

"What is it?" Clara asked.

"This is wrong."

"What is?"

"_This_."

"…Uh, coming and warming up my room? You're only being a space heater, Martha. Just, a pretty space heater," Clara said, which wasn't even a lie, Martha definitely _was_ pretty. '_Yeah, she's like, an eight or a nine_.' 'Oh my god, Oswin, piss off.' Oswin's interruption fazed her slightly, but her welcoming smile didn't falter once.

"You're married, _I'm_ married, just because I might… because I… because you… I should go," Martha turned to leave, and in a rush of desperation and a blur of teleportation, Clara's head rang and she was immediately on Martha's other side, in front of her, black smoke drifting into non-existent wisps at her toes, and they very nearly butted heads. But, rather than butting heads, they butted lips, because Clara had gone straight to her last resort of only kissing the poor girl if she absolutely had to. And, in her opinion, she _absolutely_ had to. Martha didn't even resist, or try to stop her, but instead kissed her back in a way that told Clara that, oh yeah, she _definitely_ had feelings for her, there was no way of denying it anymore. But, by god, it was hot. Not hot in a good way. Well, sort of in a good way, like kissing a Time Lord, but then it was_ too_ hot, and Clara was getting burned. She was one-hundred percent sure that Martha was pyrokinetically heating up and scorching the skin of her face, but she was also sure that it wasn't on _purpose_, though that didn't change the fact that she was getting burned. Within thirty seconds it was like she'd stuck a blowtorch in her mouth and she was holding the burning end of a sparkler beneath her hands.

Then there was a bang and a grunt of effort and Martha fell to the floor and Clara, once she was freed, swore very loudly and stared at her palms, which had the skin practically peeling off of them in dreadful, amber blisters.

"Fuck, fuck, fuck!" she exclaimed, looking to her left at Amy, who was holding the copy of _Emma_ Clara had brought to read in her hands, and Clara stared, "Did you knock her out with Jane Austen!?"

"I guess," Amy shrugged, looking at Martha's collapsed form on the floor, "You've got something on your face. Did she burn you?"

"_Did she burn me!?_ Yes, she burnt me!" Clara said, barely being able to talk properly, hoping the nanogenes would kick in as soon as possible to fix the bloated lumps like searing cold sores spreading like an infection across her lips and tongue and chin. She felt like she'd tried to drink boiling tar. Then her husband appeared in the door to the room, Mickey probably still being watched by Rory elsewhere.

"Well," he said, "I suppose it's karma, really, for tricking her like that."

"Was she not into it?" Amy asked, frowning.

"Well, her tongue was in my mouth, so I _assume_ she was into it. Considering the inside of my face has as many blisters as the outside," Clara told her bitterly, "I've kissed enough people to know when they actually want to kiss me." She thought the Doctor had a point, though. It was karma, and she'd heal eventually. She _did_ deserve it. But she didn't want people thinking she'd _assaulted_ Martha, when she hadn't.

"Are you alright, Coo?" he asked, seeming to pity her now she was suffering immense pain.

"It's like I licked a _brand_, for _cows_," she told him, Amy trying to drag Martha into the bathroom, where they'd try and tie her up without her escaping, but they hadn't really thought ahead far enough to know what they were going to do with her. She supposed she didn't need to be _awake_ to be scanned.

"You are a bit of a cow sometimes," Amy said, and Clara glared at her.

"Unpleasant," Eleven commented, giving Martha a very strange look, halfway between sympathy and annoyance, but he ultimately went and helped her, Clara staring at the second degree burns spreading across her hands, raw, red and glistening. Staying quiet, she just waited until the burns melted away and her skin started to grow back, new and fresh, free of her minor piano blisters, and after a few minutes, Martha was in the bath (reminded Clara of Day Ninety-Four), and Clara was peeling the old plasters from yesterday morning off from around her knuckles, which came off quite easily from her new skin, and were partially burnt to black anyway.

"I tried not to kiss her," she told the Doctor, sitting down on the bed after Amy had left to go and recall Rory from whatever he was up to with Mickey, "I feel really bad. But, I think there's something else about the drugs they're ingesting. She started saying that this place was heaven, and I asked her why she thought it was heaven and she got all weird and I had to change the subject. Like, you know in films when people get brainwashed?"

"You think the drugs are brainwashing them?" he sat down next to her.

"Yeah. She forgot where Mickey went," she said, "Like, five minutes after Rory came and asked him to leave, or whatever, she was just like, 'where's Mickey?'"

"Odd. I suppose we'll find out whenever she wakes up…"

"Yeah. Well. Hopefully she won't remember the last twenty minutes. That would be good."

"Dare to dream."


	276. Fly Away

_Jenny_

_Fly Away_

"What, seriously? She goes through with it?" Jenny asked her mother, stooping below the overhang of a door inside a particularly small spaceship. That was the problem, she didn't a spaceship that was quite small on the outside, but bigger on the inside. She was then motivated to have some words with the Doctor about this, but right now, she felt like she was in the world's coolest Ikea, even if she had only been to Ikea once, a good few weeks ago, with Oswin and Alpha Clara. Now that said Clara was off the phone to Oswin, they'd waited around for about fifteen minutes for Thirteen to return, and it had taken two more hours of wandering through dangerous weaponry, spacesuits, and survival equipment for she and Oswin to coax any information out of her. When it was too late to affect anything, she'd said. When the moment had been and gone.

The interior of this spaceship, like most others, was just dull blacks and whites and greys looking very clean and orderly. No personality at all. In her Messaline spaceship there was a particularly unwilling virtual intelligence attached to the mainframe, but she thought she might get Helix integrated over, even if Nios protested. Nios protested about anything to do with any sort of simulated intelligence.

"Yeah-huh," said the Doctor, "Sure does. Nothing like a bit of necking to get you in the mood for a barbecue." She seemed amused by that, like she'd said something witty and somewhat cruel, and when she saw the puzzled looks she was getting from her daughter and her sister-in-law, she sighed and explained. "Look, what do you think happens when a load of sexual frustration within a pyrokinetic girl reaches combustion point, and is then all suddenly released at once? Bearing in mind, pyrokinesis is _very _unstable and this girl is already out of it on weird alien drugs. Skin heats up, is what happens, and when you kiss someone, what are you touching? _Skin_. Baked lips like in a kiln, fallen into one of those hot pots you get out in places of geological interest. Cooks you alive to the bone."

"Clara's been cooked alive to the bone!?" Oswin asked, and though Clara would ultimately be entirely fine no matter _what _physical distress she suffered through, her face was still a picture of complete worry for her sister's wellbeing.

"No, no, nothing _that_ bad. It was a sight to behold, those blistered lips. Have you ever seen someone have a burn blister on their tongue? Across their palms? Well, that's what happens when you add Martha Jones to Clara Oswald. Burns. Gives a whole new meaning to the phrase 'having the hots' for someone," Thirteen said, "I remember that when I kissed her that day, she tasted like barbecue. Very odd. Unseasoned spare ribs. Weirdly delicious." Jenny had half a mind to text all of this stuff to Beta Clara to see what _she _thought of it, but eventually decided that she'd drop it into conversation the next time they were together. Maybe during sex, then she could say something like, "_If you think _this_ is hot, you should hear what happened between Other You and Martha._"

"Okay, okay, look," Jenny began to the Doctor, who turned around and smiled, "...These ships are all really small... How-"

"How does the bigger-on-the-inside work?" Thirteen suggested, and Jenny nodded, and Oswin heard this and seemed intrigued as well. Whether she already knew how it worked and just wanted to hear how the Doctor themselves explained it, or she really didn't understand it, she came and leant on the white wall by a set of bunkbeds, two pods embedded into the wall, the same on the opposite side. The Doctor beamed.

"Passing on the family secrets, am I? Okay. It's called dimensional transcendentalism, now let me just... Alright, you see this kettle and this mug, right?" Thirteen walked past them and picked up a kettle and a mug, taken from the kitchen installation, white and plastic and dull, "Well, which is bigger? Not a trick question."

"The kettle," Jenny said.

"Yeah, obviously," Thirteen nodded, "But now - Oswin, c'mere - look at this." Oswin was handed the kettle by the Doctor and was them pointed to go stand at the end of the galley of the ship, which was a little over four metres long, and then she herself squinted a little and held up her mug, taking a step closer to Jenny and holding it up. "Now which one's bigger?"

"The kettle's still bigger," Jenny said.

"The kettle just has more mass, which one _looks_ bigger?"

"Then... I guess the mug does," she said, the mug completely obscuring the kettle from view, Thirteen's fingers wrapping around the handle and holding it out.

"Because of transdimensional engineering, we make it so the bigger one totally fits inside the smaller one. It's a whole bigger, furthe-away dimension. That's why it's called 'Time And Relative Dimension In Space.' They're in different parts of space, technically, but exist simulatenously and are both equally accessible at the same time, which is how it works," Thirteen said, putting the mug down, and Oswin returned with the kettle. "It's sort of just like you're looking with a different perspective, from a different place. You can only see that it's bigger when outside, and vice versa, y'know?"

"So, um, how hard is it to make stuff bigger on the inside?" Jenny asked.

"Not too hard, I mean, this bag is _huge _on the inside. I used to alter pockets, but a bag is way more convenient. Can't believe I never thought of having one back when I was a man," Thirteen sighed at the apparent idocy of her past, male selves, "Yes, I will help you make this spaceship transdimensional. Of course I will. You're my daughter, why wouldn't I? And it was your birthday, so I totally owe you. Even if I did get you that pie."

"Why are none of my fathers this nice to me..." she complained. It was true, they weren't, at all. Nine just seemed to be very awkward around her because she both was and wasn't his daughter, Ten was too enamoured with Rose to pay her much attention at all, and Eleven was still trying to hate her for her involvement with Clara, which was ridiculous. Clara Oswald was a human being, she could make her own choices, and there were two of her. If the Doctor was really trying to call dibs on an actual girl, a sort of, finders-keepers type deal, _he _was the one in the wrong for treating her like an object to be claimed. It wasn't like Clara had been decieved by Jenny, she was fully aware of what was going on, she hadn't even had anything to drink.

"So. Talk to me about this spaceship. You know, you could always talk to my boyfriend," Oswin said, "I mean, he's a massive science-fiction nerd and he's pretty clever. Plus, have you seen his house?"

"His house is _super _nice," Thirteen assured Jenny.

"Well, I'm not fussed, I'm not picky," Jenny shrugged, "Just, you know. Don't make it look like a house or something done."

"Okay. Classic spaceship. Classic spaceship shit. Got you now," Oswin said, "I mean, I'll show you designs and stuff, obviously... I've always wanted to build a spaceship..."

"You should text Adam," Jenny said.

"What about?" Oswin frowned.

"You should say: 'I'm being adorable right now and you're missing it,'" Jenny said. She smiled a little and took her phone out, presumably texting him exactly that.

"You do have all those drawings in your room," the Doctor said to Oswin, then she turned to Jenny, "You should see the ceiling of the room she grew up in. Honestly, it's covered in doodles, I saw it the other day."

"You can draw?" Jenny asked her.

"Like... A little bit... But it's not a talent, I had to learn to do it, for schematics, I'm no artist," Oswin shrugged, "But, um, actual question. How many beds?" That _was _a good question...

"Uh... Well... Um... I don't know. Just have one and like, a sofa bed..." she said unsurely.

"Sofa beds are the best invention since hair straighteners," Thirteen declared, "Clara won't let me get one, though. Naturally I got one _anyway_, but we only had it for about a week because she refused to sleep or sit on it."

"You're so weird," Oswin said, and Thirteen beamed.

"You get used to it."


	277. Let's Talk About Sex

_Eleven_

_Let's Talk About Sex_

He would very much like to have nothing but contempt for Clara Oswald, and for all his fondness of her do dissipate and vanish, just so that right then, he could be be in a bad mood with her. But he knew that, really, she'd already suffered enough for her minor instance of infidelity. In his whole life, he didn't think he'd seen someone with their tongue and the inside of their cheeks puffy with yellow, huge, burn blisters, barely intelligible, and for that reason he found that he'd forgiven her, even if he really didn't want to.

After Rory had returned and Clara had voiced the same ideas about the drugs being more than just drugs, it turned into a waiting game for Martha to wake up. A waiting game that slowly sank into a game of I Spy, and he thought he'd never been so bored in his life.

"I don't get it," Amy said eventually, speaking to the Doctor, who kept complaining about the fact there were only about three things in the room to 'spy', "When you stayed with us, you went mental with boredom after just a few hours. But you can happily sit around with her doing nothing for _days_." Clara seemed surprised at being brought into the conversation.

"I don't get it either," she said, "He puts up with so much. I spent a whole day watching _Extreme Makeover_ once and he didn't even leave."

"_Come Dine With Me_ is the worst," the Doctor muttered. It _was_ the worst, by far, of all the dreadful television shows he was forced to sit through by his human wife. Well, she had a point, it wasn't like she made him stay. It was like it was suddenly a crime to sit still with somebody for a prolonged length of time.

They heard a noise in the bathroom at that moment, though, and all rushed over, Clara not bothering to open it and just phasing through it, which seemed to get on Amy's nerves somewhat, but the Doctor held the door open eventually, feeling polite. Martha had her hands and feet cuffed together (he didn't want to think about the reason handcuffs had been included in the bedroom, but no doubt it was something nefarious and mildly sadistic) and was in the bath, which was full of freezing cold water to cool her down to a dangerous enough level that they'd be able to talk to her before she managed to melt the handcuffs and possibly attack them, if what Clara had deduced about the drugs was true.

"What the hell are you all doing!? How did I get here!?" Martha asked.

"What's the last thing you remember?" Clara asked quickly, urgently, clearly hoping that her coercive seduction had gone forgotten. Martha thought for a few moments.

"I don't know, just..." she frowned and squinted, like she was straining to remember. Eleven and Rory went and knelt next to the bath, Clara staying by the door, and Amy put the toilet lid down and sat on that, "What's seriously happening? I barely remember anything after we got here."

"...What if getting knocked out and chucked in a freezing bath made the drugs ware off?" Clara suggested. Obviously, there was _something_ else in the food, because Martha had forgotten everything that had happened, even if that _was _a good thing...

"Drugs? What drugs?" Martha asked.

"All the food has aphrodisiacs," Rory said, "_All_ of it, except the bread. But we don't think it _is _aphrodisiacs, we think it's something else. It's made you forget."

"Not everything," Martha said.

"What do you remember?" Amy asked.

"Just... stuff."

"What stuff?" Clara implored. She had her hand clenched around the door handle.

"Personal stuff."

"Well, like what?" she asked, and Martha stared at her like it was none of her business, which Eleven took to mean that it wasn't anything to do with Clara in the slightest, but Clara was being paranoid and didn't let up.

"It's _private_."

"What is?"

"Would you go away?" Amy told her sternly, figuring the same thing as Eleven. When Clara didn't immediately leave, and narrowed her eyes, he supposed Amy's power wasn't working.

"Why should I?"

"Coo, go and sit in the other room," the Doctor told her with a sigh, looking back at her.

"All I did was ask a question!" she protested, and he continued looking at her questioningly, until she clenched her jaw and remained.

"Will you behave?" he asked her.

"Fine. Don't see what I did wrong, but, _fine_," she said, crossing her arms and pretending to be offended.

Then Amy muttered, "I don't know how you put up with her."

"Yes, well, let's not talk about Clara, shall we?" he said, glancing at her, seeing that she was scowling. He couldn't pretend he wasn't even a little irked, and even upset, when people made remarks about him 'putting up' with Clara. He sighed though, wanting to drop the subject of his wife, who was turning into a bit of a loose canon, and he couldn't tell if he liked that yet or otherwise (he thought, secretly, that he _did_ like her increasingly unpredictable nature, because it made things more interesting than the perpetual boredom of recent months.) "Sorry, Martha, but she's right. We need to know what private things."

"Why do we need to know what private things?" Amy asked.

"Well, on a related matter of entirely different 'private things', this hotel is obsessed with, you know. People doing the... the you-know. With each other." Amy and Rory both stared at him. "What!? I don't like talking about it!"

"You're the one who does it," Rory remarked.

"He can't even talk about it when he _is_ doing it," Clara said snarkily from the back of the room, and he stared at her with his mouth open, "What? It's true. You're the most sexually awkward individual I've ever had the pleasure of screwing."

"I _will_ send you out of this room, you know!" he half-shouted, and he wondered if this judgement was how Martha was feeling presently. Clara mimed zipping her lips closed, but when Amy and Rory looked away, she winked at him, and he mouthed at her to stop, before getting back to the legitimately important interview they were supposed to be carrying out, before Martha tried to escape, as she inevitably would, "The thing is, this resort is obsessed with sex. So if the only thing you can remember is sex, then you should tell us, because that's very interesting information."

"Alright, fine, that's all I remember," Martha muttered, "But you're not getting details." Eleven saw Clara make a face out of the corner of his eye that meant she'd thought of something sarcastic to say but actually decided against it for once, "Why am I in a bath?"

"To stop you escaping," the Doctor said, "We don't know that you're not going to attack us."

"I won't attack you," she said.

"We can't trust you, sorry," Rory told her.

"So if I get pneumonia from this ice water, I know who to blame it on," Martha muttered, "Donate some money to fight against ALS on my behalf while I'm here, would you?"

"Do you feel any different?" the Doctor asked.

"I feel cold," she said flatly. Eleven sighed and reached into his pocket for his screwdriver, thankful that his wife hadn't stolen it again, like she always seemed to. But since she decided to keep his other one, this spare, lesser screwdriver could always be found where he last left it. "Are you gonna scan me!? Don't you bloody dare scan me, Doctor!"

"I have to scan you! The whole reason we brought you here in the first place was to scan you," he told her.

"Well, why me!?"

"You were the easiest to trick into coming here," Amy said, "Mickey won't leave your side for long, and do you really want to try and split Ten and Rose up?"

"Ten and Rose probably remember the whole trip with perfect clarity they've been doing it that much," Clara muttered.

"If Mickey won't leave my side, where is he now?"

"Tied up in a toilet stall," Rory answered, "He'll be fine."

"What do you mean, 'trick me into coming here'? Trick me how? What did you do?" Martha questioned, and everyone glanced around at each other, the Doctor seeing Clara bite her lip and look at the floor.

"We just... I told you," Amy shrugged, "Not really a trick, bad wording." Martha didn't look like she believed them, but it would be better for everyone if she didn't know the truth.

"Increased arousal and memory loss," Eleven said, "I'm scanning you, like it or not." Martha glared at him, but still seemed too cold to move at all. He was sure she wouldn't suffer anything _too_ detrimental. The ice cubs they'd stolen from the restaurant had all melted already, so she couldn't be _that_ cold. With her looking like she was being severely violated, he scanned her with the sonic for a few moments, "Odd... Wait... No, that can't..."

"What? What is it?" Martha asked, getting worried now, and he scanned again, "What are you double-checking!?"

"It says... Well, no, it doesn't say that, it says..." he hit the sonic against the palm of his hand.

"Do you want me to get the other screwdriver? It's in my suitcase," Clara said.

"I'd _like_ you to give me it back," he muttered.

"You're not having it back," she said, but she then disappeared for a moment to fetch it. Remarkably, the same result came up for a third time, Martha now looking incredibly worried, and he scratched the back of his head.

"What!?" she demanded.

"Well, it's very odd," he said, "It's like... It's as though you biologically have all the signs of pregnancy."

"I _what_!?"

"All the signs of pregnancy except an actual foetus," he frowned, "No baby, but it's like there _should_ be a baby. You have a whole amniotic sac, but no embryo."

"That's impossible," Martha said, then she turned to Rory, "Can you hear anything?"

"Anything like what?" Rory frowned.

"Like another heartbeat, I don't know! I can't be pregnant, I'm on the bloody pill," Martha complained.

"I can only hear five hearts," Rory told her.

"_Five_!?" Martha exclaimed.

"Time Lord, remember?" Clara said, nodding at her husband.

"You don't have any traces of contraceptives," he told Martha.

"Maybe this is all just the 'fertility' part of 'fertility clinic'?" Rory asked him.

"You'd think they'd let people know that that was what the food was doing, though," Amy told him, "Since that's the reason they're here. But why make people forget everything _except_ sex? Why is it so important?"

"I don't know," the Doctor said, "It's like we're missing something..."

Out of nowhere, somebody crashed through the door, somebody in what looked like a hazmat suit, with a long, blunt object a bit like a baseball bat, but shorter and thicker. Immediately, and without saying a word, they bashed Clara right over the head with it, and she fell to the floor in a heap.


	278. Shock To The System

_Clara_

_Shock To The System_

When something was stabbed sharply into her forearm she was painfully awakened, darkness choking her eyes and three red orbs coming into focus, but the orbs were no more the focus than the large needle sticking out of her skin. She could do nothing but stare for a moment, completely terrified, realising that her wrists and ankles were all tightly strapped to the wall behind her, or whatever it was. She just knew that she was upright, and she looked to be in the middle of a star-jump, forcibly spread out like she was.

Petrified and unable to move, she struggled fruitlessly against the needle and the pain of it as a thick, blue liquid pulsed through her arm, cold and viscous, and the thing injecting her seemed to stare, like there was something odd about her. Maybe there was, she was plenty odd, from a biological standpoint. Who knew what was happening? Once the syringe was empty, the thing left, giving her an odd look. It was human enough looking, but unnaturally thin, and nearly two feet taller than her, a gangly, freakish thing in a black and grey hazard suit with red goggles hiding what she suspected was three eyes.

"Clara!" someone called, and her eyes were drawn away from the corridor as the thing vanished, and she realised she'd been so distracted by having her arm injected with strange fluid she hadn't looked around at all. It didn't look like human engineering at all, the walls were all curved and black and dirty and the room was circular with another corridor leading away on the other side, no doors. Everything was dirty, and so dark; she suspected she was underground. She couldn't even remember what had happened, one minute she'd been in a bathroom, the next she was strapped to a wall and unable to escape. The one consolation was the other person in the room with her.

"Doctor, what's happening!?" she asked him urgently, trying not to raise her voice too much. The Doctor had just his arms strapped to the wall, free from the ankle shackles, unlike her, and he was watching her with great concern.

"They knocked you out," he said, "Hit you with something that injected you. They did it to everyone, except me, they just dragged me here and threw us in here together."

"Injected me with what? What's the blue stuff? What about you, are you okay?"

"Me? I'm fine," he said, almost like he was surprised she was asking him, "Can you get out of there? Can't you phase?" She hadn't actually thought of that. She'd been in too much shock for the brief few moments she'd been awake, but then she tried. Tried and failed. She couldn't phase. She couldn't teleport. She couldn't do anything.

"It's a sedative," she said, "I mean, shit, obviously… Knocked me out… It's adrenaline production, right? We found that out the other week, sedatives stop the powers from working…"

"For how long?"

"Hours," she said, leaning her head back on the wall in defeat, though she kept trying to break out, "Nobody else will be able to do anything, either. What about you?"

"I've been trying to get out since we got here," he said.

"Guess we're stuck waiting for the sedative to ware off then," she muttered.

"Is there a way to speed it up?" he asked, and she thought.

"Uh… I don't know, increase adrenaline production… Pretty sure my adrenaline production is already pretty increased, though… But we're not in immediate danger, right..?" she asked, but he didn't say anything, he glanced at the corridor closest to him, and she figured he was hiding something. "Sweetheart..?"

"What if I told you that the blue liquid is the same chemical that makes the female body produce an embryo-less amniotic sac, and that from the floor below you is a whole where a device will come up with an embryo ready for implantation on it?" he said, very quickly, and she stared at him with wide eyes, "Do you know how the artificially inseminate cows, by any chance?"

"Oh my god! They're gonna _impregnate_ me!?" Well, _now_ she was terrified. She didn't want any weird objects being stuck places they shouldn't be to give her some unnatural, evil child to bear.

"I say the female body," he said, frowning, and she looked up at him from where she'd momentarily had her eyes on the floor, "Of course, in a higher dosage, the same thing could be triggered in a man, the only issue is there's no viable, erm… _entry point_ for the _device_ to… _insert_… a man would die in the process."

"Well, you're making me feel loads better, aren't you!?" she hissed, "How long is there until they try and stick me with that thing?" she said, looking down and seeing a circular hole in the floor below her, and she hoped she was wrong when she thought that that was probably the hole where some contraption was going to protrude from and violate her when she least expected her.

"I don't know," he said, "But you still have clothes on. I doubt they try it through clothes, you'd die of an infection, then you'd be of no use to them."

"What do you mean 'use to them'? What are they doing?"

"They're sleeper agents," Eleven said, "The kids. _This_ is what people are forgetting, you see? This experience here."

"I haven't had anything to make me forget, though!"

"Don't be alarmed, darling, but I think they plan to just keep you here. Farm you, possibly," he said, "I'm only here because they don't know what I am. They don't really know what _you_ are, either, what with your fast healing and colour-changing eyes, or the others."

"Oh, great! Are you just trying to scare me!?" she demanded.

"Alright, yes, but I'm telling the truth," he said, "They've injected you twice, though. I told them to stop the first time, but I couldn't do anything, and then one of them hit me."

"Hit you?" she asked, "They're not allowed to hit you. Or I'll hit them. Then they'll bloody regret it…" She struggled against her bindings again and still failed at doing anything, then she saw him smiling a little. "…What?"

"You're very attractive when you're angry and it's not directed at me," he said, like he was now trying to cheer her up after scaring the crap out of her.

"It _will_ be directed at you if you carry on like that," she snapped.

"Even better," he said, and she stopped struggling and met his eyes questioningly, but he just smiled, and in the end she couldn't help but smile, too, as much as she didn't want to. Then he looked like he was victorious.

"You're not funny, you know," she said. He didn't bother arguing with her. "Don't be smug, it's annoying."

"_Sorry_," he apologised sarcastically, "I'm not sure how long it is until you're… done, though."

"'Done?' I'm not being cooked."

"I wouldn't speak so soon, you might have a bun in the oven in a few minutes."

"_Minutes_!?" she exclaimed, "That's not funny! I don't want to be inseminated."

"_I don't think 'inseminate' is the correct term, since there doesn't seem to be any semen involved, Clars_," came a voice through the earpiece she'd completely forgotten she had in.

"Oswin! Oh my god, _please_ tell me you can do something!" Clara begged, and the Doctor looked up when she addressed her sister. He refused to wear an earpiece, claimed it was too 'military' and too 'Torchwood' for his liking, but she thought he was just being a baby, "Tell me you've managed to hack into _something!_"

"_Okay, I couldn't hack anything before because the whole lower-level sub-computing-system is shut off, so there's no way to go through that access point-_"

"Please don't say 'access point' while I'm strapped to this damn thing."

"_Sorry, sorry. Look, the blue stuff IS creating the amniotic sac, but you're also being, uh… fed… look, how do I say this… you know in _The Matrix_, when he wakes up in the pod with tubes all over him feeding him so that the people can be used as batteries for the machines?_"

"…Yes…"

"_Well I took advantage of your unconscious and gave the mind-patch a sort of, upgrade, that allows me to monitor your vital signs. I mean, you could monitor _mine_, if I had any, but… You have a big tube plugged into your spine at the base of your neck, and I'm pretty sure it's pumping you with, you know, nutrition and painkillers_," Oswin said, "_Which is why you can't really feel anything, but, the charts I have here show that that's happening. They're getting ready to, well, farm you. Like the Doctor said. Keep you here. Some kind of baby-making machine, because they can't afford to let you go, but you're too valuable to kill_."

"Well that's fucking wonderful," she said flatly. The Doctor gave her a displeased look, but she didn't care what he thought of her cursing, because _he_ wasn't the one with a tube plugged into his spine about to have his ovaries farmed for all they were worth. "How do I get it out?"

"_Thing is, you're gonna have to pull yourself off of it._"

"And how would you propose I do that, when I'm strapped to a wall?"

"_Well, your earpiece is a bio-lock to you. That means you're like, a circuit, just a physiological circuit, and because of the thing plugged into your spine, that gives _me_ access to their facility, if I just trip the system by short-circuiting it through the earpiece, like a transmission,_" she said.

"Well then, why don't you do that!?" she said, ignoring the Doctor as he asked what, exactly, Oswin was planning on doing.

"_I just thought I'd warn you first! It's gonna make your eardrum burst_," Oswin said, "_Then I'll have access to unlock husbandy, okay? Brace yourself. On three._"

"You never go on three!"

"_On three, Clara! Okay. One-_" Yet again, Oswin did not go on three, she went on one, and there was a piercing pain in the right side of Clara's head and she most definitely felt her eardrum burst and shrieked, and less than a second later the shackles around her arms and legs hissed and opened themselves and she fell crashing forwards onto the floor and her hands and knees as another, stabbing pain erupted in the back of her neck.

She lost track of time for a brief period until the Doctor was kneeling next to her trying to help her to sit up, and she curled up into his arms, feeling hot blood trickling down the right-hand side of her face from her recently destroyed eardrum, hearing a viscous ringing and a buzzing deep in her head.

"What did she do?" he asked.

"Some… biological circuit… feeding me through a spinal tube…"

"Eurgh," he said, looking at the back of her neck, she knew, because she felt him move her hair, and again she wondered if she ought to get a haircut. It _had_ been months.

"She blew up the earpiece to trip the system, or something," she said, "But it worked. What's really happening, Doctor?"

"Everyone who stays here gets drugged so that all they remember is the sex they'll almost definitely have because of this dreadful environment," he began to explain, "Then all of them – at least, all of the women – will be brought down here and impregnated and sent away, and they go home thinking this is just some magical fertility clinic."

"The sex is an alibi, you mean?" Clara said.

"Exactly, otherwise they'd start to question the phantom pregnancy," he said, "That's why it _needs_ people to do it. A cover story. They're creating sleeper agents, or supersoldiers, I imagine, to integrate into the human race, and then…"

"And then what?"

"I don't know what," he said, helping her sit up, glancing around to check they weren't about to be ambushed. '_I reckon that episode there will be enough of an adrenaline boost for your powers to work_,' Oswin thought to her helpfully, '_Do you still have your phone on you? I don't reckon you'll have been searched_.'

"Hang on, Oswin's talking to me," she said, digging in her pocket and retrieving her phone, thank god, unlocking it and ringing her sister straight away.

"Why is she called… _that_?" he questioned. She was currently called 'Fuck Buddy.'

"She changes it herself," Clara said, putting it on speaker as soon as Oswin answered, "Well?"

"_I know where the others are_," she answered, "_It'll be tricky getting them out, though, if they have the spinal tubes as well, because they don't heal like you. Plus, I don't know how long it us until they're gonna try and impregnate them... You'd better hurry up, though and figure out what they're doing with these kids and how to stop them._"

"Sounds simple enough," the Doctor said.

"Sure it does…"


	279. Pull The Plug

_Eleven_

_Pull The Plug_

They both crept through the dark, oval-shaped halls of the underground passages, the Doctor trying to figure out what was really going on, Clara getting a spool of directions over the phone from her sister, leading them. He didn't know where they were, just underground. He supposed that Paredenio 7 must have some origins he didn't know of. Built to lure humans in, Oswin said - maybe the entire planet was artifical? It was the 6600s, the human race had probably wronged plenty of species by now, and that was the only reason he could think of to why, perhaps, these people he didn't recognise were doing what they were. Unless, of course, the sleeper agents had some other purpose? Perhaps humanity was the only species they could grow their embryos in? He didn't even know if the embryos were remotely natural or laboratory-bred.

He supposed, though, that the more urgent matter was that of the others, and which of them were being kept. All in one room, Oswin said. With her being elsewhere and omnipotent, it reminded him dreadfully of when he had her help in the Dalek Asylum, but that was just the way he liked Oswin Oswald. Elsewhere. She was trying to find weak spots and information, but whatever these things were, they didn't seem to be storing information anywhere in digital form. What she did manage to find was that there seemed to be a immensely complex life support system, immediately assumed to be for the women they were strapping down and growing things inside.

Oswin still talking, they rounded a corner carefully, and saw one of the doorless entryways with two hazmat-clad fiends coming out of it, and Clara instinctively hung up on Oswin to keep her quiet and they both backed around the corner again to hide.

"Are your powers working yet?" he whispered to her, stooping somewhat so that he could be quieter, and she was leaning on the wall on her tiptoes. She pressed a hand to the wall next to her, and nothing happened, so he assumed that was a no, they were not working. Listening out, they heard some noises like steam being expelled from something, as though in a factory. This, he knew, was a noise the masks they wore made. What were the masks for, though? Perhaps they were breathing. Whatever they did, the 'breathing' sound and light footsteps drifted away, the things none the wiser to their two escapees, letting Clara and Eleven know they were gone.

"Oswin says that's where the others are, in that room," she said softly to him, snd they both peered around the corner in a comical way, her nearly a foot shorter than him, and they saw the things were gone. The pair of them crept along, him reminded almost of when it had just been the two of them, the two of them enclosed in some bubble of unproclaimed, mutual affection that, insufferable as it may have been, was easier to manage than their lives currently, rooming with so many others. He thought, if they would just stay married, but be alone, that things may be as close to perfect as they could be. He didn't think Clara knew he thought that, though. She was always so skeptical of his feelings for her, he thought, watching her walk just in front of him, on an equal plight to rescue their friends. He should probably tell her things like that, they were the sort of things the girl liked to be told. She was very sappy, at heart, and he did love that about her.

And four friends did they find, hung on the walls like starfish. The Ponds and the Smith-Joneses, with their hyphenated surname that everybody had forgotten about within a week, including they themselves. Martha always introduced herself as 'Martha Jones,' or 'Dr Martha Jones,' if she were being fancy. None of them were awake, though.

"Why did I wake up so quickly?" Clara whispered.

"I'm not sure - nanogenes, possibly," he said. That seemed like the logical solution, and this she accepted. But what were they to do now? Wake the others up? Cause a panic that may or may not be necessary?

"Leave her alone," Clara hissed, and he found himself to have been looking at Martha. Not really thinking a lot, but looking, nonetheless. When he looked at Clara, he saw her wearing an expression he hardly recognised.

"I'm not doing anything," he said.

"...I'm so glad she can't remember what happened," she said, "I feel awful. I should stop trying to manipulate people, I have a real problem for it..."

"What do you mean?"

"Nothing, sweetheart," she sighed melancholily and looked at the floor for a few moments with a hand on her hip, "Where are Ten and Rose?"

"I suppose the resort doesn't know that they're with us," he said, "They certainly haven't been acting like it, after all. Although, there's always the possibility they're in deep cover." A second passed, and Clara stifled a laugh. "What is it?"

"Just Oswin, never mind," she said, and he assumed Oswin had said something tasteless he didn't want to hear, "Why don't we just wake up one of them, and see what happens?"

"But which one?" Eleven asked.

"Um... Rory. Look, he's not got his feet strapped in, like you. Only the girls have. He's probably not being fed through a spinal tube, either," Clara said, "And we can't wake up Mickey, he might still be under the influence." Valid points, he thought. "How do we wake him up?"

"Well, I suppose-" he was interrupted by a hissing noise, a similar noise to the masks, and the shackles on Rory's arms released him and, in his unconscious state, he fell to the floor and immediately woke from the impact, "...That's one way to do it." They both watched, Rory struggling to get to his feet, coughing, bleary-eyed and confused. He rubbed the back of his head where Eleven had seem him forcibly injected with the same sedative as Clara, and his eyes finally found the pair of them.

"What's happening?" he asked, and Eleven quickly explained everything about the artifical impregnations, the strange figured in the hazard suits, the sex alibi, the spinal tubes, and Oswin's hand in his release, at which point he complained about banging his head when he fell, and Clara told him that at least he hadn't had his ear explode, "So, what do we do now?"

"We have to try and get the others out, but we don't know if they'll be okay after we take them off the tube-thing," Clara said.

"And Mickey's probably still inebriated as it is," Eleven added.

"Plus, no superpowers are working because of the sedatives. We're all basically useless, we just have glowing eyes," Clara said, "And Ten and Rose are still topside."

"There's also probably only a limited amount of time before they realise Clara and I are missing. They were very interested in me, didn't know what I was," the Doctor said.

"...Rose's powers still work," Rory said.

"Yeah, but - ugh, hang on," Clara muttered, taking out her phone, "She's going on at me to call back, I think she has something important to... Chin, would you tell Craig Owens what the TARDIS phone number is, so he stops ringing me? In the last minute I have three missed calls from him."

"Might be important," Eleven argued on behalf of his friend, still unable to deduce Clara's opinion of Craig. Possibly, she didn't have one, or she was maybe just letting bygones be bygones.

"Will you two focus? Who are you calling?" Rory asked

"My sister," Clara answered, "She's saying stuff to me but I don't understand it, wants me to call..."

"Yes, anyway... I'm sure what Clara was _going_ to say was that Rose is still on the drugs, both of them are," Eleven said, "And we're all powerless to do anything to break the spell over them both from down here."

"_Finally, Clars_," Oswin said when she answered the phone, "_Look look look, the life support isn't for humans. I managed to get a deeper look at the encoding, and it's not remotely human, not like the food tubes. It has a hub, there's some kind of console, or something, that controls it all. I reckon, if you figure a way to destroy it, you can use that to bargain with them. It doesn't look like there's any way for me to remotely disable it, it'd have to be destroyed physically. Manually._"

"So what's the life support for? For the creatures?" Rory asked.

"It must be. Maybe that's what the suits are? The hazmat suits?" the Doctor suggested, "Life support for why, though? What's wrong with them all?"

"The atmosphere could disagree with them?" Clara suggested, "Maybe they just don't breathe oxygen. There's oxygen down here."

"_Yeah yeah, you figure that out in your own time. Thing is, I think I have a way to sort out Ten and Rose,_" Oswin said, "_It's kind of a long shot, though._"

"Then what?" Eleven asked her.

"_Then they can evacuate the surface_," Oswin said, "_It's only the evening, they brought you lot down way-early because you were causing a disturbance, but you six are the only ones attached to any of the tubes or the walls. That means if you empty the surface-_"

"We can what?" he asked sharply, "Blow up the planet?"

"_...Leave the others, at least for now, I'll try my luck with Ten and Rose_," she avoided the question, "_Just get to the life support hub and find out what's happening_." Oswin hung up.

"...Life support..." he frowned, walking out of the room, though it pained him to leave the others. He thought maybe, at least, they should release them, but that could potentially be dangerous. They didn't heal like Clara, and Mickey probably couldn't be trusted. He was thinking, though. "If they're all on this life support, all of them dying, maybe they're just trying to continue their species?"

"Are you sure you don't know what they are?" Rory asked.

"No. Not unless..." he trailed off, but stopped his train of thought altogether when they saw one of the things around the corner. Two of the things, actually, but they were carrying something, so neither of them saw Eleven, who ducked away and motioned for Rory and Clara to do the same.

"What is it?" Rory whispered.

"I think one of them's dead," the Doctor replied. He peered around the corner, Rory unable to turn invisible and do some espionage that way, as the two hazmat-clad creatures, gangly and horribly tall, a whole foot taller than him (he thought, for a moment, that this proportional difference must be the way Clara saw _him_, since he was a great deal taller than she was, and it was very odd to think about), delivered what he was sure was a body of a fallen comrade of theirs into another, doorless room. They stepped out, and he ducked away, but they went the opposite way.

"They don't seem to be very confrontational," Clara whispered, "They took us by surprise earlier, I guess."

"The only weapon they had was the syringe gun," Rory said, "With the sedative in it. Nothing else. But I suppose, if they're all dying, they won't be too formidable. They're not even guarding us."

"This all points to them trying to save their species in a relatively harmless manner-"

"Harmless!?" Clara cut the Doctor off, "You try thinking about getting a metal whatsit inserted into your downstairs, _then _tell me it's bloody harmless..."

"Darling, you _were _on painkillers," he said, "And normally, you would completely forget it. If they need the child to be carried, _why _would they want to stress the mother out? Terrible for a foetus." She still seemed annoyed, but as far as he was concerned, it _was _somewhat harmless. "Anyway, I was saying that it seems like they're just trying to save themselves, but then why would they be making murderous, killing-machine demon children?"

"Maybe they don't mean to?" Rory suggested, and the Doctor checked again to see that the hallway was empty. It was very dark within this underbelly of the paradise resort, everything lit with low, red lights, though he didn't know where the light sources themselves were. He always knew that Paredenio 7 was much to good to be true. Look what that placid, perfect exterior was hiding. A bona fide human farm. "If they're not humans, maybe they're bad at growing them?"

"If they're not humans, who are the staff in the resort? They seemed weird," Clara said, "And they didn't seem to be dying."

"Maybe they're like the kids. When they grow up, they're those? They could be early test-runs," Rory said, "If your sister can get Ten and Rose to wake up, they should try and figure it out."

"Look here," Eleven said, in the room where the other two had just dumped a body. They could barely see a thing in this even darker hovel, which didn't have much in it apart from possibly storage crates. But then he saw they were frighteningly long storage crates, and they were quite a peculiar shape...

"Are these _coffins_?" Clara asked, as the Doctor pulled out an industrial torch from his pocket and switched it on, panning it around the room, which was larger than first thought. It was like a warehouse, almost, just low ceilinged, and it was full of these boxes. These coffins.

"I'm afraid so," Eleven answered, "They really _are _dying... Look at this one, though, it's been burned, some of the suit has come off."

"Martha must have done it, by accident," Rory said, coming to kneel down. The Doctor passed the torch to Clara and told her to hold it while he took the mask off. It took a while to sonic off all the complicated, locked straps keeping this mask firmly in place, but he finally managed it, and the smell was abhorrent.

"This is like that bit, in the fourth _Indiana Jones_, where they go to those Mayan ruins in Peru and find all the perfectly preserved bodies of those conquistadors wearly sealed up, and he has to cut it open with a knife," Clara said, and Eleven stared at her, "What? I'm just saying."

"Doctor, look," Rory said, taking his attention away from his wife (who was being a bit of a nerd again, even though she tried so fervently to hide that part of her personality - but if she did insist on having a Death Star clock and a collection of replica lightsabers) to the body.

"It even _looks _like one of those dead conquistadors," Clara breathed next to him, stooping down at his shoulder, him kneeling over the corpse. She was right, though, it did look like a dead body. It was horribly wrinkled, shrivelled, a face much more square than that of a human with three eyes to match the three goggles, "Do you know what it is?" Eleven stared at it. "Doctor?"

"They're Strodrybs," he answered, standing up, "They're supposed to be a peaceful race, generally, but I thought they all died two-thousand years ago. Do you see how it looks burned? That's the atmosphere. Their own planet had an almost impossibly thin layer of oxygen. The thing is, humans tried to colonise their planet because Strodrybs live underground, in tunnels. They're a bit like moles. Humans oxygenate the planet and the Strodryb all die because the air is toxic. Eventually, their cities are found by humanity with them all dead, and it's put down to a 'mysterious geological disaster' where the cave air was poisoned. Poisoned by them, though... These must be what are left... They're older than me..."

"So, that's why they've got it in for humans? They really are trying to kill them? Or, us?" Rory asked him, "Because two-thousand years ago, humanity accidentally wiped them out?"

"Might not have been an accident, but I suppose so," he said, "They were always incredibly advanced with biological technology. They must have beem studying humans for all this time, luring them hear, impregnating them, then releasing the children out into the stars... I supposs their queen must be dead."

"Queen?" Rory asked.

"Yes, like bees, you see. One queen lays all the eggs - they hatch. A third of their planet was just taken up by hatcheries and eggs. Every egg is male until the queen is about to die, when she'll lay another queen egg. They're not well-protected eggs, though. The oxygenation would have killed all of them."

"Like _Finding Nemo_," Clara said.

"I - what? No! Not like _Finding Nemo_, Clara!" he told her, and she shrugged, "No queen, no species continuation. They're all going to die, they just want to take humanity out, too, before they go."

"So? How do we stop them?" Clara asked.

"I don't know, they're condemned to die, all of them. If we destroy their life support, they'll all die, and we don't even know what the children are," Eleven said, at which point Clara's phone ringing interrupted them, and she groaned, yet deigned to pick it up.

Eleven went on talking to Rory for some moments, wondering what the ought to do, until, "_What!?_" Clara exclaimed, then, through gritted teeth, "Oswin. What do you mean when you say 'the children aren't going to be a problem anymore'..?"


	280. Permanent Vacation

**AN: Trying to finish this storyline today. Should be like, one last chapter, then an evening chapter.**

_Rose_

_Permanent Vacation_

Clarity and logic all returned to her in a rush of ringing pain when she hit her head off the floor, falling right out of her seat in the middle of a romantic dinner after trying to answer her phone, which had been ringing repeatedly for almost five straight minutes. She'd been about to tell whoever-it-was to piss off, because she was busy having probably the best time of her entire life, but as soon as she clicked to answer, a shot of electricity rushed through her hand, so powerful she was thrown sideways onto the floor, and suddenly she was confused. She barely knew where she was. She barely remembered everything. Two days' worth of sexual encounters swam in front of her eyes with nothing in between but a dreamy, unnerving blur.

Weren't they at the resort for some purpose? Didn't they have something important to be doing? Some mission? A mission she had most definitely forgotten about, she'd just drifted away into a world of excessive, over-indulgent bliss, everything the colour and the smell of intangible, beautiful, sickening roses and a perfume so rich it felt like the back of your throat was drowning in it. What the hell was going on? Someone was trying to help her up, was fussing about her, but she pushed them away, phone gripped tightly in her hand.

She stood up and found herself dizzy, and held her head, and saw, when she opened her eyes, the Doctor standing in front of her. But he was _so close_ in front of her, and she held out her phone-free hand to keep him back, almost keeling over. It felt like she'd just woken up from a nightmare she couldn't remember, like she'd been stuck in limbo, now she looked back at it. Then she heard someone saying her name, someone who wasn't the Doctor, in an electronic voice emanating from her hand. She glanced down at her phone and saw she'd picked up, and Oswin Oswald was on the line, talking pleadingly, urgently, through Rose's spell.

"Oswin?" she asked, confused. There was something about Ten, the way he was holding himself, the way he seemed equally parts suspicious and worried about her wellbeing. She stared around the room and saw nobody was even looking at them, it was just couples, everywhere, in some restaurant, everything faintly pink with hearts on the walls everywhere. She really felt like she might be sick.

"_Yes, yes! Are you okay!? Did it work!? Do you feel any different!?_" Oswin asked quickly.

"Different? Wha..? What did..?"

"_Don't eat the food, the food is a drug, you've been drugged for two days, you and the Tenth Doctor. He's still on them, I had to electric shock you through your phone_," Oswin said. Electric shock? Drugs? Two days? It didn't feel like two days, it just felt like… it felt, somehow, like minutes, but decades, all at once.

"Don't listen to her, Rose," Ten said flatly, looking at her, and she frowned, "She wants to ruin our new life."

"New life?" Rose questioned.

"We're going to live here," he said. As soon as he said that, she utterly believed that he was _definitely_ on something, and that Oswin really had succeeded in breaking whatever trance she'd been stuck in. But what should she do? When she looked around now, there was a waiter, and a waitress, standing deathly still, smiling sickeningly, watching them like robots with empty eyes. She was sure she was in danger, and she took a step away from Ten.

"What do I do?" she asked Oswin. She didn't know what Oswin had to do with anything, why she was suddenly involved, everything seemed so foggy, but if the food was drugged, it would be impossible for a hologram to be inebriated by them.

"_I don't know, what's around you? Where are you? They woke up Martha by throwing her in an ice bath_," Oswin said.

"Ice bath?" Rose asked, "I'm in a restaurant."

"_Well, I don't know, find something!_" Oswin said. Ten could hear everything Oswin was saying, and was looking at Rose dangerously.

"Are you okay, Doctor..?" she asked, finding herself backing away from him. _Ice bath, ice bath_, she thought… Then, yes, she had an idea. She stared around, looking for something, and Ten grabbed her by the arm, "What are you doing!?" she exclaimed.

"Just ignore her, Rose, sit back down, with me," he said to her, but she wrenched her arm free so violently she must have twisted his wrist in some way, because he reeled in pain for a moment. Serves him right for grabbing a girl with superstrength, she thought. But waiters and waitresses, more of them, like they were multiplying, were gathering at the edges of the room. Rose knew she must have missed an awful lot, but she found what she'd been looking for. A couple nearby with a bottle of champagne sitting in an ice bucket.

Ten made another grab for her, and she ducked away, making a dash for that table, but the couple sitting at it immediately turned to face her with sick smiles. Of course, they all must be on these drugs, whatever the drugs were. The man grabbed the bucket to stop Rose from getting it, but she wrenched it free and ducked away from Ten again. From one half of the room, it rushed around her and she was placed at the other end, teleporting in that seamless, smooth way she always did, getting enough distance to smash the top of the champagne bottle with the cork in it off and pour the whole thing into the bucket.

"_What's going on!?_" Oswin demanded.

"Just give me a minute!" Rose shouted back, shaking the bucket to mix it up, hoping that it would be enough cold liquid to trigger the same reaction in Ten that had been triggered in herself and Martha. Ten approached through the tables now, looking angry, and she was painfully reminded of the Frir-induced nightmare she'd had a week ago. Thinking of that, having no idea what else was going on, she flung the contents of the ice bucket straight at him, getting the money-shot of his face, drenching him with champagne and semi-melted ice cubes.

He staggered back, and she paused, ignoring Oswin's frantic babbling down the phone completely, watching him. His hair and suit soaking, he blinked a few times and stared around like he was in a stupor, then he frowned, and his eyes found her.

"Rose?" he asked, confused, "What's going on?"

"Oh, thank god," she said, "I don't know, I just – Oswin says the food's drugged, I had to throw ice on you to make it ware off, she electrocuted me with my phone." The staff were closing in from the walls now she'd managed to wake Ten up, yet all of the guests remained oblivious to the panic ensuing in the restaurant.

"Drugged? Drugged with what?"

"_Am I on speaker!? Put me on speaker!_" Oswin demanded.

"You _are_ on speaker," Rose said, holding the phone up and turning the volume higher, watching the staff carefully as they got closer and closer, very slowly. Nobody had even said anything about Rose teleporting to the other side of the room with her aura of gold dust.

"What drugs, Oswin?" Ten asked.

"_Aphrodisiacs. All the food has aphrodisiacs, and it has something that makes you a slave to the resort and makes you forget everything except sex, and also something in it that artificially creates an embryo-less amniotic sac_," Oswin explained, "_Look, you have to evacuate. You have to wake everyone up and evacuate_."

"Where are the others!?" Rose asked.

"_They're downstairs, in some underground part of the resort. Theodore, my sister and the Ponds didn't have any of the drugged food, they woke up Martha and figured out what was happening with the amniotic sacs, then a bunch of these things showed up, knocked them out, and strapped them to walls to be impregnated with the weird children. The staff are all the children, just older, that's what they are_," Oswin spoke faster than Rose had ever heard her speak, and she nearly struggled to keep up, "_The others are working on stopping everything downstairs, but you have to get everybody off the planet, okay?_"

"Well how do we do that!? The TARDIS isn't here! We can't bring everyone onto the TARDIS!" Ten said.

"I know how," Rose said, getting an idea, "Just – we have to stop the staff, look, they're after us." They were, they were just a few metres away, dozens of them, nearly. Maybe everyone in the resort had just showed up, "I think they're being controlled."

"_All of them_?" Oswin asked.

"I guess!?"

"_Well – it'll be – link, you know – controlled – don't have resources_," she said a bunch of words in quick succession that didn't make sense.

"What!?"

"_I mean – there's no – it's like, one thing, one – ugh, would you just think!? If you stop one of them, the link will be broken, like ants, when you destroy their antennas they frenzy and attack everything_," Oswin said. So, stop one, stop them all? Rose could stop one of them, "_You're the only one with working powers, everyone else still has sedatives in them, alright? I should go, I might be needed elsewhere, but there's a parking bay, right? With spaceships. You have to wake them up and tell them to leave, okay? Do something!_" she hung up right as one of the waiters swung a metal tray at Rose's head, but Rose punched it straight in the middle, and her fist left a huge, cartoonish dent in the metal, and she ended up smacking the waiter right in the face, and he stumbled back. At that moment, all of the others twitched.

"We just have to stop one of them," Rose reiterated, struggling to put her phone away so that she would have both hands free.

"Stop how!? What do you mean 'stop'!?" Ten asked.

"I mean," she began, "_Stop_!" She hit the waiter again, with as much force as she could muster which, it turned out, was a _lot_ of force. And it was, in actuality, a highly anticlimactic fight, because as soon as she hit the waiter, his head exploded into a splurge of green, like he didn't have blood at all. One of the unnaturally grown foetuses, like Oswin had said, she supposed? But that caused a chain reaction. A horrid chain reaction, in all of them.

They all froze, the headless one falling to his knees, and then the exact same thing happened thirty times over. Heads exploding everywhere, full of green blood and fluid. She didn't even know if she'd meant to kill them, all of them, but she had, regardless, and everybody around them kept eating.

"Wait," she began, "If… If they're the same as the children… And they're all connected…"

"You just killed all of those children, whatever their purpose is," Ten said. She didn't know how to feel about that, not yet. But some of the kids had been murderers, and they weren't even human, they were just fake embryos stuck inside people and sent off to lurk in wait, of what? What were they waiting for?

"Hopefully the others know," Rose said, "Now…" she picked up a candle stick from someone's table, "Nice to see health and safety's still important." She climbed on a nearby empty chair, and then onto the table, and blew out the candle, holding the extinguished end of it up to, yes, a smoke detector. Well, if they were growing things in the humans, they wouldn't exactly want a simple fire to kill them all.

There were no sprinklers though, just a loud, beeping noise, which people were only disturbed by, they didn't register what it was.

"Cover your ears," Ten said, drawing his screwdriver out of his pocket. Rose obeyed and clapped her hands over her head just in time, because he sonicked the alarm and it started blaring out, high pitched, ten times the volume, and _that_ got people moving, "Should wake them up!" he shouted, or, she thought he shouted, since she couldn't hear him too well.

All around, people were getting up, noticing what was happening, getting hysterical about the thirty dead, green-blooded wait staff lying headless on the floor, not to mention the alarm. A few seconds later, Ten shut it off and started trying to get their attention, but people ignored him.

"OI!" Rose yelled, and they stopped and looked around.

"I'm the Doctor!" Ten shouted, Rose's ears still ringing, "And we all have to get to your spaceships in the parking bay and evacuate this planet right now."


	281. Shadowy Arrangements

_Eleven_

_Shadowy Arrangements_

"When you say that Rose, 'accidentally killed them all,' what do you mean?" Eleven asked slowly, as Oswin explained what she'd heard down the phone, something to do with exploding heads, a telepathic field, an ice bucket from a bottle of champagne, a fire alarm and a parking bay. He didn't really want to think about the reaction a parent might have if their child's head suddenly exploded, but was that trauma justified by comparison to said child becoming an interstellar, murdering psychopath, hell-bent on destruction of the human race to avenge the species it had been artifically grown by? Plus, they'd almost certainly realise that something was amiss when the blood that splurged out of the neck and brain residue was bright green, as it supposedly had been, going by what Rose had been shouting that Oswin had overheard.

"I suppose that's one way to do it," Clara said, like she didn't have anything else to say. The fire alarm didn't reach them down where they were, in the bowels of the Strodryb den, "But what next? How do we stop them?"

"_Threaten them_," Oswin suggested, "_Say you'll smash the life support... oh, hang on, I have to go override the parking hanger locks and sort out some of that..._" with a beep she hung up, but that was the only thing the Doctor, also, could think of doing. Tell the Strodrybs to leave? Say he'd kill them if they refused? He thought that maybe there would be a way to reason with them. Their creations were all dead, but how to stop them from making more? They'd only been at it in their fake fertility clinic for a few years. He sighed, because he thought he had an idea then, even if it wasn't one he was too keen on.

"What's wrong?" Clara asked him softly, holding out the torch for him to take back, touching his arm. How did _she_ know something was wrong? It seemed odd for a moment that she would know. Nobody knew when something was wrong with him, he was a brilliant liar, and he thought he must have given her a very funny look right then, but she just looked at him imploringly.

"Nothing, it's just... the only solution I can think of is one I don't particularly like," he said, "The only solution apart from killing them all, that is."

"I can't believe he's telling you there's something wrong, he never used to tell me and Amy. Or River," Rory said. He saw the coldness flash in Clara's eyes for a moment when River was mentioned, and couldn't tell if he thought it immature or not. Lately, it seemed that his entire days were spent compiling a list of things in his head that he would tell Clara when he got the opportunity. That, again, was something on his List of Things.

"Maybe you should have married him," Clara said to Rory with a tone that seemed relatively ambivalent and free-of-snark, for her. Everything she said seemed to have snark in it, it was half of her personality.

"Well, they're criminals," Eleven said, "They're breaking intergalactic laws by doing this. Farming humans. Attempted genocide. Even if it is justified, to some extent - but they're getting revenge for something that happened thousands of years ago."

"So?" Clara prompted.

"So I don't really see how I can do anything, anything that doesn't involve murder. They'll try again, you see... but there are people who _can _do things, who could lock them all up," he said, "The Shadow Proclamation."

"The same Shadow Proclamation who are in control of _the _Shadow? The bloke in the black suit who vaporises Slitheen and Xenomorphs?" Clara questioned.

"Well, yes. I'll bargain with them, for the lives of the Strodrybs. Let them live out their days somewhere they can't do all of this again," he said, "They won't be allowed to execute them, genocide doesn't agree with their policies, you see, not when there's so few of them left... I ought to be able to pull a few strings. Not from here, though."

"Why not?" Clara asked.

"Well, I ought to use the TARDIS phone. Can't use yours, they'll track it, and with the Shadow of theirs, we can't be too careful. I doubt nanogenes will heal full disintegration, Coo," he said to her, "Very hard to get a lock on the TARDIS."

"Right, well, what about our stuff, though? In the rooms? And the others still down here?" Clara questioned, "I mean, I have our emergency teleporters-"

"What do you mean 'our'?"

"I mean, Oswin made us both teleporters, but I figured that you're too proud to ever use one of them and you'd refuse, so I have yours on me, on my keys," she said.

"I have mine, too," Rory added, "Always keep it on me."

"Which means... we can leave," Clara said.

"We can always leave the bags, you know. Everything in them is replicas made by the TARDIS, anyway," he said, "Just like those lightsabers you made such a fuss about."

"It was more the fact that you promised you wouldn't touch them, then broke one, then forced our brother-in-law to buy a replacement, and didn't even bother to tell me." He didn't even respond to that, just tried to think some more and not let his flat, staring expression give away that he wished she would drop it.

"What do you mean, 'brother-in-law?'" Rory questioned, puzzled, as Clara dug through her pocket to try and find her keys. On her keyring, she still had a house key for the Maitlands, along with a TARDIS key, and what the Doctor knew to be the spare key to her father's house, not to mention the key for the old car she had that was still dumped on the corner of a London street somewhere. Then she had what looked like two toy laser pointers, which he knew to be the emergency teleporters.

"Adam Mitchell," Clara answered Rory.

"They're _married?_"

"What? No! Of course not," she said, "I'm sure if they got married everyone would know. We just call him that."

"Okay... I have my teleporter, as well," Rory said, "So does Amy."

"Right, and Martha _doesn't _have one, because that's the one the Twelfth Doctor took and that's how they got on our TARDIS two weeks ago," Clara said.

"Did we never get that back!?" Eleven exclaimed. How reckless of them.

"I don't, we might have. Maybe he broke it?" she shrugged.

"Right, well, they can take two. And there are six of us, and we have four, possibly more," Eleven said, sighing, "We'd better hope those spinal plugs don't do so much irreparable damage when we take the others off them that they can't be healed on the TARDIS..."

* * *

"Unbelievable. Completely unbelievable. They're supposed to what's right because it's the _law_, not because they make a bargain with _me_," the Eleventh Doctor complained. As soon as he entered the bedroom, he had started pacing, after a frankly disastrous phone call to the Shadow Architect. He scarcely paid attention to what Clara was doing for a few moments, throughly caught up in his own annoyance; he hadn't even bothered to check on the people in the medibay, but he assumed they were fine. They'd been conscious, there didn't seem to be too much damage, and Oswin claimed she was going to have to set about making more Miracle Medicine, because they'd now run out of her all-singing all-dancing all-healing magical serum.

"Bargain? What bargain?" Clara asked, which was when he looked at saw her sitting on the floor, a messy pile of clothes on her left, and a neat (considerably smaller) stack of folded clothes on her right.

"Not as in something cheap, as in a deal. I know how you Northerners love anything that's cheap. Or free, god forbid," he said.

"What's the point of paying a lot of money for something if you can get it for way cheaper?" she challenged, and he didn't have an answer for her, so she asked again, what bargain was he talking about?

"I got them to agree to relocate the Strodrybs to a lax prison planet with an low oxygen density atmosphere, to live out their days in peace without killing anybody else," he said, "But only on one condition."

"Which is?"

"They want me to find the Shadow," Eleven said, "Apparently, the Shadow has gone off the grid. Rogue, or something. They want me to bring the Shadow back, or they'll kill the Strodrybs."

"Seriously? _The_ Shadow? Who killed the Slitheen? And the Xenomorph? And the Gallint? And who Donna ran into the other week? The _assassin_ who cleans up your messes?"

"Yes, exactly that. Funny how now _I'm _cleaning up _his _messes," Eleven muttered.

"Will you do it?" she asked.

"I don't know. I suppose so. If it stops the Proclamation from wiping out the Strodrybs for breaking Galactic Law on eighty-six counts," he sighed. He wondered if Ten and Rose had returned yet. He doubted they'd drop by and let him know if they had, though, but he was sure they were fine, sine Rose could teleport anywhere and anywhen. "What are you doing?"

"I promised I'd put the washing away this morning, didn't I?" she said defensively, and he went and sat down opposite her, in a space on the floor not taken up by clothes.

"Oh, look, you've moved that bra," he commented.

"I have indeed moved it," she said, "You know, I thought you'd be positively queasy at the sight of me folding clothes. Isn't it too domestic?" She was joking, but he just sighed and looked elsewhere, her watching him out of the corner of her eye. "Sweetheart?"

"I'm getting used to it. I haven't been nearly as bad as I was when I travelled with the Ponds, anyway," he said, "They're talking about things that happened centuries ago. I spent an awfully long time living in one place on my own in Victorian London, you know. People change. Even Time Lords."

"You could say Time Lords change more than most, actually." He smiled a little.

"Yes, and then you came along and you ruined it all."

"How dare I."

"And now you're the centre of my universe, or something equally abhorrent. Probably literally, after saving my life thousands of times," he said, "Everything's just strange. It's been months and it's _still _strange." She laughed.

"Your whole life is strange, Doctor. I love that - you have probably the weirdest life of any living thing, yet being in love with a girl and living with her is the thing that's a bit _too_ far? Your own eating habits are stranger than that."

"You are _not _one to go talking about eating habits, Oswald," he said, "You eat the vilest things."

"I'm actually starving," she said, "All I've eaten for two days is bread. Far too much bread. What time is it?"

"Almost eight," he said, "What do you want to eat?"

"Chocolate. I'm sick of being taunted by those stupid chocolates I wasn't allowed to eat," she said.

"You can't have chocolate for dinner, Coo."

"Of course I can. I'll eat what I... Oh for... Look at this! Ten missed calls from Craig Owens!" she said when her phone on the floor next to her started buzzing, "Why won't you just get a bloody phone and let him call _you_?"

"I live in a phone box, Clara," he told her, and she made an annoyed noise and answered the phone finally, putting it on speaker, since it was highly likely Craig was calling after the Doctor, rather than the Doctor's wife.

"Yes, hello? What is it?" she asked rudely, clearly annoyed.

"_Finally someone picks up_," Craig said, and Eleven beamed.

"Yes, _I_ picked up, because it's _my _phone," Clara said coldly.

"_Where's the Doctor?_"

"Next to me," Clara said, "Why? If you have an alien problem, we're not interested."

"_I_ might be interested," Eleven said.

"He could tell you there's a mysterious pothole and you'd be bloody interested," Clara said.

"Would you be nice?" the Doctor said, "Just give me the phone, Clara, go have some cookies from your cookie jar."

"...Fine," she muttered, passing him the phone and getting up to walk past and get her R2-D2 cookie jar out of the wardrobe, where it was hidden so that nobody would see it, just like the Death Star clock, which was probably the reason that she always had to ask _him_ what time it was.

"Sorry about her," Eleven apologised, taking Craig off speakerphone, "She's not in a good mood because we were kidnapped by some aliens a few hours ago and they tried to imprgnate her. We only just got back." Craig didn't say anything when Eleven said that. "...What is it you want?"

"..._Uh... Sophie wants me to invite you both to dinner_."

"Dinner?" Eleven asked.

"Dinner? Who's having dinner?" Clara asked from across the room, a cookie in her mouth so he could barely understand what she was saying.

"_What did she say?_" Craig asked.

"Clara says she'd love to come to dinner," said Eleven.

"Ask what they're cooking," Clara said.

"She wants to know what you're cooking."

"_Pizza._"

"Pizza, Coo," Eleven answered her.

"With chocolate on it? Can you have chocolate on pizza? I don't know why I'm asking, you can put everything on pizza," she said, like she'd had some sort of genius epiphany.

"_Did she say chocolate?_"

"Yes. She's disgusting, can't cook at all. Not even cereal."

"I can make noodles!" she protested, "...Sometimes. And once I made toast."

"Do you want applause?"

"I wouldn't say _no_ to applause, Chin."

"Do you want me to bring up the ketchup croutons again? How about the coleslaw Doritos?"

"Coleslaw Doritos is just like a dip!"

"You had it for breakfast!"

"Part of a balance diet. Once I had coleslaw and Weetabix," she said, and he stared at her, "Oh, come on, that's not as bad as fish fingers and custard and you know it."

"It is as bad! It's far worse!" he argued, and shs stuck her tongue out and went back to her cookies, "I've no idea why Martha likes you so much sometimes."

"_Are you fighting?_"

"Fighting? No," said Eleven, "Ignore her, she's being weird. She's actually been putting clothes away, I think she might be gravely ill."

"You'll be gravely ill in a minute," Clara muttered, bringing her cookie jar over and sitting back down. He smiled at her pleasantly, which only served to irritate her.

"We'll be round for dinner. We were just discussing it before you rang," he said, "Just tell us what the date is."


	282. Date Night XIII Another Planet III

_Clara_

_Date Night XIII / Another Girl Another Planet III_

"Where are you two off, then?" Oswin cut off Clara and Eleven while they were on their way out of the ship, coming out of her room, which was just about opposite theirs in the bedroom circle. Well, not her _actual_ room, the one stolen by Ten and Rose, that was one to the right. Adam and Oswin's rooms had always been next door to each other, possibly a sick joke on behalf of the TARDIS. And strictly speaking, she'd already been stood outside of her room when they'd left theirs, and Clara wondered why. What was she up to?

"We have been invited out to dinner," Clara told her, hugging her more or less against her will, "Thank you for not letting me get impregnated by any aliens."

"Is that all I get? A hug? What about sex, Clars?" Oswin asked.

"We have enough sex," Clara said, letting her go, going along with Oswin's joke for whatever reason. Just because she felt like it, really. Behind her, her husband cleared his throat, unamused, and she laughed, "Would you lighten up? You've just spent about three hours going on about my eating habits."

"_Three hours?_ More like three minutes," he argued, crossing his arms huffily.-

"Dinner with who? Where? When?" Oswin asked, being nosey. She kept glancing to her left, down the hallway that went to the rest of the ship, Nerve Centre on her right, like she was checking for something. Clara, frowning, followed her gaze, but she didn't say anything, "Clara?" Oswin got her attention back.

"Oh, um, Craig and Sophie. They invited us. Well, I'm pretty sure they only invited _me_ along as well to be polite, but they're having pizza," Clara said.

"Well, try not to annoy them _too_ much. They live in London, right?" Oswin asked, and Clara frowned.

"I haven't a clue," Clara shrugged.

"They moved in… Let's think… 2014. Used to live in Essex, but they do live in London now," Eleven answered, and Oswin nodded like this was incredibly important information.

"What's their address?" she asked.

"Why do you want to know what their address is, Oswin..?" Clara asked, and Oswin looked at her like she didn't know what to say for a moment.

"…Aren't I allowed to be curious?"

"What are you hiding?"

"I'm not hiding anything, Coo," Oswin said, and Clara turned up her nose at Oswin calling her 'Coo,' which she'd never done before.

"Never call me that again, that's awful," Clara told her.

"Sorry, honey," Oswin said a little sarcastically, "I only want to know in case anything happens. _He_ always lures trouble out," she nodded at Eleven, "And I mean, the navigation systems are still broken after they were sabotaged weeks ago, so who knows if they can be trusted?"

"Fine," Eleven said, giving Oswin Craig and Sophie's address.

"Could you say that a bit louder? I'm… Having some hearing malfunctions. Sphere needs a touch-up." Eleven repeated himself louder, and Oswin smiled a little. "Right… What date? What time? Just in case. Might get attacked. Might get UNIT on you, Clars. You never know. Risky business, London in 2014. That's when the werewolves start cropping up." She was right, Clara supposed.

"Monday, October 26th, 2015. Half past six in the evening," Clara answered. She knew _that_ much.

"Right… Well, um… I'll be here if you need anything… Need your eardrum blowing up again…" she said, still standing, like she was waiting for something, "…Aren't you two gonna leave?"

"Leave. Right. Of course," Clara said, starting to walk off, casting Oswin a shifty look over her shoulder, but Oswin just smiled and waved them away.

* * *

_Jenny_

The oxygen filter on her own spaceship was well and truly dead. She was sitting in the cockpit on the floor so that she could get to the thing itself, down beneath the ground panels, and the tank had a puncture in it that had finally ruptured the last time she'd gone to visit Beta Clara. And Jenny, unlike her father, wasn't stupid enough to just duct tape it up and go gallivanting away through time and space. And, with a new spaceship getting built with help from the smartest girl in the universe, there was little to no point actually fixing it.

Annoyingly enough, though the bangle on her wrist was disabled (even if it was still there) and Oswin hadn't re-enabled it, when she tried to pilot the TARDIS anywhere, as she'd tried that morning, she ended up getting an electric shock through the console. That put her in a bad mood, because she didn't see why the TARDIS should care what she was up to. But, Alpha Clara had been banned from computers for three and a half months now, so if the TARDIS wanted to prevent Jenny sneaking out places, the TARDIS would. Damn thing listening to Eleven's instructions. He was like a dictator, or some immoral monarch, just waiting to be overthrown by revolution. Not that she was going to kill her own father. Though, killing him _would_ mean she could steal her screwdriver back off him, unless he'd hidden it. It was very tricky trying to fix things without her sonic screwdriver.

Her phone rang next to her and, too focused on fumbling with the controls for the oxygen dispensary, she answered it absently without checking who was ringing her.

"Hello?" she asked, distracted.

"_Really not used to ringing Time Lords and having them actually pick up the phone_…"

"Clara, hi!" she said, quite happy for a moment, until she remembered she was utterly unable to go visit Clara, unless somebody else flew her there. But who would fly her there? She doubted Oswin would help unless she was bribed. Then who else was there? Thirteen? She didn't know where Thirteen was, she seemed to vanish for hours at a time and then return.

"_Are you busy?_"

"Me? Um… I don't know. I'm kind of busy, but not doing anything important," she answered, "Seeing if there's a way to fix the totally broken oxygen tanks on this ship. Why?"

"_You obviously know why. The only reason I call you._"

"Using me for sex, again?" Jenny asked jokingly.

"_Clearly._"

"Well, I don't know if there's way to get to you. This stupid grounding is kind of effective. I mean, I got Oswin to disable the stupid bracelet that teleports me away if I try and go in the console room, but the TARDIS shocks me if I try to fly her anywhere," she answered, "And I'm not even a bad pilot. It's because this is Eleven's TARDIS. If this was my mother's TARDIS, I'd be fine to go anywhere…"

"_What's that about your mother?_"

"Yeah, yeah, I know you fancy my mother, Clara."

"_I don't fancy your mother_."

"_Yeah, yeah_," she continued dryly, "She's from the future, she knows what's going on between us. She also doesn't care. She said something about the Eleventh Doctor playing finders keepers with you, and, 'why does he have any more claim to Clara than anyone else?' or something."

"_You seem to like your mother a lot more than any of your dads_," Clara said.

"You mean _you_ like my mother more than my dads."

"_Stop implying that I fancy your mother, Jenny._"

"Well she actually speaks to me and treats me like an adult, not some child who needs to be controlled and kept quiet and ignored, like the others. Even the Tenth one," she said, "She's the only one who remembered my birthday. Including me. I had no idea."

"_When was your birthday?_"

"Day Ninety-Four."

"_But I was here that day! Why didn't you tell me?_"

"Why would I have told you?" she finally gave up with the oxygen and closed the panel, dropping out of the spaceship in the immense, hanger-like garage of the TARDIS. Nearby, she could see the anti-gravity motorbike, the same one that Beta Clara possessed the Betaverse duplicate of, which Alpha Clara didn't have a clue how to drive. Then, in a row, were all of Adam Mitchell's cars that his girlfriend kept bringing onto the ship. "Do you know Adam Mitchell has a batmobile?"

"_Does he?_"

"Yeah, I'm looking at it right now," Jenny said, "Batmobile, and a replica of the DeLorean from_ Back to the Future 2 _next to it, then the Hummer, and a Lamborghini. I didn't even know he _had_ a Lamborghini."

"_How do you know it's his?_"

"Who else's would it be? The Doctor's? The Doctor in a _Lamborghini_? Yeah right, Clara. His name is on the license plate, anyway," Jenny said. It was, the plate read 'AD4M M17CH,' which was a close enough match for 'Adam Mitchell.' "Apparently he has a really nice house. Anyway, look, what's the date and the time?"

"_It's Monday, 26__th__ October. About four in the afternoon. It's the holidays, see. A whole week off. Finished_ all_ my marking half an hour ago,_" she said.

"Wait, wait, wait – you're inviting me over for the whole week?"

"_If you like_."

"Right. Four…" she was walking through the corridors now, on the hunt for her mother, hoping she would be in Nerve Centre, "If it's a whole week at stake, I'm sure I can manage to get there _somehow_. Imagine the fun we could have."

"_I have been imagining it, it's the only thing that's got me through so much marking. I've done most of it today, I've been stuck with a bunch of Year Sevens doing bloody taekwondo this weekend._"

"Wow, imagine how many twelve year old boys you gave their first erections."

"_That's literally disgusting. It's borderline paedophilic. I almost wish you refused to talk about anything like that, like your dad_."

"My mother talks about that stuff plenty," Jenny said.

"_Stop it!_" she exclaimed, and Jenny just laughed, knocking on Oswin's door. Who knew, Oswin might actually help.

"Quiet for a second, I'm trying to pull some strings," Jenny said, moving her phone behind her back and turning the volume right down. Oswin answered within seconds, looking tired.

"What? What now? I'm not going shopping again," Oswin said.

"I need a favour," she said.

"Isn't my favour of turning off the bracelet enough?" Oswin asked, crossing her arms and leaning on the doorframe.

"To put it bluntly, um, no," Jenny said, "Do you think you could fly the TARDIS somewhere for me?"

"What about this ship of yours?"

"No oxygen. No point fixing it. Maybe _you_ don't need air, but some of us do," Jenny said.

"Fly you where?" Jenny didn't answer. "…No! I'm not flying the ship to Other Clara's house so you can shag her!"

"Please!?"

"No!"

"I'll owe you," Jenny said.

"What could you possibly owe me?" Oswin challenged.

"I'll… _I'll_ find a way to collect resources to make more Miracle Medicine, so that you don't have to do it. I know how you hate going outside or leaving your room," Jenny said, grinning a little at her own genius for thinking of that, of something Oswin genuinely needed.

"I… shit…" she muttered. Jenny had her in a stalemate.

"You scratch my back, I'll scratch yours."

"Sounds like your back'll be getting plenty scratched," Oswin muttered resentfully, "And now I'm an accessory to the crime."

"I'm not murdering her," Jenny said flatly, "…Is that a yes?"

"It's-" the door opposite Oswin and behind Jenny, the door to Eleven and Clara's room, slowly started to open, and their voices crawled over it, discussing this or that, "Shit, hide," Oswin said, pointing her to the left, down the corridor. Jenny made it around the corner just in time, ducking back and lifting the phone to her ear. She could hardly hear what they were talking about. Something about being invited out for dinner.

"_Are you back yet?_" Clara asked.

"Shh," said Jenny, listening.

"Dinner with who? Where? When?" Oswin asked. Jenny stayed hidden, not daring to get caught trying to sneak off to see Beta Clara by Alpha Clara and her father. Who knew what might happen. He might even kick her off the ship.

"Oh, um, Craig and Sophie. They invited us. Well, I'm pretty sure they only invited _me_ along as well to be polite, but they're having pizza," Alpha Clara said, and then Oswin asked if they lived in London, because it seemed she had the exact same idea Jenny had just had. Eleven said they did, and Oswin asked for the address.

"Why do you want to know what their address is, Oswin..?" Clara asked suspiciously. Jenny just stayed backed against the wall, listening.

"…Aren't I allowed to be curious?"

"What are you hiding?"

"I'm not hiding anything, Coo," Oswin said.

"Never call me that again, that's awful," Clara told her.

"Sorry, honey," Oswin said sarcastically, and Jenny realised Oswin had only called her that to draw attention away from Clara asking what she was hiding, "I only want to know in case anything happens. _He_ always lures trouble out. And I mean, the navigation systems are still broken after they were sabotaged weeks ago, so who knows if they can be trusted?"

"Fine," Eleven said, and then he gave an address, but too quietly for Jenny to make out what it was at all. Street? Road? Avenue? Crescent? Close? She didn't know.

"Could you say that a bit louder? I'm… Having some hearing malfunctions. Sphere needs a touch-up." Eleven repeated himself louder, and though Jenny had no clue how close that was to Clara's house, she actually heard it. She didn't know London very well at all. They seemed to be in London a lot, though, so maybe she should go study some maps.

"Right… What date? What time? Just in case. Might get attacked. Might get UNIT on you, Clars. You never know. Risky business, London in 2014. That's when the werewolves start cropping up."

"Monday, October 26th, 2015. Half past six in the evening," Clara answered, and Jenny couldn't believe her luck, and then Oswin went about trying to get them to leave, succeeding eventually, and as soon as they were gone she walked back out to Oswin glaring at her.

"You had seriously better collect me these ingredients, Jenny. That's two favours you owe me," Oswin said sharply.

"Thank you _so much_," Jenny said, Oswin shaking her head and finally returning to her room, probably to tell her boyfriend all that had just happened.

"_What? What happened?_"

"How close is this address to your house?" Jenny asked, giving her the address.

"_Um… I don't know, maybe half an hour if there's traffic? Not that far. Why_."

"Because that's where Craig Owens lives, a friend of the Eleventh Doctor's. They're going over for dinner, on October 26th, 2015, at half past six. If you get there for half past six and hide somewhere nearby, then I can come over," she said.

"_Alright. Alright, fine,_" she said, "_Call me when you get there. I'll see you in two and a half hours. And bring me my jacket back, would you?_"

"More like see you in five minutes."

* * *

_Clara_

"At least the weather's not bad," Clara said, stepping out of the TARDIS first after checking that it wasn't raining, "I still reckon Craig and Sophie don't like me much."

"Of course they do," said the Doctor, closing the door behind them, "Just try not to annoy them too much."

"I annoy everybody though, apparently," she muttered, then she saw something and stopped, frowning, "Isn't that..? Isn't that your bike? The anti-gravity one? Sat on the curb?" she asked, nodding towards a bike.

"It's a modified version of a real motorbike, Clara," he told her, "It's highly likely that someone else somewhere in the world will have a non-anti-gravity version of it. Come on." He took her hand and lead her around the corner, her still watching the bike. She was _sure_ it was the same bike as the Doctor's, the one Beta Clara could ride that she couldn't, because her husband never taught her. "Look at the door! TARDIS blue!"

"That's the wrong house, sweetheart, it's the next one," she told him, leading him away, disappointed, from the house with the blue door. Behind them, back around the corner, they heard the TARDIS thrumming away. It had been set to do that on its own for weeks now, just dumping them places, unless they switched off that feature. She had always been of the opinion that it was quite a useless thing to do, but they had emergency teleporters now, which had come in very handy just a few hours ago.

"But this door's just red," he complained.

"Well _I_ like red," she said, going up and knocking on the door, the Doctor sulking for the universe's most pathetic reason. He didn't like the door – honestly, you'd think he was a child, not a 1200 year old alien.

"Half past six on the dot," Craig said loudly, quite happy, when he opened the door, and Clara smiled.

"Why is the door red?" the Doctor asked.

"And they said _I'm_ the annoying one…" Clara muttered, shaking her head.

"The door?" Craig asked, and Clara gave Eleven a look that told him to be polite, the same way he'd been telling _her_ to be polite for the last two days. She was stood a step higher than him.

"Nothing, nothing. It's good to see you though!" the Doctor went and hugged him. The Doctor hugged everybody.

"Brought you a bottle of wine," Clara said, "Stole it from my sister's boyfriend, so it probably cost a fortune, he's a millionaire." She glanced at the bottle of pinot noir and then handed it over, and Craig examined it with shock, like he knew how much it cost. Clara hadn't a clue. She didn't know anything about high quality alcohol, she'd probably drink drain cleaner if she thought it would get her drunk, she really didn't care (she actually did drink it once, a shot of it, for a dare, and she was very ill for about a week, but she did win £100 in a bet that she wouldn't do it.)

There was a clattering noise from around the corner, where they'd just been, and both of them looked over.

"What was that?" the Doctor asked.

"You two are suspicious of everything, it'll just be a cat knocking something over. Milk bottles, or something," Craig said, beckoning them inside.

Once they were in the house, Eleven made small talk about this or that, something about Cybermen, until Craig tried to ask what they'd actually been up to that day. Clara was just wondering where the baby was, though. How old even was Alfie now? Probably wasn't a baby. Probably wasn't even in the house, he was probably getting babysat somewhere else.

Just when Clara was getting to the part in their story about all the bathrooms having pictures of genitals all over them, she was distracted by the loud sound of an engine outside, and looked behind her through the curtains that were still open, and saw that motorbike from earlier tear straight past with two people on it, vanishing away.

"Clara, would you forget about that bike?" Eleven said.

"Dunno who that could be, nobody has a motorbike round here," Craig said, and Clara frowned.

"Right… huh… anyway… where was I? Penis walls? Right…"

* * *

_Jenny_

Jenny couldn't cut through Nerve Centre because people would wonder why she wasn't getting teleported away for trying to go into the console room, which meant she had to run as quickly as she could the long way, cutting back through the garage, the garden and past the pool into the library, which went back into the console room through a different door, and she _just_ got there as Clara and her father stepped out of the doors talking about the weather.

Half crouching, she rushed for the door before the TARDIS vanished and took her with it, ending up right behind them as they headed, backs to her, around the corner, and she jumped the garden wall on her right and hid among overgrown weeds from someone who didn't tend to their property.

"Isn't that..? Isn't that your bike? The anti-gravity one? Sat on the curb?" Clara asked then, and Jenny mouthed a swear word. Beta Clara had left her bike in plain sight.

"It's a modified version of a real motorbike, Clara," Eleven told her, "It's highly likely that someone else somewhere in the world will have a non-anti-gravity version of it. Come on." _Please believe that_, Jenny willed. She wondered where Clara was, since she wasn't around.

Once she was sure the other two had passed the corner, she pushed herself back up and over the wall, going to stand by the corner and glancing around. They were talking about doors now, she thought, and then Clara made to look over her shoulder so she ducked again, which was about the point somebody tapped her on the arm. As soon as she looked around, somebody had their hands on her face and was kissing her, and she only knew it was Beta Clara from the taste. Losing all sense of discretion, she kissed back, and took a step further away to pull Clara closer, which was when her foot knocked on something and kicked it over, and they both stopped and waited.

"Milk bottle – who just leaves milk bottles lying around?" Clara whispered, both of them frozen. Distantly, Jenny strained her ears to hear Craig say the noise was a cat when Alpha Clara asked about it, and _finally_ she heard the door close.

"She saw your bike," Jenny said, letting go of Clara and feeling obliged to pick the milk bottle back up, which was warm and full because it seemed no-one had collected it.

"I know, I was just round there," she said, pointing behind her, where the other street was, the houses all back-to-back terraces in this bit of London, "It's not like I had any clue where the TARDIS was gonna land. Good thing I got bored and went for a walk or they would've seen _me_, too. Come on." Clara lead her across the empty road, the air cold and bitter.

"I really hope you appreciate the danger I've put myself in to get here."

"Danger of what?" she asked jokingly.

"Of… I don't know. I could get kicked off if my father found out."

"Wouldn't it have to be passed by a vote?"

"No, he'd just chuck me out," she said, taking a spare bike helmet from Clara.

"Well, we'd better hurry up and get out of here, then, before they come back out to investigate the attack on the milk bottles, hmm?"

"Sure."


	283. Another Girl Another Planet IV

_Jenny_

_Another Girl Another Planet IV_

"Jenny, it's noon. Are you gonna get up yet?" Clara questioned her from the doorway, she thought. She didn't really move, though, she was quite comfy, she'd been sleeping for hours and was in no way inclined to get out of bed, just kept her arms wrapped around one of Clara's pillows, keeping her eyes shut against the bright sunlight streaming through the curtains, creating the illusion of summer, when it was really October 30th. "You really can't stay in my bed _all day_."

"Your bed is my favourite bed though," she answered finally.

"Well, I quite like my bed, too, but you've barely left it since Monday. And it's Friday now."

"It's the holidays, half-term, you said I could stay until the 2nd," Jenny said, "Your week off."

"I'm not saying you have to leave, I'm saying you ought to shower and come downstairs to keep me company. _I'm _not staying up here all day. Not again," Clara told her sternly, "I want to wash my sheets, they're gross. I'd offer to make you breakfast, but all I can make is cereal, and you've eaten it all anyway."

"Sorry."

"Honestly, you're like a prostitute I pay with stale Cheerios."

"They weren't stale," Jenny muttered, and Clara laughed.

"Up, please."

"Kisses, please."

"If you come over here you can have plenty," Clara bargained, and she finally opened her eyes and made a thinking face as she mulled over this proposition from her friend, though she wasn't facing her, she had her eyes on the wall. "What'll it be?" She yawned and finally sat up.

"I _hate_ mornings. I barely ever have to deal with them."

"Imagine if you had to wake up _every single morning_, like _me_," Clara said sarcastically, watching her from the doorway where she was leaning, clean and showered and presentable in stark contrast to Jenny, who probably looked a mess, "I've made a pot of coffee." Mention of coffee was just further enticing Jenny to get out of bed, and she still didn't really want to, even though she knew she'd been asleep for eleven hours or so the night before.

"This is more domesticity than I'm used to," Jenny said, finally standing up and stretching, an activity which Clara watched earnestly, paying great attention. She was so easily distracted, "Next thing you'll be ironing my clothes and cooking my dinner, like a good little housewife." Shevwalked around the bed towards the door.

"Oh, you're hardly one to go calling people 'little', _I'm_ taller than you, and the sexism is not appreciated," Clara said, but by that point Jenny had taken hold of her face and was kissing her in the doorway, and it went on for a while, too, neither of them seeming to want to end. Well, she thought, why would they? They were obviously both _amazing _kissers.

"…Speaking of my clothes," Jenny began when she finally relinquished Clara's lips.

"They are in the bathroom, so that you can get dressed before you leave it and you don't come downstairs naked or something, like you did on Wednesday," Clara told her as she walked past towards the bathroom, by this point well acquainted with Clara's house, "I'm gonna have to brush my teeth again now, because you're disgusting."

"You're only tasting yourself. Get over it," Jenny called back, and Clara pulled a face, "Good thing you finally splashed out on a second toothbrush, isn't it?"

"Ha, ha."

"Yours is gross anyway." She closed the door before she had a chance to listen to Clara's adamant protests that it was entirely normal to just never rinse or wash your toothbrush with anything other than your own dirty saliva (it wasn't), because they'd had that discussion quite a few times.

Half an hour later, they'd swapped places and Clara was in the bathroom brushing her teeth again because she was being prudish that day, and Jenny was downstairs drinking coffee and staring out of the window. She hadn't actually left the house once since she'd gotten there four days ago, called in by Clara after she'd rushed to finish her marking so that Jenny could come over without causing a hassle, which was kind of cute, Jenny thought. Though she really had caused hassle a-plenty. It was remarkable they hadn't been caught.

Clara came downstairs about ten minutes later with her sheets bundled in her arms, going to wash them. Strictly speaking, she wasn't dressed to go out anywhere, but she _had _changed pyjamas.

"Oh my god, I didn't tell you about Martha yet, did I?" Jenny said.

"That she apparently fancies me, when she doesn't? You did already tell me," Clara said, unamused. Jenny brought up Martha a lot to make jokes about, which was probably cruel, but it wasn't like Martha knew, or that anybody would tell her.

"She does fancy you! She made out with you!"

"Wait, _what?_ With _me_? But I'm married! What am I doing kissing other people!?" Clara exclaimed, in shock at the actions of Alpha Her, even though she didn't understand the fact there was a logical reason for what had happened.

"It's not _that_ bad, she can't remember. Martha can't, I mean. _You_ can," Jenny told her, "Clara got her face set on fire."

"Huh? Would you explain?" she asked, so Jenny did, to her best abilties, the reason why Martha needed to be malignantly coerced into coming back to Clara's bedroom, so that Amy could bash her over the head and knock her out and throw her in an ice bath.

"But it was pyrokinesis, you know?" Jenny said, "The flames of passion. But literally. Thirteen said that it was a sight to behold. I heard you got burn blisters on your tongue and the inside of your mouth." Clara looked slightly disgusted.

"That sounds dreadful."

"Apparently Other You was really guilty about it. Or, _is_ guilty about it. You seem to have a really guilty conscience, you know. Maybe you should just stop kissing people you shouldn't be?" Jenny suggested, but it seemed like she had accidentally touched a nerve.

"...What's that meant to mean? What about you? You have a husband, yet here you are with me at every opportunity, staying for days," Clara said sharply. Then Jenny realised why she was taking that remark so seriously.

"Oh, crap, no, you and... that's not what I was talking about, Clara, I'm sorry," Jenny apologised. Clara thought she was talking about when she had tried to kiss Eleven a few weeks ago. Well, months ago, to her.

"Then what _were_ you talking about?" she asked coldly.

"Uh... Listen, you remember how Alpha Clara wasn't really too bothered that you tried to kiss her husband that day..?" Jenny asked, and Clara came and sat down at the table, too, not happy about being reminded of this.

"Yes."

"Well, see, that's because she did the same thing, on the same day, at the same time. I was out with Oswin and my mother the other day, see, and after we heard about all this Martha business, Oswin brought something up about Clara being manipulative and mum ended up telling me about it," Jenny said, "Apparently she had a sex dream that night, too. Then she wrote a letter of apology and they got stuck in that maze together. It's like a bad comedy. I was talking about _that_. But I mean, I heard you kept trying to bang Sally Sparrow, as well."

"I don't even know who that is."

"Me either, but apparently she was hot. And Oswin's brother. Well, one of her brothers," Jenny said, "Dunno if you ever met him when you stayed. Don't think so. He's called Fyn, though, and he is _gorgeous_ and unfortunately gay. Sally Sparrow was straight, I heard. And engaged. Investigating ghosts in Staffordshire."

"Right, well... Getting my face burned off by kissing Martha Jones... That's a new one..." Clara said, and then there was a knock at the door, "Dammit, I forgot about that. Crap. _Crap_."

"What? Who is it? It's not my dad, is it?"

"Don't be ridiculous," Clara said, standing up, "Your father never knocks at the door. Just shows up. It's this guy I work with."

"A date!?" When Jenny said that, Clara stopped in the doorway and turned, looking appalled at such a suggestion.

"No! Ew! You're as bad as your dad, thinking I go out with Adrian. Look, he's just here to pick up a book that was 'accidentally' left in my bag." She did air quotations and seemed annoyed.

"_Oh_. You mean he fancies you?"

"I don't know. But pretend you're my girlfriend. We're dating now, that's why you're here, not just for casual sex," Clara called, and Jenny just shrugged to herself, and went back to her coffee, standing up to slowly follow Clara. And boy, he seemed pretty nervous about being here. He totally fancied her. Jenny leant on the wall and just listened.

"Clara, hi, I just came over for that..." he stopped speaking when he craned over Clara to try and see into her house and spotted Jenny, tired looking with coffee and wet hair - obviously, she had stayed the night. Which left, in the mind of this man, she assumed, just three possibilities: best friend, secret sister, or, god forbid, romantic attachment. "Who's..?"

"That's Jenny, my girlfriend," Clara said. She lied so easily Jenny was spooked. But then, wasn't that what Adam Mitchell always said about her? She was a pathological liar, courtesy of the influence of the Twelfth Doctor? Adrian just stared at Jenny, who thought she out to do something in a display of attractiveness, but in the end she just smiled and waved a little. He still stared at her.

"I knew you were a... but I didn't know you... had a..." he stammered.

"We're called bisexuals," Jenny said, "We're very elusive, lots of people don't believe we exist. Like global warming. Or dinosaurs. Or haggis."

"Haggis definitely exists," Clara told her, "It's stuffed sheep stomach."

"Don't talk dirty to me while you have guests, it's impolite," Jenny scorned her jokingly, and she frowned.

"I wasn't... talking... whatever. Do you want any coffee while you're here?" she turned back to Adrian, "I just made a pot." If he was only over for a book, what was she inviting him in for? Especially while she already had one guest over. Probably common courtesy. Everyone was always so courteous, including herself. Consideration was so irritating sometimes. They went into the kitchen and Jenny followed, a little behind because she stopped and yawned, and Clara went and poured a cup of coffee for the guy who _totally_ wanted to shag jer, but had now been disappointed by the suprise existence of Clara Oswald's fake girlfriend.

She was more interested in the breakfast she had yet to have than in whatever book Adrian had left in Clara's stuff (oh how 'lucky' he was it had his phone number in it, but Jenny thought was quite funny she didn't have his phone number after being co-workers for over a year), and so she made a beeline for the fridge in the corner, the clatter of the washing machine ringing through the relatively quiet house, along with the sound of her humming idly to herself as she spied some yoghurts she had yet to eat.

"Why do you never have nice yoghurts?" she asked, annoyed at the abundance of raspberry.

"What yoghurts would you prefer I have?" Clara questioned.

"Peach."

"I hate peach."

"Well then you're wrong."

"Just deal with the raspberry, Jenny," Clara told her, and she sighed and continued humming as she did, remembering almost too late that normal people who _weren't_ the offspring of the Doctor ate yoghurts with spoons, they didn't just scoop the dairy out with the fingers, like she had been about to. Jenny took one of the spoons out of the draining board by the sink, knowing full-well that spoon was clean, because Clara had made her do the washing up last night in some sort of exchange for letting her stay there for so many days. Jenny had said, '_Why isn't the sex enough of a deal?_' but Clara had just told her that if Jenny offered to cook spaghetti, Jenny could wash up. It had been nice spaghetti, though.

"What book was it, anyway?" Jenny asked.

"Just _Dracula_," Clara said, "Nothing too spectacular."

"Vampires don't impress you?"

"I just don't really care about them much," Clara shrugged, "I don't get any of it. Why can't they cross running water? Or eat garlic? Why do stakes kill them? Why does the sun burn them?"

"Because they're creatures of the night, Clara," Jenny said.

"Doesn't even make sense. You know what's good for vampires? Le Fanu's _Carmilla_," she gave this recommendation to Adrian, "The first work of vampire-related fiction, published twenty-six years before _Dracula_, in 1871. _Dracula_ is from 1897."

"Isn't it just about lesbians?" Adrian asked.

"You have a problem with lesbians?" Jenny asked, "With lesbian vampires? What could be cooler?"

"Lesbian _aliens_," Clara said, catching Jenny's attention with that statement while Adrian was distracted trying to see if Jenny was being serious. As soon as he looked away, Jenny winked in response, and Clara smiled to herself and drank some more coffee, "It's just in the next room, anyway, is your book. I'll go get it."

When Clara left, Jenny immediately came under scrutiny.

"Don't I know you? I swear I know you," he said to her. Know her? Why would he know her? Unless... _Oh_. She remembered. She remembered their trip to Coal Hill, some month and a half ago, where she and Jack had pretended to be school inspectors, and Jack had gotten the blame for writing a shockingly inappropriate piece of erotic fiction about Beta Clara and Danny Pink (**Chapter Ref., 384, 386**.)

"I'm, uh..." she said, as Clara came back, "Do you remember the temporary caretaker, about a year ago? The one Clara knew?" Clara stopped dead, missing the beginning of the conversation and becoming instantly paranoid, "Old? Called himself John Smith?"

"I think so?" he said.

"I'm his daughter," she said, hating being associated with Old Twelvey. She much preferred Thirteen, "Might have seen me around." Clara relaxed a little when she realised this was all it was.

"You're going out with the temporary caretaker's daughter?" Adrian questioned Clara.

"So? The temporary caretaker's daughter happens to be gorgeous and excellent in bed," Clara told him, "Here's your book back, by the way. Got any other judgements to make on my girlfriend, Adrian?"

* * *

Adrian left quite soon, didn't even stay for an hour, after he realised he probably wasn't gonna get lucky, or something. Jenny spent most of that time watching Clara's sheets spin around in the washing machine, slowly eating all the yoghurts in the fridge. She just had a yoghurt craving that day, for whatever reason.

"You ought to read more books," Clara said to her eventually. She was lying on the sofa with her feet in Clara's lap watching _Homes Under the Hammer_, somehow entranced by the ridiculously droll property porn on the screen. "Your dad loves books. Do you know, I once got off with Jane Austen?"

"You keep telling me that," Jenny said.

"I'm just really proud of it. You've got to read _Pride &amp; Prejudice_, I'm having to teach it to the Year 12s right now."

"Your life is so different to Other You's," Jenny said, "I mean, you still _have_ a life of your own. You don't spend your time maintaining a marriage, or looking after a mentally ill clone of yourself."

"I know, sometimes I struggle to keep it that way. But I like it. The Doctor thought he was my boyfriend, you know."

"Wait, what? Who did he think was your boyfriend? He thought _he_ was your boyfriend? Himself?" Jenny frowned.

"No, Adrian. I mean, yes, a bit, after he regenerated he made a big deal about the fact he 'wasn't my boyfriend.' But after that, when he showed up and pretended to be the caretaker, I told him I had a boyfriend and he assumed it was Adrian for whatever reason," Clara said, "I did mention it when he arrived."

"It's because he looks like dad," Jenny said, "Eleven, I mean."

"_Oh_, okay... I told him Adrian wasn't my type."

"Liar."

"I'm not lying! I mean, look at Alpha Me, _Thirteen_ is her 'ideal mate,' or whatever, right? That's why she has such diffculty controlling herself, like you were saying earlier about her trying to kiss her? Well, we're the same person," Clara said.

"So?"

"_So_, Jenny, you're a lot like your mother. You even have the same hair colour."

"Yeah, but she has _your _eye colour. My eyes are blue, even if they're not technically real. What point are you making, anyway?"

"That _you're _more my type than Eleven ever was."

"I knew you fancied my mother."


	284. Another Girl Another Planet V

**AN: If I were to ever do a storyline set way in the future with Thirteen and Future Clara (Thirteen is from 49 years in the future, if some of you didn't twig yet, making Clara 73), would that be something people would think was cool, or would people like, totally hate it? Just a one-off, I wouldn't be permanently cutting ahead five decades or anything. I already kind of have an idea, set in the arctic, so it could be good for Christmas? What with this massive Halloween thing I'm not really doing anything specifically Christmassy, but wintry could work? What do people think? Might be interesting to get a snapshot of the distant future? Fic won't actually run long enough for Eleven to regenerate (which happens in about 10 years), so this is really the only way to see Clara and Thirteen being canon in the future.**

_Saturday, October 31st, 2015_

_Jenny_

_Another Girl Another Planet V_

"Why've you turned all of the lights off?" Jenny asked Beta Clara. They were in the dark, all the curtains drawn, the TV on in the background. The television was the only source of light, and some candles, shaped like pumpkins. At first, Jenny thought Clara was trying to create a 'romantic atmosphere,' and she was going to question her about it, but no.

"Pretending I'm not in," Clara said, "It's highly likely that some of the kids will find out where I live. I know for a fact some of them live near me. One Sunday a girl knocked on my door asking for help with her English homework." As she talked, she was walking around making sure all of the curtains were completely shut, obscuring any view outside. Jenny was half-lying on the sofa with her legs crossed and a mug full of room-temperature orange juice in her hands.

"You're not gonna humour the trick-or-treaters?" Jenny asked, "Not got a bowl of sweets by the door?"

"Bowl of sweets outside is enough," Clara said, walking past the sofa into the kitchen with Jenny's eyes on her, "You know what we're gonna do?"

"Each other?" she suggested, leaning over the back of the sofa so that she was upside down, watching Clara boil the kettle.

"Nice try," she said, "Do you want any tea?"

"No, I have this orange juice," she said. She'd been steadily working her way through Clara's supply of orange juice the whole week. Her current mug held the last of it. Clara yawned. "Tired?"

"Ridiculously. I'm not even gonna lie and say it isn't your fault. You are so exhausting," as though to highlight this, she yawned again, and put her head down on the table, "It's nine o'clock on a Saturday evening and I am so tired."

"Come sleep on me if you want? My body heat is higher than yours. I'm like a blanket that can hug," Jenny offered, and Clara smiled and shut her eyes, like she was going to sleep right then and there, at her kitchen table.

"Maybe I'll take you up on that later. Maybe you won't have a choice, I feel like a dead girl walking," Clara said groggily. She didn't move or speak again until the light on the kettle went out to signify that it had just finished boiling.

"'Dead girl walking' - that takes me back, Clara," Jenny said as Clara poured herself what smelt like hot chocolate.

"Well it takes _me_ back to memories of horror movies," Clara said.

"Don't make me watch any scary films!" Jenny protested, "The only films Jack ever watches are the scary ones. That's why I know so much about horror clichés. I'm, like, an _expert_. Oh my god, let me tell you what he made me watch once." Clara came and sat down, Jenny sitting up and crossing her legs so she had space to sit next to her, both of them squeezed onto the one cushion.

"What was that?"

"_Lesbian Vampire Killers_," Jenny said.

"I've seen that one," Clara snorted, "Terrible. It was like, they deserved to die because they were lesbians, not because they were vampires. We were talking about lesbian vampires yesterday, anyway."

"What've you got against vampires?" Jenny asked her, sipping some orange juice.

"_You've_ obviously got a thing _for_ vampires."

"Hmm, maybe I do. Something about a shadowy creature who drinks blood and will stay young forever…"

"They're stupid."

"Have you ever met one?"

"No. I don't need to. They're _stupid_, Jenny. And they're made up."

"That's why you have all of _Twilight_ in your bedroom, is it? I do look at your books, you know, Clara," Jenny said smugly, and Clara looked mortified, like she had some dark secret, "I've never even seen _Twilight_."

"Oh, really?" Clara asked wryly, "Well, then, prepare-"

All the lights in Clara's house went out leaving the room only illuminated by the candles around the television. Five seconds later, there was an enormous thunderclap outside.

"Power line must have been struck by lightning," Jenny told her, "Oh well. No _Twilight_ for me, I guess?" A moment later, Clara switched her phone light on and got up, giving Jenny her hot chocolate to hold. "Where're you off?"

"I've got an antique candelabra knocking about somewhere, I'll put it on the coffee table," Clara answered, and Jenny frowned, but stayed sitting, "Heating will be off." Clara was looking through kitchen cupboards.

"Good thing I'm extra-warm."

"There are blankets under my bed, go and grab them, would you, please?" Clara asked her politely, and Jenny sighed, but got up, her cybernetic eyes switching themselves onto the odd, night-vision mode they had so everything was suddenly green. At least she didn't trip on her way up Clara's stairs to her room, and she could see what she was looking for as she dug around under Clara's bed and pulled out a stack of three, neatly folded blankets she kept around.

When she returned to the living room, she yawned, and dropped the blankets on the sofa, which Clara was sitting on lighting candles sat in some ancient, dusty, golden sculpture.

"Your yawns are catching," she told her, "_Why_ do you have that thing?"

"I thought I might sell it one day," Clara shrugged, "Nicked it from a mansion in the Eighteenth Century. Remarkable your father never caught me. Are you sure you don't want hot chocolate? The water in the kettle will still be hot, and if the power stays off for ages, I won't be able to make anymore. _And_ you've drunk all the orange juice."

"Oh, fine, Clara. I'll get hot chocolate," Jenny sighed and went to get it herself, trudging through the gloom of the dark kitchen towards the mug tree and the cutlery draw, "Have fun with your candles."

"Nothing to do, really. Too dark to read a book. Maybe I'll go to sleep?"

"Go to sleep and leave me bored on Halloween?" she said, coming and sitting back down on the sofa where Clara was sorting our blankets. It was underneath these blankets where, a few minutes later, as a result of the cold temperature in Clara's house that was just going to get colder now the power was out, they ended up cuddled together. Jenny stared at the blank TV screen, blowing onto her hot chocolate, "Do you really not like vampires?"

"No."

"I bet you're lying. I bet you wouldn't refuse the opportunity to be a vampire, Clara."

"What's good about it? All my friends growing old and dying?"

"You don't have any friends, or are you talking about Adrian?" she joked, "Anyway, what about the Doctor? Or me? I'm way younger than him, and I don't die nearly as often, I'd be around for ages. Then there's always Oswin, or Other You."

"Or your husband," Clara pointed out, and Jenny pulled a face.

"Ha, ha. I'm not sure Rose ages anymore, either."

"I'm not friends with any of them, though, am I?"

"Oh, come on, Other You doesn't hate you, and neither does Oswin. Oswin likes you because you're not an Echo. She hates all the other Echoes. Clara's just used to hanging around with people who are exactly like she is. Plus you're both so narcissistic, you'd be bound to get along," Jenny said.

"You sound like you're inviting me to live with you."

"No, of course not. If you won't live with that dashing rogue my father, what hopes have I, the lowly caretaker's daughter, got of winning your permanent acquaintance?"

"Gross. But why would I want to be a vampire? Drinking blood, never eating garlic bread, never going out in the sun? I quite like the sun, you know, I don't want to live in the dark all the time."

"Other You is terrified of the dark."

"How come?"

"Dunno, really. Apparently she's had some traumatic experiences involving ghosts."

"She's not the only one."

"Oh yeah?" Jenny tried to prompt her to tell a story.

"Involves your dad. Not talking about it," Clara said, her one rule, that they don't talk about the Twelfth Doctor. The other Doctors, the Alpha Doctors, were fine. Not Beta Twelve, though. Jenny didn't press her. It wasn't like Jenny didn't have a similar, don't-mention-Jack rule, she most definitely did, a rule which Clara never broke.

"Got any non-Doctor-stories to tell at all? Actually, no, don't answer that. I've heard the sorts of stories _you_ tell, Clara. One day we all body-swapped and I had the excellent idea we all tell stories to pass the time while my fathers were off trying to fix it. This was the day before the stuff with you and the Xenomorph," Jenny explained.

"Huh. What story did I tell?"

"One about horse dildo rape."

"Oh _that_ story? I really told that? Eurgh. It was dreadful. What about you? What was yours? Tell it again now," Clara said.

"It was just about me trying to sleep with some alien girl as a ruse so that I could get her to admit to being a serial killer," Jenny said, "I think I got a degree in astrophysics that year of my life. Good times. But I have a _way_ better story to tell you, Clara."

"Oh yeah? I hear a lot of stories, what with me being an English teacher.."

"_Oh_ yeah. I mean, they made me promise not to tell anybody on the TARDIS, but you're not on the TARDIS. Well, you _were_ at this point. It was Day Ninety-Four. Do you remember? With the octopus that morning?"

"How could I forget Adam, Oswin and an octopus? But I remember you all seemed pretty out of it when you got back, you and the Doctors."

"I'll tell you what happened on Day Ninety-Four... Okay. To begin with. All the humans were out elsewhere, and Twelve was locked with the Zygon, and everybody hated you, and Oswin was busy. The others, I don't really know. So I suggested a Time Lords Only day, for the five of us; me, Nine, Ten, Eleven and Thirteen... It was a dark and stormy night-"

"Could you _be_ more cliché?" Clara joked.

"I told you, I know all about clichés, now, listen. It was a dark and stormy night, the night of October 31st, 2001, the last time there was a full-moon on Halloween…"


	285. Dying To Live

**AN: Happy Halloween! 22,000 words of glorious homage.**

_DAY NINETY-FOUR_

_**Dying To Live**_

_Wednesday, October 31__st__, 2001_

Trees plagued the mountains and crawled over their peaks like a rash made from evergreens, dark and rich and constricting, wrapping everything up neatly. A full-moon grimaced overhead, toothy craters shimmering bright and pale, the mountainside rich like silver set in glittering emeralds. Deep navy curled around the clouds on the starless night, the sky buried in a tangle of smoky rainclouds, weaving roads below looked like sparkling cobwebs on a frosty morning as the moon rippled in the black mud overflowing from between the trees in the storm. A flash of lightning and a crack of thunder at the very same time slowly melted into a thrumming overture barely heard in the weather, and, the base submerged in mud, a blue box materialised in the thickets of Douglas firs and sycamores, and a sickening crunch cracked through the night, swallowed by squelching as something sank beneath the weight of the police box, leaving two white stumps sticking out of it half-drowned in the mud.

The door opened with a creak and a man stepped out. Tall, gelled hair, blue pinstriped suit, old white shoes, long brown coat, a coat which he immediately turned the collar up on to try and somewhat protect himself from the rain. More thunder boomed ahead and the man stumbled around and his face was washed in moonlight that made the teeth in his grin glow. Four others followed him out. In height order, the brown-coated man came first. Then there was another in a leather jacket, battered, old, face as weather beaten as his clothes, an expression that barely registered the weather was foul at all; a man in tweed, a bow-tie, lanky with an almost hunched countenance, a tremendous chin the defining feature of his whole, rain-streaked face; the girls were different to the men but similar to one another, both blonde, both wearing similar, seemingly tailored leather jackets and darkly-coloured jeans, though the taller's were grey, and both of them had the wise idea to wear clothes with hoods; the only key difference between them was that the taller one had brown eyes, and the shorter's were an energetic shade of blue, and the brown-eyed one was wearing the same sort of shoes as the first, tallest man, only in black, and considerably smaller, and she had a circular bag hanging over one shoulder. None of them appeared to be fazed by the weather.

"You smell that?" the taller blonde said (hardly taller at all), mainly speaking to the shorter one, "Smells like… Halloween…"

"Smells like something dead to me," the shorter one shrugged. The brown-coated man was walking off through the trees, not as though to leave, but to circle, an alpha male examining the minutiae of his surroundings as though smelling for urine. The leather-clad one seemed eager to find something interesting to examine, to make a discovery, while the tweed-one stood by uneasily, as though he was misplaced. The thrumming of the box returned as it, on auto-pilot, disappeared, as though disintegrating into the fine layer of mist sinking around the quintet of strangers. That was when the tweed-man noticed the pale stumps previously protruding from the base of their box, and what the stumps attached to: at one end, feet, shoes red beneath the sticky mud. At the other end, knees, hips, a waist, a chest, two arms, a head. Lying there as though risen from a graveyard, semi-digested as a shallow grave turned to black ocean around her, was a corpse.

"Oh my god!" exclaimed the shorter blonde, "Look!" The others flocked then, and accusations for who had been piloting the so-called cuboid of a spaceship flew – because they ruled that whoever had flown it was a murderer, the murderer of a poor, young girl, lying flat in a square imprint.

* * *

_Jenny_

"You killed a girl!" Eleven accused Ten.

"_I_ killed her? _You're_ the one who switched off the brakes! And _he's_ the one who broke the navigation system!" Ten turned on Nine.

"Oh, _I_ broke it? You're the one who hits the console with a hammer!" Nine retaliated.

"To make her work!" Ten defended himself.

"She needs a gentle touch, not _violence_!" Eleven argued.

"She needs _brakes_!" Ten exclaimed.

"You both leave the brakes on _all the time!_" Eleven pointed out.

"Just shut up!" Jenny shouted over the top of them, and they did, "Why is it that you can never get along with each other!? You're all the same man!" She was met by mass objection to that assertion, that they were all completely, wildly different, but Jenny decided she didn't want to hear it, and then she didn't have to.

"She's your daughter!" Thirteen shouted, Thirteen who tried to stay out of spats, "Get along for her, if not for each other. Jeez, what kind of message do you want to send out to a kid?"

"You're being more childish than me," Jenny added, though she'd pulled a face at being called a 'kid'. She wished that they would accept her to be an capable adult one day, instead of brushing her off like some lazy, ignorant adolescent with bad acne and a boyband obsession. But at least Thirteen had ended the argument. It seemed like she was used to ending fights. Well, Jenny supposed, living with the Twins for a while probably made one apt in things like that. And then Jenny noticed something odd, and crouched down in the mud by the body, barely noticing the rain against her cheeks and hood. "We didn't kill her, look, she was… I think she was strangled?" Jenny was unsure, but the neck of the girl seemed to be puffy and inflamed, the skin more normal-looking (for a dead person) there, but whether they were marks from hands or some other method of death, she couldn't really tell. Eleven crouched down by her side and peered so close Jenny thought he might sniff the girl's neck to see if she'd been wearing any perfume.

"Nasty way to die," he said quietly, but still loudly enough to be heard over the waterfall of a storm crashing about them. She was nearly swimming in mud, and everything she could see was just a different shade of brown, "Look, there appears to be a grave around her…"

"A shallow one," Ten said, dropping down on the other side, opposite Eleven, who was on his daughter's left. Then, probably just so that he didn't feel left out more than anything, Nine copied this too, and it was Jenny and three men crouching around a dead girl who hardly seemed eighteen, the Doctors in identical thinking postures.

"Well, murdered on Halloween?" Thirteen commented, joining the club and walking around to be on Jenny's right, closest to the head of the cadaver.

"How d'you know it's Halloween?" Jenny asked.

"Sense of smell…" she said carefully. She seemed very confused about something. Then she dug in one of her pockets and drew out a pair of glasses, not dissimilar to the manner in which Ten would pull out glasses to make himself seem more intelligent, or even Eleven. Well, before Amy got her way and stole her glasses back, since she was the one of them with the genuine prescription. These glasses of Thirteen's were very odd looking though. One of the lenses was clear and regular, but the other one was tinted, like sunglasses, and a the pair was a little battered and crooked.

"What's with the glasses?" Jenny asked, and Thirteen looked up from the body.

"Huh?" Thirteen looked up. Maybe she couldn't hear over the rain. The other Doctors were puzzled by the glasses, as well.

"The glasses, why are they dark on one side?" Jenny spoke up.

"Oh, well, the right lens is broken. I borrowed them from a vampire, supposed to be fixing them. I say fix, more like replace… anyway," she changed the subject. It seemed like this was some interesting story from the future they were all missing out on.

"Hold on, won't you already have lived this? Through me?" Eleven questioned her, and the topic of the glasses dropped.

"I… I should have… But… It's not ringing any bells," Thirteen stared at the body like it was about to speak to her, "Like, at all. Ugh, y'know what it is? Totally selective amnesia. Damn Dimension Stabilisers bringing me here, knocking my brain around…" Thirteen seemed highly unsure of this, to Jenny, but regardless, she didn't seem to remember what she was experiencing.

Jenny had seen Captain Jack Harkness come back to life many times before. He would be gone, completely gone, no matter what you'd done to him, and then he'd shoot back up like he'd been electrocuted, revived by Frankenstein if Frankenstein was Rose Tyler and he were some hybrid, grey-coloured man with stitches running down his joints. Until that day, Jenny had never heard all of her parents simultaneously scream, but when this carcass sprang up like a jack-in-the-box (no pun intended) and spat out a cloud of golden atoms into space, that was what happened, shrieks stifled by thunder. Ten fell in the mud behind him, and wiped his hands on Nine's jacket, which would have started a fight were they not distracted by the risen-corpse in front of them.

It screamed, by god did it scream, and suddenly, it was no longer a girl at all, but rather a thing, a freak of nature, back to life and groaning and wailing like a banshee in the middle of a storm below a full-moon on Halloween, and Jenny thought that with a culmination of this many clichés, it was only natural that something _super_natural would be happening. And of course, it had to happen to them. They all jumped to their feet, the five of them, Thirteen nearly slipping, Jenny too quick on her feet to so much as wobble. Eleven wasn't so lucky, as soon as he made to back away he slipped and ended up looking like he had a baby bib of filth on his body, knees and shins the colour of the tree trunks around them, a howling gale sucking away the sounds of the dead thing before it could make them, until it started groaning, started standing up.

They were all too shocked, too engrossed, too fascinated to move far, despite the steadiness of them backing away. None of them wanted to run, they didn't want to miss anything, inherent curiosity shutting down any primitive, human, fight or flight type of deal. Jenny didn't have that at all, it was replaced by her insatiable desire to learn what was happening, as the thing stumbled to its feet. It had straggly, dirtied hair with a streak of unnatural white running through it; its clothes were filthy, soaked from rain, skin grey and looking almost like it were melting from her face with the raindrops. Jenny could have sworn it was wearing a wedding dress, a line running down the side where the dirty white turned to pure black from the mud of the ground. She looked at the pale white eyes, milky, dead, uneven, and then dirty gums with just a few teeth stuck to them.

The monster staggered forwards and nearly sank one of its red trainers into the ground, holding out its arms crookedly, lopsided, groaning at them. That was when something clicked with Jenny.

"Zombie," she said, "_That_ is a _zombie_!" Nobody bothered to object and say that zombies didn't exist when faced with this proof, this creature standing right in front of them, looking somehow confused. Did it know what was happening? Was it aware? They all stayed still.

"Do you know what's happening to you?" Ten asked carefully, ever the hero, a martyr-in-waiting, stepping gingerly through the mud and the rain towards the fiend before them, holding out a hand in caution. "Are you…" He didn't seem to know what to ask. 'Are you okay,' maybe? It clearly wasn't okay, it was dead and it was loping towards them like its ankles were made of clay and it was being held together by chords of thread. Fragile, but frightful. A broken doll. "What's your na-" Ten was cut off the same time the image Jenny had in her head likening this animal to a yellowing, cracked antique exploded. It groaned like a beast and made a lunge for him, black fingernails nearly clawing at her father's hand, moving at a speed that wasn't remotely unnatural, but it was one they hadn't been expecting after the disjointed movements as it had twitched and loafed through the mud.

Ten jumped back, the sudden movement agitating the creature and it made another noise, a noise like a roar, and started coming after Ten, dragging its feet through the ground and lifting half the forest floor with it.

"Right, run. Run! RUN!" Ten ordered.

Jenny was fastest. She was the smallest and the most agile, and even in the storm with the thunder and lightning and mud and terror, weaving through trees and ducking under branches and leaping rocks and creeks of water was easy, like circling cones in slow-motion, everything went frame-by-frame-by-frame and every movement was mapped and she avoided every hazard. In her two-hundred, parent-free years of life, she had not died once. Only twice she had regenerated, both times with a father present. She'd survived thanks to the skills granted to her by the clone archetypes on Messaline and the quick intellect of a Time Lord, not because of paternal intervention (or even maternal now, it seemed), and she wasn't used to looking out for others. But what was she to do with a bunch of selfish old men who didn't get along and wouldn't listen to her one bit? She was worried, yes, but she knew she had to trust they could look after themselves, something they didn't trust her to do. She had a longer average life-span than the Doctor any day.

She slowed to a stop when she saw a light up ahead, bright, dappled in the rain and spreading through the trees. Artificial, indoors, sanctity. A smell swam around her. Petrol station. That was what it was.

Somebody crashed into her and almost knocked her to the flood and she grabbed them, whoever they were, out of instinct. When she saw a face vaguely similar to her own staring back in terror, with eyes that seemed to be glowing gold through the dark blacks of them in the storm, she let go.

"What're you doing!?" she hissed at Thirteen, letting her go instantly.

"Following you! I'm not stupid, I've known you for years longer than them, and I know you're good at evasive manoeuvres," she said through the rain, "You see? Subconscious olfactory tracking. Gas station. C'mon, the others'll find it. I hope. I might not remember today, but I sure know none of us are gonna wake up dead..." Thirteen started walking towards the bright light and Jenny followed, wondering what she meant about 'olfactory tracking'. More of this 'sense of smell' stuff? She'd never been taught that skill. She ought to ask about it, she decided, watching Thirteen slide down into a stream that was bulging into a river, wading through it up to her knees before dragging herself up. As for Jenny, Jenny was no mood to ruin her jeans, and she'd spotted a log, part of a fallen tree.

Thirteen waited for her on the other side of the river, sounding like she was maybe swearing to herself, as Jenny balanced herself on the slimy log and held out her arms. Balancing was easy. Anything involving agility was easy. She didn't slip once, swung around a branch sticking straight up like a lightning fork in the middle, cringing at the muck on her palms now. It seemed that, whatever the spectre was, the pair of them had evaded it. For now.

"Ah, if I said I hadn't begged you to teach me how to do that, I'd be lying," Thirteen said, smiling, "As it happens, I have terrible coordination by comparison to you." Jenny felt a little bit of pride at that.

"Guess I'm not exactly a 'chip off the old block'?" she asked, glancing back. She saw nothing, no Doctors, no monsters. She hunched over a little, mimicking Thirteen (though she didn't realise), fighting against the rain.

"Well, you can say that, but we have the same hair colour. The apple doesn't fall far from the tree," Thirteen said, "One day, you'll realise we have a lot in common. Certain people, certain choices…" (_"Does she mean me!?" Clara asked, staring at Jenny in shock as she told her story. Jenny paused and thought for a moment. "I guess she might've, actually. I bet she says all sorts of stuff that's clues to the future and it's just no-one realises."_)

The petrol station glared like a lighthouse, leading them out from between the trees like moths to a flame. Something about petrol stations, in all the films she'd seen, just screamed safety. Well-being. Something to do with the lights, probably, a light shining in darkness. They trudged towards it, Thirteen doggedly, Jenny only slowly to keep in-step with her mother. Complaining about not being able to see for the rain, Thirteen removed the strange, crooked, broken glasses and put them back in her pocket, not bothering to wipe the enormous blots of rain from them.

Out of nowhere, to their right, Ten burst out of the trees looking terrified.

"Is it behind you!?" Thirteen shouted to him, and he jumped when he saw them. Hopefully the other two would wander that way as well. Jenny marched purposefully towards the doors into the petrol station, sitting against a long road, the road on the opposite side to where they were, and drew out her screwdriver, silver and with its violet light on top. While Thirteen tried to get the whole story from Ten, Jenny checked to see if the door was open – she found it was, and so stuck her screwdriver back in the side of her belt where she'd been keeping it, holstered like a gun, no blaster with her that day.

It seemed that Ten had lost it somewhere in the woods, and the three of them dripped mud all over the white, pristine floor of the shop with an old, wide-screen TV mounted behind the counter with coloured bars displayed. No service. Maybe there was a line down somewhere, or the aerial was broken. She wiped her feet on the large, smelly mat by the door, and stared around for people, but she didn't see a soul. Regardless of her manners, she still ended up tracking plenty of mud in, and felt a little guilty, like she ought to go and find a mop. Thirteen, tutting at herself, may have had the same polite inclination. Ten was oblivious.

"Hello!?" he called out, "Anyone here!?" No answer. To Thirteen, he asked, "Are you sure you can't remember today?"

"Yeah, I'm sure. Day Ninety-Four. One big blank spot. Whole day missing," Thirteen told him, "I told you. Dimension Stabilisers. Amnesia still in effect." She seemed unsure, though, like she was trying to work something else out.

Nine crashed through the doors then, and they jumped away. Hardly anything could be seen outside except their own reflections, the rows of white shelves with brightly coloured soft drinks and packets of crips lining them like jewels staring back at themselves against a dreary background. The lightbulbs above made the full moon in the sky look like a distant star, barely illuminating a thing, a glow-in-the-dark sticker on a child's bedroom ceiling.

"Is it here? Is it here!?" he asked, trying to force the door closed, but it was one of those doors that closed on its own, an automated mechanism, and he failed to make any progress in shutting it faster, "Come on, come on!" he urged it, not even waiting for them to tell him if it was there or not.

Something else, a body, threw itself out of the icy darkness at the door and slammed into it so hard it struck Nine's face and he was sent reeling back, Jenny's third, tweed-suited father being the one responsible.

"You idiot!" Nine shouted at him.

"It's right behind me, what do you want me to do!?"

"Ask nicely!"

"'Ask nicely'!?" Eleven exclaimed, and loudly, over the top of them, Ten ordered them to be quiet. A hush fell, broken a second later by the muffled noise of the door shutting, then Jenny pushed through and sonicked the door locked. As far as she knew, the five of them were alone, with a zombie right outside chasing after them.

"It probably can't get in now," Jenny said, "Not without us knowing. I don't have a gun, how're we gonna kill it?"

"Kill it!?" Nine, Ten and Eleven objected.

"I don't think we should kill it," Thirteen added. That was something about her Jenny had noticed. She stayed out of the arguments between the Doctors and quietly, calmly, gave her opinion afterwards, like she was a Doctor who'd finally learnt that shouting wasn't a sure-fire answer to everything. Well, she supposed her fathers were adept enough at listening, unless it was a very high-stress situation. That one, for instance, was a high-stress situation.

"Well how else do we stop the contagion from spreading?" Jenny questioned.

"Now, now, we don't know that there even is a contagion," Eleven said, narrowing his eyes at Thirteen for a moment, but generally, Thirteen and Eleven ignored each other, stayed away from one another. Jenny suspected that this was something to do with Clara, though it was probably also to do with some mutual agreement not to share too many memories, since they were the only Doctors whose experiences directly corresponded, Eleven being the only one to regenerate after the Dimension Crash.

"The TARDIS landed on it," Nine said, "That could be related to it coming back from the dead. It only seems half alive, anyway."

"And if time energy is responsible, it might turn out like your Captain Jack," Ten said, mainly to Jenny, "Unkillable."

"We don't know that it's even dangerous," Eleven added.

"Oh, well, you all seemed pretty bloody scared of it when it was chasing us! Suddenly it might be fine!?" she argued, and they had no defence for themselves, "It is a zombie. It needs to be destroyed. End of." She walked off to hunt for food, leaving them to bicker. That was when she passed a newspaper stand, with about a dozen copies of the same newspaper, and that was all. It was dated Wednesday, October 31st, 2001, _Two Ridges Times_. Today's date, she knew. So somebody had stocked the petrol station that day, so where were they? Were they a zombie, too? Maybe it really was a spreading infection, and they'd found themselves on the precipice of global crisis?

The notion of a global crisis and the possible nearing demise of humanity (though, she was quite sure that humankind didn't come to an end in 2001, and that she'd not heard of a widespread zombie-outbreak on Earth) made her remember she was hungry, so she found a jumbo bag of Wotsits (well, Cheetos, since they appeared to be somewhere in the US) and ate a handful, carrying the bag in one hand and the paper in the other. When faced with crisps, the arguing between the Doctors ceased as she held out the bag in offering, and all four of them took a bunch.

"What's that?" Nine asked her.

"The only newspaper they have on sale. There's a town nearby, called Two Ridges, I'm guessing… The headline is, 'Spookiest Halloween Since 1974'," she read, a picture of the moon printed below, "I can't believe the phases of the moon make front page news here." She passed the bag of crisps to Ten and skimmed through the pages herself, ignoring the orange dust she was getting on the edges, "Um… Oh, here we go, 'Local Boy Bobby Hurley Hits Furthest Home Run in Washington in Fifteen Years.'"

"This news is fascinating," said Eleven dryly, taking some more crisps for himself, "Furthest home run in Washington in fifteen years. He should count himself proud."

"I only read it out because I figure that's what state we're in," Jenny told him.

A bang interrupted them, something had thrown itself against the glass of the door and had made them all jump. After a pause, it happened again, like someone was trying to break their way in with their shoulder. All eyes went to the door, and they crept over, though Jenny was sure whatever was outside could see them perfectly, surrounded by confectionaries and cans of beer in the glistening shop, though the reflections meant they couldn't see anything at all when the thing, whatever it was, moved away.

The five of them in front of the door, closely watching, it hit the door again, and this time they saw it, the girl, the thing, the zombie. It had successfully found them, groping through the woods looking for food. She jumped a little every time the thing threw itself at the glass, trying to get it, trailing mud and old blood and water across the rain-soaked glass. The windows looked like waterfalls.

"It wants to get in," said Eleven, and Jenny couldn't be bothered commenting, 'Obviously,' go get on his nerves. Each time it struck the glass they got a different angle of it burned into their eyes, like photographs, or a bad animation. Sometimes she saw face, grey and green and dead with milky white eyes, sometimes the front of its white dress and body, sometimes the blurry line of mud down its side from where it had been lying in the ground.

And then it vomited, and they all flinched, as a substance that was mainly yellow and thin with some puce streaks of blood mixed in splattered across the window. That was when the regular attack on the door, like the ticking of a clock, ceased. There was a long, _long_ silence where nothing at all happened.

"…D'you think it's gone..?" Jenny asked quietly. Gingerly, Eleven advanced forwards, taking a step as though he was walking on glass and couldn't make a sound, even as his shoes squeaked and the damp mat beneath the door squelched under his footfalls. He crouched down, nearly kneeling, placing his fingers on the door to lean closely to the slime on the door they could see quite clearly in the clinical light of the petrol station they were barricaded inside of.

"…Pumpkin seeds," Eleven answered.

"What?" Ten frowned, passing the crisps to Thirteen now, who did not object.

"There are pumpkin seeds in this stuff, like it had eaten them," he said, shrugging, and Ten went over to judge, then Nine followed. As for Jenny, she didn't really know what pumpkin seeds looked like, and Thirteen was distracted by the newspaper in Jenny's hands and the Wotsits in her own.

"Is it still out there now?" Jenny asked. Nine pushed Ten out of his way and stood up, cupping his hands around his eyes, pushing his face against the glass above Eleven, who was still distracted by the sick getting washed away by the rain.

"Yep," Nine answered.

"What's it doing?" Thirteen asked. Eleven and Ten straightened up and waited for Nine to tell them.

"Sort of… sitting there," he said.

"Threateningly?" Jenny asked.

"Not really."

"Huh," Jenny said. She supposed she hadn't seen much blood on the girl, or any bite marks. Giving Thirteen the newspaper, she took out her sonic and walked over to the door.

"No!" Ten ordered her, "Don't go out there!"

"It might still be dangerous," Thirteen advised her. She found herself listening more to her mother than her dads. She'd never had a mum before. It was odd.

"…Okay," she said. Keeping her screwdriver in her hand, she went over to another window and pushed her face against it, squinting to make out any shapes through the storm. She saw what Nine saw, the creature sitting down on the ground about two metres in front of the door, knees pulled up to its chest, garbed in wedding attire, face buried in hands. "…She looks upset…" Jenny banged her fist loudly on the window, and the thing – the girl – jumped and looked around. Zombies didn't jump. Zombies didn't sit down and hide their faces. So what was she? When Jenny saw her milky eyes, all she saw looking back at her was confusion and upset. "I'm opening the door."

"You shouldn't," Eleven told her.

"She's right," Nine said, surprising the others, "Open the door, Jenny." Ten, Eleven and Thirteen protested against this quite passionately, but they didn't actually make any physical move to stop Jenny from doing what she did, drawing out her sonic screwdriver and pointing it at the door, watching the purple glow of it. She heard the door click, and she pushed it open.

"…Are you okay!?" she called, finding herself having to shout over the rain. More thunder boomed above. The girl stared at her, and wiped her eyes, "Oh, no, have you been crying..?" Zombies, most definitely, did not cry. Jenny slid through the small gap in the door and stepped outside, back into the mud, very carefully.

"…Why were you all running away?" the girl asked. Most certainly, zombies did not speak coherent sentences. This girl was, however, plainly dead.

"You scared us," Jenny answered honestly, crouching down. The girl sure did stink of a butcher's shop on a summer afternoon, that was for certain, and her eyes reminded Jenny of those of a dead fish, with their milky white pigment. But the greyness, the pallor, seemed to be washing away. The white streak of hair, the girl then pulled out, revealing it to be a mere hair extension. Then Jenny noticed what she hadn't before – a bolt through the girl's neck. Well, not through it, there was a black bit of plastic stretching around the back of her neck to join the two ends together, "Is this your Halloween costume?"

"Bride of Frankenstein," she answered. That was why she was in a wedding dress, then, "Probably a crap costume. If you all thought I was a zombie."

"Oh… You should come inside, alright?" Jenny said, taking the girl by the arm. She could hardly see her in darkness, but when she looked back, all four of her parents had their eyes pressed worriedly against the glass. The girl eyed the Doctors with worry, "Ignore them, they're just my… My family. We think there's something you should know…"

* * *

"I'm not a zombie." She _was_ a zombie. No doubt about it. A whole half hour had passed where Jenny and Thirteen had helped the girl, by name of Madeline, wash the greyish make-up from her face in a tiny, one-toilet bathroom that had a frame where a mirror ought to be on the wall, but no mirror at all, or even evidence (aside from the cheap frame) there had ever been anything there. There was a sign on the wall, in blue, that read, _NO PHOTOGRAPHS_. In the stark light of the highway gas station, Jenny's previous assertions that she didn't look nearly so dead were proven wrong. There was a wound on her forehead where she must have hit it that caved in and gave way to her brain, which looked quite black through the hole in her skull, rotting, conspicuous and grotesque. Her skin was pale and fragile looking, like edible rice paper, but the rotten gums and yellow teeth Jenny had seen turned out to be all part of the costume, she realised with surprise, when the girl spat a whole plastic, costume denture onto the sink and blasted it with water for a moment. It seemed to have somewhat protected her real teeth from much decay. A lot of her seemed to have bene protected from much decay. If she was to wear a hat to hide the rotting welt on her head, she would look merely ill.

After she'd gotten herself cleaned up a great deal, and they'd peeled her muddy wedding dress from her back and found some tourist-clothes in the service station comprising mainly of jeans that were a little too small and a t-shirt that was a little too large, the t-shirt with a big, clip-art style map of Washington state on it in dark green,over the top reading 'I heart' (with a picture of a heart instead of the word) 'Seattle.'

"We're near Seattle?" Jenny had asked her.

"No," the girl said, "Seattle's fifty miles south-west." It seemed odd they'd have a shirt for passers-by to purchase declaring they loved a city fifty miles out of their way, but Jenny doubted that this girl knew an awful lot about how a random petrol station chose what apparel to stock. Apparel wasn't nearly the most important thing. Ten offered up a pair of cheap sunglasses to her, to hide her milky-white, dead eyes, and then some trucker-style cap. She kept her shoes. Red Chuck Taylors. When Jenny looked at the feet in the room, six out of twelve had Converse on – Ten's white, Thirteen's black, Madeline's red. She thought maybe she ought to get some, too. Maybe in blue. Maybe low-tops, like Madeline, unlike the high-tops of the other two. She'd have to look into it.

Dressed in scavenged, tourist clothes, the girl didn't half look odd, like she was shrunk in the top and grown in the bottom with the size 4 jeans and the men's medium shirt. Better than a mud-soaked wedding dress, though.

"I'm not a zombie," Madeline reiteratedi, "I'm not."

"Why'd you sick pumpkin seeds onto the door?" Thirteen asked.

"Oh, man, pumpkin seeds?" she asked, and Thirteen nodded, "I'm allergic to pumpkins."

"Well I'll be," Thirteen said, "That head wound totally does not look fatal. I'm guessing that's how you died… The throat inflammation you pointed out," she turned to Jenny, "Anaphylactic reaction. Remind me to get you a coffee."

"Zombies don't exist."

"Well you're clearly something," Ten said.

"Your brain's all yucky," Eleven added insensitively, and Madeline looked at him, half aghast, the rest of her face hidden by shades and cap.

"What do you mean?" Madeline asked, reaching a hand up to her head. They all watched her do what she did next, which was gently run her first two fingers across her head, looking for abnormalities. When her fingertips brushed the lesion, she frowned, took off the trucker cap (a few clumps of hair came with it) and prodded at. Nobody said anything, they just watched, disgusted but entranced, as she missed the mark a few times and finally reached the black inside of the welt and her finger met her brain, her middle finger. She didn't seem to feel any pain, no pain at all, and her pale, stick-like finger just sank deeper and deeper and deeper beneath her own skull, and Jenny was almost drunk on the scene before her as her finger went all the way to the knuckle. Then Madeline drew her sticky finger back out of her own cranium, covered in dark grey, goopy brain matter, a trail of liquid going from her finger to the hole in her head, like the cheese when you pulled up a slice of pizza. For a second, Jenny thought Madeline might scream.

"Oh, darn it," she said, "That's just great. How am I supposed to write that I'm dead on my college application?"

"Your college application!?" Nine exclaimed.

"You can still go to college!" Thirteen said brightly, "I know lots of undead people! My sister-in-law and my daughter-in-law are both dead." Daughter-in-law? What on Messaline did that mean?

"Undead daughter-in-law?" Jenny questioned.

"Not technically my daughter-in-law," Thirteen answered, but that was all she would say. Jenny half got the idea she'd just said something she wasn't meant to, but she couldn't get a look at her mother's face to properly tell. Unless the Doctor somehow ended up getting another child, she was talking about Jenny. What was Jenny getting up to with an undead girl? Surely not Oswin? Couldn't be Oswin. Oswin couldn't be both sister-in-law and daughter-in-law. Well, she could be, but she didn't strike Jenny as someone immoral enough to be doing stuff like that. She didn't even strike Jenny as someone who'd leave Adam Mitchell at all, unless he were to die. She'd not left his bedside for days. Time shouldn't be messed with, though. Jenny ought to stay quiet.

"How long have I been dead?" she asked, sounding bored. She wiped her finger on her shirt, getting gunk on the last E in Seattle.

"What's the date, Madeline?" Ten asked.

"Call me Maddy."

"You told us to call you Madeline not twenty minutes ago," Ten reminded her.

"I have to change my name now that I'm dead," she told him. Okay, that made no sense, but then, she had just stuck her finger for inches inside her frontal lobe, so maybe she'd stirred herself up a bit. Nevertheless, Ten accommodated.

"Well, what's the date, Maddy?"

"It's October 27th," she replied, "There was a Halloween party. It's a Friday."

"It's Wednesday, Wednesday the 31st, Halloween," Ten told her, "What's the year?"

"The year 2000."

"It's 2001," Ten told her softly, "You've been dead for a year."

"A year? I've missed the application deadline for seniors!?" Why was university the only thing this girl remotely cared about? Not that she'd been killed a year ago and buried in a shallow grave in the woods, and had been miraculously brought back to life?

"…Do you know how you died?" Nine asked.

"Was it not..?" rather than finishing her sentence, she reached up a finger and brushed her brain-hole again.

"No," said Ten, pulling a pair of glasses out of his pocket and running a hand through his hair, spattering the ground with raindrops from it. The storm still raged outside. Ten's glasses, unlike Thirteen's, were not broken. With them on, he leant so close to her he might as well have kissed her. Maddy stayed unperturbed, though, "This is blunt-force trauma, but it's not fatal. It just looks bad because of how much it's rotted."

"I looked fine in the bathroom mirror, though."

"There wasn't a bathroom mirror," Jenny said.

"Makes no difference."

"…Right… Erm… Here…" Jenny took out her screen and held it up to Maddy so that she could see the reflection.

"My lord, what is that device?"

"A mobile," Jenny told her.

"A cellphone," Thirteen added at the blank expression.

"A cellphone? Nobody in town likes cellphones. We don't have any. The forest told us they steal your voice," she said. They all looked to each other. She had taken a bump to the head. "Where'd you get that thing?"

"The future."

"Sure thing."

"We're all aliens," Jenny said.

"All of you? Even her?" Maddy nodded at Thirteen, "But she doesn't talk funny like the rest of you."

"What? You've never heard an English person before? Don't you have TV?" Eleven frowned.

"TV? Of course we have TV. Who are you? Where are you from?" Maddy asked.

"The sky," Ten told her. They seemed to be playing off of one another now, trying to figure out what kind of place they'd landed in. Some remote town in a rainy pocket of north-west America where they thought mobile phones were evil and they'd never heard an English accent before? For once, Thirteen seemed smug about her unusual speech patterns. She blended in. They did not.

"Oh. Alright," she accepted this as the truth, "What's your name?"

Four voices said, "The Doctor."

"…I'm Jenny," Jenny introduced herself, "These are my parents. You call them by numbers, okay? They'll learn to deal with it. This is Nine, this is Ten, this is Eleven, and this is Thirteen."

"Is there no Twelve?"

"Twelve's locked up because he did something he shouldn't've with an octopus," Thirteen said, smiling, "Now, who d'you think might've wanted you dead, Maddy?"

"I guess everyone."

"_Everyone_..?" Nine asked.

"Well, how am I s'posed to know if people want me dead or not? Their business is their business," she said.

"Anyone specific?" Nine implored, "Who knew you were allergic to pumpkin seeds?"

"My family. My boyfriend. The Moores. The Hurleys. The Baddes. The school nurse. My friends. Anyone who's ever mentioned pumpkins around me. And we have a pumpkin farm. Farmer Eric won't have done it, though," she said. Pumpkin farm? Did people farm pumpkins?

"Right. Everyone. Okay…" Eleven sighed, "We'll get started, then? Who shall we get started wi-"

There was a high but distinctly male shriek from the back of the gas station, and they all looked around in surprise, the six of them, and made a dash to the counter. There was a room behind it, the break room, Jenny assumed, that none of them had checked when they'd come in. This was where the screaming was coming from, loud and sharp and stopping and starting again every few seconds. Eleven took the lead and reached his hand for the door knob, pushing through Nine and Ten to get to it. Jenny and Thirteen stayed with Maddy on the other side of the counter, where they had a view from the side they wouldn't have if they were trying to push through a bunch of men who were all six feet tall on average. They both stood nearly a whole foot shorter than that.

Eleven opened the door onto a man in his twenties with his face red with acne, eyes closed, headphones in, screaming at the top of his lungs. They stared at him. He didn't look to be in pain, and he was wearing some sort of blueish uniform that bore the same logo as the lit-up sign outside the gas station. So this was who was working there.

"…Hello?" Eleven asked quite loud. Immediately, the screaming ceased. The man took his headphones out, big, bulky headphones plugged into a tape deck that belonged twenty years earlier than 2001. Then he opened his eyes, and stared at them.

"Didja ring the bell?" he asked coldly.

"You were screaming," Eleven told him.

"I was singing. Am I not allowed to sing on my break, mister?"

"That was singing!?" Ten exclaimed. Jenny thought that he had most definitely been screaming.

"I'm listening to Elvis, what's the big idea?"

"Didn't sound like any Elvis I've ever heard, and I've met him," Nine muttered.

"Ha, ha, funny guy. This room is employees only. Has the gas pump stopped working again? I've been asking Jerry to fix it for weeks," he said, getting up. The name tag on his shirt read 'Ben.'

"Um, no, nothing wrong with the gas pump," Ten said.

"Oh, good. Dammit, Jerry," he muttered, and then he kicked a tyre that was propped up in the corner of the break room, "Can't ya do anything right? C'mon, got my pet rats to feed." He kicked the tyre again. Written on the hubcap in permanent marker was the letter 'J', "If the gas pump ain't fixed by next week, I'm losin' ya."

"Ben and Jerry?" Jenny asked, and he gave her a dark look.

"Whatcha smilin' about, huh? Laughin' at my brother cos he looks a bit different?"

"…No… I'm… I'm sorry, Jerry…" she apologised.

"Ya don't hear me makin' fun of the funny way you guys are all speaking, do ya? It's just common courtesy, ain't it? If the pump isn't broken, what do you five want?" he asked.

"Five?" Nine frowned.

"Yeah, why? One, two, three, four, five," he pointed to each of them in turn. Except for Maddy. He didn't even look at her, despite how weirdly she was dressed. Then again, he was pretty weird himself, screaming to Elvis and talking to a tyre he claimed was his brother?

"What about her?" Thirteen asked, pointing at Maddy.

"Who her? The damn potato chips?" he questioned. There was a rack of crisps behind Maddy. "Two girls, three boys, all I see, lady. Now whaddaya want?"

"Do you know a girl called Madeline?" Ten asked him, casting a glance at Maddy. He froze, and stumbled back a step, putting a hand to his head.

"Oh, man…" he said, "That poor girl… What is it? What do you want? Poor Madeline Cooper's been missing for a year, sir. Since last Halloween."

"…She's dead," said Thirteen, and he seemed about to cry, all of a sudden.

"Madeline's dead? Ya hear that, Jerry? Hang on, how d'ya know?"

"We found her body. It had, um, ID," Thirteen said, "We're… I'm… I'm from the Bureau." She stuck a hand in her pocket and leant on the counter Ben was behind, leaning over.

"The Bureau?" he breathed, "The Federal Bureau?"

"You bet your ass the Federal Bureau. The FBI. I'm a special agent," she said knowingly, taking out her psychic paper and flipping it to show him it, and his eyes widened, "Been called down by the local sheriff, name of which I can't rightly remember-"

"Sheriff Roosevelt?"

"You're god damn right Sheriff Roosevelt."

"Sheriff Franklin D. Roosevelt?" They all paused for a minute, and Maddy muttered that this was the correct name of the sheriff, no matter how ridiculous it seemed.

"Sheriff Franklin D. Roosevelt," Thirteen confirmed eventually, "Here to investigate the case of missing girl Madeline Cooper, just now turned into a murder enquiry. Don't suppose you'd know anything about that?"

"Sheriff searched the woods around Two Ridges for weeks, ma'am," Ben answered, all of a sudden helpful, completely ignorant of Maddy's presence, "Never found a single thing. You found her body?"

"Car upturned a few miles up the road while we were on our way to this Two Ridges. What was the date? October 27th?" Thirteen asked, and he nodded, eager to help, "Well, where were you that night?"

"Up here working."

"Oh yeah? Can anyone corroborate that?"

"Jerry sure can." Jerry. Right. Of course. "Jerry was with me all night."

"Any cameras?"

"No, ma'am, there ain't no cameras in all of Two Ridges. Jerry and I were playing poker, all night though, you can just ask him," he said, "Say, you don't think I might've had something to do with Madeline? I never even spoke to her."

"Did Madeline like pumpkins?" Ten interjected.

"Well, sir, I wouldn't know. They let foreigners like you into the Bureau?" he questioned coldly.

"Scotland Yard. On loan," he said coldly, giving Thirteen an irritated look, and she smiled pleasantly back at him. Damn her accent, Jenny thought. They'd only talk to her.

"That'll be all," Thirteen said.

"Don't ya wanna talk to Jerry?"

"No can do, gotta get to Two Ridges. We went through the woods for a ways, could you point us in the right direction, if you'd be so kind?" she asked politely, trying to adopt the dialect as she talked. Unless she was adopting the dialect by accident – Jenny could see that being plausible. Going native.

"Sure thing, ma'am. You head straight that way and in half an hour you'll pull right into town. If you're lookin' for people to do with Madeline Cooper, she was friendly with Tommy Briggs."

"'Friendly' with Tommy Briggs? He was my boyfriend, get it right," Maddy argued, but Ben could neither hear nor see her. Thirteen was heading off towards the door, back into the rain, and Jenny lead Maddy away by her arm as she threw a few profanities Ben's way, annoyed that he was 'acting like he couldn't see her.'

"How come she's alive?" Jenny whispered to Ten, Thirteen and Nine mainly talking to Maddy to try and get her to explain her relationship with this Tommy Briggs – the boyfriend was always the number one suspect in murder cases. Along with that, they wanted her to give them an account of the night of her death over a year ago, but she wasn't doing to good, claiming she had a bout of amnesia. At this, Thirteen talked incessantly of how she empathised, saying something about the fact she thought she was suffering from amnesia right then, and how the last time she'd died, she had. Then she said something about an undead friend of hers, refusing to specify to Nine in which way this person was apparently undead. Jenny would assume it was Oswin, but Oswin had repressed memories, not amnesia. She didn't seem like she'd forgotten everything the day Jack and Amy brought her back.

"No idea," Ten said. Eleven drifted along next to them, and she mused on what an odd ensemble of people they had gathered. A group of people who were, collectively, the same singular being, all of them acting like ostracised loners. The Doctors (at least, the male Doctors, Thirteen seemed to be getting along quite well with everybody) all seemed to like to convey the idea they were outcasts, and were constantly trying to out-do one another in who was the most downtrodden. Ten seemed disconnected from the goings on, but Eleven did as well, and Nine, and cumulatively the trio of Time Lords always seemed to be in some kind of pain due to their perpetual sense of 'un-belonging.' It was like they forced themselves to be on the fringe of whatever gang they were a part of, sympathy seekers, but the main issue with them _all_ wanting to be these pitiful figures garnering attention through their brooding was that they all ended up doing some sort of peculiar dance – and not just in a metaphorical sense. Eleven was striving to stay a certain distance away from Ten and Jenny, even if he spoke to them, and Ten was striving to stay a certain distance away from Nine, with Nine struggling to keep out of the circles of Thirteen and Maddy. It was like they were circling each other with their backs' turned in resentful respect for their other-selves, not wanting to cramp the hypothetical 'style' of the others. And it was strange. To fight this, she cut across Ten's path to be on his left, between him and Eleven, which surprised the latter somewhat.

"Is it something to do with the TARDIS landing on her, do you think?" Jenny suggested, "I mean, has the TARDIS ever really landed on top of a corpse before? There are lots of ways to bring back the dead, I studied them once, but they're not as interesting if you don't have a Time Lord perspective. A Time Lord perspective always sounds like the most insightful sort of perspective into reanimation techniques. Maybe it's like _Frankenstein_?"

"What? She was just dressed as the _bride_ of Frankenstein, Jenny," Ten pointed out, and she narrowed her eyes for a moment in a small expression of annoyance.

"I know that. I'm not thick. I'm just saying that there was a thunder crash when we got out of the TARDIS, and that means there was a lightening fork before it. Lightning plus TARDIS? Humans are made of electricity?" Jenny said.

"Well, that's…" Ten began, and then Eleven cut him off when he seemed about to compliment her.

"That's a very good idea, but the thing is, with a full biological reanimation that a Time Lord, as a rough example, would go through-"

"Or Jack?" she suggested.

"Well, I, yes, I suppose, or Jack – the thing is, that's a full physical reconstruction. She doesn't appear to be healing. And if she's not healing, it's highly likely she's still decaying," Eleven said quietly, "Look at how she's walking, it's as though she has rigour mortis." Jenny could barely see through the rainstorm, but she could see enough to know that he was right.

"It must be something to do with the TARDIS, though. What if lightning struck the TARDIS?"

"We would know if lightning struck the TARDIS," Ten told her.

"Okay, well… What if the lightning struck her? I told you, I read _Frankenstein_, and then I took a trip to visit Mary Shelley to talk to her about it-" (_"You met Mary Shelley!?" Beta Clara exclaimed in shock, sitting up from where she'd been curled up in the dark living room full of melting wax candles, knocks of trick-or-treaters interrupting them every five minutes. Jenny said, "Well, yeah, but-" Clara then cut her off asking a bunch of questions about what Mary Shelley was like, and Jenny promised to tell her that particular story when she finished her current one._) "-and she told me all about the time when this bloke tried to bring a recently hanged man back from the dead by electrocuting him. Sends the nervous system haywire."

"Yes, but they're a puppet, a brain dead puppet," said Ten.

"Unless the lightning strikes Maddy Cooper and shoots through her cadaver and turns her into this big receiver – maybe that's why we landed right on top of her? The lightning draws the TARDIS in, and-"

"Reacts with the artron energy – you're a genius!" Ten exclaimed, and then he hugged her, practically picking her up as he did and plonking her back down again in some mud, which she was none too happy about, but she was always pleased to be acknowledged as one of the more intelligent crew members. "Artron energy is what you pick up when you travel in time, we're all covered in it, like sticky buds. The TARDIS is like a great big magnet for artron particles – they mutate human antibodies-"

"Martha and Jack were telling me about it once, they make your white blood cells into Spartan warriors," Jenny said – and she'd met Spartan warriors, too, "So the lightning turns her into a receiving dish for artron energy, and-"

"That, combined, reanimated her body," Eleven said, "Like Frankenstein's Monster."

"Exactly, that's how she can walk so well," Jenny said, grinning at their combined genius, watching Maddy shuffle along. She might be limping somewhat, but you couldn't tell she was dead by looking at her, "Because the lightning shocked all of her nerves back into working order…" It was mid-way through this sentence that she trailed off and nearly tripped. Maddy Cooper was running on lightning power, like a super battery, but batteries ran out. Would Maddy Cooper run out?

"…Oh, no…" Ten breathed. They had all had the same thing dawn on them. Maddy was in an hourglass.

"She's going to die, isn't she? Her days are numbered?" Jenny said.

"Days? I'd say it was more like hours…" Eleven said quietly. They didn't want Maddy to hear, but Maddy wasn't listening, she was talking to Nine and Thirteen about regenerations and time machines and outer-space (which she didn't believe existed, she said that outer-space was a lie concocted by foreigners, but then she also claimed she didn't believe foreigners existed, either).

"We're gonna have to solve her murder. It's our fault she's back. We'll have to give her some consolation."

"Well, we've probably got…" Eleven said, holding up his wrist and checking the two watches he was wearing, "Until the moon goes down. Just about."

* * *

The road into Two Ridges was split, glistening like crystal with the twinkling rain bouncing onto the moonlight. The ripples in the long puddles looked like pebbles and shells on a white beach overshadowed by the black greens of the forest around. The town was small and spread out with square buildings and distant, yellow lights in a gulf created as the woods parted around it. Right there, between the roads as the one in and the one out separated into two-lane roads with blurry traffic lights hanging above on wires, sat a diner. Jenny thought this diner might well be the most perfectly located diner she'd seen for some time. Coming in or going out, the tiny, warmly lit establishment with a red, neon sign hanging above reading 'UU Diner' was going to be right there, curved windows and checkered tiles and red benches and plastic tables, inviting the weary traveller in. And boy, after trekking through the woods in a lightning storm that wasn't showing any signs of letting up, were they weary travellers. Jenny, especially, felt as though she might collapse if she didn't get some food pretty soon, even more so when she got a whiff of the smell of all-day breakfasts and hot pie that was wafting through the rain.

Upon the suggestion they go grab some food, however, an argument broke out. An argument broke out because Maddy complained about not wanting to go to the diner, and because of the Doctors agreeing in undertones that maybe it wouldn't be best they see what would happen if Maddy tried to eat food, because they all seemed to be convinced she would be utterly unable to digest it and it would end up very messy and putrid all round. Plus, even if people couldn't see her for some as-yet-unknown reason, it still wouldn't be hygienic to have a corpse in a place of eating. But Jenny was hungry. Her fathers were not. And her mother? Her mother was accommodating, and Maddy said she remembered something about the diner, anyway. She didn't know what, she just knew something, and that was good enough for the Doctors. So the men took Maddy to identify this Tommy Briggs fellow, leaving Jenny and Thirteen to head into the diner and investigate without any handy, undead clues.

The 'UU Diner' was weird, though. Not the place, but the people. All of them seemed as immediately oblique as Ben and 'Jerry' and Maddy Cooper. Downright strange. There was a song playing on the jukebox that sounded like some upbeat enough rock and roll number with minimal lyrics and a crackly, feedback-ridden guitar riff that repeated on a seemingly endless loop. The two waitresses in mint green uniforms seemed ordinary enough, but it was, first of all, the large man sat in the corner wearing what could only be described as a long, hooded robe lifting a spoon to his mouth every few seconds, but the odd thing was there wasn't a drop of anything on the spoon he was blowing on, and the bowl before him on the table was empty, too. Moving on from that were a couple of twin boys with black hair sat opposite each other in one of the booths staring at their own reflections in the black window and grinning somewhat menacingly, and Jenny couldn't help but feel like they were watching her in the reflection, holes where their pitch-black eyes should be. There was a trucker at the counter with his shirt buttoned on backwards and a woman sitting in another corner dressed all in blue, blue dress, blue coat, blue hat, blur furs (though, Jenny hadn't a clue what sort of animal the furs were made of, and she assumed they were dyed that shade). This woman in blue had a flowerpot on the table in front of her, and she was watching it with a pipe in her mouth intently, like she were listening, occasionally making a mime like she were blowing out smoke, but she wasn't actually smoking. Then there were the decorations, plenty of them, orange and black pumpkins and bats and white, menacing skulls and green witches made of paper hanging like Christmas tinsel from the ceilings and the windows, adorning the edge of the counter in the middle and the sides of all the tables, a fake, plastic adhesive made to look like blood hanging across the top of the window into the kitchen. Jack-o-lanterns sat burning away, orange and yellow, on the counter, unnaturally small ones on the tables like wedding favours. A banner above the coffee machine read 'HAPPY HALLOWEEN.'

"This place is strange," Jenny whispered to the Doctor, but the Doctor was beaming, and saw nothing out of the ordinary, it seemed. Or maybe, she was just so enamoured with the strangeness she hardly noticed. At any rate, she finally took her hood off and tried to shake her hair a little to get the moisture out of it, leaving droplets of it on the floor nobody seemed to care about it.

"Y'know what's a great invention of humanity, Jenny?" the Doctor asked, and Jenny looked at her expectantly, "Hand dryers. They're great for hair. Make it so… poofy. Life lessons for you. I'm gonna go to the bathroom, order us a drink, would you? It's on the FBI."

"…Sure," Jenny said, and the Doctor walked off towards the bathrooms, then paused. Both of them bored just the letter 'G.' Jenny watched the Doctor ask the closest waitress which was which.

"Gals on the left, Guys on the right," she got told, and promptly disappeared onto the left-hand door, and Jenny went and sat down in the seat closest to the toilets, feeling like a child who didn't want to leave her parent's side, even for a minute. Perhaps she didn't.

"Welcome to the Double U Diner," the waitress who had pointed the Doctor to the toilet came up to Jenny with a pot full of coffee and a smile. She seemed friendly enough. Idly, Jenny tapped the fingers of her robotic, right hand against the counter top, but the noises sounded muffled through the leather glove she was wearing on just the one hand.

"Double U?" she frowned, "Is that a pun?"

"I beg your pardon?" the waitress asked, looking unnerved when Jenny talked.

"I said, is that a pun? The name of the diner? W?"

"What did you say?"

"…Never mind…" Jenny said. The jukebox went off, and the hooded figure next to it let out a groan, kicked it, and it started up again playing the same song it had been before, some jivy, upbeat grease ball anthem from fifty years earlier. But this town almost seemed like it had been stuck this way for all that time – it couldn't really be 2001, could it? "Could I have two cups of tea?" The twins watched her from the other side of the diner, now turned to face her directly. Sometimes they would throw sachets of ketchup or mustard or handfuls of salt across at the hooded man.

"Huh?" the waitress asked.

"Tea, please. Two cups."

"What did you say?"

"I said 'tea'."

"Uh, this is the Double U Diner, not the Double T Diner," she said unsurely.

"No, as in the drink, tea. You know, leaves? Violently stolen from India two hundred years ago by the British and imported? This is America, don't you learn about the Boston Tea Party?" Jenny questioned, but she just got a blank look in return. This was getting ridiculous. If they didn't have tea they could just say so, why pretend like they didn't know what it was? A globally accepted hot drink. Everywhere had tea. Everywhere except Two Ridges, Washington, it seemed.

Thirteen returned from the toilets with soaking hair and soaking hands.

"No hand dryer, imagine that? Bathroom without a dryer in 2001. Not even any paper towels. Or mirrors. Just another one of those signs saying 'no photographs.' Weird, huh?" She slid into the seat on Jenny's right, beaming.

"Welcome to the Double U Diner, is there anything I can get you?" the waitress' smile returned when she addressed Thirteen instead, and Jenny watched carefully.

"'Double U'? Is that a pun?" she asked, and the waitress smiled even wider.

"Sure is, a bit of clever naming thirty years ago," she said, "Back when I took over the business. Name's Maxine." Her name badge didn't say Maxine, it said Naomi. She nodded towards the other waitress, wiping the down the counter, "That's Naomi." Maybe they'd just swapped name tags and forgotten?

"How come you answer when she asks if it's a pun and not me?" Jenny questioned, and Maxine's smile faltered.

"I'm sorry?" she asked.

"The pun. Why do you listen to her and not me?" She got a blank look, "Oh my god, I am speaking English, aren't I?"

"This is America, honey," said Maxine, then, to the Doctor, "Anything I can get you?"

"How about two cups of tea?"

"Oh, I'm sorry, we're all out of tea," Maxine said, and Jenny gawked at her. She'd been to America about a dozen times in a dozen decades, and not once had this bizarre thing wherein townsfolk seemingly couldn't understand a simple, inherited English accent happened.

"Well then, make it a double of your finest coffee, on the house," the Doctor said, smiling pleasantly, flashing the FBI badge now emblazoned onto her psychic paper at Maxine, who nodded.

"Of course. On the house. Naomi, could you brew a fresh pot of coffee for this here lady?" Maxine said, and Naomi went about doing that, "Can I get you anything to eat?"

"What would you recommend?" Thirteen asked.

"My flowerpot likes the huckleberry pie," said the woman in blue said behind them, and Jenny and the Doctor both turned in their seats and exchange almost identical looks of confusion. Finally, something had struck Thirteen as off about this freakish community.

"Your flowerpot?" Jenny asked, and the woman stared at her blankly, so Jenny nudged Thirteen.

"Huh?" Thirteen asked her, and Jenny made a face, "Oh, right. She said, 'your flowerpot?'" And there the most shocking thing happened. When Thirteen repeated Jenny, Thirteen did an accent to mimic her, which actually turned out to be quite a perfect impression (and Jenny was always so bad at accents). But that, the woman understood perfectly.

"That's right," said the woman in blue, and Jenny made a note that they definitely had to talk to her about the murder of Madeline Cooper. She didn't care how weird everybody was, she wasn't going to let that girl die without knowing who had poisoned her with pumpkin seeds. There were a lot of carved, spooky pumpkins sitting about in the Double U Diner. She wondered how many pumpkins there had been last year?

"Well then. Two slices of this popular huckleberry pie, if you'd be so nice?" Thirteen asked cheerily, and Maxine nodded and ordered Naomi to get these as well.

"Mother, would you kindly murder me?" Jenny asked grimly, annoyed at the weird thing going on with people apparently only understanding Thirteen.

"Would you be nice? Sorry about my daughter," Thirteen told Maxine.

"Your daughter? I can see the resemblance," Maxine said, and Thirteen nodded, and then she went away and decided to get the pie herself. Jenny stared after her, and then stared at the Doctor.

"She doesn't even question that!?" she hissed, gobsmacked, at her mother, "We look basically the same age! And what's with you? Getting excited about pie? You're going native."

"It's called 'espionage,' and it'll do you well in future to learn how to be covert," the Doctor said, and Jenny, for some reason, got the distinct impression that the Doctor was talking about a specific thing in her future requiring her to be good at sneaking about, "I'm perfectly aware of how queer our surroundings are."

"You're one to go calling things 'queer,'" Jenny mumbled, and the Doctor laughed, "Seriously, though. I might regenerate if I don't ask soon – _why _on _Messaline_ do you have an American accent?"

"Honestly, I haven't a clue. Maybe my wife has a Yank fetish she's never told me about," Thirteen shrugged, "It's been a long time, though. And y'know, there are a lot of places in the universe where _this_ is the more recognised accent. Take Captain Jack, for instance. I mean, I'm sure you're well aware that he's not from Earth at all." (_"A 'Yank fetish'? Are you being serious?" Clara asked with an eyebrow raised. "Well that's what she said! Maybe you should answer for yourself, Clara. _Do _you have a thing for American accents?" "Why should I tell _you_ what I had a thing for?" "Well, you're sleeping with me, so it'd probably add to the quality of your experience," Jenny said offhandedly. "You sell yourself so well you ought to become a prostitute," Clara said, "And anyway, you're terrible at doing accents."_)

"Well, yeah, but… I don't know, I guess it's strange."

"No stranger than having an English accent. Anyway, the Beta Twelfth Doctor's Scottish, for crying out loud! And, y'know, technically this could be a Canadian accent for all either of us know," the Doctor shrugged. It was a valid point about Twelve, she supposed, who was presently locked up being tortured by a Zygon.

"I suppose so… anyway, listen, we figured it out. She's on borrowed time, we can't afford to be joking around while we're here," Jenny said, changing the subject now she'd asked the question she'd been dying to.

"Borrowed time? What do you mean..?"

The Doctor listened intently as Jenny filled her in with the same scientific explanation for literal zombism that she and two of her fathers had come up with not an hour before, including Eleven's judgement that they only had until sunrise to cure her before death would set in again and Maddy would be left without any kind of solace, such as knowing the name of her killer. Through this explanation, Jenny kept shiftily glancing at the twin boys, they were in their mid-teens, it seemed like, but they weren't looking at her now. They still made her uneasy though.

"Okay," the Doctor began, sipping some coffee, which she then spat onto the floor, making Jenny jump. Turning to Maxine, she declared, "This here is some of the most delicious coffee I've ever tasted. I'll take an entire pot, if you don't mind. My compliments to the whole staff." Jenny took a sip of it.

"Clara's coffee's better," Jenny told her quietly, and the Doctor gave her a look, "What? She's almost always on drinks-duty. Not when it's laced with adrenaline crap, I mean." (_"Did that actually happen or are you just saying that now to make me swoon?" Beta Clara questioned jokingly. "Of course it happened, I was doing it to see what she'd say. She _is_ married to you, and all that," Jenny answered, "But, I mean, if it makes you swoon then I guess that's a bonus," she shrugged, and Clara laughed._)

"I don't count Clara when I judge hot drinks, Jenny. Clara's a woman possessed when she's making coffee, that stuff was ambrosia to me when I regenerated. God, it's bliss," Thirteen said, seeming to get caught up in some reminiscent daydream of her wife's ability to make heated beverages, "Anyway, let's be logical here. We're solving a crime. They've checked out the boyfriend, but I don't think the boyfriend did it. In fact, she might not even know herself. What I think happened is, that bump on her head? Somebody knocked her out. I think whoever knocked her out is who killed her, because she had a lot of pumpkin seeds ejected from her stomach. I think they were forced down her throat and she went into anaphylactic shock when she was unconscious, otherwise I can't think why she'd ingest those seeds. You don't get seeds in pumpkin pie, or pumpkin anything, they use the flesh. No-one eats seeds, that's like chewing on a plum stone."

"How come you don't think the boyfriend did it? Boyfriend would know she had a pumpkin allergy, boyfriend would be able to get the drop on her," Jenny said, drinking some more coffee, resting her chin on her hand and leaning on the countertop, watching water drip onto the floor around them from their identically-coloured hair. Thirteen reminded her more of herself than Ten did. But timelines were complicated, even if the visuals of each regeneration weren't just pre-set compositions of different, triple-stranded chromosomes, like she'd previously believed until Thirteen, 'Alpha Twelve', showed up and offered a bit of variety. That was a different matter involving cross-dimensional travel, though, and who was to say that Time Lord genetics didn't work in tandem with the physics of multiple dimensions? Multiple dimensions was a new thing. The Doctor was not.

"The way she was talking about him. Thing is, when you're a man, you just blunder through life doing this and that and people just tell you what they think. When you're a woman, it's like this whole world of half-Orwellian doublespeak, where everything is passive aggressive and means the opposite. I mean, someone once told me they liked my hair. What does that mean? I don't actually care whether they like my hair or not, it's the ambiguity that gets me. Nothing's ever clear. You have to infer everything. And I've been a girl for longer than some of those we have back there on the TARDIS, between you and I. She was talking about Tommy Briggs like she was gonna break up with him, like she didn't care, and like he didn't care, either. I'm sure they would've had a clean break-up, no problem, had she not died. Leaving him a prime suspect. Y'know, it's like, totally possible that the local police department have solved this murder."

"What? No, weren't you listening to Ben back there? He said Sheriff Roosevelt never found Maddy's body. You can't have someone arrested for murder if you don't have a body – we don't know what her home life was like, it could be plausible that she ran away," Jenny said.

"I think our next step should be to talk to the police, unless the others actually do figure Tommy Briggs is a murderer, but I'm guessing they won't. Then I'd be interested in checking out her family, not to mention some of the kooky folk in this diner. We gotta think – oh, thanks so much, this pie smells like it's to die for," Thirteen said, beaming when Maxine came and slid two slices of pie in front of them. Jenny didn't bother to try and say thank you, she just smiled, and nearly gave a thumbs-up, but she decided against it. "Now that I come to think of it, do you have any hot sauce?"

"Sure do, I'll get some for you," Maxine said.

"What're you having hot sauce with huckleberry pie for?" Jenny asked her.

"It's delish, you'll love it. I'll have you try some. It'll be my treat, because of what today is," Thirteen said, and Jenny stared at her, nothing to say. What was going to happen that day that warranted the gift of chilli-drenched pie? "Do you not know?" Thirteen took the hot sauce with a smile from Maxine and practically drowned her slice of pie in it so the thing was stained with red goop, like the stuff that dribbled out of a ketchup bottle if you didn't shake it beforehand. It kind of smelt nice, though, she had to admit. Maxine didn't think this was odd at all. "C'mon, Jenny, it's your birthday!"

"Oh, shit," she muttered. Thank god people were pretending not to understand her accent and didn't register that she'd just sworn, but she got a chastising look from her mother, "I totally didn't realise. I usually keep track… How come you knew?"

"Couple of days ago I figured it was around the time you turn 208, so I worked it out from there and came up that Day Ninety-Four was my favourite daughter's birthday," Thirteen beamed.

"What do you mean 'favourite daughter'? You have more than one daughter?" she asked, wondering if this was some kind of reference to the aforementioned 'undead daughter-in-law.'

"No, no, it's just a joke. There's only you, my one and only," Thirteen said casually, and Jenny believed her. No kids on the horizon, it seemed. Who even needed kids with Oswin to look after? Oswin needed way more supervision than _she_ did, she thought, "Here, have some hot sauce on your pie." Before Jenny could refuse, the Doctor practically turned the bottle of hot sauce upside-down above the pie and let it spit its crimson sludge onto the hot pastry and the fruit.

"If you sing _Happy Birthday_, I will have to run out of here crying from shame," Jenny told her sternly.

"Please. _Happy Birthday_ is an Earth tradition."

"What happens on Gallifrey?" Jenny asked curiously.

"Stuff we can't discuss here, I'll tell you about it later." (_"I'm guessing," Beta Clara began, "That you're not gonna tell me about these secret, Gallifreyan birthday traditions?" "You guess right," Jenny answered, "That's a trade secret, I'm afraid. Unless I bite you and make you one of us." "See, that _would_ be funny, had I not been bitten by you before. Funnily enough, I haven't grown an extra heart or started to see into the untampered schism in the last couple of weeks._") The Doctor leant over to whisper then, continuing what she'd been saying before the pie and the hot sauce and the birthday in undertones, "I was saying we gotta investigate these diner-goers firstly, then I'm sure it'll be good to get to the family."

"Why would the family be up in the middle of the night? It's nearly midnight already. We've only got seven hours left until Maddy's no more," Jenny told her.

"I don't care if they're awake or not, if one of them killed their daughter or their sibling, I plan to be stretching the law as far is it will go. I am a law-woman, after all."

"You're not, you're a fraud," Jenny reminded her as they ate pie, because Jenny really was still starving, and the Doctor rarely turned down food.

"Oh yeah… Well, anyhow, I would suggest we begin with flowerpot lady," Thirteen whispered, and then the woman in question behind them cleared her throat loudly. Maxine and Naomi both stopped what they were doing and looked over, the same time Jenny and the Doctor turned on their red, leather stools to face her.

"My flowerpot heard that," she said in a voice like ice with cold eyes to match, a harsh, pale blue that exactly matched her clothes. She blew some imaginary smoke from the pipe in her lips towards them.

"There anything your god damn flowerpot _don't_ hear, Candida?" the trucker with the backwards shirt snorted. He was holding a chocolate milkshake in one hand, glowering at her with beady eyes, half of his face hidden by an impressive beard.

"It's never heard _you_ fully pleasure a woman," the blue lady, Candida, retorted, and Jenny and Thirteen exchanged a look. They'd clearly just started some fight between the trucker and the blue woman, which Maxine and Naomi were watching carefully.

"Now you listen here you god damn tease-" he began, waving a finger at her with his left hand, the one not holding the milkshake, until she cut him off.

"I'm the 'tease'!? And I'm sorry, Chet, but I'd be more impressed by those hands if you knew what to do with them," she said coolly, "How about you put 'em where I can't see 'em? Or are you still too scared?" Chet clenched his fist around his milkshake then, and Jenny nearly fell off her stool with shock when he crushed the thing so hard the brown liquid shot out of it like a shrapnel bomb, spattering the ceiling, the countertop and Chet himself, leaving him with the whipped cream topping it around his eyes, like frosted eyebrows.

"I won't stand for this kind of abuse, Naomi," Chet said, and then he stared at the blood in the palm of his right hand, a huge shard of broken class sticking out of the lines on it, the wrinkles. He stared at this as though he were entranced for a couple of seconds, before ripping the shard of glass out with his other hand. Then he tossed it like a tomahawk at Candida's head, but she dodged it and it stabbed into the forehead of the carved pumpkin sitting behind her, blood soaked. She gave him an unimpressed look, and then he started bawling. "Why won't you just love me, Candida!?"

"I loved you a long damn time ago, Chet, now get outta Johnny's diner or I'll kick you out myself, _big boy_."

"You're a witch! A heartless witch! A cold, heartless, witch! A _god damn witch_, ya hear me!?" he yelled. The creepy twins and the hooded man who kept kicking the jukebox at regular intervals to make it repeat the song it was playing ignored all of this, and even Naomi and Maxine hardly batted an eyelid. Naomi gave Maxine a sympathetic look and started to clean up the chocolate milkshake dribbling over the edge of the counter onto the floor, dropping the shards of glass into a bin by her feet. Chet, while yelling about Candida being a witch, had backed out of the Double U Diner with blood and milkshake dripping from his fingertips. He then proceeded to punch the glass door so hard he left a fist-sized hole in it, shattered glass everywhere like dust, and sobbed as he left, his hand red and wet. When he was gone, nobody apologised for the scene, and the two waitresses went about cleaning it up straight away, like this was a normal occurrence. The creepy twins and the hooded man didn't even pay it any attention at all. Didn't even flinch.

"Okay, Jenny. You've got me. This place is definitely weird."

"Yeah, well, let's just hope psycho-trucker isn't Maddy Cooper's murderer, it'll be tricky trying to find him now whatshername has sent him off crying," she said, staring, flabbergasted, at the mess on the floor of the diner.

"C'mon," the Doctor said, sliding off the stool and taking her hot sauce soaked pie and her cup of coffee (Jenny was quite surprised she didn't have hot sauce in that, too) and sat in the seat opposite the woman in blue, Candida. Jenny was obliged to follow and they both sat down opposite her and her flowerpot, and the Doctor got out her psychic paper and held it up, "We're with the FBI. Investigating the case of missing girl Madeline Cooper, recently found dead just two hours ago." And then she, Candida, gasped in a very dramatic fashion as though she were a thespian and her hand flew to her mouth and she patted a hand on the muddy soil filling up her plant-less flowerpot in 'comfort.'

"Didja hear that, Naomi?" Candida called, "Madeline Cooper's been found dead."

"You're not at liberty to go divulging federal information like that," Thirteen argued, but Candida ignored her.

"That Madeline Cooper? I tell ya, Sheriff Roosevelt was all too quick to say _I _had something to do with that girl's disappearance," Naomi argued, "Thought Maxine and I were the masterminds behind some kind of plot to kill her."

"Why'd he think that?" Jenny asked, and they said nothing, just stared at her. She clenched her jaw in annoyance and looked at her mother, "Would you please ask them?"

"Oh, sure. Why did Sheriff Roosevelt think you killed Madeline Cooper?" the Doctor asked.

"Somethin' to with this little spat the restaurant had with her 'bout a year ago," Naomi began, giving Jenny a shifty look for a moment, like she might do something unprecedented and dangerous at any given moment. When she was about to say something else, Maxine called for help down at the counter, and Naomi was distracted for a few moments wiping up Chet's spilt chocolate milkshake. "Thing is, we had this whole pumpkin-theme going on, ya see. Pumpkins everywhere, for Halloween. Pumpkins all outside, pumpkins on the tables, everything on the menu had pumpkin in it for half of October."

"And some of November," Maxine added, "Because we had a lot of pumpkin left over, what with the fuss that girl started up. Saunters on in here and orders a burger. _A burger_. Fifteen minutes later, floor's covered with broken plate and she's stabbing herself with one of those allergy sticks." An EpiPen, Jenny assumed, was what she meant. Not that she dared correct her.

"Next thing we know, Deputy Hardy's down here questionin' us, tellin' us we oughta make a couple of the things on the menu pumpkin-free-"

"Hang on, there was pumpkin in the burgers?" Thirteen frowned.

"Ain't you never heard of pumpkin bread? The _bun_ had the pumpkin in it. Try a bit if you want. With Madeline Cooper gone now, we don't hafta worry about no more allergies," Naomi finished, "Girl cost us a lot of money. Sued us and everything, said we gotta include that the bun had pumpkin in it. Who's allergic to pumpkin, anyway? I've never heard of such a thing." People could be allergic to anything, Jenny supposed, but was that motive for murder? Maybe Sheriff Roosevelt's initial thoughts had been justified. The police didn't know how Maddy had died, from someone taking advantage of her pumpkin allergy and stuffing her full of orange seeds until she was so bloated she collapsed and rotted in the woods. Unless she'd been moved to the woods post-mortem, but it had been a year, and the TARDIS landing had contaminated the crime scene just as much as the rain and the wildlife would have. Plus, she didn't even know if they could find it again. How much forensic evidence was there likely to be to tell them whether or not it was a body dump?

"No, thanks, full up on your delicious pie," Thirteen smiled.

"The crust has pumpkin in it," Maxine said. It seemed the Doctor hadn't noticed this, but how could she notice anything when her dinner was drowned in hot sauce? Even Jenny would think twice before eating a thing like that. Her taste-buds seemed to have changed a lot this last regeneration. Huckleberry pie and hot sauce. It seemed their interview with Candida, still sitting opposite and listening interestedly, had been cut short.

"How much money was it, exactly, that you lost?" the Doctor asked, "When you were sued?"

"Never mind money, Johnny almost lost the diner," Candida said.

"Who's Johnny?" Jenny asked, and received a blank stare from the woman in blue. She very nearly swore at that, her mother having to act like a translator because a bunch of small-town weirdos were so sheltered they'd never heard of Great Britain. What decade were they even stuck in? It was 2001, but it looked more like twenty years earlier, like they were back in the 1980s.

"Who's Johnny?" the Doctor asked for her.

"My husband, the owner," Candida said. Okay, so the money motive stretched from Naomi to Maxine to Candida to Johnny, as yet unseen. All of them had the knowledge of the allergy, and all of them had the motive, if their livelihood was at stake. Perhaps Candida and Johnny more than the two waitresses. There didn't seem to be many favourable opinions of Maddy Cooper around Two Ridges so far, though, "Sheriff Roosevelt thought it was Johnny, for a while."

"How come he stopped?"

"Let's just say that my Johnny took a bit of a shine to Madeline Cooper," Candida said.

"Maddy's a senior," Jenny said to Thirteen quietly, though she probably didn't need to be quiet, since nobody understood her, "That's seventeen or eighteen, right?"

"Uh-huh," Thirteen affirmed, then to Candida, she asked, "An affair?" Candida nodded. "How old's Johnny?"

"Thirty-six," Candida said. About twenty years between them, then, "She broke it off the week she vanished. I guess, the week she died." Okay, so yet another motive for Candida, and another for Johnny, wherever he was. She could have killed Maddy out of revenge, Johnny could have killed her to keep it a secret, or out of rage. But with that much pumpkin seed, it had to be a premeditated murder. Who just carried pumpkin seeds around with them? "He was in love with her, though. Wouldn't hurt her. Roosevelt dropped it."

"Where were you the night she disappeared?" the Doctor asked.

"I was here, with my flowerpot."

"Any security footage?" There was a pause, and then Candida, Naomi and Maxine all laughed like she'd just said the funniest thing and the Doctor and Jenny, unnerved, glanced around at the three of them. Jenny couldn't see a single camera anywhere.

"We don't believe in photographs in Two Ridges," Maxine said. That offered some explanation to the weird signs hung up in the bathrooms in place of mirrors. But not much. Why was everything so odd? Jenny had never in her life felt like she was too _normal_ to fit in a certain place, it was always the opposite. Yet here she was. Two Ridges, Washington, the USA. The weirdest town on planet Earth.

"And where were you two?" the Doctor asked Maxine and Naomi.

"At home, both of us, Candida closed the diner for the night so that she could try to get a case together," Maxine answered. The same home or different homes, neither of them specified.

"Didn't need to, in the end," she said, "They dropped the lawsuit when she disappeared."

"Does the pumpkin stuff sell good?" Thirteen inquired, and Maxine shrugged.

"I guess it does, our genuine pumpkin pie always goes quickly. Deputy Hardy said Madeline's allergy was so bad, we should stop serving pumpkin altogether. D'you know how bad that would be for business? Not just our business, but for Farmer Briggs, who owns the pumpkin farm," Candida said.

"Did you say Briggs? As in Tommy Briggs?" the Doctor asked. Maddy's boyfriend.

"Yeah, Eric Briggs, his father, is the farmer," Naomi confirmed. So that was why, earlier, Maddy had seemed so sure that 'Farmer Eric' hadn't killed her.

If Maddy's tiff with the Double U Diner was threatening Tommy Briggs' family business and their income, maybe _he_ was her killer? Candida nodded, yes, as in Tommy Briggs. It was a bit of a weak link, though. Jenny supposed it could have been someone else in his family wanting to protect their assets and salary as well, though. Maddy Cooper was not a well-liked member of the community, it seemed…

* * *

"Wasn't the boyfriend," Eleven declared confidently. They reunited, as agreed, outside of the rainy Sheriff's Department, the sign hanging over the door, poorly illuminated in the light, letting them know they were in the right place. They weren't going in, because they all generally thought they'd be able to find just as much to put this crime together, and they didn't really have the time to be trawling through old files and documents. Jenny guessed the police would be up all night for Halloween, in case any juvenile kids tried to pull any jokes. The three male Doctors were completely soaked, like they'd been out for far longer than Jenny and her mother had been, but Maddy, at least, was sensible enough to go and stand under the concrete overhang up the steps to get out of the bad weather and the rainstorm. Jenny was freezing, and she rarely got cold from just experiencing Earth's weather, but this chill barely seemed natural. She was shivering, but she didn't know how cold she was _really_. It was more the perpetual sense of unease that was getting to her.

"How do you know?" Jenny asked Eleven.

"He's got an alibi," he shrugged. Maddy looked even worse now than she had done earlier, that hole in her head almost falling away into blackish brain like a sinkhole, growing until other parts of her face would start to get sucked up as well, like her eye. And Jenny knew a lot about eye troubles. She didn't smell very nice, either. Jenny could smell her from a good few metres away, through the stench of damp evergreens and grass. They had passed some trick-or-treaters dressed as zombies on the way there, a costume which suddenly seemed insensitive to the real undead hordes. But, Maddy was just one person, she couldn't really be considered a horde. She wasn't craving brains, either. "There was a football match on. Well, _he_ said it was football, but he used a lot of words I didn't understand and had a rugby ball, very odd…"

"Yeah, it's called a football here," Thirteen told him harshly, with some annoyance, "What you're talking about, they call soccer. Everybody knows that."

"You better than most," he retaliated, making another jibe about her accent, but she ignored him, unimpressed. They either ignored each other, or refused to get along, Jenny noticed. She, Ten and Nine just watched the tension grow between the Doctor's latest incarnations painfully, unable to do anything. Thankfully, Ten took over explaining to them what they'd found at Tommy Briggs' house.

"His father owns the pumpkin farm," Ten said, "Gives him access to the murder weapon."

"But so do all the people who work in the Double U Diner," Thirteen said, Ten briefly amused by the pun of the name. Jenny wondered how people were understanding the other Doctors, since nobody could understand _her_. "What way's your house, Maddy?"

"That way," Maddy said, but she didn't point, or indicate, or anything. She just stared flatly at Thirteen and said 'that way.'

"…Could you take us there?"

"Oh. Sure," she beamed, seeming please to help, and then started walking off to her right, away from the police department, dragging her feet like a real zombie from a horror film.

"Everyone in there has the motive and the opportunity, because none of them have solid alibis," Jenny explained, following Maddy, "Multiple motives, even. I mean, Candida could want to kill her because she was threatening the business _or_ because of Johnny. What's with you doing some thirty-year old, anyway?" she turned her questions on Maddy herself, who wasn't listening. No, what Maddy was doing was picking off one of her fingernails, letting out black blood and muddy slime from months of wallowing in a deathly, wooded marsh. She shook her hand and some of this gunk splattered onto the floor.

"Gross," Thirteen said, but Maddy ignored her, holding her fingernail in the palm of her spookily while, dirty hand. Next she'd be pulling out teeth and clumps of hair.

"He was charming," Maddy answered, "Johnny B. Badde…"

"What?" Nine asked, "Johnny B. Badde? Like _Johnny B. Goode_? The song?"

"This place might as well be stuck in the 1950s," Ten muttered next to him, which was true enough, Jenny thought, "Tommy's father was at the match as well, though, and so were all of her friends, before some party that night. And there's only the two of them in the family." As Thirteen had suspected, it wasn't the boyfriend who did it. Wasn't the boyfriend, and Jenny doubted it was Johnny, either. And she thought that if either of those waitresses knew how Maddy died, from being force-fed pumpkin seeds, they wouldn't have gone on so much about the trouble the lawsuit was causing their diner, because it painted them as obvious suspects. But still, she had to look at the evidence, and the evidence said they were all likely to have committed the murder.

"Are you sure you don't remember who killed you?" Jenny asked Maddy.

"Yes, I'm sure! Obviously I'd tell you if I knew!" she protested, "I'm trying not to freak out about the fact I'm falling to literal pieces because I haven't graduated!" Jenny didn't think that Maddy's lack of high school graduation was the reason she was falling to 'literal pieces' at all, but more the fact she was a steadily decomposing corpse. She didn't say that, though. She didn't think Maddy knew that she only had a few hours left to live, and a few hours to see her killer brought to justice, whoever that was. Jenny remembered both of her killers. Cobb had shot her, and a Xenomorph had ripped its way out of her chest. She remembered both of those relatively vividly. She said this to Thirteen a moment later, when Ten tried to calm Maddy down by saying, of course she could still graduate. _Liar_, she thought.

"I barely remember when I last regenerated," Thirteen said to her.

"What do you mean?" Jenny asked.

"I mean, I know what happened, but only because Clara told me. I can't actually remember it too well. Not that I'd tell you if I _did_ remember it clearly, but I don't," she said, "I have a terrible memory in this incarnation, you know. My whole life is just patches of amnesia. Took months for it all to come back to me, and even now, I'm still plenty forgetful."

"Really?"

"Yeah, don't you remember when the Stabilisers first brought me here? Couldn't even remember Clara's name," Thirteen said, "Couldn't remember who she was when I regenerated. I slept a lot. Lots of sleeping, a lot of sex, even more crying." She checked Eleven wasn't listening, but Eleven was ahead of them with the other two men, trying to trigger memories in Maddy.

"Crying?"

Thirteen sighed sadly and looked down, "She cried so much when he died."

"So… If you forget a lot of stuff," Jenny changed the subject, "How do you usually remember?"

"How do I remember?" Thirteen asked wryly, raising her eyebrows and crossing her arms. Jenny nodded. She had her hands in her pockets and her hood up again, but the rainwater from the savage storm lashing around them was soaking right through. "Well, this is gonna sound pretty sappy, but I always have a wife to help me. Past or future, Earth or the edge of the universe, she's always there."

"If only she was here right now, maybe she could jog your memory enough to remember what happens today," Jenny said, and Thirteen laughed, but in an unsure way, like she was worried. Maybe she was worried about forgetting. Jenny wondered why she'd forgotten, as well, but she had.

"Hang on, I remember," Thirteen frowned.

"You remember who the killer is?" Jenny asked quietly, but urgently, though she was still talking awfully loudly to be even remotely heard over the foul weather.

"No, I remember forgetting."

"How can you remember forgetting?"

"I remember waking up tomorrow and having no recollection of the day before, and everyone refusing to ever tell me…" she answered, "Before I regenerated. Back when I was him."

"That's weird…" Jenny said. ("What happened was Thirteen drugged Eleven that evening with this drug, retcon, and he totally forgot, and that's why we made a vow not to talk about Day Ninety-Four, to stop him remembering," Jenny explained to Beta Clara.)

"I guess though that Madeline Cooper doesn't have that, since hanging around Tommy Briggs didn't spark any memories cropping back up, and I don't think we really have time to go looking for Johnny. Plus, you gotta remember," and the next part she whispered to stop Maddy hearing, "Her brain is literally rotting away, and has been for a year."

"Johnny could be the killer, though," Jenny said.

"The police ruled him out, and I don't think we should underestimate them. This town is weird enough, it probably takes locals to separate the curds and whey from each other. Not us. To us, everything looks like milk. Just super weird milk, with pumpkin seeds in it," Thirteen said, and Jenny didn't have a clue what that meant.

"Speaking of milk and locals," Jenny said quietly, "I'm glad to be out of that diner."

"How come?" Thirteen asked. She seemed to have quite liked the diner. Maybe she just liked the disgusting pie she'd eaten.

"Those twins," she said, "They freaked me out."

"Twins freak you out? It's not like you live with a set of identical twins. Technically, I guess it's triplets right now. If we went Eslilia or Victorian London, it could be quintuplets," Thirteen said.

"Yeah, well, maybe sometimes Clara and Oswin freak me out as well," Jenny shrugged.

"Uh-oh," Maddy said suddenly, and Jenny and Thirteen were cut off when they looked to see what she had just seen, which was some guy in a wheelchair, gliding towards them in the rain, down the pavement. There was one odd thing about him, though – well, two odd things, if one included the orange, neon lights on the inside of his chair rims – he had a pumpkin on his head. A whole pumpkin. Stuck on his head. The front of it had a hole carved in it, though, and he had another mask over his face underneath it, one that looked like the face of a porcelain doll, yellow and aged. The six of them all stepped out of his way as he came towards them, doll-face, pumpkin head, a weird, dirty, red raincoat on. Who was he? Was he even alive? Was he even a he? They all just stared, and the second of those questions was answered when he very slowly turned his head towards Madeline Cooper, eyeless holes in his creepy doll mask, watching her, and she watched right back. For a moment, Jenny thought his head might rotate the whole way around as he went past them, but he turned a corner and disappeared into the rain behind one of those idyllic, white, picket fences.

"Who was _that_?" Nine asked Maddy, all of them acting like they were in shock. Except Maddy, who glared after him, whoever he was.

"Mr Stewart," she said, "Everyone hates him. He thinks we should install those satellite things. We all signed a petition to say, we don't need satellites, we're happy with the local, Two Ridges television broadcasts. Even then, you can't turn on the television after ten o'clock, because of the static. Aliens can hear messages in the static."

"They can't, don't worry," Ten said, confused by this idea, apparently.

"That guy's got one hell of a Halloween costume," Thirteen commented.

"Whaddaya mean?" Maddy asked, looking just as confused as the rest of them perpetually were stuck in this weird town. She even looked somewhat offended, though it was hard to tell with her skin waxy and falling off her bones, "He's not wearing a Halloween costume…"

"He dresses like that _every day_!?" Eleven exclaimed rudely, gawking at her, looking back over his shoulder as though Mr Stewart was still there.

"What's wrong with it?" Maddy asked him.

"He had a pumpkin on his head!"

"It's a symbol of industry, power and wealth. This is the pumpkin town," Maddy said proudly.

"Do you ever think it might have been safer for you to move to a town that wasn't built on the pumpkin farming industry?" Nine challenged, crossing his arms. Maddy looked at him blankly, like she didn't understand why he would suggest this at all. Not like she had a severe allergy that had been her cause of death. You'd think that she'd be more sensible. She didn't want to continue the conversation, anyway, and she seemed in a bad mood as she shuffle-walked down the path and turned the next corner with them trailing along, keeping up with her ghostly, limping, rigid figure as she dragged her carcass towards her house.

Her house which happened to be right around the corner. All the better for them, Jenny thought, meant they didn't have to force Maddy to walk around for too much longer, because pretty soon, Jenny thought, her legs might give out. It didn't look any different to the other houses around them, a typical American job, painted white, made of wood, picturesque and suburban and everything one would expect. It was the only house on the street without any pumpkins outside of it, though, even though it had plenty of other decorations. Headstones, mainly. Headstones, zombie hands crawling out of the ground, a bowl of sweets with only the unwanted dregs left in it, but Jenny didn't recognise and of the sweets. There might have been an unusually large gobstopper she didn't want to touch because it looked like someone else had already tried sucking it and had dumped it back. Maybe it had originally started in somebody else's bowl of candy.

Maddy approached as if to knock, climbing the three steps onto the porch, a bug zapper stuttering and yellow hanging on the awning in shelter of the rain. All of the wood of the house was darker and swollen, bloated, full of something more than the water. Full of rot, perhaps. Full of rot like Madeline Cooper, waterlogged, too. Jenny shivered. It was freezing that night. Maddy shot a disdainful look at the garden decorations, though, unimpressed. In the last few hours, maybe dressing as a zombie for Halloween had suddenly gone from a bit of fun to downright offensive. She didn't seem very amused.

"I'll knock," Thirteen volunteered. Eleven tried to stop her as she got out her psychic paper, saying something juvenile about how Thirteen always knocked, or always spoke to people.

"It's only been today," Jenny said, following her mother closely, the three girls further ahead than the three boys, "You've never been out anywhere with her anywhere before." (_"They don't like each other, you know," Jenny pointed out to Clara, "It's strange. You'd think that with the same girl in love with both of them, they couldn't be _that_ different." "They're _your_ parents. I can't offer an opinion. I don't think I've ever said a word to your mother. Why don't you ask Other Me?_"_ Jenny thought maybe she would._)

Suffice it to say, Thirteen came out on top in an argument about her that she didn't actually say a word in. Her not saying a word was one of the reasons she won, as well, because while Eleven fumbled around, she just got out her psychic paper and flipped it open and knocked on the door, pulling down her hood and letting her hair drip onto the wooden floor, just like it had been on the checkered tiles of the Double U Diner. She knocked on the door. All the lights were still on, but it was three o'clock in the morning. Perhaps, in Two Ridges, people only turned on their lights when they went to sleep? She wouldn't be surprised.

She _was_ surprised, however, when a very large man opened the door, dressed in a three-piece business suit with combed back white hair and a bib on. Upon closer inspection, he was also wearing a cape, and had some unpleasant looking plastic fangs in his mouth, which was when Jenny noticed he was dressed as Dracula, or something. Maddy stared at him, on Thirteen's left, Jenny on her right, the men stood close together on the step below, behind them, but they were all still taller than the girls. This man did not see Maddy at all, didn't even look at her.

"Daddy…" she said, staring at him like she might tear up. He didn't hear a word she said. Why could nobody see her?

"Mr Cooper?" Thirteen asked, and he nodded, "We're from the FBI. We were called in to investigate the missing persons case of your daughter, Madeline Cooper, who went missing on October 27th of last year, correct?" he nodded again, "Sir, it's my deepest regret to inform you that while coming into town earlier tonight, we discovered your daughter's body. Madeline is dead."

* * *

"Have you ever told someone their daughter is dead?" Jenny asked Clara. They were sat up now, cross-legged, next to each other on the sofa, facing the television and the coffee table. The power wasn't back in the house yet, and Jenny had paused in her story while Clara fetched some more candles for the candelabra. She watched the wax melt absently.

"No," Clara answered.

"You should've seen it with the Frir. Should have seen it when Other You thought Oswin was dead. I think she screamed the loudest of the four of us. You know, we all saw our worst nightmares, and they all lost someone, in some way. All of them were so dependent on another human being," she sighed and stared at the candles, and Clara put her feet on the floor, uncrossing her legs, and shuffled next to Jenny.

"What did _you_ see?" she asked, and Jenny frowned and half-smiled.

"Death by Xenomorphs. Xenomorph hive, below the house. I remember thinking that a Xenomorph hive was the only logical explanation for anything. Makes sense, they're one of the two things that have ever killed me, and the first thing was a bullet," she said, "The Coopers screamed. All of them screamed. And there were six of them, six people screaming with grief, crying so much, I mean… I don't know a nice way to deliver that news, but… you'd think with her being missing for a year, that… I suppose they always thought she'd show up. The parents woke up the kids and the kids probably woke up the neighbours – not that I know why the parents were up at three in the morning anyway. God, it took almost an hour for us to calm them down. And you know, my fathers were the best at it."

"Which ones?"

"Nine and Ten. Come to think of it, I might have had something to do with it. I guess having your newly spawned daughter shot dead in your arms, or seeing her get impregnated via facehugger, might make you have a bit of sympathy for people losing their children in odd ways. Anyway. We finally got them calm enough to ask a few questions…"

* * *

There were a lot of them, and they didn't all fit in the Coopers' living room. Thirteen stood nearby, in the background, taking a backseat, as usual. Jenny thought she must practically _live_ on the backseat, just a figure scribbled out of the foreground, an extra. She observed, and Jenny sat near her on a chair she had brought through from the kitchen. The mother, the daughter and the son crowded onto the sofa, the father sat in a chair. Maddy sat on the stairs, pressing her slimy, undead face through the banisters to watch. At one point, she spat out a tooth covered in black blood onto the carpet, but none of the family noticed. Eleven leant against the fireplace on the other side of the room, and Nine and Ten were both sitting in two more chairs. It was a tight squeeze for the lot of them.

"How did she die?" Mr Cooper, whose name they had not asked yet, questioned, wiping sweat from his head with the back of his hand. Guilty behaviour, Jenny wondered, or grieving behaviour? In her two-hundred years of life, she couldn't tell the difference. Reading people was not one of her strong suits, it had never been something she had learnt to do, or even tried. She was naturally too trusting of a person, after being so untrusting in her first hours of life. Then she went to extra effort to be careful, to fact check, to see the best in everybody, be some optimistic ball of blonde energy and fancy backflips. It was times like this when that was of no good to her, so she just stayed silent, her mother a stoic next to her, always so calm.

"Pumpkin allergy," Ten told him, glancing at the children carefully, but they had already told the parents to send the children, Andrew and Catherine, to bed, but the parents refused. They all kept glancing very shiftily upwards, but Jenny assumed they were looking at the loose light fixture hanging from the ceiling, which kept rocking and twisting. "Somebody hit her over the head and forced pumpkin seeds down her throat, and she had a reaction, and died, and we found her body in the woods." Ten cast a glance at Maddy while he said this, but she was looking very fixedly at her younger sister, who was maybe ten or eleven. Her brother looked about the same. Perhaps they were twins. Twins like the ones in the diner, earlier, the strange boys who hadn't said a word, but had watched Jenny and Thirteen the whole while they had been there, in between messing with the hooded man miming eating soup.

"Oh, god," Mrs Cooper sobbed and hid her face in her hands, "Why Maddy? Why? Why!?" she pleaded with the unknown assailant out loud, as though she were praying. Jenny was now at an utter loss to who had killed Maddy Cooper. She really didn't think it had been anyone in the diner, and it apparently couldn't be her boyfriend or anyone she knew from school because they _all_ had the same alibi for being at some football game, but she didn't think it was anyone in the family, either. Maybe they really _should_ have spoken to the local police. There could be some huge suspect that they were _just_ missing. Probably staring them right in the face. Probably had been all night…

"Where is she now?" the little girl asked. She was dressed as a ballerina, or possibly a princess. She seemed to be wearing a tutu, but also a tiara, and a lot of pink. Who knew, maybe she was a princess who did ballet on the side? Jenny, curious as she was, didn't think it was the appropriate time to ask.

"She's, um…" Ten stammered, "She's…" he glanced at the banister.

"Tell her I'm upstairs," Maddy said.

"She's up there now," Ten said, smiling meaningfully.

"What did you say?" Mr Cooper asked.

"I, um, I mean… you know, heaven," Ten said, "Up in the, um… the cloud. With the heaven people."

"Angels," Nine corrected him.

"Yes, exactly, angels and the, uh, that beardy bloke. You know. Whatshisface. Anyway," Ten changed the subject. Religion, apparently, was not his strong suit. To think he'd met Satan before. Well, that was what Rose said, "She's entirely, um…"

There was a noise. A thudding. It came from above them. They looked up at the ceiling and the dodgy light fixture, one of those downsized, electric chandeliers, (_"Not a patch on your candelabra," Jenny commented_) flickering a little.

"I think I left the window open," Mrs Cooper sighed and smiled, a strange and sudden change of face from her tears moments ago. Though, when Jenny looked carefully, she could still see glistening, wet streaks down her cheeks, and the droplets running down Mrs Cooper's face like the rain sliding off Jenny's hair around her face. She brushed her wet hair behind her eat when she noticed this, and tried to wipe her face with her sleeve, but her sleeve was soaking and leather and did more harm than good. (_"How much leather do you actually wear, Jenny?" Clara asked, "It's all I ever see you in. How many leather jackets do you own? Leather boots? Leather trousers?" "It's all a question of style, Clara, but you wouldn't know anything about that, now, would you?"_)

"Are you going to close it?" Eleven asked her. He was suspicious now.

"Oh, no," she said, smiling pleasantly. Eleven looked deep in thought for a moment, before a smile broke on his face.

"Well, I can feel the draught. Do you mind if _I_ close-"

"Don't go upstairs!" Mrs Cooper practically shrieked when the Eleventh Doctor uncrossed his arms and started to cross the threshold of the living room to go towards the stairs. The two children seemed terrified. Maddy still stared at her sister. Jenny strained her ears to listen, trying to hear anything out of the ordinary. She _did_ have heightened senses, after all.

"Why not?" Eleven asked, "It's very cold in here, don't you think, Jenny?" Jenny didn't know why she picked on him to answer.

"Definitely," she agreed automatically. She wasn't one for arguing with the methods of her parents all that often. She preferred to try and learn from them, unless they were being _completely_ stupid. She smiled warmly at the Coopers. At least they didn't pretend they couldn't understand her, like the folk at the diner.

"It's rude," said Mr Cooper sharply, "I don't know where any of you are from, but do you invite strangers into your homes and let them do as they please?"

"All the time," Thirteen said brightly. Mr Cooper glared, but Eleven stopped his path towards the stairs and went back to the fireplace, which was not lit. She hadn't been lying, she really was cold. She desperately wanted a hot shower, and some sleep. She hadn't slept for a week, she was aching and exhausted.

"Sometimes it's all we ever seem to do," Nine muttered, then to the Coopers directly he said, "Do you have any idea who might have wanted to kill your daughter?" He didn't too much like playing detective, it seemed. There was a long pause where the parents looked to each other. The children neither did nor said anything, just stayed sat there, staring at the floor, Maddy still watching. Jenny really did think it would be best if somebody took them to bed.

"I suppose…" began Mrs Cooper very slowly, "It could have been any of those folks who work at the diner. Or that Tommy Briggs. Or his father, I never liked either of them much." Maddy made an offended sound at this. "I suppose some of Madeline's friends were always very jealous of her. Could have been anyone, really. You'd be best to-" There was another loud noise upstairs and they looked up again, and Mrs Cooper resumed like nothing had happened, "-best to ask everybody. Especially the Double U Diner. Never did like their pie."

"Excuse you!" Thirteen exclaimed, "I will have you know that that huckleberry pie brought a tear to my eye! And there are only two occasions on which I cry: when I watch a sad movie, or when my wife tries to cook dinner. Which are both rare occurrences, since I always skip the sad bits of _any_ movie, and since I _never_ let her cook dinner." She took an awful lot of offence to that remark about the pie. Jenny didn't think the pie was that much to talk about, especially not drenched in hot sauce, but if Thirteen wanted to go around dropping the 'my wife' bomb on a bunch of rural weirdos who probably still lived in a time before doctors had to legally wash their hands, she could do as she pleased. They just stared at her. There were probably much weirder things than lesbians knocking about in Two Ridges, anyway. Bobby Hurley, for instance, who hit the furthest home run in Washington state in fifteen years, according to the local paper.

"Well, you've been a lot of help," Ten said carefully, "Do you mind if we take a look around before we go? Standard procedure in investigations like this."

"Yes," said Mr Cooper sharply, "Don't you people need a warrant? You can't come barging into a man's home at this time of day while the weather's so nice and demand to look around his cupboards." That sentence didn't make the slightest bit of sense. It was the middle of the night, the weather was _foul_, and they hadn't said a word about looking in any cupboards.

A clang resounded from the kitchen and they all looked over in alarm, expecting to see somebody there hitting the tap, Thirteen even jumping. The room was empty though. Nobody there. But it definitely _seemed_ to have come from the kitchen… (_"Have you ever heard of sound carrying, Clara?" Jenny asked, then continued, "On pipes, mainly, it works. It's like sending a message. You hear stories of people hitting pipes in Morse code trying to plan prison escapes. You hit a pipe somewhere, from, say a cellar, or an attic, and the sound carries and comes out somewhere else. In a kitchen, for instance._")

"Strong breeze you've got up there," Eleven said to them, glancing at the stairs. Realistically, if they wanted to go upstairs, they couldn't be stopped. Not all of them.

"Yes," said Mr Cooper stiffly, "You were leaving?"

"On the contrary, we were doing nothing of the sort," Ten said, standing up, "We were just about to take a look around your house. On the authority of the FBI. Just a wander. We won't touch anything."

"That's a violation of my constitutional rights!" Mr Cooper yelled as Ten and Eleven began to proceed towards the stairs.

"Getting murdered was a violation of your daughter's _human_ rights, so don't you talk to me about that, Mr Cooper," Ten said coldly. They were hiding something. Something upstairs.

There was another, enormous bang from upstairs, even louder than before. This bang sent a shake through the floor and the house so strong that the already wobbling, loosely fitted chandelier finally snapped out of its wiring and was sent crashing down in all its cheap, plastic glory onto the coffee table, shattering itself into fibreglass and shards and plunging them into darkness. It had been the only light.

In the seconds it took for somebody to switch on another light in the room, a small lamp on the fireplace, there was another person in the room. The sixth Cooper. Six screams ringing out into the night. Maddy on the stairs, everybody else where they had been before, save for Mr Cooper, now standing up, having just switched on the light. And there, In the corner of the room, dark, matted hair and sunken eyes, was-

"Maddy?" Jenny asked, frowning. The face of Madeline Cooper was staring right back at her.

"Laura!" exclaimed Mrs Cooper, and the duplicate looked over, Maddy herself staring at her in shock.

"My _sister_!" she breathed, "_that_ sister, not the other one! I knew it was something to do with a…" she stopped speaking. There were _two_ of them? They were _twins_? Maddy and Laura Cooper?

"Laura, what are you doing downstairs? Don't you know better, you should be in bed, resting. Resting," her mother reiterated the resting part. Jenny had stood up from her chair now. Everybody had. The two younger children cowered away and Laura Cooper gave them the vilest look of repugnance and resentment Jenny had seen before. All this time, they had another daughter!? Why hadn't anybody told them!? Why hadn't _Maddy_ told them!? Probably due to her rotting brain, Jenny could hear the reason as soon as she thought of the question.

Laura was filthy, the exact picture of the terrifying, ghost-girl like you would expect to step right out of the silver screen into your latest nightmare. She had the dirty nightgown she'd outgrown, the lank dead hair, the equally dead, darkly coloured eyes, the complexion of rotting. In fact, it was hard to tell who seemed more dead out of herself and her zombified sister over on the stairs, who was trying to approach in the mechanical, suffering way she moved. There wasn't long until she would be gone. From Laura's wrist something glinted in the light of the lamp on the mantelpiece, and Jenny saw it was handcuffs, one of them broken, like it had been torn, blood dripping down her fingers onto the carpet.

"Have you had her locked up!?" Jenny exclaimed, "Handcuffed!?" Laura ignored her.

"I broke the radiator," she said with a twisted grin, "Pulled it off the wall." She seemed like this was amusing her greatly. Of course, what was it Maddy had said? _"Tell her I'm upstairs_." Literally, her twin sister _was_ upstairs. Upstairs banging, upstairs making noise. "Why did you give me pumpkin pie for dinner, mom? You know I'm allergic." Laura didn't look at any of the Time Lords as she spoke, like she was oblivious to them even being there.

"It was you!" Nine exclaimed, "You killed your sister, didn't you?"

"Killed her! Of course I killed her, I killed her _good_, I did, I really did," she snarled, rounding on him like a feral creature, "I just wanted to go the party. Maddy was going to the party, she was, her first party. First party. Halloween party. Never been to a party before either. I just wanted to go to the party… _I_ was supposed to take her place, Maddy's place, her _place_…" Maddy just stared like she couldn't believe her ears.

"Your own daughter, you kept her locked up! Why?" Thirteen asked angrily, stepping towards the Coopers, save the children, who were petrified, understandably, "Why would you do that? Your own flesh and blood!"

"She's very sick, you wouldn't understand, you're too young to have a child," Mrs Cooper hissed furiously, "We looked after her, we knew what she did, she told us, didn't you Laura? Told us everything. How much she _loved_ Madeline, how she just wanted to _be_ Madeline, and we could understand. We all loved Madeline, too… We protected her. Kept her away from the police, from the sheriff."

"_You're _ the sick ones!" Ten shouted.

"She tried to drown poor Andrew! And poor Catherine – the oven! She put her in the oven!"

"They wouldn't stop screaming," Laura hissed like a wild animal, "I walked so far in the woods that night. So far out. I took Maddy. Took her so far. So far…" How this girl had managed to drag her twin sister's carcass two miles out of town was beyond Jenny, but she'd already seen some pretty weird things in her few hours in Two Ridges. Jenny didn't know who to side with – she supposed, if Laura had tried to kill her siblings in such dreadful ways (the oven? Seriously?), she could see why they would want to lock her up. Why not send her to an institution, though?

"So you killed your sister, Laura?" Nine asked, "You murdered her, you knew what she was allergic to, you hit her and you crammed those pumpkin seeds down her throat because you were jealous. Because you wanted to take her place. You wanted to go to the Halloween part on the 27th, too, so you murdered her."

"Laura, why? I always… I always fought for you…" Maddy seemed to be trying to cry, but Jenny wasn't sure she physically _could_ cry anymore. Laura couldn't hear her, though. Nobody could hear Maddy Cooper.

"She had so many friends, so many friends, and I… and I didn't have any, not any, not a single one, a single one! Not nobody. Just me. No brothers, sisters, just Maddy sometimes, just Maddy bragging about how many people she knew, how many boys she knew, what Tommy was doing… I just wanted to see Tommy, Tommy Briggs, see him for myself… but Maddy couldn't be here, she wouldn't let me."

"I would've, I would've let you, I would've brought him over!" Maddy sobbed, but she still went unheard.

"She had to go so that _I_ could become her, I could be Madeline, not Laura, not crazy Laura, locked upstairs, locked in the attic, fed through a cat flap in the door, fed cat _food_! Fed nothing human. Worthless. _Worthless_," she hissed.

"You're just Mr Rochester, both of you," Thirteen said coldly to Mr and Mrs Cooper, then to Laura, "And you're Bertha. But you, Maddy… you're Jane Eyre."

* * *

"Seriously!?" Clara exclaimed, "Her identical twin sister, living in the attic, killed her out of jealousy?"

"Yep," Jenny said.

"Well, what happened to her? What happened to Laura? What happened to Maddy?"

"Well, Laura got arrested, you see, because we did go visit the police afterwards. That part's not too interesting, though, just us explaining all the stuff I just explained to you, with less sci-fi," Jenny said, "I think she ended up institutionalised. I remember I researched it afterwards."

"Maddy, though? Did you save Maddy? Why could nobody see her?" Clara asked, "You can't leave so many questions!"

"Would you calm down? Look, the thing is, to you in the biz, I'm what you lot call an 'unreliable narrator.' An embellisher. Make my story better than the truth," Jenny finally admitted, "I left a bunch of clues!"

"You lied!? How much of that is a lie!?"

"Well the real meat of it is all true, the stuff about the TARDIS landing on her body and us spending the night solving her murder, but… well the thing is, nobody could see Maddy Cooper's zombie, because Maddy Cooper's zombie didn't exist. She was murdered by her sister, sure, but she was no zombie. I just made up all of that science mumbo-jumbo on the spot. Genius of me, if I do say so," Jenny said, and Clara gawked at her, hooked on the story.

"What else wasn't true?"

"There weren't really any twins in the diner, that was a clue," Jenny said, "there was no dramatically crashing chandelier in the Coopers' living room. The flowerpot woman and the guy, Chet, she had the fight with were real, though. And she seriously was talking to the flowerpot, and he seriously did smash his glass, and they all acted totally casual about it. _And_ the weird bathrooms that had a 'G' on both doors. And the fact there were no mirrors. That was all true. And that they could only understand Thirteen's accent. It was a really weird town, I didn't really have to add a lot of stuff."

"How do I know you're not lying now?" Clara challenged.

"Oh, come on, I'm not. There are just certain details you have to change to make a good story. You should know that. The guy who thought his tyre was his brother was real, as well, but they weren't called Ben and Jerry. They _were_ called Ben and Gary, so I barely changed a thing," Jenny defended herself, "I didn't want your Day Ninety-Four story to be anticlimactic. Don't you go telling Eleven who the killer is, though. We can't have that."

"Ugh, fine," Clara muttered, "So she never was a zombie?"

"Nope."

"Aw. That was the best part…" she said.

"Thought you didn't like the undead?"

"Vampires and zombies are totally different!" Clara argued. Just as she was about to go on some other anti-vampire, pro-zombie rant, there was a faint buzz and all the lights came back on, a storm rushing around the outside of Clara's house, "Do you want another cup of hot chocolate?" Clara instantly asked.

"That would be wonderful," Jenny said, passing Clara her empty mug. Clara took it, and picked up her own, but stayed sat down for a few more moments on the edge of the sofa.

"What a weird place," she said.

"That's what I said. Anyway, are we gonna watch _Twilight_ now? Now the electricity's back?" Jenny asked.

"No way," Clara said, standing up and going over to the kitchen now, "Ugh, it's freezing."

"I'm still here and I'm still nice and warm," Jenny reminded her.

"Good, just how I like you," she said, and Jenny laughed, "You know, there's this show from the 1990s I've always been meaning to watch," she began.

"Oh yeah?"

"Yeah, have you ever heard of _Twin Peaks_?"


	286. A TARDIS Breakfast V

**AN: Okay okay, so. Thing is. I don't watch the show anymore, as you probably know, but I DO keep up with it through other people telling me what's been happening just in case there's an opportunity. And the thing is. In S8, Beta Clara lived in that flat, right? Incidentally, Rose Tyler's old flat on the Powell Estate. I actually watched S8 so I know this. Then I stopped, but I still know that in the last Christmas special, whatever it was called, with those stupid dream crabs I hate so much, she lived in a big-ass house. I remember because I had someone wonder how she could afford a house so big on a teacher's salary (NQTs (newly qualified teachers) working in London get paid like, £22,000 a year, which isn't nearly enough to buy a house if you're living on your own and you're a first time buyer or whatever she is). But NOW, I had the same person point out that in the last episode she was in the damn flat again!? Which is kind of pissing me off because I've been writing all the Clarenny (that's what I call them) stuff as though they're in this massive house. So in the next chapter with those two it's gonna basically be inexplicably swapped to suddenly being in a flat rather than a house, and this is why, just because for whatever reason I was under the impression she lived in a house now. I guess it was those pesky dream crabs up to no good. Also, did you guys like the Halloween update?**

_DAY ONE-HUNDRED AND FIVE_

_Rose_

_A TARDIS Breakfast V_

"Did everyone have fun getting impregnated, then?" Jenny asked the group of them sitting at the table, sitting down in the empty seat next to Rose where Ten had been sat, before he got up to make the entire room a round of tea, as was the usual custom. She was on Rose's right, Rose stuck with the Twins on her left.

"Oh, yeah, I had a _great_ time," Clara said sarcastically, slouching down on her hand. Jenny had some strange energy about her that morning that Rose didn't understand, like she was in a phenomenally good mood, and Rose didn't know why. By this point, she got uneasy when things happened she didn't know about, which happened a lot because of what she'd now figured out and called the 'Dimension Block,' since she could only affect the dimension she was a product of, "I just love having sharp metal contraptions stuck in private orifices."

"They didn't even get you, honey," Oswin muttered.

"The picture in my mind was vivid enough."

"What were you visualising it for?" Rose questioned her. Rose thought that if _she _had been strapped down somewhere and was being threatened with an involuntary insemination, she would be doing everything in her power to _not _visualise what was about to happen to her.

"Because my husband had the _wonderful_ idea that if he kept scaring me about it I'd get the ability to use superpowers back and get us out faster. Which didn't even work," Clara explained with an annoyed tone of voice.

"I had a kid once," Jenny said, looking off into the distance wistfully as though pondering an old memory of hers, then she sighed and looked at the table.

"Did you?" Rose asked incredulously.

"Yeah," she said sadly, "I loved that kid with all my heart. Then Martha Jones killed it and flushed it out of an airlock."

"...The Xenomorph was not your child, Jenny," Oswin told her sternly.

"It was! It came out of me."

"Yeah, and killed you in the process, and then it tried to kill Other Clara, so how does that make you feel?" Oswin questioned her. Clara next to her seemed confused at that being pointed out, and so was Rose, but it got Jenny to shut up about the Xenomorph. Rose knew she couldn't have kept any _real_ child of hers a secret for three and a half months. Jenny could barely keep anything a secret. She couldn't even keep it a secret that she banged her stepmother from another universe that one time. "So, Clars, speaking of things that happened yesterday..." Oswin began in a drawl.

"Don't even start," Clara said to her coldly, glancing around the room to check who was there, "I know what you're gonna ask."

"Well then you can answer without me having to say it," Oswin said, trying to coax some kernel of information out of Clara. Rose didn't like being so interested in what the Twins were saying to each other, but whatever it was, it immediately engrossed Jenny as well, right as Ten came and sat on Jenny's other side, passing Rose her mug of tea.

"No," Clara said.

"Oh, come on, is she a good kisser or what?" Oswin asked, desperately curious.

"Is who..?" Rose asked. Who had Clara been after _this _time? Clara Oswald had the most one-track mind of any individual Rose had ever met. It was just sex, and that was it. She could barely even function as a human. Oswin looked around at Rose with an expression of utter ecstasy at being able to deliver some piece of news onto Rose Tyler.

"_Well_," she started, "Clara here committed some very nefarious acts trying to get Martha to come back to her room with her yesterday so that she could be thrown into an ice bath." Rose now understood why Clara had checked who else was in the room a moment ago. No Martha, no Mickey, and no Eleven, so she was safe enough from the scrutiny of those interested baths. Rose gawked at Oswin.

"Wait, so... Hang on, what did you do?" she asked Clara, who was clenching her jaw and looking highly irritated at this entire conversation, courtesy of her sister.

"Made out with her, didn't you, Clars?" Oswin said.

"...It's fine, she can't remember," Clara muttered, then, to Rose, "Don't go telling her. She probably thinks that I have no clue she-"

"Totally wants to do you?" Oswin suggested needlessly.

"Would you be quiet? You've caused enough trouble," Clara snapped at her, but Rose was now desperately intrigued.

"So what happened?" she asked urgently.

"What do you mean 'what happened'? What Oswin said happened," Clara said, "She was totally into it."

"Was she a good kisser, though?" Oswin implored.

"Yeah, was she?" Jenny asked, just as the doors opened. Clara didn't see who came through the doors, but Rose did, Rose saw Mickey and Martha, just as Clara resigned to tell Oswin the truth about this supposed impassioned encounter of hers with an aphrodisiac-laced Martha Jones in a fertility resort.

"I guess that she was. And then she set my face on fire and that's really the more vivid memory I have," Clara said. What, exactly, did one getting one's face 'set on fire' comprise of? All Rose could picture was Johnny Storm, that mixed with the fate of the Nazis at the end of _Raiders of the Lost Ark_ when they opened the Ark of the Covenant. Melty and explode-y.

"How'd you get your face set on fire?" Martha, overhearing, asked, and Clara jumped and was immediately lost for words. Rose decided she wasn't going to say a thing, she was merely going to observe whatever trainwreck was about to ensue. Martha hadn't heard the beginning of the conversation, though, thank god, because she'd come in _just_ too late for that. She was smiling at Clara, as though Clara was about to bestow upon her the most hilarious of all anecdotes. Maybe one day it _would _be a hilarious anecdote, Rose already thought it was kind of great, because she'd spent the best part of two weeks tormenting poor Martha about this sudden gay feelings of hers.

"I, um..." Clara stammered, Jenny watching this show with the same amused attentiveness as Rose, "Well... you see..." she looked at Oswin, on her left, for help. Oswin raised an eyebrow as if to question Clara asking for any kind of assistance, before submitting and breaking into a smile, grinning at Martha.

"Clara tried to put the 'blow' in 'blowtorch'," she said, and Martha stared at Clara like she was an idiot, and Clara just smiled sheepishly.

"...Oops?" she said.

"Clara'll put her mouth around anything. 'Specially if it's _hot_," Oswin said to Martha, the word 'hot' aimed directly at her, to get her attention, to imply her involvement, and Clara kicked Oswin under the table.

"What happened to your face though?" Rose asked, "You know, with the 'blowtorch'?"

"Uh... A lot of blisters," was all Clara said. Rose got the feeling that she could have indulged herself in feriouciously lurid detail of what it felt like to have the inside of one's mouth set on fire, had Martha not been there. Unfortunately, Rose's amusement had been cut short.

"...is ridiculous! I can't find a single thing..." Clara's husband complained when he entered the room, talking to River Song. River was the last person Rose expected to see Eleven having an argument with, but upon closer inspection, it wasn't an argument at all, rather just him in a bad mood. Clara wasn't paying much attention, so Rose supposed that whatever it was about, she knew.

"You were always bad at finding anything, though," River said. Eleven ignored her and crossed his arms, looking around only one half of the room and spying Jenny, marching towards her.

"You!" he pointed at her, "Where's your other half?" he questioned.

"Next to me," Jenny pointed at Clara with her thumb, and Eleven frowned, "_Oh_, you mean, the _other_ person I occasionally have sex with? Jack's behind you." He glared at her like he might tell her off, but she just smiled.

"You're not helping yourself," Clara said quietly when Eleven decided he'd already had enough of his daughter for one day, "Here _I_ am, trying to convince him to unground you, and this is what you do... And what do you mean 'occasionally'? It was only once."

"I had to word it that way so that the joke made sense," Jenny shrugged, and Oswin shot her a dark look that she entirely ignored.

"What are you looking for?" Ten, who had remained disengaged from the conversation about what Clara stuck in her mouth, asked. At this point, Eleven went on to explain that he had struck up a deal with the Shadow Proclamation resting on the good treatment of the Strodrybs, which involved him finding and retrieving the Shadow.

"The Shadow's gone rogue?" Donna asked. She'd been talking to Jack, who sat on the sofas as far away from Jenny, it seemed, as possible. She kept sending her husband annoyed glances, for whatever reason. But now Jack was plenty interested in the discussion about the Shadow, the mysterious assassin who followed them around in secret and cleaned up their messes. "He's dangerous, though."

"Well, yes, that's why we have to find him," said Eleven, scratching the back of his head like he was out of ideas.

"What if he's after _us_, though?" Rose asked, "He could be. He fixes _our_messes, with us gone, there wouldn't be anything to fix."

"Look, if you want an assassin," Jack began, and Jenny scowled at the sound of his voice next to Rose and glanced towards the door like she might leave, "There's only one place to go."

"The Maldovarium," River finished Jack's sentence for him, and Jack nodded in agreement.

"Exactly."


	287. Fancy Seeing You Here I

_Jack_

_Fancy Seeing You Here I_

"Okay, so," Jack began, addressing the group as they stepped off the TARDIS, "Which of us are going after information, and which of us are going shopping?"

"Shopping for what?" Donna asked. There were six of them, Eleven swapped for Ten when he expressed more of a desire to stay at home with his wife all day, and when Ten volunteered. It didn't affect Jack what Doctor did what, the Doctor was never really the best person to take out to black markets, anyway. Always seemed to be surprised when he saw illegal things for sale. Then there was Rose, curiosity for the Shadow overcoming her, along with Mickey. Lastly there was River, who was there, apparently, to do a favour for Oswin, of all people.

"Well _I'm _the one with the shopping list," River said smugly, "So _I'll _do the shopping."

"Shopping for what, exactly?" Jack questioned, "What are _you_ doing helping _Oswin_?"

"Perhaps I owe her," River said. Jack didn't know what Oswin had ever done for River, but decided not to ask.

"You don't think that maybe you'd be better off looking for information? Me and you, the Fifty-First Century guys?" he grinned.

"Mmm, I'm sure you can handle yourself, Captain. Off you go, then. _I'm_ going _this_ way. Anyone care to join me?" River asked, and Donna volunteered to follow her while Mickey drifted towards Jack, Mickey who'd already encountered the Shadow before.

"Well, what about me?" Ten asked, "You can't just go off and leave me, _I'm _in charge!" he complained. River shot Jack a look.

"Isn't he cute? Thinking he's still in charge," River said, and Jack laughed.

"Well, _I'm _coming with you two," Rose said, walking over to Jack and Mickey. Jack was surprised she didn't offer to go elsewhere with Ten and have them be three pairs, rather than leaving the man on his own. The TARDIS autopiloting itself away was switched off, though. Black markets weren't the sort of place where you wanted to eliminate your getaway vehicle.

"What? But what about-"

"Well come on, then, this way, Doctor," Donna said, already following River one way, looking at him like he was an idiot. He looked pleadingly towards Rose, but Rose was busy going the other way. Jack just laughed, and then left.

"She's only shopping for medicine ingredients," Mickey said when they were walking out of the hot, dark corner they'd landed in into pathways full of alien shops and stalls and aliens themselves. Jack was used to wandering past aliens, though, but in this corner of the universe, in this part of the future, there was always the risk he might run into someone he knew. Someone who probably wanted him dead.

"Oh yeah?" Rose asked Mickey.

"Yeah, Rory told me, overheard Oswin asking her for a favour. I thought it was weird though, because Oswin already asked your wife to do that favour," Mickey said to Jack, who furrowed his brows as he brushed through the crowds to go find a certain shop where one could find assassins for hire, "Well, he said it sounded like Oswin did _her _a favour first. Something to do with Clara."

"Clara?" Jack asked, confused, "Jenny can't get off the TARDIS, how was she gonna do anything for Oswin?"

"She has that-" Rose began, and then the three of them walked smack-bang into two people coming out of another alley seeming like they were running away from somebody. "Clara!?" Rose exclaimed, and sure enough, there was Clara Oswald, and Clara just stared.

"Oh, because this is _just _what we need," the Doctor began next to her. The Twelfth Doctor, "While we get chase by a hoard of angry Woobers."

"Woobers after you? Tough break," Jack said, shrugging, glancing down to the left where they'd just come from, "Fancy running into you two. Do you know what universe we're in, Rose?"

"No idea, it stinks here," Rose muttered, turning her nose up.

"Huh," said Jack, then the Woobers (which were short and purple and had three arms and weren't really too threatening) burst from around the corner, and Jack stepped out in front of Twelve and Claratoo and drew out a revolver, cocking it and aiming it at them. Nobody cared if you drew a gun out in these parts of space.

"Whoa, whoa, whoa, what are you doing!?" Twelve demanded as the four Woobers skidded to a halt and held up all twelve of their arms above their dome-shaped heads.

"Scram, would ya? Go on," Jack shouted at them, brandishing his gun. They bowed their heads and left, and he shook his head, "You gotta know how to handle these people, Doctor. Haven't you learnt that yet?"

"I don't like soldiers," he said coldly, and next to him Claratoo scoffed and rolled her eyes, which he ignored, "Or guns. Give me that thing, what would _your_ Doctors think if they knew you had that? Even that weird girl." Jack stepped away when Twelve tried to grab the gun.

"Take it easy, old man, it's a stun gun," Jack said, "Not even calibrated to work with non-humans, so almost everyone here is safe. Well, except for anyone with a lower level of synapses than a human, they'll get brain damage at best. That's no worry to you, though, is it, Doctor? It's the latest in TARDIS tech support. And for the record, your daughter was born to be a soldier. Blew up a cave and almost killed Martha the first day she was born. You'll know all about that, though, won't you?" he said to Claratoo, winking at her, and she almost fell over when he said that, which he took careful note of.

"How come you have a gun from Oswin, and neither of us do?" Mickey questioned Jack.

"Maybe you oughta go visit our genius in the wings and tell her you want a gun then," Jack said, stowing his away, "Careful where you go here, rumour has it your ex-wife is shopping for the ingredients for a resurrection potion."

"Resurrection potion?" Twelve frowned.

"What are you two doing here?" Rose asked, then she asked, "And when did you cut your hair?"

"A while ago," Clara answered, looking highly uncomfortable with what was going on around her, "Fancied a change. We're just looking for something, some artefact that has the power to make anyone who possesses it into a supersoldier. Routine job."

"What are you telling _them_ for?" Twelve complained.

"Why not? I doubt they care," she shrugged, "What about you lot? What are _you_ doing?"

"Looking for an assassin," Mickey said, "Same one who kilked the Xenomorph. Stopped the Frir."

"He's gone rogue. We've been ordered to get him back, by the Shadow Architect herself," Jack answered, "The others are shopping. Somebody call Donna and tell her to pick up some milk."

"Do we need milk? Again?" Rose asked, and Jack nodded, and she groaned and took her phone out and started texting.

"Dangerous artefact like that, you wanna be talking to Turk Renderling. You go to the bar and you ask for Lando, and then someone says to you, 'Lando's out fishing,' and you say, 'Is the area good for trout?' and they'll let you right on in. Arms dealer. Careful, though, he might shoot you. Specialises in the weird and the rare. So how 'bout you two? You heard any whispers about the Shadow? See if we can't help each other out," Jack said. Everything he told them was true. If they were after some dangerous device, Turk Renderling would probably know about it.

"We don't hand out information to dangerous thugs, Clara," said Twelve, trying to walk off.

"Don't I even get a thank you?" Jack called.

"We heard someone looking for him," Claratoo said, "Shop back that way that sells smoothies, but they have armed guards outside. Someone got thrown out asking for the Shadow, and they said the Shadow was off their roster."

"Come on, Clara, leave these ruffians alone."

"Who are you calling a ruffian?" Rose shouted after him, "You fell in love with me two lifetimes ago!" Twelve stuck his tongue out like a child and Claratoo was stuck following him.

"I'll tell Jenny you say hi," Jack called, watching Claratoo stumbled and hurry off out of sight. Mickey clapped a hand down on Jack's shoulder, and Jack glanced at him, "And by the wat, don't tell Renderling you know me. Then he'll _definitely_ shoot you."

"Mate, she is _so_ doing your wife," he said, grinning like this was hilarious.

"Well, he could say the same to you, Mickey," Rose retorted, and Mickey's smile vanished.

"What's that supp-"

"I seem to remember your husband having a bit of a thing for one of her, at one point?" Jack said on Mickey's behalf, Mickey still pitifully oblivious to what Jack called 'the Clartha conspiracy,' much to the annoyance of anybody he ever brought it up to, minus Rose.

"How much do you think I'd have to pay the Shadow to kill her?" Rose said, sighing now that Twelve and Claratoo were out of sight, cutting into the alley on the left they had originally emerged from with a flock of angry Woobers on their heels.

"One of her or all of her?" Jack asked, following her, "A lot, I'd wager."

"And what would you do with all the skeletons?" Mickey asked.

"Dunno. Burn them?"

"Burning bodies? God, that takes me back. You remember the Miracle, Mickey? Hate the way that Oswin calls the medicine 'Miracle Medicine.' All healing medicine made with parts of my blood, wow. Almost makes me think it's a pun," Jack said darkly.

"The Miracle? That was you?" Mickey questioned.

"Eh, sort of. Complicated. They used my blood, but they didn't have my consent. A lot of people died because of that blood. Friends of mine," he said, sighing, "These days, I'm sure if we travel back in time to the right moment, we could be going around bringing people back to life. Dig up a coffin and shoot up the corpse with some of that rocket fuel of Oswin's and hey presto - resurrection potion."

"I don't get it, what's the Miracle?" Rose asked, Rose who didn't know a thing about the latest alien attacks because she'd been sucked into another universe in 2006. She probably didn't know about the 456, either. Good, he thought, the less people knew the truth about that, the better.

"Nobody on Earth could die for weeks," Mickey said, "Not one person. Everyone immortal, no matter how bad your injuries were. They started categorising people, then locking them in camps-"

"And burning them. Alive. Impossible to lose consciousness," Jack said, "Everyone except for me. For a few weeks, I had to take care of myself. Got poisoned and shot and fell out of a building. I don't know how you people do it. Anyway, enough of me, this looks like the place where you can buy a nice, chilled, murderous smoothie."


	288. Shadow Broker

_Rose_

_Shadow Broker_

Bumping into Beta Clara and Beta Twelve was unprecedented, to say the least, but Rose figured out the same thing she assumed Jack did from the brief encounter. This thing between Other Clara and Jenny Harkness that had supposedly happened 'one time' had not happened 'one time' at all, but many, many times, going by what Rose could see and what Rose could hear incessantly whispered to her through the annals of the time vortex, private and pointless and essentially damaging information shovelled into her brain by the universe itself. She'd think the universe would have something more important to tell her than who her sort-of-stepdaughter had decided to go mess around with, but clearly not. Clearly, now, this was her secret too, which didn't bother her that much; she kept so many of other peoples' secrets those days.

At least Clara had tried to make up for her actions somewhat by feeding them information that turned out to be accurate enough, Rose supposed, as they stared at a 'smoothie shop.' It, of course, was not selling smoothies at all, but rather, it was selling hitmen, bounty hunters, assassins and other assorted ne'er-do-wells from the scuzziest stars in that region of space. And would you have guessed it, Jack knew both of the guards and the owner by name. Old friends, he said. Old friends who _don't_ want you dead, Mickey had questioned? Then he'd laughed. But, it seemed they were lucky enough to bump into someone who wasn't trying to kill Captain Jack Harkness, which was even rarer than finding people who weren't trying to kill the Doctor.

It was a couple of aliens with bright red, shiny skin and spikes running down the middle of their faces and their noses who owned it and seemed to be in charge of hiring out murderers.

"They're good friends of mine," Jack answered, "Kantu and Reekil. Did some work for them a couple of decades back."

"What? _You_ worked _here_? As a gun for hire?" Rose questioned, shocked, and not shocked in a good way.

"Yeah, and I'd appreciate if you didn't tell your boyfriend," he told her, "I'm sure that would make him despise my marriage to his daughter even more." Rose didn't have any intention of telling Ten, what would the point in that be? Causing more conflict on the TARDIS? Plus, she hardly expected any less from Jack Harkness. Speaking of which, his marriage to the Doctor's daughter seemed to be far from stable at that moment. Jack, clearly, didn't know that this thing with his wife and Claratoo had been going on longer than a one night stand until the same moment Rose did, about fifteen minutes ago. How did _that_ bode? Jack and Jenny had been rocky since their 'wedding.' No, she thought, scratch that, they'd been rocky since _always_. But it was _not_ Rose's business.

They were lead past a fake counter that had empty tanks painted to look like, from a distance, they had some pastel-coloured, vaguely fruity liquid swirling about within, through a beaded curtain into a back room that reminded Rose of in gangster films when there were sweat shops or money laundering setups in the basements and hidden rooms of laundrettes, or dry cleaners. And in this room was a great deal of old-looking weapons and a large book, like a ledger, on a yellowing table that had once been white. Kantu sat opposite Jack at the table, Reekil standing behind by the curtains, Rose and Mickey behind Jack near the armaments.

"We're looking for the Shadow," Jack said bluntly, "Heard from a friend of ours that someone got kicked out of your shop earlier for asking after him, said he's not on your books anymore. You care to tell us where he's gone?"

"What do you want the Shadow for? We have plenty of others you can hire. Hire yourself," Reekil said coldly, neither of them nearly as warm now that Jack, leaning across the table with his hands together, had asked for someone they didn't seem too fond of, "That Shadow ever comes here again, I'll shoot him, and he knows it. He'd be wise to stay away."

"Shoot him why?" Jack asked.

"What's it to you?" Kantu asked sharply, and Jack stuck his hands in his trouser pockets and leant back in his chair.

"Could say _we've_ been hired to find him, take him back to his masters," Jack said, "I'm sure they'll give him the punishment he deserves for running out on you."

"He stole our earnings for this fiscal quarter," Reekil said, "I don't have to tell you that that's a lot of money, Jack. We'd like that money back."

"Well I'll see what I can do if you tell me where he's gone," Jack said, shrugging, "I'm not doing it for money, after all."

"You? Not doing something for money?" Kantu said, and they both laughed in an odd way that sounded like snorting and a cow mooing combined, and it freaked Rose out a little when she heard it for the first time just then, "Who are the goons?"

"Friends of mine," Jack said, Rose and Mickey both affronted when they were called 'goons,' but not wanting to argue with people possessing so many guns. Even Rose thought that would be better. If only Amy was there to 'persuade' them to talk, "Mickey here can breathe underwater, so your usual tactic of trying to drown information out of people probably won't go a long way."

"Why? Does he have information we need?"

Jack cast a glance back at Mickey, looked like he was thinking for a moment, then turned back, shrugged, and said, "I doubt it."

"Oi," Mickey argued, "I could have loads of valuable pieces of information on me."

"Sure you do, Mickey," Jack said, "All we want is to find out where this assassin is so that we can take him back to the Shadow Proclamation, who he belongs to. I don't know why he belongs to them, I don't know who he is, I don't know why he went rogue, but I know somebody has to get him back. And that somebody happens to be us." Kantu and Reekil exchanged a look, and one of them shrugged.

"He left a message," Kantu told Jack, who sat up again.

"What message?" Rose asked, approaching. She probably looked terribly odd, because she was wearing sunglasses to hide her colour-changing eyes, that still kept swapping against her will. She jumped every time she looked at herself in the mirror.

"It's not a message for you, Jack, but it's all we have. And we have business to get back to, and if you find him, I trust you'll bring our money back to us?" Kantu said.

"If he still has it. Seems like the kinda guy to spend, rather than save. Spend on fancy gadgets and technologies. But I'll see what I can do. I do owe you," Jack said. Rose hadn't a clue if he was telling the truth at all, she never knew with Jack. But what was Jack going to be buying with future-money? More illegal weapons, probably.

"Then bring back something of equal worth," Kantu told him.

"Like what?" Jack asked.

"His head," Reekil muttered, and Jack laughed.

"No-can-do, I'm sure the Proclamation want their pride and joy back _alive_," Jack said, "So, then? What's the message?"

"He said to tell a doctor, not you."

"A doctor?" Mickey, Rose and Jack all asked together, then Jack continued, "Yeah, tell us, it's for us. We know this Doctor. He's a friend of ours. Boyfriend of _hers_, in fact. What did he say?" Jack implored after jerking a thumb in Rose's direction, leaning towards Kantu over the table.

"He said to tell the next doctor who came calling that he was visiting an old friend, and he was taking the bus," Kantu said.

"A _red_ bus," Reekil added.

* * *

"A red bus?" Jack asked Rose and Mickey five minutes later, confused, after they'd left the building and were back in the streets of the Maldovarium, heading back to the TARDIS while trying to keep Jack from picking up any Fifty-Second Century toys on the way, but Jack was too distracted thinking, "A red bus?"

"So he's gone to London?" Rose frowned.

"Yeah, sure, London, but when? And why would he want to lead the Doctor straight to him?"

"To kill him," Mickey said, "Obviously. It's a trap."

"Yeah, a trap, but what's the bait? A bus? Save a bus? Red bus… why does that worry me?" Jack frowned.

"I'm always worried when assassins send me cryptic clues about buses," Mickey said.

"That happen a lot, then?" Rose jibed.

"All the time," he told her.

"A trap to kill the Doctor… but why _now_? Why not any of the other opportunities he's had to kill the Doctor? If a Xenomorph Queen can get onto the TARDIS, the Shadow can definitely get onto the TARDIS, and he's had more than one chance," Jack said, "Huh. I got a lot of questions for this guy, y'know. What have the Shadow Proclamation got on him, do you think?"

"Doesn't seem like the sort of guy with a family to threaten," Mickey shrugged, "Maybe it's for money?"

"Yeah, but who's paying him to kill the Doctor?" Jack asked, and they all paused and gave Jack disbelieving looks until he relented, "Okay, _fine_, I guess there are probably a couple billion people who would pay for somebody to kill the Doctor."

"Maybe the paycheque was just so big that he didn't want those two getting in on it?" Mickey asked.

"Red bus… red bus…" Jack muttered, "Why would that interest the – Doctor!" he shouted as they glimpsed Ten at the end of the street, if you could call it that, they were walking down. Ten looked over, holding something silver. He had appeared to be in an argument with somebody, and if Rose had to guess, he'd say it had been an argument with River about the thing in his hand. Ten forgot all about that straight away though and came over, meeting them halfway, Donna deigning to follow.

"Did you find anything?" Donna asked.

"Sorta," Jack said, "He left a clue for us to follow with a couple of his old employers. Good thing Clara was here to point us in the right direction."

"Clara? What's Clara doing here? She followed us?" River asked.

"Other Clara," Rose told her, "Beta Clara. That one. Here with Twelve. Jack told him you were here trying to invent a resurrection potion, so be on the lookout." River glared at Jack.

"What's this clue, then?" Ten asked, "The clue he gave you?"

"Apparently he said to tell the next doctor who came through that he was visiting an old friend, and he was taking a bus," Jack said.

"A bus?" the Doctor frowned.

"A red bus," Mickey clarified.

"A red bus?" Ten asked.

"Is there an echo in here?" Donna questioned.

"Well, when he says take," River began, "He doesn't mean ride. He means _take_. As in _steal_."

"He's stealing a red bus? That's ridiculous, who would he steal a bus fro… Oh," Ten said, "Right."

"What?" Rose asked.

"You've met her," Ten told her.

"Met who?" Mickey questioned, and Jack seemed to realise too, now that River had spelled out whatever it was for the two of them.

"Lady Christina de Souza," River answered, "Remember? On the third, or the fourth day after the Dimension Crash, or something? When we were staying with those kids?"

"What? The woman Jack shagged in the TARDIS for two straight days with the bus?" Rose asked.

"Yes, obviously, the one with the bus," River said.

"Of course," Donna said, "The Shadow cleans up the Doctor's messes. What bigger mess could there be than just leaving some woman with a massive, flying bus and letting her run around stealing priceless artefacts in it?"

"…Right…" Ten muttered, sheepishly, scratching the back of his head, "The Shadow's gone after Christina… how do we find Christina?"

"Maybe we should ask around?" River suggested sarcastically.

"Or we could just check news reports for sightings of massive buses on Earth," Rose sighed. She didn't even like Christina de Souza. And now what were they doing, trying to save her life from an assassin? _Great_, she thought dryly. Just great.


	289. To His Coy Mistress

_Donna_

_To His Coy Mistress_

"Oh, you have got to be joking," Donna said, looking over Ten's shoulder at what he was skinming through on the monitor hanging from a scissor mechanism on the ceiling of the TARDIS console room, "Does that say she's written a book? About _you_?" she questioned the Doctor, who stared at the screen.

"A book? What's it called?" Jack asked. Mickey came and looked and burst out laughing as soon as he saw the title and the cover, Donna's shock turning into adverse amusement. What it seemed to be was some trashy slice of erotic fiction that had somehow dragged its sorry self to the top of all the bestsellers lists.

"_Fifty Shades of TARDIS Blue_," Rose, who had not seen the cover, jokingly suggested, laughing at herself.

"It's called, _The Doctor Within Me_," Mickey snorted, "Where's everyone else? We have to show them this."

"Did you pose for that cover art, or did they get a very close model?" River questioned, getting a look at the image once Mickey moved to apparently go drag anybody else he could find in from Nerve Centre.

"No! Mickey, stay here! Don't tell anybody about this!" Ten shouted, going to get Mickey back, leaving River Song with enough access to the keyboard to find a digital image of the back of the book, and the blurb, which she promptly read aloud to the room.

"'The _true_ story of my personal and _sensual_ exploits with a mysterious, _dashing_, enigmatic _alien_ traveller, from the planet...'" River trailed off just as Ten started to yell at her to stop talking, "This is bad."

"Yes! I know! That's what I've been saying!" the Doctor complained.

"No, really," River seemed serious now, and Donna read over her shoulder to try and see why, "Listen, 'a mysterious alien traveller from the planet Gallifrey, calling himself a doctor and a Time Lord.' This is serious, she can't write a book that has your secrets in it."

"I never told her Gallifrey's name," Ten said. And suddenly it really _was _serious, "How could she find that out?"

"I mean," Jack said, "I might've... let a few things slip, but I mean, this is plenty of a mess we've made that the Shadow will want to clear up."

"Looks like bait to me," River said, "De Souza's trying to lure you in."

"Wonder why she isn't trying to lure _me_ in," Jack mused jokingly.

"Do you think that's really a good idea?" Donna questioned him, her laugh dying away. He crossed his arms and looked at her with mild surprise, but almost like he was challenging her.

"I don't see why not. If my wife has a mistress, why can't I?" Jack asked, shrugging, and the laughter and the talking in the room evaporated, and there was silence as Jack tried to pretend everyone in th room _wasn't_ hanging onto what he'd just said.

"...I'm going to go make some tea, while you lot figure out where to find Christina de Souza," Donna said.

"I'll help," Rose volunteered, standing up from where she'd been sat on the stairs to follow Donna, both of them keen for an escape from the console room. "Everyone for a cup then, yeah?"

"Not for me," Jack said coolly, watching them leave, glancing around at people as though he wanted one of them, any of them, to accuse him of being immoral. Donna thought that Captain Jack plus Lady Christina was a recipe for disaster, for complete and utter destruction. Plus, what did Jack even mean? If his wife had a mistress? All Donna knew about were the issues between Jack and Jenny that the latter had told her about a day or so ago. A lot of issues. A lot of issues all about to boil over, it looked like.

At least Jenny wasn't in Nerve Centre when they went in, hardly anyone was, just Oswin waiting for the kettle to boil and the Ponds on the sofa. Oswin was glaring at the cat, who was sat on the table purring at her. Funnily enough, Jonesy seemed fond of Oswin, even though she despised him with every fibre of her existence.

"I thought you lot were going out to find the Shadow?" Rory asked.

"We were. Now we're trying to find Christina de Souza," Rose said sourly, "You remember?"

"The woman with the bus who shagged Jack a lot?" Amy frowned.

"That's the one. How much water's in that kettle?" Rose asked Oswin.

"It's full. Why? How many cups do you need?" she answered.

"Five," Rose said, and Oswin offered to make them all and started sorting out mugs.

"Why do you have to find Christina?" Rory wondered.

"Because the Shadow left a hint with some scumbags Jack knows who were employing him saying to tell the next doctor who came by that he was taking a red bus from an old friend," Rose answered, "Plus, she's written some dangerously specific erotica called _The Doctor Within Me_. Talks about her meeting with an alien from Gallifrey."

"I thought the Doctor didn't..?" Amy began.

"He didn't," Donna said, "He wouldn't. Not with someone he'd just met. And I'm sure we would have found out about it that weekend she spent with us. Well, with Jack."

"Who is this Christina?" Oswin, who hadn't been around when they'd first bumped into her three and a half months ago, asked, dolling out teabags and sugar respectively into the appropriately coloured mug, seven of them in front of her in a line.

"The _Lady_ Christina de Souza is-" Amy began.

"A slag," Rose finished, "Just a posh slag."

"Rose is jealous," Donna told Oswin, "She's an aristocrat who's also a master thief."

"An adrenaline junkie," Rory said.

"They ended up on some desert planet together back in 2009, in a flying red bus, and then they came back to Earth and the Doctor just... let her fly around in a bus. Then we ran into her in 2013, in July, and stopped her from pulling off a heist that would get her arrested because it was in flux," Rose explained, "And now the Shadow is after her and she wrote a porn book about the Tenth Doctor. Probably to get his attention."

"Is it a good porn book?" Oswin asked.

"It's a security breach, is what it is," Rose said.

"Your sister's the one with the literature degree, why don't you ask _her _to read it and analyse it?" Donna said.

"She can tell us if it's accurate," Amy joked.

"It's about the _Tenth_ Doctor," said Rose coldly.

"Well then why don't _you_ read it and tell us if it's accurate?" Amy challenged, and Rose scowled.

"Speaking of your sister," Donna said to Oswin as the kettle finally boiled and she poured water into the mugs, "We ran into her today. The other one."

"Beta Clara..?" Oswin asked unsurely.

"Yeah."

"...Was she with anyone?"

"Just Old Twelvey. Why?" Rose interjected, "Who are you expecting us to say she's with? Someone female? With blonde hair and blue eyes and a husband in the room behind us?" Donna half expected Oswin to drop the kettle in shock, and Donna thought if _she _was pouring tea, _she _might drop the kettle in shock.

"What are you talking about, Rose?" Donna asked her seriously.

"You weren't there, so you didn't see the signs. Mickey said that _Rory_ said that he heard Oswin say to Jenny she owes her a favour for something to do with Clara," Rose said.

"That's how rumours start, Rose," Oswin said coolly, gauging the situation carefully, it seemed.

"That made Jack get suspicious, so we run into Claratoo by accident and he starts implying she knows stuff about Jenny and she gets really awkward about it all. Then when they're leaving, Jack said, 'I'll tell Jenny you say hi,' and she tripped over. And just now Jack says about Christina, 'If my wife can have a mistress, why can't I?' He's convinced it's more than a one time thing, and so am I." Donna kind of was now, too, now she'd heard all of this... "Well?" Rose challenged Oswin.

"Well what? It's not my secret, is it? If you lot figure it out, it's nothing to do with me. Just don't tell my sister, I told Jenny she has to tell her herself," Oswin said, "It's none of our business."

"It's our business if they break up again and suddenly we're all on another road trip," Amy pointed out, "It was awful the last time. She better not start killing him."

"Look," Oswin began, "Clara - Alpha Clara - says it's bound to end badly anyway. Just stay quiet about it and act like you don't know anything and you won't have to get involved, will you?"

"So how come _you_ know? She tell you?" Rose questioned as Oswin passed she and Donna mugs of tea for everyone in the console room minus Jack.

"No, I figured it out as well," Oswin answered, "And seriously, you all know what it's like on this ship. Just don't take sides and stay quiet." She took the two mugs she'd made presumably for herself and Adam and walked past them into the console room, followed by Donna and Rose leaving the Ponds behind, the cat still purring on the table.

Oswin didn't stay in the console room, she ended up going up the stairs to where her lab was situated, leaving them alone to deduce the whereabouts of Christina.

"This is weird," River told them, "I found a copy of the foreword, but it's just a poem, it says, '_I am born in the shadows / I thrive in the night / Dapples from the sky / Are my dying light_.'"

"Who does it say wrote it?" Donna asked.

"Just initials, C.O. Smith," River shrugged, "Never heard of him."

"It's about shadows, though," Rose said, "Isn't that a bit weird?"

"Maybe it's... about a vampire?" Mickey said, and they stared at him, "What? Sounds like it is. She seemed like one of those weirdos who might be into that."

"Into what? _Twilight_?" Jack asked him, "I think there's something else going on here. Any word on where she lives?"

"I just googled her," Rose said, looking at her phone, "Her address is on the internet. Some mansion. Why do you lot never think to do the most obvious thing?"

"The poem, though," River said, "It's a trap, it's obviously a trap. And I don't think she's in danger, I think she's part of it. This book, picking that poem?"

"The Shadow said he was visiting an old friend," Mickey said, "He didn't tell them whose old friend Christina is though..."


	290. Simple Plan

_Rose_

_Simple Plan_

"Jack," Rose began, trying to talk quietly but ending up talking quite loudly to be heard over the sound of the car engine, "Do you not think Adam Mitchell will mind that you've stolen his Lamborghini?"

"He doesn't know how tempted I was to take the DeLorean," Jack answered her over the roar of the black Aventador the two of them were in, which only had two seats, "I've never seen him drive this thing, anyway. He always drives that Hummer." Jack glanced over his shoulder out of the rear window at the Hummer trailing behind them with the other four in. They had decided that showing up at Christina's in the TARDIS would be a bad idea, because they thought she definitely knew what it sounded like. By comparison, though, Rose was utterly convinced that coasting down her driveway in the middle of the night in two stupidly expensive and loud cars was barely more discreet. Were they going for the element of surprise, or not? Knowing Jack, he'd probably go right up and knock on the door and blow _all_ the cover they might have.

"Are you really gonna try and sleep with her?" Rose questioned him, crossing her arms in the car. There was still about ten minutes before, by her estimations, they would arrive at Christina's, and since they were the ones with the directions, they couldn't exactly go speeding off at full speed out of the sight of the Hummer.

"We used to have big SUVs like that in Torchwood," Jack said.

"You're avoiding my question."

"Why shouldn't I, huh?"

"Do you even care about Jenny?"

"Oh, do _I_ care? Me? Because it's not like I've never done anything wrong. That clone was a _hologram_. You can't fuck holograms, Rose. Not unless you're Adam Mitchell and you have a fancy VR simulation," Jack said angrily, glaring at the road instead of at her.

"You're the one who asked her to marry you! And then you're the one who made that bet about Beta Clara," Rose pointed out. Everybody knew about that bet by now, they had done for ages, "Do you even know what you want, Jack?" He didn't answer.

"Don't you talk to me about morals, Miss Teleports-Husband-Away-To-Get-Back-With-Identical-Ex-Boyfriend," Jack snapped, and Rose was angry.

"It's completely different."

"I don't care. They have some kind of friends with benefits arrangement? Fine. I just wish she would've told me. So I don't see a problem with anything that might happen with Christina," Jack argued.

"So you're both as bad as each other, you mean?"

"She started it!"

"God, you're like a child! Both of you! Maybe my opinion isn't welcome, but don't you think things might be better if you possibly split up? Then she can go off with whoever she likes, and so can you. Win-win," Rose said.

"Because I want things to work, okay?"

"Jack, it's been three months. Are things really working?" Rose asked him quietly, almost gently. In fact, she would have asked gently, were she not angry at him still for bringing up Tentoo. That was water under the bridge, it wasn't some ongoing, ridiculously unhealthy relationship that had, a long time ago, melted into two people just trying to get back at each other by sleeping with various other people.

"We're here," said Jack flatly, as they turned a sharp right on a narrow, country road, the middle of the night, somewhere in Hertfordshire. The dirt road swiftly changed into a neat, enormous, gravel-coated driveway that wound around for a few metres between some very small hills Rose suspected had been build into the ground artificially for some reason. It was behind one of these that Jack, after sliding off the path onto the neatly trimmed lawn and shredding it with tyre tracks, parked the stolen Lamborghini Aventador, and the Hummer looming behind them, driven by Mickey, followed suit.

As soon as they got out, they reconvened in a huddle behind one of the grass mounds in view of the house, a large, old, possibly Georgian mansion, but Rose couldn't be sure. She didn't know a great deal about architecture. Could be Victorian or Edwardian for all she knew.

"Okay, so, plan of attack," Jack began, talking to the group, but he was instantly interrupted by Ten, who Rose had drifted over towards. She was quite inclined to take hold of his hand, but she didn't in the end, just folded her arms.

"Attack? We're not attacking, we're going to talk to her," Ten argued.

"It's an expression," Jack said flatly, "Look, you think they're working together, right?" he said to River.

"I think it's obvious that they are, and that this is a trap, for the Doctor," River answered, "Why else would de Souza choose that poem? Write that book? Where would she get all of the information?"

"She's right," Donna said, "No matter what she learnt from us over two days, River just read the whole thing-"

"_All_ of it?" Rose asked.

"Yes," River answered, "Not accurate in the slightest. And I'm talking personality. But the funny thing is all the science is pinpoint accurate and beyond the knowledge of Earth. I don't care what you might have said while you were fornicating, Captain, somebody is feeding her information."

"Oh, don't call him Captain, you know what he's like," Ten complained, cringing when Jack laughed to himself.

"Do we really think they're trying to kill us, though? Why would Christina want to kill the Doctor?" Mickey asked, "She writes a book like _that _and then wants to kill who it's based on?"

"Maybe she doesn't have a choice?" Jack said, shrugging, "He feeds her all this information and makes her write it in? Threatens her?"

"Christina wouldn't be threatened," Ten said, "She's a pragmatist. There'll be something in it for her if she's working with the Shadow."

"Whatever the reason, this is circumstantial. We don't have the evidence to accurately speculate, which means we have to go in. Now, I would suggest that Rose and I go in the front door," Jack said.

"What about me? It's me they want," Ten said.

"How do you know?" Jack questioned.

"Well it won't be about you, will it?" River said, "If she wanted to get _your _attention, she'd just have posed nude in a magazine, she wouldn't have needed to leave clues throughout the universe. It's about the Doctor."

"Those arms dealers, or whatever they were, _did _say to tell the next _doctor_," Mickey reminded him, "You three go in."

"Okay. And what'll you do?" Jack asked. Mickey reached around his back and pulled a gun out from somewhere, a 9mm, and the Doctor jumped back as he loaded it.

"What's that for!?" Ten exclaimed, "Do you keep that on you!? On _my _TARDIS?"

"Thought you said Oswin didn't give you one of those non-lethal stunguns yet?" Rose questioned.

"She didn't," Mickey answered, "This is plenty lethal."

"I won't have that!" Ten argued.

"It's not your choice," Mickey said flatly, "Get over it, I won't use it unless I have to. And I won't shoot to kill."

"Leave him be," Rose told Ten, "Look, I'll... I'll go with Mickey and River, Donna can go with you two. The Shadow is the one who spoke to her before."

"He said he knew me," Donna specified.

"Okay," Jack, the natural leader, in spite of the Doctor's presence, agreed, "What are you three gonna do?"

"We'll sneak in the back," Rose said, "It'll be fine. I'll... I'll punch anything we come across."

"She's a fancy millionaire, she probably has a security system. I'll be able to switch it off if we go first," Mickey said, "Then you lot go in, and talk to her. Or them... Whoever you find."


	291. Friends Reunited

**AN: So, this is really short because it's sort of an instalment in a much longer running storyline, the overarching one about the Shadow in general, and I just did like, two huge storylines, what with Halloween and Paredenio 7. It's kind of like a break, because the next storyline I do is looking to be a long one as well.**

_Donna_

_Friends Reunited_

"_This_ is the most Scooby-Doo thing that's ever happened to me," Donna growled. Five minutes in the entrance of Christina de Souza's mansion and they'd been caught in a trap. Forget futuristic laser beams and forcefields and motion detectors, or even burglar alarms, because they'd failed to notice a very thin net on the floor, in the centre of some stupidly large, decorative rug, made of tightly-woven fishing line, or something similar. But, sticking together, they'd stepped right in the middle of it, not even dreaming up the possibility that something so quintessentially cartoonish and ridiculous could possibly happen in real life. But now, they were caught in a trap.

"Could you both stop struggling!? It won't help," Ten said, Donna and Jack thrashing around quite uselessly and kicking each other and themselves _and_ the Doctor in the process, suspended by Christina's chandelier and an alarmingly sturdy looking rope that wouldn't look out of place hanging from a lift shaft. No chance of that breaking any time soon, she thought.

"Look, I've got a way out," Jack said, fumbling inside of his coat, getting out a gun, "Stun gun, should burn the rope enough to let us-"

"I won't do that if I were you, Captain," somebody crooned. A voice only Donna recognised out of the three of them, that cocky, male, synthesised drawl, with a hint of electro-manipulation that still made her think there was a voice changer being used somewhere down the line. They all stopped moving. Donna couldn't see the Shadow anywhere, but the room was dark, no lights on at all, he could be lurking anywhere. Whatever that suit he had on was made of, it didn't reflect light at all, like a dark part of space. A black hole, "It's not rope, or net, and that electromagnetic stungun will send a current through it and kill all three of you. Well, maybe only Donna."

"Who are you?" Jack asked loudly, shouting.

"That's the Shadow, that's him," Donna said in a whisper, trying to shuffle in the net so she was kind of sitting, but it was impossible, she had her face pressed hard against Ten's back and was stuck there with one of her arms bent very painfully and one of her knees jamming up, pins and needles spreading violently through her other foot.

"Well, give the lady a gold star, because I think she might be right," the Shadow said from the side lines somewhere, somewhere on the balcony and the higher floor, or one of the corners, or the shadows in front of the doors beneath the staircase. Anywhere dark, he could be hiding.

"Speaking of ladies," Jack began, "Where's Christina? Have you killed her?"

"Killed her? I only needed her help. I would feed her information for her book to lure the Doctor and his little friends here, in exchange for… equipment," the Shadow said, "Weapons, mainly. De Souza _loves_ weapons."

"It's true, I do," Christina's voice emerged. So River had been completely right, it really was a scheme between them, but to what end? What did they want the Doctor for? Christina wasn't hard to find, though. She might be dressed in black, but her skin still shone in the moonlight coming in from the windows, and she wasn't exactly trying to hide. She leant on one of the balconies on the right, about level with where the net they were stuck in was hanging in the large room. Where were the other three? Surely Rose, of all people, could find the Shadow? Rose could make the Shadow cease to exist if she wanted.

"Alright, you caught us, now what do you want?" Ten asked.

"Well, _I_ wanted to spend some quality time with Captain Jack," Lady Christina said, and Donna saw her eyeing Jack's military-coat-clad back through the needing with dangerous bedroom eyes. So, it looked like the marriage of Jack and Jenny was definitely set to take yet another foul blow from the mutual infidelity and promiscuity of both parties. What was the point anymore?

"I'm sure that can be arranged, if you let me down out of this net. Unless that's what you're into? In which case, you'd still have to get _in_ the net," Jack flirted.

"Bloody hell…" Donna muttered, "Trapped in a net with you and your… _horn_. Is the last thing I want."

"I want the same as you, Doctor," the Shadow said, before Christina could say anything back to Jack. Disaster was imminent. "To talk."

"Then let us out of this net," Ten complained.

"Oh, we couldn't do that," Christina said, "I always used to love playing Mouse Trap. You're all perfectly safe in that net."

"Perfectly uncomfortable," Ten retorted, "Let us down."

"No," said the Shadow.

"Then tell us who you are," Ten challenged, "Go on."

"Let's clear things up. First of all, I know that the Shadow Proclamation sent you here to recapture me. I'm not going back to the Shadow Proclamation, and I don't care how many Strodrybs die because of it," the Shadow said, "I'm not being their prisoner anymore."

"You're a prisoner?" Ten asked.

"When have I met you before?" Donna implored. She still couldn't place the Shadow at all in any of her encounters with alien life.

"Think about it, Donna," the Shadow said, "Think about the skeletons." The skeletons?

Donna was immediately distracted from thinking about skeletons by a distant glimmer of gold on ground level. Something to do with Rose, she was sure of it. If she squinted, she could just about see them, creeping around somewhere. That was when the Shadow himself stepped out into the light in the middle of the room, wearing the all-black suit made of a highly mysterious material.

"What I want, Doctor, is your help."

"You're an assassin!"

"Not by choice," the Shadow said coldly. Donna found herself believing him, even though he really didn't seem like the world's most trustworthy person. He _had_ lured them into a weird trap and captured them in a net. Christina, on the top floor, was walking away now, towards something on the wall.

"What could you possibly need _my_ help for? Don't you clean up _my_ messes? As far as I see it, you take me out of the picture, you won't have a job to do anyway, and you can be 'free' that way," Ten argued.

"Well don't give him ideas, you idiot," Donna growled at him.

"If I wanted to kill you, you'd already be dead," the Shadow said, "Except for you, Jack. But you'd be in a great deal of pain, I assure you."

"I reckon I believe you, too, with that disintegration ray. Where is it, can I ask?" Jack spoke up, "The thing you used to kill all those creatures. The Slitheen, the Xenomorph, the Gallint. How come the Frir didn't affect _you_?"

"They're slower than I thought they'd be," Christina said, "I think if I knew what they did, I would have figured it out by now." That was when she flicked a switch in a corner and all of the lights in the room came on, illuminating the three other members of their team who had previously been hiding away in the shadows like rats. River, Mickey and Rose all froze, half-crouched, mid-sneak, as the yellow glow of the chandelier and all the other lights washed across them and blew any cover they might have. While the Shadow in the middle remained stubbornly pitch black, invisible to light, the most opaque creature Donna had ever seen. Except for… maybe…

"You're all very predictable," the Shadow said, "You three are decoys, the other three disable the alarms, sneak in the back, and then what? What was your next step?" They just stared, in awe, it seemed. Only Donna had seen him before that day, and they'd not understood what she meant when she said he absorbed light. Almost like he was literally a shadow…

"The vaporiser. How does it work?" Jack asked.

"There is no vaporiser, Captain," the Shadow said drolly, like he was bored of them.

"No way…" Donna breathed.

"What? What is it?" Ten asked.

"He's-" she began.

"He's dead, that's what he is," Rose, on the bottom floor, said. At which point Donna saw her vanish in a shimmer of gold and reappear right behind the Shadow, swinging a punch around in the air, a superstrong punch. But the Shadow dodged out of the way easily, like Martha or Jenny might be able to do with all the extra agility the pair of them possessed. Rose hadn't a bit of fighting training, she was relying solely on strength, and it showed, because she couldn't land a single punch on the Shadow.

"It's impossible to get the drop on me, Rose Tyler," the Shadow just taunted her flatly, sighing, "I have to admit, I expected it to be more of a challenge to catch you three."

Rose tried to hit him again, and this time, instead of dodging, he lifted a hand and caught her fist, and it seemed he'd made a mistake. Maybe he didn't know about the superstrength? Nevertheless, Rose kept her hand moving forwards and pushed so hard something shattered. It sounded like glass, like a breaking window, and something fell to the floor and the Shadow's arm was gone. But it wasn't lying on the ground, on the ground something glinted very weakly in the lights of the room, like glitter, but there was nothing else.

"What the..?" Rose stopped hitting it.

"He's not a he," Donna said, struggling to half stand in the net she was trapped in, "He's a they. There is no disintegration ray, no vaporiser, it's a swarm."

"A Vashta Nerada swarm, in a suit," River, who figured it out next, added.

"That's why I know you, isn't it? You were in the Library, that's where you're from. That's why you're called 'the Shadow.'"

"You're literally a shadow," Ten said.

"I did say you would kick yourselves when you figured it out," the Shadow said, "I suppose my question of what the second super power of yours is has been answered now, Rose. No idea what yours is yet, Donna." He spoke like they were friends. Christina didn't seem shocked at all. "The Shadow Proclamation took me from the Library. Took _us_ from the Library."

"They're manipulating a voice modulator, like they did to the astronauts," River said, "Remember? Remember Dave? Other Dave? All of them?"

"They keep us a prisoner. It took us years to break the hold they had on the suit. It has a teleportation matrix, an explosive network, a tracker. Impossible for us to escape," the Shadow said, "So we worked as an assassin for them, because at the beginning, we didn't care. We fixed what you couldn't, killed who you wouldn't, didn't leave a trace, and nobody could catch us. But now we want to leave."

"What do you mean, explosive network?" Ten asked, "You can't eat anything from inside of a suit. What's stopping you running off when you get out of that suit?"

"Do you know how small we are? One of us? How harmless one of us is? Do you know, Doctor, how long it takes to separate and implant a microscopic, dust-sized explosive charge on us?"

"_All_ of you?"

"Not quite. But they're powerful charges. That's why it's an explosive _network_. If you take us back to the Shadow Proclamation, they'll kill us, all of us," the Shadow said.

"Yeah? Well, what if I don't? What'll you do then? What'll you do for food, hmm? You'll just go killing. Killing and killing and killing."

"The more of us there are, the clever we are. We, Doctor, are almost an _I_, it's been so long. There's almost one, one consciousness. The suit offers that. It offers intelligence, sentience, a life looking like a humanoid, being able to interact like we never could before," the Shadow told them.

"You're carnivores, you'll never stop eating," Ten accused the swarm coldly.

"Oh, come on," Christina spoke up in the Shadow's defence, "When was the last time any of you lot ate a bacon sandwich?" There was quiet.

"…She has a point about that," Jack said, "What is it you want us to do, then?"

"Disable the detonators with your sonic device. Any sonic device. I know you have a lot of them. The detonators, the scanners, they're all jammed now, but the jammer won't hold out, they'll find a way to find us, and blow us up, kill us all," the Shadow said, "Do it, Doctor, or I'll take you up on your earlier suggestion of killing you to make my life easier. It would take me less than ten seconds to eat everyone in this room."

"Y'know, Doctor, there are a lot of times when I wouldn't say no to somebody eating me," Jack began, "But this guy? I don't fancy it. I'd free them from the Proclamation."

"No! The Shadow is a murderer!"

"I saved the Earth from those Slitheen, I saved the universe from that Xenomorph, I saved Earth again from the Gallint, and I saved every female you keep on your ship from the Frir. The Frir didn't even die by my hand, it was the Shadow Architect who authorised that. That Xenomorph would regenerate if it wasn't for me destroying it the way I did. Nothing would have stopped it. I stopped threats to existence that _you_ couldn't, and I still would, if you release me from the Proclamation. Because they won't just bring us back. You take us back to them, they'll murder us," the Shadow said. Donna thought he, or it, or they, had a point, as she listened to the thing(s) talk, drifting easily between speaking in plurals and singulars, equally accustomed to each.

River, just as the Doctor was about to continue arguing, cleared her throat.

"Could I make a suggestion?" she asked, which was when Donna noticed she was holding something large and white, like a tablet or some other sort of device, an oval in shape. That thing, whatever it was, had been stashed in the glovebox of Adam Mitchell's Hummer, "We can switch who has the technological authority over the suit to this." She held up the device.

"That? What is it?" Ten asked.

"It's Helix," Mickey said, "It's the external Qetesh device that got scavenged from Luke Smith's."

"That means that if the Shadow _does_ go on a killing spree, _we_ can stop it," River said, "As long as we find a way to seal up that arm Rose smashed, now there's a hole in it."

"I'll fix it myself later," the Shadow said, "None of us are in a hurry to leave the swarm."

"See?" River said.

"What about the Strodrybs, then?" Ten argued, "We can't just let them die."

"We could tell the Proclamation that the Shadow is dead? If we cut off all their links to the suit, they might think it's been destroyed. We could say there was an explosion."

"Speaking of explosions," Christina interrupted, "Whose was the Lamborghini? And the Hummer?"

"…What do you mean whose _was_ the Lamborghini..?" Rose asked her.

"Well, there are remote controlled mines around the edge of my land. Didn't you wonder what the mounds in the ground are?" she asked. That was when a rumbling shook through the floor and there was an enormous flash of light from the South of the house, and Donna got elbowed in the sides by Ten and Jack when they turned to look at it.

"Did you just blow up our cars!?" Mickey demanded, and she shrugged.

"Jack! That's _your_ fault! _You_ decided to take Adam's cars!" Rose shouted.

"Oh, because I was supposed to know that she had bombs buried in the garden!? Who has bombs buried in their garden!? Especially bombs that big!?" Jack argued.

"I assumed you'd take the TARDIS to the front door," Christina shrugged, "They're for my protection. A lot of people try to kill me quite often."

"Thank god you took Helix out," Donna said to River, then to Christina she said, "And _you're _mental."

"I kinda like it though," Jack added, and Donna saw them wink at each other. So, he was still planning on doing her. Great.

"So? Doctor? What'll it be?" River asked.

"Shall I re-programme the Shadow?" Mickey asked, "I could do it easily. Technopathy, remember?"

Rose, finally sighing and looking helplessly at the three stuck in the net, just said, "What do we do?"

In the end, Ten really didn't know what to do, but it seemed like he had a lot of pressure from the others in the group, and eventually River pointed out that technically there were more living organisms within the Vashta Nerada swarm that made up the Shadow than there were Strodrybs left, and that if he found a planet for the Strodrybs to live on _before_ going to the Shadow Proclamation and helping fake the Shadow's death it was more likely they would help him. That combined meant he finally agreed to let Mickey put _them_ in control of the Shadow's suit, which seemed the safest route to go, as much as Ten disliked it. But Donna thought it also seemed unfair to devalue the Vashta Nerada simply because of their nature - they weren't stupid at all, they were a big, collective consciousness, they'd proven that in the Library, and it was also unfair that they'd just been stolen and forced to assassinate people by the space police. Wasn't that sort of stuff illegal?

Thank god Christina deigned to lower the net they were in slowly, though, when she finally did, though Donna still stumbled and staggered with one dead leg over to lean on a wall when she was finally freed.

"By the way, Jack," Christina said while Mickey went about his business with Helix, "A few months ago someone was looking for you, ended up finding me for some reason."

"Huh? Who? What year is it?" Jack asked.

"2014," Christina answered.

"It's getting dangerous to be us this year," Rose commented in regards to her status as a Manifest, and Donna's status, too. She remembered Silverstorm prison and the HCC, but that wasn't for years yet.

"Well who was it?" Jack implored.

"She didn't say her name. A woman, quite short, blonde hair," Christina said.

"Probably just Jenny," Donna shrugged.

"And she definitely had brown eyes," Christina added.

"Okay, maybe not Jenny..." Donna frowned. Jenny's eyes were blue. Unless she reprogrammed them at some point in the future. But why would she be wandering around 2014 asking Christina de Souza where to find Jack?

"And an American accent."

"Oh, right," said Jack, "I think I know who you mean. Just my mother-in-law, I suppose..."

**AN: Preemptive plot-twist and totally cool, minor spoiler; it's not Thirteen who was asking Christina de Souza where to find Jack, and it wasn't Jenny, either. It's someone who will not, unfortunately, be relevent for a quite while. But still, foreshadowing. This thing is full of foreshadowing lately.**


	292. Misery Business

**AN: Do you guys like ClaraxJenny, or dislike ClaraxJenny? Unlike Adwin, they're a ship who actually exist outside of the universe of 3D9C/4D12C.**

_Jenny_

_Misery Business_

"Jack did _what _to Adam's cars?" Jenny asked Rose. They'd all gotten back just recently, including Jack, apparently, though people were being very shifty when she asked them where he was or what he'd had to do with Christina and just shrugged or refused to answer her.

"It wasn't him, it was her," Donna said, "She has bombs buried in her garden. Destoryed the Lamborghini _and _the Hummer." Thankfully, Adam Mitchell wasn't in the room, and neither was his girlfriend, so they didn't hear that news delivered, in her opinion, quite insensitively. She didn't like the sound of this woman one bit.

She stood and sipped some tea and realised Donna was staring at her.

"What?" she asked.

"Nothing," Donna said quickly, "Nothing at all. What's it like having a robot hand?" Jenny was taken aback. No-one had really asked her about her artifical appendages, apart from Beta Clara and Oswin a few times, but for entirely different reasons.

"Cold," was all she answered. She didn't really know how to describe the feeling, it was overcome by the feeling of uneasiness she had that everybody was watching her, which wasn't even paranoia, because they _were _watching her. "What? Why are you all staring at me?" She glanced around at the faces of the Ponds, Rose, Donna, Mickey, Martha, River, everyone, who all quickly looked away. "Is there something on my face?"

"Not right now," Amy muttered.

"What's that supposed to mean?" she questioned.

"She doesn't mean anything," Donna said, glaring at Amy.

The door from the console room slid open, though, and saved the others from Jenny asking them any further questions, because all questions now were directed at Oswin and Adam, who'd come through carrying a large quantity of guns. Thank god there were no Doctors in the room, Jenny thought.

"As promised. Weapons," Oswin said, dumping the firearms on the table in front of Jenny where Rose and Donna were sitting, "Courtesy of me, now I've apparently been promoted to technical support. Best technical support in the universe, but still."

"So what's different about them to regular guns? Are they more stunguns?" Martha asked.

"Yes," Oswin answered, "Please, pass them around, they are, of course, a work of genius. The thing is - don't worry, I won't shoot - if I point this at Rose-"

"Oi!" Rose protested when Oswin aimed the gun.

"I just said I wasn't going to shoot you!" Oswin argued, "Look," she pushed a button and a green, hologramatic screen, square and small, projected out of the back of it, "I point it and it scans. See, species, human. It's scanned and assimilated itself to knockout a human. But if I point it at Jenny - it says species, Time Lord. It just takes a few seconds to calibrate, is all."

"What about a species it doesn't recognise?" River asked.

"It has meagre scanning properties for synapse volume, since the synapses are what it charges. An organic EMP, like the Stomb, like what happened to the Daleks, remember?" Oswin said, "In the case that it can't calibrate at all, it can be set to a sort of, 'lethal mode' where it dispenses the most powerful charge possible. Use at your own risk."

"Are you sure it's a good idea to... militarise ourselves?" Donna asked.

"If you don't want a gun, don't take one," Oswin shrugged, "Spares are always useful. You lot break everything." Donna did not take one of the guns, but Jenny did. Never one to pass up an opportunity to arm herself - war was as much in her blood as pacifism, it was an odd, genetic contradiction. "Where's Jack? He'll need a new one, his a prototype. Human-only."

"Everything you invent seems to be a prototype," Rory said, coming and looking at the guns, "Why are you so eager for them?" he asked Mickey and Martha, mainly.

"Davros said the Doctor turns people into soldiers," Rose said.

"Who?" Amy asked.

"Creator of the Daleks," Donna answered.

"That's what happens when the Doctor leaves," Rose said, "I'm stuck on a parallel world with no way back, working for what became that universe's Torchwood. The gun I brought back was huge."

"I was the same. Stuck in the other universe until the Daleks came through in the Sphere and the ghosts started appearing because of Torchwood One," Mickey said.

"I chose to leave this life behind," Martha sighed, staring around, "Walked across the planet hiding from the Master, the year that never was. When I left, I joined UNIT. Helped Torchwood Three. Went freelance. Things out there are dangerous, and you can't fight all of them with kind words and negotiations."

"Haven't you learnt that yet?" River said to them.

"They're not even lethal," Oswin said, "Unless you set them to be, but they're a precaution. I could have made them look like water pistols if that cheered you up a bit more?"

"I'll go find Jack," Jenny sighed, walking off.

"Why don't you stay here and have some more tea? For a bit?" Rose asked quickly.

"What? With you lot staring at me? I don't think so," she argued, not stopping walking at all, going through into the Bedroom Circle and ignoring everyone as, for whatever reason, they tried to stop her leaving and looking for Jack.

She found out just seconds later why they were doing that, though. The same time she found out why they'd avoided answering where Jack had got to. Why Jack had come back to the TARDIS but hadn't gone through Nerve Centre.

The last thing she wanted to see in her own bedroom was a mess of tangled limbs, in her bed no less, and the last thing she wanted to hear were moans of pleasure from both genders. Yet that was what she heard, and when she switched the lights on, it was also what she sure.

"I should have guessed," she said flatly, glowering, as Captain Jack Harkness and Lady Christina de Souza fell apart and scrambled away from each other, "I should have figured this was what you were doing." She barely looked at Christina, but she could feel Christina looking at her, and Jack looked like he didn't know what to do.

"Is this your wife?" Christina asked.

"That's what he tells people. I'm more of a part-time shag. A habit he can't be bothered to break," Jenny said, glaring at Jack.

"Oh, you're _my_ part-time shag? _My_ habit? What about me? Aren't I yours? Isn't Clara yours, huh?" he argued, "I know you kept it going and lied to me about it."

"Well so what if I did!? You bet her in the first place! You have no reason to do this!"

"I have every reason!"

"Like what!? Like revenge!? This is exactly like when you went after Eyeball!"

"Because _you_ went after the Victorian!"

"Because you cheated on me with a hologram clone!"

"You can't. Fuck. Holograms! How many times!"

"But you would have if you could! You just don't care! You have never cared! I don't even have a stupid wedding ring, _or _an engagement ring!"

"Oh, _I'm _the one who doesn't care!?" he demanded of her, "I only made that bet for a joke!"

"Yeah, right."

"Okay, a test. I always knew you could screw her, I just thought you had more integrity than actually going through with it," he hissed.

"_Me_!? I'm the one with no integrity!? 'Hey, Jack, just thought I'd let you know I _did _shag that girl _you dared me to shag_, and it was _great_, it was _way_ better than _anything _with you!'" she yelled at him, "Why would you bet that!?"

"Why would you go through with it!?"

"To make _you_ mad, and look at it working!"

"Oh, too right it's working! Because you know what _isn't_? You know what _never has_? Us. Me and you. 'Let's have sex with each other to piss off your dad, Jenny! What a great idea!' Suddenly, everyone thinks we're dating, suddenly I'm stuck with you!"

"And what's the purpose of this with her then, huh? Is that not just to get to me? You can't sleep with your stepmother and claim you don't have ulterior motives, Jenny!" he shouted at her.

"She _what_?" Christina asked.

"You shut up or I swear to god I will punch that face so much you turn permanently blue," Jenny threatened her, then she turned back to Jack, "And don't you dare pretend that you know a _single thing_ about ulterior fucking motives, Jack! You wanted me as a trophy! _The Doctor's Daughter, First Prize_! Well I'm sick of it! I'm sick of you!"

"That's what you said last time," Jack told her, "And look who came crawling back to me!"

"I did not! I didn't crawl back to anyone! It was _you_! You say, 'Will you marry me?' and we don't even have witnesses, or rings, or a priest, or anything! Stolen somebody else's wedding after everybody else was slaughtered by some alien!"

"Then why'd you say 'yes,' huh? Just tell me, _why_?"

"Because I thought it might be different! But now it's just worse, and you are not worth my time anymore, you're not worth my _anything_, not even worth me killing you for fun."

"What would your father say if he heard that?"

"Shut up!"

"You're a hypocrite! You are no better than me!"

"We're both better, Jack, just not together," she told him, "I wish I had a ring to pull of and throw at you, but I guess I'm not allowed the pleasure. This is over. For the last time. _We_ are over." She turned to leave.

"I still love you!" he called after her, and she turned.

"You know what, Jack? Fuck you. You're not mysterious or charistmatic or anything, not to me, I just don't care anymore." The door shut behind her and she was left alone, and she didn't even know what she felt. There was no-one around, though. Nobody to hear that, unless Rory had just been witness to the entire thing. She wasn't going back into Nerve Centre though, so she walked the other direction. Thought she might go to the garage, or the library, out of Rory Williams' earshot.

Did she feel anything? Anything at all? It was a long-time coming. It really was. But now what? Three and a half months of her life had just been wasted attempting to fight for something that wasn't even there, she didn't care what Jack might say. So she just walked until she ended up in the garage, the TARDIS shifting before her to bring it closer, full of cars, and ships, and bikes, from across the universe and across time. The TARDIS accommodated to her needs because it liked her, it liked the Doctor's daughter a lot more than it liked Captain Jack.

Once she got there she took out her phone and dialled Beta Clara, because she didn't know what else to do. There would be a way to get there. There would be somebody to take her. Maybe the TARDIS would even let her fly itself, out of pity. They were still friends though, no matter what else they might be as well.

"_Hi... Sorry, it took me a while to get my phone_..." Clara said, sounding tired, like she might yawn at any moment, almost on the last ring.

"Can I come over?" Jenny asked straight away, without explanation.

"_Huh? Oh, um... I'm sick, and it's a Thursday_," Clara told her. She was never usually invited over on weekdays. Usually it was just the weekends.

"Sick? Sick how? Are you okay?" she asked concernedly. Why wouldn't she be concerned for Clara's welfare? She knew Clara, both Claras, and they were both remarkably unlucky. Jenny wouldn't be surprised to hear she'd accidentally contracted the Black Death, and she cared more about Clara than about Jack.

"_I'm really sick. Awful cold. Caught it at work, it's been going round_," Clara told her, and Jenny could hear that her nose was blocked, "_So-_"

"Please?" she implored.

"_Is something wrong?_"

"Yeah. Kind of. Something is. It's important," Jenny confessef, and then Clara told her to hang on a moment and put the phone down, and Jenny thought she heard her blow her nose before returning two minutes later.

"_I guess you can come over if you don't want to stay on the TARDIS, but don't expect much from me. You woke me up from a three hour nap, it's seven in the evening._"

"What's the date?"

Clara yawned, then said, "_November the 5th. Let yourself in, with your screwdriver or whatever_." Then she hung up, leaving Jenny faced with the conundrum of how to actually get to London, November the 5th, 2015, seven PM, in the first place.

"Hi," someone announced themselves, and she jumped around and saw Thirteen standing in front of the Batmobile, "Thought I'd wait for you to get off the phone. I should probably tell you that I'm here to do you a favour. I'm not too sure what the favour is, but you, in the future, told me to come and wait here at this time on this day. Over Christmas dinner one year. After I regenerate. Just to give you a rough idea."

"Oh," was all she said.

"So? What's the matter?"

"I've just gone through a quickie divorce because my husband shagged someone else in our bed. But I'm sure you know that from the future," Jenny told her coolly.

"I can't tell you things about the future, you know that."

"And I won't ask you to, I'm just... I'm not in a very good mood," she said.

"I suppose this favour would be dropping you off at Clara's, then? I heard your phone call," Thirteen smiled warmly.

"Do you really not care?"

"She's not my possession, neither are you. I love you and I love her, albeit in _very _different ways, but it's been a long time. Doesn't matter what universe she's from or what Echo of herself she is, I won't stop her being happy. Or you," the Doctor told her.

"What do you mean 'being happy'?"

"She doesn't have a lot of friends, is what I mean. At all. Now, are we going?"


	293. Another Girl Another Planet VI

_Jenny_

_Another Girl Another Planet VI_

_Thursday, 5th of November, 2015_

She did have to let herself in, in the end, and she called Clara's name through the flat and heard a grunt that was only half a formed word drift through from the living room to her right, and she went in, the whole place dark, to find Clara curled up in a ball under just one blanket that wasn't even long enough to cover her, which Jenny didn't understand, because Clara had loads of blankets under her bed in the next room.

"You're a sight for sore eyes," Clara sort of groaned. She didn't even have her eyes open hardly. Jenny sighed and looked at her, putting a hand on her hip, thinking. What did you do when humans were sick? Kept them warm, kept them hydrated, kept them stocked with tissues, kept them near a toilet? Should she get a bowl? How sick, exactly, was Clara?

"Have you been to work today?" Jenny asked first, going and sitting down at the other end of the sofa. Clara didn't speak for a few moments, so Jenny repeated herself a little louder.

"No need to shout," she murmured, "Yeah."

"Seriously?" Jenny was surprised, she expected Clara to say she'd called in sick, or they'd made her go home. She looked like she was sweating and feverish, and also sort of grey, with sunken eyes. Almost undead. "Well. That's actually kind of impressive. Did you say it was the 5th?"

"Uh-huh."

"Wow, four days since I left on the 1st."

"How many has it been for you?"

"Last night." Clara laughed weakly.

"Aren't you sick of me?"

"I see you everyday anyway. Just sometimes I see... three of you," Jenny said, "And you're hardly one to go calling people sick, look at the state of you! Now, what are we gonna do about the fact you obviously can't take care of yourself?" Clara groaned pathetically and pulled up her blanket so it covered her head but barely reached her waist. "You've not even changed into pyjamas."

"Oops."

Jenny sighed. She could tell from Clara's voice that her noise was blocked, and the fact she was mouth breathing. She probably had a sore throat, too.

"Right. Clara. What _you_ are gonna do is go have a shower and get changed in clothes that aren't uncomfortable or disgusting. I mean, it might be really tricky to find clothes of yours that aren't awful, but let _me_ worry about that. You will shower, and you will go to bed, and I'll stay here and try to ward off my father if he shows up," she said.

"You know," Clara said, shutting her eyes and curling up more, "First date with Danny... I get back here cos... doesn't go well... and the Doctor shows up in my bedroom... and he says... 'thought I'd better hide in here... in case you brought him home.'"

"Does my father understand what generally happens when girls bring boys back to their flats after dates?" Jenny asked, "Typically things that require bedrooms. Unless you just used the sofa."

"We did use the sofa," Clara answered.

"Wow, you must be really ill if you're randomly telling me stuff about Danny. Come on, Clara, it's time for you to have a wash," she nudged Clara's feet off the sofa onto the floor.

"He used to cry after he finished."

"Finished wha..? Oh. _Oh_. _O_kay, then..." Jenny said. She didn't know how to take that, but she ended up desperately suppressing the urge to text that nugget of information to Oswin. "I really think you'll feel better after you have a shower. Wait, was it _this_ sofa?"

"No, it was his," she answered.

"Oh, thank god," she said.

"On the sofa, I've only done, like..." she began, but then she faded off. Good, Jenny thought, she didn't know how many times Clara had had sex on the sofa, "It's second hand."

"Ew. Off. Now. I'm gonna buy you a throw because you've grossed me out, come on, off the sofa," she gently swatted at Clara's legs enough to force her to sit up, then she pushed her to her feet and ended up walking her to the bathroom herself, "Have a shower now. Come on. It'll unblock your nose."

"Don't have a towel," she muttered.

"I'll get you a towel, I know where you keep everything by now. I _do_ have a toothbrush in your bathroom," Jenny said, which was true. She hadn't even brought it, Clara had bought it for her.

When she _finally_ succeeded in forcing a grown woman to have a shower, she had to busy herself deciding what she was going to do. Part of her wanted to call Martha, who was a doctor, part of her thought she should call Oswin, who'd looked after a sick Clara before, and another part of her wanted to call Alpha Clara herself. Finally though, she resolved, that she was a capable adult, and Clara Oswald was her friend, just her friend who she had sex with... a lot. But they _were_ friends, regardless.

Well, first of all she found Clara a towel and a change of clothes, feeling like a babysitter, but the poor girl seemed like she was dying, and she was literally unable to look after herself - she knew that from living with her on the TARDIS. Clara needed almost as much supervision as her twin sister, and Clara's twin sister was a manic-depressive mass murderer. She couldn't cook _any _food for herself, except maybe toast, if the wind was in the right direction, the stars were aligned, it was her lucky day and she hadn't broken any mirrors lately. Then she also seemed unable to fold clothes, so she dumped them in various piles on the floor, and Jenny wasn't sure either Claras had ever used an ironing board. The only practical thing Clara could do was boil a kettle, and she couldn't even do that now because she could barely walk straight. Which left Jenny, after dropping off clothes in the bathroom while Clara showered, filling up the kettle and calling through into the next room to ask her friend if she had a hot water bottle, which, apparently, she did not.

"Guess it's a good thing I have a fifty-degree body heat..." Jenny muttered to herself after she heard that, rubbing her forehead like she had a headache.

"What'd you give me your towel for?" Clara questioned when she came out of the bathroom finally, after about half an hour, wet hair and looking a little drowned but probably warmer. Clara's flat was always freezing.

"What do you mean _my _towel?" she questioned.

"The pink one is the one I always leave for you, or you take," Clara shrugged, and Jenny frowned. She'd never even noticed that, "I can't believe you brought me a pair of bed socks."

"And tea, here," Jenny passed her a mug, and Clara took it, looked at it, then looked at Jenny, "What?"

"You're kind of adorable, you know, Jenny. Plus, you just remind me of your father, first day I met him," Clara said with an almost sad look about her. One of nostalgia. She seemed to have come back to herself a little, Jenny thought, as Clara walked over to the sofa a few feet away. "Did you bring _all_ my blankets here?"

"Well, yeah, I didn't know what one you'd want. I kind of feel like curling up under a blanket, too, anyway," she sighed, sitting down next to Clara, who finally had a chance to think about things now she'd warmed up and unblocked her nose, though she did keep sniffing and coughing, and she was still dreadfully pale. "How do I remind you of my dad?"

"Well, because... haven't either of them ever told you about the day they met?" Clara said, "Of course, I mean, they're married, so I guess it's personal... I can't believe... If you called her up now and asked to talk to her husband, you'd get the Doctor on the phone..."

"I doubt it, I don't think that particular father of mine wants to speak to me. It's because I'm banging his wife. Well, technically you just _look_ like his wife, and he doesn't hate Adam Mitchell, or Flek," Jenny muttered.

"I got knocked out by some weird wifi thing, and he carried me up to bed and set up a vase of flowers and a tray of biscuits and sat outside my window guarding me," Clara explained, "Ask him about it. You still can. I can't."

"Do you miss him?" Jenny asked. Clara sighed.

"All the time. Anyway. Why _are _you here? Because you called me, I remember," Clara pointed out, sipping some tea.

"Oh. Well..." she sighed, "I... Look, I know what you'll think, you'll think it's to do with you, when it's not. But I did call because I need a _friend_, not, you know, a sex toy that breathes."

"As always, I'm charmed," Clara joked.

"You should be. The thing is, I broke up with Jack," she told Clara, and Clara stared.

"It's my fault, isn't it?"

"Yes, Clara. You're an enormous homewrecker. It's totally not like I walked into my room half an hour ago to find him shagging Lady Christina de Souza in our bed, or anything," she muttered, "I mean... I'm a hypocrite. I am, and I know it, but... you know I was sleeping with you for a bet with him. To make him mad. But it didn't work, so I kept it going - I mean, you're also great, and a lot of fun in both sexual and non-sexual ways, but I won't lie to you. I was just so angry that he didn't _care _that his _wife_ was just off with someone else, so I kept coming back to you. At least I had the decency to keep it away from him. He's never had to walk in on anything. Not that he would have cared. I mean, I can't _blame_ him, since we got 'married'-" she did air quotations with one hand because the other was holding her tea, Clara listening closely, "-the word 'monogamy' hasn't even been mentioned. But it's like... what the hell is an 'open-marriage' anyway?"

"A bad idea."

"Well, exactly. It didn't work the first time, and I mean... the Doctors treat me like I'm a twelve year old girl with her first facebook boyfriend. Between you and I, I have not been completely alone for two centuries. There have been, you know, other people. I can tell when something is toxic. All to piss off my dad..."

"Isn't this, with us, pissing off your dad?"

"That's not my aim, though. The aim-" she was interrupted when Clara sneezed quite violently next to her, four times in quick succession, and then stared at her droopy reflection in the television screen for a few moments, and then sniffed and wiped her nose with a tissue.

"What were you saying?" she asked with a yawn.

"Hm?"

"You were talking."

"You distracted me with your unreasonably cute sneezes, Clara," Jenny said.

"Maybe _you_ distracted _me _with your unreasonably cute everything," Clara retorted, like she didn't want her sneezes to be complimented, "Anyway. Back to your now-ex-husband."

"What I was saying about him is that there's just... nothing. I don't even know if I ever loved him, and it was definitely the universe's second most illegitimate wedding, after yours in 2121 Las Vegas, which happened at gunpoint, or so I heard." Clara sneezed again. "How are you feeling?"

"Terrible. I'm _so_ tired, I can barely breathe, and my head feels like it might explode, and I'm really having to focus to speak to you," she said, "How'd you get here? I thought your ship was broken?"

"I... okay, maybe my mother dropped me off," she admitted, and Clara laughed.

"I deal with teenagers every day and then I come home to you," she joked.

"You're just annoyed that you didn't get a chance to invite her in," Jenny retorted, "Since you think my mother's so great." She laughed some more, but then started coughing violently half way through, and when she finally stopped she groaned and leant her head on Jenny's shoulder. "You okay?"

"No," she said weakly, "I think I'm gonna die."

"You're not gonna die, Clara, you've just got a cold."

"People die from colds."

"Yeah, people in their nineties with no central heating, not people in their twenties who _do_ have central heating, and they also have me." Clara moved and looked at her.

"And what is it _you're _gonna do?"

"Exist in your general vicinity and provide warmth and witty remarks," Jenny said, "How many old people have got that?"

"I hate to break it to you, but you _are_ an old person," Clara said, "What's funny is two-hundred doesn't even sound old to me anymore."

"Well, good," Jenny said, "I mean, I'd hate for you to think I'm a cougar."

"I don't care what you are, but you should know to be careful with your makeup. No human being can do eyeliner so perfectly," Clara said. Jokingly, she bit her lip, like she was worried.

"I guess I _do _have perfect eyeliner..." she said, and Clara leant over and kissed her out of nowhere for a just a few seconds, "What was that for?"

"For coming over, and looking after me, and being so perfect and cute all the time."

"Came over for me, not for you. I'd prefer if you didn't do that again, though, because you sort of taste completely disgusting right now. Like phlegm," she told her, "Did you brush your teeth this morning?" Clara paused and thought for a moment, but didn't seem to come up with a legitimate answer, which Jenny assumed meant no, so she rolled her eyes. "So, what do you want to do? Are you going to go to bed now, or later? If you fall asleep on the sofa again I'm not carrying you."

"As if you could carry me anyway," Clara retorted, "You're smaller than I am."

"Well, barely! And I'm actually physically fit, unlike you."

"Too right you are," she said sultrily, giving her eyes on purpose. Jenny just smiled.

"Don't start. For once, _I _am not actually in the mood for that right now," she said, and Clara seemed to sigh.

"Guess that's good news, I'm exhausted anyway," she said, then she sneezed twice more.

"You have to blow your nose."

"I'm not blowing my nose in front of you!" she exclaimed, and Jenny stared at her, "What? It's rude and gross."

"If I can stand you kissing me with all snot in your mouth, I can stand _seeing_ it," she said, but it was no good. Clara was being a baby. "So, are you going to bed, or not? Because _I'm_ actually exhausted, and you're sitting where I'll sleep."

"You do this _every_ time. Every time you make like you're gonna sleep on the sofa. When have I ever made you sleep on the sofa? Besides, you said it yourself, _I_ don't have a hot water bottle to keep me warm. But I do have you. And you're _so tiny_."

"Stop it! I'm _this _much shorter than you, _this _much!" she argued, holding up her hand with about an inch-long gap between her thumb and forefinger, and Clara just laughed, and Jenny pouted, "You're so cruel." Then Clara started coughing quite violently and spat and astonishingly vile glob of phlegm into a tissue. "That's disgusting. You keep that mouth well away from me and go to sleep."

Clara was about to say something, when there was an almighty explosion and a green flash outside, and Jenny stared at the night through the nearest, largest window as sparks showered down and they could hear screaming.

"Bollocks, I forgot about that," Clara muttered, throwing herself backwards onto the sofa and scrunching her eyes shut, looking very unhappy.

"About what!? What was that!? Was it aliens!?" Jenny exclaimed, getting up to go look out of the window. Behind her, Clara opened her eyes a smidgen and squinted at her back.

"Are you being serious?" Clara asked her.

"What do you mean!? There are explosions!"

"They're fireworks! It's the 5th of November. You know, Bonfire Night?"

"What-fire Night?"

"You know. _Remember, remember the fifth of November, gunpowder treason and plot. I know of no reason why the gunpowder treason should ever be forgot_," Clara recited some weird rhyme Jenny had never heard before in her life.

"Have you been brainwashed?"

"Brainwashed!? No!" Clara said, standing up, dizzy when she did, walking doggedly over to the window, "Have you really never heard heard of it?"

"Of what!?"

"In 1605, this bloke called Guy Fawkes was part of a plot to blow up Parliament and kill James I. They caught him underneath the House of Lords on November 5th guarding gunpowder kegs, and people celebrated that the King had survived by lighting fires throughout London," Clara explained, "Over four-hundred years ago. People light fireworks these days. Just wait, it's gonna get awful. They'll keep setting them off all night, the wankers." She drew the curtains shut and yawned. "He was hung, drawn and quartered, you know. Thank god I'm so ill, gives me an excuse to get out of going to the bloody faculty bonfire this year."

"Which means..?"

"All the staff meet up and go to some cheap, local pub. Danny forced me to go last year, I hated it. Told me I have to 'make more friends,' like I'm a socially inept Year 7. It's awful. It's freezing and you come back stinking of wood smoke and have to shower about fifty times. So great. That's another reason I won't be able to sleep, along with my blocked nose... At least you're here though. That's something. That's always something."

"Because, as we both know, I am your only proper friend."

"And your dad."

"Right. _Sure_. My dad."


	294. Another Girl Another Planet VII

_Jenny_

_Another Girl Another Planet VII_

_Friday, 6th of November, 2015_

She usually slept so well at Clara's, but not that night. In a way, she didn't mind, because she did quite well on lack of sleep, but getting woken up every hour by Clara having to go wander around her flat for five minutes to clear her nose wasn't that much fun. Along with that, there were fireworks going off outside _all night_, even though Clara said it was illegal to set any off after eleven o'clock in the evening. Her own displeasure was overwhelmed, though, by the cool knowledge of the displeasure Clara was probably feeling next to her the entire time, since she was a human who actually needed sleep, and not broken sleep, either, and to be able to breathe.

In the morning, she was awoken by a loud beeping that might as well have been a siren blasting in her ear. She dragged one of the pillows over her head and groaned involuntarily with discomfort, then she heard a bang and the beeping stopped and Clara was swearing.

"Shit, shit... I have to go to work..." Clara said. Jenny then moved her pillow in time to see Clara try to stand up and then fall over and have to catch herself on the door, then she paused for a moment and rubbed one of her temples with her other hand, and keeled over whilst coughing violently. Jenny, yawning, clambered out of bed to go and help her sit back down, getting her a tissue.

"No you don't," Jenny told her.

"I have to," she said.

"Have you looked in a mirror?" Jenny questioned, "Because you're really pale and you have the worst bags under your eyes, and you've been up and down all night. Also, I know loads about medicine, because my parents all pretend to be doctors." She got a small laugh out of that. They were sitting right next to each other on the edge of the bed, Jenny waiting to grab her if she kept trying to get up and leave.

"I have to go to work."

"No, you're going to call in sick and go back to bed, and so am I, because I'm still tired as well."

"I have to-"

"Do you want me to call Martha? I can call Martha. She actually _is_ a doctor," Jenny threatened, "Also, I'm not an idiot. I can take care of myself. _You_ can't. Go call in sick."

"No! I have a job to do-"

"I could always get Oswin to call in sick for you?" she continued with threats, "What was it happened the last time Oswin called in sick for you, again?"

"She said I have to go get some gonorrhoea medication that doesn't clash with the laxatives I take for my hernia," Clara muttered, "It was terrible. I don't even have a hernia, _or _gonnorrhoea. I never have."

"Just one day, and then it's the weekend," Jenny told her softly, "I'll get you your favourite food."

"You don't know what my favourite food is. Do you?" Clara had to lean away to turn her head enough to talk to Jenny, the latter was sitting so close by.

"Soufflés or coleslaw. Or just a lot of tea. Anything generally edible?" she suggested, and Clara scowled because she was right, "I could always get you something."

"You could nip to the future and get me a cure for the common cold?" Clara suggested after coughing some more mucus up, making Jenny lean away because she didn't want to get anything on her.

"I don't have the means to time travel on my own currently. Also, that's most definitely an abuse of my position as a Time Lord," Jenny told her.

"You call yourself a Time Lord, then? It's just, I've heard people say Time _Lady_," Clara said, which seemed to be a question she'd been thinking about asking for a while.

"I dunno. I swap. Mix it up a little. Either will suffice," she shrugged, "Anyway, you're ill, and I'm gonna stay here while you make that phone call to make sure you actually do and you don't try to sneak out like an idiot," she said. It was about half past seven in the morning.

"I'm not gonna sneak out, I feel like my head might explode," she muttered, going through her phone, "You be quiet. The last thing I want is them thinking I stayed off work because I'm spending the whole day screwing my hot fake girlfriend... now, shh." She didn't say a word while Clara was on the phone, didn't even try to kiss her neck or her cheek to try to distract her, but that was mainly because she smelt sort of gross. Clara really did get drilled on if she was staying off school for the purpose of boning somebody, as well, but they believed her when she went into another violent coughing fit for a full minute and proceeded to throw up in her mouth a little.

"Guess no sex for me, then?" she joked as soon as Clara hung up the phone, then Clara sneezed in her hand about three times and stared at her wet palm, "Ew." Clara yawned, which made Jenny yawn.

"I'm gonna go wash my hands... and brush my teeth..." Clara said, standing up, taking her dressing gown from the back of the door with her non-disgusting hand.

"Shall I make tea or coffee?" Jenny asked, following.

"Coffee. And would you turn on my laptop? I have to send out an email detailing cover lessons. Oh well, at least it's early." She was right, it was still dark out, this late in the year. In a month, it would be the winter solstice.

It didn't take Clara long in the bathroom, and Jenny was just stood in the kitchen leaning on the fridge waiting for the kettle to boil.

"Your kettle's kind of rubbish," Jenny said, "It's so small."

"There's seventeen of you who live together," she said, sitting at the kitchen table, "Sorry if I don't have a ridiculous, industrial-sized kettle." She supposed the kettle on the TARDIS _was_ a bit more than twice the size of any normal one. "Isn't it weird that you live with so many people, and then you come here and it's just me?"

"Well it's just been _me _for centuries. I'm not like the Doctors. They're all running from something, that's why they never stop. I've only ever been looking for them, and now I've found them," she shrugged, "Which means _now_ I have to find something else to do with my time."

"Still, I mean, isn't it quiet here?" Clara asked.

"No, because you never shut up," she said, pouring them both coffee, "You know, it's really rare that everybody is in one room together. That only happens when we have a meeting, and we hardly ever have meetings. We did have one the other day about spacesuits and guns, though. Plus, I'm still grounded."

"Speaking of which, how are you getting home? Whenever you decide to go?"

"Emergency teleporter. Remember? That's how you and Old Twelvey got onto our TARDIS in the first place?" Jenny said. Her emergency teleporter was on the same keyring as her TARDIS key, in her jacket, hanging across the sofa. It had been a battle to get one of those a few months ago, she remembered.

"So, did... did Jack mention anything?" Clara asked.

"Anything about what?" Jenny set the mugs down on the table and sat in the chair closest to Clara.

"Me."

"...Why..?"

"I maybe... bumped into him. And some others. In the Maldovarium. They said they were looking for the Shadow. Jack kept bringing you up. Said something about you nearly blowing up Martha, then he told me that he'd tell you I said hi," Clara told her, "And him saying that might have caught me off guard so much that I tripped over."

"You got him onto us," Jenny told her, then she sighed, "Maybe I should thank you. He figured it out."

"Wait, wait - he didn't know about this? About us?" Clara asked, staring at her. Jenny knew now that she had to be very careful about what she said next.

"Only the first time. And then... well... I just didn't think he deserved to know. It's over now, anyway," she said, and Clara thought about something and sighed and slouched down.

"Look at us both. We're just liars, the pair of us."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean that you're cheating on your husband with me, but I've been sleeping with my best friend's daughter for months. Plus, I was hardly a bastion of morality when Danny was still here. I lied to the Doctor about Danny being fine with me travelling, I lied to Danny about stopping travelling," Clara sighed.

"...You were talking about him last night."

"I was?"

"Yeah... do you not remember?" Jenny asked, and Clara shook her head, and Jenny bit her lip and drank some coffee.

"What is it? What did I say?"

"You told me that he used to cry after sex," she answered, and Clara's eyes widened and she looked away for a few moments.

"...He did. It was awful," she admitted.

"Serious question: am I allowed to laugh about that or not?" she asked carefully.

"No! Don't laugh at him! He went through a lot of stuff," Clara said.

"I've been through ten times as much and _I _don't cry when I cum," she answered.

"This is a very inappropriate conversation about my dead boyfriend, Jenny," Clara said.

"Sorry," Jenny apologised, but only half-heartedly, "You also said you shagged him on his sofa."

"Oh. I did. I'm not sure why."

"How long were you together for? If you don't mind me asking?"

"About two months," Clara said. In the back of her mind, Jenny tried to work out if she'd been regularly sleeping with Clara for longer than Danny Pink had, but figured that she hadn't. September 25th to November 6th was just about six weeks. It was so much less time to her than to Clara that it almost seemed frightening.

* * *

She was woken by knocking on the front door at some point later on in the day, after she and Clara had ended up watching TV and falling asleep together on the sofa. Whatever time it was, the television had switched itself off, and it seemed to be getting dark out. How long had she been asleep? Both of them? Clara hadn't even woken up yet.

Yawning, she took it upon herself to answer the door, probably not thinking clearly, as a better thing to do would be to wake Clara up and make _her _answer the door. But she was sick, so that would hardly be fair. She unlocked the door and answered it to some teenage girl who was, annoyingly enough, taller than her. She was an alien, for god's sakes, why did she have to be so short?

"Yes? Hello?" she answered, leaning on the wall and closing the door as far as she could, but she just got stared at. "...What?" She thought the girl was maybe familiar.

"Is Clara here?" asked the girl.

"...She's asleep. She's ill. Why? How do you know her?" Jenny was desperately trying to place this girl.

"I'm one of her pupils," she answered.

"On a first-name basis with her?" Jenny questioned.

"She doesn't like her last name," the girl told her coldly, looking at Jenny like she wasn't supposed to be there. Frankly, Jenny thought, it was this child who wasn't supposed to be there, showing up to her teacher's house?

"Does she not? Perhaps she should change it. She's still asleep, though, no matter how much you stand there trying to intimidate me," Jenny said.

"Do I know you?" the girl asked, "Who are you?" Jenny narrowed her eyes.

"You know the temporary caretaker about a year ago at your school?" she asked.

"The Doctor?" That was when it clicked.

"Shit, you're Courtney, aren't you? Courtney Woods?" Jenny questioned, "Right. _That's_ why you hang out with Clara... also because Clara's a weirdo, I guess. How come you know where she lives?"

"I only live a few floors down," she answered.

"Oh. That's a lot less creepy than I thought... you wait here a second and I'll go wake her up," Jenny said, closing the door. Immediately after she closed it, Courtney opened it and stepped inside. She supposed the girl just didn't really have manners.

"Have we met before?" Courtney asked her.

"Uh, yeah, I think so. Some time last year, back when Danny was still around," Jenny answered, going to shake Clara awake, "Get up, would you?" she said when Clara groaned, "You have a guest. A guest apart from me."

"Who?" Clara mumbled, Jenny dragging blankets off of her and trying to sort out her own hair, which hadn't been brushed.

"Courtney Woods has shown up to pay you a visit, for whatever reason."

"_What!?_"

"I wanted to see if she was really sick, or if she was off somewhere with the Doctor," Courntey said, Clara finally sitting up alarmingly quickly and holding her head.

"I think my sinuses are going to explode," she told Jenny.

"What do you want me to do about it? Ring up Martha?" Jenny asked.

"Who?" Courntey interjected as Clara stumbled to her feet.

"Mutual friend, a doctor," Jenny answered, "A proper doctor, not an idiot alien pretending to be one."

"That's not a nice thing to say about the Doctor," Courtney said.

"He's my father, I'll say what I like," Jenny answered sharply.

"Your father!?" she exclaimed, "There's more than one Time Lord?"

"There are three," Clara said, "Discounting all the dimension stuff. Three Time Lords."

"You and your parents? Wait, so, has the Doctor... has he... you know... with another person?" Courtney asked, and Jenny and Clara exchanged a look, neither of them really knowing what to say.

"Not my parents," she said, "Parent, single. Complicated thing involving a soft tissue cloning machine and a war."

"You're a clone? So you're not a _real_ Time Lord?" she asked, and Clara interjected before Jenny could argue and defend herself, suddenly in an unpleasant mood. She hated when they called her a clone.

"She's plenty real. She's two-hundred years old, she has two hearts and she regenerates," Clara said.

"I don't change my face, though," Jenny pointed out.

"Why would you want to?" Clara asked, and there was a moment of silence.

"Are you two dating?" Courtney Woods asked brashly.

"No!" Clara objected, the same time Jenny calmly said, "We're just friends."

"Are you sure? There _are _rumours, Miss," Courtney said.

"Rumours are never true," Clara said.

"They usually are," Jenny said, shrugging, "I mean, we have loads of rumours at home. Who's dating who, who's broken up with who, who fancies someone else, who's added a new person to the crew this week."

"You're not helping," Clara told her, "Look, Courtney, you can't keep showing up at my flat. It's borderline illegal. And an invasion of privacy."

"Just wanted to see that you had a real reason to be off sick," she answered.

"Right. Great. I do, I have a really bad cold, and I'm going to the toilet now, and when I get back you'd better not be here or I'll give you detention all next week," Clara threatened.

"I'll tell everyone you have a girlfriend if you do."

"She isn't my girlfriend," Clara said sternly, "And I know you'll tell everyone that anyway, won't you? Regardless of detention?"

"You could always buy my silence."

"I'm not getting you any alcohol. Wait two years and you can get it yourself. Not that I condone drinking, drinking is terrible, don't - stop laughing at that, Jenny!"

"Sorry," Jenny apologised through laughter she was failing to stifle, "It's just... I remembered that the last time you got drunk you ended up with a mango tattoo."

"You mean the other one," Clara said, "Not me. I wasn't on that hen party of yours, remember?"

"Hen party? You're married?" Courtney asked her.

"No," Jenny said quickly, "I'm not. Not anymore."

"Not that it would matter if she was, because we're just friends," Clara added, then to both of them she said, "Behave," and walked off towards the bathroom. Jenny watched her go, wondering how Clara thought she was going to misbehave. What was she worried she would do?

"What happened to your hand?" Courtney asked her, and Jenny glanced at her robotic hand, silver and reflecting the light coming in from the windows.

"Have you ever seen _Alien_?" she asked, and Courtney Woods nodded, "I was attacked by a facehugger. Acid burnt off my hand and my eyes. My eyes are cybernetic."

"Didn't you regenerate?"

"It's complicated."

"Are you really not dating her?"

"Yes."

"Yes you are?"

"No, I'm not! Why do you think we're together?"

"Because she looks at you the same way she used to look at Mr Pink."


	295. Scientific Pursuits

**AN: So, as you guys know, I basically have the mechanic of the Dimension Doors and the parallel universes so that I can do crossovers, and as you also hopefully know, I'm quite accommodating with my crossovers and you don't actually have to know anything about the subject matter to understand what's happening, because I'm not a twat and all that. I mean, you didn't need to know anything about _Bioshock_ to get that one, didn't need to know about _Twin Peaks_ to understand this Halloween just gone, and then one of this was vaguely based on _Humans_ and one on _Until Dawn_. and I usually have Adam and Oswin out to explain video game references. Which brings me onto my next point, that Today is gonna be another crossover with the _Fallout_ universe, which I have had planned for a very long time and have finally decided to do now because of the release of _Fallout 4_. So, yes, prepare for another video game crossover.**

_DAY ONE-HUNDRED AND SIX_

_Oswin_

_Scientific Pursuits_

"Look at all this crap," Oswin said, sitting on the floor in the corner of her laboratory in a pile of weapons taken out of the Torchwood archives weeks ago, while she'd been away. It had taken three whole weeks for her to get around to cataloguing any of it, "Wow, they have a lot of trackers..."

"This is what I did when I worked for Van Statten," Adam Mitchell said, watching her pick things up and examine them, leaning on the wall nearby, "Then the Doctor came and said it was all useless. One of them he said was a hairdryer."

"Well, I haven't a clue what any of these things are, because they gave them all stupid names. I mean, 'singularity scalpel'? What's that?" she asked, holding an alien device that was like a screen on a stick with a alrge dial to twist on the right-hand side, a tag on it with a name scrawled. It looked like a toe tag you found in morgues. She aimed it at her mug next to her on the floor.

"Maybe you should ask Jack what they are before you start playing with-" Oswin's mug exploded and she jumped away from it and dropped the device, "Very sensible of you."

"Shut up, how was I supposed to know it made stuff explode?" she snapped, "It's not like most of this stuff is human, it's almost all alien. I barely know a thing about alien technology.

"I just thought, since you're the smartest human being who ever existed, you might know a few things," he said.

"I'm a dead hermit, Mitchell, not an expert in rift-silt," she said, "This is why I build all my own stuff, you can't trust these aliens to build anything with proper workmanship."

"I can't tell if that's racist or not," he frowned, "You'll be wanting more coffee, then? Now you've blown up your mug?"

"It's actually Clara's mug, but if you're making more, I'm never one to say no," she said, smiling at him, "Please? I heard it's gonna be a long day, sat in here trying to sort through all this stuff people scavenge and give to me."

"What's in it for me?" he asked, raising his eyebrows at her, and she thought for a few moments and then sighed.

"I'll make you a stungun that looks like the alien blaster from _Fallout 3_," she told him.

"You know me too well," he said, shaking his head and smiling, then he picked up his own mug from one of the tables and left the room? yawning, because it was relatively early. Ridiculous, she thought, when she had been alive she slept through until the afternoon, four o'clock had to drift by before she entertained the possibility of over-sleeping, and then she would stay awake for some days on end and lose track of time. There was no sunrise or sunset at the edge of the solar system. If you never switched the lights off, it was always a sunny, summer afternoon. And now she never switched the lights _on_.

Before she could muse upon the apparent symbolism about how bright her life and death were in stark contrast to one another, she was thrown out of kilter by the shock of somebody falling out of midair and crashing onto the floor in a blue flash of light, and she scrambled to her feet brandishing the singularity scalpel, with its unknown purpose and explosive tendancies.

"What the hell is that thing!?" Jenny demanded of her.

"I don't know! You surprised me! What are you doing!?" Oswin asked, dropping the thing back on the floor and hoping it didn't make another pointless item explode.

"Running away," Jenny answered.

"Away from what?"

"My father. All of him. Lots of him. Everywhere," she said.

"Right, well, because that's not remotely vague or cryptic," Oswin said.

"I run away from him here, I run away from him there, who else in the universe has so many bloody parents?" she complained.

"Are you wearing my sister's clothes?"

"Yes. Why did the teleporter bring me here? Why not the console room? Or Nerve Centre?"

"Because here is out of the way. You'll only run into me. Or Adam, but Adam's on a coffee run. Do you want any coffee? I'll text him, he has his phone on him," Oswin said, her hologram phone shimmering into existence in her palm, texting her boyfriend quickly with orders to make three cups of coffee, "So did you ask her out?"

"Sorry?"

"Other Clara."

"What about her?"

"Did you ask her out?" Oswin repeated herself slowly, and Jenny stared at her like she was an idiot.

"No! Why would I!?"

"...Isn't that why you broke up with Jack?"

"Of course not!"

"Are you sure?"

"Yes, I'm sure! I don't... she doesn't... no!" Jenny argued.

"Alright, alright, you don't actually fancy her, you just sleep with her and spend as much time as physically possible with her and go running to her side at every opportunity for some other reason," Oswin said, "Even though Alpha Clara told me that friends with benefits never works for her."

"_Friends_, Oswin, we're _friends_."

"Adam and I are _friends_, too," Oswin said, "And I'm sure that Alpha Clara would consider herself to be _friends_ with the Doctor."

"You're making something out of nothing," Jenny snapped, "How do you know I broke up with Jack, anyway?"

"Because Rory heard the whole thing last night and gave everyone in the living room a running commentary," Oswin answered, "And then you just mysteriously disappear until now."

"Last night?"

Oswin groaned and rubbed her head, "Seriously? How long have you been with her?"

"Maybe... four days. And now I've been evicted," she said, which was when Adam returned balancing three mugs and Oswin walked over to relieve him, and he passed the third one to Jenny. Oswin didn't even know whose mug she was using now. They really needed to get more.

"Evicted from where?" Adam asked her.

"From Other Clara's," Oswin told him, "Apparently she's running away from... oh my god, you got caught by Old Twelvey, didn't you?"

"Like, in the act?" Adam asked.

"No! We weren't..." but she trailed off, "We might have been making out."

"You're supposed to just be casually sleeping together," Oswin said.

"Who are you to define anything!?"

"Alright, sorry! Calm down! Just because you totally won't admit you want to go out with her," Oswins said, succeeding in agitating Jenny further, "So what happened next?"

"Heard the TARDIS. Thank god it's so loud. Gives you some warning."

"Oh, of course," Adam agreed.

"So I hid in the wardrobe."

"How'd he find you?" Oswin implored. Jenny was pacing up and down as she spoke, frustrated.

"He suspected. She was trying to get rid of him, but he kept looking around," Jenny explained, "You can't stay at someone's flat for four days without leaving clues behind. Plus, he wanted to know why she didn't go to work on the Friday, not that I know how he found that out. Sort of creepy if you ask me."

"You made her take the day off!?"

"No! Sort of! Yes! She was sick! She had a really bad cold and you know what she's like, she's an idiot, so I stayed to look after her," Jenny said, "Anyway, he ends up asking, 'whose are these shoes?' 'whose is this jacket?' 'why do you have peach yoghurts in the fridge, Clara? You don't even like peach,' 'why are there two toothbrushes in the bathroom? Who do you have over who knows how to brush their teeth properly?' Because Clara can't brush her teeth."

"She buys yoghurts _just _for you? You took a toothbrush over?"

"No, she bought me it, she was sick of me using hers," Jenny answered.

"If I buy _you_ a toothbrush, will you use it?" Adam whispered to Oswin.

"What? My teeth don't rot."

"But you have really bad breath, babe."

"Shut up, let her carry on," she elbowed him.

"Long story short, he found me in the wardbrobe, the nosey twat, and my teleporter was in the next room. So Clara acts all surprised like she has no clue I was there, and I guess it's a good thing she's such a good liar, even though I don't think he believed her, what with the overwhelming evidence. Clara started saying it must be the Alpha Crew spying on them and he drags me out of the flat and leaves me in the hallway! Thank god she knew where my teleporter and my phone were and she dropped them through the letterbox, but my boots and my other clothes are still there!" she complained, pointing at her bare feet.

"Sounds like you've had quite the adventure," Oswin commented, "What are you gonna do now?"

"I don't know. Have you finished those spaceship schematics for me yet?" Jenny sighed.

"Oh, yeah," Oswin said, "On paper and everything." She passed Adam Mitchell her coffee and went to dig around in the sheets upon sheets of paper on the large island table in the middle of the room that reminded her of what she imagined a school science classroom looked like, dragging out some plans and holding them out to Jenny.

"Guess I'll start building this, then."

"Feel free," Oswin shrugged, "I have to catalogue alien crap, so, I'm plenty busy."

"Speaking of vehicles," she began, looking at Adam as Oswin retrieved her coffee, "Did you hear about what happened to your cars yet?"

"...Um... no..?"

"Oh," she said, "Jack stole them and Christina de Souza blew them up. Only two of them, though."

"Which two?" he asked stiffly.

"The Lamborghini and the Hummer," Jenny answered.

"I loved that Hummer!" he protested, and Oswin carefully took his coffee out of his hands because he was steadily freezing the mug, putting it down on the surface behind them that they were both leaning on.

"You can buy a new car, babe, it's fine," she told him softly, "We'll give it loads of special features and a bio lock so that Jack can't steal it."

"I do nothing but give to this crew, and this is how they repay me?" he questioned.

"They're just cars, Adam," Jenny said.

"It's not the cars, it's that I buy _everything_ around here and then they just take my stuff without asking and get it destroyed!" he protested, which Oswin thought was a very valid complaint.

"...Sorry, Jenny, did you say you were leaving?" Oswin asked, and Jenny frowned.

"No."

"Are you sure? I'm pretty sure you just said you were leaving," she said, and Jenny scowled.

"Fine. Guess I'll go shower so I don't smell like your sister," Jenny said, and then she walked out.

"What are you up to? Why'd you get rid of her?" Adam asked.

"So I could talk to you," she answered, "Because I have an idea." She pushed herself up on the countertop behind her so that she was sitting on it, this making her tall enough that they were the same level (almost) as she spoke to him.

"What idea?"

"We should get a flat."

"We should _what_?"

"On the ship, I mean. Instead of a bedroom. Plus, everyone always comes and sleeps on our sofa! Imagine if we still had a sofa, but it was in another room?"

"Sofa in another room? You really do have luxurious tastes," he said sarcastically.

"And our own kitchen, is what I'm getting at. We're already the only ones with our own bathroom, Mitchell," she said, "And then you can only buy food for us, and leave the others to sort themselves out. Well, buy food for _you_."

"I knew there must be some reason you're always going on about being a genius," he whispered, leaning over and kissing her, in spite of all his constant complaints of her having bad breath or tasting terrible.

"Hey," she moved away, "Do you think it's weird to kiss someone you're not dating?"

"We _are _dating."

"No, not us," she said, "Clara and Jenny. Other Clara. She said they were making out. That's not what you do if you're just sleeping together."

"Maybe they were about to and they got interrupted by Twelve?" he suggested.

"Why would you stay and nurse someone back to health if you don't fancy them?"

"Oswin, you don't have to speculate about if Jenny's telling the truth about not secretly wanting to date Beta Clara. I can read auras, remember? Emotions?" he reminded her.

"Oh, crap, I totally forgot, I'm so sorry!"

He laughed, "It's fine. But, by the way, she totally does like her. I'd try not to mention it, though. You know what Clara said, it's bound to end badly."

They both looked around in alarm when the door slid open again, expecting it to be Jenny returning, yet, surprisingly enough, it was the Ninth Doctor, the last person either of them expected to see. She slid off the island and stood next to Adam.

"Yes?" she asked him.

"I found something," he told her.

"...Okay? What is it?"

"I don't know. I've been trying to figure it out for months. I think it's some kind of vitals monitor," he said, holding something out to her. It reminded her of a vortex manipulator, and seemed dreadfully familiar. She and Adam both stared at it, the screen lit up green.

"Is that..?" Adam asked her, and Nine threw it to her and she struggled to catch it, but managed it, "Am I dreaming?"

"What?" Nine asked.

"When did you find it?" Oswin asked, passing the wrist gizmo to her boyfriend, since he was so excited about it, going over to one of the corners of the room where she kept her prototypes. She had a corner for everything, just stacked up piles of organised chaos. She kicked a few old things over, searching for something.

"The same day we found the Flesh Suit and the Static Bomb. It only just switched on now, though, an hour ago," he said.

"It did? Helix, scan all immediate atomic matter and tell me if there's another Cosmic Background Radiation alteration," Oswin called out.

"_Affirmative_," Helix answered, the enormous screen on the wall lighting up blue when the VI talked.

"I don't understand, what is it?" Nine asked.

"Ah-ha, found it," Oswin said, digging something out with prongs on the end, "We just need to-" the ship veered violently in one direction and threw them all sidewards, Oswin so close to the wall she fell into it. "Ow."

* * *

_Clara_

"Whatcha doing?"

Clara jumped and looked around. She'd been stood in the console room, underneath the floor in the area full of wires and broken tools, about to light a cigarette when Thirteen spoke, sitting on one of the lower-level staircases nobody ever used anymore. There wasn't anybody else in the console room except for Nios sat by the central column with a wire plugged into the back of her neck; she was charging, apparently. Clara had no clue if she was 'switched off,' or 'hibernating,' or whatever she preferred it to be called, either. She just sat like a statue above them, visible through the glass floor.

"Smoking. They've put up a bloody 'No Smoking' sign in the other room," she complained, lighting her cigarette, because Thirteen was one of very few people who wouldn't stop her, "Thought I'd just give up and come out here. What about you?"

"Oh, I was waiting for you," she said, "Something happens today you've always refused to tell me about because I - as in me now - was there. Just making sure I get a place."

"Some people might call that stalking," Clara said, and Thirteen laughed. Above them, they heard one of the doors slide open, the door to her twin sister's laboratory, Clara thought. They both went quiet and saw Jenny walk out wearing clothes Clara distinctly knew belonged to_ her_, not her stepdaughter, crossing the glass floor above her and the Doctor and leaving the console room through one of the other doors. She didn't see them, and she ignored Nios completely.

"Did you hear about what happened last night yet?" Thirteen asked.

"Yes, from Oswin, because Jenny didn't have the decency to tell me herself," Clara muttered, blowing smoke in front of her, "Oswin reckons she left Jack for Other Me."

"Maybe you should go and ask Oswin now, since Jenny was just in the lab?" Thirteen suggested. Clara knew that Jenny had only been in the lab because that was where the emergency teleporter dropped people off.

"Sweetheart, I have enough queer drama on my plate with you around, let alone if I start getting involved in Jenny's business," Clara muttered, "It's not to do with me... in the future, when you're from-"

"I can't answer any-"

"Am I happy?" Thirteen stopped arguing when Clara had asked her question. A simple question. No spoilers involved. "With you. Are we happy?"

"Yes, of course we are, perfectly happy," Thirteen smiled warmly.

"Then what I mean is, you and Jenny, you're similar."

"I know, we get that a lot," she said.

"So, if we're happy, that means that whatever's going on with Other Me and your daughter is making _them_ happy, and I for one respect that," Clara said simply, "And I want nothing more to do with it."

"That's mature of you."

"Maybe it is," she said, at which point the door to Nerve Centre opened and the Ninth Doctor came through, muttering to himself about this or that or whatever, surprising Clara by going up the stairs to Oswin's lab. "What's funny is that when you got here, you knew all of this was going to happen."

"Well, that's generally what happens when you go back in time," Thirteen said, "You sure do like to point out the obvious."

"Everyone stares at me in that room."

"I know," the Doctor said solemnly, "They just like gossip. It was like this with Rose and Tentoo, and now it's like this with you. You should be used to it."

"I don't want to be used to it, it's not even anything to do with me, _I_ haven't done anything, have I?" she argued.

"Well, you keep _trying_ to do me."

"No-one knows about that, though, do they?" Clara said, "Apart from Adam and Oswin. And who are they gonna tell apart from each other?"

"And Jenny."

"What? _Why_ does Jenny know about anything between us!?"

"Because! I guess I'm the terrible habit of trusting my only daughter with secrets, _sorry_," she pretended to apologise, getting a little annoyed, it seemed, about Clara questioning why she was confiding in Jenny, "Anyway, she's hardly in a position to tell anybody, is she?"

Clara sighed, "I guess not."

"They're also staring at you because they all know about what happened with Martha."

"Oh, everybody knows about that _except_-"

"Shh," Thirteen said quickly as the door to Nerve Centre opened again and in stepped the woman of the hour, the subject of the gossip, Martha Jones herself, looking highly frustrated and eager to leave. "What's wrong with _you_?" Thirteen asked her loudly, and she jumped, and looked down through the floor at them. She didn't answer though, just made a frustrated noise, and the Doctor went up the steps towards her, Clara trailing after because she didn't have anything else to do.

"You okay?" Clara aksed her. She had nothing but sympathy for Martha, in this situation she was in, half of it without her even knowing. Martha was sat on the stairs up to the lab, the only chair occupied by the charging synthetic everyone was a little too frightened to ever approach. She'd been with them for weeks, now, and Clara didn't even think she'd ever talked to her. Only Oswin and Jenny had anything much to do with the synth.

"I'm sick of them staring at me," Martha answered.

"I know, they're the worst," Clara agreed with her, "Looking at me as if I have anything to do with Jenny's behaviour."

"We're all suffering because of Claragate," Thirteen said.

"_Claragate_?" Clara and Martha both questioned her.

"All the rumours lately revolve around you," the Doctor told her, "Just you in various - _that's_ not supposed to happen." She was distracted by a beeping noise coming from the console somewhere and left Clara to go see what it was. Clara wasn't really bothered a whole lot for anything going on with Martha, not nearly as much as the others seemed to be. The worst thing she could do in this situation would be to ridicule her, not to mention it wouldn't gain anything.

"It's like going back to school on here, don't you think?" Clara commented, leaning on one of the railings, continuing to smoke, "All the rumours and the gossip." Martha stared at her. "What?"

"What gossip have you heard?" she asked. _Oh_, Clara thought. Martha was clearly fearing that she knew something about these supposed 'feelings.' She was saved from answering when the ship reeled backwards, though, grabbing hold of the railing behind her.

"Why does this always bloody happen? Do you ever fix the artificial gravity in here? Or, god forbid, learn how to fly properly?" Clara questioned Thirteen.

"Hey! I fly just fine!" she protested, and then there was a bang and sparks flew out of the console.

"Clearly," Martha said.

"Sometimes. I fly fine _sometimes_..."


	296. Future Imperfect

_Clara_

_Future Imperfect_

"Where did the ship just take us? What just happened?" Clara asked the Doctor.

"Hopefully to get milk," Martha muttered.

"Didn't we get milk yesterday? I swear to god, we never have any bloody milk…" she complained. It was a valid point. She knew there were seventeen of them, but only fourteen of them even needed to eat or drink, but really? How could they go through _that_ much milk?

"Oh, we can get milk here," the Doctor said, looking at the screen, "Says we're in Washington D.C., 2284." Just as she said that, Clara heard shouting from the stairs above them and Oswin emerged carrying something, looking highly over-excited. She nearly tripped as she was coming down the stairs, Clara prepared to catch her if she did, Adam Mitchell struggling to keep up with her. It was a little funny that he and his sprained ankle were slower than his dead, amputee girlfriend, because you'd think his range of movement would still be better than hers. But her leg _was_ quite advanced.

"Where are we? When are we?" Oswin asked, ignoring the screen completely and heading straight over to the doors, Adam following her.

"What's with them?" Martha asked Nine, who'd come out after them, and was looking very confused. They were both holding devices Clara had never seen before. Nine just shrugged, watching Oswin open the doors, bright white light flooding blindingly into the console room.

"Os, what's going on?" Clara asked, wondering if there was anywhere to put out her cigarette. There was a definitive lack of ashtrays on board the TARDIS.

"What's going on?" Oswin repeated Clara's question as she stepped outside, and then she was muttering stuff Clara couldn't hear for a few moments until sticking her head back through the door, "Nios, do you want to see a new universe?"

Apparently, Nios could still hear everything when she was charging and pretending to be disengaged, because she opened her cold blue eyes immediately and looked over her shoulder at Clara's grinning sister.

"What do you mean, new universe?" Nine asked, "How do you know?"

"Duh," Oswin said, holding out the device in her hand, which looked like a battered, alien scanner with two prongs on it, "Scanning the Cosmic Background Radiation. Different levels of it all over the place – parallel worlds doesn't half do a number on red shift. Speaking of red shift, the communists have blown up your planet, are you coming to look?" She vanished and Nios, without a word, followed her, along with Nine and Thirteen.

"Blown up planets doesn't sound like my idea of a good time," Clara muttered, stubbing out her cigarette in a conveniently placed ashtray that hadn't been on the edge of the console just a minute ago, but she supposed the TARDIS didn't want her dropping fag butts on the floor and stamping them into the glass. And she'd really prefer not to litter in her own home.

"The last time we went to a new universe Jenny died," Martha reminded her.

"Oh, wonderful. I'd better go make sure Oswin doesn't do something stupid, though," Clara said with a sigh, "Are you coming?"

"Me?"

"No, I was talking to the TARDIS. Yes, you. Weren't you just saying you were sick of them staring at you? Well, come and see this destroyed planet Earth," Clara shrugged. She didn't want Martha to be subjected to the ridiculing of the rest of the crew anymore than she wanted to be ridiculed herself, and Martha followed her out of the console room in the end into a grey and white world.

Already she saw it was ravaged, all of it. This was supposed to be Washington D.C.? The US capital? The buildings were shattered, scorched bones sticking out of mountainous hunks of rubble like flesh sticking to a carcass, everything grey, or black, or faintly green in some regards. It smelt of fire and metal and death and the wind wasn't strong but it cut already, the sun hurting her eyes more than the sun usually did, burning her skin after seconds. They were right on a street corner, the TARDIS the most colourful thing in sight, no other blues around them at all. The sky was so bright the sun was barely distinguishable, and the road was so cracked it was like a desert. As the ship thrummed away behind them, she realised she didn't have a jacket on. She hadn't been planning on going anywhere right away, even if her husband had been pestering her and saying they ought to go somewhere together.

"Well, I can see why you were so excited," Clara said quietly to Thirteen, hovering behind her while Oswin ranted incessantly to her boyfriend about something, but he didn't actually appear to be listening, "It's basically paradise here. Better than Disneyland." Thirteen laughed a little.

"Oswin, where are we?" Martha asked her.

"Washington," Oswin answered, "You remember when we went to Rapture?"

"Atlantis?" Clara asked. Oswin was pacing, but she kept tripping over rubble and chunks of broken concrete.

"Exactly, exactly… Look, it's a Door, we went through a Door and that thing turned on," she pointed to something in Adam Mitchell's hands, "By my calculations – which are never wrong – this is the Thetaverse. It's post-nuclear apocalyptic North America."

"It's another universe that's a video game to us," Adam answered when Oswin refused to be concise, "Basically, this is 2284, and the world ended in 2077 after Earth used up all its natural resources and it ended up causing total destruction in a war mainly between America and China."

"What's the thing, though?" Nine nodded at the thing Adam was holding.

"It's just a simple vitals monitor," Oswin answered, "I mean, sort of. Has a map and stuff. Notes. A light. Not the most exciting thing you could scavenge from here, certainly…" Oswin started to walk off one direction, like she was looking for something, and Adam followed.

"Where are you going, Oswin?"

"Just this way, Clars, you don't have to come with us," Oswin called back to Clara.

"Are they seriously walking off and leaving us!?" Martha exclaimed, "Oi! You can't just go!" Oswin groaned and started walking back, swiping the device from Adam, who protested but was ultimately ignored.

"Look, you lot take the Pip-Boy 3000, it has a map. Avoid going any further into the ruins, try and get out," Oswin advised, giving the thing back to Nine, "Don't go to Old Olney, either, and steer clear of any Vaults, alright? Otherwise, scavenge. There should be loads of cool stuff lying around. Try to help people." She was walking off again now.

"Well where are you two going!?" Clara called after them.

"Into the ruins!"

"You just said not to go into the ruins!"

"I told _you_ not to go into the ruins! _We_ will be fine!" Oswin shouted back, getting further away, "From here go East, cross the Potomac, and then follow it South and you'll find a city in a boat, but don't stray from the water!"

"Stay safe! I love you!"

"That's gross, Clars!" Oswin shouted back at her, and Clara sighed and crossed her arms.

"I'm not sure that yelling in a place like this is a good idea," Nios said, looking around, "Or letting those two run off. Not exactly fighting material, either of them."

"They'll be fine. Adam fought off the Xenomorph," Martha said.

"He _did_ have a flamethrower," Nine added.

"I'll keep an eye on them," Clara said, "Guess we don't have anyone to show us around this place. Where's the Potomac river, then?" Nine squinted at the tiny screen of the device Oswin had given to them, she and Adam now away and around a corner somewhere, Clara keeping mental tabs on her in the back of her mind. Nine span around for a moment and held up the wrist gizmo, the 'Pip-Boy' whatever.

"Um, this way," he said, pointing to the left, "This map's rubbish."

"Guess we won't be finding a lot of milk, then…" Martha complained.


	297. Wasteland Survival Guide

_Clara_

_Wasteland Survival Guide_

"_Prepare for the future. It's never too late_," Nios read from a billboard they had all walked straight past. She was staring at it with some confusion, the others approaching a bridge over a large river Clara assumed was the Potomac, but she'd never been to Washington D.C. The billboard was destoryed in places and peeling away like dry skin on a sunburn, yellow and brown with all the colours watered down by sun exposure and nuclear winds, but it was still relatively easy to read. A relic of a time long-gone, a time that didn't even belong to her. Didn't belong to any of them. It was a large amount of people all queuing to get up a hill into an enormous, circular, metal door, light shining from within like it held paradise itself in the belly of the mountain it had bored its way into. Nios read, "_Vault Secure_. It has running water, sustained electricity, protection from predators, and it's radiation free."

"Radiation? I didn't think about that," Martha said, glancing around like she was going to see green, irridated gunk made from plutonium bomb residue crawling out of the disused sewer gates and the river water.

"Geiger counter on the thingamajig," Nine pointed out to her, holding out the wrist band that was like a vortex manipulator, only monochromatic green and bulky, pointing at a crackling dial on the left of the emereld display screen, "We'll be fine for a day. Unless the levels are higher in places. They'll probably be higher in the water, and around bomb craters."

"Humanity destoryed itself, and they say _we're _the monsters," Nios said, staring at the billboard. The cartoonish nature of it unnerved Clara a little. In the Alphaverse, this had been designed with entertainment in mind, everything they saw was the brainchild of some Mitchell-esque computer nerd who sat in a dark room and coded the environment with a greenish, greyish filter, like a sickness in the air. But now it was reality, in the Thetaverse, and this wasn't a fiction. Clara had to remember their own relationship with what her sister called the Gammaverse as she stared around. This was as real to its inhabitants as they were to the TARDIS.

"Humanity are always destorying themselves, don't worry about it," Thirteen said, at which Martha scoffed.

"Says you." Thirteen paused and thought for a moment, Nine, significantly younger and closer to the genocide of the Time Lords, staying silent and clearly not liking that comment.

"I guess that's true," she agreed eventually. The Time Lords, and the Doctor in paricular, were clearly the guiltier of the races present when it came to genocidal tendencies, "Species are so often destroyed by themselves than by others, you know."

"Come on," Nine said, walking off and staring at the little rectangular screen of the device in his hands, "It's this way." He lead them across the bridge over the Potomac and then turned right, heading what Clara presumed was South, which seemed to be the same direction Adam Mitchell and Oswin had gone, only they were on th other side of the river.

"This place freaks me out," Clara said quietly, staring around. There weren't a lot of signs of life about. It was empty. Was Oswin sure there was a city somewhere? A city in a boat? Where had her sister even gone? No doubt somewhere both dually safe and fascinating, not into the path of danger. What if something attacked them? Hopefully the stun gun she had stuck in her belt would assimilate itself to mutants as well as recognised species. Technically though, she supposed all species were mutants in some way, what with evolution and all that.

"You know, if you destoryed humanity, it would still be humanity destorying itself, because you're just as much a product of human engineering as atomic bombs," Martha said to Nios, and Nios didn't seem to know what to say.

"Don't make the poor girl have an existential crisis now, Martha," Thirteen jokingly chastised her. Nios thought of something to say finally, some comment on the human condition, which sparked a philosophical debate Clara wasn't particularly interested in between the three of them. Clara, instead of joining in, sped up a little and caught up with the Ninth Doctor. She never spoke to the Ninth Doctor. She thought that maybe she should.

"Are you always so quiet?" she asked him. He seemed incredibly surprised that she would be talking to him, and didn't say anything, until he realised what staying silent would mean when asked that question.

"No," he finally answered her, "Well, maybe lately. Wasn't always, though."

"How come, then?" she asked, "How come you're quiet now?"

"We're all quiet," Nine said, referring to the other Doctors, "No point in speaking when you don't have a voice."

"Drop the superiority complex and join in with the humans," Thirteen, who was half listening to them and half listening to Martha and Nios debate genocide, called out to him.

"Drop the accent, then," he retorted.

"You first," she said.

"What's your problem with Northern accents, hmm?" Clara challeged her, "I'd rather be Northern than American any day."

"What's wrong with America?" Thirteen challenged.

"I think if you take a good look around our post-apocalyptic setting, you'll see exactly what's wrong with America," Clara said.

"The fault lies with who ordered the bomb drop or the missile launch, Clara. Are you implying that the Americans bombed their own capital in 2077?" she continued to argue.

"Wouldn't be the first time," Martha interjected.

"Please, none of you start talking about 9/11," Nine sighed, agitated, and they shut up.

"I always thought humans were too pragmatic to destroy themselves like this," Nios said, getting back onto the earlier, mildly related subject as they walked along a tarmac road that snaked by the river, in the Eastern half of the capital now.

"Maybe they are where we come from," Martha said.

"I bet the Silurians wouldn't take kindly to this. I have to remember to tell Vastra about this in a few... the next time I see her," Thirteen changed what she was going to say part way through. When were they going to see Vastra? In a few days? Weeks? Months? Years?

"What was that on the billboard, then? A 'vault'?" Clara asked anybody who wanted to answer.

"Bunker," Nine answered, "Bunker to save people from the nuclear holocaust."

"Yeah, only the rich people who can afford it, I'll bet," Thirteen muttered, "Capitalists."

"How much air do you use up whining about capitalism?" Clara questioned her, and she shrugged, like she didn't seem to know how often she subconsciously brought up the topic of taking down the bourgeoisie. "Oswin would love to live in an underground bunker."

"I couldn't do it," Martha said, "I'd get cabin fever."

"What's that?" Nios asked, changing the subject and looking towards a wrecked car. It was a very queer looking car, though, which explained her puzzlement. It had, by Clara's best guess, been red once, but was now a rusty shell with a dome on top instead of a proper window, just stretched across all of the seats. It was long, too, and had six wheels and tail fins and dirty chrome trimmings.

"The coolest car I've ever seen in my life, that's what," Martha said, going up to it.

"I stopped the Cold War from becoming a 'hot' war, you know," Clara boasted, "We were on a Soviet submarine and a Martian tried to set off the nukes because some idiot taught him what 'mutually assured destruction' was."

"Oh, come on, his people coming and saving him was what stopped him blowing stuff up," Thirteen said, "And anyway, Adam said this was the result of a war between _China_ and the US, not Russia. Not the Cold War at all, a century _after_ the Cold War."

"This is like, what they thought the future would be like in the 1950s, but it actually advanced the way they predicted," Martha said, looking at the strangely designeed car. It must get awfully hot inside that thing, Clara thought, with its glass roof, like a greenhouse, "It's weird."

"So, the nuclear apocalypse comesa and the Americans lock people up in underground Vaults?" Clara asked.

"I guess so," Thirteen shrugged.

"What the hell is _that_?" Nios interrupted again. It was always Nios who was pointing things out to them, though, this next thing Clara was sure they wouldn't have missed. It was huge, as tall as Nine, and blueish grey, hunchbacked, a tiny face, an enormous shell curving around its back and claws like a lobster sticking out if its front. Whatever it was, this crab-monster mutant, it had just emerged from within the river now on their right and had climbed up a set of steps near what looked like a statue of three men.

"Dangerous," Martha answered, drawing a gun. Real gun or stun gun, Clara didn't know, but she aimed it right at the charging thing running straight for them. Clara's question was answered when a green hologram, not dissimilar to the aesthetic of the wrist device, projected from the back of the thing, "Shit, it won't..." Martha said, because it seemed Oswin's invention hadn't taken radioactive mutant crustaceans into account when she built her gun. Clara waved her hand and sent it staggering back, but her telekinesis had good days and bad days, and that one was the latter.

"Just shoot it," Nios practically ordered Martha.

"I can't! What if it's not-"

It exploded.

Whatever it was, it exploded. Its blood was grey. It had been right there. It drenched them in its mire-like bodily fluids, like dirty water, and the bits and pieces of it remaining were on fire.

"What did you do!?" Nine shouted at her, "Those things are meant to be non-lethal! What if it wanted help!?"

"I didn't even fire! It was an accident, alright!?" Martha said.

"What was? What did you do? Did you make it explode?" Clara asked.

"I did the same thing to that as I did to your cigarette four mornings ago," Martha answered, putting the cold, un-fired gun away again.

"Spontaneous combustion is Martha's mutation," Thirteen told them (mainly Clara, though), "Like your teleporting, or Rose's eyes. I think it's a mutated horseshoe crab."

"Nice of Oswin to warn us," Nios said, "I wonder what other harmless creatures there are that have mutated into killing machines around here?"

"Because _you're _one to call someone a 'killin machine,'" Clara snapped, annoyed at the remark about Oswin she had made, "I wanna go see what that statue is." She stepped around the singed lumps of mutant crab flesh on the road and headed towards the statue, large, dark, three soldiers on it, the others following. They were large soldiers on an equally large monolith, brandishing guns in victorious poses, on a concrete embankment with decorative trees in a circle right on the edge of the river.

"What is it?" Nios asked.

"It says, 'Anchorage War Memorial,'" Nine told her, reading a bronze plaque below the bronze soldiers.

"Where's Anchorage?" Martha asked.

"Alaska," Thirteen told her.

"It says it was built in 2077," Nine continued.

"This graffiti over here says, 'Warning: Do Not Enter. Mirelurks Within,'" Clara read a poorly handwritten tag off the brick of the plinth they were in front of, the huge statues on top, "I guess that's what that thing was. A mirelurk."

"We should probably get out of here, then..."


	298. Unfriendly Persuasion

_Clara_

_Unfriendly Persuasion_

It wasn't very hard to spot the fabled 'city in a boat' Oswin had been talking about, as it leered through the fog, an enormous, grey structure. Everything they saw was grey and harsh, destoryed bricks and concrete and husks of cars swallowed up by nuclear fire, everything grey, grey or faintly green. She didn't know if she was maybe imagining the green hue, though, by whatever expectations of the nuclear apocolaypse and dangerous radiation she had in her head. The ship looked like an old aircraft carrier, but it was now permanently beached on the shore of the deep river and the hull was torn off, separating it from the main body of the ship, hanging down into the water. It reminded her of the Titanic, the way it split in half, though the river wasn't nearly deep enough for it to sink. So it just sat there and festered, the old planes on top of it rusting away. There was a bridge that extended out from it to a large structure made of brown pipes and sheets of metal, all held together by loose screws, crooked and rusted to auburn colours. This, she presumed, was the way to get onto it.

"Good place to build a city," Nine commented, "Safe, fortified."

"I'm not a fan of water," Nios said. She was electronic, after all, a synthetic, she'd probably break if she went into water. On the right, a lot further down the river bank, was a pathway made of more metal, floating on the water, which lead to a door into the broken hull. There was something going on, though, it wasn't peaceful right then. There appeared to be a dispute of some kind.

"...deserve the same rights to pure water as you!" someone shouted in a gruff voice, loud enough for them to hear as they approached, though they didn't want to get too close. Everybody Clara could see was armed, and along with that, there was a _very_ odd-looking animal with some yellow oil drums on its back. The drums read 'Aqua Pura' on the side of them, and going by what the tallish man had been saying about pure water, she assumed that was what they contained. But the thing they were on the back of, god, it looked like a cow, it was the size of a cow, except it was sort of orange and it had two heads. Then the people standing closely around it were _even_ stranger looking, and at first glance Clara thought they might be robots. They were all in dark grey armour, huge contraptions, like exoskeletons, covered in valves and vanguards and shoulder plates that would put anyone who grew up in the 1980s to shame. Along with that, one of them was holding a minigun, and another was holding something that looked _like_ a minugun, but was cuboidal and silver.

There was then a group of three who all had their backs to the Alpha Crew, but appeared to be complaining, all in equally hoarse voices, and Clara wondered if they might need some cough medicine, that they deserved pure water as well as the people in 'Rivet City,' whatever that was.

The final lot of people involved in whatever the argument was about were on the left, all normal looking people, all in black, shiny armour that left their arms and heads bare and unprotected, but one of them had a very strange gun covered in valves and tanks and cylinders and looked like it might shoot green electricity, when Clara looked at its tip.

"Humans are the priority of the Brotherhood," one of the 'robots', as Clara was now calling them in her head, said. Those on the right.

"We're not human enough for you?" one of the ones with their backs turned said, "I got four limbs and a face, don't I?"

"Barely," one of the two other armoured people, a girl who had a holstered pistol rather than whatever enormous rifle her male acquaintance had, "Ghouls don't need pure water."

"We have rights!" one of them argued.

"You don't got shit," the woman said, "You barely even have skin, so don't give me that crap."

"Radiation doesn't hurt them, I'm sick of them showing up here and trying to take our water," the man with the green gun said.

"_We're_ the ones who don't need water!? You got plenty of water! You live in a god damn river, Harkness!" the ringleader of the gruffly-voiced trio argued.

"Harkness?" Martha asked, only talking to the others in the group. Unfortunately for Martha Jones, though, the people ahead of them were quite the perceptive bunch, and they had about five guns pointed at the lot of them. "Don't shoot!"

That was when Clara got an actual look at the three people asking for water, and she nearly jumped seeing them, because they looked like... well, they looked like _zombies_. Like corpses. Rotten, hardly any hair, hardly any skin, pink patches where the muscles shone through, no noses. What was it the girl had called them? Ghouls? Ghouls was right. They were frightening.

"Who are you? What are you doing here?" the man, Harkness, asked, aiming his gun at them.

"Hey, what's that in your hand?" one of the 'robots' asked of Nine, who was still holding the gizmo Oswin had given them, the 'Pip-Boy.'

"Looks like one of those things that wanderer wore," the other robot, which sounded female, said. Clara still didn't know if they really were robots or just humans in ridiculously huge armour, "Bring that over here."

"Lower your guns," Nine bargained.

"Maybe I'll shoot you and take it from your body," the male one said, "That's some pre-War technology too complicated for Wastelanders to use. Hand it over."

"And who might you be?" Nine asked.

"What about you? You don't look like raiders. Too clean. And that accent..." the girl dressed the same as Harkness said, and it struck Clara that if these people lived two-hundred years after a global nuclear war had brought on the apocalypse, they probably didn't have a great deal of experience with the United Kingdom. Especially not with the lesser-known dialects of Northerners, and maybe even Martha's London drawl. Thirteen was their best bet if they wanted to be civilised, and Thirteen seemed to know this.

"We're just travellers," Thirteen said. It really seemed very advantageous sometimes, having her and her accent around, like they had an ambassador, or someone to vouch for, "From far away. Just recently come from the south, following the river, from Virginia. Don't know a lot about a lot."

"So you don't know what that thing in his hand is?" the girl robot asked.

"Nope, and we don't know what you are, either. Or them," Thirteen said about the 'ghouls.'

"We're Paladins with the Brotherhood of Steel," the girl said, "Here to deliver water from the Purifier to Rivet City."

"The Brotherhood have no claim to that Purifier, it's a historical monument," one of the ghouls argued. What was the Purifier?

"You built your city in the Natural History Museum, you have no room to talk," the girl next to Harkness said, "Hell, that's the only reason you know what a historical monument is to begin with. Most people don't care."

"Most people didn't lecture history before the war," the ghoul argued.

"Before the war?" Thirteen asked, "But the war was two-hundred years ago. Wasn't it?" Clara thought she'd rather they went into the boat city, Rivet City, than stay standing out in the open where they could be got at by pesky mutants at any second.

"Is Virgina under a rock? You never seen a zombie before?" the girl asked.

"Next person that calls us a zombie is getting a bullet through their brain," a male ghoul, not the history-ghoul, the one who'd been talking to start with, said angrily, "Maybe I'll get lucky and it won't kill ya, that way I getta shoot you twice."

"We're ghouls," the history-one said, "We were caught in the explosions, but the radiation kept us alive. I'm two-hunded and thirty-three years old."

"Two-thirty-three? Wow, that's older than my daughter," Thirteen said.

"If radiation doesn't hurt you, why do you need pure water?" Nios asked bluntly, since that was what the dispute seemed to be about. These Brotherhood folk were trying to deliver clean water from this 'Purifier' they kept talking about to the settlement inside the aircraft carrier, and the ghouls were angry because they weren't getting any of the 'Aqua Pura' delivered to _them_, in _their _settlement, in the History Museum.

"The Mall is too dangerous for deliveries anyway, Reyes, you know that," the girl robot from the Brotherhood, who Clara now assumed were humans, said to this history ghoul.

"'The Mall is too dangerous,' you're all so full of it," the third ghoul, another woman, said to them, "The Mall isn't too dangerous for your boys guarding the Monument."

"The Washington Monument broadcasts GNR," the same girlbot said boredly, like they'd all had this argument a lot, "GNR is good for the Wasteland. You know that that area is full of Super Mutants." Clara didn't know what in the hell a 'super mutant' was, and she really didn't think she wanted to.

"Then clear them out. That's your job, isn't it? Protecting the citizens of the Wasteland? Or do we not count as citizens of the Wasteland?" the ghoul argued, "We're just 'zombies'?"

"Dammit, Celia," the male ghoul, who hated being called a zombie, said to her.

"Can it, zombie," the girl next to Harkness said to him, purposely trying to intimidate him. She was keeping one hand on her gun, but at that, he drew out a pistol.

"You shoot her, we shoot you," the male Paladin - at least, Clara _thought_ that was what they had called themselves, threatened.

"And I'll shoot you as well," Harkness added. They'd forgotten about the TARDIS crew in the midst of their dispute.

"She's looking for an excuse to get rid of us, Gerald, don't give her one," Reyes said calmly to the male ghoul. 'Holy shit Os, we just ran into some guy called Gerald,' Clara immediately thought to her sister, thinking this was the sort of information Oswin needed in her afterlife. That someone was, by sheer coincidence, named Gerald.

"That water belongs to Rivet City, not Underworld," Harkness said.

"The water should belong to everyone in the Capital Wasteland, not just who the Brotherhood of Steel decide it should go to," Reyes argued.

"Go back to whatever grave you crawled out of and leave the city alone," the girl with Harkness said.

"Drop it, Mags," Harkness told her. Five names out of seven now. Well, eight if the two-headed cow had a name. Or, nine? Did they name each head? The cow probably didn't even know what a name was.

"What's the Purifier?" Nine asked.

"A water purifier built into the Jefferson Memorial," Reyes answered, "The Brotherhood got it working with the help of a dweller from Vault 101 seven years ago. And they still refuse to deliver water to Underworld."

"Underworld being..?" Nine promted.

"The ghoul city in the History Museum," she answered, "The only safe place for ghouls around here."

"You turned the Jefferson Memorial into a water purifier, and the Washington Monument into a radio tower? C'mon, next you'll be telling me that there's a bunch of freed slaves living in the Lincoln Memorial," Thirteen said.

"There are," the male Paladin said.

"Wow. Humanity never fails to surprise me."

"Fuck this," Gerald said angrily, and then he turned and stormed away, barging right through the middle of the TARDIS crew. He didn't smell too good, either. Clara thought that deodorant, perfume and cologne probably weren't really necessities in Post-Apocalyptia. The other two ghouls, the girls, Celia and Reyes, seemed annoyed, but followed suit immediately. It seemed that this confrontation had been going on for some time, but now Harkness and Mags finally went about unloading the Aqua Pura tankards from the back of the two-headed cow that was still taking up a lot of Clara's attention.

"Sorry about that. I'm Harkness, Chief of Security at Rivet City. Those ghouls have started attacking the food caravans we get from Megaton and Greyditch as retaliation for us getting the largest water ration in this half of D.C."

"I don't get it, why do they want clean water if they don't need clean water? If radiation doesn't affect them?" Nine asked.

"They want to feel 'equal' to humans," Mags said, "They're just corpses waiting to be put down."

"They are not, they're clearly human beings, just like you or me," Martha argued angrily, "They think and feel. That one was alive before the War! Don't you care about what it was like before?"

"Lady, the world before the war blew itself up, it doesn't seem all that great to me. Now do you want in to Rivet City, or not? Cos you're really testing my patience, and usually when people test my patience I use them for target practice," Mags said. Clara didn't think Martha would change that girl's ideology one bit, but she also didn't think Martha would stop trying unless someone shut her up.

"They're people! Are they not allowed in Rivet City, either?"

"We don't claim to be advocates for 'equality,'" Harkness said, holstering his gun on his back and lugging a water tankard with Mags, the TARDIS crew following, the Paladins about ready to leave, "Rivet City is safe, and that's all anyone wants it to be."

"We'll see you in two days, Harkness," the girl Paladin said, "Heading back to the Citadel now."

"What's the Citadel?" Nine asked.

"The Brotherhood base in this area. What's Virginia like? Is it worth us sending a scout party to?" the male Paladin joked. At least, he _seemed_ to be joking. Clara wouldn't put money on that assumption, though.

"...Sure," Thirteen said after a moment, "Scout away. Now, how is it we get into the city?"


	299. The Local Flavour

_Clara_

_The Local Flavour_

The group had splintered, as it usually did. Five people wandering around was conspicuous, so the Time Lords had split one way to talk to whoever was in charge of the boat city, and the humans and the synth had gone to talk to the locals, to see if they could maybe figure a solution to this problem involving pure water and ghouls. Neither Martha nor Clara had eaten any breakfast though, and so they were quite glad to be shoved off by Nine and Thirteen towards the marketplace built into what looked like a hanger, but it was quite small for a hanger. It seemed the only place to get cooked food was called Gary's Galley, but they made quite the scene involving currency when they tried to buy anything.

"It costs how much?" Clara asked, confused.

"Seven caps," the girl who worked there said, who had previously introduced herself as Angela when she had asked them what they wanted to eat, and had proceeded to recite the entire menu, everything on which cost the same. There was the girl and an older man, and they seemed to be father and daughter.

"Caps?" Martha frowned.

"Bottlecaps," the girl elaborated, looking at them like they were crazy. She repeated, "Bottlecaps. You don't have any bottlecaps?" Clara thought the idea of bottlecaps as currency was quite a novel thing.

"Uh, no... in Virginia we use, um... can ring-pulls as currency," Clara quickly lied. Ring-pulls seemed like a plenty believable monetary alternative.

"Well, we only take caps here," she said, "Sorry."

"Can we trade?" Martha asked, digging in her pockets, "I'll give you... a packet of wine gums." She held out a full pack of wine gums, unopened, the circular kind that were just in one long cylinder.

"A packet of _what_?" Angela asked.

"Wine gums," Martha reiterated, "Sweets. I mean, candy."

"I think I have a chapstick?" Clara suggested, "I mean, there can't be much lip balm around after the apocalypse. God, imagine if you had to live without lip balm?" Nios seemed almost disgusted at that remark, but then, Nios seemed disgusted by most human things. The end of the world was no exception.

Apparently, chapstick and wine gums was actually enough to trade with Angela for something off the 'delicious' menu that only Clara was brave enough to try, because Clara really didn't have high standards at all when it came to food. This all seemed to be a relatively recent deterioration, and she was partly convinced that her husband lay entirely to blame.

"Are you seriously gonna eat that?" Martha asked incredulously, looking at what Clara had on a plate that was somewhat dirty. What it was was a kebab with darkly coloured meat on it.

"Well, I've never had iguana before," Clara said. That was what it was. 'Iguana bits.' Which bits, she had no clue, but it was either that or squirrel bits, and she didn't think squirrels had a lot of meat on them.

"Disgusting," Martha said. The marketplace was very dark and poorly lit, an amber lamp on the table next to the small one the three of them were cramped on.

"Don't be rude, why travel through time and space and refuse to sample the cuisine?"

"I wouldn't even _call_ it cuisine," Nios commented, "But then, I don't eat. Eating is inconvenient."

"Of course it is," Martha muttered. Nios still unnerved Clara a little, but Clara was too busy with the iguana bits to take much notice. Lifting the kebab, she took a bite. "Well?"

"Surprisingly moist," Clara said eventually. It wasn't even bad. She could have sworn she'd read somewhere that people ate iguana in some parts of the world. Britain was just a country painfully reserved and squeamish when it came to food, she thought, remembering the horse meat scandal.

"I bet you say that to all the girls," Martha said, and she laughed.

"Try some of it," Clara offered, "Needs salt. I wonder what Eyeball would make of it. I've been meaning to visit her, you know."

"Eyeball? Oh, the Echo?" Martha asked, eyeing the iguana chunks Clara was sliding off the stick they were stuck on to eat with her fingers like a slob. Finger food was her favourite kind of food.

"Yeah. She lived on Phollim, this swamp planet, for years. I think she's one of the Echoes who can cook. She killed and ate this really weird thing on Eslilia once, but I refused to eat any of it," Clara sighed, "Kind of regret it now." She remembered something Eleven had said to her the other day, that Martha wouldn't like her half as much if she knew how disgusting she was. The funny thing was that Clara wasn't even going to extra effort to be gross. She just was.

"You regret not eating some random thing one of your Echoes killed?"

"Well, she brought it and showed me it like a cat bringing a dead mouse, or something. It looked a bit like a cat, actually, just blue, with green blood," Clara reminisced. She really _was_ meaning to visit Eyeball, maybe ask a few things about this apparent engagement Oswin had told her about.

"Why do you care about them all so much?" Martha asked.

"Humans rarely care so greatly for their own puppet-creations," Nios said.

"You sound like my husband," Clara said, ignoring Nios completely, "He gets weirded out when I call them my daughters."

"Your _daughters_?" Martha questioned.

"Look, Oswin's... Oswin has had a very rough life. She died when she was twenty-five years old. And now her mother's dead, and her mother was a nasty piece of work who never looked after her, and I'm the one who created her, so I owe her to be in death what she didn't have in life. That's why I worry so much about her, she's fragile. I have tabs on her right now."

"Really?"

"Yep."

"What's she doing?"

"Dunno, but right now she's about the same level of excited as she was when we got back from staying away from the TARDIS for a week and she got to see Adam Mitchell again," Clara told her, "Maybe I should play some of these video games we always get trapped in the universes of."

"This is crazy," Martha said eventually, sighing, staring around, "Kids running around down here with them selling guns, selling drugs? This is the reality everyone where we're from is so scared of."

"Is radiation really green?" Clara asked.

"No, it's invisible. People think it's green because they used to use radium and phosphor to make things glow in the dark, until they realised it was poisonous," Martha answered.

"Well, I think I'd rather be here than on the TARDIS," Clara said.

"It's always interesting to see all of the ways humanity finds to destroy itself," Nios said flatly, sitting as rigidly upright as she always did. Synths didn't slouch, apparently.

"It's always Rose starting rumours. Rose Tyler is the biggest stirrer I've ever met. I mean, you remember H&amp;T?" Clara said.

"H&amp;T was stupid and was disbanded months ago," Martha told her, "And _you_ were a part of it."

"I was not! They created themselves to terrorise me," Clara said, "The Doctor and I just got stuck in the middle, just like Adam did when he first got here. Everyone is just in everyone else's business, I hate it." She complained as she kept eating more of the iguana, which was actually turning out to be quite tasty.

"Business like what?" Martha asked her.

"Everything. All this stupid crap with Jenny and Other Clara, looking at me like it's _my_ fault. It's nothing to do with me. Let them do what they want, christ," she muttered, "Are you gonna have any of this?"

"Might as well," Martha finally gave up and picked up the smallest chunk of meat she possibly could from Clara's plate, Clara wondering if she had a tissue anywhere that she might use as a napkin when she finished her lunch. "I left, you know."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean that I left the TARDIS originally. So did Mickey, and Jack. Didn't want to come back, and now look? Stuck travelling again. It feels like there's no way out," she sighed.

"Do you want there to be a way out?"

"I don't know."

"I know what you mean. I didn't even live with him before this Dimension Crash," Clara sighed. Nios was listening. She always seemed interested in what had happened on the TARDIS before her relatively recent arrival, "Then I move in and now I don't even have a life to go back to."

"Look at these people, though. They're fighting and arguing over water, saying that people who look different don't deserve to be treated equally. It makes our problems look stupid," Martha said. It really did, Clara agreed. "What did Thirteen mean when she said 'Claragate'?" Nios laughed at that.

"Oh, I don't know," Clara lied, "She says all sorts of things, doesn't she?" She didn't know if Martha believed her.

"She meant that Clara's causing trouble by existing," Nios said.

"Trouble?" Martha asked.

"No, no, there's no-"

"To my understanding, three Doctors, Jenny, Adam, whoever Flek is, Jack and you are all apparently attracted to _her_. For some reason," Nios answered.

"_Me_!?" Martha exclaimed, "I am not."

"Okay, you, go away," Clara said to Nios, "Go find someone else to talk to, alright? Go ask around about water supplies."

"But I don't care about water supplies, I'm having fun here," Nios said coolly.

"Having fun? Well you won't be having fun when I throw you into the Eye of Harmony if you don't piss off, will you?" Clara threatened.

"What's that?"

"You'll know when it burns you to death," Clara told her sharply, and Nios finally got up and left, wandering over to the arms dealers, Clara making a note to keep an eye on her, because she doubted letting a psychopathic synth have access to dangerous, futuristic weaponry was a good idea. "Right, this morning you asked me what gossip I've heard, right? The gossip is that you fancy me."

"I don't," Martha said.

"Martha, the jig is up, I know you do, I've known for ages, but I'm not being a twat about other peoples' personal business, like Rose," Clara told her quietly.

"Clara, I totally do not fancy you."

"And that'll be totally why you made out with me two days ago," Clara said, and Martha's fake, lying smile died away.

"What?"

"Look, I'm really sorry about that, and it would be better if you just stayed not being able to remember it, but Rose won't let it drop and it's getting to ge cruel," Clara said, "Remember yesterday? When Oswin was talking about me getting my face set on fire? _You_ set my face on fire. With _your_ face. Okay?" Martha stared at her. "Listen, I'm totally happy to forget that this conversation ever happened or that Nios ever said anything."

"You erased my memories!?"

"No! The drugs did that on their own - look, I am very sorry, I needed to do it to trick you back into the ice bath," Clara explained, "It was all done with malicious intent, so I apologise."

"You took advantage of... of my-!?"

"Yes, and saved probably billions of human lives from those Strodrybs in the process, and also _I_ _got my face burnt off_. I have totally been punished enough for it, alright?" Clara said, "That's why they're staring at you. It's why they're staring at me. Well, that and Jenny... it's why Thirteen said 'Claragate.'" Martha didn't seem to know what to say. "You know we're still friends. And maybe the next time Rose starts making jokes, you should make _her_ spontaneously combust, not the mirelurk."

"I'm gonna start Prank War Three when we get back onto that bloody spaceship..." Martha complained, annoyed that all of her secrets were not remotely secret at all, and hadn't been for some time. "Wait, does Mickey know anything?"

"I don't think so," Clara said, "I know what to do. Lock the bathroom. Strike up a deal with Adam and Oswin to use _theirs_."

"Adam and Oswin have a bathroom!?"

"Oh, yeah. They're the only ones. And maybe Nine and River. I'm sure my sister will be up for it. She's up for anything."


	300. The American Dream

**AN: 800 chapters? Do I have a life? Apparently not. Highly likely there will be a third part of 3D9C/4D12C. Probably called, 5TL13C or something, which doesn't rhyme but hey, variety.**

_Nine_

_The American Dream_

"Gosh, this place sure is a maze, huh?" Thirteen said to him as they walked through a series of corridors that were all grey, steel and identical, getting funny looks cast their direction by Rivet City's denizens because they were, as people kept telling them, 'too clean.' "I heard what Clara said about you being quiet, by the way."

"Oh, and here I thought you were too busy arguing about genocide to pay any attention to me," Nine said.

"Well, no offence, but I was paying attention to _her_. I've been married to her for longer than you've been around in this regeneration," Thirteen told him. He wondered if she should speak so loudly, because he had no clue if anybody around them might be homophobic. But the world had ended in 2077, and hopefully before then it had adjusted in a way that made anybody who wasn't a heterosexual equally accepted.

"How long's that, then?" he asked. He was sure they'd passed the same iron-wraught door with a wheel lock on it about twenty times already. A sign on the wall said they were in the 'Weatherley Hotel.' Really? _This_ was a hotel?

"About-"

"-finest establishment in the Capital Wasteland!" someone said very loudly in a room on their left, cutting off Thirteen just as she seemed about to reveal to him. It was a booming, mechanical voice, but perhaps the thing that surprised the both of them most was that whatever it was was speaking with recieved pronunciation.

"What the-?" Nine asked, as they both looked through an open door together and saw a reception desk with a woman stood behind it, but on the left was one of the strangest robots the Doctor thought he had ever seen. It was silver and dirty, its body was a large sphere and it seemed to have three arms, all of them long, reminding Nine of a squid. Just a floating squid, made of metal, arms all with contraptions on the end, a buzzsaw, for example. Along with three arms, it had three eyes, on bent stalks that kept focusing and defocusing like a camera lens.

"I do believe that robot is speaking the Queen's English," Thirteen said to him, making him jump by copying the poncey accent of the robot and getting it exactly right.

"Don't do that, it's weird," Nine told her.

"Oh yeah?" she crossed her arms, going back to her general US drawl, the typical accent with no specific regional allocation, "What would you prefer? I start talking like a southern belle, put on a cowboy hat and yell 'yeehaw?'"

"Yes, definitely. Do you have a lasso in that bag of yours?"

"You're so funny," she said dryly, shaking her head, "Excuse me, robot, why do you talk like that?" she called over to it, and it floated over, with its buzzsaw and its gun.

"Greetings to the Weatherly Hotel, I am Mister Buckingham, your bartender for your stay," the robot said, speaking in the most pompous, pre-programmed way possible.

"'Mister Buckingham?'" Nine questioned.

"Yes sir, at your service, sir," it said, then it turned to Thirteen, "I was programmed with this voice to make myself seem more welcoming to potential customers, miss."

"Huh... Well, we're not staying, I don't think," Thirteen said, "But who knows a lot around here? Who's good to talk to?"

"Recently, the Capitol Preservation Society has been seeing more of our guests. Of course, the Weatherly Hotel should always be your first stop when visiting our great city, the greatest settlement in the Capital Wasteland," Mister Buckingham (a stupid name, Nine thought) explained. He thought it was interested how everybody was calling the ruins of Washington D.C. the 'Capital Wasteland.' He wondered what they called other parts of the world now, "You might also be inclined to visit the fine shops of the Rivet City marketplace, and visit the Muddy Rudder bar on the lowest deck. Our city is also home to the advanced laboratories that got the Purifier up and running."

"The Purifier? Tell us about the Purifier," Nine asked.

"Ah! The pride of the Wasteland, the only reliable source of clean water for hundreds of miles. Built into the Jefferson Memorial, you see, in the possession of the Brotherhood of Steel, won from the clutches of the Enclave seven years ago," he explained. Finally, someone who didn't ask a thousand questioned and just automatically gave answers.

"But who _are _the Brotherhood of Steel? Those goons in the armour?" Thirteen questioned.

"Yes, of course, Power Armour, miss. From what I understand, they protect the citizens of the Wasteland not lucky enough to have the protection of the fine Rivet City security team, while also scavenging advanced, pre-War technologies. They are based in the Citadel, on the other side of the river, but why travel across the river when you are safe enough here, in Rivet City? One-hundred and twenty bottlecaps for a room."

"Bottlecaps? As currency? That is so cool," Thirteen beamed at the robot, which seemed to be quite a personable creation. Nine wondered if it was an artificial intelligence, but he doubted it. Nios was an artificial intelligence, and she wouldn't be caught dead serving humans in a hotel.

"Two Mars Bars says that's where Adam and Oswin are," Nine bet, "This Citadel. Gone to scavenge advanced weapons while we're stuck here asking about water."

"You're on," Thirteen said. Adam and Oswin had stayed on the other side of the river, and apparently that was where this 'Citadel,' this base, was. He just hoped they didn't bring anything _too_ dangerous back. Like a nuclear bomb, for instance. Look at all the chaos nuclear weapons had already caused planet Earth, either in this reality or their own reality. He'd been around plenty of times during the Cold War.

"So, say I want to know something, where would I go?" Nine asked Mister Buckingham.

"Mr Abraham Washington of the Capitol Preservation Society is a spectacular fellow who can answer any question you put to him, unless of course, your question is, 'Can you book me a room at the Weatherly Hotel?' because-"

"Yes, yes, you work for the hotel, we get it," Nine said, cutting him off. He was just a walking advertisement for a hotel built into the lower decks of a beached, decayed ship, it wasn't exactly what the Ninth Doctor would describe a luxury establishment, "Which way is this Capitol Preservation Society, then?"

* * *

"Why did you _really_ regenerate into a girl?" Nine asked Thirteen. Now that he spent more time with her, and just her, she just snowballed into a even more of an enigma than she had been before. A Doctor with a wife? With a personal life? A Doctor who seemed almost free of the grievous clutches the outcome of the Time War still had on Nine? On Ten? Even on Eleven?

It had taken some time to coax directions out of Mister Buckingham, because he kept trying to sell them a room, and when they confessed they really didn't think they would need a room, and even if they did, they didn't have any bottlecaps with which to pay for one, he called them 'time wasters' and attempted to have one of the security guards who patrolled throw them out. They were asked kindly to leave the 'Mr Handy,' as the guard had called Buckingham, alone, in case it 'went on the fritz again,' and then the guard was the one who _actually_ told them where the Capitol Preservation Society was.

"What do you mean?"

"You always say you changed because of Clara."

"Have you ever really talked to Clara? Just you bring up Sally, or Esther, or Old Janey, and you'll see that girl's true, queer colours come shining right through," Thirteen said, saying these girls' names somewhat bitterly. They were climbing down a wide stairwell at this point.

"Right, and who are Sally, Esther and... what was the last one?"

"Old Janey. Jane Austen. Don't even get me started on what my wife's like around that damn woman - y'know, I used to like her, but now? Not so much. Don't tell Clara I said so, she'll kill me," Thirteen said, "Really shouldn't have mentioned those others, though..."

"Sally and Esther?"

"Yeah. Should _not _have let that slip. Considering everyone currently thinks the second one is dead... anyway, the answers will come if you just have patience, Doctor," Thirteen told him, and he didn't even know how much he cared about who those people were. Sally and Esther. Neither name struck enough of a chord with him to bring up a face, or a surname, or anything. Maybe he hadn't met either of them yet. "Look, my point is, my wife is totally, super-gay, okay? And that's why I'm a girl. That and I was sort of bored of being a guy, and I mean, I've met Missy. She always seems to be having great fun when she commits genocide, tries to assasainate a key historical figure who isn't supposed to die, seducing the leaders of intergalactic drug cartels. Whatever it is she does. Stalks vampires."

"Stalks vampires!?"

"Dammit, I really gotta be quiet... never mind. Forget it. Oh, look, here we are, the Capitol Preservation Society!" Thirteen beamed and went through a door. They were on the upper deck of a room with two levels, the top one just a thin balcony with a staircase down on one side, but below them their was a vast array of objects, or so it seemed, with a very old man examining a large wall covered in miscellaneous pieces of paper Nine couldn't read from such a distance. He was paying more attention to the ancient fighter jet hanging by steel cables from the ceiling.

"This doesn't look like the kind of place you should come looking for whoever's in charge of water distribution," Nine said.

"Sounds to me like this Brotherhood are the ones who control the water, anyway," Thirteen said.

"Which means we're relying on Adam and Oswin to ask the right questions, and actually go there in the first place," he said. Even though Thirteen had bet two Mars Bars against him, Nine thought, going by her lack of argument, that she actually agreed with him in where they had flocked to. It seemed like exactly the kind of place they would be. Big base of technologically advanced do-gooders. Nine was almost jealous.

"This place is _cool_, though," Thirteen said, fast-walking over to the staircase down where the old man was, who had just looked around to see who was there. He beamed quite widely at the sight of visitors. Looking around at all the old artefacts and bits of other junk, Nine assumed this was a museum they were in.

"Welcome to the Capitol Preservation Society!" he exclaimed.

"Happy to be here," Thirteen said as Nine caught up with her.

"What _is_ the Capitol Preservation Society, then?" he asked the man.

"Why, it's only the last curated museum of American history in the Wasteland. 'America' is what this country used to be called, before the Great War, and this used to be the capital city, Washington D.C.," he said.

"An American history musuem? Wow," Thirteen said.

"It's always important people don't forget the world that came before this one," he said, "At least, that's what _I _think. _I_ am Abraham Washington."

"Abraham Washington?" Nine asked incredulously. He'd sort of thought that Mister Buckingham had made that up as a joke name, since it was just as ridiculous as his own, but apparently not.

"What are these on the wall?" Thirteen asked. There was what looked like an American flag hanging on one of the walls, but it didn't look like any American flag Nine had ever seen. It had all the red and white stripes, but it only had thirteen stars, one big one in the middle of the upper-left corner on the dark blue background, and twelve more organised around it, like a clockface. He wondered what had happened to the rest of the states.

"Some of the most important documents in our history. This here is my pride and joy, brought to me seven years ago with the assistance of a hired mercenary, it's called-"

"The Declaration of Independence!?" Thirteen exclaimed.

"Spoken like a true patriot," Nine commented.

"Oh, you can shut up, you're plenty excited too," she said, grinning as she went to ogle the sheet of paper stuck to the wall in a battered, dirty frame. A very tacky thing to hang such a document inside of, "God, this is the most important document in American history. And look here, the Constitution, the whole Constitution, a copy of the Emancipation Proclamation, the Gettysburg Address! I was there when Lincoln made that address. '_W__e are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure_.'" She quoted Lincoln. Nine had been there, too. This was a shared memory.

"Never could handle his drinks though, poor Abe," Nine said with a fake-sigh. Abraham Washington stared at them.

"You can't have been there, it was four-hundred years ago," Washington said.

"Ah, don't question it, don't question it..." Thirteen said, "You know what the last thing I said to him was? I say, 'Honest Abe, old buddy old pal old sport, next time you wanna go to the theatre, you change your mind and stay at home.' Did the man listen? Of course not! Ended up with a bullet through his brain, but god damn he stuck by his promises to his wife, that man."

"You didn't say that to Lincoln, you said it to Kennedy, and not with those exact words," Nine said, a little irked at her embellishing her words, _their_ words, "Remember? Kennedy was the one you told not to go to the theatre. You told Lincoln to be always be in a covered car when he went to Dallas."

"I did? Oh, that explains it..."


	301. Stealing Independence

_Clara_

_Stealing Independence_

"I reckon I might call her, you know," Clara sighed.

"Who?" Martha asked. For the last hour where they'd been sat around in the marketplace, Martha had stayed a few feet away from Clara and had only spoken when spoken to.

"Oswin," Clara answered. Oswin must know what to do about the water. Everybody they spoke to just said ghouls didn't need clean water, that radiation healed them, so Clara really didn't understand why they needed pure water anyway. Just so they didn't feel left out? She seemed to be swinging towards the human side of the argument, by nothing but pure logic. They had a second problem apart from that one, though, "Oswin must know how to track Nios."

"You're the one who told her to go somewhere else," Martha said.

"Well, _yeah_, but, I didn't think she'd wander off, did I? God, this must be what the Doctor feels like all the time, mustn't it?" she sighed. It was probably exactly what the Doctor felt like, his companions always ending up in weird places. Well, his or her. Though, from what she'd seen so far, Thirteen didn't seem like the type of person to just leave her wife behind to get lost.

"Says you, I hardly ever got lost places, not by him just forgetting me," Martha said, "I once got lost by Jenny blowing up a tunnel and causing a cave-in. Within the first five minutes of her life, too."

"He's always leaving me places. Well, he used to, he doesn't really anymore, but I have to ask and keep a really close eye on him to make him stay with me. Threaten him by saying I'll withhold sex, or something," Clara said as they patrolled the edge of the marketplace for the fourth time. Nios was nowhere to be seen, that was for sure. "Ugh. Let's just go this way." She cut into a some corridor, everything inside the ship completely identical and grey and steel.

"As if you could stand to withhold sex from anybody," Martha quipped, following her without protest. Well, what else were they going to do? Talk about their feelings while eating more iguana? _No thank you_, Clara thought. Mainly to the iguana. She didn't think it was agreeing with her.

"Mmm, true, I'm a sucker for boys _and _girls," Clara said. _Sometimes literally_, she was sure Oswin would add, were she there. Thankfully she wasn't.

"What's that like?" Martha asked.

"Huh?"

"You know," Martha said when Clara frowned at her, not really understanding, "Being... well, being, _you know_."

"Oh. Queer?" Clara asked.

"Are you allowed to say that?"

"Am I allowed to say 'queer?'"

"Well, I don't know how it works, do I?" Martha said in a tone of voice Clara might describe as defensive. Maybe it _was_ defensive. She was more preoccupied with the fact everywhere they went looked the exact same, and she was sure they were going to end up lost.

"_I_ can say it, about myself," Clara said, "But if someone else were to call me a queer, that's out of order. Can't go around calling everybody queers now, can you? Unless you know for a fact they're okay with it."

"Right."

"Were you asking me what it's like to be bisexual?" Clara asked, and Martha shrugged, which she took to mean yes, "Uh... I don't know. It's just, girls, are _amazing_. But then boys can also be, you know. They can be _okay_. Not _amazing_, but _alright_."

"Wait, you have a preference..? Does that happen?"

"Yeah. I like girls way more than I like boys. I tried to be a lesbian once, it lasted for like, two weeks, then this guy who was pretty hot walked past and I just couldn't do it," Clara said, "Not that all bisexuals are shallow, that's just me." She was just generally superficial. 'Earth to sister, come in Oswin,' she thought, assuming talking to Oswin telepathically would be quicker than ringing her. '_Earth sucks._' 'Martha's asking me about being bisexual.' '_She has the hots for you. Literally._'

"How do you know, though?"

"You always know, it's just a process of self-acceptance. See, if you asked Oswin, she'd be so useless, because she's from some stupidly liberated era. She was born after Jack, and you know what Jack's like. Same era," Clara explained, "Thing is, I was _so_ repressive. I was just like, 'it doesn't matter what I think about girls, because I still like boys, so I'm straight.' That's what it was like, back in... uh... 2003, I think. Because you have to think, it was such a little known thing back then, like, there were no bisexuals on TV or anywhere. I mean, arguably, you have literary figures like Woolf or Whitman, but I didn't care about Woolf or Whitman when I was fourteen... anyway. What I mean is, it took one of my friends coming out to even realise it was a legitimate possibility and not some myth. And then in society you just get reduced to a sex-crazed weirdo who's always up for a threesome, nothing is further from the truth. Speaking generally, not about just me, before you start saying I _am_ a sex-crazed weirdo always up for a threesome. I'm not up for a threesome at all, thank you very much."

"I didn't even mention threesomes," Martha said. Clara didn't care what Martha had and hadn't mentioned, the stereotype had annoyed her for a good decade now. '_Did she ask if you're up for a threesome yet_?' 'No, shut up! Do you know where Nios is?' '_What? She's with you._' Clara maintained what she called 'radio-silence' for a few moments. '_Have you lost a dangerous synthetic psychopath, Clara Oswald!?_' 'Might have.' Martha interrupted, "Are you talking to Oswin?"

"Yeah."

"About what!? About this conversation!?"

"Martha, she's my sister, I love her, I tell her everything," Clara said, "But I was asking her about Nios. Oswin is the last person to judge anyone questioning their sexuality. Well, maybe not the _last _person, but still."

"I'm not questioning anything!"

"Okay, okay! But I was asking if she had a way to track Nios, that was all," Clara said, turning right into another door, very surprised when she came face to face with a fighter jet hanging from the ceiling. She was even more surprised when she heard two painfully familiar voices, one of them like music to her ears, having what sounded like an argument about if it had been Andrew Johnson who had said something or Andrew Jackson. Nine and Thirteen.

"And do they?"

"I don't know, all I know is she had a massive go at me for losing Nios in the first place," Clara answered, heading down some stairs onto the lower level where the Doctors were, the pair of them getting some strange looks from an old man nearby.

"Ah, Clara will know," Thirteen said, spotting them, "Clara, was it Johnson or Jackson who told me I was 'too red' and then kicked me out of the White House?"

"I imagine most presidents of America would think _you_ were too red, sweetheart," Clara told her.

"Mmm, true..."

"Sorry, did you two say you lost Nios?" Nine asked them, staring like they were a pair of idiots.

"I told her to go away for a moment because she was being awful!" Clara protested, "She was being mean to Martha."

"She was? Why?" Thirteen asked.

"I'll tell you later," Clara said.

"What!? No!" Martha protested.

"I, uh... I _won't_ tell you later. Sorry," Clara said. She probably _would _tell her later, but didn't want to get into one with Martha.

"How do you lose someone!?" Nine exclaimed. '_You guys have a problem._' 'Problem? What sort of problem?' Clara focused on Oswin while Martha defended her to Nine. '_She's in some subway tunnels._' 'She's left the boat!?' '_Oh, did you actually make it to Rivet City?_' 'Yes, but carry on.' '_Well, I don't know where she's going. You'll have to follow her, into the city._' 'You said don't go into the city!' '_That was before the lot of you lost a dangerous android! You'll be fine! Leave the boat, go North, find Anacostia Crossing. Then talk to me. It's a subway station._' 'Are you not coming!? Oswin, I would feel a lot better if you and your giant nerd of a boyfriend were coming with us.' '_Oh my stars. Fine. Get to the bridge that goes to the other side of the river and wait._' 'Thank you.'

Interrupting what the others were saying, Clara told them all what Oswin had just told _her _telepathically about Nios heading into the actual heart of Washington D.C., because a large amount of the area they were in didn't even seem to be built up, it was just barren.

"If you had just kept an eye on-" Nine began.

"Well we didn't! End of! Nios is losg and we're going to have to get her back before she goes on a killing spree, or something."

"And I thought the iguana bits were grim..." Martha muttered.


	302. Not Of This World

**AN: So I haven't written for like three days because of this mishap involving me paying £20 to basically break my iPhone and it having to go get fixed, and since I generally write everything on my iPhone this has been highly disconcerting. Anyway, basically, there are a good few chapters of this storyline left probably, but I ended up spending yesterday and this afternoon writing a Whouffluff chapter that is actually pretty cute and vaguely important for some character development, and I guess it is set on the evening of Day 106 (that's Today, if anyone lost track), do you guys want that uploading or not? Because if there's too much Whouffle, since I just did a whole storyline that was very Whouffle-biased, I'll just leave it, but it's only the one chapter and there's not scheduled to be Whouffle doing anything together for a long while, basically. Just let me know if you either want the Whouffle chapter or have an incredible aversion to the remotest idea of another Whouffle chapter.**

_Clara_

_Not Of This World_

It really was a desolate place, this future. It was just cold and barren, even where the buildings grew, they were blackened and shattered just like the trees and the barely existent plant life. The only trees were petrified, dark, they didn't grow, they hadn't grown for two centuries, it was like looking at a world that had been frozen. She said to, to Thirteen, she said it was as though looking into a snow globe, or a model village. Something created and then destroyed. Nios was right about it being a symbol of the destruction of human nature, she told Thirteen while she was smoking another cigarette.

"I know that everything you're saying is a load of crap, Clara," Thirteen said to her, "Grade A, uh, what is it the Brits say? Blagging. Grade A blagging. That's all you do in English Literature." Martha laughed at that, because Martha seemed to have been listening in. Clara blew smoke at Thirteen for that, and Nine ignored all three of them, following the waypoint on the wrist device to Anacostia Crossing that Oswin had ordered them to go to. They didn't run into much of anything on their way. No more critters.

Adam Mitchell and Oswin were not alone, though. They were with two of the robot people, armoured soldiers, Nine had said, belonging to some Brotherhood. Brotherhood of Iron. Some metal. She didn't remember, she hadn't been paying attention, she had very guiltily been watching Thirteen have a battle with a few stray blonde hairs, trying to tuck them behind her ear, but they didn't seem to be long enough so as she walked along next to Clara she was still trying to fix it.

"Okay, whose fault is it, specifically, that you lost the psycho android?" Oswin questioned immediately, and Martha and Nine both gave Clara accusatory glares. Thirteen looked at her own feet because she didn't seem to want a part in anything, but she still looked as though she thought it was funny, "I should've guessed it. My own flesh and blood."

"You're not made of flesh and blood though, are you?" Clara challenged, really not thinking her words through. What, exactly, would these Brotherhood people who were apparently in the business of stealing advanced technology think if they knew Oswin was a hologram? Thirteen elbowed her gently, and Clara jolted like she'd received an electric shock. Well, no, she didn't. She felt like she did, when in actuality what happened was that she froze completely.

"Very funny, Clars," Oswin sighed.

"Why are the robots here?" Nine asked rudely.

"Well, the Brotherhood are here to help us out in exchange for some detailed schematics about a new purification device for the Wasteland," Oswin said, "Unless _you_ want to fight off the hordes of Super Mutants that live inside the Mall and the Capitol Building?"

"What's a Super Mutant?" Martha asked.

"A bit like the Incredible Hulk," Adam said, "They're huge and screen and stupid and they will shoot you on sight, and the ones through this subway station over there," he pointed to a large sort of glass roof nearby that must hide the entrance to the underground, "probably have miniguns and missile launchers."

"…Right…" Martha muttered.

"Not to mention the raiders, the feral ghouls, the mirelurks and the landmines. Thank god the deathclaws don't roam down here," Adam said.

"He is _such_ a nerd," Clara said to Oswin, "I couldn't even put up with dating somebody like that."

"Thanks, Clara," said Oswin coldly, "Maybe _I_ couldn't put up with being married to _that_." She waved a hand at Thirteen, who was affronted.

"Hey! That's my wife," Clara said defensively, which got her shifty looks from Nine and Martha. The latter especially. Martha didn't seem to like Thirteen.

"Yeah, well, she's all… blonde. And short."

"Better than Flek."

Oswin was about to launch into a genuine, offended argument with Clara.

"Okay, yeah, that's enough," Thirteen cut them off, "What is it you say to kids when you go out places? Don't embarrass us all? Behave yourselves? Next thing we're gonna be going down the candy aisle of a supermarket and you'll both be crying because you want a bar of chocolate. Now shut up."

Apparently this Brotherhood lot knew everything. They knew everything because Adam and Oswin had _told_ them everything. Clara wondered if they weren't being too trusting, but apparently that was the only way they'd been let into this Citadel complex, which was apparently built into the ruins of the Pentagon, by ranting on endlessly about aliens and time travel and parallel universes and novel ways to purify water with the viciously limited resources a nuclear wasteland had to offer. A plentiful supply of rubble and rusty cars, at least. The other thing everyone seemed to be very sure of was that the only way to get into the city itself was through the subways. Clara thought that the subways would have been destroyed in the atomic onslaught of the 'Great War,' as people seemed to call the destruction of 2077, but apparently some of the tunnels were still standing.

They most definitely _were_ still standing, Clara noted a while later, because now they were inside them. It was one of the strangest feelings in the world, walking down a metro tunnel, down the train tracks. She had lived in London for a while, she remembered the chaos of the Underground, the crowds of people who all knew exactly where they were going, the people who always tried to cop a feel on the train during rush hour. But it was silent. They walked through the gates one usually needed a ticket for in a gloom only penetrated by torches, dust and filth dancing in the glow, then they were on a balcony that went in one direction to a different entrance, and on the left and the right were broken escalators up and down. None of them were working, but they went in single file down the closest. The silence was a booming crescendo, she thought her ears might burst at the sheer lack of noise. Just footsteps and whispers and mechanical clanks of armour and weapons, and she felt a layer of grime building itself up on her nose and tried to rub her face clean with her coat sleeve.

"What?" she asked Thirteen, very quietly, when Thirteen laughed. Laughed at _her_.

"What are you doing?" she asked.

"Getting dirt off my nose," Clara answered her.

"You look pretty when you're covered in dirt."

"You literally say the weirdest things to me sometimes," Clara said. She didn't care what Thirteen thought. She wasn't going to let her face get dirty. Martha shot a grim look in their direction that Clara only just caught. When she looked to her left at Thirteen, she saw Thirteen looking at Martha with her eyebrows raised in mild questioning, with some annoyance, but Martha didn't see this. Clara suspected she knew what was going on, and she would rather not be involved, though she always somehow ended up being intrinsically involved in _everything._ She hated it. What she rather liked the idea of right then was shutting herself up for a few days with her husband and not speaking to anybody else. She had spent the last four days milling about with only his company. She thought she would enjoy him a lot more if they did what they used to do for stretches of time and just stayed quiet and out of the way. If that were even possible.

Adam and Oswin turned out to be very amusing to watch, as was Nine. While the three other girls remained disengaged, Nine was highly interested in their environment, and kept asking questions about the history of this alternate Earth, the way it worked, why all the cars looked so funny, what the odd device Oswin was carrying around that looked like a scanner and kept flashing blue was. Clara didn't catch what it was, and suspected Oswin had avoided the question. In turn, the Brotherhood of Whatever asked Nine more questions. Clara felt oddly proud of her baby sister when she saw how happy she was with Adam Mitchell, and thought she might be prouder still if Oswin ever actually admitted having feelings for him when the situation was anything less than life-or-death. She had been dating him for, what? It must be very nearly two months. And she still maintained that she didn't like the boy one bit. And now they were living together. And Thirteen let slip that at some ambiguous point in the future they were married.

Back on the topic of the future and her desire to isolate herself from everybody except for the Eleventh Doctor, and she didn't even know where this heinously heterosexual urge had come from while she had Thirteen floating along on her left, she turned to ask her wife a question.

"In the future," she began as quietly as she could.

"Oh, here we go…"

"How much time do we spend together?" She felt like the master of getting answers out of Thirteen about her future without it seeming like she was damaging anything.

"All of it. It's terrible. Really," she said, "And you always say, 'you can't spend _too_ much time together.' And I'm sure that you can. That's the sort of thing you say on Boxing Day, because that's when I have to force you to visit everybody with me."

"What happens to everybody?" Martha asked.

"Boredom, mainly," Thirteen said quickly, "Boredom and mass, savage dislike for my charming wife here."

"Excellent," Clara said sarcastically.

"What about us?" Oswin asked. Thirteen sighed. Over the weeks, because it really had been weeks now, she had gone from refusing to say a word and saying rather a lot about what happened. People leaving, hints about whoever was staying.

"You don't leave."

"Oh, great, I get stuck with her," Oswin muttered.

"I love you, too," Clara said to her. She scowled, but Clara just smiled.

"Hang on," said Nine, Nine who had not been listening, Nine who blocked out the identical sounds of the Twins arguing with one another. If they never called each other by name, and if one were to close their eyes, it would be impossible to tell where one ended and the other began. When marriage became too overpowering and a prosthetic leg burst into existence. "Look where she's gone." He held the wrist device up to Oswin.

"Oh, we should have guessed," Adam, looking over her shoulder, commented.

"What? Where is she?" Martha asked.

"The Lincoln Memorial, it looks like," Adam said, "Hasn't moved. I guess maybe because the synths are slaves of humanity and he's, you know, the Great Emancipator or whatever."

"Some fine knowledge of American history," Thirteen said, and Clara for the life of her couldn't deduce if Thirteen was being sarcastic or not, "Onward through the tunnels, then? To the Mall!"


	303. I Put A Spell On You

_Clara_

_I Put A Spell On You_

"I _so_ don't think this iguana is agreeing with me," Clara muttered.

"Gross," Thirteen commented next to her. They were still walking down metro traintracks. The only things they'd run into were some critters that seemed to be ginormous, irradiated cockroaches, called 'radroaches,' apparently, that were the size of a small dog and particularly terrifying. Oswin found it the scariest out of all of them, her being the least used to bugs of any sort, let alone giant ones.

"Nice to see you have plenty of concern for my safety," Clara retorted.

"Oh, you'll be fine," said Thirteen, "Don't be a baby."

"I could be ill!"

"So what? I _used_ to try and stop you from doing stupid things, a long time ago, but these days I've given up. It's your life, your life to end in dumb ways four times a week," Thirteen said. What a comforting thought.

"Clara accidentally kill herself a lot in the future, then?" Oswin asked.

"Yeah, and usually I can't even say anything about it because she says the same thing to me."

"How come?" Oswin and Clara both asked identically. Whenever they spoke like that neither of them ever acted like they had noticed, not like when you spoke the same time as a friend and then laughed about it and called it a jinx.

"Because I once died in a stupid way."

"How'd you die?" they both asked again. Martha looked between the Twins like she was unnerved. Adam Mitchell seemed used to them by now.

"Well, I can't go telling you that, can I? But it was dumb. All I'll say is this," she turned to Clara, "The first words you said to me, this me, were, 'You are an idiot, you are so bloody stupid.'"

Clara was distracted from this insightful nugget of information, this beacon into her future, when they turned down a right curve in the train tunnel and were faced with a train. When she saw it, she jumped, almost made to leap out of the way, drag Oswin with her, but it was still. This train probably hadn't moved for two-hundred years, it had just stopped. Power had probably been cut by the bombs was her first thought, but then she saw the rubble around it. The tunnel had caved in ahead of them, so where were they supposed to go? It was a dead end. Both of the Doctors were very interested in the train, though, as the Brotherhood were heading to the right towards a door Clara now saw, an access tunnel, it said on it.

"Ah, I wouldn't look in there, if I were you, Clars," Oswin said quietly, taking Clara's arm when she wanted to follow Thirteen to see.

"What? Why?"

"It's a lot of skeletons," Oswin told her, "People who died on the way to work, starved down here. Subway tunnels aren't shelter enough from the apocalypse. They'll be dead or feral ghouls."

"Don't think so, this area's cleared of ferals," a Brotherhood Whoever interjected.

"Ferals?" Clara asked. She supposed that she didn't want to see the skeletons in the train, "Feral _ghouls_? But we saw those ghouls, didn't we, Martha?"

"You saw ghouls? Where?" Adam Mitchell asked, "At Rivet City?"

"And you've been killing them?" she questioned the Brotherhood.

"No, no, there are ghouls and feral ghouls, you know?" Oswin said, "The feral ghouls' brains have been rotted by radiation. They'll just attack you on sight."

"What were there ghouls at Rivet City for? Ghouls don't live there," Adam said.

"We've had some issues with a group coming over from Underworld and trying to get us to deliver water to them. A few weeks ago they started retaliating against Rivet City by starting a protection racket with some of the trade caravans that come along the Potomac," one of the two Brotherhood members explained. They both sounded like men, and Clara hadn't a clue which was which. Oswin had told her names and ranks, but she'd started going on saying something nerdy and likely irrelevant, so Clara had stopped paying attention.

"Why can't you just give them the water?" Martha asked.

"They don't need clean water," the other Brotherhood member said, "Radiation practically heals them, keeps them alive for so long. It's only a minority anyway, but we have to prioritise the humans of the Wasteland over them."

"They'll pick a fight with the wrong trader one of these days and wind up dead, anyway," the first one told Martha, "That, or they get sicked by a Yao Guai." Clara didn't think she wanted to know what a 'Yow Gwy' was, because it sounded like it might kill her as soon as look at her.

"Look, if you wanna talk to the ghouls, Clara, go talk to the ghouls," Oswin shrugged, following the Brotherhood into this access tunnel, Nine and Thirteen apparently now sick of looking to the train full of skeletons, "The Museum of History is in the Mall as well as the Lincoln Memorial. All sorts of things up here. They just don't like humans that much."

"Well, maybe I will," Clara said. Maybe she would. Maybe they could just... _talk_ to the ghouls. Maybe one of the Doctors or one of the geniuses or even Martha could tell them how to get clean water for themselves. Collect and purify rain, it must still rain, surely? As dry as the ground outside was? And the others could all find Nios. Nios wouldn't listen to Clara, anyway. Would Nios listen to anyone?

"So, is this place more or less dangerous than Atlantis?" Martha asked Adam or Oswin. Whichever of them cared to answer.

"Less," said Adam, "Well, I guess it depends where you are. The Deathclaw Sanctuary is probably more dangerous than the Lighthouse with the bathysphere in it, but Megaton is a lot less dangerous than Persephone."

"Oh,yeah, Megaton the town built around an undetonated atomic bomb? _That_ Megaton?" Oswin argued with him jokingly. Who the hell would build a town around an undetonated atomic bomb!?

"Alright, then," Adam corrected himself, "The Citadel. The Citadel is a lot less dangerous than Persephone."

"What's Persephone?" Martha asked.

"The prison," Oswin answered, "Awful place. Be glad you didn't have to see it." Clara suddenly felt that getting her foot shot off and a crossbow bolt through her face were not nearly as bad as the horrors which may have awaited them in Atlantis' underwater prison.

"Aw, c'mon," one of the Brotherhood complained suddenly. Clara couldn't really see what they were complaining about until they all filed out of the maintenance tunnel into a small room with an ancient-looking computer terminal. This terminal was sitting on a desk with the screen smashed, "Looks like someone's punched it to death." The door on the right was shut tight, and it wasn't a normal door at all. It was like a steel door in a ship, with wheels to turn and locks to slide and mechanisms to move. Clearly, the terminal controlled the door, and something had smashed the terminal.

Oswin walked up to the thing, made a fist, and put her hand through the shattered screen.

"Nios did it," Oswin deduced, "Human-sized hand broke it and tore out one of the cables, and recently."

"Well, what do we do, then?" Martha asked.

"Gotta head out and use a different station," one of the Brotherhood said. They'd already been trudging around down there for over an hour, they couldn't go all the way back.

There was a window above the desk with the terminal into another room, and Oswin cupped her hands around her eyes to peer inside.

"There's another terminal through there," she said.

"Yeah, we haven't found any technology yet that allows us to walk through solid concrete," one of the soldiers said, almost mockingly. Then the eyes of Oswin, Adam, Martha, Nine, and Thirteen all panned over to Clara.

"I'm banned from computers," Clara said, "Remember?"

"Oh, boo-hoo, Clars," Oswin said.

"I'm lifting your ban for the next ten minutes," Nine said, and Clara groaned, "Don't want another episode like three and a half months ago, do we?"

"Before you ask, yes, you _are _still banned from computers in the future," Thirteen told her, and she grimaced.

"Fine, fine, whatever," Clara complained, going over to the wall and trying to see how thick it was. About a foot.

"What? What's she gonna do?" a soldier asked. She really couldn't tell the difference at all, no matter how hard she tried. Was it ever like this with people and the Twins?

"A magic trick," Clara answered them dryly, and then she phased through the wall. This next room also happened to be soundproof, so whatever explanation the others were presently giving for this abnormality of Clara's, she didn't have to hear. When she went over to this second computer terminal and crouched down to see it, pushing hair behind her ear, she was faced with seem monochrome black-and-green glare of the wrist-thingy Nine was using as a map. Then there were a bunch of symbols, like round and square brackets, semi-colons, hashtags, underscores, and words between them.

She barely registered what she did to hack the thing, just like always, all she knew was that a minute later she'd inputted the correct password (it had been 'MAVERICK') and she pressed enter over the option to open the very complicated-looking door. And complicated it was, the whole thing loudly split itself into three segments, two of which sucked themselves into the left and right walls, and the middle of which sank down into the floor.

"We gotta get doors like this back home," Thirteen commented. Whether she meant the Present TARDIS or her own, Future TARDIS, Clara didn't know. She didn't ask, either, "I'll show you a magic trick," she entered first and came up to Clara.

"Uh, what?" Clara asked her, trying to step back and bumping awkwardly into the desk, which Thirteen didn't seem to notice. The Brotherhood more or less ignored them and carried on, but Oswin and Martha cast them some very shifty looks.

"Would you stay still?"

"Well, I can't move anymore, you've got me pressed against this desk," Clara said. She was blatantly being paranoid, because it wasn't as though she was being physically trapped, she just froze, as Thirteen reached up a hand behind Clara's right ear and produced something. At first, she thought it was just that terrible trick adults did to little kids where they produced a fifty pence piece out of nowhere, and while what Thirteen drew out was silver and shiny, it most definitely was not money. "Is that-!?" Clara began, stepping away and holding up her left hand, seeing her bare ring finger, "How did you get my wedding ring!?"

"Magic," said Thirteen, dropping the silver band back into Clara's palm, Clara who hastily slid it back onto her finger, where it belonged.

"No, seriously," Clara implored, following after her. Oswin now found this very amusing, it seemed. Clara being tormented. Thirteen just smiled smugly to herself.

"It's _seriously_ magic," Thirteen said.

"Uh, you can't keep secrets from me! It's in our wedding vows, or something. Probably," Clara spluttered.

"Oh, if I can't keep secrets, you'll be wanting your lighter back, too?" Thirteen said, producing Clara's purple-coloured, disposable lighter out of nowhere. Oswin audibly laughed here, but Clara was too busy snatching things off of her future-wife to pay attention. "Clara, you can't talk when it comes to secret-keeping from spouses, now, can you?"

"That's low," Clara said, annoyed, reachig into her pocket for her cigarettes. But her cigarettes were not there. "Give me back my fags."

"Well, there's no need to be homophobic about it," Thirteen said, reaching behind her back and making a pack of cigarettes apparently appear from nowhere. Of course the Doctor could do close-up magic. That seemed entirely like something the Doctor would, at some point, learn to do.

"I'm not! It's a _slang_ term, and you know it," Clara snapped, "As if _I'd _be homophobic. I am _so_ gonna kill you. Stealing my stuff." Thirteen just found her anger funny.

"Okay, Clars, you doing anything remotely violent to her sounds _way_ too erotic for my tastes," Oswin said, coming to steer Clara away from Thirteen's company, "And if you're gonna kill people for stealing stuff from you, we should probably go back to 2004 and assassinate whoever took your virginity."


	304. Head Of State

_Adam_

_Head Of State_

"I really, uh, I don't trust them, you know? You know what I mean, babe?" Oswin said to him, watching over her shoulder. They were back in the open air, some dwindling evening light, all grey and cool, and the group had split up. Five one way, three the other. They were going after Nios, and had come up from the underground near the Washington Monument, which meant it was just a straight shot through the National Mall and past the Reflective Pool to get to the Lincoln Memorial, as long as they headed due East and tried not to get blown up by and landmines that might be lying around. It was them, Nine, and the Paladins. Apparently, in the last seven years since _Fallout 3_, the game they were stuck inside, was set, the Brotherhood had done some good work clearing out the Super Mutants that had made their home nesting in the Capitol Building to the West. But they were going to the Memorial. And hopefully, the people who had lived there some years ago still resided there.

"Oswin, they'll be fine," Adam Mitchell told his girlfriend, unnecessarily fretting about Clara and Thirteen, as usual. She spent so much of her time worrying about those two, she was getting terribly neurotic about them. "What's it to us what they get up to, anyway?"

"Who?" Nine asked.

"Clara and Thirteen," Adam asked, watching Oswin carefully.

"What are they liable to do..?" Nine questioned, in a way that suggested to Adam that he didn't want to know the answer, or possibly that he knew it already and regretted asking even as he started talking.

"Each other," Oswin answered. One of the Paladins made a comment to the other about lesbians, but it didn't sound to be too offensive, and at any rate, they went ignored. Adam Mitchell wasn't exactly a spokesperson for gay rights, and definitely not while his girlfriend was around. Oswin would say something if she thought she had to.

"They're not," Adam said, and he sighed, "They have this weird, tense friendship, and it's really strange because basically one of them always messes it up by accident, and then they just go round in this circle of advancing and apologising. But Oswin's worried for nothing."

"I can feel her emotions, is why I'm worried," she complained, "You should try being psychically and empathetically linked to the damn woman."

"I'm sure she feels the same about you," Nine told her, which Adam didn't think was a good move.

"_I_ have the excuse of being severely mentally ill, though, don't I? Clara likes keeping tabs on me," Oswin said, "I would resent it, if I didn't know I needed it. But I do. _I_ am sick, _Clara_ is just queer, and sexually insatiable, and it's _dreadful_ having her feelings buzzing around." Adam couldn't count the number of times he had had to stay awake late with Oswin, when he was so incredibly tired, because she couldn't sleep because of having to put up with Whoufflé late at night. Or, because she just didn't want to be on her own with them, before she gave herself the ability to go to sleep. Not that he minded, he'd never met anyone in his life whom he loved to talk to so much as Oswin Oswald, and no extra time with her could be considered wasted time at all. She continued after some thought, "And she keeps making it our bloody problem, anyway."

"Ooh, it's 'our' problem? We're sharing all sorts of things lately, aren't we, Oswin?" Adam joked. He was still somewhat irritated he wasn't allowed to call her 'Os,' quite immaturely, really. Maybe he would start calling her 'girlfriend' to her face to see how quickly she got sick of it and begged for anything, _anything_ else. Or maybe he was being pathetic.

"Ha, ha," Oswin said dryly, "But you know what I mean. _We're _the ones they come running to, both of them. I do actually care about Clara's happiness, you know, Mitchell." The Paladins were no longer interested in the things they said. Oswin had proven herself a genius to them earlier, when she had modified a gatling laser into a laser cannon and they were very impressed at this new, more effective way to vaporise the scum of the Wasteland. That was why they were there. But she had ceased saying fascinating things some time ago. At least they were an honourable lot.

"Ah, is that why you keep going on about what Jenny's up to as well, then?" Adam asked. Nine sighed at that, a sigh which Adam Mitchell could not deduce the emotions behind. A sad sigh, an exasperated sigh, a bored sigh, a wistful sigh?

"Look, babe," she said to him, looking away from the Remote Teleporter in her hands, a device they had been using all morning (after she had cobbled it together from one of her hackdrive prototypes left over) to zap random, miscellaneous items back onto the TARDIS. Mainly, they had sent about three Stealth Boys (a device which could render one invisible), a few guns, and roughly thirty coffee cups back to her laboratory. There hadn't been anything else worth teleporting around, "They so obviously like each other."

"Well, they _are _sleeping together."

"You know what I mean!" she argued, "I've not even _talked_ to Beta Clara since this stuff started, but she's buying her toothbrushes? Buying yoghurts Jenny likes that Clara doesn't? Letting her stay over for days and days? _And_ she was wearing her clothes."

"I guess," Adam said.

"Mitchell, you're forgetting that _I_ am also Clara, or I'm close enough to Clara to tell you that she, or I, would not buy a toothbrush or special yoghurts for somebody if she-or-I did not have actual feelings for her that _weren't_ just about sex," Oswin said to him.

"Imagine if one of them died."

"_Why_ would I imagine that? You have to make everything morbid, don't you?" she questioned him rhetorically, and he laughed.

"I don't know, I just mean... I don't know."

"Great, you're the king of not-knowimg. Death is probably the least stable thing in this life, anyway, the least permanent thing. Nothing fluctuates more than the idealogical line between living and dying," Oswin said, "Anyway, for once in my afterlife, shall we not talk about death? The Lincoln Memorial is right ahead."

It was right ahead, and the thing was colossal. It was still mostly white, after hundreds of years of absolutely zero maintenance and nuclear storms passing through. It seemed to be remarkably intact, the marble statue of Abraham Lincoln looking down at them all from behind tall columns and pillars, at the top of some great steps, his famous Gettysburg Address carved into the stone walls. In front of the Memorial were sandbag forts from the people who lived there, people stood with guns who Adam recognised, who did not threaten or fire on the Brotherhood of Steel. It was a group of freed slaves, slavery being a real problem in the lawless world of post-nuclear America, there to live peacefully and safely.

"Excuse me," Nine asked, going up to them, holding the Pip-Boy that now showed them Nios' location, since Oswin had messed with it. They didn't shoot. "Have any of you lot seen a blonde woman around her? Young-looking, sort of murderous, _really_ blue eyes? Almost unnaturally blue?"

They all exchanged looks with each other, the ones behind the sandbag fortifications who were guarding the memorial, when that familiar, cold voice crooned towards them from the top of the steps.

"I should have known you had a way to track me," Nios said, "My slave masters." The freed slaves raised their guns.

"We're not your slave masters, Nios," Oswin sighed, "You just ran off because you got annoyed at my sister."

"You might as well be, might as well be just as bad as those people who kept me where I'm from," she said. She was being so vague and careful with her words, Adam was sure the Union (as the freed slaves called themselves) did not know the truth about Nios, that she was really a synth, that she was a murderer who would quite happily enslave humanity. No doubt she hadn't told them any of that.

"Well, didn't you murder all those people?" Oswin said, "And then they locked you up in a special prison and _we _broke you out because you promised not to kill anyone else."

"And you won't let me go back and free the rest of my kind."

"Your kind? You're giving yourself away here. They offered you shelter here because they don't know what you are. Are you really gonna stay here and live with them?" Nine questioned.

"They have others 'like you' here," Adam added. They did have synths. The Chief of Security at Rivet City, Harkness (a name which now amused Adam thoroughly), was a synth. An android. Whether he knew it or not in this timeline, Adam didn't know. Maybe the others had bumped into him? "They're frightened of you."

"Others? Where?" Nios questioned.

"Massachusetts," Adam answered, "They get them down from Boston, they run away and come here, some of them."

"Well then we must go to Boston and free all of them," Nios said coolly.

"No, we must go home and think. We can always come back," Nine said.

"Where are the others?" Nios asked.

"They've gone to the Museum of History to see if they can't sort out this ghoul problem and their water supply," Adam said, "Look, you've got two Brotherhood Paladins out looking for you with us, you're so dangerous."

"I'm not dangerous!" Nios protested, "No more dangerous than anyone else here. Everybody you meet here is a murderer, a killer, and they all thought they were justified."

"Lots of people who kill think they're justified," Nine said darkly, "Now, are you going to come home, or not?"

"I like looking at the Memorial. So interesting to see humans enslaving other humans, relying on more humans to be halfway decent and realise that's wrong. Then they spend hundreds of years fighting for equality with people denying there's a problem at all," Nios said, "Funny."

"Yes, Nios, the Civil Rights Movement was hilarious," Oswin said sardonically, "And if you come home you can read _all _about it and all about the people who fought for centuries to get equal rights. Okay? Just try not to kill anybody."


	305. Cry Me A River

**AN: Do you guys think I balance it out evenly between characters yet? It has literally been about 500 Chapters of me trying to make it even, and I still don't think I've succeeded. I keep a log of how many times they've all been sent out and roughly who will get sent out on what days in the future (the next 30 Days are literally all planned, if I didn't mention yet), it's hard though, since there are so many of them. Martha's been out the most, though, she's been out 23 times since Chapter 265.**

_Clara_

_Cry Me A River_

There was a radio playing from somewhere within the ghoul city, multiple radios, all set to the same station, spitting out smooth jazz at them as they entered through a set of double doors in the foyer of the Museum of History, the doors underneath a skull belonging to a creature Clara Oswald could not pinpoint, as instructed by her sister. Oswin said, don't go through any other doors, just that one, and Clara listened to her dutifully. She liked to think she could tell when listening to Oswin was important or not, because Oswin spent so much of her time thinking of the most ridiculous garbage to say to people, but here they were. It was warm. Full of oil drums set alight, like a homeless city, on street corners that were staircases underneath paintings and banners and statues. There was a black statue in the middle of the room, the centrepiece of some pre-War exhibit that no-one thought to clear out, naked bodies crawling on top of each other to clamber up some chain. The chain that connected the Underworld to Olympus, Clara presumed. It all seemed very Greek to her. She had once enjoyed mythology, long ago. It was all red, as well, deep red carpets, grimy walls, blood here and there, filth that was so old it might as well be a wallpapered part of the décor. And still, amid the walking, talking corpses of the ghouls, she could hear jazz music.

They got judgemental looks coming in there, the three of them. Ghouls did not like humans, for obvious reasons. Oswin and Adam Mitchell had said to try and talk to them, first of all. Second of all, she said, try to pay them. Third of all, she said, kill them, and then she said not to _really_ kill them, but if this was the video game she and her boyfriend kept going on about, that would be the third option. The fourth option was simply to leave. By this point, Clara could care less about the ghouls and their lack of water, because she needed the toilet. It was that iguana, she thought. Dreadful iguana. Never have iguana when you haven't had breakfast, she decided, that would be her life lessson to take away from today. Strange food came at dinner time, not the morning.

"Did that iguana seem off to you?" she asked Martha Jones. Her wife talked to someone close by, some robot, some green spherical thing with three arms, a weapon on each, a white star painted on either side of its triple-eyed, planetoid head. It said it was called Cerberus, everything staying Greek, and Thirteen was talking to it about somebody with the highly stupid name of 'Mister Buckingham.' Did they know each other, or something, she wa saying. Clara didn't care.

"Would you stop with that iguana?" Martha snapped, "You'll make _me_ feel sick, too."

"I don't feel _sick_, I just need the toilet. But you know, _badly_."

"Well if you have any D&amp;V, let me know, and I'll prescribe you some paracetamol and extensive bedrest for your bloody food poisoning," Martha said, but Martha seemed to doubt there was food poisoning involved. She didn't think she was _ill_, it was just one of those things, where the food went straight through you and you suffered the consequences later. Unless she _was_ sick.

"D&amp;V?"

"Diarrhoea and vomiting," Martha answered.

"Ew."

"You should have gone for the squirrel. Or the noodles. Why didn't you just go for the noodles?" Martha questioned her, "Because if one of us gets food poisoning, we both get food poisoning."

"Maybe you just shouldn't have eaten my iguana."

"I barely ate any of it!" Martha protested.

"Why don't the pair of you just eat each others' iguanas and get over it?" some croaky-voiced ghoul said to them. Some familiar, croaky-voiced ghoul. Gerald, she was sure of it. Gerald come to meet them.

"Is that a euphemism? Because I'll have you know that I have a wife, thank you very much," Clara said, "She's right over there."

"The blonde one asking the Mr Gutsy if he knows that hunk of junk they dredged out of the river in Rivet City?" Gerald questioned.

"Aye," said Clara.

"Wife like that, I woulda thought you had plentya practice eating peoples' iguanas," Gerald said, and then he laughed, she thought. It sounded like when people had the most dreadful mucus cough, and they had this big web of phlegm coating their layrnx, their tongue, gullet, whatever it was down there, and they kept trying to cough it up but they never succeeded, it was just this rattling, moist sound, as though at any moment Gerald might hawk up a lung. Behind Gerald, Clara now saw, floated the historian, Reyes. The third ghoul from the morning, Celia, was nowhere to be found.

"Doctor, would you leave the robot alone?" Martha called over to Thirteen as Clara tried to be offended by what had just been said to her. The Doctor had not heard a word, and only looked around when Martha addressed her for a second time.

"Hmm?"

"Leave it alone," Martha said, "People to talk to."

"'People,' that's funny," Gerald said, "We don't often get that much courtesy from a smoothskin." For all of two seconds, Clara thought 'smoothskin' might be a compliment, then she remembered who was talking to, and decided it was most definitely derogatory. What was wrong with having smooth skin? She'd worked very hard as a teenager to keep her acne at bay, even if her mother always told her she was one of those lucky minorities who didn't get many spots, she had still maintained almost an almost ritualistic exfoliating, rinsing, moisturising and preening regime from when she was twelve to twenty-two.

"Hi there," the Doctor said, holding the railing on the staircase where the robot floated and jumping the bottom step to land lightly and exuberantly in front of the ghouls, beaming. Clara noticed the jazz music again as she watched the Doctor talk, _Anything Goes_, she thought it was, and then Martha elbowed her. That was when she realised that it had been maybe a whole minute and she hadn't heard a word that Thirteen had said the whole time, she had been staring. The ghouls didn't notice, or they didn't care. Only Martha did, and boy, did Martha seem to care. "...I mean, the radiation basically heals you, right?"

"Would you pay attention?" Martha said to Clara.

"I just feel sick," Clara lied, "That's all."

"Yeah, sure you do," Martha said, "Do you want to go get some air, then? It's hot in here." 'Hot in here' was a funny thing to say. It had a lot of meanings suddenly, so many. Martha saying it added more layers. Usually, someone would say that to get her to admit she was fine, so she would stay in the room, because she didn't want to leave the room, because of Thirteen being there. Thirteen was why she was not listening, not because of the dodgy iguana that was _definitely _having an argument with her bowels. She did feel hot, though, for whatever reason. There were about five reasons she could think of off the top of her head why she might legitimately be hot. She took a long moment to think about this. Maybe she was only hot because Martha was doing that whole heating-up thing she did, she wasn't sick at all. Then she was suddenly very dizzy and struggled to keep track of her thoughts. "Right," Martha said with suspicion and confusion together, "We're gonna go where it's colder." She dragged Clara away. More led her away, actually, than dragged.

"I might be sick, you know. The iguana," Clara said as the door closed behind them. They had been right by the entrance anyway. It was draughty and chilly in the large, circular foyer all of a sudden. Ghostly, with the receptionist desk standing unmanned and scorched ten or so metres away.

"So you keep saying," Martha said, "What's with you staring at Thirteen?"

Clara sighed.

"I didn't know I was staring at her."

"You're weird around her," Martha accused.

"Am not!" she protested, "No weirder than you around me."

"Exactly," Martha said begrudgingly, not wanting to point this out but being left with no choice if she _really_ wanted to get Clara to speak with her, speak with her _honestly_, without her complaining about iguana all over the place. She was very tired now.

"Leave it out," Clara snapped.

"Leave what out? Are you okay?"

"I'm really dizzy," she said airly, falling back against the wall and leaning on it, "What do you want to know about the Doctor? She's gorgeous, you know. It's the hair. I always loved blondes."

"Are you having an affair?"

"No! Of course not! That can't happen, I can't lie to my husband. He does these eyes. Like a puppy, he's just so sweet, I couldn't do that to him. I miss him right now. He would have loved to try that iguana," Clara said, and then she yawned.

"So, you're not secretly sleeping with her? Because I don't care that they're the same person, it's still wrong."

"I'm not sleeping with her, we're friends," Clara said. Maybe Clara had got a dodgy bit of her lunch, _their_ lunch. Iguana rectum. Iguana bladder. Something foul.

"Are you sure?" Martha asked. Clara didn't know why Martha cared so much.

"Listen," Clara said, "Do you know how weird it is when some beautiful stranger shows up and says she's your wife? She knows all this stuff about you and she's, like, everything you've ever wanted? It's the most extreme form of bait in the universe, and it's not even the poor girl's fault. We're complicated, but we're not together. Don't tell anyone anything."

"...Nothing to tell," Martha said eventually, "Besides, as if I want to tell any of the others a single thing. Not after them keeping all this... _this_ business a secret." Clara knew exactly what business she was referring to. She felt somewhat better with the chill around her, though.

"Was it hot in there?" Clara asked. Martha shrugged.

"_I_ thought it was, so it must have been," Martha answered, "Stuffy. Thirteen any good at talking to people?"

"Hmm..." Clara wondered, "Maybe. Nobody seems to hate her, so maybe. Someone hates everyone on the TARDIS. Unless _you_ hate her. You could do."

"Why would I?"

"Jealousy."

"I'm not _jealous_, not of _her_."

"Why'd you ask her what I'm like when I'm turned on?" Clara asked, a question that had been bugging her for weeks now. What day had that been? Ninety-Five? Three whole weeks. Three whole weeks of her being confused by the actions of Martha Jones.

"What!? I never said that."

"I have it on good authority."

"Whose?"

"Thirteen's. She was there," Clara said, "Something about me being a demon. What an awful thing to say! I'm not a demon."

"Are you sure? I remember when you got married, at the start," Martha said.

"It still _is_ the start, it's not even been four months."

"Three months is like three years on that ship, though," Martha said, then there was a muffled, sort of roaring, hissing noise coming through one of the other doors in the foyer. They both stopped talking and glanced in the same direction, double doors, locked, to some other exhibit. Above it, the signage read, '_2066: The Resource Wars_.' Eleven years before the Great War. Earth's resources must have run out. That must have started the whole thing off. No doubt that freakish noise was the reason they weren't meant to go wandering. Clara dug in her pockets for her lighter and cigarettes, returned to her, and lit one of them quickly. "Maybe it's the smoking making you sick."

"Doesn't hurt me, Oswin wouldn't let it, even if she does hate it. She's too protective of me," Clara answered.

"I've noticed, she killed that thing in Atlantis because it shot you."

"To save _you,_ you mean."

"_You_ saved me. You had it shoot me in the foot, instead of the head."

"Reckon you deserved it, for punching me in the face about three times and being sort-of awful," Clara retorted while blowing out a cloud of smoke. Honestly, she didn't care about the new 'No Smoking' sign in Nerve Centre, or the reproachful, disgusted looks, she felt better already. Her life was very stressful, and would never cease to be very stressful, she guessed. Waiting around for that impossible eventuality would be ridiculous.

"Probably."

"Anyway, I had my foot physically shot off by a shotgun that day," Clara said, "And it shot me in the face. I had to rip out the crossbow bolt. You're a doctor, anyway, shouldn't you be used to gore?"

"On other people!" Martha argued, though she was smiling and laughing a little.

"The next day this little Vircling bastard mauled the same foot, you know, while I was in Los Angeles with my husband getting new rings," Clara said, "Plus, I did fall out of that escape pod and get impaled on a branch, while that giant lobster was after you. Oswin made me be bait for the stupid thing!"

"And here I thought you were protecting me out of the goodness of your heart," Martha joked.

"Hearts don't come into it, I had no clue what was going on. Then there was that beaver that got thrown at my face."

"Would've thought _you_ would have-"

"Loved a beaver in my face?" Clara suggested, "Jack and Jenny both said that same thing to be about fifty times. Shut up." Martha laughed though, Clara continued to smoke, the both of them just waiting for Thirteen to make whatever deal she was going to.

"Basically, I reckon I've gone through worse stuff than having a crossbow bolt through my foot."

"Maybe I'll go find a crossbow to shoot you with and we'll be even."

The doors opened before Clara could say anything else and the Doctor emerged, seeming quite happy.

"That's the face of someone who just killed a whole town right there," Clara said about her.

"What? I haven't killed anybody! Have you two been talking about me?" Thirteen questioned, mainly Clara.

"Obviously, you obsess all of my thoughts and I am utterly incapable of speaking of anything apart from you," Clara said sarcastically.

"Ha, ha," Thirteen said, "They're gonna stop harassing people because of this water business."

"Are they? How come?" Martha asked.

"Oh, I bribed them. Oswin, a good while ago, gave me a tub of that burn ointment she invented in the First Prank War that also fixes all scars - y'know, it's why Jenny doesn't have huge acid burns around her eyes from that facehugger - and told me that when I went to the past I would need it. So I gave them it. Might do some good, you never know," she shrugged, "So they'll stop with the water."

"That was easier than I thought it would be," Martha said.

"Well I forgot I had it on me til halfway through the conversation - thank god for bags, is all I'll say. I really love bags."

"Great. Can we leave now?" Clara begged, "It'd just, I _really_ need the toilet."


	306. Back In Your Own Backyard

**AN: Clara's birthday today, November 23rd. Too bad she's dead now. Kind of sad that she died two days before her birthday, she'll be 26 forever. By the way, I've been planning for her to die all series. In fact, the stuff I have planned would barely be possible without her dying. There has also been a frankly offensive amount of foreshadowing nobody has picked up on. Like, check any "Another Girl Another Planet" chapters. There's even foreshadowing in THIS chapter.**

_Clara_

_Back In Your Own Backyard_

She didn't think she was sick, in the end. Not after she had managed to go to the toilet and had forgotten all about the day's irradiated, post-apocalyptic wastelands, followed by a long shower. Nobody came into the shared bathrooms of the TARDIS while she showered, which was all the better, almost like having genuine privacy. On her way back to her room after Nios had finally been retrieved and she felt largely better, she thought she might tell her husband that.

Yawning, she walked through the door into their room, her bag of things she needed to shower in one hand, the arm of which had her used, damp towel over it. Then she was attacked, so she froze, at which point she realised she was not being attacked at all, but rather, hugged, by someone very tall and very warm.

"Are you okay?" Eleven asked her, stooping down after he let her go so that they were face to face, his hands on her shoulders. She stared back at him with wide eyes, because she really hadn't expected him to come running out at her like that. "Clara?"

"I'm fine, you made me jump," she said, arranging her face into a smile, "Why? What do you think's wrong with me?"

"Someone said you were sick," he told her.

"What? No," she said, "I thought I was, but I feel alright now. Don't worry." She put a hand on his cheek, him still crouched to her level, and kissed him once, before walking straight through him. He span in place as she walked over to the washing basket in one corner to drop her damp towel in it, leaving her bag of shampoo, conditioner, soap, and whatever else, on the desk, as usual.

"Well, why? What was wrong?"

"I thought I caught food poisoning from eating dodgy, irradiated iguana bits," she answered, "But I don't think I have now, I think I just wanted to come home, really."

"Home?"

"The TARDIS, you, _home_," she elaborated, sitting down on the bed, relishing in being clean, and comfortable. She'd felt dirty for hours. The Doctor watched her curiously, "What?"

"Have you called the TARDIS home before?" he asked. When she looked up at him, momentarily distracted by if the pillows were plumped or not, she saw he looked like he was trying to suppress a smile. He came and crossed his arms and leant on the wall next to the bed, the bed pressed into the perfecty-sized alcove in the wall. In reality, in her original bedroom, this alcove was significantly smaller and the bed stuck out of it quite a lot, and the bed was only a single. Since the TARDIS had given them this room in the first place, the ship seemed to have modified this one area as a consolation to the embarrassment Clara suffered each day when she caught her husband reading her books, looking at her seashells, searching through a pencil case she had had when she was ten. He got terribly bored. His arms were crossed in a way that she could see his wedding ring. She always loved that he wore a wedding ring; he had never worn one for River. Maybe she would tell him.

"Don't know," she answered, then she thought, "I think I have. I must have. It's not like I have anywhere else to live, do I?"

"No, I suppose not," he answered. He was still trying not to smile, and she smiled back it him widely, pleasantly, tasting mint on her teeth instead of grease from gross iguana chunks, "I'm sure Adam Mitchell could put you up."

"What do you mean?"

"He could pay for a house for you."

"He wouldn't, though," Clara argued, "Why would he?"

"He owes his girlfriend's existence to you. And his girlfriend's attractiveness. The least he could do is get you a house."

"Ooh, saying my sister's attractive? Ought I be worried about your fidelity?" she joked. She knew, perhaps due to more subversive, immoral doings, that she most definitely _didn't_ have to worry about the Doctor ever cheating on her. Any Doctor. "Are you saying _you _wouldn't buy me a house?"

"You live in my house!" he protested, and she laughed, "I'm allowing you to live with me in my infinitely sized, time-and-space-travelling house. All I ask for in return is you."

"Doesn't seem fair when you word it like that, seems like I should be paying you," she said, "And not even with sex, with like, money. A lot of it."

"Who needs money? I hate money."

"Because you don't have any, you steal everything. Honestly, thank god we can't have kids, you must be a dreadful role model."

"What do I need money for?" he argued.

"Buying me a house."

"Apart from that."

"Buying me a new phone when somebody breaks it, they're always doing that," Clara said, and he moved off the wall and came and sat next to her, on her right, "Why do you wear your wedding ring?"

"Sorry? What do you mean?"

"Why do you wear it?" she asked, taking his hand, left hand, the closest one, running a thumb over his ring.

"Well, I don't know if you've noticed, Clara, but I have a wife now," he said.

"I just didn't think you would wear one, you never did for River. Wouldn't think you'd want to be tied down," she said, not looking at him. She felt like she couldn't meet his eyes, like she'd upset him.

"I'm not tied down, though, am I? You're here with me, we're together. Such a human thing to say. Rings aren't human, you know. Well, possibly rings are, but not wearing something to symbolise marriage, it's very common, like gift-giving. Are you expecting me to desire the freedom to go off galavanting with other women?" he questioned, "Because I most definitely do not, I love _you_, Clara. You're always after reassurance, aren't you?"

"Did Time Lords get married?"

"Of course they did, I was married to another Time Lord once, hundreds and hundreds of years ago," he said, "Ancient history." He'd never told her that before.

"What did Time Lords do when they got married? What were Time Lord weddings like?" she asked him, and he seemed about to tell her, too, when her phone went. Buzzed once, for a text, and she instinctively dropped what she was saying and leant around the Doctor to pick the thing up. When she read her text, which came from Oswin, or, _Arm Candy_, as she was now called, this talk with her husband was over. "What the..?"

"What?" he asked her.

"Something about a... flat warming party? What? Have they moved out?"

"What are you talking about?" he asked her when she stood up, staring at her phone screen like she was reading it wrong, even though she had read it through about five times.

"I don't know, Os just texted me, something about a flat warming party, and then saying that yes, I can bring my husband..." she frowned, "We should go see."

"Both of us?"

"Well, you're invited. I think. To whatever this is. Be my plus one," she said, "It's _your_ TARDIS, anyway. Shouldn't you go see what they're up to?" He paused and thought. "Plus, I've missed you all day."

"Well, when you put it that way, I suppose I best _had_ come, hadn't I?" he sighed, standing up, and she smiled at him in thanks and took his hand, phasing the both of them through the door because Clara was always much too lazy to open it.

"Exactly. Can't have people messing up your house, now, can you?"

"I got the feeling people were messing up my house plenty when the TARDIS got rid of all the bathrooms, Coo," he said to her dryly, but by that point she'd dragged him into Adam Mitchell and Oswin's bedroom. Except, they weren't in a bedroom. She suddenly understood what they meant by 'flat warming.' The Doctor relinquished his hand from Clara's. "What's all this, then?" Thirteen wasn't there, thank god, she couldn't think of anything worse than being in the same room as both of them. It really was as though she was having an affair sometimes, when she thought stuff like that. There were only three people there aside from she and Eleven; Adam, Oswin, and Jenny. Jenny, whom she had not spoken to since discovering the truth of this unorthodox arrangement with her Other Self. Jenny, whose personal relationships didn't bother Clara one bit, but they sure as hell bothered her husband, whose arm she quickly took a hold of in order to keep him reigned in. Stop him from marching up to anyone and shouting at them.

"Having a party," Oswin declared, "By party, I mean Adam's cooking carbonara, because _we _have got a flat now." The door, behind them, was almost directly centred in the middle of the wall, it was just a little further to the right. Ahead were two sofas arranged in front of the large TV they _used_ to have in their bedroom. Against the far left wall was Adam Mitchell's computer setup and a door. On the right hand wall was also a door, but this area was where the kitchen was, the flooring all black, faux-wood linoleum. Black like the kitchen units, the island in the middle that was more like a bar, topped with black marble. The only things that _weren't_ black were the two beige leather sofas, like milky tea, and Clara wasn't too sure they matched with the rest of the room. Jenny was sat at the bar with an open bottle of beer in front of her looking sullen and now annoyed that her father had come into the room.

"Ooh, I love carbonara," Clara said, "Don't I love carbonara, sweetheart?"

"Why is it so dark?" Eleven complained without answering her, going and switching on the light. Adam really was cooking, too. He was a good cook, in Clara's experience. What a shame it was for him to be dating a girl who couldn't taste. Oh well. He could always feed his future-sister-in-law, instead... "Why have you done this?"

"That lot out there might be _your_ friends, Doctor," Adam said, turning around from his pan, or pot, or bowl, or whatever the thing you cooked pasta in was called. As if Clara knew. Clara's abilities in the kitchen extended to eating leftovers and calling takeaways, and even then she often mucked both of those up. Vividly, she was reminded of that awful time on the third day of the Dream in which she had to stand in for _Carla_ Oswald, famous television chef, and had made an utter fool of herself. Seriously, though, what kind of normal human being used a colander? Or knew what a colander was? All Clara knew was it made an excellent helmet if you were ten years old and going as an astronaut for Halloween, because that was the only time in her life she had ever used one. Adam Mitchell continued, "But _I'd_ only met two of them before I arrived her, and one of them kicked me off the TARDIS. Not to mention I spent the whole time third-wheeling."

"And now look, you've had Jenny stuck here third-wheeling the pair of you two for god knows how long, poor woman," Clara commented. Jenny smiled a little, but she was looking a different direction. Avoiding the gaze of her father, probably. The most disapproving father of the bunch when it came to her recent vices. "What's up?" Clara asked her.

"Nothing," Jenny said quickly, and Oswin laughed.

"Why does you not knowing the others mean you have to get a flat?" Eleven interrupted, like he didn't want to know what was wrong with his daughter, "You've been living with them for nearly three months."

"I just don't see why _I_ have to buy them food and why _I_ have to buy new phones and why _I_ have to buy all this stuff for _them_, when they don't even appreciate it!" he complained. And he normally seemed so passive and un-opinionated, she thought.

"What did they do to piss you off?" Clara asked him. The carbonara smelt delicious. She was definitely staying for dinner regardless of what her husband wanted to do. Her husband daren't approach the bar where Jenny was slumped, it seemed. What _was_ the matter with her?

"Jack got two of Adam's cars blown up," Jenny answered.

"Jack _what_? How on Earth did he manage _that_?" Clara asked, gawping at Adam Mitchell.

"Oh, apparently _Christina_ did it. Have you ever heard a more irritating name than _Christina_? _Lady_ _Christina_ _de Souza_?" Jenny questioned. Okay, Clara thought, Jenny was just as bad as Jack.

"Clara's quite an irritating name," Oswin said.

"Oi!" Clara protested, and Jenny pulled a face and looked round over her shoulder at Oswin, who was leaning against the fridge.

"Quite an irritating person, too," Oswin snickered.

"Newsflash, Oswin, we're _the same person_."

"Can anyone else hear that annoying ringing sound?" Oswin mused.

"_You're_ the one who texted me and asked me to come here!" Clara protested.

"It's just this sort of, whining noise," Oswin continued. 'Fuck you,' Clara thought to her. '_If you like. What time?_'

"Ew," Clara said out loud. Oswin winked at her and then turned around to go peer around her boyfriend to see what he was cooking, "Well," she turned to her husband, "Are you staying for dinner?"

"I don't know," he said.

"Well, _I_ am, but you don't have to if you don't want," she said, "Really, _you don't have to stay._" If Jenny were not there, Clara would ask him to stay, but she had not yet had the chance to talk to him about this wonderful illicit relationship of his daughter's, so she thought it might be best if he left. He muttered smething unintelligible to do with having to put some washing on, and left the room quickly, and Clara relaxed.

"Thirteen's just having a shower if you want to amuse yourself thinking about that, Clars," Oswin said as soon as Eleven had left the room, nodding at the door on the left wall, now behind Clara, the door out into the Bedroom Circle on her right. She supposed that must be the door into the bathroom they still had. For a few seconds, she said nothing. "I was being sarcastic, you don't _actually_ have to think about her having a shower."

"Huh?" Clara asked, not listening.

"You're pathetic," Oswin said. Clara pouted, then turned to Jenny, walking over and sitting opposite her at this strange bar-like thing Adam and Oswin have.

"What's up with you, then?"

Jenny seemed about to explain, when Oswin broke in yet again.

"She and Other You got caught by Old Twelvey this morning, so she's not in a good mood," Oswin said. Jenny looked at Clara for a moment, then crossed her arms on the table and put her head on them, looking the other way. Apparently, this was the truth.

"Oh. You know, I'd gladly shag you to cheer you up, but I don't think that would go over well with my husband," Clara joked, and Jenny looked at her and frowned.

"Aren't you angry at me?"

"No, of course not. Doesn't really affect _me_, does it? If you're happy, what's the problem? Of course I care dearly about my stepdaughter's happiness."

"That's gross, don't say that again," Jenny told her.

"Were you invited, too?" Clara asked. Jenny yawned.

"Uh-huh. So was my mother," Jenny said.

"How come?" Clara asked Oswin.

"Because I have a _huge_ crush on Thirteen," Oswin told her.

"Ha, ha. That's my wife you're talking about."

"Not if _I_ have anything to do with it."

"Because," Adam began with what she hoped was an actual reason, "You're the only ones I trust not to go off and tell everyone we have this flat now. And also to keep the bathroom a secret."

"Does that mean I can use the bathroom in here?" Clara asked.

"Fine," Oswin said, "As long as it's not at the same time as wifey."

"I would never!" Clara protested.

"Good, because if you two get up to anything, we'll have our private toilet privilege reliquished."

"_You_ don't even _use_ the toilet," Clara pointed out.

"_Everyone_ shits on the floor in the future, honey, not just me," Oswin said, joking, Clara knew, in that repugnant manner she always did, "Sorry if it's a culture shock."

"Wow, that was exactly what I wanted to hear before your wonderful boyfriend cooked dinner. Speaking of which, how long until that's ready?"


	307. Can You Find It In Your Hearts?

**AN: This is the Whoufflé chapter I was on about, like, five chapters ago, FYI.**

_Clara_

_Can You Find It In Your Hearts?_

"Okay. What's wrong?" Eleven asked her. There wasn't really an awful lot wrong, but she supposed he could tell that it was very late, gone midnight, and she wasn't asleep. Apparently, that meant something was up. Unless he was worried about the fact they weren't touching, she was curled onto her right and facing the wall with one arm under her pillow to cradle her head, and her other arm she kept moving to either be under the covers or on top of them. Maybe it was her restlessness that got him worried. She heard him roll over some direction, she didn't know which, and she stayed still and yawned.

"Nothing, really," she said after her yawn. She'd had quite a nice dinner of Adam Mitchell's pasta carbonara, but she hadn't stayed for long. This had gotten a bit weird because every time Jenny or Thirteen tried to talk to Clara, Oswin would cough very loudly and obnoxiously to make them stop, for some malicious reason, she was sure. It had been nice food, though. Her boyfriend really _could _cook, she thought. She might be bad at cooking, but she was _excellent_ at eating.

"What's keeping you awake, then?" He almost sounded accusatory as he spoke, but that was just what he seemed to sound like when he was worried. Sighing, Clara gave up and rolled over completely, coming face to face with him, having to sort out her pillow again so that she was comfortable before speaking. All the while, he stared her carefully with those blue eyes of his that reminded her of galaxies.

"I was thinking about Martha," she answered, "I had to tell her what happened today. You know, that whole thing about me kissing her and her forgetting. Nios was being awful about it, and the others kept making jokes at her expense, and she didn't even understand. So I thought it was better if I told her myself, because I don't reckon any of the others would have been nice about it. Plus, it gave me a chance to apologise." He listened calmly to her as she talked, her not meeting his eyes until she decided she was finished, more or less.

"What did Nios say?"

"Something about Rose getting annoyed because, like, a thousand people fancy me, or something," she muttered, rolling onto her back and staring at the pale, grey ceiling in the darkness. There was a light on somewhere, not nearby, around the corner, but it suddenly seemed a little too bright. "What's Rose's problem?"

"She doesn't have a problem, she's just bored. This ship is a very odd environment," he answered.

"Still, though! What is it to do with _me_ what people feel? And half of it isn't even me. Nios was brining up Adam Mitchell, and Ten, and Flek. They don't like _me_, they like _Oswin_. And in the case of Ten it's still debatable, not that it even matters," Clara complained, "Then, I don't know. The stuff with Jenny is bugging her, too. As if any of that's _my_ fault." When she mentioned his daughter, she felt him tense and move his head a little so that he was looking past Clara, rather than at her. "Nobody's business but theirs."

"They shouldn't have any business at all," he muttered.

"Oh, leave them alone, would you? Let them do what they want. They're not hurting anybody, are they?"

"I just don't like it. She was supposed to be grounded. Not... _canoodling_ with my _wife_."

"She's not a kid, Chin. She's two-hundred years old."

"Why are you defending them so ardently?"

Clara turned her head to the side and looked at him, shuffling a little closer so that he might take the physical hint and put his arms around her. She thought she might like that.

"Because, sweetheart. Because of you. You know full-well that Other Clara was in love with you when you were _you_, and not Old Twelvey, and then you regenerate and just shrug her off. When I married you, there was only one alternate day between me and her. Do you know what that would have done to me? Because I do, because I'm her, and I can't think of a lot of things worse than the love of your life, marriage irrelevant, changing his face and whole personality for the purpose of eliminating his feelings for you, for the purpose of basically getting rid of the tiniest semblance of attraction. What's left then? This big hole that you're meant to fill with friendship, but instead it gets filled with... lies. And I don't care if you don't like Danny Pink, _she_ fell in love with him, _she _lost him. Other Me has lost, through dreadful circumstances both times, someone she was in love with. _You_ lost the Ponds and shut yourself away with the Paternosters for centuries, or something. And she can't have a lot of friends, either, because _I _don't have a lot of friends, I never have. But Jenny? Jenny's _you_. _Your_ daughter, _your_ female tissue clone. And both of us love _you_ quite a lot, if you haven't noticed. I don't know exactly what they have going on, but if they're happy, then who cares? And then Jenny's been having to put up with Jack for months, and you didn't like that one bit, either. I just think that you should let them be happy. And anyway, I'm not your possession, Other Me _definitely_ isn't your possession, and neither is your daughter. It isn't a finders-keepers, I-saw-her-first type situation. She already had a chance with you. And _you_ blew it, because you're an idiot. And now you're trying to not even let her have this bit of joy in her life! God knows why, because your daughter is a ray of sunshine and you know it." There was a long moment of silence in which he looked at her and she looked at him, until he unnerved her by doing this and she looked away.

"You do talk a lot, don't you?" he said, and there was a pause, and then she ended up laughing and turning her head to the ceiling for a moment, "That's coming from me, as well. I'm always talking." She smiled and then sighed, looking left at him again. For a few moments, he smiled back at her, he looked at her as though she put the stars in the sky, and he had seen oh so many stars in his life. Then his smile fell, drooped away like his hair and he too rolled onto his back.

"What's wrong with _you_, then?" she asked, posing him the question he had posed her minutes ago.

"I still don't like it. You're my wife. _My_ wife. I don't care that the other version of me, Beta Me, never told you he loved you, never did any of that, or any of this. It doesn't matter, because _I'm_ still _me_, and I'm still your husband. You can call me jealous all you want, Clara, it doesn't change that I hate the idea of anyone else being with you."

"I've been with lots of people, Chin," she said quietly, cutting out as much emotion as she could.

"No, no, no, I don't mean anybody before we got married, of course not, we both have pasts, don't we? We even live with one of my pasts every day," he said, referring to River Song, she knew, "That's before, this is after. This is you _now_, you as you are today, and it doesn't matter who Jenny is because _she's_ not _me_ and _she_ gets to see all of the things that make _me_ love _you_. Your bookshelf with all the notes of what plays link with what quotes left over from your degree; scribbled poems from when you were a teenager; your seashell collection by the windows; the way you deny having anything to do with _Star Wars_, or Batman; the way when you're sleepy your accent comes out so much more and I have to think about things you say before answering; what your dimples look like when you brush your teeth; what it's like to kiss you in the mornings, or the evenings, or _ever_, this you. That's what I don't like. They're the things that won't change with time or with universes, the things that keep you human, even with all of this nonsense going on around us all the time."

He didn't look at her while he spoke, he seemed to be thinking too carefully about his words to sneak a glance to his right, but she stared at him, his darkened silhouette, him listing the things he liked the best about her, such simple things, and remembered hazily in nothing more than emotions why she fell in love with the Doctor to begin with, or rather, why she continued to fall for him as the days and weeks and months rolled on. Soon it would be years, it would be decades. Perhaps it would be centuries. And she thought she really ought to make a note of this moment, perhaps write something down, or take a photograph, to remind herself why she was living the life she lived to begin with.

"...What?" he asked when he noticed she was just staring at him and not speaking.

"...Does my accent really come out more when I'm sleepy?" she asked, thinking of nothing else to say. 'I love you' wasn't enough right then. It wasn't what was needed. He laughed.

"Yes, it's marvellous. Honestly, the amount of double or triple negatives I have to put up with in the middle of the night are simply astonishing," he said, grinning, "You always ask what time it is, and every time I complain that you should just get a clock, it's always, 'there aren't no clocks what are better than you.'"

"Seriously?"

"Frequently. It always sounds like such an aggressive compliment, as well."

"Should've seen me in high school. Terrible things happen when you go to uni in the South, you come back talking all posh. And then everyone's like, 'why don't you talk proper Clara?' And I'm like, 'I talk well proper, innit.'"

"Disgusting." Clara laughed. "Happens when we visit your father, as well. Suddenly I've married into a family of people who don't understand proper grammar. 'Don't want no gravy on me taters.'" His fake Northern accent didn't irritate her half as much as Thirteen's. Probably because Thirteen was American already. She already sounded odd enough.

"Say something else."

"'Nowt what I love more'n gravy.'"

"I do really fucking love gravy."

"Clara!" he exclaimed, and she burst out laughing, "That was the most unnecessary swearing I've ever heard from you. You swear more and more every day that goes by."

"Should've seen me at uni, every third word out of my mouth was 'fuck.' 'What are you having for breakfast, Clara?' 'Fucking cereal, innit mate.'"

"I hate that word, but I thoroughly enjoy the way you pronounce it, which leaves me a very conflicted husband."

"Well, put all your emotional conflict onto my swearing, rather than Other Me's illicit relationship with you daughter, and we'll be alright. Or, 'we'll be reet,' if you like," she said. She was lying on her side again, she kept tossing and turning as they talked. His amusement died as she knew it would and he ended up sighing and growing melancholy again. Now, though, she fumbled under the sheets for his hand and interlaced their fingers, her other hand under her head as she looked at him with big, pleading eyes. "Let them do what they like, sweetheart. Doctor. They're both adults," she called him 'Doctor' as an afterthought, as she still rarely called him that, especially not when they were alone together, "More adult than me. If I'm consenting enough to marry you, then Other Me with two tragic, failed relationships under her belt can consent enough to sleep with who she likes."

"But-"

"Just let them be, Chin. For me. I'm asking you to leave them alone. You can complain to me all you like when we're on our own, but keep your dislike behind closed doors. Between us."

"I always hate when there are things between us. Arguments, secrets, clothes, for instance," he joked.

"Yes, yes, but I'm being serious. It's not any of our business anymore than it's anybody else's." Eleven sighed then, but seemed to agree, finally. Seemed to submit to her wishes as she imploringly begged him to leave Jenny and Other Her alone. Let them sleep with each other. It was bound to end horribly, she thought.

Just when she was debating if she should just try to go to sleep then or say something else, because she really was feeling very tired now, a loud buzz rang through her skull as her phone went off, under the pillow where she always kept it. Annoyed and presuming it to be her sister telling her something ridiculous, or her father not knowing what time it was where she was, she dragged it out onto the bed in front of her.

"Who is it?" her husband asked.

With mild surprise, she answered, "Rory."

"Oh? What does he say?"

"He says..." she began, tapping the app to get the text up.

"What's your phone passcode?" he interrupted.

"2121, why?"

"Well, so I can delete all of your contacts and control your life, obviously," he said sarcastically, and she smiled a little, not quite laughing, preoccupied, "Isn't that the year we got married? The first time? Wasn't it the 2nd of January, 2121? 2/1/2121?" Clara bit her lip and gave him a look, feeling her face flush with blood.

"Might have been."

"You're so adorable, Clara."

"Ooh, careful with the compliments, you don't wanna know what this text says," she said, and he looked at her expectantly, "Rory says, 'The heart to heart is nice, but could you two keep it down? Some of us can hear everything you say. Also, if you start shagging I'm going to send Amy into your room to order you both to be celibate for the next ten years.'" Her phone buzzed again. Immediately she read, "'BTW, your accent makes everyone who has it sound thick.' He can't say that! I'll stamp on his bollocks."

"Don't do that, Clara," Eleven told her, and she yawned, "You should probably go to sleep."

"_You_ should go to sleep," she retaliated, curling up closer to him with her head half on his shoulder and an arm across him after she untangled it from his right hand and instead entangled her fingers with his left, the cold of his wedding ring sending the same chills down her it always did.

"Ah, I see, this entire conversation was just a ploy to get close to me, was it?"

"My entire existence sometimes seems to be a ploy to get close to you," she said, closing her eyes and smiling. He kissed the top of her head. "And for the record, _you're_ the one who asked _me_ what's wrong. Maybe it was all you trying to get me to-" her phone went again, and this time Eleven checked it with his free hand behind her head.

"Rory says 'shut up,'" he told her, and finally she did. She could have words with Rory about these little things called _ear plugs_ in the morning. Why couldn't he wear an adrenaline inhibitor when he went to sleep?


	308. She Looks So Perfect

_DAY ONE-HUNDRED AND SEVEN_

_Eleven_

_She Looks So Perfect_

He had surprised himself in the night by falling asleep. Quite early, too. It was his night for it, he supposed, but he'd forgotten to count lately. Clara usually counted, and he thought he would ask her when she woke up how many days, exactly, it had been since he last slept. Clara was asleep right then, though, and he wasn't going to wake her up. No, that job went to somebody else. That job went to whoever was knocking on their door. Day in, day out, people knocked on their door. He was always woken up. When was he allowed to sleep in, on those rare days that he slept? When was he allowed to sink down into the delicious mood he was always in with his wife around, with his wife next to him? And the woman wondered why he wore his wedding ring for her. He would do anything for her. Even forgive his daughter, it seemed, for her nefarious activities.

Usually, he would groan, were Clara up, but he was definitely more bothered about letting _her _get some sleep rather than making his displeasure with people who knocked on bedroom doors loudly known. Carefully, he unknotted his hand from whichever one of hers it was trapped in and detached himself from her slowly, being careful to lower her head onto the pillow as she continued to dream, as she had been lying on his shoulder before. Yawning and scratching the back of his head, wearing nothing but underwear with shockingly messy hair and sticky, tired eyes, he opened the door and blinked, confused, at some tall ginger who was staring at him like he was from outer space. Well, he supposed, he _was_ from outer space, but that wasn't his point.

"What have _you_ been up to?" Amy Pond questioned him. He rubbed an eye and kept one hand on the door handle, leaning on the edge of the door. She was eyeing him like she had never seen him before.

"Sleeping," he answered, "Not nearly for long enough, though, and then you come along waking me up. What do you want?"

"I'm trying to get Rory to go out somewhere so that I can go to a spa with Donna without feeling bad," Amy answered him honestly. He narrowed his eyes at her and she smiled.

"How very moral of you. What's that to do with me?" Eleven knew where she was going. She wanted him to distract Rory for the day. Maybe he didn't want to distract Rory, though.

"Well it's not like you have anything better to do than go out somewhere, is it?" Amy questioned, and Eleven cast a glance behind him at Clara, still asleep, thinking that at that precise moment she might be the most beautiful thing in the universe. "You can't spend _another_ day alone with Clara, Doctor."

"What? Why not? I was hardly with her yesterday," he said, not knowing why he felt the need to defend his desire to spend the day lounging around in the company of his small, human wife to Amy, "And I should be allowed to do what I like."

"It's not healthy to be with someone 24/7."

"We're not with each other 24/7 at all," he said, failing to add the bit where he didn't think he would mind remotely if he spent every minute of every day with Clara Oswald. "Some of us enjoy spending time with the person we married."

"Like you voluntarily married her either time," Amy retorted. Perhaps he deserved that. Truthfully, maybe she was right, in some way. He had said 'I do' to the girl both times, though, and thought that if he didn't really love her with both of his hearts he wouldn't be lowering himself to suffer the menial tasks of deciding what wedding favours they might give out, or what exact shade of white the seat covers had to be (apparently, there were lots of different shades of white, which he hadn't known, because he had thought there was only one and the rest were just varying shades of grey.) No, though he had been drunk for the First Wedding and manipulated for the Second Wedding, the _Third_ Wedding was going to be as in-their-control as possible. Most people planned their own weddings. He was just being most people.

"Why does it matter if I'm married to her or not? I still love her. Does it surprise you to know I enjoy her company? Nobody else seems to," he said to Amy. It was still a loss to him as to why people disliked his wife's company, but it meant Oswin was the only person ever in demand of her presence. Not like right then, when he was being forced to go talk to Rory so his wife could hang around with Donna Noble. Why did she need him to be occupied to spend time at a spa?

"Go out today."

"No."

"You know what they say."

"What who says?"

"I don't know, everyone."

"Everyone?" he questioned, and she nodded, "Why do I care what everyone says? What's everyone saying?"

"Bros before hoes. That's what people say."

"That's a line crossed, Amelia," he told her, annoyed. He wasn't awake enough to be angry, he was only awake enough to be angry about being awake, while simultaneously angry about not being awake enough to be angry. That was why he wasn't angry.

"You can't just throw your friends away because you have a wife."

"I'm not throwing anybody away! I let you live with me, don't I? I don't charge you, any of you. Maybe I should."

"Would you charge Clara?"

"No, Clara does more than enough for me to be allowed to stay." What he meant was Clara's general existence was enough, but Amy didn't take it that way at all.

"Like a prostitute?"

"No! You show up here at half past seven in the morning, call my wife a prostitute, and then expect me to do things for you?" he challenged.

"Only going out with Rory. Not like _I'll_ be there, will I?"

"Maybe I want to go to the spa. Maybe Clara wants to go to the spa, did you think of that? Ought to give her some consolation for taking her husband away from her," he said. Clara had made quite clear the night before that she would like to spend the whole day with him not doing anything, since recently they had spent their time together eating a lot of bread, kissing Martha Jones, and trying not to get impregnated by aliens. Maybe he was a little bored, though... he stayed in all day yesterday... she could always come with him...

"So you'll come out?"

"I don't know yet."

"Fine, wifey can come to the spa if you go out with Rory." Eleven wasn't even sure Clara wanted to go to any spas, he'd just said it because he thought that the sheer idea of spending time with the Doctor's newest flame would make Amy go away. It hadn't, though.

"I still don't know. I'll talk to Clara."

"Can't she just go with you?" Amy questioned as he turned to go back into his room. Half past seven. He wanted to sleep until at least nine, and then two more hours in bed doing nothing, ideally.

"I don't know if she'll want to."

"But you'll volunteer her to come to a spa with me and Donna?"

"Well I don't know what she wants to do, do I? It's nice to have a choice, though. I'm not going to boss her around. Not like you're doing now."

"You're not my husband, Doctor, I can boss you around all I want," Amy said.

"Only my wife gets to tell me to do things. I'll go talk to her." He tried to leave, but she stopped him again, sticking a foot in the door so he couldn't shut it.

"I'll wait here."

"No! Go away! Let me speak to Clara."

"Why do you have to tell her what you're doing? Does she want to know where you are all the time? That's unhealthy."

"I have to let her know where I'm going, or she'll get worried."

"Why? Because she's controlling?"

"She's not controlling."

"You're making her sound controlling. Saying she bosses you around, makes you do stuff. You know," Amy lowered her voice to a whisper and leant over the threshold of Eleven's bedroom to talk to him, "_You_ have to consent to it too, otherwise it's rape."

"_Rape_!?"

"Yep."

"Clara is not raping me. I can't believe you would even suggest that!" he shouted that, and then he shut the door in her face. She deserved it after that. But still, she was right. She was not Rory, she was going behind Rory's back. Spending the day with Rory Williams probably wouldn't involve accusations of his wife being sexually exploitive. Next thing they would ask him to 'show them on the doll where she hurt you.' He leant against the door, scrunching up his eyes, Amy banging on it behind him, shouting something through about him being able to confide in her if he was being taken advantage of by the psychotic nymphomaniac she seemed to think Clara was. Then Clara yawned, or made some non-descript, tired noise, and he opened his eyes to see her looking at him through heavy lids, just awoken. Just in time to miss his talk with Amy.

Locking the door behind him, because for all of Amy's persuasian abilities, he didn't think she could persuade the chain lock to slide open, he went over to the bed.

"Shuffle over, would you?" he said to her, and she did. She'd been practically in the middle, so she moved further onto the right side, by the wall, and gave him enough space to throw himself down uselessly onto his front on the left, rolling his head sideways to look at her.

"Who was at the door?" she asked softly, her eyes still shut, half-hugging the pillow.

"Jehovah's Witness," he said, and she laughed, "It was Amy. She said some dreadful things about you, you know."

"Did she?" Clara opened her eyes now.

"Yes, she accused you of raping me."

"What did you say?"

"I told her you're a cruel mistress."

"Good boy. Honesty is the best policy. What did she want?"

"Wants me to hang around with Rory so that she can go to a spa with Donna without feeling guilty."

"Can't Rory hang around in our room with us? Or does he hate me, too?"

"What do you care if they hate you? _I _love you, and I'm the only one of two people on this ship whose opinion you care about," he said. Himself and her sister. Nobody else mattered.

"I love you, too. Do you have to go somewhere though?"

"I think I'd like to, you know. I had a boring day yesterday wondering where you'd got to, and then Martha tells me you're sick. Are you feeling better?" he asked her.

"I'm so tired."

"I still have to have a shower, you can go back to sleep if we sort out today's business. Unless you want to come out? You're invited to the spa, I accidentally got you invited."

"No, I'm staying in bed. You go out if you want," she said.

"I'll stay if you want me to stay."

"It's fine, sweetheart," she shut her eyes again and smiled, "Go out, have a life, a life outside of me."

"Life is so dull when I'm outside of you, though. Inside is best."

"I'm not in a sex mood, anyway."

"That's a first. Are you _sure _you're not sick?"

"I don't think I'm sick. Tell them I have food poisoning. I'll stay in bed. Hang around with Oswin. I know, you take Adam Mitchell out, too, so that means I can have Oswin."

"I don't think you can 'have' a person, strictly speaking, Clara."

"Tell that to the people who ran sugarcane plantations in the Nineteenth Century," Clara told him.

"I'd rather not, I've met people who ran sugarcane plantations, they're an awful bunch."

"Take Adam out."

"Well, what should I say to him?"

"I don't know, tell him I want to spend the day with my sister. Go somewhere fun. Tell him bros before hoes."

"Again with that. You humans really do have the most dreadful idioms," he said.

"Well, what time is it?"

"Seven-thirty."

"Are you tired? It was your night to sleep last night, wasn't it?"

"Incredibly tired still."

"Just go back to sleep for a while, then, _then_ sort out today. When everyone else is awake."

"Excellent idea, Clara," he said, rolling onto his right side so that he was facing her, "An extra hour or so."

"Exactly, then go badger Rory all you like."

"And Adam."

"Yes, and Adam. Get him away from his girlfriend, it'll be good for him."

"I feel like _you're_ the one who should be got away from Adam Mitchell's girlfriend some days."

"Oh, because Adam's girlfriend is _so_ irresistable. Some mornings I have to cover the mirror with a towel because I'm just _that_ attracted to myself."

"Well, I know precisely what it's like to be that attracted to you, so you can always confide in me about it."

"Sleep, now..." she sighed.

"Okay." He smiled at her. Times like this, he could hardly believe so many versions of her had passed him by that he had not even spared a glance for, because really, he thought she was the most perfect person he'd ever met, and it was a travesty not to have married her centuries earlier.


	309. For Heaven's Sake

_Eleven_

_For Heaven's Sake_

He almost didn't have the nerve to say he was disappointed with the group that had assembled as part of multiple coniditions from every member. It was ridiculous. Just before ten o'clock, the Doctor having spent another hour and a half dozing with his wife for company, and then half an hour having a shower to bide his time before he had to go throw himself under the wheels of extra-terrestrial danger yet again, he had ended up chasing people down to try and gather together anyone to go out with.

This had shocked him thoroughly, him trying to persuade people, because he didn't even want to go out to begin with. But he had been persuaded by Amy to go after Rory, then persuaded by Clara to go after Adam Mitchell, and Adam Mitchell was always a difficult one to make leave the TARDIS unless you were Oswin, he was that asocial. Rory, however, didn't even seem fussed to be left alone by Amy, but said he would only come out if Mickey came out, though apparently Amy had gone to Eleven instead of Mickey for this duty because she thought Rory ought to spend time with someone other than his new best friend. Then Mickey claimed _he_ wanted to spend the day with Martha, though Martha wasn't fussed either way, and with Eleven promising they would definitely go somewhere 'cool,' along with Rory's input, he finally agreed.

Himself, Adam, Rory and Mickey were an odd bunch who didn't generally cross paths, but he was not altogether against their company, even if he was debating the whole time just whisking Clara off somewhere to get out of the newly-formed TARDIS alliances. Apparently, with love and friendship came codependency and desire to only go places with people one knew. Eleven would go anywhere with anyone, he thought, and frequently did. As if he knew any of them properly when he offered them a place on his TARDIS. Not even Clara, who he'd met twice before. And both of those times he had offered her a place on his ship. It just turned out they both happened to die.

No, it was the last two who tagged along, a pair resigned to the console room to discuss in nostalgic, bitter terms how much they both missed the Fifty-First Century. In the Fifty-First Century, Jack Harkness said to River Song, he would never have been dumped for sleeping with someone. Everybody understood open relationships apparently, he had said, and River had agreed. River seemed to mainly be agreeing because she pitied him, but Eleven didn't pity him at all, nor did he believe him. Humanity was stretched far and wide in the 5000s, and he could hardly believe that _all_ of them partook in these behaviours. Oswin, for instance, he could never imagine entering into some 'open relationship' with her current boyfriend, and she was from further ahead than Jack was. He liked Oswin more than Jack. Oswin had never upset his daughter, nor had she slept with his daughter, _nor_ had she slept with another version of Clara, because that would just be plain weird. Mildly incestuous.

So it was the six of them, this rag-tag bunch of people who were not the Eleventh Doctor's wife (well, not any_more_), who stepped out of the TARDIS that morning. And they stepped straight onto the surface of Mars, and did not immediately die. This lack of dying from a planet with hardly any breathable atmosphere led Eleven to first believe it was one of those theme parks, or a simulator, for astronauts. And then he saw the distant view of Earth and smelt the iron of the surface, like blood, and realised that this really _was_ a Martian plane.

"It's the future," he said, TARDIS autopilot taking the ship away from them. He never liked that feature. Perhaps one day everybody would leave he and his wife in peace and they could switch it off and go wherever they liked, "It's been atmo-assimilated."

"It's been what?" Mickey asked.

"Mars. Atmo-assimilated. Oygenated, you could say, even though that's not technically true. More nitrogen in this air than anything else, an artifical atmosphere. There will be a semi-permeable forcefield around it, like a reverse sieve. Lets the big things through and keeps the tiny things in," Eleven explained.

"Would Clara not be able to get out, then?" River asked him. He couldn't tell if this joking was all in good humour or not anymore. He didn't know if she was happy with the Ninth Doctor, he didn't even know what she _was_ to the Ninth Doctor, or vice versa, and he still didn't know what she _really _thought of Clara.

"Yes, very funny," Eleven said coldly, flatly, "Isn't it just the funniest thing in the world that there are people who are five feet and two inches tall? I've never laughed so much in my life." River seemed unimpressed then.

"It's just a joke," Rory told him. Adam Mitchell, closest to the Doctor, had laughed at his empty sarcasm, the only one of them who was allowed to laugh at that, since his girlfriend was physically identical to Eleven's wife, except for the difference of one left leg amputated above the knee.

"Of course it is. A very funny joke. That's why I'm laughing so much," Eleven continued in his monotone, "Thank god we left _your_ wife, as well, Roranicus, because with hair like that she'd probably blend into the planet's surface."

"Oi!" Rory argued.

"He's done you," Mickey said to Rory. Mickey wasn't getting involved in any jibes about other peoples' wives or mothers, and neither was Jack, because though Eleven didn't like Jack at all at that moment, he wasn't nearly that much of an idiot. Rory and River shut up.

"I don't know why anybody expects me to join in when they make fun of Clara, you know," Eleven muttered to Adam Mitchell after he had turned to walk off towards some great structure he had spotted behind where the TARDIS had landed and just out of their original field of view, "You would think they forgot I married her."

"It's just that nobody else can see why," River said, listening in. Eleven, regardless of his status as ex-husband when it came to River Song, still knew her well enough to deduce that that remark of hers was all to do with him commenting on Amy's hair colour, and since Amy was her mother, she took that personally. Honestly, he thought there was nothing wrong with red hair, why would he? It was just, of course, he also thought there was nothing wrong with Clara Oswald, and had retaliated with some equally absurd statement about some biological trait that was none of anybody's business and was impossible to change. In fact, if Amy Pond so desired, though he didn't see at all why she would want to, she could dye her hair some other colour. What was Clara supposed to do? Go around on stilts? Where a large hat? How ridiculous. He should have stayed with _her_, instead of suffering this sort of abuse on her behalf. "Oh wait," River drawled, "It's because you were drunk."

"You're being immature."

"It's not immature, not when you get brought back to life and find your husband off with some... tart."

"Yes, yes," Eleven said dismissively. She wanted him to argue. What was even happening? Was she trying to start a fight? After three and a half months? On Mars? _Now_?

"See? You don't even care!" River shouted. Oh, yes, it seemed she _was _trying to start a fight, after three and a half months, on Mars, now.

"You died," he told her.

"So?"

"What do you mean 'so'?" he questioned.

"Oswin's dead. And she's going out with _him_," River nodded rudely at Adam Mitchell.

"Well, if you wanted to go out with Adam Mitchell, you should probably have said something," Eleven said, "What do you want? An apology? An apology for falling in love with Clara?"

"Possibly."

"Well then," he said sourly, "I _sincerely_ apologise for falling in love with Clara, and when I marry her next, none of you will be able to argue that my marriage was involuntary, because I will be sober and will not have been kidnapped. If you continue to play your cards right, River, you might force me to go and serve you with some divorce papers. Although, that would be difficult, since I'm not sure how legally binding making a promise on top of a pyramid really is. You do know that marriage vows are, 'til death do us part?'"

"Death didn't do us part."

"Yes it did. For centuries. Now, _I_ am going to go to _that _colony over _there_," he pointed at a large dome structure, which half reminded him of Gallifrey and half reminded him of the Eden Project in Cornwall, "And I suggest the rest of you lot go over _there_ and leave me alone." He started to march off, and then paused and looked back, "Unless Adam wants to come."

"Uh, yeah..." Adam said quietly, taking a few steps to follow the Doctor.

"What about me? I didn't say anything about Clara," Mickey argued.

"Well do you want to come with us?" Eleven asked him, and he shrugged.

"Alright," Mickey said.

"What about me?" Rory asked him.

"What _about _you?" Mickey said.

"Can I not come?"

"Not if you insult Clara, you can't," Eleven said.

"Well _now _who's being immature, sweetie?" River questioned him.

"Would you be quiet? You're not my wife anymore, and once you did murder me, and also you died, and I moved on," Eleven snapped at her. She was being so childish. It seemed like she had a lot of things to say to him, but they were a lot of things that he didn't remotely want to hear. She could take her problems and talk to her boyfriend about them. She could even take her problems and leave the TARDIS, it wasn't like she'd ever lived with him on it before.

"I didn't say anything about Clara, either," Jack said.

"So? You upset my daughter. And before you start, you're as bad as each other, but I'm still working through the hatred I have for you even marrying my daughter to begin with," he said. He really felt like he was getting closer to forgiving Jenny that day.

"Your daughter left me for your wife," Jack argued.

"Oh, now you _did_ go and say something about her," Eleven said snidely, "Wonderful. And I prefer her leaving you for Clara to her insulting her all the time. At least it probably means she doesn't hate her."

And at that moment he refused to even say anymore words to Jack, Rory and River, because he marched off angrily with Mickey and Adam Mitchell following him towards one of the two settlements he could see nearby, and he even thought he knew where or when they were. Mainly, he thought he knew because when he cast a glance behind him in the general direction of the Earth and the Sun and the Moon, he glimpsed an orbiting structure drifting around, enormous and immediately recognisable as Satellite Five, the jewell of human media and the heart of imperial propaganda in the 2000th Century.


	310. Everybody Wants To Be An Astronaut

**AN: I actually really hate how much this fic revolves around Clara Oswald. Like seriously, I reckon she's a good character, but like, I really have to stop with her. I really try. It just keeps happening. Funny thing is how in the show almost everyone immediately loves her and she's the biggest Mary Sue, but in the fic everyone hates her and she is literally a gross, lazy smoker who can't cook or do anything except analyse penis-poems. Another thing, Clara's age. Basically, in 3D9C her age may or may not be different to her actual canon age, and allow me to explain why: people assume that Clara Oswald and Jenna Coleman are the same age, but they're not (neither are Rose Tyler and Billie Piper), because in _The Bells of Saint John_ in the front of _101 Places to See_ it has her age clearly written as 24. That episode being set March 2013, and her birthday on November 23rd, that means Clara was born in 1988 (in earlier chapters I say 1989 because a), I didn't know what month she was born in and b) I can't do maths, and have not actually done maths as a subject for about two years and now lack the ability to count to 7 on my fingers). And even if you prove that wrong, that's what I'm keeping it as in fic. She was born 23/11/1988 and that is how it will stay, making Alpha Clara 24 and Beta Clara 26. Incidentally, Oswin was born 14/12/5096 and Adam was born 22/5/1986.**

_Adam_

_Everybody Wants To Be An Astronaut_

He'd never been to Mars. He thought he might always have liked to go to Mars, too, so this was very interesting for him. Mars was always this big mystery to him, to his era, this big What If hanging in the night sky with ice caps, volcanoes and red dust. The question of if humans could live on Mars was as interesting as the question of if humans could live on the Moon, or Venus, Saturn, Pluto - any planet in the solar system, any rock large enough for a house and a plastic garden. He asked his girlfriend so many questions about space colonisation it was definitely starting to annoy her, but he still kept asking her stuff. Asking her stuff about every colony she knew; Titan Beta, Io Alpha, Eden Four, Neptune Gamma, Venus Zeta. Gods and Greek letters were all you needed to know, and it was probably a human space colony somewhere.

Coming towards an enormous village of tall, block buildings made of metal rather than mortar felt like entering a town in the Wild West from a red and yellow desert. Walking straight up to a sign post on a road you could only tell was a road by the indented tyre tracks, it was like being a space cowboy, an adventurer, even if the sign did declare that they were only entering into a university, the University of Mars, possibly the most mundane thing one would expect to find on the red planet. An establishment of learning. Though, the name did sound peculiarly familiar, he thought. So it wasn't a village at all, it was a campus.

"What century is this?" Adam Mitchell asked Eleven. He didn't know what kind of a mood Eleven was in anymore, but there was a bloated silence broiling around the three of them, he and Mickey seeming to want to talk to one another about the first thing that came to mind, but the pair of them feeling as though their tongues were numb, or severed, and they were unable to say a word. Neither of them wanted to be shouted at by the Doctor, because suddenly the Doctor was a figure of power, risen from the ashes borne of a fire inside him revolving around protecting the honour of his wife.

"2000th," Eleven answered him, "You remember? If you look over there, there's Satellite Five in orbit of Earth. Still a media outlet around now. Don't know the year. There could be two of you at this moment." Adam followed where the Doctor had pointed, to a distant structure burned into the sun like an elongated pockmark, dark and blurred but enormous and spinning with rings and a stem in the middle with the flower of a star piercing around its silhouette.

"What happened on Satellite Five?" Mickey asked, staring at the very distant and skeletal structure with the air of somebody looking at fine art, though not an artisan, somebody who had just been told that some ancient doodle was fine art and he ought to look at it and see what he got from it. Adam knew nothing of fine art, except that he could afford to buy it, and that, at one of the many galas rich young bachelors were made to attend so that they appeared charitable, people cared what he thought of these doodles. He had once said Jackson Pollock was a contemporary of Beethoven, and an elderly CEO who had been following Adam around some theatre at one of these events and kept calling him Sir Mitchell had nodded thoughtfully, and continued trying to get Adam to buy out one of his courtesans for leisure, because apparently he was in the business of luxury prostitution and wives-for-hire. When Adam had refused the whole evening because he had just procured an early release copy of _Starcraft 2_ and didn't think he would have time to hang around and sleep with a woman he was paying to be there, he'd been ruthlessly questioned by a middle-aged baroness who knew the old CEO at a completely different mixer two months later, who felt personally insulted that he had said such a stupid thing about Jackson Pollock because she apparently had known him once, and Adam had needed to be rescued by his PA whom he took to such events with him.

"Adam got his brain chip," the Doctor told Mickey as Adam continued to observe the distant spacestation. He was a temporal amalgam, part of him came from there, part of him came from hundreds of thousands of years ago. What a _Frankenstein_-esque creation he was. In fact, he was sure the monster in _Frankenstein_ even referred to itself as Adam at some point, it being the founding member of a brand new, sallow and destructive species.

"Did he?" Mickey asked with a grin, and then he clicked his fingers. And then nothing at all happened, and Adam scowled. His head might not open its doors at the click of somebody's fingers anymore, not now his girlfriend had fixed it to a switch that looked like a nondescript set of curiously brand-less car keys. He didn't even know if he had them on him that day, buried in his jeans beneath his phone and some crumpled receipts and small change from half a dozen countries and centuries. Ten pence piece, a dime, a euro, a trolley coin. He never emptied his pockets when he washed his clothes, it was a terrible habit he didn't care to break.

"It has a switch now, so people can't click and do that," Adam told Mickey.

"Aw," he said, "Why?"

"Because I was sick of people opening my head."

"What did they do to you to get that in your head, anyway?" Mickey asked. Adam Mitchell didn't rightly know what had been done to his head, and when he thought back to it, a few years ago now, his brief abduction, he felt a headache coming on. But he remembered something.

"I had to pay them loads of money from this credit stick the Doctor gave me with unlimited funds, and it took ten minutes," Adam said, "It seemed like a good idea at the time."

"It was a dreadful idea," the Doctor said, a little ahead of them, staring ahead at the campus, "I can't see anyone out and about. You would think there would be plenty of people. This campus holds half a million, you know, it's huge, half the size of Ancient Rome."

"Well, you and Rose wandered off, so there wasn't anybody to tell me not to get major brain surgery. I just wanted to absorb all the information of the future," Adam said. Nobody ever listened to his reasons when they asked about his brain chip, just laughed at him and passed him off as being a moron, 'some genius,' they said. Well, he thought that was what they said, they probably did. He didn't really talk to them.

"Yes, yes," Eleven waved him away dismissively, "Place is deserted. How strange."

"You don't know that for sure," Mickey said, "And if it is, it could just be the holidays. Students have holidays in summer, they could just be away."

"Half a million people, Mickey, they can't all be away," the Doctor said, walking towards the place. Adam agreed with Mickey, Eleven was being paranoid, highly paranoid. Worried about them showing up to abandoned space colonies. What was the last one? Io Alpha? But this was Mars. This was a fully colonised planet, in the future. Adam Mitchell doubted they had all vanished, somebody would realise.

"They could've closed it down, a few years ago," Mickey suggested, making logical suggestions that didn't bore into the Doctor's paranoia one bit.

"Well, _maybe_, but how likely is that?"

"More likely than any alternative."

"We'll see," said Eleven. Adam thought he was being ridiculous.

"I lied and told the surgeon on Satellite Five that I was from the University of Mars," Adam said. That was why it sounded familiar. He had made something up that had miraculously turned out to be correct.

"Uh-oh," Eleven said. Mickey and Adam didn't immediately see what he saw, didn't see anything of the remotest interest straight away, but there was another sign, a smaller sign, on the ground, smaller than an average television, a ruler's length across and a square propped up by bent metal legs. It had a three-circled red symbol that Adam recognised clearly, because it didn't seem to have changed in all the time it had existed. It was the symbol for a biohazard. The University of Mars was under quarantine.


	311. Not A Leg To Stand On I

_Eleven_

_Not A Leg To Stand On I_

The campus was not empty, as the Doctor had first thought, because as soon as they ventured into the nearest office-like building with a dozen different symbols on a sign by the door that all meant 'information,' they found somebody, somebody who did not at all look happy to be there, but was not a human, either. They were very similar to a human, and distinctly female. Biologically identical in every way, in fact, except for the fact she had bright purple skin and neon eyes to match, eyes that literally glowed vibrant indigo, an effect which the Doctor wondered if Rose could achieve with her ability to alter her iris colour. She was a Jiraxt. The University of Mars within the Fourth Human Empire was a relatively accepting place, away from the malignant media outlet blotting out a stick-shaped sliver of the sun, and welcomed all sorts of species. It belonged more to one of those intergalactic institutions he could never remember the name of; the ICCC, he thought, but he could never remember what the Cs stood for. It was open to all species, as long as they wanted to learn in the way Earthlings had learnt for millennia.

The Jiraxt stared at them in a bored way.

"Who are you?" she asked, "Have you been decontaminated at the Decon Bay?"

"Decontaminated?" Mickey asked, and Eleven shushed him and whipped his psychic paper out of his pocket which, thank god, he had made Clara (who had stolen it again, the incorrigible woman she was) tell him its whereabouts before he had left that morning.

"We're from the ICCC, special branch medical officers," Eleven said, flipping the thing open and showing it to her, "'Fraid there's a bit of a state of emergency and we haven't really been told what's going on. The specifics, I mean." He figured that there was a state of emergency somewhere, if a university of this size had been completely quarantined, and since they'd had to walk quite far to get to the campus, the Doctor assumed this Decon Bay was quite far out.

"Funny how they sent three humans," the Jiraxt said. She was reading a magazine quite boredly, "It's some sort of virus. I'm supposed to be checking visitors in, but we haven't had any visitors for about a week, just soldiers and medical officers from a hundred different organisations."

"Oh? Virus? What kind of virus?"

"One that only affects humans," she said, shrugging. Only humans. That meant that _he_ would probably be fine, he only looked human, but the others? Well, River would probably be alright, she was a robot now, and everything. A computer monitor on the top of the desk turned to face them which had been black and off until then suddenly flickered a range of blue colours and hissed like it was broken and choking out sparks. The Jiraxt hit it, the thing nailed or stuck to the desk in some way that prevented the clunky object toppling over. Human technology did the oddest u-turn Eleven had seen at some point in the last fifty thousand years, mainly because they went all the way back to the 1990s where everything was stored somewhere in a physical copy. In that age, hologram technology had been outdated by square, plastic-bodied, round-screened hunks of engineering, a big block that spat out pixels and black bars. Just like all changes to human culture as a whole, this was another one Eleven didn't understand.

"Affects them how?" Eleven asked.

"Oh, they've all been evacuated," she said, "To the hopsital site, that way," she nodded straight ahead, straight West, Eleven knew. The way Rory, Jack, and River had gone. What might they run into? "No humans here, except you three. They haven't sent any human soldiers." The computer stuttered again. "This stupid thing..." the Jiraxt went to hit it once more with her shiny, violet hand.

"Don't do that," Mickey said, and she stopped before she did. She scowled at him and hit it anyway, and Eleven saw him visibly wince. He wasn't catching it, was he? Whatever 'it' was? But he looked unhappy. Out of precaution, Eleven looked at Adam Mitchell, too, who had been quite quiet. Eleven was sure that the monitor the Jiraxt kept hitting had the ability to interface with his Chip Type 2, but he didn't know if Adam was remotely inclined to use his head-door in the way it had been originally intended. Of course, hologram technology had instead been replaced with direct-to-brain upload-and-download technology that didn't even belong in that era.

"What are the symptoms, though?" Eleven asked the Jiraxt. That was the urgent thing, symptoms.

"I don't know, I barely talk to any humans," she said, "They're all ignorant."

"Oh, the joys of cross-galactic integration, the freedom to discriminate against anybody and everybody you come across. Do you think if every species had just stayed where it started, there would be any of this?" the Doctor questioned, then he paused, "A lot of them are quite ignorant, though, I suppose. These two especially."

"What are you, then? 'Not like other humans?'" she asked mockingly.

"Not at all, I'm an entirely different species, you won't find any homo sapien in me," Eleven said.

"Tell that to your wife," Adam muttered.

"Oi!" Eleven shouted over his shoulder at him, scowling. Adam shut up. He wasn't going to stand for any of that today, and he was going to prove to Adam Mitchell, the only person he'd ever had to kick off the TARDIS, even if he had come alarmingly close with 'Old Twelvey' every time he suggested Eleven was a zoophile for marrying a human or called him a pushover for letting aforementioned human address him as Theodore, exactly that in just a moment when the three of them would step outside. The computer flickered again, and this time the Jiraxt just groaned and caught a dark look from Mickey.

"What's the matter with you and the computers?" Adam asked him.

"Nothing," Mickey said stiffly. Eleven thought he glimpsed flashes and traces of silver in Mickey's eyes each time the computer started going wild.

"You don't know any symptoms, then? None at all?" Eleven asked.

"I don't know, alright? If you're really not a human, just go to the hospital and see, you'll probably be fine, unless you're some transient, uncatalogued weirdo," she said. He very much _was_ some transient, uncatalogued weirdo. They had to get out of there before she called somebody to decontaminate them and found out he had two hearts and a dozen faces and personalities. It was a dangerous time for him. For all he knew, the Daleks could have already begun their conquer of Satellite Five and, accordingly, the human race, or at least what bits of the human race lived on Earth. He'd rather not be around for that a second time, hiding away until the Bad Wolf entity erased all the cyclops-saltshakers from history. Hopefully, _this_ was irrelevant to _that_, though. Some different phenomenon.

"Right, then. I suppose we ought to," Eleven muttered. He didn't think them staying there suffering the vaguely racist remarks of the Jiraxt, coupled with Mickey acting like a guard dog over the ridiculous-looking, Nineties-esque computer would be productive. The Doctor turned to leave, beckoning to his two companions.

"I think they got headaches?" the Jiraxt called after him as he opened the door to leave, a swinging door, on a hinge. Really, history did repeat itself. Gone was the sleekness of the 1000th Century, when everything was smooth and shiny and streamlined and floating, projections without a single pixel and enormous teleportation bays and personal docks for people who couldn't be bothered with stairs, or lifts, or their own two feet, which had been everybody about then. There were only a finite number of ideas, really, and sometimes evolution was devolution, especially in a case like this.

"Thank you," Eleven said, nodding to her, holding the door open to make sure Mickey and Adam Mitchell left, "You've been very helpful." As soon as the door closed and they were a very steps away and out of earshot through the walls of the small, information building, the Doctor turned on Adam Mitchell. "You, give me your phone."

"What!? Why!? Because I said _one_ thing about Clara!?" he exclaimed, stepping away as Eleven held out his hand expectantly.

"No. Well, not just that. Mainly because the last time you and I were in this century, Adam Mitchell, I distinctly remember you stealing and using Rose's phone and that chip of yours to try and send dangerous information back to the Twenty-First Century, and then you almost lost the TARDIS," Eleven said, "And I had to kick you off."

"You didn't _have_ t-"

"Phone."

"But-"

"Phone, Adam," Eleven ordered. Mickey was finding this very amusing, "If I have to kick you off twice because you put everybody at risk, I won't hesitate. Even if it does make my own sister-in-law hate me."

"Did you really get kicked off?" Mickey snorted.

"He's making it sound worse than it was," Adam said to Mickey quickly, "I had a good reason!"

"To endanger the technological progression of the entire human race?" Eleven suggested callously, still holding his hand out in expectation of Adam Mitchell's mobile phone.

"My mother was sick!"

"Lots of people have sick mothers."

"You sound like Nine," Adam said.

"Yes, probably," Eleven said.

"She would have died if I didn't get the money to save her," Adam said angrily. Eleven knew none of this, none of it at all. Did anybody?

"Money you got illegally," the Doctor added.

"Well, so what!?" Adam demanded, "So what if I did? So what if I stole software from Van Staten and put my name on it? Without that money I wouldn't be able to supply _your _ungrateful companions with food." Mickey shouted something disgruntled then, and Eleven didn't think the situation called for him to reveal Adam and Oswin's secret new flat. He thought Oswin might kill him. He thought Oswin would kill him if he kicked her boyfriend off the TARDIS, too, but he wasn't taking chances.

"I don't care why you did it, I just want you to give me your phone until we get back to the TARDIS so that I can make sure you're not stealing information again," Eleven said. Finally, Adam relented, and dug some flat and shiny device out from the pocket of his jeans, which buzzed when he did and the phone lit up with five texts from someone called _Hop Along_, and it took the Doctor a moment to figure it out. "Is that Oswin!?" he snatched the phone, "That is a _very_ insensitive name to call somebody with one leg."

"What's she called?" Mickey asked.

"Hop Along," Eleven told him, and he looked at Adam like he was the scum of the Earth, though this look was entirely fake.

"It's a joke!" he protested, "You know what she's like."

"She never seems to enjoy people making fun of her leg."

"_Other_ people, not _me_," Adam argued.

"I thought you were nice, too," Mickey scoffed. All of the texts from Oswin 'Hop Along' Oswald were to do with the Doctor's wife, and they immediately saddened him. Apparently Clara had been asking Oswin if everybody hated her. He thought he might get her something at that moment, as he switched Adam's phone of for his benefit, because he was sure he didn't want to see what sort of things Oswin texted her boyfriend when they were presumed to be private.

"I am nice!" Adam protested.

"Yes, yes, Adam, of course you are," Eleven said dismissively, "Now, Mickey, what about those computers, eh?"

"Oh," Mickey said shortly.

"What do you mean? Why did you tell her to stop hitting it? And why were you wincing when she did?" Eleven inquired, approaching Mickey as though to examine him, stooping down a small way.

"I don't know, it was like it was hurt, or wounded," Mickey shrugged, "It'll just be my technopathy being weird." Eleven paused for a moment, and thought.

"Hmm, yes..." he clapped his hands all of a sudden and straightened up, turning on the spot to face the West, "Well then, off we go to catch up to the others."

"Uh, I thought you just ostracised them?" Adam asked, hastening to follow.

"That was before there was something going on. And they went in the direction of this hospital, anyway, which I am _very _interested in," the Doctor explained.

"Unbelievable," Mickey muttered, "We're on Mars, and there's not a single NASA space buggy in sight."


	312. So Long Soldier

_Rory_

_So Long Soldier_

He thought it was thoroughly uncalled for that the three of them be ordered away by the Doctor. The Doctor hadn't order anybody to do anything for weeks. Maybe even months. None of him. Or her. Four Doctors and they'd all been hiding like woodlice in a log for the best part of three months, and now suddenly he was bossing them around and expecting them to obey. And the annoying part was they obeyed him exactly, the trio of himself, Jack and River drifting away from the village-looking group of buildings and heading off towards a big, ivory-coloured block of a structure. It had a red cross painted on the side, enormous and seeming to shine in the pale, orange light the dust and the sun threw up at the walls. For a moment he was reminded of those chalky, old, brick buildings one would find in the most southerly parts of the United States, or Mexico, remembering the times he had ended up in Utah or Arizona on trips with the Doctor, distinctly remembering the episode with the Silence, when the man himself had been shot, after inviting himself to bear witness with some funny-coloured envelopes. Not that he had succeeded.

"What is that?" Rory asked, in the presence of two people who gemerally understood what was happening and what to do just as good as the Doctor did, and arguably better, since both Jack and River were frequently inclined to use lethal force when dealing with rogue extra-terrestrials.

"Hospital," they both answered. That explained the cross, then, he supposed. For some reason, he was quite baffled to see a hospital on Mars, just sat there on the surface, looking not too different from the hospitals there had been hundreds of thousands of years ago. It was strange to be on Mars anyway, just walking about, it might as well be a day at the park, or a stroll down to the local shop. The temperature was odd, as well. It was neither too warm nor too cold, it was just average, them sealed in the bubble of an artificial atmosphere. It was room temperature and it was windless, even though he was sure that Mars had storms. Had those storms been stopped? Or was it just a good day they arrived on?

"I've never been to Mars," Rory said as they approached this enormous hospital. The road they were walking down was highly indistinct and tricky to tell was a road at all, just a dirt path cut into the rocks by the tyres of whatever vehicles the people living on Mars those days used, even though there weren't any vehicles in sight at all. He was lagging somewhat behind the unhappy pair that was Jack and River, the both of them glancing around suspiciously. It was very quiet, he noted. He could hardly hear a thing beyond them walking, which was very odd, because usually he was stuck hearing a lot more than he wanted.

"I'd hardly call going to Mars in this century 'going to Mars,'" Jack commented, "Human beings. Always assimilating. No weather here anymore. Constantly generated temperature. Atmospheric forcefield."

"Boring," River added.

"Exactly," Jack agreed, "Boring. Honestly, you have to go back to, uh, 2150, the first successful, established Homo-Martian colony, after a _lot _of less successful attempts. There's human life on Mars before there's human life on the Moon." Rory hadn't known that. "Lot of disasters, though. You ever heard of what happened to Bowie Base One?"

"To what?" Rory asked, catching up and moving around so that the three of them were in a line, he on Jack's left, River on Jack's right.

"2059, the first established human base on Mars got destroyed by the crew," River said, "Action 5 was carried out by the captain-"

"One Captian Adelaide Brooke," Jack interjected.

"-but then she was found dead in her home after shooting herself, nobody knows what happened on Bowie Base One," River said.

"Dead in her home? How did she get home?" Rory frowned, "Home from Mars?" Surely they didn't have such astonishingly long-range teleportation by the year 2059?

"Well, that's the mystery," Jack said, "Nobody knows."

"How can nobody know?"

"I think the Doctor had something to do with it," River said with a sigh, "I could have sworn I read something on the TARDIS once about all nine crewmembers dying in the nuclear explosion they triggered themselves."

"How does that work?" Rory puzzled, "I thought if someone read something, it had to happen?"

"So did I. But the Doctor's never mentioned it," River said, and that was all either of them would say, because it didn't appear like they had anything to add. Then River decided to do something she often did, where she brought up a sensitive topic of conversation and decided she didn't really care how anybody else felt. She'd always been like that, even when she was Mel, and she'd grown up with himself and Amy. "What happened with you and Jenny, then?" Rory had to suppress the urge to groan or tell her off, and instead stayed quiet. The less involved with the Harknesses he was, the happier he was.

"What do you mean, what happened? I heard that _somebody_ listened in to the entire thing and gave a running commentary in the living room," Jack said, casting an annoyed look in Rory's direction, who looked at his feet.

"You _were_ shouting quite loud," Rory muttered.

"Don't worry about it, the more people know, the less questions they ask, and as far as most people see it, _she's _more immoral than me," Jack said bitterly.

"You're as bad as each other," River told him harshly, and he shrugged.

"_Yeah_, but people expect it from me. 'Oh, Jack's cheated on his wife, I guess that's to be expected.' None of you guessed that the tiny, cute, blonde daughter of the Doctor's would go off becoming fuck buddies with her alternate universe stepmother, now, did you? Hell, even I didn't suspect she would go doing a thing like that. I bet two months ago you all would have called her things like, 'that sweet Jenny,' and you would have said she 'couldn't hurt a fly.' Well that 'innocent' girl is as innocent as me, or Oswin, or the Doctor himself.

"And as far as following in her father's footsteps of pacifism goes, that's a lie, too. She's a major with the Homeworld Alliance in the 4800s, a first lieutenant in the British Army in the 330th Century, and a commodore in the Royal Navy in the 2300s _and _the Alliance Starfleet in the 4900s, and a lieutenant colonal in the USAF in the year 10,000. She's a soldier as good as they come, and her father doesn't know a damn thing about it." Jack had said a lot, a he'd given away a lot of secrets of Jenny's. Was all of that true? He wasn't even done. "And don't even get me started on all those times she gets herself assigned as a medical officer, right there with Mary Seacole in Crimea, field hospitals in World War One, attaching herself to aviation squadrons in World War Two, hanging around and starting a black market in East Berlin, and a railroad between the East and the West in the 1960s." Jenny got assigned as a medical officer? "She's nothing but a liar, as bad as her new _friend_, and I hope they're happy together."

Rory thought that Jenny Harkness the Doctor's Daughter had always been relatively a simple person to get to know. She always _seemed_ to be kind, she _seemed_ to be caring, and friendly, and hospitable, but he had never really considered her his friend. And suddenly, what was she? An army doctor? A German racketeer? A ruthless killing-machine? Well, the Doctor certainly lied enough, why wouldn't this carry over to his clone-daughter, who already had everything needed to fight in a war downloaded right into her head, as best as Rory understood it. Did the Doctor know his daughter at all? Did anyone? He supposed, she had been on the TARDIS with them for just three months, compared with over two-hundred years of living on her own without any paternal guidance. How much would Rory listen to a man he knew for a handful of hours, before leaving him to get by on his own for centuries?

"Hey! You three! Humans!" someone yelled gruffly, someone ahead of them, wearing a dark red, vaguely military-looking uniform, a gun clearly recognisable on his belt. He definitely was not a human though, mainly because he was bright green and had spikes on his head like a cactus. Whatever he was, he wasn't pleased to see them. "Who are you!? How did you get here!? We haven't heard any transmissions about arrivals!"

"Take it easy, we're just-" Jack began, but he was cut off when the cactus-man radioed for back up, "Back up!? Hey, we're not dangerous!"

"That's what _you_ think! You might be infected!" the cactus-man kept his distance from them. He appeared to be guarding the hospital, whiched now loomed above them like a monster, the metal doors of which now swung open and four more soldiers dressed in dark crimson ran out.

"Infected!? Infected with what!?" River demanded.

"There!" the cactus-man pointed the others, a range of different species, none of them human, towards Rory, River and Jack, "Get them decontaminated and quarantined! Quickly! For all we know, they could be carriers!" And then the soldiers were on them, dragging them, grabbing them, terrified, punching Jack when he wouldn't quite fighting against them until he resolved it was best just to allow them to get dragged away and decontaminated, whatever than entailed...


	313. Before The Lobotomy

**AN: To the guest who asked if I would do a day where Eleven is with Oswin and Adam is with Clara. Yes, I totally will, I will do that on Day 132. Well, maybe not 132 if I shuffle the storylines around, but it will definitely be the Second World War storyline I want to do that day currently. Even if the day swaps.**

_Eleven_

_Before The Lobotomy_

"This is a violation of my human rights! Not that I even am a human - as I keep telling you, I'm not - but that's irrelevant! You ought to treat me as what you think I am!" the Doctor shouted in objection as he was forcibly dragged by red-garbed soldiers belonging to the ICCC, as the logo on their uniforms declared, towards a 'decontamination room,' down the corridors of the Martian hospital.

"What I think you are is crazy and infected. Everyone crazy is infected, and everyone infected is crazy," the soldier, a YossirI , told him sharply, elbowing him in the back and forcing him into a white room after Adam Mitchell and Mickey Smith, who hadn't made nearly as much of a fuss about things as the Doctor had. No, the pair of _them_ went 'quietly' because they were 'sensible,' or, as he called it, _boring_. Very boring indeed. Then the Yossir and the other soldiers slammed the door in his face and left him there, in a big, white room that was just a sectioned off waiting room with plastic coverings on the walls, so he felt like he was on the inside of a freezer bag. The chairs had plastic sheets, too, and there were about eight of them, in that back-to-back fashion one found in airports or train stations, cushy and blue but worn down and stained, four on one side, four on the other, nailed to the floor on a big metal frame like a bench. There were already some people there, though. Three other people.

"Nice of you to join the party," Jack Harkness said boredly. So they'd come to the hospital first and got stuck in decontamination like the rest of them, "Hope you're not planning on trying to kick us out of here, too."

"No, I have more important things to worry about," Eleven said dryly. He did. This mysterious plague spreading through the human population of Mars University was most definitely more important than his ex-son-in-law (he wasn't going to lie, he rather enjoyed there now being an _ex_ at the start of this when he addressed Jack), his ex-wife and his ex-father-in-law thinking it was amusing to make cheap jokes about his wife. After all, she wasn't there to hear the jokes, and he could always do something else about it later. But he always had to be careful when it came to doing things, or punishing people, lest a Third Prank War break out... although... if Adam Mitchell was no longer in charge of culinary requisitions and general nutrition, not to mention finance... that gave him a few ideas... It was his TARDIS, after all, and all of them should be grateful he was letting them live with him, because really, when had it ever been asserted that the Dimension Crash disallowed people from leaving? Every last one of them, including the other Doctors, could have no reason at all to remain attached to the ship. Really, he thought, he could do what he liked. It was his home, and his alone. And Clara's. He supposed it was Clara's home as well, if that was how she wanted things.

Back to the plague, though. The more important thing he had to worry about.

"Have you been decontaminated?" Mickey asked Rory, Eleven staring around. Now he looked some more he saw a very odd pipe plugged into the strange, plastic bag sort of room, that was probably pumping air in so that they could breath from the ventilation system. But then, he could always be wrong, he didn't exactly know what this 'decontamination' consisted of. He went and leant against the door and crossed his arms, spying a security camera on the ceiling. It was probably much more than a security camera, though, it probably had a scanner in it, and working on this hunch he dredged his sonic screwdriver out of his pocket, his older, slightly broken one that wasn't quite up to scratch when compared with the newer model that had been stolen by his other half.

"No," Rory answered, as the Doctor scanned the camera, a little black hemisphere stuck to the ceiling that did _so _resembled the cameras of the Twentieth Century and beyond. He would have thought they would have installed a cloaking mechanism, but, again, cloaking mechanisms were of the sleek days gone by. He much preferred the clunkier eras of humanity though. It was much easier to get around, to take things apart and see what made them work, than it was when everything was just a flattened, blueish image projected out of pinhole-sized port in a glistening, smooth wall.

"What does this decontamination consist of, then? Have you managed to find that out?" Eleven asked. Adam Mitchell hadn't said a word for some time, he had gone and sat down on the very edge of the four-by-four waiting room seats, as far from the others as he could get. He had his head in his hands. Weren't headaches a symptom?

"Nope, not at all," Jack said, "Far as I can tell, they've just locked us up in a room."

"What are you sonicking?" River asked him, and he pointed at the black scanner.

"That," he said, "Scanning us. Decontamination isn't decontamination at all, they don't know how to decontaminate us if we have this infection, they're scanning to see if we do."

"Yeah, what's all this stuff about a plague?" Jack asked.

"Entire campus is quarantined and all the humans are in this hospital, as far as I can tell," the Doctor said, "It only affects humans, whatever it is, so I should be safe. And River. The rest of you, I haven't a clue. Are you alright, Adam?" Adam didn't hear him.

"Oi, Adam," Mickey, who was closer, said a little louder, and at this Adam looked up and squinted like he was having difficulty seeing.

"Huh?" he asked, looking at Mickey, who nodded at Eleven. Adam took off his glasses and rubbed one of his eyes. Maybe they were malfunctioning and making everything look odd, since they _were _to correct colour blindness. But nothing Oswin usually invented seemed to be subject to malfunctions, and certainly not something so simple as colour blindness correctig lenses.

"I said, are you okay?" the Doctor asked.

"I just have a headache," he said.

"That's one of the symptoms," Eleven told him, and he got some shifty looks from Mickey and Rory, who felt like they were the only two really at risk of this mysterious illness spreading to them, since it was unlikely it would impact on Jack and his immortality too much.

"I get a lot of headaches," Adam said, "I have a lot of eye problems, not that you would know. Astigmatism." Eleven hadn't known that at all.

"You're quite a stereotypical weak nerd, really, aren't you?" Rory commented, and Adam glared at him. The lights _were _quite bright. "Do you have asthma?"

"No," Adam said, and then he put his glasses back on and turned the other way, not amused in the slightest, then to Eleven he said, "Why did you make me come out today?"

"_I_ was made to come here against my will anyway, all because Amy wanted me to keep _him_ busy so she could go to a spa," Eleven said, waving a hand in Rory's direction.

"She's gone to a spa!?" Rory exclaimed, "She said she was staying in!"

"Well, she was lying," Eleven said.

"Why do _you_ care if she stays in or not, anyway?" Jack questioned Rory, "How come she can't do what she wants?" Then an argument broke out between Jack and Rory about wives and how Rory of course did not try and control is wife (who _could_ control Amy?), but that Jack should maybe have been a little stricter with _his_ to stop her running off with other women, and that was when the Doctor tried very hard to stop listening while Mickey tried to quell the argument entirely, Adam buried his head in his hands, and River drifted quietly to Eleven's left side. Still, anyone outside had yet to realise that two people in the room were not even human. River was basically a robot now. Their scanners would pick _that_ up just as well as they would pick up the Doctor's dual circulatory system due to his having two hearts.

"What's going on?" River asked him.

"Haven't a clue," Eleven said, crossing his arms and observing Adam Mitchell. His intuition was telling him that there was something definitively interesting about the often overwhelmingly ordinary Adam Mitchell. Well, perhaps Adam wasn't so ordinary those days, hobbling around with his frozen, permanently sprained ankle and his cryostasis. He was very chilly to be around for prolonged amounts of time. Another reason why he hadn't stayed with Clara for dinner the previous night.

"You must have," River said.

"Nope."

"Why are you looking at him?"

"Not sure. Mickey! Are you picking anything up?" Eleven called to Mickey, who stopped trying to interrupt Jack and Rory (who were still rowing), who looked over and gave him an odd, disgruntled look.

"I'm not a radar," he said.

"No, then?"

"No," he said.

"Hm..." he mused. He still had his screwdriver in his hand, and he pointed it right at Adam Mitchell at that moment, and scanned.

"What are you doing?" River asked him, not loudly enough for Adam, who was not paying attention, to notice. Eleven's being odd was the thing that got Rory and Jack to stop arguing that Rory should be less controlling while Jack should also be more controlling, an argument which was completely incorrect and mildly insulting to both Amy _and_ Jenny, who were both self-determined creatures with as much free will as was possible. Jenny with more, even, he would say. The room fell quiet with confusion, and Adam Mitchell still did not notice a thing.

"Ah," said the Doctor, stopping his scan and putting away his screwdriver, taking a step closer to the door, "Well, I know what's happened to the humans."

"What?" Jack asked, and Eleven put a finger to his lips and nodded at Adam, then he started hitting the door again.

"Anybody there!? Non-human here!" he shouted, "One Time Lord and a..." he glanced at River, "What would you call yourself now?"

"A cyborg."

"Yes, one Time Lord and a cyborg. I think if you check the results of your ceiling scanner you'll find that out quite clearly!" he yelled, "Two hearts, you see! Regenerative abilities! Inhuman IQ!" The last one, he supposed, was a lie, because Oswin had once been perfectly human with an IQ of about fifty points more than his. But they didn't know Oswin, so it hardly mattered if he was telling a white (conceited) lie.

_Finally_ the door opened.

"There's only one Time Lord left known to the ICCC," the soldier, another purple Jiraxt, like the receptionist, told him harshly, glancing at River by his side. No doubt they were the only two who stood a chance of being released, which was why Eleven, who was overcome with a sense of urgency now that one of his companions was being affected by something a great deal more dangerous than astigmatism.

"Yes, the Doctor," River said, "_He's_ the Doctor."

"It's true, I am. I also think I might have solved your little plague problem." 'Solved' was an enormous overstatement. He had not solved a single thing. Merely, he just thought he had found something out that had been overlooked by the ICCC or whoever else was there. He still couldn't remember what ICCC stood for.

"You two had better come with us," the Jiraxt ordered them.

"Wonderful," Eleven beamed, stepping out of the decontamination chamber where no decontamination happened at all. Just a lot of sitting and waiting. Well, it _was_ a waiting room, just a waiting room covered in a thick and excessive layer of clingfilm.

"Hey! What about the rest of us!? _I'm_ not sick!" Jack shouted.

"Well then, I'm sure you'll be let out soon enough," Eleven said to them, smiling. He couldn't let them out. Adam needed to stay put, whatever was wrong with him was what was wrong with everybody else in the hospital. Seriously, he added, "Look after Adam," and then closed the door behind himself, River and the ICCC soldier.

"Well?" River asked him questioningly, the ICCC soldier looking at him with trepidation.

"Could you tell me how many of the humans here have the Chip Type 1 or Type 2 implants? You know, those brain whatsits? With the doors?" when he said this, he made a mime with his fingers on his forehead. The soldier frowned in thought.

"All of them, I think."

"_All_ of them!?" he exclaimed.

"I think so."

"They're the mobile phones of this century, then, I suppose..." Eleven muttered, and sarcastically, "Excellent. Whatever this plague is, it's going through the chips. One of my friends in there has a chip, the other three don't. The one with the glasses."

"Should we let the others out?"

"What? No! Of course not; they've annoyed me. Dreadful bunch today. Let them be," Eleven sighed, "Show me these wards, then. I have to see the infected."


	314. Prosthetic Head

_Eleven_

_Prosthetic Head_

There was a single ward of the enormous hospital kept for anybody with a problem other than this brain disease that was spreading through the human population. He thought the brain chips really were a prime example of backwards engineering and, to be frank, devolution. It was so many hundreds of thousands of years ago that trepanning and cutting holes in skulls had been a commonplace treatment for resolving such supernatural and unfathomable issues as demonic possession, or anything as painfully simple as a migraine, and here people were carving out recesses in the centres of their skulls for the purpose of information absorption, and the Doctor thought that there weren't a whole lot of things he wanted to know so badly he didn't have the patience to spend ten seconds reading a passage of a book, rather than cramming everything directly into his frontal lobe.

All around them, as the soldier lead them through the unkempt hallways, they could hear moans and whispers. Wherever they were going, the sounds seemed to be getting more extreme and disturbed, and the Doctor very much hoped he could come up with some sort of cure for it, lest Adam Mitchell suffer terribly for the mistake an earlier version of himself - an earlier version of himself who could well be making that exact mistake for the very first time thirty-three million miles away on Satellite Five presently - had made when trusted by the Doctor with more freedom than he could handle. Brain chips were so common, like mobile phones as he had previously put it, that it didn't seem to anybody that they could have anything to do with this illness, although, if anybody _had_ figured it out, it was likely that they didn't know how to stop it, or what it was. Something affecting the brain chips. What could possibly be affecting the brain chips? And why _now_? He knew that the University of Mars had been around for hundreds of years by this point.

"This is the secure ward," the Jiraxt ICCC soldier whose name was actually Tiot said. He was the only soldier with them, but Eleven had seen a lot of other staff running around. They all seemed so busy tending to the ailing humans that they didn't have a glance to spare for the Doctor or for River, and the former himself was so preoccupied with the enigma of the brain plague that he hadn't given a second thought to the fact he had gotten himself trapped for the rest of the interminable future with only his ex-wife for legitimate company. He had barely said a word to her for three and a half months.

"Secure ward?" River asked, "Why do they need to be kept in a secure ward?" Eleven saw through the door that the room seemed to be dark, this secure ward. Then the lights flickered within and there was the imprint of a blueish glow left in the shadows for a second, like looking at the sun and then blinking and still seeing the blots sticking to your retinas.

"You'll see," Tiot said.

"How ominous," the Doctor commented, then to River he said, as Tiot opened the locked door, "You have to wonder if all of this build up is really worth it. For all we know, I'm completely wrong and there's been a mass outbreak of people not switching the heating on and contracting gangrene."

"Sweetie, I doubt the entire human population of the planet Mars have simultaneously forgotten to turn on their radiators and have _all_ got gangrene," River said. Still, he thought, keep an open mind. Gangrene was much easier to treat than mysterious, ambiguous brain plagues. A healthy dose of medicinal maggots to eat the dead tissue, some leeches to cure the underlying blood infection should it have progressed to septicaemia, and then throw on a few blankets, and they would be right as rain. Perfectly healthy. Maybe just with some stiff movement in whichever appendage had suffered the disease. He was distinctly remembered of his own vilely infected hand that had been cured by the Miracle Medicine almost two months ago. (**Chapter Ref. 315**)

Five minutes later, he was no longer 'wondering if all of this build up was really worth it.' Most definitely it was, and most definitely it was also _not _gangrene.

It was like he had suddenly entered into the imagination of a very sordid sea captain. Nemo or Ahab, or other such sycophantic, enigmatic, psychotic pirate. For they were on Mars, the pair of them, on the highest floor of a hospital, and the room was full of barnacles. Black and grey barnacles that were enormous and leeched their way across people and beds and floors and windows like suckling limpets, throbbing as a blue glow stretched outward through veiny adornments that spread along all of them as tree roots, pulsating light like a fiberoptic cable and looking, on the whole, very odd. He partly expected to find the people on the beds were secretly mermaids hiding fish tails and fins beneath the bedsheets and these dark things growing on everything.

"What _is _it?" River asked him, like he knew. But he didn't know at all, "Where is it coming from?"

"Them," Tiot told them, "It started out small, just on a few of them, and then it just... grew. And we moved them up here, and they're stuck to the walls, and we can't move them. We tried to cut it once, but they all screamed. They severed one of those glowing bits though," he pointed at one of the bits that pulsed blue, like a heartbeat was flowing through from somewhere, an artery, flowing to and from the barnacles, which varied greatly in size. Some of them were enormous, one on the ceiling the length of his arm in diameter, and others, the ones on the people, were significantly smaller, the size of a real limpet or seashell, covering faces and arms and skin like pustules and welts, the buboes of the Black Death or the sores of Smallpox.

River and Eleven drifted over to the closest bed. All of the people in there were moaning, this seemed to be the source of the noises that flooded out into the whole hospital. This nearest person's eyes were tightly shut, but there was no sign of the door in their head being open.

"Are you sure it's the brain chips?" River asked him.

"Positive. I scanned Adam and got a reading back like you would get if you were to give an MRI scan to somebody having a seizure, the most astronomical amount of unnatural brain activity. How long does it take to get to this stage?" Eleven asked Tiot. There were no other medical staff or soldiers in the room. These patients were not dangerous, nor was what they had contagious, but it also wasn't curable.

"It's taking less and less time. There are other wards like this one, not as bad," Tiot said.

"How are you feeding them?"

"We're not."

"What do you mean, 'you're not?'" Eleven asked darkly, turning away from the poor fellow in the bed to look at Tiot, who was a little taller than the Doctor and utterly unintimidated.

"We can't. It's been over a month since anybody in here ate or drank, they just can't. It takes them over from the inside out first," he said, "The doctors, when they scan, say it takes over the nervous system. They said it had all the hallmarks of being a neurological virus that just wasn't in the brain."

"What do you mean, it takes them over?" Eleven asked.

"They're as good as dead," River told him, "It's keeping them alive. Like a fungal infection. It needs them to be alive so that it can live."

"A parasite. Some kind of neurological, viral parasite. But how does it get to them?" he puzzled, "How did it start in the first place?" Tiot didn't answer that, presumably because there was no answer. Not yet, anyway.

"Who are these people?" River asked.

"They're all maintenance staff," Tiot told her, Eleven watching the infected people, who might as well be corpses, struggle to breath. They all seemed damp, too, like they had been sweating excessively, and the lights were still flickering on and off above them.

"All of them?" she implored.

"Yes."

"From where?"

"From the Hard Drive."

"The what?" Eleven looked around. Tiot shifted uncomfortably.

"The Hard Drive is quarantined."

"Quarantined why? What is it? Where is it? How do we get there? I need to see it," the Doctor said very quickly. Tiot sighed and walked over to the door, pointing them out of the room. The pair of them left reluctantly, but the Doctor knew he couldn't really do anything for the people stuck in the secure ward, and this 'hard drive' was of great interest to him all of a sudden.

"They think that's where it's coming from," Tiot said, "The power was all out the last time anyone went down there, nobody knows what's going on. No one's gone down in a month."

"Down?"

"It's underneath the Information &amp; Data Management Facility," he said.

"What? Admin? This entire thing is an administrative problem?" Eleven frowned. 'Information &amp; Data Management Facility' was the most long-winded name for 'office' that he had ever heard.

"This virus must be a nightmare for Human Resources," River muttered.

"It's where everything is saved," Tiot said, "All the data for the university and for the hospital and everyone on Mars is stored in the Hard Drive. It's huge and underground, further north, where the ice caps were before the whole planet was made temperate." Ah, yes, he had forgotten about that, about the fact all of Mars' naturally occurring glaciers and ice fields had been destroyed in an effort to make it a more pleasant place to inhabit. The Ice Warriors would not have stood for it, but the Ice Warriors had been extinct for a very long time by that century.

"If they have the brain chips, they'll be using the info-spikes, won't they?" Eleven asked.

"I suppose," Tiot, locking the door again, answered, "Those things are barbaric if you ask me."

"Well, I happen to agree with you, but the fact remains that they're here and in use. That's where the humans get their information, a direct link from this Hard Drive to the brain," he said, "We need to get there."

"It's off-limits," Tiot said, "The priority is getting a cure."

"Tiot," Eleven said, slapping a hand on Tiot's back as they worked, looking at him, "There is no cure, I'm afraid. None at all. It's a biological organism that is somehow passing through the info-spikes from this Hard Drive, and it's evolved to transmit through the links that all of the chips will share. Now, how long do you think it'll be before this biological, electrical thing figures out how to jump to a new species through the nervous system? Synapses? Everyone has a brain, it's neurological. It's already in the lights, and it's alive. How long do you think it'll be before it really is a virus? Before the Jiraxt are susceptible? Any species? Before it can spread like wifi through anything that recieves data? Through every living thing in the entire universe? It's leeching those people, they're like batteries. Imagine that, Tiot, civilisation as you know it reduced to batteries powering a big lump of barnacles, all because you wouldn't take River and I to look at this Hard Drive?" Tiot stared at him fearfully, "Now. Can we see it?"


	315. Lend A Hand

_Eleven_

_Lend A Hand_

When they arrived, there was absolutely no doubt in the Eleventh Doctor's mind that the Hard Drive was the place the mysterious, barnacle brain infection had originated from. Tiot was the one who had driven them in a land cruiser that was reminiscent of a big moon buggy from times so long ago they were most definitely ancient history. 1969, Ancient Earth, Ancient America walking upon the Ancient Moon. Tiot hadn't been with anybody, it had just been with him, and strictly speaking, they didn't have clearance to break the quarantine of the Hard Drive and enter into its underground belly to the far north of the planet, in the middle of some crater that looked almost like a bomb had gone off. But there was the building in the middle, large and definitely looking like the office block which it was. An office block on Mars, how novel.

Tiot would not come in with them. He left them alone with an access key card, though the building was apparently in complete lockdown. The Doctor had utterly no intentions of using this key card, for he had his sonic screwdriver, and even though it was an old, partially broken sonic screwdriver, it was still perfectly capable of opening doors.

Everything was lit blue inside. Lit blue by the same barnacle manifestation as the secure ward of the hospital. The limpet things grew grotesquely on the walls and the floors like they would on the inside of a shipwreck in the ocean, everything decayed and rusted and dripping wet and icy cold. Everything was damp, too, and shining in the blue glow of the pulsating 'veins' of the crustacean infection, like a rot, spreading across every surface, including underfoot. Beneath them, everything they walked on crunched and squelched like bones and flesh being ground to a pulp, and it was all bobby and bumpy as though they were in a forest stepping over entangled, elderly tree roots that snaked below the leaves. And this wall only in the entrance of the Hard Drive, the reception desk.

The Doctor had, for once, taken on board the advice of himself (and this time, when he said himself, he really _did_ mean himself, this own version of him he was now, not any past or future manifestation) and finally remembered to put a torch in one of his pockets, an enormous, industrial-sized thing that had probably been used as a devilish murder weapon innumerous times on those crime dramas Earthlings loved so much. This torch he dragged out of his pocket now and lit for the benefit of himself and for River, though he wasn't sure if she might have some seeing-in-the-dark feature now she had mechanical eyes and mechanical everything-else, because he was sure that Jenny had night vision in _her_ eyes, but then, they were very different pieces of machinery, and he didn't know the particulars of either his ex-wife _or_ his daughter lately.

"It's like they're breathing," River said to him quietly as he shone a light at these barnacle formations, these crusty, dark grey protrusions that stuck to the walls like vile growths and moved and wriggled. She was right, it _was_ like they were breathing, and he didn't know what might happen if they stepped too close to one of them.

"They're alive," he told her, the same thing he had told Tiot, spinning around on the spot and looking up and down and everywhere to see them, frowning at one of them he found at his eye level with a great deal of curiosity.

"What _are_ they, though?"

"Just the visual part of the infestation," he answered her, stepping away from the door and looking around for whichever way it was they had to go to get deeper down. But if it was already so affected at just the entrance, he couldn't imagine what the place must look like lower down, where those maintenance workers who had been the first ones affected had been, "This isn't the dangerous part, not quite. Well, it sort of is, but the dangerous part is further in. Wounds often aren't as bad as they look." He shone the torch in her face for a moment by accident and she squinted at it, until he walked off without apologising, too involved in what he was seeing around him to pay much attention.

"How did it get here, though, do you think? How would it get here, and then get into data storage, in the first place? Did somebody bring it?" River wondered, "And how is it making all of these barnacles grow?"

"Biomechanical, Song," Eleven told her, "It's using energy, but there are a lot of different types of energy it can make. Cell division and multiplication is a biological feature, but _this_? This is both. It uses any power it can leech onto to grow like this, the same way mould does. If the conditions are right."

"That still doesn't answer my question of how it got here," she was saying, and the Doctor stopped dead in the middle of a hallway lined with a coating of shell-creatures and blemishes so thick that the metal walls beneath them were hardly visible, "Or what it wants, or why everything's so wet. It was wet in that secure ward, too. Where can the water be coming from? A leaky pipe? Doctor? What's wrong?"

"I…" he stepped back and then tripped over one of those damned things that was suckling the floor and tried to catch himself on the wall, at which point he was blasted in the face with a harsh blue light and didn't have time to save himself from his blunder before one of the limpet-things opened up like a Venus Flytrap and prepared itself to receive his hand as he fell straight into it.

And receive his hand, it did.

It grabbed him and pulled, grabbed him and _sucked_, sucked his arm all the way down to the elbow and he put his other hand firmly on the wall, along with one of his feet, to try and drag himself back to safety.

"What did you do!?" River exclaimed.

"Nothing! I haven't done anything! Not a thing!" he shouted back, the thing keeping tight hold of his hand pulsating like it was chewing, and then something within started to twist, started to try and drag him deeper still, "River! Do something!" he shouted, his torch dropped to the floor. He couldn't pay attention to whatever River was doing nearby as the thing shot pain through his hand like he had just been stabbed, or he was being gnawed at, attached to something _very_ painfully. "It's trying to pull my whole arm in!" he yelled at her, as it slowly crawled its lip-like appendages along his arm, beyond his elbow, halfway to his shoulder. And what after that? His head? If his head was gone, digested, there wouldn't be enough left of him that he could even regenerate, if the thing kept pulling his insipid carcass within itself.

Then there was a flash of light and more blue glow and he fell backwards with great force as the thing suddenly released him, a high-pitched noise of pain that almost sounded like a piglet squealing, but if that piglet also had a bad mucus cough, as the thing writhed on the wall and glowed an even brighter blue than it had before, leaving fluid down his arm, now sopping wet and faintly glowing with whatever bioluminescent spittle had been left on him from his attack.

"What did you do!?" he demanded of River, River who was holding a gun.

"Shot it," she answered him, and he gawped at her, and she shrugged, "You told me to do something. It's not even dead."

"Well, what's that gun? Is that one of Oswin's guns? Those stun ones?" he asked her, making a grab for the thing, but she pulled it out of his reach and stowed it back in her belt.

"No, it's a blaster," she told him, "I didn't think shooting it with electricity would do anything too helpful, if that's what it's feeding on." He grimaced, annoyed, but then, he couldn't really think of another possibility. He really thought that they might be forced to kill the infection anyway, and now that he thought he knew the truth of the matter, he _definitely_ thought they might have to kill it. "What were you going to say? Before it grabbed you?"

Eleven sighed, and stared at his hand, shaking it like a dog would to try and get it dry.

"Don't do that," River told him off like he was a child, and he stopped.

"You know, that reminded me dreadfully of when Jenny was born," he said, "Have you ever been subjected to one of those soft tissue cloning machines? They just grab your arm and stab you, and next thing you know there's some blonde girl running around shooting off guns and trapping Martha Jones in cave-ins."

"Seems like a very specific experience, sweetie," she said.

"Probably," he muttered, wiping his hand on his trousers, "Thank god it was my right hand, I don't think Clara would be so forgiving if I got _another_ wedding ring destroyed. You know, after that business with the space pirates."

"And your hand was infected and bleeding puss, yes, I remember, it was disgusting," she told him, and he sighed (again) and began to walk off towards a fire escape he saw at the end of one corridor, picking up his torch in his clean, left hand, his wedding ring still glinting like sapphire back at him in the phosphorescent blue glow of the growths themselves. The fire escape, he presumed, would have a route down to the lower level. "What were you going to say, though?"

"I know what it is," he said grimly, "I think I do, anyway."

"Which means it's something bad and you don't want to accept it," she 'translated.' That was what he meant, though. He didn't want to be right, was the thing. He wanted to be very, very wrong.

"Did you ever hear about what happened to Bowie Base One?" he asked, and her eyes widened.


	316. Troubled Waters

_Eleven_

_Troubled Waters_

"It was a virus, took people over, called itself the Flood, made them into walking corpses," the Eleventh Doctor explained hastily to River Song as they dragged themselves through deepening water. Down and down a winding, square staircase they were going, trying to get to the lowest level, squelching, dripping noises surrounding them in the dark. "I came here, I was the Tenth Doctor back then, going through some unpleasant personal issues. You know how it is," he glanced at her, shining the torch at her again. He had a dreadful habit of pointing the torch wherever he was looking, and River wasn't too happy about it.

"I hope that isn't directed at me," she said.

"What isn't?"

"'Unpleasant personal issues,'" she quoted him back to himself, and his jaw dropped.

"No! Of course not!" he assured her, mortified, stopping in the corridor and shining the torch at her face again. This time she hit his hand away and he kept the torch still in the direction she had moved it, even if now they could barely see each other. Around them the sea-like infection was moving like it might in an ocean breeze, and the stuff was beginninng to look more like a grotesque amalgam of black coral and veiny wires. With this movement came a horrid sound of creaking and cracking and crushing.

"So was my death not unpleasant for you?" she asked him with a smirk, and for a moment he stared at her dimly lit countenance, before scowling to himself and starting to walk again.

"I just can't win with you," he said, and she laughed at him, following on as they went down another flight of stairs slowly, so that they didn't slip, "We're not even married anymore, and you're still taunting me with these... Catch-22s."

"Well, you're always so fun to taunt."

"I suppose I must be, what with everybody taunting me so much," he grumbled, reminded of the way Clara tried to get him stuck in cleverly worded traps designed to make it sound like he had said something abhorrent to her all the time, "Taunting me _and_ Clara. We must be like circus clowns to you lot." He glanced at her and she raised an eyebrow and they paused for a moment and just looked at each other, him waiting to see if she would say something else about Clara, her debating saying something else about Clara.

"So, the Flood?" she changed the subject, and he sped up walking, as they had slowed, and she caught up with him.

"It was here," he told her.

"What was?"

"Bowie Base One, it was here. This place is built in a crater, a nuclear crater, created by Adelaide Brooke in 2059 when she triggered Action Five and destroyed the base to stop the Flood from reaching Earth. They were all supposed to die, I took three of them back to Earth. When she realised that her martyrdom is what drove her granddaughter to pioner faster than light travel," he paused for a minute.

"What happened?" River asked him softly.

"She shot herself," he told her, and there was a long pause, both of them stopped, and then he turned and started going down another staircase, "The water comes from the infection, the barnacles are exuding it, creating water, gallons and gallons of it." Childishly, to illustrate his point, he jumped the last three steps of the flight they were on, the last flight, for they were now deep underground the data facility, and made an enormous splash in water that nearly came up to his knees. "The water they got came from a glacier, and the Flood was trapped inside. Now, the bacteria has been festering here for hundreds of thousands of years. There must have been a leak, I suppose, or it got into the pipes. An easy thing to happen, they could have been syphoning water from deep down inside the planet. But it grew here, mixed with the computers, evolved, and now look at it." He nodded then at a barnacle sucking a broken down door that was lying on the floor, that they had just had to step over.

"What does it want?"

"I don't know, probably just to take over all of humanity."

"It's evolving alarmingly quickly if it's taken everybody over. They can't _all_ have used an info-spike before the infection started," River said, "Adam didn't even use one."

"No, he didn't... It's jumping now. Like wifi, doesn't need a physical connection."

"Soon it won't even need a brain chip, it'll just go from human to human, then species to species, across the universe," she said.

"Yes. That's why we have to stop it before it gets that far," he said, "But I don't know how. We can't nuke it again, the entire planet would need to be destroyed to make sure."

"What's going to happen to Adam?" River asked, and he stopped.

"I don't know. I shouldn't think he'll die. Unless we fail, or take an awfully long time about it... We should have brought Mickey."

"_You_ should have, you mean."

"I suppose so. Water breathing and technopathy, what a useful combination he has..."

"You're an idiot," she told him.

"We could always have him use Adam."

"Use Adam how?"

"Corner the virus in him. There must _some _part of it that controls the rest, like a heart. If we put that into Adam-"

"We would have to kill him," she said, and he looked at her, "I might not get along very well with Adam's girlfriend, but I really don't want to see what she might do if we kill her boyfriend. We could just as easily corner it into somebody else."

"Jack."

"Jack doesn't have a brain chip, sweetie."

"I have an idea," Eleven declared.

"We're not going to kill Adam."

"I think we should kill Jack."

"How the tables have turned, now _I'm_ the one trying to convince _you_ not to kill anybody. Although, he _is_ immortal. But you would have to forcibly evolve it."

"Jack's in the decontamination chamber," Eleven answered, "That'll stop biological viruses from getting out. All of a sudden, we've trapped it, if we move it into him."

"And how do you propose we do that, then?" she questioned him, and he thought. He didn't really know how to do that, "How do you forcibly evolve a virus?"

"Oh, I know exactly how, Professor Song," he said, reaching into his pocket, holding the torch under his arm as he did, pulling out a sleek, rectangular object that he had stolen that very morning, "Brain chips are just as common these days as mobile phones."

There was a groaning noise that eminated painfully from somewhere nearby the floor they were now stuck on, and Eleven jumped and dropped the phone in the water at the raspy sound. River would probably have called him an idiot again if it wasn't for the fact she was too busy drawing her gun - the deadly blaster rather than the harmless stun gun, to his irritation - as he started wading his hands through the deep water to try and retrieve the phone before it was too waterlogged to work.

"The thing is, River," he said quietly, and now he could hear footsteps sloshing about, though he wasn't sure about how close they were, "The control hub is down here, and what _we _have to do is talk to it, and move it, because - and I'm just guessing here - it's probably so enormous that the only way to destroy it would be to-"

"Blow up Mars, yes, I got that part," River hissed at him, "Be quiet." She was holding her gun, ready to shoot, as he stood back up holding the soaking wet phone, which had some strange, wiry stuff on it that reminded him both of cables and seaweed.

"That's why we have to convince it to move," Eleven said, "Into Jack. What better base of operations than an immortal man?"

"I know, I get it, now shut up."

"Did you hear that, Flood!?" he bellowed, then he beamed at her, "IMMORTAL MAN! RIPE FOR THE TAKING!"

"_Stop talking_!" she said, and she looked like she was about to shoot _him_, when some bulbous creation of the infection loped around the corner, water lapping around Eleven's shins in the tide that it had created, a horrifying fiend, that had once been a human being. Yes, he was sure of it, the thing had two arms and two legs, even if the arms were wrapped and fused to its body. It was metallic grey in colour now, though, the infection had grown over it to such a severe extent, and it was covered in barnacle protrusions like rot, that glowed blue just like the cable-esque formations wrapping like pythons around its body. The face was the same as last time though, the large, cracked lips, the white eyes, the water secretions coming from its very skin, like sweat. And it was moaning. That was the source of the noise.

It staggered towards them frightfully, and for a split second the Doctor thought he was with someone other than River. No specific person, but someone just as defenceless as he was, his only weapon being words and a screwdriver, and he was debating throwing his sonic, or Adam's phone, at the thing to see if that might slow it as it dragged itself sluggishly through the water with its ghastly, open mouth and staring, dead eyes.

And then River shot it in the head, shot it straight through the middle of its skull and burned a hole with her white-beamed laser blaster, and it fell forwards onto its knees. The pair of them jumped back and Eleven winced as the water from it falling splashed him, and its body now lay submerged.

"Is that what'll happen to everyone if we don't stop it? Those people in the hospital will become like _this_?" River asked him.

"No," he told her, spying something and crouching down, "This is awfully different. It used to spread through the water, a single drop could infect you. Well, me, I doubt it would work on you. But now they've moved on from that. Look," he picked something up from the water, long, like a snake, "It's a wire."

"That'll take us to the heart of it," River said, "Then we can see if it'll go into Jack."

Eleven straightened up, holding the wire in his hands, lifting it up with him, and then they started to follow it, slowly, listening out for any more of those things that might be lurking around.

"In the hospital they're like batteries. This is more like a soldier. Probably designed to force people to use the info-spikes before they developed the wireless communication ability," Eleven explained, "It doesn't need them anymore, but I suppose there's no point in it killing them. It's clever. I'm sure it'll listen. It talked to me before, I'm sure it can talk to me now."

"Well, how could it not listen, when you were shouting so loud?" she asked him resentfully.

"Everything worked out fine. More than fine, even. Look, we have a breadcrumb trail," he said, showing her the wire that slithered slimily through his hands, one of which was also holding Adam's phone.

"Give me that," she said, snatching the phone from him, wiping it down and trying to see if it still worked. Eleven didn't think River had a phone, and neither did he, so they really needed it to work.

"So, then," he began, "What was it I was saying earlier? About taunting Clara and I?"

"Phone still works, thank god," River said stiffly.

"Why did you call her a tart?" he questioned.

"I thought you'd forgotten about that. And usually you don't say a thing when people make fun of her," River muttered.

"Yes, well, perhaps I have too much faith in them to realise they're being cruel and to stop," he said, thinking again about the fact it was _his_ TARDIS they were living on in the first place, not any of the other Doctors'. If anything, the person who he would think had secondary control over it was his daughter, who he thought had more of a right to the ship than his other selves lurking about. "Perhaps I should stop putting faith in them, you included, to realise you're being cruel and to stop."

"Why are you so bothered _now_?"

"Because I accidentally saw some of Adam's texts from his girlfriend earlier, and Clara was asking her if everybody hates her, and was apparently very upset. And the thing is, River, that if _I_ upset my wife, _I _will be the one to do whatever it takes to fix it. But I don't know how I'm supposed to fix it when she's having to put up with all of that relentless tormenting. When it's people like you, and people like Rose."

"Oh, please, I neither like nor dislike the woman. And you know that Rose is the ringleader anyway."

"Well I'll get to Rose. But now I'm asking you. Dig deep and find whatever bit of that cold heart of yours still has feeling - you know, the bit I used to love so much - and leave Clara alone," he asked her imploringly, "Because in the end, if you want to be angry about us falling in love, aren't _I_ the one you should be angry at?"

"Maybe I _am_ angry at you." He looked at her.

"Well, I'm sorry," he apologised, "But you died. And then there was Clara."

"...Fine, Doctor. I'll be nice to wifey."

"Thank you. Now, have you anymore things to say to me while we're stuck here together? Because I have the dreadful feeling you have a lot to say to me that you haven't said after all these months." They were still walking, and he was watching the cable as he slid it through his fingers and followed it around corners now.

"Anymore things like what?"

"Haven't the foggiest. How about starting with if you _really _have feelings for the Ninth Doctor, or if you're in the midst of some sort of diabolical ploy, toying with his emotions?" he asked.

"I don't think that's really your business," she said defensively, and he laughed, "What? What's funny?"

"You would only be defensive if you _did _have feelings, which is good, because he's been through a lot," Eleven said, "What with dying and coming back to find the woman he loves off with some weird bloke with too much gel in his hair." He was talking about Ten.

"Suppose you can never say we don't have anything in common," River joked, and he laughed again.

A rumble rang out through the foundations and the walls of the basement they were creeping through, and all of the barnacle-things on the walls seemed to shiver and pulse faster than they had been doing. They had just rounded a corner and were faced with a set of double doors, a sign next to them unobscured by limpets reading, simply, _Hard Drive_. Whatever this heart was, it was right through those doors.


	317. Brain Drain

_Mickey_

_Brain Drain_

He and Jack had been trapped in a tiny decontamination chamber with Adam Mitchell for three hours. It was hot and the walls were damp with condensed breath from the three of them, and with the lights glaring it was as though they were stuck in a greenhouse. Suddenly, Mickey knew how dogs felt when left in cars on hot days. Being warm was a bad thing for another reason, however, because it meant something was going on with Adam Mitchell's cryokinesis. Usually, when Adam entered a room the temperature dropped, and though Jack had said his skin temperature was still incredibly low when he had gone over to check, there was definitely something else going on. The strange brain disease, he was sure of it, just like the Doctor had said. Adam was infected.

"What do you think is wrong with his lips?" Jack asked, watching Adam closely, closer than Mickey, who was stood as far away from him as possible. When he went near Adam, it was almost like... interference. In his head. Static. There was a buzzing sound in the back of his mind constantly in that hospital anyway, like something was trying to talk to him.

"Can't say I'm paying much attention to Adam's lips," Mickey said, crossing his arms and staying backed as far into the corner as possible.

"Oh no? They always look so soft to me, his girlfriend's a lucky lady," Jack said, "Well, not soft any_more_." Mickey didn't know if Adam Mitchell was gay, straight, or _other _(like his girlfriend), but the fact remained that he probably wouldn't go anywhere near Jack Harkness. "I'm being serious, though."

"Why?"

"They're all cracked, and kind of... blue."

"_Blue_?"

"I think he's drooling. He's soaked."

"Is he asleep?" Mickey inquired, leaning forwards to try and see to where Adam was lying down across four of the chairs on the iron rows in the middle of the room, but he really couldn't see a thing.

"I don't know. He doesn't really have much of a pulse anyway," Jack said, frowning at Adam, "C'mere."

"I'm not looking at his lips," Mickey said firmly, and Jack gave him a bored look.

"Are you _that_ uncomfortable with your heterosexuality?" Jack questioned dryly, then he got serious, "But really. You used to work freelance, like Torchwood. Come and have a look."

"I don't want to."

"Oh, you're just-"

"_Not _because of anything to do with being gay," Mickey told him, "He gives me a headache."

"Adam? He's not _that_ annoying. I mean, I'd say he's not really annoying at all, and he's kinda cute, you gotta admit," Jack said, and Mickey didn't think he had to admit anything about the purported cuteness of some guy he lived with and barely spoke to, "Look how smooth the rest of his skin is, though - I bet he's one of those types who never got any acne, lucky kid."

"If you say one more thing, I'm gonna call his girlfriend," Mickey threatened.

"Please, nobody ever says anything nice about Adam Mitchell, I'm sure she'll appreciate it," Jack said. Mickey wasn't so sure. He also wasn't sure that he should really believe things Jack said to him about how girls felt anymore, after his recent and highly-publicised 'divorce,' if it could be called that much. The most disastrous relationship Mickey had ever seen in his life, he thought. And that was including his own relationship with Rose, when she'd run off and left him to go travelling through time with an alien and the police had tried to arrest him for her suspected murder.

"Not that kind of headache," Mickey answered him stiffly. The only part of Adam he was really able to see was his feet, and just looking at those was making his skull buzz and his vision blur.

"What kind, then?"

"You know when you wake up in the middle of the night and try to use your phone and realise it's on maximum brightness and you can barely even look at it?" Mickey asked, and Jack nodded, "Like that. Whenever I look at him. I'm not going near him."

"The water, though, look at the water," Jack frowned, "I don't get it, how come he isn't freezing it? It's like he's... making it. Making water."

"Sweating?" Mickey inquired.

"Uh-uh," Jack said, shaking his head. He was right though, there _was _a lot of water, and he was sure it was filling their plastic-bag sealed chamber like a paddling pool, and it was coming from Adam Mitchell, "What is this? Is it his cryokinesis? What if the room floods?"

"The Doctor said he was infected and to keep us all in this room, remember?" Mickey said. From the Doctor, they hadn't heard a word, "We'll be fine. You're immortal, and I can breathe underwater."

Adam Mitchell gasped a huge, raspy, lungful of air and coughed. Jack leapt away from where he had been standing by the edge of the benches as Adam rolled over and fell onto the floor, utterly still, facedown in the tiny puddle of water of his own creation. Jack went over and kicked (well, it was a little gentler than a kick) Adam in the side of the head to turn him over so he could breathe and wouldn't drown, if he even could drown with this ambiguous infection.

"What's that stuff?" Mickey asked, pointing, having to squint to see Adam properly, like staring into a strobing lightbulb.

"What stuff?" Jack asked.

"There, on his arm," Mickey said, and that was when Jack saw 'what stuff.' Adam had been flat on his back before, so that backs of his arms hadn't been visible. Now he was on his front, the back of them defintely _was _visible, and on Adam's left arm was the strangest sort of growth, that almost looked like barnacles.

"It's like seashells, but black seashells," Jack said, frowning. Seashells clustered together like a bumpy rash, like extreme, darkly-pigmented eczema, or psoriasis, gathering in a lumpy, vile cluster above his elbow.

"Is that the infection?" Mickey asked.

"I guess it-" Jack stopped speaking when his phone rang, and he frowned, reaching into his pocket to see who was ringing him before he finished his sentence, "It... it says it's Adam."

"Answer it, it's the Doctor, he took Adam's phone earlier," Mickey said quickly.

"Why'd he take his phone?"

"Something about stealing information, I don't know, answer it!" Mickey more or less ordered, and Jack picked up the phone and put it on speaker.

"Doctor! Just the man we wanted to talk to," Jack said, grinning.

"_Yes, yes_," said Eleven's voice, crisp and clear, "_How's Adam Mitchell?_"

"He's passed out, exuding water, growing barnacles on his arm, with the worst case of chapped lips I've ever seen in my life, why?" Jack asked, putting one hand in his trouser pockets and walking over to Mickey.

"_It's a biomechanical virus called the Flood who infected Bowie Base One in 2059 and meant the base had to be destroyed in a nuclear explosion_," Eleven explained, "_Infected almost the whole crew. I saved... two of them. Had to be destroyed. Came from the water they drank. It got into the humans through maintenance workers who work where all the data for the brain chips is stored, the Hard Drive. It got into them, got into the Hard Drive, and learnt to control the brain chips. Then it evolved so that it didn't need the info-spikes to infect people, and if we don't stop it from evolving again, all humans will be at risk, then all other species, and the whole universe, so we have to stop it._"

"Okay. How?" Jack asked. What was going to happen to Adam if he was infected with this 'Flood' thing?

"_We need to force it to evolve again_."

"Right. But you just said we can't let it evolve again?"

"_We can't,_" River interrupted him, "_Ignore him, he's not making things very clear-_"

"_Oi! And we have to keep them talking, River, remember?_" Eleven retorted.

"_Be quiet! That's one thing you could never do, you could never just be quiet. Even during sex. It's like having a running commentary._"

"_Clara never complains_," the Doctor snapped defensively. Jack found this bickering funny, but all it was doing was annoying Mickey, who suddenly seemed to be the only one worrying about whether or not Adam Mitchell was going to be okay. He wasn't really very good friends with Adam at all, but he didn't want him to _die_.

"_Her mouth is probably too full for you to understand her when she does._"

"_River!_"

"_I'll tell her to bite next time, shall I?_"

"Can we get back on track, please?" Mickey implored, "I really didn't need to hear that."

"_What the Doctor means to say is that the Flood needs a new primary host away from the Hard Drive in order to infect at a purely biological level_," River explained, "_And then the primary host needs to die so that the infection will be killed off in all of the secondary hosts._"

"_Secondary hosts like Adam Mitchell there. You don't want to see what happens when you leave it to spread_," Eleven said.

"Yeah, so who's this primary host?" Jack asked.

"_You are, Jack_," Eleven told him.

"What?" Jack asked, as though he had misheard.

"_It's biomechanical, evolving through the phone right now and infecting you. We tricked it into you by ringing. __When you're not healing in some way, you're biologically human_," River said, "_And we can't exactly evolve it in somebody who won't come back when we kill them. We told it you're invincible._"

"_But you're not invincible_," Eleven added, and Mickey wondered if this was what Eleven and River had been like when they were still married, this back and forth. At any rate, neither of them seemed so unhappy with their present relationships that they would run off with each other any time soon. Mickey thought that if _that_ happened, it would be even more scandalous than the circumstances of Jack and Jenny's latest break up, "_And you _can_ die, Jack. You just always come back. Bit like me. Minus the face changing._"

"_And the stupid gold light_," River said.

"_Oh, yes, because every time _you've_ regenerated, River, there hasn't been _any_ gold light _at all_,_" said Eleven horribly sarcastically. Suddenly, Jack wasn't amused anymore.

"Wait, wait, wait - somebody's gonna have to kill me," Jack said, then he looked at Mickey.

"No way!" Mickey protested, "Can't you just kill _yourself_? Why do _I_ have to be involved?"

"What if I miss?" Jack asked.

"You're my friend! You helped me choose Martha's engagement ring! I'm not shooting you!" Mickey protested, "Even if you'll come back within a minute."

"_Jack, I know you've shot yourself plenty of times playing games of Russian Roulette_," River said over the phone.

"Well, _yeah_, but _then_ there was money on it," Jack argued, "What's on it this time?"

"_The fate of the universe!_" Eleven shouted at him, "_This is the least you can do, after breaking my poor daughter's heart the way you did._"

"Don't retaliate," Mickey advised Jack, "I'll give you a fiver if you shoot yourself."

"What!? _Five measly pounds_!?" Jack protested.

"_This is the only parlour trick you even have, and now you're refusing to do it, unbelievable,_" River said.

"How about a tenner?" Mickey suggested.

"...Deal."


	318. Water, Water, Everywhere

**AN: Funny thing to think of while reading this chapter is that in the future, Eleven drowns, and that's how he regenerates. Hence Thirteen saying in 803 that she "once died in a stupid way" and that Clara's first words to her were, "you are an idiot. You are so bloody stupid," which they were because I've written it. I'll have them talk about it in this Clarteen storyline I'm doing the one after next.**

_Eleven_

_Water, Water, Everywhere_

"If that's what swimming looks like, I reckon I could do it in the olympics," a sarcastic, girlish voice commented from somewhere behind the Doctor, who was standing at the edge of the TARDIS's swimming pool with his hands in his trouser pockets, doing nothing more than staring at the water. He thought it must be Oswin behind him, why else make a remark about swimming, and so didn't bother turning around to speak to her.

"Shouldn't you be with your boyfriend?" he asked her dully. His right arm was still covered in scratches from where he had almost been mauled by a wall-limpet, and from his knees down his trousers were still soaking wet.

"What boyfriend would that be, then?" she questioned, and he realised that he had made a terrible mistake in thinking he was speaking to his sister-in-law, turning around finally, careful not to slip on the damp floor, to see his wife leaning in the doorframe of the changing room with one hand on her hip, looking at him with a look of dangerous disbelief.

"Clara! I'm so sorry," he apologised to her, "I thought - because you said something about swimming - sorry..."

"And here I was thinking you could tell the difference between us," she said, though she was smiling. She didn't seem offended. Then he thought that if she _was_ offended, it would be a little odd, since she and Oswin were almost the exact same. Clara wouldn't take it as an insult anyway, she probably didn't think it remotely derogatory to be mistaken for her twin.

Neither of them said anything for a while then, they just looked at each other, a good ten metres apart, and he watched her with the same incredulity that always coursed through him when he saw her, disbelief that she was his wife. Clara made a move to get off the wall and walk over.

"No, no, could you just stay there?" he asked her, smiling, and she raised her eyebrows and went back to leaning on the doorframe, but she had her arms crossed this time.

"Why?"

"So that I can admire the view some more," he said, resuming his staring of her, and she giggled.

"Is it a particularly amiable view?"

"Oh, the most amiable of them all," he said, making a show of eyeing up her entire self as she stood there so perfectly, as though created in the image of some beautiful goddess.

"Any specific pose you want the view to adopt?" she asked, and he did an exaggerated thinking face and frowned at her.

"No, not unless the view is particularly inclined to remove its clothing?"

"Oh, not right now."

"Well then, I suppose you're perfect exactly as you are, Clara," he smiled, and she smiled back widely, with a slight blush, and walked over to him slowly, casting some suspicious glances at the water. He glanced back at it, the blue tiles making the water look that unnatural, bright colour. And it stank of chlorine.

"What're you up to then, Chin?" she asked him, taking hold of his left arm. Presently, she was using telekinesis to be the same height as him. As disconcerting as it always was when he found her floating next to him, it was quite nice right then for her _not _to be nine inches shorter than he was. That was why he enjoyed talking to her when they were both lying down next to each other. That and the fact he loved being so close to the woman.

"I was just looking at this water," he answered her, looking at the pool rather than at Clara. His jacket was thrown on the floor a short way away because of the glowing blue stuff he had gotten from the limpet attack, but he still had a waistcoat on. "Don't you think that water's quite frightening? Do you know that a human can drown in one drop of water? Or even a puddle? This swimming pool is a deathtrap."

"Maybe you should come away a bit if it's so dangerous?" she suggested, tugging on his arm a little. Sighing, he relented, and allowed her to pull him a few feet away from the poolside, where he might not fall in.

"Are you worrying about me?" he asked her wryly.

"Indeed I am. I'm always worrying about you, especially when you come home and wander off here, leaving Mickey to let us know that Adam Mitchell's nearly dead and you've gone swimming," she said.

"Imagine if _you_ drowned in a puddle. I don't know what I'd do with myself."

"I'd wake back up, though, wouldn't I? Nanogenes," she told him, "Can't get rid of me."

"Drat. Here I was thinking I might push you into the pool," he told her, and she laughed.

"What's wrong with Adam, then?" she asked, staring around the room. They'd been swimming together before, he and Clara, but not in the months since the Dimension Crash. And certainly not today.

Eleven told his wife the whole sorry story of the Flood and the brain infections and the limpets on the walls and wading around with River and Jack shooting himself in the head, and she listened intently to everything he said, captivated by every word. As they talked, or rather, he talked, Clara pulled them towards one of the benches along the side, as water lapped over the edge of the tiles. He could have sworn that the last time he saw the TARDIS swimming pool it was less of a public leisure centre deal, and it also didn't used to have changing rooms. Probably another thing to do with the invasion of his ship by his old friends. Just another thing that was actually his being laid claim to.

"Is Adam going to be okay?" Clara asked worriedly.

"I should think so. It didn't have time to spread far enough to do any permanent damage. That reminds me," he said, picking up his soiled coat from the floor and searching through one of the pockets, out of which he drew a phone, "Give that to your sister the next time you see her, would you?"

"And here I thought you were just _giving _me this iPhone, uh, whatever generation this is," Clara said, staring at it, holding it very delicately. It was thin and large and shiny, and that was about all that the Doctor knew about Twenty-First Century mobile phones, because he really didn't care about the newer, fancier models brought out every single year. Clara seemed to, though.

"Yes, well, it's Adam's, I confiscated it to stop him trying to send dangerous information to the past. Again," Eleven said, "I don't think he'll be needing it much for the next few days, though. He's probably going to be sleeping a lot. Does it ever strike you as odd the amount that boy gets injured?"

"I don't really think about it, too busy getting injured myself," she said, smiling a little sadly next to him on the bench, and he watched her without speaking for some seconds. When she next looked over to talk to him, she seemed almost surprised to find him staring at her and pushed a bit of her hair behind her ear self-consciously. She was definitely an odd one sometimes, this Clara of his. "He will be okay though, won't he?"

"Yes, eventually. A week or so. In all honesty, I think if we dragged Adam here and all that was left of him was a toe, he would be okay, because I don't think Oswin would ever accept his death," Eleven said.

"Oh, she has his whole, I don't know, everything I guess, saved onto Helix," Clara told him, "It's because he has that brain chip that she says she can do it."

"What does your sister plan to do with a backup of her boyfriend's psyche?"

"Make a hologram of him if he dies, I think."

"We'll never be able to get rid of him," the Doctor said jokingly, and she laughed, and then went quiet, and he was watching her again.

"Why do you keep staring at me?" she asked him when she caught him again.

"Clara, are you alright?"

"Why wouldn't I be?" she questioned, and he sighed.

"Because Oswin texted Adam saying you were asking her if everybody hates you, and I saw the texts come up when I confiscated his phone, and I've been terribly worried about you all day," he explained, "And no I was not going through his texts, they just came up coincidentally."

"I'm fine," she muttered, but she wasn't. She just didn't want to talk about it.

"Well, what if I do something about it?" he asked her, standing up to her alarm, picking up his jacket and pulling it back on, preparing to leave.

"Something like..?"

"I'm going to get rid of the food."

"You're _what_!? No! Don't do that! Adam's already stopped buying any, the food is nothing to do with us!" she protested, and she grabbed hold of his arm and dragged him back down (with the aid of telekinesis, he assumed) onto the bench.

"I had this whole thing planned about swapping the bedrooms and getting a kitchen and us only having the nice food!" he complained.

"Well, sweetheart, that sounds a lot like what happened in _Animal Farm _when the pigs took over and made it a worse place than it was before," she told him, holding his hand to stop him trying to run off again, "Inequality like that is dangerous."

"It's _my _TARDIS, though."

"Doctor, you know full well that if the TARDIS is angry about something, the TARDIS will do something itself. Hence the communal bathrooms. And the changing rooms in the pool now."

"Bah! Changing rooms! Who needs them? Prudes, probably."

"Well, the last time _we_ went swimming here we got changed in different places, didn't we?" she questioned him.

"It was a wholly awkward experience, if I remember correctly, Coo. We weren't married. We weren't anything, except alone," he muttered.

"_Awkward_? Awkward why?" she sounded almost offended at this, like he had said something ghastly.

"Well, because there I was, letting this stunning creature I was secretly _very _infatuated with go _swimming_ with me because she said she hated swimming alone," he told her, and she laughed, "And then there she is wandering around in a bikini, of all things, and what was I to do?"

"You hardly said a thing the whole time."

"I was utterly tongue-tied, darling. Couldn't even take my eyes off you."

"Oh, I noticed," she whispered. He was sat on the bench, but she was kneeling on it next to him, sitting on her feet and leaning close to him as she talked, "You still can't take your eyes off me."

"Guilty as charged."

"Do you want to go swimming?"

"Honestly, Clara, I don't particularly. Mainly because I've had a traumatic enough day involving water and really ought to have a wash that doesn't involve chlorine. Also because I know what you're suggesting, and the TARDIS would _definitely _be angry about _that _in the pool," he said.

"I suppose you're right. Our room's empty, though."

"Is it?"

"Yep. Fresh sheets on the bed, and everything." He looked over at her and her hopeful expression and couldn't help but lean in to kiss her and her perfect self and wonder why she had such an intoxicating power over him. Well, he wondered that until she started kissing him back, because then he wasn't really able to focus enough to pay attention to thinking anything at all.

He did remember the time they went swimming, though, how he had thought of exactly this happening in the pool by some happy coincidence if they swam too close and the Doctor just decided to be brave when it came to a girl for once in his life. But he had not been brave, not then, he had not been brave when it came to this woman he was presently kissing until he had gotten drunk and they had ended up married and, truthfully, things had been very messy about that time for him to pinpoint whose fault it had been, his or Claras, that they had ended up properly together.

"You're a minx, Oswald," he said unintelligibly through the mess of her lips, but she still laughed faintly, understanding enough.

And then he had to go and ruin the whole thing by thinking about how his daughter had experienced this exact thing, probably, countless times and found himself breaking away.

"What's up?" Clara asked him sweetly, as he sighed amd slumped down on the wall, "Got bored?"

"Bored!? I could never get bored of you, Clara."

"Well, that's good, I suppose."

"I might unground Jenny."

"Oh. Why? She's not stopped sleeping with Other Me. Although, I saw her earlier on her phone complaining that Other Me hasn't replied to any texts for two days. She's worried or something," Clara told him.

"Well, grounding her never did much good anyway. I might as well let her off. It _has _been a week," he told her, "That girl causes more trouble when she _is _grounded than when she _isn't_, you know."

"You should probably unground her. I mean, I know that she and Jack are both in the wrong as much as each other in this breakup, but she's still pretty upset in her hypocrisy and it might cheer her up a bit. Anyway, back to what _we _were talking about."

"What were we-?" he was reminded immediately when she kissed him again.


	319. In Loving Memory

**AN: So, because I don't watch the show anymore and keep informed via other people, here's Matt who wrote the Wonderland storyline, and Chapters 587, 715 and 716, who DOES still watch it, to explain why what I am going to write over the following twenty chapters and forever onwards makes sense according to the canon:: "****_Okay, Matt here (Writer of such classics like 'Jenny and The Xenomorph Cave' and 'Niver in Wonderland'), Hi I need to do some explaining because Seafoam here... well... Let's just say that she and _****Doctor Who****_ don't exactly get on too good when it comes to official canon anymore. Anyways, I'm here to explain stuff since she doesn't have the relevent information. SPOILERS for the latest episode of _****Doctor Who.****_ So eventually Clara is going to have to head back to Gallifrey to put the time line right, god knows when but it has to happen. Therefore she will still die the way she is meant to and the cool stuff that you are going to read by the superior writer now will all still make sense as according to official canon, or is that Zeta-verse in this fic? Anyway, enjoy your reading with the knowledge that everything is absolutely going ahead as planned. Sort of. Some wibbly bits in the middle._****" So apparently that explains that. But whatever you think is happening with these queer romps through space Clara and Maisie Williams are having presently, she's forgotten them. Just you guys trust me, because I'm competent and I will explain everything, just over time. And yes, I have skipped ahead a week.**

_DAY ONE-HUNDRED AND FOURTEEN_

_Beta Clara_

_In Loving Memory_

One thing directly fed into another in a jerky fashion, stuttering along like an old film reel being badly changed over, the flickering noise, the yellowing images, the hot projectors, the stench of chemically treated celluloid. That was what she felt like. An overheating piece of machinery that jittered from one scene of heartbreak to the next scene of heartbreak with none of the resolution. There was the TARDIS and the Doctor, and then there was this, a burning heat under her skin, a savage ache in her mouth, and a pressing, stabbing whiteness piercing beneath her eyelids and causing her to scrunch her face up to protect from it.

What had just happened? Was it a memory worm? Something making her forget? Had she been hit over the head? Dragged somewhere? When she tried to move, she found herself restricted by bindings on her wrists and ankles, and she was in a high, straight-backed chair. Her immediate thought, before she summoned the strength to open her eyes against the searing lights above and around, going by feel alone and also a vague, clinical smell, was that this was some kind of hospital. All of these assumptions and guesses were completely dashed when she _did_ take a look around, though, a figure swimming into her blurry, bleary vision, focusing slowly, dark and light in contrast with the stark white background, the stark white room, like a padded cell, or some other sort of secure room of a mental facility. And until she deduced who was sitting opposite her, she thought that was where she was.

Jenny Harkness, the Doctor's daughter, stared back at her, sitting in another straight-backed high-backed metal chair, but she wasn't strapped down like Clara, and in between them was a table. What, exactly, was going on? Was this an interrogation?

"Where am I?" she asked tiredly, her throat feeling like it was on fire, burning every time she swallowed like her own spit was acidic.

"The TARDIS," Jenny answered. Jenny was staring at her with the most perplexing expression Clara had ever seen in her life. Worry, curiosity, fear? "The Alpha TARDIS. _My _TARDIS."

"What's going on?" Clara asked. There was a sheet of paper on the metal table facing Jenny, words scrawled on it in handwriting that looked illegible from where Clara was sitting, and _she_ was a teacher, she was used to reading atrocious writing. But that? It was shocking.

"Yeah, Oswin does have quite appalling handwriting, doesn't she?" Jenny said, catching Clara looking at it. Clara didn't say anything. What had Oswin written and given to Jenny? She felt like she had missed something enormous, that something monumental had happened between the last thing she remembered, which was stepping into the TARDIS with the Twelfth Doctor raving about souls, and this, here, with Jenny sitting across from her in a white room.

"What is it?"

"A list of questions I have to get around to asking you. Oswin was going to ask them herself, but they - we - thought it would be better if I was the one to talk to you."

"And what, exactly, are you going to talk to me about?" she asked, "And why am I strapped to a chair on your TARDIS? And how did I get here? Where's the Doctor? And what the _hell_ is going on!? And-"

"Clara, listen to me, when have I ever lied to you?" Jenny interrupted her as she shouted fervently, struggling in the chair.

"Sorry?" Clara asked, but Jenny just stared at her, waiting for an answer, refusing to repeat herself, so Clara scrunched up her face again in thought, trying to battle the bright lights that were giving her a bad headache, almost as bad as a migraine, to get the answer to Jenny's question, "You lied to me that time you told me the story about the zombie."

"What zombie?"

"You know, with the weird town and all the pumpkins!" Clara argued, annoyed at Jenny for not remembering, and for making it seem like she was the most honest person in the world. While she wasn't the most _dis_honest, either, Jenny's trustworthiness was definitely a grey area.

"Oh, _that_? That wasn't imporant! I've never lied about anything _important_."

"Not to _me_, maybe..."

"Yeah, and _you're_ the one I'm talking to," Jenny argued, and Clara just watched her, "Okay, Clara, I promise to tell you the truth."

"Don't embellish."

"Story doesn't need embellishing, it's crazy enough already," she muttered, like that remark wasn't really directed at Clara, Clara was just someone who happened to have heard it. She met Clara's eyes again, "You have to be quiet and answer my questions and I promise I will tell you _everything _that's happened and why you're here, and I won't lie at all. promise, I'll tell you everything, if you're just patient."

Clara clenched her fists and jaw and stiffened at that, narrowing her eyes and thinking. Realistically, Jenny was the only one who had the power right then to tell her anything at all, and she really did trust her, so she thought it best to answer whatever these questions were and get it all on with, because it seemed like the only way to get _any_ clues of what was happening.

"Fine," she answered eventually. Jenny paused a moment, as though to see if she was going to argue or say anything else, but Clara didn't have the energy to argue. She didn't feel like she had the energy for anything. In fact, she felt if the room was just darker, she might go to sleep...

"Okay. First things first, I had to pull a lot of strings so that it could be me here right now, and I hope you'll appreciate that, uh, later..." Jenny said, then she glanced down at the sheet of badly-written questions, "What's the last thing you-"

"Can you turn the lights down?" she asked. Jenny thought, and then leant far to her left as though to look around Clara, who twisted and tried to follow her gaze, but couldn't see anything past the high chair back, nothing at all. Just more white. Jenny raised her eyebrows challengingly at the space behind Clara. A second later, the lights dimmed quite substantially, and Clara sighed with relief, because it had made a lot of difference, and leant back in the chair. Jenny smiled at her, but she didn't smile back.

"Who's behind me?"

"We're being watched, some of the others are in another room with one of those mirror-windows you get in interrogation rooms," Jenny said.

"Is this an interrogation now?"

"What's the last thing you remember?"

"Who's watching us?"

"Oswin, Thirteen, Other You, Martha, and Rory," Jenny said, "Rory's only there so that he can't eavesdrop and tell the others what's being said. Anyway. Clara. What's the last thing you remember?"

"Getting onto the TARDIS with the Twelfth Doctor," Clara answered flatly.

"Then what?"

"Then..." Clara began, because then it got foggy, "I don't know. Something about souls. That's it. Just nothing. Then I wake up here. What's happened to me?"

"You've lost about a week," Jenny said, "Which is sort of good, because it was a bit of a rubbish week, and you're forgotten that we had a fight the other day."

"A fight!? What could we possibly have had a fight about!?" Clara exclaimed.

"Well, it was less of a fight, more you just shouting at me and me trying to apologise, but I'll get to that part. Now, Clara, I really have to be blunt with you when I tell you what happened on that last trip on the TARDIS. You died."

"I _what_!?"

"Died."

"No."

"Yes."

"How?"

"You got your soul sucked out. I'm not entirely sure what that means, but that's what you said happened when you remembered," Jenny said, "I think you said you sacrificed yourself for the Doctor."

"You're lying."

"I'm not lying, Clara," Jenny said softly, leaning closer over the table, but the table was about a metre long and Clara was strapped to the chair, so she really wasn't that close at all. As Clara looked into those blue eyes that were always that little bit too vibrant to be anything but cybernetic replacements, she thought Jenny was telling the truth.

"But I'm not dead, am I? I'm right here. I'm sitting right here, I'm not dead," Clara argued, "What's going on? Would you please just tell me _what's going on_?" She tried to fight against the chair's restraints fruitlessly, because the chair was attached to the floor, and then she felt like she was about to cry.

"I can only tell you some of it, some of what you told us, but you were a bit... foggy. Hardly remember anything. Mum - the Doctor - said you have a very odd type of amnesia she's only seen with a biological time lock."

"A what?"

"You know, immortality, that," Jenny said, "And then you died, and... I'll get to that."

"What are you talking about!?"

"Okay, okay, just calm down, we have plenty of time."

"Just tell me!"

"Alright," she said calmly. She was so calm, almost unusually calm, "To my best understanding, it all started six days ago, on Day One-Hundred and Eight, when Other You and Oswin went out shopping for some essentials..."


	320. Dead Ringers

_Oswin_

_Dead Ringers_

"I really shouldn't be here, Clara, I should be with Adam," Oswin argued, trailing after Clara uselessly in the middle of a Sainsbury's at eight o'clock in the evening, shopping. There were very few people around, but they still ended up getting funny looks cast their way, as they always did, because they spent most of their time making fun of each other, and people didn't often see identical twins wandering around a supermarket.

"Boyfriendy will be fine," Clara said with a sigh, drifting along the frozen aisle with a trolley she was leaning her full weight on, one of the smaller trolleys. The TARDIS had been taken off of autopilot by Oswin for this trip, and was waiting outside, unless somebody else came and grabbed it and took it away. Then they would have to ring somebody up and go through the complicated process of finding someone who could fly the TARDIS, which was tricky because most of the people who could fly it didn't have phones, so it usually ended up as a wild goose chase. The only person who almost always answered and flew the TARDIS to wherever was Captain Jack, but Oswin doubted Jack would be too keen on helping them right then.

"Why do you call him 'boyfriendy?'" Oswin asked.

"Well, you know. Boyfriendy and girlfriendy."

"Husbandy and wifey," Oswin retorted.

"Yeah," Clara agreed, like Oswin had said something worth agreeing with. Oswin hadn't.

"I don't mean why as in that. I mean why as in why do _you_? Specifically? It's not like you enjoy being called 'wifey' by people other than the Doctor, and as far as I know, he doesn't like being called 'husbandy' by anyone, including you." Clara picked up the biggest packet of custard creams she could find and dropped them in the trolley. Clearly, these were biscuits just for her, because when she got to the milk chocolate digestives she emptied the whole shelf. Custard creams were Clara's, chocolate digestives were for everybody. Probably to shut them up when they got back and it was discovered they'd only bought enough food to populate the cupboards of Adam and herself, rather than the cupboards of the entire kitchen, which happened to be transdimensional cupboards, and there _still_ wasn't enough room for all the food they needed. Honestly, the freezer was like the warehouse of an abattoir, it was so enormous and so full of bits of dead animals.

"Just cos," Clara said simply.

"I bet it's that bullying cycle. You know, the cycle of abuse. People on the TARDIS bully you, so now you think you can bully me and Adam and get away with it," Oswin said.

"Oh, I'm bullying you now, am I?" Clara asked dryly, "Adding a 'y' to 'boyfriend?'"

"Name calling can be very hurtful."

"Your invalid of another half isn't even around to hear what I'm saying, so I hardly see how it matters," Clara snapped at her.

"Don't call him an invalid, and don't call him my 'other half' either," Oswin said, turning her nose up at the words. Clara laughed, looking at the shelves full of name brand and own brand gummy sweets and debating what to buy with the £10,000 Adam Mitchell had given her extra when he'd given her and Eleven the money to buy that Frir-infested house three weeks ago.

"Of course not. Everyone knows that _I'm_ your other half, anyway, Os," Clara said, moving along when Oswin started pushing the trolley instead, because she thought Clara had bought enough unhealthy snacks already by way of custard creams and endless digestives to need any packets of Haribo Starmix.

"Well, precisely," Oswin agreed boredly, dragging her little sister away from the gelatine, "Those sweets are made by boiling animal bones, you know."

"Mmm, my favourite."

"Ew."

"Are you a vegetarian now, Oswin?"

"No, but meat should look like meat."

"Bone isn't meat."

"Alright, animals should look like animals."

"I could always buy a pack of gummy bears? Anyway, who are you to say what meat should look like? No innuendo intended, you've probably never eaten anything containing real meat in your life," Clara said, which was annoyingly true.

"Shut up, Clara," Oswin snapped, and Clara smiled smugly and pushed the trolley away, "Anyway, I should think you're plenty used to eating the bones and meat of things that aren't human, the amount of time you spend with the Doctor's..." Oswin trailed off, Clara looking at her expectantly, one hand on the trolley and the other hand on her hip.

"With the Doctor's..?" Clara prompted.

"...I didn't think I would get that far without you telling me to be quiet," Oswin muttered.

"Oh, _please_, finish your sentence, Oswin, I'm all ears," Clara said.

Oswin moved her mouth silently for a moment, before clenching her jaw and saying firmly, "No. I shan't."

"Oh, what a shame that I've missed out on another piece of evidence of your charming wit, dear sister," Clara said, and Oswin grimaced at her, annoyed that she had been bested by her damned twin. Oswin stuck her tongue out at her. "You are such a child. So rude in public."

"But I'm _your _child, so isn't it _your_ fault if I'm rude in public?"

"Should I buy any baked beans, or will they make me fart too much? Because I like baked beans, but I don't like farting," Clara said, and Oswin stared at her with shock and mild disgust. Clara looked around, oblivious, and asked, "What?" Oswin continued to stare. "I guess with increased risk of farts there's also an increased risk of following through, too..." she mused thoughtfully.

"And _I'm _the one who's rude in public? _Me_?" Oswin questioned, "You are ghastly."

"The only thing that's ghastly is the smell of my shit after I eat baked beans," Clara said.

"I'm going to be sick."

"Clara!?" exclaimed a voice nearby, and they both looked around, and Clara was so alarmed at who they saw staring at them like she was seeing ghosts at the end of the aisle, that she dropped the can of Sainsbury's own-brand baked beans she had been examining right onto her foot.

"Fuck, fuck, ow _ow ow_, shit," she swore frantically, moving very awkwardly with her left foot.

"See, at least you still_ have_ a left foot to feel pain in, honey," Oswin sighed, then she turned to the girl who was staring at them, "Courtney Woods, right?" she asked, and the girl nodded. She thought so. "Clara, stop swearing, you're setting a bad example for Courtney Woods."

"I - what? Shit, sorry," Clara apologised, tried to step forwards on her newly injured foot, and winced, "Ah, you cunt," she said to the can on the floor, and then she kicked it, "Fuck - I am so sorry, Courtney."

"It's fine, I'm used to it," Courtney said.

"What? Why?" Clara questioned, deciding that the pain in her foot wasn't that bad at all. The more comfortable she was with her husband, the more Clara generally swore. Not that it bothered Oswin, particularly, it was just an odd change to come about.

"Some of my extended family are from the north," Courtney said.

"Are they? What's it like up there?" Oswin inquired.

"They swear constantly and talk about gravy, and they're all really poor," Courtney said. Oswin nodded, absorbing this information welcomely.

"Christ, it's only four hours away by car, it's not the third world," Clara said, "And there's absolutely nothing wrong with gravy. Why are you in Sainsbury's, then? You know I'm not your teacher? I'm the other one? We met before? You followed my sister around for about two days?" Oswin remembered that vividly.

"Obviously you're not, she's..." Courtney began, "Do you not know?"

"Know what?" Clara and Oswin both asked, narrowing their eyes in identical suspicion, casting a careful glance at each other.

"She's dead."

"No she's not," Clara said instantly, while Oswin froze.

"She is," Courtney said.

"She can't be dead, she's..." Clara trailed off. Oswin didn't say a word, "No, how could she be?"

It was the most complicated array of emotions Oswin had ever felt, not in the least just her own, but also including her sister. For Oswin, it was more like the feeling she would generally have thought losing her mother would feel like, except when Oswin had lost her mother she had not felt a thing. It was that, but detached, like she had no right to feel that sort of grief for somebody except for the woman she shared one of her middle names (Rosalind) with. And then there was Clara. Clara felt despair. Clara felt like she had lost an Echo, a daughter, a part of herself, somebody she owed something to.

"But the Doctor... he wouldn't..." Clara stammered. Oswin, too, felt like she owed something to Beta Clara, the same way she felt like she owed something to Alpha Clara, the one who really _had _created her, the one who really _did _take care of her, the one who had nightmares about losing her and came to her sobbing with the fear of that at three o'clock some mornings.

"That's what I thought," Courtney said, "She was buried on Wednesday. On the 25th."

"25th of what?" Clara asked hollowly, "A Wednesday. Mum was buried on a Wednesday." Oswin didn't know what to do now that Clara was thinking about her mother as well, the _other _subject of Clara's frequent nightmares, apart from herself.

"November," Courtney said.

"_November_?" Clara exclaimed, "Well - when did she... when did she die? What was the date?"

"The 21st."

"Two days before her birthday..." Clara said. Oswin thought she might fall and took her arm in some attempt to offer any kind of comfort, "No, she can't be dead. She's not dead."

"She is dead, Clara," Oswin said softly.

"Well, so are you," Clara said, "Where's she buried?"

"Honey, I get if you want to go and pay your respects, but-" Oswin began. She knew what Clara was thinking. Of course she knew what Clara was thinking. Clara wasn't going to let Beta Clara stay in the ground where she was.

"But what?" Clara turned on her, "If the Doctor is so incompetent that he can't keep her alive, why shouldn't we step in?" Clara demanded, marching off, leaving the shopping trolley behind and addressing Courtney Woods, "Show me where she's buried."

"Why? What are you going to do? Why are the two of you even here? I haven't seen either of you for over a year," Courtney said, "I've only seen that girl."

"What girl?" Clara asked.

"That short blonde one with the fake hand." Neither of them had even spared a thought for Jenny in all this.

"That's a thing, Oswin, Jenny told me that Other Clara wasn't replying to texts," Clara said.

"Yes, I know, she told both of us, I was literally right there," Oswin said.

"You saw how upset she was."

"Well, I guess, but Clara, you can't just-"

"What about Rose bringing Jack back? What about Jack and Amy bringing you back? My husband bringing _me _back? You giving me the nanogene cloud? You having a blueprint of your boyfriend's brain stored to bring him back too?" Clara questioned, "We can't fail where the Doctor does."

"Well, what if it's a fixed point in time, Clara? What then?" Oswin asked as Clara walked out into the night, Courtney following them, "Shouldn't have come here, shouldn't have come here... I only did to see if we bumped into her, ask her what's with her and Jenny..."

"I guess we found out then, didn't we?" Clara said, approaching the TARDIS where it was sitting parked, making that soft humming noise it always did. She ordered Courtney to stay still outside as she and Oswin went in.

"Clara, I don't-" Oswin began.

"Oswin, go and get that new batch of Miracle Medicine I know you've got brewing in your lab while _I_ go get some shovels and meet me back here in two minutes. Just because the Doctor can't save her doesn't mean that we can't - and christ! The woman's not exactly had the best time of it! Losing one love of her life after another!" Clara argued, quite passionate about this sudden decision of hers to go around, Burke and Hare style, and dig up graves. Oswin just stood still. "Oswin, are you going?"

"...I'm not sure this is the right thing to do..."

"Oswin, if you help me you can be exempt of all responsibility. Whatever happens is my fault and my problem, okay?" Clara said, and Oswin couldn't help but think Clara was influenced right then by the memory of the Frir-induced hallucination she had experienced a week and a half ago now, of seeing Oswin's dead body and it somehow being her fault that she had died, and Clara not wanting to let that happen. Then, of course, there was the fact that at least two of _their _universe's Doctors were so ardently in love with her she saw it as a crime level with murder that they had let her perish, even if they didn't know the circumstances. And here was Clara, Oswin's unfailing moral compass, trying to do something she didn't strictly speaking agree with, but when she spoke out she immediately became a bloated, repugnant hypocrite.

And that was why Oswin agreed to help her sister bring Beta Clara back from the dead.


	321. Sitting On My Crucifix

**AN: Reviews always appreciated so that I know what you all think of what I'm doing. Otherwise I get paranoid I'm writing shit everybody hates.**

_Beta Clara_

_Sitting On My Crucifix_

"Wait, did they really care that much?" Beta Clara asked Jenny as she told her this story of Other Her and Oswin being so grief-stricken after being delivered the arcane news of her death from Courtney Woods, that they could see no option other than to dig up her dead body and bring her back to life.

"Yeah," Jenny said, "Oswin records everything. I saw it, you know, on playback. I saw them dig you up, too, but the last time they told you about digging you up, you didn't enjoy it very much. You were filthy, too. Wearing this black dress. It was kind of hot, but I mean, you were a corpse..." Jenny trailed off like she was thinking about what she had just said about corpses, but Clara didn't pay a lot of notice.

"But those kids..." she sighed, slouching down in the chair as best she could, which turned out to be quite difficult. Her ankles were getting sore from her constantly battling against the bindings that were awfully tight, and she still didn't have an answer as to why she was trapped in a chair to begin with. "First they lose Danny, now me... I can't imagine... why am I tied to this chair?"

"I'll get to that part."

"Was I tied up last time?"

"No."

"Why now?"

"It's nothing to do with me, it's Oswin and Martha's doing. Not my idea. Sorry about it. I might as well be tied down, too, you know. I'm not allowed out of the chair," Jenny said, "If I try, Other You will stop me."

"Why? What happened to you?"

"Nothing happened to me. I'm just not allowed to touch you, or go too close. It was one of the conditions for me being allowed to tell you everything, instead of Oswin and You, like it was last time. You weren't too happy about it, is the thing..."

"Why?" Clara asked. All she was saying was 'why.' Why, why, why, and here was Jenny answering her every time but barely saying a thing. What had she learnt that was new? Nothing. She had died and had her grave dug up. Perhaps she was beginning to accept that now. And then the Miracle Medicine, the infamous Miracle Medicine of Oswin's creation that she had only heard about, because there had not been any of it at all the last time she had been on the TARDIS, the last time Jenny had regenerated, and now she had two fake eyes and a silver fake hand that was resting on the table for Clara to see right then.

Jenny sighed, "Because Oswin told you that you had to live with us. And you didn't want to."

"What? I'm not living with you!" Clara exclaimed, "You won't even tell me what's going on! Did I just get a bit too angry about that and you, what, sedated me!?"

"Listen, Clara," she said, sounding almost angry, "Oswin was being presumptuous. Oswin did not consult with the crew. You know as well as I do that votes need to be passed. You didn't understand a week ago that you can't go back home."

"Why not? What about those kids? My co-workers? What about my father? And the Doctor? What about him? What must he be thinking? You know what he's like when he loses people!" she argued, struggling again against the leather restraints.

"Clara, stop struggling," Jenny said calmly.

"I'll stop struggling when you tell me why I'm tied up in this fucking chair!" she shouted at Jenny, and immediately regretted it by how wounded she looked, but Clara wasn't thinking clearly. Clara had a headache and the worst sore throat of her life, and she still didn't even know what was going on. How long was this story going to take? Why couldn't Jenny just tell her?

"You couldn't go back to your old life a week ago because everybody thought you were dead."

"Great. So me dying is a fixed point in time, is it? What am I, then? An anomaly? Like Jack? Like you?" she questioned harshly.

"You dying isn't fixed. Everyone thinking you're dead _is _fixed. Don't you see? You can be... _alive_... just somewhere else... look, I'll get to that-"

"You keep saying that, but you haven't got to a single damn thing."

"Well, I will. You woke up and had a loud argument very similar to this one, but with Oswin, and then the first time you saw me I tried to hug you but you refused to believe I didn't have anything to do with bringing you back."

"Can I have a drink?"

"No... so yeah, I didn't have-"

"I'm thirsty," Clara said hoarsely.

"You can't have a drink, Clara."

"Why not? Am I a prisoner?"

"Clara, don't shout," Jenny said quietly.

"I wasn't shouting!" Clara shouted, and heard the echo of her voice back at her in the empty room, and silenced, "I just want a drink. I can't even have a drink. Why can't I have a drink?"

"Clara, do you know they wanted to keep you gagged while they told you everything?" Jenny asked coldly, and she shut up, "And I was the one who said no, don't gag her, there's no reason to-"

"But there is reason to strap me down to a chair in a weird, white interrogation room on your TARDIS and speak in riddles and refuse to tell me what's going on?"

"Well we could be halfway there by now if you stopped interrupting me every two seconds!" Jenny cut across her. Jenny seemed to be trying very desperately not to shout, "And for the record, tying you down wasn't my idea, either, and I had to fight quite hard for it to be me here and for you to be ungagged, and I don't think you appreciate it."

"Oh, _sorry_ that I don't appreciate being _tied up in a chair_!" she argued.

"So I didn't have anything to do with bringing you back," Jenny said loudly, getting back on track with her story, "And it wasn't just you who wasn't happy with them bringing you back to life, and it really seemed the only people who _were _happy were me and Other You. And my mother, for some reason. They were even less happy about the fact it wasn't the Miracle Medicine they used, but it was Other You's nanogene cloud. The Miracle Medicine is an injectible, you see, and so it needs a pulse to work. No pulse, it won't bring you back, so they had to use the nanogenes. After digging up your corpse. And then you were stuck on here and you didn't want to speak to any single person, except my father when _he _went to see you. Eleven, that one. You've been staying in my room for the last week, you see, but I wasn't there, I was in Oswin's room. She and Adam have _two _sofas now, for all the countless people who end up sleeping on them. Better than staying on the ones in Nerve Centre.

"Anyway, he was the only one you would tell what happened to you, or what you could best remember, and then he got suspicious and dragged Martha in to do a check for memory functions, and they ended up scanning your brain and finding that _you_ had been the subject of a biological time lock, meaning you could have been off anywhere doing anything for god knows how long, and now you can't remember a thing. Whatever happened, it needed to be counteracted by your eventual death, so when you died by sacrificing your soul for the Doctor, or something equally bizarre, that was the last thing you remembered. But now it looks like you don't even remember telling us _that_, and who knows what effect the..." Jenny trailed off, then cleared her throat, and started saying something different, "So you died, and whatever happened in between while you were frozen wasn't restored when you died, so it's basically lost. Unless we find someone else who can tell us what you've been up to, but we don't even know if you were with anyone all that time.

"So there you were, stuck on this TARDIS, desperately trying to remember this stuff because you were convinced it held some kind of answer, begging for any of our Doctors or for Oswin to 'unlock' your memories, refusing to believe that since your brain in this state had been reversed to the point where none of these 'lost memories' were ever actually recorded nobody could 'unlock' a thing.

"You weren't happy and wanted to leave and tell all your students and your father and the Doctor and whoever else that you really weren't dead at all, you had been resurrected by your alternate universe self. And none of us would let you, even though you couldn't see any reason why not. Thing is, you sort of woke up in a high-adrenaline state of panic and it took a few days to calm you down at all, a few days in which I generally ignored most of what was going on with the rest of the crew and just sat around brooding about you ignoring me and wanting nothing to do with me, because you still thought all this scheming was my fault. You really weren't thinking of the bigger picture at all, or listening to any sort of reason, just obsessing over your lost memories that technically aren't lost memories at all.

"If you want to know what else has been going on this week, Eleven has been trying to become some sort of dictator of the TARDIS because he's upset about people being cruel to his wife, and it hasn't worked at all. And also, Adam Mitchell nearly died. Again."

"How did he almost die?" Clara inquired, feeling a little calmer now that Jenny was telling her things again.

"Some weird brain infection - my god, Clara, you should see the back of his arm! I really shouldn't say a lot because his overprotective girlfriend is listening in to our every word, but on his arm there are these black barnacles, they're like scabs, growing out of him, jesus it was gross." Clara winced in pain. "What's wrong?"

"I, um, nothing... I don't know... you were saying about the barnacles?"

"Oh yeah, well, at first everybody thought his skin was going to grow over them, or they would just be there permanently, but last night one of them fell off. Left this big, bloody welt where it had been. It's honestly quite disgusting, he keeps itching them," Jenny said, "So, I mean, you're not the only one who's had a bit of a shit week."

"Great."

"Also, I'm ungrounded," Jenny said, holding up her right hand triumphantly, the robot one, now with no bangle on it.

"Really? Why?"

"It's to do with my father trying to become a dictator because of people being mean to Other You," Jenny explained, "He decided to unground me. Guess he figured that if I was sleeping with his wife, I didn't really dislike her a great deal, or something. Not that that matters much now, I mean, here you are on the TARDIS. Falling into my arms."

"Wonderful," said Clara with a sigh. She wanted to be overly sarcastic and cruel, she really did, but she couldn't manage it. Jenny was trying so hard to do what little she could to cheer her up, that her own cruelty and Jenny's face falling just made her feel sad and guilty, and if Jenny hadn't quickly started talking again, she would have apologised.

"Back to my story. Six days ago you were resurrected, Day One-Hundred and Eight. It was the morning of Day One-Hundred and Eleven, three days ago, that you finally seemed to settle down a bit. I mean, you ate breakfast with me, for a start, which I was quite happy about, and then when mother got a call from the Paternosters? Well, you thought they might know a thing or two about what you'd been up to in your biological time lock..."


	322. Breaking Dawn

**AN: You know what my favourite literary device is? Foreshadowing. You know what's foreshadowed a _crazy _amount in Chapters 750, 751, 783, 784, 785, 789, 793, 800, 806 and in the Author's Note of 733? What's happened to Beta Clara.**

_Jenny_

_Breaking Dawn_

Rice Crispies swam in little, sticky clusters, soggy and damp, in her bowl full of milk that had now gone warm and developed a sort of shine to it like one might see in a pool of oily water after rain, a slight crease to it, like skin. A great silver spoon came down and scooped up a ball of these Rice Crispies she had been thinking about eating for forty-five languid, melancholy minutes, and she held it in her great silver hand and stared at it, at her breakfast, and then sighed and dropped the spoon back in the bowl, where a blot of milk splashed her nose which she took a while to be bothered wiping off.

Beta Clara had been there for three days. Three days ago she had been resurrected. Three days ago Jenny had stopped paying attention to any single thing that Clara hadn't touched, or breathed on, or brushed against, or spoken to or about, because nothing else seemed of any interest to her, apart from the girl who was now ignoring her with such conviction that Jenny was beginning to wonder if maybe she _had _orchestrated Clara being brought surreptitiously back into the land of the living. Right then, she was being spoken to by the calm voice of her mother. She wasn't really _listening_ to her mother, as she slouched forwards in her chair and pushed the bowl away so that she could bury her head in her crossed arms on the table, but her mother's voice was floating around her and failing to permeate any single cell of the part of her brain responsible for changing sounds into language and lapping it up with the great understanding and intelligence she usually displayed. Thirteen seemed off that morning though, like she was nervous, or anxious, about something.

Hiding her face like this with a mix of tiredness, sadness and boredom, she started listening to the things Thirteen was saying. But Thirteen wasn't saying an awful lot important, and was just talking for the sake of talking to her to see if she could help. Thirteen was being very odd the last few days, in the detached manner she often donned while she was around the greater part of the Alpha Crew. She enjoyed being a distant observer, she enjoyed going unnoticed so that people wouldn't badger her incessantly with inquiries about their own personal future, in that selfish way all sentient creatures did, that unhindered thirst for knowledge that belonged to everything inherently alive. It seemed that right then, the Doctor was doing exactly that, blending in, but not leaving, like she usually would. She knew something. Jenny knew that she knew something, but Jenny had enough self-control to resist the temptation to pester her about whatever looming event was drifting towards them like a sweltering fog. A sweltering fog like her own hot breath on her face as she was slowly covered in a thin, damp layer of moisture.

There was the sound of a stool dragging along the smooth carpet next to her and she lifted up her head then, immediately washed with the cool air of the living room, rather than her own condensed, muggy breath. Immediately again she felt heat rise in her face from some internal function when she realised Clara had just sat down next to her, Beta Clara, and she looked at her with a great amount of shock while wondering if anybody else in the room cared, though she wasn't sure that _she _would care if anybody else in the room did anyway. Maybe Jack. Jack was there. Jack was at the other table telling some anecdote to Rose and River that Jenny had heard plenty of times before with less enthusiasm than he usually might tell it with. The pleasant buzz of her mother talking next to her faded away, and she stared at the morose, shorter-haired version of Clara Oswald she liked so much.

"Hi?" Jenny asked awkwardly, frowning. She thought that Clara had made a mistake in sitting next to her, because Clara had not said a word to her since shouting her out of her own bedroom two nights ago, so that now Jenny was stuck in a sleepless dreamless state each night on one of Adam Mitchell's sofas.

"I've given up," Clara said, leaning on her arms on the surface of the table the same way Jenny had been doing when she had walked into Nerve Centre a moment ago, and Jenny moved her own hands and put them in her lap, out of the way.

"Given up what?" she asked gingerly, not without the worry that she might get shouted at again, and she most definitely hated getting shouted at by somebody she had no reason or inclination to shout back at.

"Ignoring you." Behind Jenny, Thirteen got up and went off into the kitchen on the other side of the room, and Jenny suddenly regretted not eating her Rice Crispies. She didn't know what she was going to do with them now. By far, she thought the human race shone for their breakfasts. Always going on that breakfast was the most important meal of the day - in Jenny's opinion, midnight snacks were the most important meal of the day, but she wouldn't say no to a fry up. She always had fried breakfasts when she stayed with Clara. Of course, _she _was always the one making them. Everybody knew Clara couldn't cook a single thing.

"Oh, right," Jenny said. She would have liked to look a little less happy about this, because Clara still wasn't happy at all, but the fact remained that she ended up having to tactfully put a hand over her mouth to stop Clara seeing her smile, "How come?"

"Well, what's the point?" Clara asked her dully, quietly. Across the room, they had piqued Rose's attention, and Jenny heard Jack mumble something faintly about having to excuse himself. Jenny looked over at them and saw Rose looking displeased and River moderately surprised, but Jenny hadn't a clue what she was surprised about. "If everybody's gone, then I only have you now, and I can't start shutting out the last person who actually cares about me." Jenny didn't bother pointing out that clearly Alpha Clara and Oswin cared a great deal about her, else they wouldn't have brought her back to life by temporarily jury-rigging a nanogene cloud.

"Well, I'm glad," Jenny said. Clara didn't apologise for ignoring her, but she didn't mind. Maybe one day she would try and squeeze an apology out of her, but she was smart enough not to go trying her luck, "I've missed you."

"When was the last time you saw me?"

"Yesterday, you boiled the kettle and refused to speak to me when I asked if you wanted me to pass you the sugar," Jenny said, and Clara nearly laughed.

"No, I mean like... you know what I mean."

"Six days ago," Jenny said, "You remember, that incident with my father and me hiding unsuccessfully."

"Oh, I remember vividly. Dragged me out after that, would not stop questioning me, kept trying to get me to slip up. Eventually I just had to tell him straight."

"Tell him what straight?"

"Tell him that why on Earth would I, his best friend in the whole universe whom he would do anything for, betray his trust by doing a thing like sleeping with his daughter? Repeatedly?" Clara told her, and Jenny laughed, "I really sold it, too. I said, how is it _my _fault if his daughter has an unruly infatuation with me enough to go sneaking around in my flat? Would I be blamed if a burglar broke in? It's not _my _fault a burglar broke in. A burglar did that all on their own."

"Well Clara, maybe you just had a very attractive flat and the poor burglar just couldn't help themselves?" Jenny questioned her wryly.

"It's still not _my_ fault I have an attractive flat."

"No, I suppose not. Anyway, your flat's disgusting. Clothes all over the floor."

"They were _your_ clothes."

"That I threw off in a moment of passion, Clara."

"You said you couldn't bothered waiting until you were in the bathroom to take your clothes off to have a shower so you just threw them on the living room floor."

"I'm very passionate about showers. You should know _all _about that," she said the last part quietly.

"Hey, Doctor," Jack called loudly. Jenny hadn't noticed him come back into the room at all, but he spoke so loud to get the attention of her mother, for her mother was the only Doctor in the room presently, she found herself looking over.

"Yeah?" Thirteen asked quickly. Thirteen had been pacing after she had moved off to go into the kitchen, like she was antsily awaiting something.

"Phone call for you. Specifically _you_," he said, "Someone called Vastra." Jack had never really met the Paternosters enough to care to learn their names, but Jenny recognised the name. Thirteen walked off to go into the console room where Jack had just come through from, but he blocked her passage, an arm over the door, "Have you been looking for me?"

"Looking for you?" Thirteen questioned, putting a hand on her hip.

"Yeah. Christina" - Jenny winced - "told me the other day that someone had been looking for me, and they found her instead. A woman, short, with blonde hair, brown eyes and an American accent." (**Chapter Ref. 791**)

"Not me," Thirteen said, smiling chipperly, and she ducked under his arm and into the console room before he could insist. Jenny wondered why Thirteen was so sure it wasn't her, it could easily be another future version of her. But then, why would Thirteen be looking for Jack? And going to Christina de Souza of all people for help? Jack walked right through Nerve Centre and left through the other door.

Into the room then sauntered two undesirables. The two most undesirable people on the TARDIS for the last few days. Surprisingly, Jenny and Beta Clara were not the most ostracised or despised pair aboard, because it was accepted by the rest of the crew that Jenny hadn't had a single thing to do with this resurrection, and that it wasn't really Beta Clara's fault at all that she had been brought back to life. How could it be her fault? She had been dead. No. The honour of most hated crew-members went at that moment to the Twins, who had yet to do anything by way of atonement for their latest sin. Even though they both adamantly claimed that it was all Alpha Clara's doing and Oswin had just been made to go along, this went unaccepted by the majority.

"How are you two crazy kids doing, then?" Oswin asked, because of course the Twins had to sit with _them_. They couldn't have sat on one of the four sofas, all of which were empty, except for the one with Jonesy the cat and her mother's transdimensional bag sitting on it. Of course not. So now Jenny was going to be subjected to Oswin's sense of humour, which would be fine enough if it wasn't directed at her and Beta Clara that day. As it happened, neither of them answered her. Beta Clara didn't even look round at her two counterparts. Jenny thought they freaked her out, but she didn't know for sure. Jenny was on her right, Alpha Clara was on her left and Oswin was in the next seat down that way. It was towards Jenny that her head was turned, and so it was only Jenny who saw the facial expressions she pulled as the Twins spoke to one another, and to them. Surely, these expressions were the only things that kept Jenny from telling them to go away, because they were quite funny.

"Os, leave them alone," Alpha Clara told her.

"Why? Do you ever think that you're basically Cupid for bringing them back to life? Or Aphrodite?" Oswin said, still refusing to take any of the responsibility for the resurrection.

"No," was all Alpha Clara said to her, "How are you, though? Are you okay? ...Clara?" Beta Clara utterly refused to speak to them, and Jenny laughed a little when she saw her roll her eyes and grimace.

"She's fine," Jenny said. A lie or not, if it got them to shut up, Beta Clara would be grateful.

"I have a question for her," said Oswin, and Jenny wondered if Beta Clara could tell which of them was speaking with her back turned. Oswin leant towards Jenny, who didn't move an inch, as though about to divulge in her some enormous secret, "What's it like to be fingered by someone with a robot hand?" Beta Clara made a start and sat bold upright.

"Oswin!" chastised Alpha Clara.

"What? I'm curious."

"What's it like to only be able to have sex with someone in a simulation?" Jenny countered, which hurt Oswin greatly.

"Leave her alone," Alpha Clara said to Jenny, and Jenny just raised an eyebrow at her and crossed her arms.

"I bet it feels so cold," Oswin continued.

"I bet it feels so fake," Jenny retaliated.

"Probably painful," Oswin muttered, and Jenny leant towards _her _now, in front of Beta Clara, who wasn't saying a word about what it really _was_ like to be touched by someone with a robot hand.

"Probably shit."

"Oi!" Oswin snapped.

"Did I strike a nerve because I'm right?" Jenny questioned.

"You're not right at all."

"So what _is _Adam Mitchell like in bed?"

"I'm not telling you that."

"You know what that means, Jenny," Beta Clara said to her mischievously, evilly, leaning towards Jenny like she was stage whispering.

"No, pray tell?" Jenny asked her with exaggerated curiosity.

"She not telling you means that he's not that good at all, but she likes him too much to tell anyone," Clara explained. Oswin glared at them both, and then walked off in a huff and sat down on one of the sofas. Alpha Clara sighed and stood up.

"Honestly, I'm so sorry," she apologised on her sister's behalf, "Seriously, I try so hard with her..." Clara left to go lecture her sister, for the billionth time, about social boundaries and appropriate conversation.

"I don't get her," Beta Clara said to Jenny, shuffling closer to her on the stools, bringing her intoxicating stemch if strawberry laces with her and wrapping Jenny in it like a delectable, scrumptious birthday present, breathing out mint toothpast smell in her direction. Jenny smiled and listened, "Why does she act like that? Why does she say those things?"

"Oh, I think that's a question for very well-renowned and highly qualified psychiatrist, Clara," Jenny said.

"Who's your mother on the phone to?"

"Paternosters."

"Is she?" Clara seemed interested, but Thirteen came back in before she could say whatever she was going to about the Paternosters.

"Jenny, we're going out," Thirteen said to her, more or less ordered her, going and picking up her bag from one of the sofas where it was sitting near the sleeping ginger cat, along with one of her many, _many _jackets. Thirteen had a wardrobe of just as much variety as any human girl did, not like the male Doctors and their singular outfits of varying colour. Looking at the way she had left her things ready, though, Jenny really did wonder what was going on that day and how much Thirteen knew.

"Where?" she asked, frowning.

"Waterloo Station, 1894, late at night. Overnight train to Whitby, Vastra says," Thirteen said.

"How come?" Alpha Clara asked her.

"Hasn't told me yet," Thirteen said smoothly, "Just said it was urgent." That was a fine example of Thirteen evading the truth if ever Jenny had seen one. Quite possibly, Vastra _hadn't_ told her yet, but that didn't change the fact that she knew.

"Can I come?" Alpha Clara wondered.

"Yes. So can Oswin," Thirteen said, "So can everyone, if they like." From what Jenny could gather, that was as close as her mother would come to telling people they _had _to go somewhere that day because they were supposed to. The only other two in the room were Rose and River. Jenny was surprised when they both agreed quite readily to come out. She would have thought they might both have refused outright.

"Paternosters," Beta Clara frowned, "Oh, but they'll be the _Alpha_ Paternosters, won't they?"

"There are no Alpha Paternosters," Thirteen told her.

"What do you mean?"

"There are no Alpha Paternosters or Beta Paternosters. The Alphaverse and the Betaverse aren't parallel. They zigzag and crisscross over each other, and some points in time and space occasionally overlap. Victorian England in the 1880s and 1890s is one of them. The Paternosters are just some of the few lucky people who have to keep up with what's going on in both universes," Thirteen explained.

"Really?" Beta Clara asked, and Thirteen nodded. "What if they know what I was up to in that time lock? They could tell me."

"Well then," said Thirteen in a voice that bordered on hollow, and she looked a little haunted when she said these next words, "I guess you'd better come too..."


	323. Being Human

_Jenny, Alpha Clara, Oswin_

_Being Human_

Waterloo Station's roof was a criss-cross pattern of sooty glass panes rising and falling sharply like abstract fells; curvaceous windows were swooping, translucent mountains high above the traintracks, metal beams and thin, iron scaffolds running over the platforms. It stank of dirt and coal and filth, the air tasted like cholera and other rampant, urban infections. It was just across the Thames from the slums, close enough to there and close enough to Parliament to get all sorts of people coming in and out, going to and from, to and from places like Whitby and London, it seemed. And in the late February of 1894, the snow had barely thawed and the engines chugged along furiously, merciless drivers and stiff-boned passengers making overnight journeys on the great British railway.

The TARDIS parked discreetly under some archways, it being quite late, half past ten, and the place quite abandoned. In a dark corner elsewhere, on a different platform, the three darkly dressed figures of the Paternoster gang lurking about in waiting as a stopped steam engine hissed nearby. The train they were supposed to be catching. And the Paternosters were very surprised by the group of six who approached them because it seemed that they had never seen the Alpha Twelfth Doctor before in their lives, which Jenny thought was strange, because hadn't Jack said they asked for her specifically? And her mannerisms were still so odd. Alpha Clara was noticing, too, how impatient and agitated the Doctor was being as she led them like a troupe towards the waiting Paternosters, who came to the awareness of their arrival with a start of confusion.

"Who are you?" Vastra, in her veil, looking like a bad advertisement for Scottish Widows, questioned her.

"The Doctor," Thirteen said stiffly, "Where's your train? Is this it?" she pointed at the nearest train. They were in so much shock from seeing her that it took Jenny Flint a few moments to notice the fact that there were three Claras. If it was an overnight train, she wondered, did it have beds? On Jenny Harkness's left, Beta Clara hovered so close by that she thought she might try to take her hand at any given moment, but in her awkwardness Jenny crossed her arms and they remained stoically separated.

"Well, yes, but-"

"Who's this boy?" Strax, the potato, questioned nobody in particular, looking at Thirteen, "Why are there so many boys?" Beta Clara sighed next to Jenny Harkness and there was momentary outrage, mainly from Rose and Alpha Clara, at the notion of being associated with men.

"I'll tell you about it on the train," Thirteen promised, ignoring Strax and beginning to walk over to the train Vastra had pointed out, a freight train, it looked like, but with a particularly nice looking black carriage hitched up closest to the train itself.

Smoke and the smell of hot coal wafted over them for them for the whole journey, an industrial stink Jenny Harkness highly disliked that she noticed as soon as they boarded. Thirteen refused to say a word to any of the three Paternosters until they were all seated (actually, it was until they were well into their trip), and it turned out that the seating arrangements caused a great deal of trouble. River and Rose being the two most outcast members of the group that day meant they easily chose to sit with one another, and so did Jenny Harkness and Beta Clara, and Jenny Flint and Vastra. The issue was the Twins, because as Thirteen slid into the seat by the window across a wooden, nicely carved table made of mahogany from Flint and Vastra, Alpha Clara sat down next to her. And Oswin wasn't happy about that.

Ultimately, Alpha Clara deserted her sister and told her that they could still talk just as easily psychically if Oswin sat next to Strax across the table in the next booth down that Rose and River were sharing. Strax was next to Rose. Oswin ended up sitting next to River. Beta Clara and Jenny didn't even have a table between them, they were stuck on the end, which suited Jenny fine. It was a good place to listen in to things.

Fifteen minutes later they were on their way, in their private train carriage with just the nine of them in, to Whitby, much further North, and words were being exchanged between Vastra and Thirteen on a question-for-question basis, which Alpha Clara listened to intently, because Thirteen was still being uneasy. All morning she had been pacing, and Clara had been hard done by to find an excuse to get her alone and force the truth out of her. On Clara's right, the Doctor bounced her foot up and down spasmodically, and at frequent intervels she caught her biting her nails.

"Why are there three of you, then?" Jenny Flint blurted out at Clara.

"She's from the other universe," Clara answered as the train glided a long, but all she could see in the window was bleak darkness and her own reflection. Suddenly, her life was Dickensian. "Alphaverse, Betaverse, you know, the Dimension Doors. Oswin explained them the last time we saw you."

"The Twelfth Doctor doesn't know they exist," Jenny Flint said.

"He knows full well that they exist, he just hates this reality because _he_ doesn't exist," Clara said, "He stayed with us for a week and still tried to pretend we didn't exist. Put an octopus under Oswin's bed - the poor girl was terrified. How did you know to ask for _this _Doctor on the phone if you didn't know she was a she?"

"This is the first time they meet me," Thirteen told her. Thirteen was hardly speaking.

"Yeah, so how did they know to ask for you?" Clara asked.

"That's what _I'd_ like to know," Thirteen said, "Ringing me up and asking for me specifically."

"We just got told to, told call up the TARDIS again and ask for Thirteen, because you were away when I called the first time," Vastra said, "I got through to your wife."

"My wife? Clara? You spoke to Clara? How is she?" Thirteen asked urgently, and Clara couldn't tell whether or not it was acceptable to feel dejected.

"She was asleep, we woke her up," Jenny Flint said. In the background, Clara could hear Oswin talking to Strax about dehydrated space potatoes, for some reason.

"Woke her up? That total... promised me she wouldn't sleep in the console room while I was gone... maybe she'll think twice about it with that ringtone I set," Thirteen grumbled. Clara felt like a child being vicariously disciplined for something she hadn't done yet.

"What ringtone?" she asked.

"_Axel F_, Crazy Frog," Thirteen answered. Good. Her future self could suffer plenty with having _that _for an alarm clock for all she cared. Decades would pass before she had to deal with it. "What else did she say?"

Vastra then beckoned her closer over the table. The Doctor leant as far forwards as she could until their faces hung only two inches apart, and Vastra seemed about to divulge the most astonishingly important piece of information to ever be bestowed upon an individual, "She says," Vastra began quietly, and Thirteen looked at her with wide, listening eyes, "Could you pick up some milk on the way home?"

Thirteen scoffed and sat back up instantly, affronted.

"Milk!?" she exclaimed, "_Milk_!?"

"Green milk. Whatever that means," said Jenny Flint. Pasteurisation had yet to be invented.

"Green milk!? Is that all!?" Thirteen demanded.

"No, she also said would you get her some lip balm, cola flavour, not the strawberry flavour like you usually get," Vastra said.

"But strawberry tastes the nicest!" Thirteen protested.

"And the dog misses you," Jenny added.

"The dog always misses me," Thirteen muttered.

"Hold on - _dog_? What dog?" Alpha Clara asked.

"You'll find out soon enough. Is that all she wanted? Seriously? To tell me to get milk and chapstick?" Thirteen asked incredulously, and Vastra shrugged.

"It seemed like it. She has a message for her past self, as well," she said, and Clara made a start.

"What message!?" Clara was now the one being rude and shouting.

"She told me to tell you, 'patience is a virtue,'" Vastra quoted, and Clara gasped and her wife actually laughed.

"What a cow!" she defended herself, then to the Doctor, "Divorce her."

"You want me to divorce you?" Thirteen puzzled.

"No, divorce _her_."

"You're one and the same."

"That means that _I'm _the one sleeping with your daughter."

"Are you talking about me?" Jenny Harkness stuck her head around the back of her seat to look mainly at her mother and stepmother, Jenny Flint and Vastra being on the seats backing her own.

"No, we were talking about _me_," Alpha Clara said.

"The only thing you _ever _talk about is you," Jenny Harkness argued, and Beta Clara on her right elbowed her in the side, but nobody else saw anything because they were sat on their own.

"What is it with you two, anyway?" Jenny Flint asked Alpha Clara and Jenny Harkness' mother while she was still peering around the back of the seat.

"What's what with us?" Alpha Clara asked.

"You know, what's _with _you?" she implored in a lower tone of voice. Jenny Harkness saw Alpha Clara frown and cast a glance at her wife, who was frowning as well and met her eyes for a moment when she had been previously staring out of the window.

"What are you talking about?" Clara asked again.

"Well, you two. What are you? I don't get it."

"Don't get what?"

"Well, you _used_ to be married to a _man_," Jenny Flint said.

"I still am married to a man," Clara told her.

"What about _her_?" Jenny Flint asked, nodding at the Doctor. Behind her, Jenny Harkness was ultimately confused and met her mother's confounded gaze for a short moment with an equally confounded one of her own. She tapped Beta Clara's leg to see if she might pay attention as well.

"What?" Beta Clara, who had not been listening, just sat there in quiet annoyance that Jenny was leaning so far around the seat she could no longer lie on her shoulder. Jenny sat back up for a very breif moment and whispered to Clara to listen.

"What _about _me?" Thirteen questioned roughly, "I'm her wife. She's mine. Well, she _will_ be. You know that. We're still married when Theodore regenerates, why should anything change?"

"Because you're a girl," Jenny Flint said.

"So what? Vastra's a girl. So are you. You're the cross-species lesbian detectives and good friends of Arthur Conan Doyle, I have on good authority," Thirteen said.

"But she was with a man before," Jenny said. Vastra didn't say a word.

"Well so what?" Jenny Harkness interrupted.

"Well, you can't be with _both_."

"Oh _there _it is," Alpha Clara muttered. By the way Jenny Harkness then saw Oswin look over and hastily mutter something to River on her other side at the far end of te carriage, she thought that Clara had just told her telepathically what had just been said.

"Of course you can," Jenny Harkness pointed out.

"How?" Jenny Flint asked.

"What do you mean 'how'?"

"I don't understand it."

"I really thought bisexuality existed as a word back in this century," Jenny complained to herself, "I was married to a man just two weeks ago, you know."

"Who are you married to now?" Jenny Flint questioned.

"Well I'm not married to anybody _now_, but-"

"She's shagging _me_," Beta Clara said loudly.

"What, _right now_!?" Oswin demanded.

"No!" Jenny Harkness and Beta Clara both shouted, and then Beta Clara added, "Just generally. When we have freetime." She herself didn't know a thing about whether their 'arrangement' was going to continue post-mortem, but she supposed the prospects of it carrying on were suddenly overwhelmingly positive and threw her into a great befuddlement.

"Show me your hands," Oswin demanded, and Jenny sighed and held her hands around the side, and Beta Clara held hers up over the backs of the seats, "Alright, good. No damp fingers."

"Gross," Rose, who Jenny couldn't see, muttered.

"Doesn't matter, anyway, Oswin; I have very flexible toes," Jenny said, and there was a unanimous groan through the carriage and Beta Clara elbowed her again.

"Jennifer, be nice," Thirteen scolded her lazily, and she grimaced immediately and both of the Claras snickered. Then the Doctor turned to Vastra, "I'd like to hear the Silurian take on bisexuality?"

"Sexuality is fluid," Vastra said shortly.

"Maybe you should keep better control of your wife," Thirteen said coolly, "Teach her to be less biphobic."

"She's just never heard of such a thing," Vastra defended her wife as though she were a child. Where was the equality?

"So what? I'm sure once she'd never heard of the infamous five-inch tongues of the lizard people who lived below the Earth's surface, but I assume she's _more_ than familiar with that particular oral muscle now?" Thirteen challenged, and Jenny Flint went red the same time Jenny Harkness ooo'd immaturely and glimpsed Thirteen's look of triumph, before she sank away into her brooding quiet again. Under the table, Jenny was sure she could see Alpha Clara holding Thirteen's hand. Something to ask about later, she thought.

"Why are we going to Whitby, anyway? Nobody even said. What's in Whitby that you need the Doctor for?" Rose Tyler broke the following silence five minutes later, after Vastra's maid had stopped trying to deny the existence of bisexuals for the time being.

"Mysterious attacks, unusual symptoms, vanishings," Vastra said, "Looks alien in pattern. Two murders, as well." Thirteen stayed silent.

"Which aliens?" Jenny Harkness asked.

"Seagulls, probably," Alpha Clara muttered, then mainly to Thirteen she said, "Did you know I once heard about someone who was stood on Blackpool Pier with fish and chips, and this seagull came right at them and cut down all their cheek."

"They needed sixteen stitches," Beta Clara added to Jenny.

"Honestly, reminds me of when I got shot in the face with that crossbow bolt and ripped it out. You know, I think they needed sixteen stitches."

"Not seagulls," Jenny Flint said, "Vampires."

"Vampires?" Jenny Harkness, Beta Clara, Alpha Clara, Oswin, and Rose all questioned all of a sudden.

Then the Claras both added, "In _Whitby_?"

"What's so great about Whitby?" Rose called over the back of her seat. Jenny's eyes met Oswin's right at the end of the seats across the whole carriage, mutually perplexed.

"It's where _Dracula _is set," River told her.

"Where what's set?" Jenny Flint asked.

"The second vampire novel," Alpha Clara answered, "Came out in 1897. Bram Stoker, you know. What year is it now?"

"1894," Thirteen told her.

"Oh. That explains things."

"Vampires don't exist," Oswin argued.

"They do," River told her, "The Great Vampires have always been rivals of Time Lords."

"They share ninety-eight percent of the same DNA with us," Thirteen said, mainly to Jenny Harkness, "They were called the Great Vampires, oh, thousands of years ago now, I suppose. The Time Lords waged a lot of wars against them. They saw it as their duty to destroy any vampire they found after that."

"Not like, you know, film vampires, though?" Alpha Clara questioned.

"I guess we'll see," Thirteen told her.

Jenny Harkness was distracted by the conversation as it swung away again to future dogs and milk by Beta Clara putting her head on her shoulder next to her, and she swelled for a moment.

"Are you okay?" Jenny asked her quietly, quiet enough that nobody else would hear.

"Probably not."

"You'll be alright, Clara," Jenny said, "Happy birthday, by the way."

"It's not mybirthday."

"It was your birthday yesterday, though. November 23rd. Two days after your death. Sorry I didn't really get you anything," Jenny said.

"You're adorable," Clara told her, and then she sat up for a moment just so that she could kiss Jenny's cheek, which she did, resting her head back on her shoulder just in time to miss seeing her grin, "Nobody else remembered."

"You can't glare at them for the next six hours," River said sternly to Oswin, who had been glaring at the Doctor her little sister for almost two hours already as it was. She was slouching down resentfully, stuck on an aisle seat without so much as an arm rest to lean on.

"I could glare at them for the next six years if I wanted. Here I am not even getting the pleasure of being a third wheel," Oswin muttered. Her argument with Strax about the possibility of there ever being a potato famine (Strax denied this possibility, while Oswin knew that in the three thousand years separating them there were five different potato blights or famines or shortages or droughts or absences) had ended some time ago now.

"Why would you want to be?" Rose questioned her.

"I just can't believe she drags me out today and then blows me off for _wifey_. She's despicable, after everything I've done for her," Oswin grumbled.

"Oh?" River asked, "What are you brooding over this time?" Oswin scowled at her.

"How much I hate everybody. Except Adam. Poor Adam's fast asleep right now, and she wouldn't even let me leave a note," Oswin complained. Adam Mitchell would probably text her when he woke up though, and ask where she was, she was sure if it. He had barely been awake at all for three days, and hadn't been as cold as usual. She was constantly worried about him lately.

"Is that what you're in a mood about? Adam almost getting killed again?" Rose asked.

"While the frequency of which that happens is rather alarming, Rose, no, not at this precise moment. At this precise moment I'm thinking I've made a mistake," Oswin muttered. She had slid very far down her seat now, and so at that moment she sat up straight and started fumbling with her prosthesis. If she was going to be sat on that train for six more hours, she was definitely not going to do it with her heavy fake leg attached.

They all seemed highly alarmed when she put it down on the empty table in front of them, for it was a huge, shining thing, and the left leg of her jeans now hung empty. She balanced oddly on her right leg and folded hhe fabric underneath herself before sitting back down.

"Won't you move it?" Rose questioned, cringing away from the leg like it was a fleshy stick of gore dripping blood everywhere.

"Why? It's just metal and carbon fibre," Oswin said.

"Yeah, but it looks weird, you haven't taken the shoe off of it," Rose pointed out.

"Well so what? River here's one-hundred percent prosthetic, and you're not telling _her_ to go hide somewhere else. I could always implant Helix into it and make it speak?" Oswin suggested. She was somewhat annoyed she didn't have Helix's handheld device out with her, the white, Qetesh oval. It never proved not to be useful when it was brought somewhere.

"What have you made a mistake about?" River implored, ignoring Rose's strange squeamishness about Oswin's artificial leg on the table.

"_Her_," Oswin said quietly, nodding forwards.

"Me?" Strax questioned, "I am not a her!"

"_No_, Clara," Oswin said very quietly, "But, you know, the Beta one."

"Mistake how?" River asked.

"Bringing her back."

"I thought you said your sister did that?" Rose asked. Both of the Claras were too preoccupied with Jenny and Thirteen respectively to listen in, anyway, "You've both been saying for days that she did."

"Strictly speaking, it was me, but she told me to!" she protested, "I didn't want to do it, I felt like I shouldn't, but she said if I did that _she_ would take all the responsibility. She would have done it on her own, had she the means."

"She better not live with us," Rose grunted. That was all Rose said when people brought Beta Clara up to her. _She better not live with us_. Oswin thought everybody felt the same way about that.

"Don't worry, she doesn't want to," Oswin sighed, "But we haven't thought of a solution yet. How could we stop her from looking for the Doctor? Or him from lookng for _her_?"

"He won't be looking for her," Strax assured her.

"He's _what_!?" Oswin shouted suddenly a while later. Jenny was now prevented from craning her neck around the back of the seat by her lack of desire to upset Beta Clara where she was quite comfortably nestled in the crick if her warm neck, so she was stuck having to listen. She had vaguely heard mention of Oswin's part in bringing Beta Clara back to life, but hadn't paid much attention. Suddenly it seemed like someone had told Oswin something she didn't want to hear.

"Forgotten she existed," Vastra answered her.

"Forgotten who existed?" Rose called.

"Clara."

"What?" Beta Clara sat up straight away and tried to peer over the back of the seat, "Which one? Who forgot?"

"The Twelfth Doctor, he showed up a few weeks ago on his own," Jenny Flint said, "Didn't have a clue who you were when we asked him where you were." Despondent and lost for words, Beta Clara sank back down in a silent stupor as Alpha Clara and Oswin argued on her behalf about what an awful thing that was for him to have done, even if the Paternosters didn't know the exact circumstances. For the rest of the journey, Beta Clara didn't say a single word, she just stayed wrapped in Jenny Harkness' arms until daybreak, and until their arrival in Whitby.


	324. Interview With A Vampire

**AN: I am being ****_such_**** a perfectionist with these chapters. Anyway, basically, you guys know Matt? Previously The Final Shadow, now MattHarrisFF? Who wrote me that Author's Note the other chapter? Well, basically, he's been writing this Clara/Ashildr fic called "Clara &amp; Me" set out like a linear series of ****_Doctor Who_****, and we've combined the canons. Really it's just because I'm too lazy to think about what those two might have been up to during this time lock myself, but he's writing this fic that is what they've been doing, involving the Paternosters in the first storyline, and those Paternosters there are BEFORE these Paternosters ****_here_****, so these ones know what happens there and they know about the time lock and they know Clara was travelling with Ashildr (I'm not gonna call her 'Me' because it's weird and incredibly jarring in prose format). And basically I am writing Ashildr in, and it should be pretty funny, but not for a couple of days. No Maisie Williams in this storyline, or the next, but a few after. So go and read ****_that_**** fic for background.**

_Alpha Clara_

_Interview With A Vampire_

In Whitby, they immediately set off to go and visit a young woman who had supposedly been attacked by these vampires. She was stiff all over from sitting on a train from eleven at night to eight in the morning, as it was now, but trains in the 1800s weren't nearly as fast as trains in the 2000s. All through the journey, Thirteen had been unsettled. All morning, Thirteen had been unsettled. Clara was beginning to get worried, because Thirteen stoically refused to tell her what was making her so constantly anxious, constantly walking around, either completely silent for lengths of time or talking unfathomably quickly about Venetian vampires or werewolf legends or anything else to distract herself. Clara was beginning to worry that this was the day Thirteen was due to go back to the future.

She had never been to Whitby. Strange, since the town was such a centrepiece of literature and a key location in the genres of gothic fiction, horror fiction and, more importantly, vampire fiction. She could smell the slat of the sea and hear the looming caws of seagulls overhead, and it was a vastly more rural setting than London was. Victorian London was dire, and here they were again populating Victorian Yorkshire. But this time it was North Yorkshire, not West Yorkshire, like it had been when she and her husband had visited and gotten caught in Sweetville in need of rescuing by the Paternosters.

Jenny Flint and Vastra were leading the way, Vastra veiled up again as usual, walking in a troupe towards the house of this vampire victim. Strax was not with them, he had been sent off elsewhere to procure them some discreet lodgings, should they be there for a while, but Clara knew enough of the Nineteenth Century to know that if you went around a city asking for 'discreet lodgings' you would probably get directed to the nearest whorehouse, even if you _did_ uncannily resemble a jacket potato. Clara and Thirteen floated just behind them, occasionally level, and then behind them was Rose, River and Oswin, and right at the back Jenny Harkness and Beta Her. Clara wasn't even sure if Jenny went by the surname 'Harkness' anymore or what.

It was only when they got to the house, in their large group, that the problem arose of who, exactly, was going to go in and see this girl, because they couldn't _all_ fit inside. It was a very small house, after all, and Vastra was very insistent that her maid, as arguably useless as she probably was in any situation that didn't involve beating people up or making tea. Mainly the issue was that it was cold outside and there was still a great deal of snow about, it being the end of February in the colder Victorian period in a northerly point of the country. Nobody had a coat. Clara was freezing. It was only resolved when her sister decided to take matters into her own hands and knock on the door herself as they all argued.

"Hi," Oswin said when a frail, middle aged woman opened the door looking chilly. They all looked unaccountably odd, on the basis that none of them were dressed for the period. Except for Jenny Flint and Madame Vastra, but then, they _lived_ in the period. Clara found that she didn't actually care how much she got stared at, though, in fairness. Oswin continued to say, "We're the Lesbian Patrol. Here to see your daughter." The woman stared at her. The woman also stared at the other two versions of her who were both very displeased by her saying that.

"Oi!" Rose protested.

"Sorry," Oswin corrected herself, "We're the Lesbian Patrol, Plus Rose. Can we come in? It's dreadfully cold." Clara felt a pang that told her Oswin had just got revenge on her for ditching her to sit with Thirteen on the train. For the full journey she got a spool of irritated thoughts and feelings fed directly into her own brain, and had started to get a headache.

The house was small and exactly what you would expect from a low earning Victorian family, and as far as Clara could see, as they flooded the living room to cluster around the hearth like fireflies, it was just the mother and this young daughter who lived there. There was suddenly not a lot of issue as to who was going to go and see this girl, because most of them would rather stay by the warm fire.

Ultimately, when Jenny Flint and Madame Vastra went and made introductions for them all with the mother and apologised because of how many of them there were, four of them were to go upstairs, five to remain in the living room with the fire. Vastra and Thirteen were the two givens to go up, then Thirteen also requested that both her daughter _and_ her wife come, too. Clara wasn't even that bothered, so she didn't know why _she'd_ been invited up, but she resolved that she would leave her apology to her baby sister for later and would stand quietly in a corner and try not to say anything, so she trailed off after the other three. Jenny Harkness had kicked up a bit of a fuss, as well, saying she would prefer to stay downstairs, but Thirteen had been oddly insistent with her.

"I don't see why _I_ have to go and see, I really don't care," Jenny whispered to Alpha Clara as they went up the stairs.

"No, me neither," Clara agreed. But Thirteen almost definitely knew something they didn't, so it was probably in all of their best interests to just do what she told them to.

The bedroom was dark, curtains drawn heavily across the windows, the only light being one measly candle sitting by the bed. The girl was a nondescript mass hidden underneath thin blankets for bedsheets, and the fire up there wasn't lit. Wasn't she unbearably cold? The mother hovered in the room feeling out of place like Clara and Jenny did, Clara sinking into a corner between the wall and the armoire to try and keep out of the way.

"Isn't she cold?" the Doctor asked the mother.

"She wakes up and shouts when I try to light a fire," the mother answered, "It's been like this for a week."

"What's she like when she wakes up?" the Doctor inquired. Thirteen stood with her arms crossed at the end of the bed, Vastra going to carefully peel the covers back from the girl, who was lying underneath them flat on her back with her eyes shut.

"Sleeping during the day, key trait of vampirism," Clara muttered. Only Jenny was listening to anything Clara said.

"Tired," the mother answered, "She can hardly get out of bed, she's so ill." Vastra picked up the girl's hand and looked at it, and Clara wondered how she could even see a thing through her veil.

"Blue fingernails," Vastra said, then glanced at the girl's face, "Blue lips..." A long moment passed while Vastra took, or tried to take, the girl's pulse, "Weak pulse."

"Symptoms of hypovolemic shock," Thirteen said.

"Acute blood loss," Jenny whispered in explanation to Clara, who hadn't a clue what 'hypovolemic shock' was.

"Leave us now," Vastra ordered the mother coolly, who protested for a moment, until the Doctor stepped in.

"I'm a doctor, it's fine, and I think I heard some of our friends earlier saying they were awfully thirsty. We've been travelling for days, you see, I came all the way here from America on a freighter last week," Thirteen said, and that got her to leave, presumably to ask the others if they wanted anything to drink, "You don't always have to be so harsh, Vastra."

"I'm not harsh," Vastra argued with her.

"Oh, come on, you're so unnecessarily cruel to some of these poor humans," the Doctor said, "You would think that since you married one of them, you'd be a bit nicer."

"Says you."

"Says me!? I'm plenty nice! _I'm_ the nice one!"

"What do you mean, 'the nice one?'" Clara, sensing this was something to do with her, asked, "If you're the nice one, what am I?"

"The lazy one," Thirteen answered her.

"I'm not lazy!"

"Not yet, you're not," the Doctor muttered. Maybe she resented Clara's alluded-to laziness, "Anyway, I just think if you marry someone of a species you should probably take a closer look at them and stop trying to hate them all, viewing that person as the only exception to some rule _you've_ made up in your prejudiced, xenophobic head. Everyone's equal, and everyone should be treated equally."

"Okay, sweetheart, enough of the communism, back to the vampires," Clara told her.

"She's always like that, I'm so sorry," Jenny apologised to Vastra, who had now lifted up her veil and revealed her scaly, green face, since the mother was out of the room. Vastra sighed, and went back to looking over the girl.

"So, if it is vampires, what do we do?" Clara asked, "Like, do stakes kill them? Religious symbols? There was a crucifix on the door downstairs. How's it getting in to bite her?"

"Might not be, she might be sleepwalking out," Thirteen said stiffly. She had her arms crossed, but Clara could see her fists bawled so tightly her knuckles were shining in the dimly lit bedroom, "Probably is."

"Do we have to kill them?" Clara inquired, "How much, exactly, do you know about this from the future?"

"Some of it. Not everything," Thirteen answered, "I know about vampires anyway, though. Ran into them loads of times. Second Me, Fourth Me, Fifth Me, Eighth Me. Now Twelfth Me. And Eleventh Me bumped into these Saturnyns once in Venice that everybody thought were vampires. They weren't, though, they were fish."

"Then tell us, Doctor," Vastra implored, "What do you know about vampires?"

"Most of the stuff you've read in fiction books is true. I mean, this is straight out of _Dracula_. Stoker might have been one, you never know, I've never met him. Well, why would I want to meet him? He might be a vampire. They're interspecies parasites, they can convert anything, including a Time Lord. There were cults on Gallifrey at one point who thought Rassilon was a vampire," the Doctor explained, "Honestly, it's ridiculous. They have dreadful light aversion, they need to drink blood, have fangs, pale skin – once I met some who could shapeshift into mist. A stake through the heart or decapitation would kill them just fine. You know, they can't even cross running water, and they're allergic to allyl."

"What's allyl?" Clara asked.

"You find it in garlic," Vastra answered.

"Seriously?" Clara asked.

"Yeah," the Doctor confirmed, "Not to mention them being affected by the faith of others, which is why the crucifix on the door is an excellent touch. Reminds me of three weeks ago, with that demon. Well, that thing just _thought_ it was a demon, the Great Vampires really exist."

"Why does faith affect them?" Jenny wondered.

"Affects the transition between the quantum and classical states of physics in a humanoid mind. To non-humanoids, it's like they don't exist. Enough faith can make them vanish, and so can enough garlic."

"They sound kind of rubbish when you put it that way," Clara said.

"Well, I guess, but you gotta remember about the whole super-fast healing, super-fast running, superstrength, the fact there's probably loads of them, sometimes they can fly, and shapeshift, and boy, if you get caught around them in the _night_? Terrible. And they don't have reflections or show up on camera," Thirteen said.

"She's got bite marks on her neck," Vastra said, "Definitely vampires, then?"

"Well, yeah," Thirteen confirmed, "It is. And lucky for us, I know exactly where they are."


	325. Bite Me

**AN: So, Thirteen's been in the fic for almost a month now (Day 88), so I was just wondering what you guys' opinion of her is now that she's been here a while?**

_Oswin_

_Bite Me_

What could possibly be easier than killing a bunch of vampires during the day? They were asleep during the day. Oswin didn't know a lot about vampires, but she _did_ know that if something was asleep, it was easier to murder. And if there was one thing Oswin Oswald was an expert in, it was murder. She supposed though that they were lucky to have gotten a train during the night, because it made their job all the easier. Here though, Oswin was faced with yet another ethical dilemma, as they trudged through the snow that had fallen maybe a week ago now, but hadn't had the opportunity or the rain to melt, and she remembered it every time she had to use her right to do anything and glimpsed the black ring she wore on her index finger. The one that stored the names of all the people who had died because of her.

They all traipsed onwards towards the Abbey, Whitby Abbey (rejoined by Strax, who had met back up with them outside the house of the girl soon to be afflicted with incurable vampirism if they didn't stop whoever was feasting on her every night), which, according to Clara and Clara, had served as Bram Stoker's inspiration for _Dracula_, and it was where Thirteen said the vampires were lurking, no surprises there. No, it seemed a pretty easy, open-and-shut case, and she didn't really understand why they couldn't have all just gotten the TARDIS straight to Whitby in the first place, or why they couldn't just call the TARDIS back now so that she could leave. She didn't want to be there. She hated trains, and the weather, and the cold, and she slept next to her freezing boyfriend every night so she would much rather go somewhere hot during the day, not a desolate coastal town at the edge of some filthy moors, full of filthy Victorians-

"-who don't even bath regularly or have flushing toilets. And then we're probably before the invention of actual toothpaste, or soap, or central heating, or proper medicine. I hate the past," Oswin was incessantly saying all of these things to Rose Tyler as she dragged her feet through the snow, the fake one seizing up with the foul temperature, the sky grey and foreboding, "I hate the past, and the weather, and the outdoors, and-"

"Clara!" Rose shouted ahead at Alpha Clara, Beta Clara somewhere behind them with Jenny Harkness. The whole group ceased moving and Oswin glanced between Alpha Clara and Rose with surprise, the former looking back questioningly at Rose when it was made clear she was talking to _her_, not the other one, "Please come and talk to your sister, because if I have to listen to her talk about how much she hates everything for five more seconds, I'm going to shoot myself."

"Don't be melodramatic, Rose," Clara sighed, but she saw the shocked, offended and downright upset face Oswin was making at Rose (who ignored her) and sighed with the sort of maternal pity someone showed to the mother of a child having a tantrum in a supermarket. And Oswin was most definitely not a child, nor in a supermarket, so Clara looking like that just upset her even more. Clara detached herself from the Doctor, for the first time in ten straight hours, and walked back through her own footprints in the snow as the others walked ahead, Jenny Harkness and Beta Clara finally succeeding in not being right at the back for the first time that day.

"I'm not that depressing to be around!" Oswin protested, and now she thought maybe she _did _sound like she was having a tantrum. Oswin didn't move, though, she stayed still. On the horizon was the Abbey, so it wasn't like they were going to lose it if they ended up too far separated from the main group.

"No, no, of course you aren't," Clara said reassuringly, only half listening, staring after the rest of the group.

"Clara!" Oswin hissed, and Clara jumped.

"Hmm?"

"What's wrong with you? Why have you been ignoring me all day?" Oswin demanded.

"Ignoring you? I haven't been ignoring you, I've had you buzzing away in my head all day."

"What? Like a fly you haven't swatted!?" Oswin asked.

"No! No, Os, sorry, I haven't been ignoring you on purpose, I was distracted-"

"By wifey?"

"Could you not?" Clara asked her, glancing after the group, but the group had rounded a corner without them, and Clara sighed and finally paid attention to her, "What's wrong?" she crossed her arms.

"What's wrong is _you_ dragged me out today and then just left me! You know I don't like _mingling _or _socialising_, and especially not with Rose or River," Oswin complained.

"I'm worried about the Doctor," Clara told her.

"Why? He seemed fine yesterday. Just weirded out by Other You," Oswin said.

"Not Eleven, Thirteen," Clara said awkwardly, "I think it might be today. That she goes back to the future."

"What? Why?"

"I don't know, she's being weird about something, didn't you notice? She's being all twitchy, and biting her nails, and she was pacing this morning in the kitchen. Didn't you see?" Clara asked. Oswin thought for a few moments, trying to remember the last time Thirteen had slept. In all fairness, she had been pating a lot more attention to her injured boyfriend with his weird barnacle scars on the back of one of his arms than to her future sister-in-law.

"One-O-Three," Oswin said.

"Huh?"

"Day One-Hundred and Three, that's the last time she slept," Oswin said, "But she has been agitated, you're right... I wonder what about. Have you asked her?"

"Yes, of course I have, she won't tell me anything, just like always."

"Why would she be so nervous if she was just going back home, though? You'd think she'd be happier. I don't think she's leaving, it won't be that... we should catch them back up, come on," Oswin grabbed Clara's wrist and dragged her through the snow for a few moments, until Clara phased her hand free and followed after her anyway, "And she's not usually weird about stuff. Like, she obviously knew the truth about the Shadow, didn't let anyone in on that. And she must have known my mother was going to die. What else does she know?"

"Must be pretty big to get her riled up... Oh, where have they gone?" Clara stared around, "We've lost them... Ugh, hold on..." Clara stopped moving and pulled a pack of cigarettes out. Earlier, on the train, Beta Clara had had a bit of an argument with Alpha Clara about smoking in the carriage, and so had everybody else. But now they were cold and in the open air and the snow and the streets were empty, so there wasn't anybody to stare at her shiny red disposable lighter and odd-looking cigarettes.

"I wish you wouldn't..." Oswin sighed, but she went ignored, as usual, and Clara lit one, "Clara, what do we do if we run into any vampires?"

"Well _you_ won't have to do anything, I doubt they'll want anything to do with you. And I'll be fine, I'm always fine," Clara said.

"What if someone isn't, though? What if that's what's worrying your wife?" Oswin asked. Clara sighed. She could tell that Clara would like to tell her what she wanted to hear, that of course that wasn't true, but Clara didn't say anything, just started walking again, following the group.

"How's Adam, then?" she asked instead, blowing out smoke, as they walked into a slushy street with a horse-drawn carriage loitering about nearby, the road muddy and covered in horse dung. Disgusting.

"You _really_ don't want to see his arm. It's _really _weird," Oswin said, "And kind of gross."

"Why? What about that, um, antibody cream?" Clara asked. Oswin had come up with an ointment the other day to try and thwart Adam's lack of immune system and his lack of blood flow, but it was a work in progress.

"I don't know if it's working yet. One of them fell off in the middle of the night, though, like a scab, left this welt, eurgh," Oswin said, "I don't get it."

"Get what?"

"This Abbey, it's a ruin, so where are they living? And isn't it, you know, consecrated ground?" Oswin asked.

"Oh, fuck me," Clara stopped.

"No thanks, Clars."

"What? No! Not like... Shit! Nobody ever said they were going to the Abbey!"

"What? You seemed pretty convinced of it! In your head!" Oswin protested, "You and bloody _Dracula_! And look at the road, the whole road's mud, there's no footprints anymore, there's just sludge! Where have they gone?" She couldn't see them anywhere. Not any of them. And they weren't exactly discreet.

"Thirteen just said she knew where the vampires were, so... so we'll just... we'll go wait for them," Clara shrugged, "Go to an inn, or something... look, there's one right here, see?" Clara pointed to a cold looking public house by the road.

"Oh, you're just full of good ideas, aren't you? You idiot."

"_Me_!? You're the one who couldn't stop telling Rose how much you hate everything! Christ, this is dreadful, lost in Victorian Whitby..."

"Well, I hear there's a gap in the market down London for prostitutes who look exactly like us, if we get stuck here."

"That's a terrible thing to say about your sister," Clara said, pushing the door open.

"My _what_!?"

"Shut up!"

The place was completely deserted, which was strange, considering the sign had definitely said it was open. But it was cold and nobody was around, and the weirdness of the inn struck out of Oswin's memory that Clara had just referred to the damn Vict-whore-ian as her _sister_, of all things. Next Eyeball and Cara would be her sisters, and she would be expected to do things for them. Why should she do anything for any of them? They'd done nothing for her. One of them was even shagging her ex-girlfriend, the nerve of it was unforgivable.

"Okay, this is weird..." Oswin said quietly, taking a stop closer to Clara, whose orange-glowing cigarette was the only source of warmth. She wasn't exactly going to let _her _get out of her sight, as well, "Maybe we should-"

Music filled the air, coming from another room, all of a sudden. Piano music. How odd.

"I definitely think we should leave, this place is creepy," Oswin whispered as the music continued. It almost sounded like it was coming from somewhere below them.

"Creepy places are where vampires live," Clara told her.

"_What?_ That's the most ridiculous logic I've ever heard!" Oswin hissed, but Clara stepped inside to follow the music, which was quite gentle and relatively dull, but what could one expect from the 1890s? It wasn't exactly opera, and jazz or blues or rock and roll or even dubstep hadn't been invented yet. Oswin loved a bit of dubstep blues opera (a genre that only existed briefly in two-thousand years, or so.)

"C'mon, Os, it might be warm downstairs," Clara said.

"_It might be warm downstairs_!?" Oswin exclaimed, "Do you ever think anything through!? _Anything_!? Climbing up that diplodocus, eating that iguana, kissing Martha!"

"Excuse you, I thought through kissing Martha a great deal. And for the record, kissing Martha was very warm," Clara said, walking off to follow the music, Oswin taking hold of her arm to make sure she didn't get left behind.

"I'm sure it was, especially when she set fire to your tongue," Oswin said dryly, "It's probably not any warmer downstairs than it is upstairs."

"You never know, you always make _me _feel warm downstairs."

"That's literally disgusting. You're supposed to be the one who _doesn't _make the incest jokes."

"Who says I'm joking?"

"Please think about what you're saying before you speak." Clara never thought things through. Oswin thought everything through. Clara didn't think through bringing Beta Clara back to life, Oswin had thought about it obsessively for days. Clara didn't think through trying to kiss Thirteen. Oswin overthought her feelings for Adam Mitchell almost to the point of self-inflicted madness. Everything should be thought about and tested and re-tested and perfected, and this was what Clara didn't care about one bit. And Clara never listened to her, nobody ever listened to her - it wasn't like she was the smartest human in existence, or anything, and even cleverer than any Time Lord. No, none of that mattered, because Clara Oswald was an idiot.

They followed the musical trills of the piano into a room behind the bar that had another door in it that lead downstairs, and Clara went straight ahead with Oswin trailing along like a lost dog without a single inhibition. At the bottom of this set of stairs was yet another door, and it was this door that they found to be locked. When Clara tried the handle the piano music abruptly stopped, and they paused and waited, as though to see if someone might open the door. Nobody did, though, but then the door handle clicked as though it had been unlocked. It was Oswin who actually opened it, to reveal a dark room full of wooden crates and boxes with a straight-backed piano in the middle, like it was being used for storage.

"What on Earth..?" Oswin stared around, looking for whoever had been in there playing the piano, but there was nobody to be seen. Her Sphere light came on a moment later and illuminated up the room's emptiness even more, but she was more distracted by her sister, "Clara? No, leave the piano alone!" she hissed. That was the thing that annoyed her about people who played musical instruments. They just _had _to touch one and go play it and show off if they saw one, whatever the instrument, and Clara wasn't any different as she sat down at the thing and tried to figure if it was in tune.

"What song should I play?"

"How about, _The Sound of Silence_?" Oswin suggested sarcastically. Clara completely ignored her and deemed the piano was in tune enough to start idly playing some jazz music Oswin thought you would hear in a 1930s speakeasy than Victorian England. Music that hadn't been invented yet. "Show off."

"I have to show off with it, I don't have anything else to show off with. Piano, sex, and analysing literature. They're my only three skills," Clara said, getting bored and playing something that vaguely sounded like blues, but Oswin was too busy being agitated to pay attention.

"You're quite good at being a narcissist."

"Ha, ha," Clara said dryly, "Some of us aren't the most intelligent person who ever lived, Os. We don't all have those bragging rights."

The door they had just come through slammed and a cold gust of wind swept through the basement room that stank of dirt and was full of wooden crates. Clara missed a note and stopped playing when the door shut itself, but then they saw it hadn't shut itself, someone lurking behind it had shut it, some tall, pale man with sullen eyes, wearing all-black like an undertaker. Vampire?

There was a long pause where nobody said anything, the Twins just stared at this newcomer, and then Oswin said, "Sup?" to him, and Clara cursed her telepathically. He stared at them both unblinkingly.

"Do you happen to know the way to Whitby Goth Festival?" Clara asked politely, "You look like the type."

"I really hate being related to you sometimes," Oswin muttered.

"Who are you?" the man asked.

"Who's who? Are we? Us? Who are... who are we?" Oswin stammered and then turned awkwardly to Clara.

"I'm the greatest pianist in the world," Clara declared.

"You were always good at telling the truth, weren't you, Clars?" Oswin said sardonically, and Clara grinned.

"_I_ am the greatest pianist in the world," the man told her.

"Oh, _wonderful_," Oswin muttered.

"No you're not," Clara said, "I am."

"I am."

"_I _am."

"I am!"

"_I am!_"

"Prove it," the man challenged.

"Alright," Clara said.

"This is _so _not going to end well. Like, at all," Oswin shifted uncomfortably. She really did think this was the stupidest thing Clara had ever done. It really topped the list, and it was a very long list, too. But the thing was, Clara actually _was_ very good at playing the piano. She was absolutely not the best pianist in the world, not by any means at all, but the thing she next started to play in proof, which she claimed to the underground goth was a concerto of her own creation, really was highly complicated. Eleven days ago, Oswin had offered her sister the ultimatum that if she would learn _Cohen's Masterpiece_, because she really was a sucker for video game music, she would let her teach her to play the piano. Apparently, Clara had succeeded, because this was what she played, this rapid, impossible-looking monstrosity, and the vampire (if he was one) actually stared on in awe. Vividly, Oswin remembered seeing somebody else, two months ago, playing that exact number while sealed to the piano with plaster and covered in dynamite. He had ended up dead, though.

The music got cut off halfway through, though, when the vampire Oswin hadn't been paying attention to brought a cane down on the back of Clara's head, and Oswin blacked out.


	326. Risen From The Grave

_Beta Clara_

_Risen From The Grave_

"Sorry, what? He did what?" Beta Clara asked Jenny, interrupting her again while she was in full swing in her story.

"Hit her around the back of the head with a cane," Jenny said, "Well, no, sort of. He _did_ do that, but he also accidentally hit Oswin's Sphere and _really _did a number on it."

"Wait, wait, wait," Clara said, feeling almost like she was getting used to being strapped into a chair and refused food or drink, "You can't just go straight into someone getting knocked out like that, it needs build up, suspense, it was very jarring."

"Oh, _sorry_, Miss English Teacher, but I thought you would appreciate me picking up the pace?" Jenny questioned sarcastically.

"So, a vampire knocked out Oswin and Other Clara, because... because why?" she frowned.

"Because she could play the piano better than him."

"...Are you sure? Are you sure she didn't just trip, hit her head, and knock herself out, and then lie about it?"

"Everybody thought that, Clara, hardly anybody believed you were actually good at playing piano. Then yesterday she got so sick of it she played _all _of that damn song and invited everybody to watch so that they would shut up," Jenny shrugged, "That's a very important detail, as well, otherwise I would have just skipped over it."

"Right, but I don't get it. Where did everyone else go? Where did _we_ go? Into that inn?"

"No, we went to the Abbey."

"But I thought you said that the others _weren't _going to the Abbey?"

"No, Oswin and Other You just _thought _we weren't going to the Abbey because they're stupid and they lost the footprints. Neither of them thought to text," Jenny said, "And then they ended up knocked out."

"But the Abbey's a ruin?" Clara frowned.

"Hang on, I've misled you. We split up. Me, you, my mother, and Jenny Flint split from Vastra, Rose, and River-"

"What about Strax?"

"I'll get to Strax, don't tell me how to tell my story. So we split up, and those three went to the Abbey, alright? Now, strictly speaking, I don't know what happened to them to end up where they did enough to go into loads of detail - I only know about what happened with Other You and Oswin because of her memory playback thing. So I'll just stick with us."

"Where did we go, then? The four of us?"

"A cemetery."

"Great..."

* * *

_Jenny_

They had split abruptly from Vastra, Rose and River when it had become clear that the Twins had all but vanished. Indeed, this worried and puzzled the Doctor to such a great extent that she lead them all the way backwards through Whitby for half an hour, resolving that their were no peculiar, identical twins in sight, and one would think that identical twins would not go unnoticed. The Doctor had pointed the other three in the direction of the Abbey, and was dragging the rest around in fruitless search for her wife and sister-in-law, but they came up utterly short.

"Does Clara really not tell you anything about your future?" Jenny Harkness inquired incredulously. She sort of hoped that if _she_ had been married to Clara for an unspecified number of decades, Clara would tell her the truth about things.

"Well, I... she's always vague, the best I get is, 'vampires in Whitby Abbey,'" Thirteen complained, "And you're no better, anyway. Here you are right now, never telling your father a single thing of the details. I guess the details really aren't the most intriguing thing about Day One-Eleven, though..." she grumbled, like she knew something, but now they were just wandering aimlessly around Whitby. Thirteen walked off to go and talk to everybody she could see, and the two Jennys and Clara just decided to give up following her and loiter until she got bored. Jenny Harkness sighed and walked off to go and lean on a wall nearby and watch her mother fret.

"Is she always like this?" Clara asked, standing next to her so close that their hips were touching. Jenny Harkness pushed herself up so that she was sat on the wall and slightly taller than Clara and Jenny Flint, as she came over as well.

"Like what?"

"Like, you know, frantic, all over the place," Clara said. Behind them and their wall was a graveyard and the sounds of people shovelling snow, or digging.

"No, she's usually so calm," Jenny said.

"Oh, like you?"

"What do you mean?"

"I don't know, it's something about you," Clara said, watching Thirteen rush around and talk to anyone and everyone, looking like a maniac, smiling while she spoke, "Sort of an... aura." Jenny actually knew what she meant.

"You look a bit alike," Jenny Flint pointed out.

"We don't look _that_ similar," Jenny Harkness said, frowning as she watched her mother talk very animatedly to a coachman as he tended to his horses.

"You're the same height," Jenny Flint said.

"The Doctor's an inch taller," Clara told her with a smirk. Jenny Harkness knew exactly what that meant, it was Clara boasting about the fact _she_ was _also_ one inch taller than Jenny, "Don't you think she has nice eyes?"

"Her eyes are exactly like yours, you _complete _narcissist," Jenny said, "Anyway, _my _eyes have night-vision."

"Sorry?" Jenny Flint puzzled.

"Oh, I have fake eyes," Jenny told her, "Complicated incident involving an alien with acidic blood. Have you ever had your eyes gouged out? It's _so _not fun. No anaesthetic, either. Got it on my hand, too, that's why I have the glove on." She held up her right had and waves at Jenny, which had a black leather driving glove on it. She'd been outside so rarely to places other than Clara's house and places that didn't have accepting attitudes to prosthetics since she'd had her hand amputated, she'd not really needed to hide it.

"Didn't you regenerate?"

"My regenerations are complicated," Jenny said, "Clara knows, Clara saw me regenerate once, didn't you?"

"No, I'd just missed it when Adam and Oswin 'rescued' me," Clara said, doing air quotations resentfully.

"You did need rescuing, you know. My child was a merciless creature," Jenny sighed wistfully.

"Are you talking about that damn Xenomorph again?" Thirteen asked, and some woman passing by gasped at her use of the word 'damn,' and she apologised half-heartedly, "It was not your child, it killed you. And it nearly killed _her_, til the Shadow got it."

"I can't believe you're talking about your grandchild that way," Jenny said.

"Don't listen to her," Thirteen said to Jenny Flint, "It was a parasitic and highly dangerous organism that implanted a larva inside her throat and killed her when it was born. She regenerated, and then we ended up killing it. Well, the Shadow did."

"Poor thing was just scared."

"Right, whatever," the Doctor ignored her, "Listen, I asked that coachman, and he started talking to me about missing people, but not ordinary missing people, look," she nodded past her daughter into the graveyard behind them, "They're re-digging a grave, reburying a coffin, but an empty one."

"Why?" Clara asked, looking over her shoulder. Jenny Harkness jumped off the wall and leant on it to look over and see that they really were lowering a coffin into a grave, and that was what the digging had been, but there was no funeral party or family gathered around.

"That was the reports we got," Jenny Flint said, "Empty coffins, missing bodies, we were following them for weeks, then came through reports of attacks." Jenny Harkness jumped over the wall, about four feet high, with one hand and landed lightly in the snow.

"We'll walk around to the gate, then, shall we? Like normal people?" Thirteen called after her, but she ignored the three of them. The wall wasn't even that high.

"Excuse me, what's happening here?" she asked the undertakers lowering the coffin politely, smiling, holding her hands behind her back.

"Burial, miss," one of them answered gruffly.

"Who're you burying? I don't see any family around," she asked, and none of the four of them answered, "Or is it a _re_burial? Hmm?" They exchanged looks with each other.

"Who are you?"

"Torchwood," she answered, "I'm with the government, investigating some missing persons cases, caught our interest. Strange when dead bodies start going walkabout, isn't it?"

"Strange when they start breaking down doors, too," said one of them. They were all men, and all much taller than she was, with mud on their boots and trousers from digging in the snow.

"What doors might those be?"

"Over there," he pointed at a small building nearby, brick and white, a tomb, "The Whateley Mausoleum." The door really was broken, as far as she could see.

"When did that happen, then?"

"Two nights ago," he answered, "Police put rope up yesterday, this morning they come back and it's all torn apart."

"Wonder what's in there..." she mused.

"Whatever it is, it isn't down there anymore. The door was broken apart from inside."

"Inside? A stone door?" she asked, staring at it as the other three approached finally, "Do any of you gentlemen have a lantern you're willing to let me borrow? For governmental purposes, of course."

"Lantern? Why?" the Doctor asked.

"We're going tomb raiding."


	327. Tales From The Crypt

_Alpha Clara_

_Tales From The Crypt_

One second, she had been playing the piano in the basement of an inn. Next second, she was waking up groggily in a pitch black locale that stank completely of rotting meat and damp dirt. She immediately started coughing violently and trying to sit up on the strangest surface she had ever been lying on, which was both soft and stiff and bumpy, so bumpy, and rising behind her. Her head swimming, she fell backwards and fumbled in the pocket for her jeans, squinting in the dark as she unlocked it and dragged up the control panel from the bottom of the screen to tap the torch icon. The light from the torch glinted off something around her, something wide and shining, and it took her a cold, dreadful few moments to realise that she was staring into an open eye, and that this eye was in a face, and a body, and the body was in a pile of other bodies, and going by how cold they all were, each of these bodies she had woken up lying on top of was dead. She was too petrified to scream as a ripping pain tore through her head and she was shifted by the instinct of her teleportation to standing upright, pointing a torch at the pile of bodies, and as she backed away her foot hit something. Glancing down, she saw a decapitated skull, and then she did scream until she clamped hand over her own mouth and breathed deeply.

She was in an undergound room full of dead bodies, and going by that, she assumed that _she _must have died, died again, killed by somebody - but who? A moment's thinking passed and she remembered the mysterious man in the cellar with the piano and instinctively checked her neck for any bite wounds. Alarmed, she found a trickle of dried blood on the side of her neck, but followed this tentatively with her fingers upwards to a crunchy, dry patch of hair and bone fragment and supposed something had hit her very hard in the back of the head. Hard enough to kill her. And then she had been dragged into another underground room, that looked like a tunnel, and smelt so strongly of dead flesh that she was sure she was nowhere near fresh air.

"Clara!" a voice shouted from behind her, a voice exactly like her own, and she wheeled around on the spot to stare at a shining thing in a corner.

Confused, she asked, "Oswin?"

"I see you, come over here!" Oswin pleaded, but Clara couldn't see Oswin.

"What? Where?" she looked around.

"The floor, Clara! The floor!" Oswin shouted, and her eyes were deawn to the shining thing, a grubby, silver sphere, the size of a basketball, lying next to an equally shiny, damningly familiar sleek appendage. A fake leg. In a flash she was reminded of the hallucinated sight of Oswin's mangled prosthetic limb outside of the electroshock room of Happy Views Hospital, courtesy of the Frir.

"Oswin! Oh my god, oh my god," Clara dropped to her knees next to the Sphere and dropped her phone on the ground by the bones of the deceased, "What happened!? I don't remember..." she picked it up and stared at it, looking all around until spotting a sizeable dent that had broken through the shell and shattered something.

"The piano-bloke bashed you in the head with a cane," Oswin answered, her voice coming from an unspecified source within the Sphere, "He got my Sphere, though, with the handle, totally busted my projection matrix, scraped the hover modulator."

"Oh, shit, Os, are you gonna be okay!?"

"Look for the blue light."

"What blue light!?"

"On the bloody Sphere! Turn it around!" Oswin ordered her, and she turned it in her hands until a blue light blinded her for a moment, and she squinted at it until realising it looked like a Dalek's eye, minus the stalk.

"Why does it look like a Dalek!?"

"I'm sticking to my roots, sheesh. It's only the emergency backup eye, and Dalek technology is reliable," Oswin said, and Clara didn't even want to _try _and argue with her about that, as she stared at the little blue eye, "It's not like I have an exterminator."

"Well - well what's going on? He hit me - what happened to me?"

"You died again," Oswin said, "Look, do you have that sonic screwdriver on you?" she asked, and Clara dropped the Sphere in order to search through her pockets, then gasped when Oswin exclaimed, "Ow!"

"Oh my god, I'm so sorry!" she put her hands to her mouth in horror as the Sphere rolled on the floor.

"What the hell am I looking at right now!?"

"Oh, shit, it's just a, uh, dead body," Clara said, rolling the Sphere back and jamming her phone underneath it so that it wouldn't roll away from her.

"A dead body!?"

"Yes! I guess they thought I was dead - or, I really _was _dead, I have blood on the back of my head - and dumped me here. And they don't even know what _you_ are, I guess," Clara said.

"You definitely were dead. The whole curved handle of the cane was lodged right through your occipital bone," Oswin said, Clara searching her pockets, "Covered in blood when he pulled it out. Horrifying. Would you hurry up with this sonic dildo?"

"Sonic _dildo_? It's a screwdriver," Clara muttered, having to pull a lot of stuff out of her jeans pockets, stuff consisting off receipts, cigarettes, empty disposable lighters, an empty thing of UHT milk and some used sugar sachets from the museum the other week, before she finally found the screwdriver.

"Yeah, a _screw_driver," Oswin put emphasis on 'screw.'

Clara next spoke with a sigh as she tapped the screwdriver against her palm to see if it still worked, "Oswin, if I want to get off so desperately I can't wait for my husband, I'll use an _actual_ dildo, not a metal thing with extendable claws. Even _I'm_ sensible enough to know I could easily rupture something down there. Now, do you want me to help you, or do you just want me to get up and leave?"

"You wouldn't leave anyway," Oswin said. Maybe she was right and Clara wouldn't leave, but she still gave up snd told Clara what to do next as she shoved things back in her coat, "The projection matrix is completely destroyed and needs to be rebuilt, but the kinesis module is just shut off. If you sonic the kinesis module and reactivate it for me, I'll be able to float again. Have you seen my leg, by the way?"

"Your leg's right here," Clara answered, sonicking the Sphere, using the psychic interface to tell the metal stick what it should do, "What do you want me to do with it?"

"I guess you'll have to carry it," Oswin answered, "I don't have any telekinetic abilities to hold things in this Sphere, you know. It's enough trouble making solid metal intangible." Clara didn't say anything more as a _very _quiet hum started up in the Sphere that she could only hear because she was close, and the thing shot upwards quite wildly and smacked against the ceiling and then twirled around in the air, but it remained floating, Clara scrambling to her feet and dragging her phone up off the floor.

"Are you alright!? Do you feel pain in that thing? Do you feel pain at all?"

"I feel simulated pain when I'm projecting, but not in the Sphere," she said, floating down to Clara's eye level, spinning around to point the eye at various places. The torch came on a moment later and nearly blinded Clara, who held up a hand to cover her eyes, "If I felt pain in the Sphere, I would literally feel like I'd been shot in the head right now."

"Oh, like me, you mean?" Clara asked dryly, stooping down to pick up Oswin's leg, no hologramatic shoe attached to it anymore, just a naked metal thing that was a bit dirty now. She rubbed the back of her head with her free hand, after putting her phone away since with Oswin's Sphere lit up she didn't need the torch on it anymore, and saw a lot of sticky, dark red liquid on her fingers. Instinctively, though the wound was all healed, Clara winced, "What do we do now, then? Where are we?"

"I don't know why you're asking me, I don't have a built in geo-mapper," Oswin said sarcastically, then she wined, "Oh, I just _hate _dirt..."

* * *

_Jenny_

All the graves they came across inside the Whateley Mausoleum were empty, and there were about a dozen. She held up a lantern and became the leader of the group due to her possession of the light source as she opened the last coffin leaning against the wall of the crypt, the one right at the back. Clearly, somebody was building an army of vampires, but where were these vampires, if not in their graves?

It seemed that this questioned was destined to be answered as she brushed some cobwebs from the lid of the coffin and pulled it open with some help from Jenny Flint, seeing not an empty coffin at all, but a hole, in the wall. A hole which seemed to lead to some underground passages and tunnels.

"I guess this is where the vampires live?" Clara said, "I didn't know Whitby had catacombs. Hey, what are you doing? We can't go _in_ there!" Jenny Harkness, Jenny Flint and the Doctor completely ignored her though, all far too intrigued to even consider the possibility of _not_ going spelunking under Whitby and forgetting all about the lost Twins. Clara groaned and was forced to follow them.

"Why raise an army of vampires?" Jenny Flint asked the Doctor. It was a very narrow tunnel they were in, walking in twos, Jenny Harkness and her mother at the front, though the former would prefer to walk next to Clara.

"Probably just world domination, plain and simple," Thirteen answered stiffly, worried still about Alpha Clara yet now stuck not being able to look for her. It stank down in the catacombs, of mud and disease, like the trenches of the First World War. Jenny Harkness knew what dead bodies smelt like, and she could smell them then, which unnerved her, as they walked in the ground beneath the graveyard. "Doesn't take a lot of vampires to wreak havoc for the living."

"We never hear reports of large groups of them, though, Vastra always says they're solitary," Jenny Flint pointed out.

"She's right," the Doctor said, "It's not very hard to figure out, the only thing complicated about vampires is their biology. Raise an army, take over the world, blah blah blah, pretty simple stuff. One person will be rounding them up. The new ones are easy to trick and play mind games with... no, the difficult part is stopping them... did you hear that?" They all stopped, and listened.

A few seconds passed of silence before they heard it again, a sort of shuffling noise, like slow footsteps. Jenny Harkness passed the lantern to Beta Clara and tiptoed forwards to see what the sounds were. Who would be skulking about in the darkness under a cemetery? Except for members of the undead?

"Jenny!? What are you doing!? _Come back_!" Clara hissed, but Jenny ignored her, and leant against the corner of the mud wall and glanced around into the gloom. But it wasn't gloomy, there were candles lit on all of the walls now, and she could see the dark outline of a tall, formidable man with his back to her. She didn't think she had much choice right then, because that way was the only way to go, and he appeared to be acting as a checkpoint.

Feeling eyes on her back from Jenny Flint, Clara and her mother as they leant in a comical fashion around the corner behind her, she crouched and crept on her toes through the tunnel and didn't make a single sound, the man not noticing at all. In his hand he was holding a cane with what looked like a shining red handle, but upon closer inspection as she approached, and thanks to her keen sense of smell, she recognised it has blood, which gave her an idea. All in all, sneaking up on a vampire (he smelt like a corpse so badly she was sure he _must _be a vampire) and grabbing a cane out of his hands was quite easy. But then she was in a fight, and the vampire hissed at her and revealed barred fangs and dark eyes, and she hadn't expected him to be so fast.

She grabbed the cane and the vampire slashed anhand at her head, which she ducked, making a kick at his ankle and sending him to the floor, because _she _was fast, too. He fell to his knees and forwards and crawled across the ground to claw at her ankle, at which point she flipped the cane to the blunt bottom of it, the less lethal part, and smashed it into the side of his head like she was driving a golf ball. That caused him to release his grip on her hand and in a daze clamber to his feet, and then Jenny roundhouse-kicked him into the face and he smashed into the wall on his left in a crumpled, unconscious heap, and a candle fell into the mud from its out-of-place wall bracket and ended up extinguished.

"You know, I quite like this cane," Jenny Harkness said, glancing back to see the other three staring at her, examining the cane, "I love weapons."

"_I _could have taken care of it," Jenny Flint complained.

"Well, you can do the next one," Jenny Harkness shrugged, "Doesn't bother me. I think I scuffed my boot..." she examined her right foot, holding the cane in the middle, the end that didn't have the blood and chunks of sticky flesh staining the silver. She thought she might keep it. To hit people with. "Whose blood do you think this is?"

"How should we know?" Thirteen questioned, "Is he dead? You know, _dead_ dead, not _un_dead."

"Oh, I don't think I hit him hard enough for that," Jenny sighed, eyeing him, "Off we go, then?" Jenny Flint and the Doctor started moving, and walked past Jenny Harkness as she waited for Clara. But Clara was staring at her. "What?"

"Is it wrong to be incredibly attracted to you after just seeing you beat some up?" Clara asked, and Jenny laughed pleasantly and held out her cane-free hand for Clara to take.

"Come on," she said invitingly, "Faster we finish up with these vampires, the faster we can find somewhere private for you to tell me _all_ about how attracted to me you are." Clara, smiling, relented, and let Jenny take her hand and begin pulling her with them. Not after winking at her first, though.


	328. Bad Blood

_Rose_

_Bad Blood_

"Whose idea was it that we come here, again?" Rose questioned, staring around. It must have been an hour since they had shown up to search the Abbey and had been dragged away into a door that still stood in the ruins and down a narrow spiral staircase into some tunnels. Beyond the staircase, she didn't remember much, because when they got to the bottom of it she'd been caught in a chokehold long enough to be rendered unconscious. As had Vastra. And River had faked it. And now the three of them were trapped in, for want of a better word, a cell. Rusty, orange bars and filth on the floor. The back of her head hurt from being hit over it and knocked out.

"The Doctor ran in this morning after a mysterious phone call and ordered us out for the day," River reminded her. River was leant on one of the walls and Rose was pushing her face between the bars. Escaping would be easy, but she didn't know if it was a good idea to try that. "Why don't you just teleport away? Go get help?"

"We don't need _that _much help, the situation is definitely under control," Rose said, sighing and stepping away from the bars, "I reckon this is the best way to learn what they're up to."

"Are you hoping they'll tell us?" Vastra asked sarcastically. Vastra wasn't thrilled about being outwitted by a bunch of vampires and knocked out and dragged into a cave, but this was where they had woken up some time ago. Rose was the only one with any ability to escape, but Rose was also the only one not inclined to.

"Might do. They usually do," Rose shrugged, "Time vortex isn't telling me anything... maybe they want virgin sacrifices?"

"What part of the three of _us_ locked in a cage makes you think of virgin sacrifices?" River questioned, and Rose turned and stared at her.

"I could be a virgin!" Rose exclaimed.

"Is that the same day pigs will fly?" River retorted.

"How is it that hard to believe that I'm a virgin!?"

"You're not, so what's the point? Isn't the point of them wanting virgin sacrifices lucky for us, anyway? If that's what you were getting at, why would you want them to think you _were _a virgin worth sacrificing?" River asked. Maybe that _was_ what Rose had been getting at, but she would be damned if she was alright with people thinking she was a Clara Oswald-level slag.

"There's no difference in taste if someone is a virgin or otherwise anyway," Vastra said, keeping her arms crossed and staring out into the empty room. They weren't even being guarded, as far as Rose could see.

"I don't know if that makes you a cannibal or a nonce," Rose muttered, pressing her face to the bars again.

"Hardly a cannibal because you're an inferior species, and hardly a nonce because it's not exactly a perverse activity," Vastra said coolly, "Not to _me_, anyway. Though, I did mean it in the cannibal sense."

"Well, I can really see why Jenny can't keep her hands off _you_. Does she not get offended by your being racist about her 'inferior species?'"

"How am I supposed to help it if her species is inferior?" Vastra argued, and Rose gave up. She wasn't gaining anything by being snarky with either of them. "Why would any of us being virgins help, anyway?"

"That's just how it works in films," Rose told her, "They always want a virgin sacrifice."

"It's rarely how it works in reality, though," River said, "I wonder where they're going to make more? Have there been many cases similar to that girl's?"

"One other, two weeks ago," Vastra answered, "A male. All the same symptoms, then he disappeared, and there have been reports of seeing him out late at night, around the graveyard."

"Could they be digging up graves and biting the corpses?" Rose suggested, "How long do you have to be dead before it stops working? And how _do _they change you?"

"I'm not sure," Vastra answered.

"Some would have you believe that one bite is all it takes and the change is instantaneous, some say the change takes days to complete, some say the victim has to be fed on repeatedly to change, then others say the victim needs to consume the blood of a vampire to change," River said, "They're highly ambiguous creatures."

"It's true, the symptoms of vampirism vary from strain to strain. It could possibly be a venom and they can choose to infect people with it or merely drink the blood," Vastra shrugged, "It would be nice to have a specimen to study. Gain an edge of some sort, were they ever to come back."

"Come back? What do you mean? What are you going to do to them?" Rose questioned suspiciously. Was violence on the agenda?

"Slaying them is probably the only option we have," Vastra said, "They're too dangerous to be let loose, even if the Doctor doesn't want to admit it. We have a good supply of stakes and garlic in our bags."

"Who's 'we'?" Rose asked.

"Jenny and I."

"And where, exactly, are these bags, Vastra?" River asked, crossing her arms.

"Strax took them when he went to find us an inn to stay in," Vastra answered.

"So we don't have any way of getting to them, then?" Rose asked, annoyed. What was the point of bringing up a bag of stakes hidden in an unknown location, when they had no way to reach them?

"You could always teleport?" River suggested again.

"It doesn't work like that, I can't always do it at will."

"When _can _you do it?"

"When I need to," Rose said shortly, "So if I can't do it now, it's because I don't have to."

"Who decides when you need to?"

"The time vortex or something, I don't know! I'm not close enough in tune with the inner workings of the bloody universe to tell you _that_, either. You'd have more chance of getting a bear to dance."

"Bears are avid dancers in some areas of the planet," Vastra told her.

"Yeah, well, _that_ sort of dancing is cruel," Rose snapped.

"If the bears are unintelligent enough to get themselves caught," Vastra said indifferently, looking around at the walls.

"Oh, you're all heart."

"You should go see dancing bears," Vastra said, "Terribly delightful when they realise what their life has come to and tear somebody's throat out."

"Wonderful..."

"Why _can _you teleport, anyway?"

"Don't you know about all the superpowers? The last time you ran into any of us?" Rose asked.

"The last time I ran into any of _you_, and not into the _other_ Doctor-"

"We call him Old Twelvey," River interjected. Even River didn't like Twelve, and Rose would have thought that someone who spent most of his time insulting Clara Oswald's appearance would be right up River's street.

"Yes, well, I haven't seen you..." Vastra struggled to find a word for them.

"Alphas," River, who kept up-to-date with all of Oswin's interdimensional terminology, supplied.

"You _Alphas_ since 1888," Vastra said, "Do you know how confusing it is trying to hide things from each of you?"

"You don't really have to hide things from any of us. And if the Twelfth Doctor - _Beta_ Twelfth Doctor - has forgotten everything to do with _Clara, _doesn't that mean he's also forgotten everything to do with us? I don't mean each of us individually, but the Dimension Crash? And the Doors?" Rose asked.

"I suppose so," River told her.

"Everything out of order."

"The superpowers are an adrenal mutation," River said, "The last time we saw the Twelfth Doctor he was living with us for a week after an incident involving some dangerous aliens building a nest in his TARDIS and him wanting _us_ to sort it out."

"Which we did," Rose added, "But not before he convinced Other Clara to spike all of our drinks and further the mutations even more. That's why my eyes keep changing colour."

"They've been green all day," Vastra said confusedly.

"They're supposed to be brown."

"Oh... well, by my best guess, the vampires are building an army," Vastra said, "And they probably just want to recruit as many people as possible."

"To do what? Take over the world?"

"Oh, probably. They're hardly complicated. All that's left to do now is sit around and wait and see if they try to kill us."

"You never know, we might get rescued," Rose shrugged, "And there can't be _that_ many of them, we don't even have a guard in here. There was only the four who dragged us here."

"Unless they're all just asleep? It _is _the daytime, after all..."


	329. Neck Pains

_Jenny_

_Neck Pains_

"Do Silurians really have five-inch tongues?" Jenny Harkness asked Jenny Flint as they walked through the tunnels with Beta Clara and the Doctor. The Doctor was even more anxious than she had been earlier, burgeoning on some ferocious fit of nervousness any second. If she crumpled to a heap on the floor, Jenny didn't think she would be the least bit surprised, not when she remembered her mother's behaviour throughout the day. She'd been on the TARDIS for weeks and hadn't once acted so peculiarly. She didn't even bother to tell Jenny that asking a question about Vastra's tongue was inappropriate.

"Be nice," Beta Clara said, when her mother didn't say a single word. She had her arms crossed and was hunched over agitatedly as she walked. Any moment, Jenny thought, she was going to start muttering.

"It's fine," Jenny Flint said, "I know what it's like. I've spent time with Oswin."

"Does Oswin have a five-inch tongue as well!?" Jenny Harkness mock-exclaimed, "How little I know."

"What does Oswin say to you?" Beta Clara inquired, ignoring Jenny. Fair enough, because Jenny Harkness was having some _very _unorthodox thoughts about what Oswin Oswald (or anybody who looked like her) might be able to do with a tongue that was five inches long.

"I don't want to get into it," Jenny told her, and Clara nearly seemed disappointed. Jenny Harkness kept her hand wrapped around her cane, fully intent on keeping it, maybe after cleaning the blood and disinfecting it, "Do you really not remember?"

"Do I not remember what?"

"Anything from when you were frozen," Jenny Flint elaborated, and Jenny Harkness was pulled away from her daydream with interest, because it seemed something might be about to happen.

"Not a thing. I remember getting my soul sucked out, and then a split second later waking up on the TARDIS, and suddenly people are telling me I have permanent memory loss consistent with a biological time lock? It's exactly like getting black out drunk and waking up next to someone you don't even recognise," Clara said.

"You'd know," Jenny Harkness muttered, and when Clara looked at her with some annoyance, she just smiled.

"Why do you ask, anyway? Do you know what I was up to?" Clara asked, and Jenny Flint stayed silent, which caused Jenny Harkness to get suspicious of this quiet, like maybe there was something she was hiding.

"What?" she asked Jenny Flint eventually.

"I... might know. But I don't know if I can tell you. Can I?" she asked the Doctor.

"What? No," Thirteen said, only half listening, "Give it a few weeks and she'll know all by herself." Jenny Flint obeyed what the Doctor said far more than she sympathised with Clara and her lost memories, not that they were technically lost. It wasn't like recording over an old tape of a film, it was like filming a whole movie and realising you hadn't actually pressed 'record.' In the head of Beta Clara, these memories had never happened, like trying to remember the future.

"Why am I forbidden from knowing about my own past?"

"Clara, I'm living my own past everyday, and sometimes I really wish I didn't know a thing about it. In the words of my wife, _patience is a virtue_," Thirteen said, then she directly forbade Jenny Flint from telling her a thing. That all necessitated a subject change as they trudged through underground tunnels. How long was this network of catacombs? The deeper they went through the passages connecting to the Whateley Mausoleum the more bodies started showing up, but after the first guard vampire, they hadn't run into anybody else. Maybe they had overestimated their own defensive abilities and only set one man to watch that entrance, but there must be _something_ apart from skeletons buried there.

"How comes you're a girl, then?" Jenny Flint asked Thirteen abruptly. Thirteen _really_ didn't want to talk, and Jenny Harkness _really_ wanted to know what was wrong with her.

"My wife's preference."

"Can you change to look however you want when you regenerate?"

"Not really, it's all subconscious," Thirteen answered shortly, uncrossing her arms and looking at her left hand and its three wedding rings, "Well, Time Lords _can_ control it. I was just always totally awful at it."

"You're one of these 'bisexuals' too, then?" Jenny Flint asked, and Thirteen laughed for the first time all day.

"Me? Nah," she said, "The only thing _I've _ever labelled myself as is 'Clarasexual,' and even then it's only when we're joking." Beta Clara, next to Jenny Harkness, seemed very put off by Thirteen sometimes. In fact, she seemed put off by Eleven as well, when either of them went saying things about Alpha Her. It had never happened to Jenny personally, but she thought it must be odd to have a bunch of people utterly in love and devoted to your own doppelgänger.

"Why do you have that accent?"

"Ask another one," Jenny Harkness interrupted, "She never has a good answer for anybody who asks that. The best _I_ got was her saying that Clara might have a 'yank fetish.'"

"What accent _is_ it?"

"You know, American," Jenny clarified for Other Jenny.

"I've never been to America."

"I suppose not. Still thirty years until talking pictures are invented," Jenny said, "But then, I have mixed feelings about the 1920s."

"How come?" Clara asked.

"I'll tell you later," Jenny said, Clara growing confused by that remark.

"Why later?"

"Jack proposed in the 1920s," the Doctor answered on her daughter's behalf. Jenny clenched her fist around her cane and didn't say anything. She had been very thrilled that day about going to the 1920s, and even more thrilled to be met with a proposal, even if the proposal _did _come in the form of a crisp that she ate within ten minutes, but now the whole decade seemed to be marred. Still, she quite liked the early 30s. And then the 1940s were a decade she'd spent a whole lot of time in, during the war, stationed as a medic with various aviation squadrons there to protect Britain from the blitz.

"Oh... sorry, I didn't know," Clara apologised.

"It's fine," said Jenny. After all, Clara's lack of knowledge only stemmed from her own ineptitude when it came to discussing her marriage. Ex-marriage. She only had herself to blame.

"Jack who?" Jenny Flint asked.

"Captain Jack Harkness," Jenny Harkness answered. She often debated introducing herself by her military rank. She was a higher rank than a captain, anyway, five times over. She hadn't really made up her mind yet, though. She had always like the idea of _Major_ Harkness, though.

"What? Not the one from Torchwood? Torchwood are always showing up and trying to take our cases. The last time we saw him he said he had a 'personal interest' in finding out what Vastra looks like underneath her veil," Jenny Flint said bitterly.

"Yeah, that'll be him," Jenny Harkness muttered, "Complete prat. I hate him."

"I really regret giving him permission to ask for your hand some days," Thirteen sighed.

"...What do you mean, 'permission?'"

"He asked me. Did you not know that? Of course, I mean Eleveny when I say that," Thirteen said. Jenny had never heard anybody call her father 'Eleveny' before.

"He asked for your blessing and you gave him it!?" Jenny exclaimed angrily. She had no idea about any of that, any business about 'permission.'

"My wife was in a coma! I was planning my own legitimate proposal at the time! I was very stressed!" Thirteen argued, "You remember, it was Day Twenty or something. You'd only been dating the man for two weeks."

"He was planning it for _that long_!?"

"Well, yeah, I mean, he cares about you. Or cared. I really don't know. _I _wouldn't give him the time of day after that business with Christina, though, the woman's a nightmare. You can do much better. All his eagerness shows is that _I_ have a catch for a daughter."

"Shh," Jenny Flint started, "Do you hear that?" There was a pause.

"...Hear what?" Beta Clara asked.

"Voices," Jenny Harkness answered, "I hear them too... wait..."

"Is that..?" Jenny Flint frowned.

"..._Vastra to be so prepared_," said one of the voices. Then they started asking for which way the way out was.

"Is that me?" Beta Clara whispered. They went unheard, it seemed.

"_Your teleport range is twenty metres, if you teleport straight up, you'll get out_," a voice identical to the other asked. Oswin, it had to be, Oswin talking to Clara. How the hell had they gotten into the catacombs? Was there more than one entrance? Another way in, apart from the Whateley Mausoleum?

"_I can't really do it at will_," Alpha Clara said. Jenny Harkness pushed the cane into Beta Clara's hands then and urgently pulled out her phone, her superphone that, like the phones of everybody the Doctor travelled with, worked anywhere in all of time and space. And she dialled Clara's number.

* * *

__Alpha Clara__

She went through everything they had so far discovered with Oswin as they crept very slowly through the catacombs underneath Whitby with hardly any memory of how they had gotten there. Knocked out and dragged, thought to be dead, but she hadn't been bitten. When she checked in her phone camera she saw no healed woulds or bloody marks on her neck, just the trickle of blood from the back of her head.

"Would you stop looking for bite marks? Nobody bit you," Oswin told her. Oswin span around in the air wildly trying to look around with her singular, unmoving eye, and it was quite odd, reminding Clara of the image of an eyeball rolling in its socket. Clara was brandishing Oswin's fake leg like a weapon, her hands clamped around the ankle.

"Well, what if they did, and it healed?" Clara questioned, "The nanogenes don't fix mutations, remember?"

"Of course I remember! _I_ programmed them! Give me _some_ credit, Clars. Look, the nanogenes wouldn't heal a vampire bite, and I don't think the miracle medicine would, either, but I reckon one of us would be able to figure out if you were turning into a vampire, honey," Oswin said, annoyed at Clara's paranoia. She didn't _feel_ like a vampire, but she didn't know what a vampire felt like to say for sure.

"What if all those bodies were actually vampires that have been bitten?"

"Clara, you were dead, that's it. Just like you were the other day with the diplodocus. And when the worm shat you out," Oswin said, "Like the rest of those bodies. They're probably just... food, or something."

"The Doctor said there wasn't a cure earlier, on the train. She said there's no way to cure a vampire bite." Oswin provided all the light from the Sphere as they walked through the mud of the catacombs.

"Well you haven't been bitten by a vampire, so it doesn't matter," Oswin said firmly. Clara could swear she could hear something, like someone walking.

"But what if-"

"Holy shit would you give it a rest!?" Oswin shouted, and Clara shut up, annoyed and a little upset that Oswin wasn't taking her fears seriously. Thinking about it, though, maybe vampirism wouldn't be so bad? Though, she didn't know where she would get blood... '_Oh my christ, it does not matter where you would get blood because you aren't a vampire!_'

"I'm _worried_!" Clara shouted back at Oswin, stopping in the catacombs, watching Oswin's Sphere bob away for a few moments before rolling backwards so that the eye was facing her. Oswin sighed. Her voice didn't sound robotic, which was slightly strange, Clara found. She thought Oswin might sound mechanical without her image, but she sounded the same as usual, like she was really there, and really alive. Clara still thought she heard footsteps, though, squelching and quite heavy, somewhere close-by. But they sounded quite strange, not that she could put her finger on why.

"Okay, fine. How are your gums?" Oswin asked, and Clara started walking again.

"They're fine."

"Haven't started sprouting fangs or anything, then?"

"No."

"And you have a reflection, and you're casting a shadow. Don't suppose you're craving blood, are you?"

"No, I'm not."

"So you're probably completely fine, like I've been telling you for the last half hour. Anyway, honey, being the undead isn't even all that bad. I mean, being a vampire is a lot less detrimental than a hologram. At least you would still be able to taste."

"Would I? Do vampires need food? Or just blood?" Clara inquired, and she didn't need to see Oswin to picture how she would look as she talked, and how she thought about the question she didn't know the answer to.

"I don't know. I wish we had like, a specimen."

"I don't think we should experiment on the vampires, sweetheart, that probably wouldn't go very well," Clara said, still listening out for the footsteps she kept hearing. Whoever was walking, they were getting closer, but they weren't speeding up or going quickly. It was impossible for them to _not _be able to her the Twins talking to each other they were so close, 'Can you hear that?' '_Hear what?_' Oswin thought back to her. Clara stopped and listened, still hearing the impending footfalls trudge onwards like a metronome. 'That.' '_...It's right around the corner_.' Whatever it was that was stalking them, Oswin was right.

It didn't slow down or speed up as Clara crept along towards the corner on tiptoes, one of many ways to go in the maze of the catacombs under the town. Had the vampires tunnelled this whole place? Dug the maze out of the ground as a lair? A base of operations? She was sure, as she listened to the feet, that these catacombs were not like normal ones. For a start, they didn't have crevices dug into the walls for store bodies, the only body storage had been the room they had both woken up in.

She leant against the wall and knew that whatever was walking towards them was right around the corner. The hum of Oswin's Sphere was only discernible when the quiet was so heavy, and going by how loud her own heartbeat sounded, it was definitely still beating at a living rate, rather than an undead one. If it was a vampire, she didn't have anything to do other than hit it very hard with Oswin's leg (_"She said to me," Jenny Harkness explained to Beta Clara as she told the story of three days ago, "that when she gets really stressed she always forgets that she has superpowers."_) and hope for the best. So, with that in mind, she jumped out and brandished it.

"What are you doing with that leg, may I ask!?"

"Strax!" Clara exclaimed, for it was Strax, his stocky footsteps being the noises she had been hearing. In her shock she dropped the leg onto the floor.

"Would you be careful with that!? It's a complicated piece of machinery, Clara!" Oswin complained, but Clara ignored her.

"What are you doing down here in these tunnels?" Clara asked Strax, who was carrying a large, leather briefcase in one hand, a stake in the other. Where had he managed to get a stake from?

"Lucky shot from one of them with a cane, struck my probic vent. Dragged me down here and left me for dead in a corridor near a door, in the cellar of an inn," Strax said.

"Of course, you went looking for lodgings..." Clara realised. Strax must have gone to the same inn as the Twins had, and had ended up suffering a similar fate.

"What happened to your twin brother?" Strax asked.

"...Sister. She's my twin sister..."

"Same thing that happened to you and Clara," Oswin explained, voice emanating from the floating, silver, Dalek-eyed Sphere.

"The bastard with the cane twatted her," Clara answered, picking the leg back up.

"...I wouldn't have put it quite so commonly..." Oswin muttered. She turned to reveal the hole in the side of the Sphere to Strax, "Broke my projection matrix, needs replacing."

"Where did you get a stake?" Clara asked. A stake was more use than a leg, especially since she had to be careful with the leg.

"Brought them with us, from London," Strax answered, lifting up the suitcase after passing his stake to Clara and opening it to reveal a selection of stakes in various sizes, a few crucifixes and some garlic cloves.

"Oh, trust Vastra to be so prepared," Clara said as Strax took another stake out to make up for the one he had just given Clara, "What's the way out, then? Does anyone know?"

"Your teleport range is twenty metres, if you teleport straight up, you'll get out," Oswin told her.

"I can't really do it at will," Clara told her, and there was a moment where she glanced behind her, as though a magical door outside would suddenly make itself known to her.

She jumped violently and dropped the leg _again_ when her phone all of a sudden started vibrating in her pocket.

"Would you stop dropping that!?" Oswin shouted, and Clara shushed her, leaving the leg where it was in the dirt for the time being.

"It's Jenny," Clara said, answering it straight away, "Hello?"

"_We can hear everything you're saying_," came the voice of Jenny Harkness from two different directions, and then the blonde-headed figure stepped out from behind another fork at the end of their particular tunnel, and she hung up the phone, "You two don't half talk loud. What's the ball?"

"Oswin," Oswin answered coldly for herself.

"Oh, I should have recognised you by the Dalek eye," she joked as Jenny Flint, Claratoo and the Doctor stepped out as well to greet them, "You know, I still find myself weirdly attracted to you, even when you're just a floating ball."

"One of these days I'm going get you done for sexual harassment," Oswin muttered.

The four of them weren't nearly as dirty as Alpha Clara was, who had been dragged through mud and ended up covered in filth when she'd been murdered. And she had dried blood on her neck and clothes and back.

"What happened to you all?" Jenny Harkness wondered.

"We were all accosted by a man carrying a cane," Strax answered, "And dragged down here."

"How did he get you?" Jenny Flint asked Strax, caring more about him than Clara and her sister, understandably.

"Probic vent, ma'am," Strax said, "Caught me by surprise. Might know his way around a Sontaran."

"Yeah, you think _he_ got it bad, _I_ died again," Alpha Clara said annoyedly, "And Oswin got her projection matrix bro- _what _are you doing?" she asked when Thirteen hugged her tightly, catching her completely unawares. Suddenly the smell of death and muck around her was replaced by cinnamon. Free of Oswin's leg, having dropped it again, she felt like she was left with no choice but to hug back.

"A cane, you said?" Jenny Harkness asked Strax.

"That exact cane your girlfriend's carrying," Oswin said, and Jenny got annoyed.

"She's not my girlfriend."

"She still has the cane, though. Look, it still has Clara's blood on it. It went right into her skull, horrid sight. I might be even more traumatised than I was before," Oswin said, "This hug's going on for a while, isn't it?" 'Shut up,' Clara thought to her, as Beta Clara passed the cane back to Jenny, wiping her hands, apparently disgusted by the blood of her Other Self.

"Is something wrong?" Alpha Clara asked Thirteen. For a second, it seemed like Thirteen might say something, then changed her mind and said something different as she released Clara from this hug, while Jenny Flint tried to get more details from Strax.

"No, I'm just... glad you're alright..." she mumbled. She seemed even worse than she had done a few hours ago.

"How did you lot get down here?" Oswin asked anyone who cared to answer.

"A secret door in a crypt in the graveyard, in one of the coffins," Beta Clara said as Alpha Clara picked Oswin's leg back up, resolving that she wouldn't drop it again, because she thought she could see a worrying dent in it.

"Which way might the exit be?" Strax asked.

"Oh, it's just..." Jenny Harkness began, but she trailed off. There were seven of them, only three of them armed at all, or so Clara thought. Until she looked to the end of the tunnel the other four had just come from, at the corner on the right, where three men now stood. Tall, gaunt, sallow, with black eyes, "Just past the vampires..."

"Doctor, what should we do?" Jenny Flint asked.

"Uh... run. Definitely run!"


	330. Once Bitten

_Rose_

_Once Bitten_

"I swear I can hear shouting," Vastra said, pacing up and down, coming up to the bars every now and then to look out. It must have been some hours they had been down there. Rose had given up staring through the bars and had gone and sat down on the floor against the wall near River, but Vastra didn't sit down once, just paced around, thinking, veil on the floor nearby.

"You're just hearing things," Rose told her for the dozenth time. Rose couldn't hear anything, no matter how much she strained her ears. Just some nearby scratching sounds she assumed were merely coming from animals within the walls. Rats, or something equally filthy.

"We have to get out of here. If you would just-"

"I _told_ you I _can't _teleport, not at will, it just happens sometimes. If I try, I could end up anywhere," Rose said to her firmly, "It's too dangerous anyway."

"So is letting ourselves get attacked by vampires," Vastra hissed, and she really did hiss, too. That was the thing about reptiles, Rose supposed. They hissed. She was a bit scary, as well. Not as scary as Rose was if she were to make her eyes start glowing gold, because she always seemed to frighten people a great deal when she did that. Made them think she was going to erase them from existence.

"I'm not breaking us out," Rose refused adamantly.

"Why? Why not?" Vastra questioned.

"Have you seen something?" River asked.

"It's a feeling. Like before you break a rule and you're just considering something you know you shouldn't do. And I have to listen to feelings like that," Rose said, "So I won't break us out. I could easily snap the bars apart."

"Snap the bars apart?"

"Her other power is superstrength," River said.

"Superstrength? Oh, of course. Does it never strike you as perhaps the tiniest bit ridiculous? All these dimensions? These superpowers? It's preposterous."

"A human, a Sontaran and a Silurian walk into a bar. One of them is a maid, one is a nurse, and the other fancies herself Sherlock Holmes," River said, "Isn't that _equally_ preposterous? It sounds like a bad joke." Vastra kept pacing.

"You all make my life look positively ordinary. Boring, even. Are you sure you can't hear anything?" Vastra asked.

"Yes," Rose and River both said.

"Completely sure?"

"Why are you so agitated?" River asked her.

"Because I can hear fighting, coming from that way," Vastra pointed down one of the passages. The room they were in was circular with five different tunnels coming off of it, all of them leading into darkness. Vastra pointed at the one furthest on the right, "I can feel it. Fighting. Through the ground."

"'Through the ground?' What are you, a mole?" Rose muttered.

"She comes from the ground, the Silurians are native to Earth," River said.

"What, seriously?"

"Yes, and we look after the planet a damn sight better than you apes do, ruining everything with industry, and pollution, and... homophobia," Vastra complained, "And I really wish you would break those bars and let me out."

"I'm not breaking anything," Rose said loudly, clearly, and firmly, getting to her feet, "We're staying here until something happens, because something is going to happen, I can feel it."

"Yes, it's a fight, and it's happening right now," Vastra argued frantically.

"She's right," River finally said, "She can hear better than we can. You can. Shh." River stood up now, as well, and they slowly walked towards the bars, the three of them, in silence. For a few moments, Rose couldn't hear anything, just whispers. But these whispers soon grew into shouts and screams and sounds of running, flashes of brightness coming down the tunnel on the far right.

"What's going on?" Rose asked, staring.

"A fight. It's the others. All of them. And Strax," Vastra said, and the three of them all approached the bars in anticipation of the momentary reunion with the other members of their brood.

And an explosive reunion it was. It seemed that with the nature of vampires being already dead, the electric stun guns they had weren't working very well at all. They froze them like they had rigor mortis for a few moments, Rose witnessed, as ten people came flooding into the room with unexpected ferocity, and then they resumed their regular functions of hissing and rushing about impossibly quickly. Rose was watching in shock and debating clawing the bars apart with her bare hands when this all started happening, and Vastra started shouting loudly for her wife, who appeared to be engaged in hand-to-hand combat with one of the vampires.

"Probably shouldn't distract her," River told Vastra, who had gone right up to the bars to stare out uselessly and perhaps swing at anyone who got too close, like a child in a crib.

"What the hell's going on!? What's that ball!?" Rose shouted, still not sure if she should bend the bars and step through. She could probably be quite helpful if she started punching the vampires. After all, if she could hit a train so hard it stopped, she was pretty sure she could do the same to a vampire.

"It's Oswin," Clara answered, but Rose didn't know which Clara, just _a_ Clara. Well, until a second later when this Clara walked through the bars of the cell as though to get out of the firing line of the vampires fighting the others. Oswin the Flying Ball whizzed around above the fighting, unable to fit through the bars to safety yet equally unable to do anything to help. Rose thought she might be shouting, but she was finding it hard to discern between the voices of the others.

"How did you do that!? Walk through the wall!?" Vastra demanded of her. Rose supposed that the last time anybody had run into Vastra, anybody being the Twins, the Eleventh Doctor, the Ponds and Donna, the only one who had superpowers had been Clara, and it was probably quite easy to just _not_ walk through walls or _not _move things with your mind, unlike her poor ability to control her eyes as they constantly changed colour through every colour on the spectrum.

Rose saw Jenny Harkness smack one of the three vampires right around the face with a cane, trying to fight off two of them at once, Strax poorly helping Jenny Flint while the Doctor looked like she might be sticking to the shadows, agitated. Beta Clara was trying to stay out of the way and follow the Doctor's example, utterly useless too. Alpha Clara was clutching a stake, and so were the others, but they weren't really using any of them. Thirteen stayed away. Vastra begged to be let out of the cage to go fight. River was pointing a gun, but seemed to be debating whether the gun, whichever gun it was, would have much of an effect on the vampires.

A fourth vampire entered the scene from one of the tunnels.

"It's the one who hit us!" Oswin the Flying Ball shouted about the newcomer. And then a lot of things all happened very quickly and time seemed to slow down for Rose. For a second, she thought time was literally slowing down as a result of her time powers to maybe allow her to do something to help, but regardless of that, she didn't act at all. Nobody acted at all. Jenny Flint, Strax and Jenny Harkness were both busy fighting off the original three. The Doctor seemed to be frozen in a corner, the vampire walking straight past her. Alpha Clara almost looked like she was straining to teleport herself to help. Oswin couldn't do a thing. It was a culmination of different factors that lead to them all proving themselves completely inept and incapable at doing something when they really needed to do something important, as the vampire shouted something vengeful about somebody playing the piano better than he could and not knowing how to stay dead (which almost seemed like a sick joke, in retrospect.)

Then the unthinkable happened, because Rose, for all she was worth, really hadn't entertained the possibility that any of them could end up _bitten_. Bitten by a _vampire_. It just seemed so unlikely, she hadn't even known vampires existed yesterday. The vampire grabbed Beta Clara, who didn't manage to stake him in time, who wasn't paying enough attention to it, who was busier looking elsewhere, and plunged his fangs savagely into her neck.


	331. Black Mirror

_Beta Clara_

_Black Mirror_

"Nice try. I'm not a vampire," Clara said firmly. Jenny watched her uneasily from the other side of the table, a slight frown on her face. Clara looked back, but Jenny didn't say a word. The lights still felt almost blindingly bright, even though they had been turned down twice more since the last time she had asked. Apparently, Jenny got the word through her ear that they weren't going to turn the lights right off. She had an earpiece in one ear and Clara could only faintly hear it when anybody spoke, not quite enough to make out the words.

"...You are, Clara. It bit you," Jenny answered her. Jenny looked directly at her as she spoke, and Clara could hear her tapping her foot in agitation, the soft noise of the fabric of her boot moving.

"Nothing bit me. This is a joke," Clara said, then she laughed, and Jenny looked at her worriedly, "This is all some sick joke. I bet you've just kidnapped me yesterday, taken me out of my home and retconned me, and locked me up here for a joke. Just tricking me."

"Clara..."

"I've never heard anything so ridiculous. But it's exactly the sort of thing _you_ would do, from what I've heard. Everyone warned me not to sleep with you, maybe this was all orchestrated? You and Jack? Trying to mess with me? Tied me up in a chair? Is this what you do instead of BDSM?" Clara said coldly, and Jenny looked legitimately hurt.

"I can't believe you think I would ever-"

"That's why they're watching, isn't it? Trying to see how far you can take this before you get bored? I bet they're all out there, aren't they? All however many dozens of you there are? Just watching this like it's a bloody..." she trailed off as she felt a very strange rush go to her head, her throat burning like she needed a drink so desperately she thought she might cease to be able to breathe. But she couldn't remember the last time she had drawn breath.

"...Clara..?"

"Like it's a... a _fucking _play," she said, changing her word choice, shaking her head a little, "All the time I spent with you, and _this _is what I get? This sick joke? This sick _fucking _joke!? Telling me I've died!? Of course I haven't died! I'm pretty sure I would remmeber if I _died_, Jenny! I'm not dead. I'm not. I never have been. I haven't. Tell me I haven't. Please tell me I haven't, Jenny, tell me I haven't died, tell me I'm okay..." Jenny didn't see anything, and Clara half screamed and half sobbed and wrenched at the chair so much that she felt it pull up from the ground where it was screwed the tiniest bit, before sinking back down, "Please tell me I'm not dead, tell me I'm okay, I can't be dead..."

"I'm so sorry, Clara..." Jenny said, not looking at her anymore. Tears burnt Clara's cheeks and a headache pulled against the skin of her forehead. Her hands were shaking.

"Vampires don't exist," she said hoarsely.

"Neither do aliens," Jenny said quietly, "Neither do time machines. Neither do ghosts. Clara, I know what it's like to die so that the Doctor can live, and I know what it's like to come back and have to live on without him."

"They're not real," Clara ignored her, "How can I become something that isn't real? It's a joke," she said while leaning forwards in her chair as far as she could.

"Clara, why else would we tie you down to a chair?" Jenny asked, "A vampire bit you."

"_Then cure me_."

"There isn't a cure."

"Nanogenes. Medicine," she said, then she added coldly, tears she was unable to wipe still running down her cheeks, "Stake."

"Clara, it doesn't work that way. It's not an illness. It's like... you've changed. You've been changing for three days, you kept screaming that it hurt so we had to sedate you," Jenny said quietly, leaning towards Clara, "You're just different."

"If a human can become a vampire, why can't a vampire become a human?"

"The only creature that could change species like that is a Time Lord, and even then it's still a Time Lord. And I can't even change my form at all," Jenny told her, "There isn't a cure."

"There has to be a cure!" she shouted at Jenny, "I can't be a vampire! I'm not! I won't believe it, I won't, I won't, I - what are you doing?" Jenny pulled out a phone and Clara could hear people shouting down the earpiece telling her not do whatever she was going to, and then Clara was blinded by the flash of a camera and became immediately dizzy by the brightness of it.

"Look," Jenny said, holding up a photograph of an empty chair to Clara's face.

"Where's the photo you just took?" she asked, seeing bright spots from the flash. A camera flash had never affected her so much before.

"That _is_ the photo I just took," Jenny told her, "You don't have an image. You don't show up in photos, or on cameras. Or in a mirror."

"Bullshit. That is such _fucking bullshit_! Stop _lying _to me! Just stop!"

"I'm not lying!" Jenny shouted back at her. Clara was shocked. She had never heard Jenny shout at anybody before, not even her father, or Jack. She hardly believed she was capable of raising her voice until just then. Jenny clenched her jaw and sat back in her own chair, crossing her arms. Chatter was coming across her earpiece. Clara could hear it quite clearly, somebody asking if Oswin should come in, it sounded like.

"Let her in," Clara said, and Jenny frowned at her.

"You can hear the earpiece?"

"Clear as day."

"...Might as well let her in... yes, with the flask..." Jenny said. Flask? What flask?

A second later Clara heard a door behind her open and heard someone walk in. There was a smell, as well. She couldn't place the smell at all, but it was metallic, and delicious, she knew. She strained to try and see around the chair, but she didn't need to, because Oswin walked into view carrying a silver thermos, the source of the magical smell, whatever it was. Clara stared at it.

"How do your gums feel, Clara?" Oswin asked.

"Sore," she answered stiffly, "What's in the flask?" Oswin crossed her arms and left the flask on the table in between Clara and Jenny, completely out of Clara's grasp.

"I think you know what's in it, don't you?" Oswin said, and Clara looked up at her, "You look like shit, by the way. Thought I'd better tell you, since you can't exactly see for yourself." Clara scowled and looked back at the flask. "What about your teeth?"

"What _about_ them?"

"Would you be so kind as to open your mouth? You know, say Ah?" Oswin asked.

"No," she refused. Oswin sighed. "What's with the forged picture?"

"The picture's not forged, Clara. Jenny's telling the truth," she answered softly. She wasn't being quite as cruel as Clara had come to expect. Maybe she shouldn't expect Oswin to be so cold towards her. After all, she _had _saved her from that Xenomorph about a year ago, dragged her into an air vent.

"I don't get it. I have a body, I'm here, I'm right here, why wouldn't I show up on a camera? Or have a reflection?"

"Or a shadow," Jenny added.

"Oh, a shadow as well, great. Is there any point to me, then? Do I even exist anymore?" Clara questioned angrily. Maybe it wasn't the best idea to get into a debate with a hologram about the semantics of existence, but she didn't care right then. Oswin didn't bother to argue, anyway. Oswin was too clever to reduce herself to a petty argument with another version of itself.

"It's about your relationship to light. You have a hyper light aversion. It's why you wanted the lights switched off," Oswin answered calmly. Clara kept glancing between Oswin and the flask full of ambrosia in front of her. The latter was taking up a great deal of attention by its mere smell. "You're just... different. You just react differently to light. It kind of, goes through you. Reflections are created by light bouncing off things, shadows are you blocking light, but in a way it just goes through you. It probably doesn't feel very pleasant. An imbecile would look at it like you were absorbing it."

"How is that even scientifically possible?"

"Well, there are the basic fundamentals of the human interpretation of science, and the basic fundamentals of _actual _science, science being a very general term for the study of all existence. Humanity - at least, humanity in _your_ century - can't perceive that any forces they can't see or understand can exist. But maggots probably don't understand gravity, it doesn't mean gravity doesn't exist. And mice probably don't understand how cheese is made," Oswin said, "Clara, it's really not that bad."

"Not that bad? _Not that bad_!?"

"No, it isn't."

"That's easy for you to say, holograms aren't... aren't... _monsters_."

"I think you should go, Jenny," Oswin said, turning to her. Jenny had been watching Clara the whole time.

"I don't want to," Jenny said.

"We discussed this, remember?" Oswin told her, referring to whatever they'd spoken about before orchestrating what Clara still pitifully hoped was a very sadistic prank.

"Fine. Fine, I'll go," Jenny said, getting up, then to Clara she said, "I'll be outside, alright?" Clara didn't answer, and Jenny sighed sadly and resigned to walk out anyway. She heard the door open and close again as Oswin replaced Jenny in the opposite chair.

"Why did you make her leave?"

"Because I have to tell you some things that you won't like, and I don't really care if you shout at me because _I_ know what's best for you, and Jenny hasn't done a thing to deserve your wrath just because you're not thinking clearly," Oswin said.

"Oh, great. _More_ things I don't like."

"Do you want a drink, Clara?"

"Yes."

"What would you like a drink of?" Oswin asked, a loaded question if she ever heard one. She didn't answer. "Does it start with a 'b'? Do you find it pumping through someone's body? Red? Warm?"

"Don't."

"Right there beneath the skin? In the veins and the arteries? Filling a person up? Rosy complexion? Loud heartbeat?" Oswin spoke like she was reading out the menu of a five star restaurant. "I'm going to let you out of the chair." She stood back up.

"I, um - I don't think - maybe you should... shouldn't... let me..." she stammered a lot because suddenly she didn't know what to think. She couldn't think, couldn't think about anything except the contents of that silver flask on the table right in front of her, so close, so almost in her reach, she could practically taste it in the air as Oswin undid the strap for her right hand. As soin as she did, Clara made a lunge for the flask and grabbed hold of it, the lid already loose. She had barely registered what she was doing before she was drinking it, drinking its still-warm, thick contents, that soothed her burning throat and made it feel numb. She had never tasted something so delicious as blood right then, and she drained the flask completely and dropped it on the floor. Oswin stared at her.

"...Right then. Exactly the reaction we expected."

"Who fixed your Sphere?" Clara asked.

"Jenny did, with Adam. Jenny hasn't had much else to do, what with you being all unconscious and... screamy," Oswin sat back down, "I'm good as new." On her own, Clara undid the strap holding down her left hand. "Anyway. So. Vampirism. Along with the light aversion, all the clichés seem to be... true. We're pretty sure you can't cross running water, and you've also developed an allergy to allyl, which is part of the composition of garlic. And an allergy to religion, basically. Faith affects the transition between the quantum and classical states of physics in a humanoid mind, and you're really not good with it. You know, crucifixes and all that jazz. And stakes. Don't let anybody stake you. You're also nocturnal."

"Whose blood was that?" she asked as her actions came back to her. Oswin didn't answer. "Oswin?"

"You won't like the answer."

"Whose? Oh my stars - it's Jenny's, isn't it!?"

"No, of course not. The Doctor says you only crave human blood. Vampires can bite and turn anyone of any species, but apparently they can only survive on the blood of what they once were. So no golden-eyed vegetarianism for you."

"Which human, then?"

"Clara."

"_What!?_" she felt like she might be sick with disgust.

"It was a choice between her or Jack!" Oswin exclaimed, "And Jack refused on the basis he reckons you're the reason his wife left him."

"Oh, charming. Maybe if ever _talked _to his _ex_-wife."

"We don't want you getting a taste for somebody you could kill."

"'A taste'!? I'm not a dog!"

"No, you're more like a mosquito," Oswin said.

"I can't drink Other Me's blood! It's _weird_! And _gross_!" she finally freed herself, and immediately struggled to get up from the chair, legs aching, but remembering what Jenny had said about their being a one-way mirror behind her. Oswin didn't try to stop her from staring at it. But she found herself staring at nothing. Just a room with two chairs and a hologram. There was no Clara Oswald in the mirror, there was no nothing.

"You shoud sit back down, Clara," Oswin sighed.

"I... but... me..."

"And _there's_ the narcissism. You can always look at _me_. We're identical, except my hair's longer. Why _did _you cut your hair, anyway? I don't like it," she said, but Clara ignored her, "...Wow, I really didn't think the lack of reflection would be the thing that bothered you most about being undead... back to the blood... the health benefits outweight the weirdness."

"Health benefits!?" Clara wheeled around to face Oswin again. She couldn't stomach looking at the empty mirror.

"Long term."

"_Long term!?_"

"There isn't a cure, Clara. Like Jenny said. Not even slaying the vampire that bit you, or the one that bit that one. Jenny slew the one that got _you_ about ten seconds after it did. The same one that bonked my Sphere and got its cane stuck in Alpha You's grey matter. _And_ that got Strax. Total bastard. Deserved it. And _I_ don't like killing," Oswin said.

"What 'health benefits?'"

"Well, there's an assimilation process any blood you consume has to go through in order for it to sustain you. Like the human body breaking down food and processing it that way, the digestive system. With Other You's blood that process doesn't need to happen because it's pre-assimilated. It means your symptoms will be... less extreme. Like, you'll be able to go out in the sun, we reckon. I mean, I'm sure you'll still really, _really_ hate it, but you won't... burn... and you'll need less of it, we reckon."

"I hate the way you're talking about it."

"It's a permanent change, Clara," Oswin sighed.

"Why did it bite me?"

"...Well, Other You played the piano better than the vampire could, and for that he already killed her once. It was seriously traumatic seeing her with a cane in the back of her head. And then he ripped it out and accidentally hit my Sphere. I figure that Clara and I smell different, but you and Clara probably don't so-"

"You stink."

"What do you mean I stink!?"

"Literally. You reek. Do you shower? I mean, I know you're a hologram, but... and your _breath_..."

"Oh, _you're _one to talk!" she exclaimed with offence, "He bit you because he was angry you didn't stay dead. He was trying to bite Other You, but she phased behind the cage bars like a coward."

"Great. Fucking brilliant. This is all a mistake. What am I supposed to do, then? You're going to keep me on this TARDIS? Like a pet? Like thay Zygon? Too dangerous to be let out? Stuck in this room?"

"No, Clara. I mean, I really doubt that you can ever stop living with us now, but-"

"What?"

"Well it's... you're not really... you're not safe."

"Oh, _I'm_ not safe? That's rich, coming from you. I'm not the one who's killed thousands of people, am I, Oswin?"

"No, you haven't. At least, not _yet_. For the record, I need constant, round-the-clock supervision and _I _probably wouldn't be allowed to leave if I tried to, either," Oswin said.

"You don't have a reason to leave, though! _You're _dead, Oswin! And you have Adam here!"

"You're dead too, and _you_ have Jenny. You can't go back to your old life. It's fixed. They have to think you're dead, you have to stay dead, and off the Doctor's radar."

"The Doctor's forgotten who I am."

"But I figure he might be interested if a vampire starts rampaging through London massacring people. Might even kill you. The Time Lords don't like the vampires."

"I'm not staying here, Oswin. I'm not. Nothing has changed, I still don't want this life, this life trapped on this ship is hell! I don't want to be your bloody prisoner!"

"There is no other choice!"

"Can I leave this room yet!?"

"No. We have tests to carry out, involving bloodlust. It might take a while. Better get comfy."

"Oh, because I haven't been here for _hours _already..."


	332. Perfect Situation

**AN: The chapter where she got bitten was originally going to be called "Tooth &amp; Clara" rather than "Once Bitten," as in "Tooth &amp; Claw" from series two. Fun tidbit for you there. Also, Vampire Clara I now call Beta Clara Prime. The past version of Beta Clara travelling with Ashildr that she has now forgotten is Beta Clara Nega.**

_Adam_

_Perfect Situation_

He was half-asleep and half-awake on one of the sofas in their new living room, though he supposed they had had the living room this way for about eight days now. Even if he had been asleep for most of those eight days. Adam Mitchell's problem was that he was trying to stay awake and managing it terribly in his state of constant exhaustion, even if he _had_ been getting better from his brain chip affliction lately. The barnacles on his arm were falling off, at any rate, even if the welts they left behind were growing unpleasant, faintly blue scabs on them. According to Eleven, he was likely going to be left with a nasty scar, but at least he had a special sort of synthetic steroid cream courtesy of his genius girlfriend which was serving in place of an immune system for him. No blood flow, no immune system. No way to get white blood cells to fight of pathogens and infections. There was also no way for the infections to spread through his body, though, so it worked out even, he supposed.

He was made alert by the sound of somebody very quietly opening the door in from the circular hallway outside, and felt his eyes burning from tiredness like he had acid in them. Whoever it was closed the door equally quietly and carefully and walked over to see who was on the sofa, and that was when he opened his eyes enough to spy that it was Oswin, looking dishevelled and thoroughly unhappy.

"Hey," he greeted her softly, and she sighed, and looked around for somewhere to sit without saying a word, "What time is it?"

"Almost four in the morning," she answered him. She sounded as tired as he felt, probably more so, even, considering _he_ hadn't just spend a considerable number of hours trying to tell someone that they were now a member of the undead. He remembered Oswin telling _him_ that he was sort of undead. Cryogenically frozen yet still impossibly able to function normally, never ageing and never healing. He yawned and sat up. "Why are you still awake?"

"I was waiting up for you," he answered. She smiled slightly.

"You didn't have to do that."

"Of course I did," he said. He had fallen asleep with his glasses on, and they were covered in finger prints now. She sat down in the space he had made next to him by sitting up. "Are you okay?"

"I'm exhausted," she said, leaning on his shoulder.

"Is she a vampire, then?"

"Oh yeah. There's no denying that. We did a _lot _of experiments. I mean, not in a cruel way. We had to see if she could control her desires to, you know, suck people's blood," Oswin told him, taking his right hand. It was his left arm that had the barnacle formation on the back of it, above his elbow, and a bandage over that to stop him from itching it. It was _so_ itchy.

"Can she?" Adam asked.

"Well, we're not asking her to go cold turkey or anything. You know that we can get her plenty of blood, Alpha Clara's been having blood taken from her for the last three days," Oswin reminded him. This was true, she had practically lived in the medibay. She might even still be there now, he didn't know. They'd harvested gallons of the red stuff from her impossible-to-kill physiology. "It _seems _like she'll be fine, as long as she has _a_ blood supply. Are you gonna go to bed?" He yawned then.

"I guess so," he said through his yawn, almost unintelligibly, nodding as well. He stretched his arms, which was painful for the arm with the rash, and stood up.

"Wait, hang on - do I smell?"

"I - what? Do you..?"

"Smell."

"I, uh... I don't... why..?"

"Because Clara said I reek!" she confessed pitifully, very distraught by this information, clearly, "Beta Clara! Her and her advanced sense of smell... it's awful. And she could hear Jenny's earpiece."

"You let Jenny talk to her, then?"

"_Yes_, but don't avoid the question, Mitchell," Oswin said.

"The vampire in _Being Human_ is called Mitchell."

"Wow. That's _nearly_ a coincidence," she said sarcastically, disinterested, "Answer the question."

"Well, you... you know that I love you, but-"

"Oh my god, I _do_!" she exclaimed in horror.

"I'm always telling you to brush your teeth! It's not like you ever shower, Oswin."

"I don't need to shower. I don't sweat. I can phase through dirt."

"Babe, she's right," Adam sighed.

"Oh my god," Oswin muttered, then she thought for a moment, "I'm going to have to shower, you know."

"Well finish telling me about what happened with Clara first," he implored her as she headed past him to go to the bathroom and wash for the first time in god knew how long. Weeks, probably. Oswin was never the world's most adept person when it came to taking care of herself. Maintaining good personal hygiene. She debated his proposition for a moment, and then sat back down on the arm of the sofa.

"We had to send Martha in to see if she tried to kill her," Oswin said, "She didn't, though. She had a thermos full of blood with her, anyway. You know what it's like, it's just like water. If you don't drink water for days you'll die, or be so desperate for it that you'll kill to get your hands on some. As long as you keep hydrated, you'll..."

"Not kill anybody?" he suggested.

"I guess so."

"So is she safe..?"

"Yeah. We let her out. She was strapped to that chair for almost twelve hours, bless her. Or, I guess, _don't_ bless her, because she doesn't really cope well with religion anymore... She was very distraught to see that she didn't have a reflection anymore. Or a shadow. Or show up in photos."

"Anyone would be, I mean... imagine what it would be like not having a reflection? Never being able to see yourself?"

"I wonder how she'll choose what clothes to wear..."

"Her clothes are rubbish anyway."

"True... and get this, bright colours hurt her eyes. Everything seems to hurt her eyes, it's crazy. She's gonna end up like me, only wearing black, albeit for different reasons," Oswin said.

"That'll make her outfits less disgusting. I mean, _I'm_ colour blind, and _I _think they're atrocious," he said, and she laughed, then seemed to remember something that made her stop and stare off into space. "What's the matter?"

"She really doesn't want to be stuck living on this TARDIS," Oswin said, "You know what she's like, she always refused to move in with the Doctor, like everybody else did. And she still doesn't want to, but she's... dangerous. She shouted at me when I said she has to stay."

"Strictly speaking, a vote needs to be carried out. And isn't it a bit cruel to keep her here against her will?"

"What are you suggesting..?"

"Well, I might have an idea."

"Which is..?"

"I'll tell you after your shower, I have to think about it," he said, and she sighed.

"Alright, fine... how long have you been asleep for?"

"On and off for the last week."

"Ha, ha."

"Ages, I don't know."

"Well..." she began, "...would you make us hot chocolate? While I'm showering?"

"Sure," he said, "You can tell me all about Clara the Vampire."

* * *

_Jenny_

Most of the time, whatever room Jenny Harkness inhabited was painfully messy. Whether she was in a room of her own, like right then, or whether she was sharing with Jack, like she had been for months before, it was always a mess. Usually, she couldn't be bothered cleaning. She had been conditioned to be a soldier, or a traveller, an intellectual, but never a housewife. Never a domestic. There was a myriad of behaviours that Jenny had never learnt, all of them comprising of cleaning up after herself. But she had been ordered out of the 'viewing room' behind the one-way mirror where the others had been while they tested Beta Clara, and in the hours since then had ended up picking old clothes up off the floor. A lot of the clothes Clara had left around anyway, since Clara had been inhabiting Jenny's bedroom for the last week, while Jenny either slept on one of Adam's sofas or stayed in the garage trying to build her new spaceship. She had made a lot of headway with it this last week, while trying to avoid people and keep herself occupied.

When somebody started opening the door at some time vaguely around four o'clock in the morning, she jumped, startled, in the middle of folding dirty clothes she was going to wash in the morning for little reason other than to have something to do. She dropped them instantly back in the basket where they had been and realised that if Clara had forgotten everything since before she had died (the first time), then she had never seen Jenny's bedroom before. She was suddenly quite glad she had bothered to clean. It was low-ceilinged and circular with cream-coloured walls and light blue bedsheets. The carpet was dark blue and the television was huge and curved around to the same degree as the circular bed, but it wasn't a particularly large room. Jenny wasn't allowed an en suite, so there were no other doors in there.

She stood very awkwardly and alarmed at the foot of her bed and held her hands behind her back, then moved them so they were in front of her, then changed her mind again. As soon as Clara came into the room, for that was who it was, she ended up crossing her arms very tightly. Then she uncrossed them and made a step as though to hug Clara, but decided against it at the last minute. Clara didn't notice.

"Is this your room?" Clara asked.

"Yeah," she answered, "Where I spend my nights. Well, not much, not really..."

"What do you mean? Is this the room you and Jack had?"

"No, no, it's new. We only split up like, just under two weeks ago. And then I haven't really been... sleeping... anyway, how are you? Are you alright?" Clara looked at her like that was an incredibly stupid question to ask. Oswin had been right earlier, Clara really _did _look awful. She was completely pale with sunken eyes that seemed a darker brown than usual, but maybe that was just in comparison to her sickly pallor.

"I'm dead," she answered flatly, "And I have to drink the blood of another version of myself to survive. Which strikes me as borderline incest, to be honest. Should I go? This is the door they just told me to go in..."

"No, no, this is where you were sleeping after they brought you back," Jenny answered.

"With you?"

"N-no, no, not at all," she stammered, "I was in Oswin's room. Or the lab. Or garage. Not here. It was just you here. Remember? You were ignoring me? And you've been unconscious for the last three days?"

"Right. Unconscious," Clara leant against the door with her hands behind her back, "Why was I ignoring you, again? You said we had a fight. What fight did we have?"

"It was about whether or not you were going to stay on the TARDIS," Jenny admitted, and saw Clara clench her jaw. A sore topic, Clara's future. Jenny thought it would be better if it went undiscussed until she had slept, but she didn't know if that was possible, "Because you didn't want to, and I was the only person here to shout at... I never told you you had to stay."

"I guess I can't go back to my old life now, anyway." Jenny said nothing in response, just waited for Clara to continue. "I'm dangerous, right? Probably too dangerous to be around kids."

"Clara, you know that I care about you a lot, we're friends, and I don't want to say anything to upset you, but if you want me to speak to you objectively about your future, I will," Jenny said. She really didn't want Clara to shout at her again. Clara had shouted at her enough for that week, she thought.

"Okay, them. Be objective."

"You can't be around kids. It would be best for them if you stayed away. And you _are _dangerous, and it _would_ be safer if you stayed here on the TARDIS, but that isn't me saying I _want _you to stay on the TARDIS. People are probably safe going to prison, but nobody wants to go to prison, and I know that that's what this ship feels like to you, so I wouldn't wish it on you. But nobody has a solution, not yet, anyway," Jenny said, "It can't hurt to just rest for a few days though, right? You don't have to see any of the others."

"Oh, good, I was afraid Amy might punch me again."

"To be fair, Clara, it _did _seem like you were being very irritating that day she punched you..."

"She broke my nose!"

"I know, but you were being a bit of a twat," Jenny shrugged, "You can easily avoid them, though. Adam and Oswin basically have a flat now, they have a kitchen and a bathroom and stuff, you can go in there. As long as you don't tell anyone they have a bathroom and a kitchen. The food supply still hasn't quite got low enough for people to notice Adam's stopped buying their food."

"What happened to the vampires, then?"

"Killed them all. There were a lot, maybe forty? Most of them were asleep... I'm not proud of it... I did kill the one that got you, though..."

"I thought you didn't like to kill?"

"There wasn't really a choice... they don't have a consensual blood source, so-"

"Please don't call her a _consensual_ blood source, that makes it sound even _more_ like some weird sex thing," Clara muttered.

"River and Vastra also killed their fair share. And Strax and Jenny Flint. Nobody else wanted to get involved. Other You doesn't like killing much. The last time she killed anything, Jack told me, it was a zombie, and afterwards she and Oswin went away somewhere for six days."

"Jack told you?"

"It was over a month ago. You know, I didn't even spend one day with my father before I died and it took so long to regenerate that he'd already left. Barely a few hours with him trying to eliminate all that soldier conditioning," she said, "But I'm very clever. Quite level headed, uh, usually... maybe not recently, but... I'm 208 years old, over 207 years without the pacifistic influence of the Doctor. Sometimes people have to be killed. That's how the universe works. Everyone has their time to die."

"Yeah. That's what I thought. Until I apparently got brought back to life and trapped in a time loop for who knows how long, then died, then got resurrected by some other versions of myself, then got bitten by a vampire. Now what? Are people going to come and try to stake me? Throw garlic and holy water in my direction?"

"Alright, I guess that was a bad choice of words... look, are you going to bed? Are you tired? It's four in the morning, so it'll be daylight in a few hours. Well not _daylight_, because we're on a spaceship, but..."

"Yes, I'm tired. I've just spent twelve hours being interrogated, of course I am."

"So, you want the bed, then?"

"I'm surprised you haven't lain out a coffin."

"Well, do you?"

"I don't have anywhere else to sleep, do I?"

"Then do you want me to..."

"To what?"

"To stay. Do you want me to stay or go somewhere else?" she asked tentatively.

"Listen, I'm not mad at you or anything, or angry, but I've had people watching me all day and I just want to be on my own now," Clara said, "I'm not like Oswin. I'm not alright with being... supervised."

"Okay, well then, I'll leave," Jenny said, going over to the door Clara was still leaning on, though Clara stepped away to allow her to get to the door handle, "You don't have any clothes here, but the TARDIS might be kind... you can wear mine though, if you like... and just go into Adam and Oswin's room when you wake up, they won't kick you out..." She stepped out of the room and was about to close the door behind her when Clara grabbed hold of her hand, and she almost jumped because of how cold her skin was.

"I'm really not mad, you know that, right?" she said, standing in the doorway. Nobody else was around. Jenny forced a smile, even if she did feel somewhat dejected.

"Of course," she said, and then they just stood for a while, until Jenny said, "You're holding my hand."

"I'm...? Oh, sorry," Clara dropped it, and Jenny moved her hands behind her back and took another step away from the door.

"I'll see you tomorrow."

"Yeah..."

"Goodnight, Clara."

"Goodnight..." Clara said sadly, and then closed the door.


	333. Daylight

**AN: So, in almost every single chapter with Clara and Jenny, they discuss vampires. Like, they talk about vampires a ridiculous amount. This thing has been planned to happen for the last hundred chapters.**

_DAY ONE-HUNDRED AND FIFTEEN_

_Alpha Clara_

_Daylight_

She did not know how long she had slept for, just that it wasn't for long enough at all. She really didn't feel right then that her fatigue was the sort of fatigue that could be slept off, that she needed real rest, real 'time off.' She didn't have a job, or a house, and hardly any responsibilities, yet here she was wishing there was some kind of form she could fill in for sick leave, or trade in some time to go on holiday. She was in the midst of debating whether or not to go wrangle Oswin wherever she was and ask if she wanted to go on _another _brief holiday, like the last one, when she remembered what had happened at four in the morning. Mainly, she remembered this because she caught herself thinking about how wonderfully comfortable the Doctor's arm was under her head as she slept next to him, which was when she also remembered that she had not slept with the Doctor, in any sense of the word, for over a week. And at four in the morning she had slept with the Doctor in _both _senses of the word.

She felt all of a sudden like she was having an unorthodox, one night stand with a man she had been married to for nearly four months. To put it bluntly, they had had a fight over her actions resurrecting Beta Clara. She had gotten furious about him speaking to her like a child who needed to be put on the naughty step, in that patronising way he sometimes spoke to people when he deemed them stupid, and they had ended up shouting. It was really a culmination of different emotions that ultimately all morphed into sickening, twisted anger, and she had kicked him out. It hadn't been _so_ bad, they _had_ spoken to each other, and been relatively civil, but now this had happened.

Clara sat up straight away and dragged a great deal of the bedsheets with her, and then groaned and put her head in her hands and shuffled right into the corner. She heard Eleven move and then peered at him through a gap in her fingers, pitifully embarrassed, him watching her silently, guardedly. Neither of them knew what the other might say. She finally moved her hands and then pulled up her knees beneath the covers, resting her cheek on them and looking at him, now sat up next to her, with an apologetic expression.

"Sorry," was the first thing she said. The only thing she could think to say, "Sorry for... shagging you..."

"I'm quite sure you don't have to apologise for that," he said, "Well, I suppose you did rather take me by surprise, but... first time in a week. I'd almost forgotten how good it was. _You_ was. Were. How good _you were_," he kept correcting himself. She smiled a little.

"A week?" she asked as he sat up next to her and crossed his legs. He seemed happy. She sighed. "I was in a funny mood. Sorry."

"What mood? What were you thinking?"

"I was thinking that I'm suffering enough already for bringing her back to life, since I've spent the last three days bloodletting, and it isn't worth it to keep forcing myself to be angry at you. And I was like, if I see him, I'm gonna kiss him. And then you were here, so I did see you, and kiss you, and... the rest," she sighed, "Don't be angry at me for what I did. The blood might be replenished, but it wasn't pleasant. And I'll have to do it again soon enough."

"Am I forgiven for shouting at you, then?"

"That depends on if _I'm_ forgiven for bringing her back to life and for kicking you out."

Eleven sighed, then smiled and said, "Well, I suppose so." She leant over and kissed his cheek. "Good morning, anyway. Guess what time it is."

"Guess? Why guess?" she asked, glancing over towards the artificial light pouring through the window at the other side of the room. It was definitely later than it usually was when she would get up.

"Just guess," he said wryly.

"Hmm..." she though, narrowing her eyes and trying not to smile. Then she beamed, "It's eleven, isn't it?"

"No, it's half past ten," he said, and her face fell into a pout.

"How was I supposed to guess that? You're just being mean. I want to go back to sleep, but I probably shouldn't..." she trailed off with a yawn, and he stared at her being idle as though he was staring at a sunset, "What?" she asked.

"You know, Clara, throughout all the time I don't spend with you, I constantly think about you and make innumerable notes in my head to tell you possibly the most inconsequential things. And then whenever I find you to tell you all of these things, I hardly ever do," he said, "The only thing I seem to do is miss you."

"I know _exactly_ what you mean," she said, lifting up her head and smiling, "It's been a terrible week without you. Why do we ever fight?"

"It wasn't _that_ bad of a fight. We've had worse fights, about less things," he said, "I can't even talk to anyone else when you and I aren't speaking." They _had _been speaking, she thought, just not a lot and not alone together. Mainly because they both thought that if they were alone and speaking it would result in another argument, and neither of them wanted that to happen, even if they did disagree.

"Why can't you?" she asked concernedly.

"Because everyone accuses me of 'crawling back to them' and of thinking they're all 'second best' to you. So they don't talk to me," he said, "As bad as that is, it might be true. I don't have any intentions of losing you, so why should it matter if I want to spend all my time with you?"

"It's a _bit _unhealthy. They _are _right. And you can't lose all your friends because you have a wife."

"I already lost them all hundreds of years ago," he said, "You're the only one I haven't, and I would rather keep you here because you want to be here, not because of some fluke with the Dimension Stabilisers." She nearly pointed out that Old Twelvey had lost her, and forgotten she had ever existed, but she knew that would upset him. He already knew all of that anyway, _and_ she knew precisely what his response would be; something along the lines of, "_He never had you in the first place_." Which, she supposed, was mostly true. Beta Her and Beta Twelve had never been together.

"Four in the morning is a terrible time to have sex," she changed the subject.

"I quite enjoyed it," he said, and she laughed.

"How come you were in here at four o'clock, anyway?" she questioned curiously. He hadn't really had a chance to explain himself in the heat of their early morning moment, in the artificial twilight of the TARDIS.

"Oh, well, I was going to give you a piece of my mind."

"I'm pretty sure your mind _isn't_ what you gave _me_ a piece of last night. Quite a _large _piece, I might add."

"Clara! How vulgar."

"A piece of your mind about what, then?"

"Well, it was my night to sleep. And I was very tired and in a very bad mood, and I was going to say to you, I don't care that you've fallen out with me, this is _my _room as well and _I'm_ tired and have just as much of a right to sleep here as you do," he explained, "And then you threw yourself at me and I rather struggled to get the words out."

"Understandable."

"I still haven't slept."

"Why not? You've had the last six hours almost to sleep," she said, slightly worried and not hiding it too well.

"I was worried you were going to wake up and shout at me. I'll sleep tonight, don't worry. Assuming I'm allowed into my own bed, of course?" he questioned, and rather than tell him that yes, of course he could sleep in his own bed with her that evening, she merely kissed him. Then she realised that she hadn't thought that through at all, because when he lifted his hands to her face and she bit his lip, things only began to escalate.

Until they were interrupted (maybe for the best, neither of them had showered or brushed their teeth yet) by someone knocking on the door, and they both stopped.

"Who is it?" Clara called, after mouthing at her husband to be quiet.

"Adam. Can I talk to you?" Adam Mitchell called through the door.

"Uh..." she paused as her husband implored her to tell him to go away so that they could resume what they had been doing, whispering in her ear and distracting her.

"Clara?" Adam Mitchell asked.

"Yep! Just a sec!" she said, failing in her attempt to teleport out of bed because she was that scattered when Eleven tried to kiss her neck to convince her to stay with him. She pushed him away and managed to climb out of bed in the end, though, "Just let me get dressed, Adam!"

"Alright."

Eleven made eyes at her as she picked up the pyjamas she had been wearing yesterday off the floor and hastily threw them on, having to sort out the trousers twice because she put them on inside out the first time.

"Would you stop staring at me?" she hissed.

"I've missed you."

"Ugh, you're just like every other man. A pervert."

"How dare you!" he protested jokingly, right as she opened the door to Adam while trying to fix her sex hair, which really wasn't going to be fixed without the aid of a shower and a hairbrush.

"Morning," she said, leaning on the doorframe in front of Adam Mitchell, who was tall enough to see over her head to where Eleven was lying and now pretending to be asleep, it seemed.

"Oh, are you two back together?"

"'Back together?' We never broke up," Clara said, affronted.

"Yeah, but... you know what I mean..." he said, and she didn't answer, "Can I speak to you?"

"You're speaking to me right now, aren't you?"

"It's about..." he began, thinking, "...your sister!" he said triumphantly, "Very important business involving your sister." She frowned at him and glanced back at the Doctor, who was still pretending to be asleep. Adam mouthed at her to follow him, and she had no doubt in her mind that he was lying about having to talk to her about anything remotely to do with Oswin. She sighed and followed him out, closing the door behind her, and he walked across the Bedroom Circle towards his own door.

"What is it?" she asked him.

"It's about Beta You, and it vaguely involves your wife, so I thought you would want husbandy to be kept in the dark," he said, shrugging, opening the door and holding it open for her, "You smell, by the way."

"You didn't give me a chance to shower," she said, going in, immediately switching the light on as revenge for Adam interrupting her. "What do you want, then?" She stared around. There were four other people in the room; Adam, Oswin, Jenny and Thirteen.

"Clara doesn't want to live us," Jenny said.

"No, I wouldn't either if I was her..." Clara sighed.

"You _are _her," Thirteen reminded her.

"...Whatever... so? So what? I thought she didn't have a choice?"

"No, because Adam has an idea. A solution," Oswin said, "Which she probably also won't like too much, but it's definitely better than staying here."

"We just need your help," Thirteen said.

"Who's 'we'?" Clara asked.

"Jenny, Adam and me," Thirteen told her.

"...Alright, fine... just let me shower first... and talk to my husband..." Clara muttered, walking past towards the bathroom. She had permission to use Adam and Oswin's bathroom, and she would exercise that right for as long as she needed to. She didn't even bother to ask what this idea of Adam's was. She just hoped it wasn't a dangerous one.


	334. Blood Ties

_Oswin_

_Blood Ties_

Oswin was rarely alone. She always had someone there to watch her or supervise her, but her 'regulars' had all gone off out and not left anyone in charge of her or told her what to do. She had not been left to her own devices for such a long time that she suddenly felt empty, and more than empty, she felt... bored. That was it. She used to be alone constantly, when she was alive, and then on the Dalek Asylum. Boredom and loneliness were as bad for her as they were common. It didn't take long to remember that she had things she could be doing, though, and that she was actually allowed out of her bedroom. The first thing she did was pick up her phone and message Flek commenting on how bizarre it was she had just been alone and convinced somebody was going to stop her from leaving her room, and then she sighed and retrieved Helix's handset from one of the sofas and her set of keys (on her set of keys, which was a relatively recent addition, there was the key to she and Adam's bedroom, the key to her old room which still stood emptily next door, a key card for the laboratory, a key for the TARDIS, and her emergency teleporter) and left the room.

As she was locking the door behind her (because you never knew who might sneak into your bedroom to steal your food or your shower on the TARDIS) and fumbling because of how much she was carrying, somebody addressed her and she jumped.

"Oswin?" they asked, and she turned around to see Beta Clara standing like a sickly shadow in the doorway of Jenny's room, loitering there looking ill and pale and substantially more undead than Oswin ever did. It was getting on for one o'clock in the evening.

"Afternoon," she said with a smile, turning back to the door to finish locking it, "I hate keys, you know. In the future, everything is biometric, or technological. None of this faffing about with metal and holes." Her phone buzzed in her hand, but she was too busy messing with the keys to check it.

"Do you want some help?" Clara asked, but as soon as she did, Oswin succeeded, "Where are you going? Isn't there anybody else in there?"

"No, they've gone out," Oswin said, "Just me. Well, the others'll be... around. I try to stay out of their way. Why?"

"It's just that, Jenny said..."

"What did she say?"

"Just to go into your room when I woke up, because you wouldn't kick me out," she admitted, "Is there anything to eat around here?"

"I thought there was plenty of blood left in Jenny's room for you?" Oswin asked. There _was_ plenty of blood, she knew for a fact, she had put it there, "Have you drunk it al-"

"Not blood, _food_," Clara said, "Of course I haven't drunk it all, there's loads of it. I mean proper food."

"Oh. Uh, funny you should say that... there's some food in there, but you'd to cook it, and I'm not exactly gonna let you cook because I know how bad you are at it. As for on the rest of the ship? Don't go into Nerve Centre. They're low on food because Adam's stopped buying for them," Oswin said, "Theodore might make you something? I would if I could."

"No thanks. I'd rather not speak to Theodore. Or see him," she muttered, crossing her arms.

"Martha'll cook for you?" Oswin suggested.

"I guess I'm not that hungry anyway," she muttered. Oswin resolved to text her boyfriend and ask him to bring some food back on his way home, "What are you up to?"

"Going to the TARDIS garage to carry on building Jenny's spaceship. I don't have anything else to do, there's nobody else around. You can come with me, if you want? It'll probably be boring, but-"

"Okay," she said, looking a little pleased at being invited out somewhere. She stepped out of Jenny's room and then stopped, "I'll just... I'll get some blood..." she half smiled, somewhat sadly, and Oswin was half sure she glimpsed some fangs. Clara stepped back inside and returned with a sports bottle, all black and impossible to see through. Blood was so much darker than water, it would stand out in most other containers. Jenny's door didn't have a lock, so Clara merely closed it behind her and followed Oswin in the opposite direction of Nerve Centre.

"How are you doing, then? Had plenty of sleep?" Oswin asked her, leading her towards the garage where the mid-construction spaceship lay in wait.

"I suppose," she said. She didn't seem to be big on talking lately.

"...Listen, I'm really sorry about us having to strap you into that chair yesterday," Oswin said, "It's just, you were screaming before we sedated you, and we really didn't know how much you would change, or how bad the bloodlust would be..."

"It's not so bad," Clara said, holding onto the sports bottle very tightly, as though she might go for anyone who tried to grab it from her, like a dog with a particularly delicious steak, "...Do I have a heartbeat?"

"Yes," Oswin answered, "Incredibly weak pulse, but you still have bloodflow."

"Right. Thank stars. I was worried there."

"Worried about what?" Oswin said, pressing the button to open the garage.

"Never having an orgasm again."

"Oh, how do you think I feel? I'm like a bloody barbie doll," Oswin muttered as the door slid open. Clara laughed, and Oswin glanced at her when she did and was completely sure she could see fangs. Fangs Clara herself would probably never see. How surreal. Not having a reflection.

"You have that simulation, though, right?" she asked. Oswin was a little annoyed then. Not at Clara, but rather at Jenny, because she was sure that Jenny was the one who had told Clara all of these things. Jenny seemed to tell Clara everything.

"_Yes_, but _before_ and _outside _of that, I can't do a single thing," Oswin said, "Thank christ I don't have a sex drive programmed in. Deleted that straight away, the most useless function I possessed. Oh, look at those empty spaces. That's where two of my boyfriend's cars used to be, until Christina de Souza blew them up," she indicated some empty spaces. The TARDIS garage was enormous and might as well be a hanger, it was that vast, with a myriad of different vehicles lying around.

"He gave me that bike," Clara said, pointing at the anti-gravity motorbike.

"I know, Other You often complains about the fact the Doctor has never taught her how to ride a motorbike when he taught you," Oswin told her, slightly amused.

"What do you think he'll do when he goes looking for that bike and can't remember where he's put it?"

"Well if he gave it to you, he can't need it _that_ often," Oswin shrugged, "I've only known him to use it once. But you never know. I might ask him."

"What's _that_?" Clara asked, turning her nose up at what she saw. And Oswin found this hilarious, because she was looking right at Jenny's old, stolen, Messaline ship, which was a small escape shuttle she'd never gotten rid of until it had broken down beyond repair a few weeks ago, prompting this construction endeavour to begin with. It looked like a rusty lump, and sort of reminded her of an Imperial Shuttle from _Star Wars_, minus the huge wings. Just a sort of funny cuboid.

"Jenny's old ship," Oswin said. She had nearly said, 'your girlfriend's old ship,' for a joke, but had decided that that might be a little too cruel (for once.) "Haven't you ever seen it?"

"No. It has a cloaking mechanism, and she can't exactly park it inside my flat," Clara said.

"I don't know about that, it always sounds like she parks _plenty _of things inside _your_ flat," Oswin joked.

"Hilarious," Clara said dryly.

"I am, aren't I?"

"I swear, you're completely different every time I speak to you," Clara said, following her past Jenny's old ship to Jenny's new ship, which wasn't quite a ship yet, but it was definitely getting there. The TARDIS was very helpful when it came to the Doctor's daughter, for whatever reason, so construction was going swell.

"How so?"

"Sometimes you're awful, sometimes you're nice. Sometimes you're both."

"I'm an enigma. It's all to do with the Dream."

"The infamous Dream? Where you and Other Me were in a coma?" she asked, and Oswin nodded, "Jenny reckons you made all that up and spent the two weeks doing it."

"Well, that's because Jenny has an even dirtier mind than me. I'm sure she _loved_ picturing that twin-on-twin action. Eurgh. Makes me feel ill. Here we go, it's this one," Oswin said, eager to get off the topic of imaginary incest.

"W-_ow_. That one is a _lot_ cooler..." she said, staring at it in awe. It was large and silver. Not a bright silver, quite a dull, metallic silver, more grey, and it didn't reflect more than shapes. Not that it reflected much anyway, the space where Beta Clara's dark blob should have been in he hull was completely empty. Only Oswin had an image. Clara didn't pay attention to that, though, she paid attention to the ship itself. It went along quite nicely with the typical image of a flying saucer, because it was a circular disk, the four large, low domes on top almost reminiscent of a Dalek ship, just the wrong colour. The domes were actually the four engines, the engines whose outputs were rockets on gyroscopic pivots that meant they could swivel around like gun turrets in all directions. That sort of manoeuvrability was something most military or commercial vessels wouldn't even dare implement because, though the benefits were enormous as it meant both vertical and horizontal propulsion simultaneously, there just weren't enough pilots that skilled to warrant mass production. The cockpit of the thing had black, tinted glass, and sat at the front of the ship at the same level as the rest of the body, rather than being some ridiculous pod-like-thing sitting on the top. The window went from the floor to the ceiling and beyond, curving around to achieve the effect of peripheral vision. It stuck up in a semi-circle on top though, and sloped steadily downwards to make the thing more streamlined. It looked a bit like a tadpole that had swallowed a digestive biscuit sideways. Or a sperm. Sperm and tadpoles looked the same anyway, and she'd seen more sperm in her life than she had tadpoles, that was for definite.

"All thanks to me," Oswin said proudly, "Honestly, it might be one of my favourite inventions. Well, I guess I didn't _invent _spaceships, but the FTL drive has some pretty extensive modifications to any FTL drive you'd find in even the _fanciest _battle frigates."

"Is it finished? How is it floating?" Clara asked, in awe by the fact it had no landing gears and was hovering with a circular hole in its underbelly.

"Oh, just magnetism," Oswin shrugged, "It's like an anti-gravity system, where you take the magnetic polarity and then reverse it and project it outwards, like a forcefield, and it alters depending on the acting gravity wherever you want to land. I'm trying to work on it altering automatically, but it's tricky without having it in a room where the artificial gravity can be changed. It'll mess up the car hydraulics too much to do it in here."

"It's a bit small," Clara commented, staring at it. There were large pieces of machinery scattered about on the ground, two partially-completed engines and a prototype gun, the to-be-installed FTL drive. The thing Oswin was interested in was the temporal matrix, though. _That _was her pride and joy.

"It's bigger on the inside," Oswin said, "Obviously. She _is _a Time Lord. Time she started taking her dues. Claiming her inheritance, or something."

"What's _that_?" Clara asked of the temporal matrix. Oswin dragged a fold-out chair over from a corner and sat it next to the temporal matrix, then retrieved another for Clara, "It looks like the TARDIS's central column. But smaller."

"Uh, it is," Oswin said, "More or less. Condensed time travel. Complicated. It's basically the... the flux capacitor, you know?" Clara stared at her blankly, "_Back to the Future_? You don't..? Oh, _right_, now I remember, I've never forced you to watch it like the other one, so I guess you haven't... it's the thing that makes time travel possible." It was a long, transparent cylinder with other transparent mechanisms within, about two feet high and ten inches wide.

For the next half hour or so, Clara just asked her questions about this and that, about what certain things did, about how long it would take to build. A few more weeks, Oswin had said, then she also said that since Jenny was ungrounded and had access to the TARDIS controls again, it wasn't a priority. Then Oswin got too engrossed in trying to decipher her own terrible handwriting on the paper blueprints lying around on the floor to say anything much, until Clara interrupted her again.

"Oswin?" she asked, speaking uncertainly, like she was going to say something risky.

"Mmmhmm?"

"...Do you... do you remember what it was like... to die?" she asked, and Oswin stopped fumbling with large sheets of paper and looked over. Clara stared at her almost pleadingly.

"Not really," she answered truthfully, "Well... no. I don't. I remember what it was like to get turned into a Dalek, though."

"I got put inside a Dalek, a few months ago," Clara said, "Wasn't very fun."

"Well, I was living inside my own head. Didn't have a clue I wasn't human anymore. Not that being human ever did me any good," she muttered.

"Who was it who brought you back?"

"Jack and Amy," she sighed, and then she dropped her sheets and came and sat back down on the fold-out chair, "For the sole purpose of tormenting you. Other You. It backfired, though. I'm not sure if they regret it. I _did _make them all guns and spacesuits." That was true, the spacesuits she had been working on had all been completed a few days ago, while they were all waiting around for Clara to wake up from her transformation.

"...What was it like to wake up here and be told you were dead?"

"It was horrible," Oswin admitted, "I would have much preferred if I was strapped in a chair with Jenny speaking to me, other than being dumped at a wedding."

"And they told you you had to leave everything behind?"

"No, I ran away. I already left it all behind. I'd rather be here than on Horizon," Oswin said, "We're in different circumstances, Clara."

"You're the only other dead person I know," Clara reminded her. She supposed that was true. They were kindred spirits.

"I'd rather be a vampire than a hologram, for the record. I never went out in the sun anyway. There's barely any sun at all on Horizon."

"Maybe I'll move there," she muttered, "Or to the dark side of the moon. Although, there are Nazis on the dark side of the moon, aren't there?"

"Sorry?"

"You know, Moon Nazis. And Moon Hitler. On the moon."

"You've met Moon Nazis..?" she asked incredulously. She'd never heard anything about there being any Nazis on the moon.

"_No_, but it's just one of those things that people think, isn't it? If vampires exist, why not Moon Nazis?"

"People also believe that if a black cat crosses your path it's bad luck," Oswin reminded her, then her eyes found something far behind Clara, "Or a ginger cat."

"Huh?" Clara frowned, glancing over and spying Jonesy prowling into the garage, but he wasn't close at all, "How did it get through the door?"

"How should I know?" Oswin said, lifting her feet up. Clara saw this and raised her eyebrows, "What? I don't like animals. Or anything that's alive. My boyfriend is technically undead as well, you know."

"It's just a cat."

"It's _evil_," Oswin told her. Jonesy began walking over.

"Smartest girl in the universe, scared of a cat?"

"Kill it, would you?"

"_Kill it_!?" Clara exclaimed.

"Yes, you know, kill it and drink its blood, or something!" Oswin said.

"I'm not going to kill it and drink its blood!"

"Why not!?"

"I don't want to!" she protested. Oswin might kick it if it came near her. It mewed at them.

"Go on, put those new fangs of yours to good use."

"Fangs!? What fangs!?" Clara exclaimed, instantly checking for extra teeth with her tongue and one of her fingers, her eyes widening when she realised that she really _did _have fangs, "Is that why my gums were so sore yesterday? I _grew a pair of fangs_!?"

"How else are you supposed to rip peoples' throats out and feast on their life's blood?" Oswin asked, "Eurgh, won't you get rid of it? Somehow?" Clara was about to say something else when they were interrupted by the cat hissing. It had stopped moving and arched its back and hissed right at Clara, and then it turned and ran out of the garage at full pelt.

"Animals hate me now. Great. My life just gets better and better."

"Afterlife, technically..." Oswin corrected quietly, putting her feet back on the floor now that the cat was gone. Clara scowled at her, "Sorry..."


	335. Last Will And Testament

**AN: I'm really trying to hurry to finish this storyline, by the way. There should be three chapters left. Then the first two chapters of the _next_ storyline I already have drafts of.**

_Alpha Clara_

_Last Will And Testament_

"She has a lot of shit, doesn't she?" Clara commented, walking around the flat of her Beta Self like an intruder, or a burglar. Mainly the latter. Jenny was stood in the corner looking displeased at anybody touching Beta Clara's things. She had been brought along solely for this purpose, both herself and Jenny, to pick out which things were worth taking and which could be left behind, in Beta Clara's flat. They were like bailiffs, or something, she had an unpaid debt and they were stealing her things as a result. It was late in the evening of November 21st. Some hours ago, Beta Clara had left with the Doctor, unknowingly to her death.

"Leave all the kitchen appliances and the TV," Adam Mitchell said, peering around, "Just stuff that can't be replaced." Jenny sighed and made a beeline straight for the bathroom. What sort of valuable stuff was in there, Clara wondered? She herself picked up one of the folding, plastic boxes they had brought and started looking around the living room for anything worthwhile.

"What do you think about photos?" Clara asked either Adam or Thirteen. Those two had been needed for the earlier stage in their plan. There were three stages. Get a house, get her stuff, and get new stuff from Ikea. They were in stage two, and she was very excited for stage three. Shopping with a millionaire was always fun.

"What do you mean?" Adam asked.

"Well, do you think you'd be upset to have old photos around when you can't take any new ones?" Clara wondered.

"No, it would be comforting," Thirteen said, so Clara shrugged and picked up old photos of her family (their family?) when her mother was still alive (she had the exact same photos on the TARDIS), and then another picture of Beta Clara and Danny Pink, and put those carefully in the box. There was no piano to try and bring in sight, and Clara couldn't see much in the living room that she thought Beta Clara would be too attached to.

Jenny came back out of the bathroom then with all of Beta Clara's shower supplies and toothpaste.

"We can just get more shampoo, you know," Adam said to her.

"Familiar smells go a long way," Jenny said to him, "She'll appreciate it. And the towels. Let me go get her towels..." Jenny was much better at this than the rest of them.

"God, isn't this great? It's like being back in the future," Thirteen said, sighing wistfully and smiling, commenting on her present company, it seemed, "The four of us. And Oswin, were she here."

"Am I still around in the future?" Jenny asked.

"Of course you are!" Thirteen said, aghast that her daughter would dare to think anything different, "You don't live on the TARDIS anymore, but you're always welcome. You should see the Christmas dinners, _god_, Clara hates them."

"Me? Hating Christmas dinner?" Clara asked, surprised.

"Well, what we do is, the four of us have Christmas dinner on the TARDIS on Christmas Day, and then Boxing Day we usually just rest, but after Boxing Day it's just me pestering you about doing Christmas visits. I won't say anything more, I'm sure you'll be having to live it soon enough." Clara wasn't complaining, that was more than she usually got out of Thirteen about the future.

"Pass me one of those boxes, I need it to put books in," Clara said to Adam, who was stood closest to the flat stack of boxes that had to be awkwardly assembled.

"Books are in the bedroom," Jenny told her, which she alreay knew, because she couldn't see any books in any other room she had been into. Still, she nodded thankfully and went off into Beta Clara's room, with its neatly made bed and vanity mirror, then the bookshelves along one of the walls. It was quite small, less than half the size of Alpha Clara's room on the TARDIS, which was also her bedroom at her father's house still.

"She seems to be cleaner than you," Thirteen said, and Clara jumped, not realising the Doctor had followed her in, "Honestly, you two seem so different to me." Thirteen shut the door, which just made Clara overly suspicious and take a few steps away. She'd been acting so weird for the last week, Clara didn't have a clue what she might do, even if she _did _seem to have come back to herself.

"In ways you can tell me?" Clara asked hopefully, watching Thirteen go and carefully take Beta Clara's sea shell collection from the dressing table and wrap the shells in bubblewrap she had brought from the other room. Good, Clara thought, those sea shells were very important to her, both of her.

"You're lazy and messy. I'm the opposite," Thirteen answered, and that was all she would say. It seemed true enough, she was already quite lazy and messy, and relatively surprised that Beta Clara had bothered to make her bed. Maybe she kept it made in case Jenny showed up on a whim. Or in case she went on the pull and dragged somebody home.

She had not had a chance to speak to the Alpha Twelfth Doctor without eavesdroppers for a full week. There was always either people there, or Thirteen was avoiding her. Well, not just _her_, Thirteen had spent a lot of time in the past week avoiding _everybody_ if she could, save for her daughter, who'd been acting more reclusive than Clara had ever known her to. Like mother like daughter, she supposed, both of them becoming asocial at the same time. She hadn't so much as had the opportunity to get the truth out of her about why she had been acting so strangely four days ago, when they'd been in Whitby.

"What do you want?" Clara asked guardedly, watching Thirteen wrap up a particularly large limpet shell she remembered finding on the beach maybe ten years ago now. Twelve years for Beta Her.

"Duh, to talk to you, obviously," she said, "Do you think we should take her sheets? Because part of me thinks she would like the familiarity, then another part of me thinks she would like a fresh start." (**Chapter Ref. 750**)

"Best take them to be safe, but we'll put them in a bin bag, or something. That duvet has more togs than I've ever seen, it will _so _not fit in one of these boxes," Clara said, putting the box down on the bed and going over to the bookshelf. She thought they had best take all of them. "Talk to me about what?"

"Well, because two weeks ago we were in that museum, and you made me promise to tell you when that 'complicated thing,'" she did air quotation marks, "happened. And I said, it's all weird so don't blame me if I'm a few days late."

"Wait, wait, wait, wait - _this _was the complicated thing? This vampire stuff?"

"Well, _yeah_, it sort of involves you vaguely, and it's pretty complicated. All this running around stealing money to commission houses to be built was very tricky," Thirteen said, Clara pulling down half a shelf of Victorian literature to put in the box. They were definitely going to need more than one box for all of these books.

"Why were you being weird the other day?"

"Huh?"

"You spent more time that day holding my hand and clinging on to me than you spent _not _doing that," Clara said, "Everybody noticed."

"Because I didn't know any details of what was going to happen. I knew that Beta Clara was going to get bitten and turned into a vampire, it's not the sort of thing you forget, but I didn't know... precise circumstances. Nobody ever told me. It _really _used to get on my nerves, too, because I knew that someone could give me specifics," she sighed, "I thought it was going to happen at any minute, and I knew that nobody could do anything to help her."

"I thought you were gonna be leaving that day," Clara admitted.

"Leaving? No way! Not yet. I mean, when I do, I'll be sad to go, but I'm going back home to you. One day, you'll be grateful for me leaving the past to come back to the future, Clara," she said, smiling a little. Clara supposed that was true. She hadn't really thought about that, about the fact that one day she would be alone with no spouse at all, pining after Thirteen to come home. Even when Thirteen eventually left her now, she would still have Eleven, whom she loved dearly regardless of the presence of her wife.

"Well, maybe you should be making up for that lost time _now_?" Clara asked wryly. She was only joking, though.

"Excuse me?" Thirteen asked.

"There's a nicely made bed right there," Clara said, motioning to Beta Clara's bed. Thirteen raised her eyebrows at her and crossed her arms.

"I am _not _going to do it in a bed where my own daughter has also done it," Thirteen said firmly, "That would be way too weird. _And _done it with _my wife_."

"I thought you weren't mad about that..?"

"Oh, I'm not, it's just surreal," she confessed. Clara went back to the bookshelf just as Jenny opened the door and stood staring at her mother for some moments, "Uh, was there something you wanted?"

"I remember something you said to me," Jenny said, narrowing her eyes at the Doctor, "Three weeks ago. Can I see those glasses you have? You know? The broken glasses that filter sunlight you said you borrowed from a vampire?"

"Wait, you have _what_? Vampire glasses!?" Clara exclaimed.

"What are 'vampire glasses?'" Adam Mitchell asked, coming and loitering behind Jenny.

"Oh my god, _fine_," Thirteen said begrudgingly, and she dug a hand in the transdimensional pockets of her black jacket and dragged out a pair of glasses, "You see these? None of you can tell Oswin that they exist. _She's_ the one who invents them. If you tell her, it'll create a paradox. Understand? I'm looking at you, Adam Mitchell."

"Alright, fine, I won't tell her about the broken sunglasses," Adam muttered, shaking his head and walking off.

"Better not," Thirteen called after him. Jenny took the sunglasses while she was distracted to examine them, "Well I don't know what _you _want with them, you don't need UV rays filtering." Regardless, Jenny put them on. They made her cybernetic eyes almost seem to glow, almost as blue as Nios' eyes.

"I might get some glasses. You know, fake ones, like the lot of you have to make yourselves look clever," Jenny said.

"Why would anyone _want _glasses voluntarily?" Clara asked, sorting out Beta Clara's collection of beatnik literature and poetry to put in the box. It seemed that everything was ordered chronologically, rather than alphabetically.

"To make your sister fancy them more," Adam answered from other room. Thirteen took the glasses back of Jenny.

"I _am _meant to be getting those fixed, remember? I just have to wait until Oswin invents the first pair, so that I don't mess anything up," she said, putting them away again.

"Well. You two just make sure you don't forget to pick up her dildo collection," Jenny said, smiling politely.

"Her _what_?" Adam reappeared at the doorway, and then to Clara he said, "You have a _dildo collection_?"

"I suppose it isn't really a collection," Jenny said, kneeling down on the floor next to Clara and dragging a cardboard box out from under the bed, "Just... a very large quantity." The cardboard box really was full of sex toys.

"Clara, are you _sure _you're not a nymphomaniac?" Adam asked her concernedly.

"Uh..." Clara couldn't find the words. They weren't even _her _dildos, a lot of them were probably bought _after _the Dimension Crash. And _she _hadn't had an awful lot of ability or need to go buying fake penises.

"Her sex life is nobody's concern except whoever she's sleeping with's and her own," Thirteen said firmly, "Now, let's not judge Beta Clara for wanting to have some fun, okay?"

"I'm going to pretend I never saw those..." Adam muttered, leaving the room.

"...I don't think I'm a sex addict... am I?" Clara asked Thirteen unsurely.

"Of course you're not, sweetheart," Thirteen assured her, though Clara couldn't shake the feeling that she was lying, "Now, go back to the books, and I'll go and get a bin bag for the duvet."


	336. Love Will Have Its Sacrifices

**AN: So I was thinking today and yesterday that I'm really in the mood for another spin-off, like _The Lost Echosodes _was back in the summer of 2014, and I was thinking I might do a prequel about Jenny and what she did in her 207 years, with maybe a finite number of storylines done over long chapters (circa 20k words). I just think she's a really interesting character I've done like, nothing at all with until just recently, and I'm trying to give her a good bit of backstory and history, so it might be a nice thing to start in the New Year. Thoughts?**

_Jenny_

_Love Will Have Its Sacrifices_

When she stepped into the TARDIS garage, like Oswin had told her to do once she got back, carrying a wrapped and hot portion of fish and chips, she heard voices. She paused for a moment to see if it was anybody apart from just Oswin and Beta Clara (Alpha Clara gone back into the company of her husband now they had returned, Adam Mitchell sorting out shopping with her mother), but it didn't sound like it was. Past Adam Mitchell's batmobile and his DeLorean she walked, along with some other random sports cars and a dreadful red Ford she knew was Alpha Clara's, until she passed her old junkyard-ready spaceship to find Beta Clara and Oswin sitting down on folding chairs with the new ship's temporal matrix between them. It was about seven in the evening.

"Jenny!" Oswin called as soon as she spotted her, "I need your sonic. You did get it back, didn't you? When he ungrounded you last week?"

"Who're the fish and chips for?" Beta Clara asked. Jenny assumed that she could smell them.

"For you," Jenny said, "Apparently you were hungry four hours ago? Adam paid. Obviously. I don't have any money." Jenny passed her the paper-wrapped food, which Oswin turned her nose up at, and then drew she her sonic screwdriver out of her jacket pocket and passed it to her. She liked having her sonic back. And not being grounded.

"See, I've almost finished the temporal matrix," Oswin said, sonicking it, though Jenny didn't know what she was doing to it. Beta Clara was ravenously eating a huge, battered cod fillet with her fingers, a sports bottle presumably full of blood sitting on the floor by her feet. In the dull, silver hull of the spaceship, she didn't have a reflection. She was an empty chair, "It's a work of genius, you know. Honestly."

"I believe you," she said. Truthfully, she knew that she herself could quite easily design and assemble a spaceship, but Oswin was enjoying herself quite a bit with this task, and she would hate for Oswin not to have things to do. She might get dangerous if she got too bored.

"Is that your screwdriver, then?" Beta Clara asked her. Her screwdriver was sleek and silver and the light on it was bright pink.

"Yeah, haven't you seen it before?" Jenny asked.

"I don't think so."

Jenny thought for a few moments, "No, I'm sure you must have. That time on the _Caelestis_, when the android tried to kill us, I swear I threw it at Old Twelvey's head."

"You did," Oswin said.

"Well, that was like, almost a year ago," Clara said.

"Five weeks," Oswin told her, then she made a noise that definitely had origins of elation and was a bit like a squeal when the temporal matrix suddenly lit up bright, light blue, "Look at it! Look at it! I did it! _I_ invented time travel!"

"I'm pretty sure time travel has already been invented," Clara said. Jenny went and leant on the back of Beta Clara's chair. Oswin was not dissuaded from her joy at all by Clara's negativity.

"These are _my _theories and _my _technologies!" the thing hummed in the same deep way the TARDIS did, even if it was a bit sleeker and more ethereal looking than the central column was right then, though that was probably more to do with her father's design choices. She wondered what Thirteen's console room looked like. "It just needs to be installed. Goes right in the middle of the control console, right between the seats in the cockpit. Where's my boyfriend?"

"Unpacking food with my mother," Jenny said, and Oswin got out her phone to text. Presumably to text Adam and tell him to come and see what she had invented.

"I'm very excited to see this ship when it's finished, you know," Clara said, mainly to Jenny, because Oswin was too excited to pay attention.

"Oh, me too," she said, then she sighed, "You have to come with me."

"I _what_? What do you mean?" Clara turned around in her seat and Jenny moved so that she wasn't leaning on it.

"I mean that I have something to show you," Jenny said, "Something you'll like. I hope."

"I, um... okay?" Clara said, standing up, "Would you carry this, then?" she passed Jenny the black sports bottle with blood in it. Jenny took it and then went and got her sonic screwdriver back from Oswin.

"Bye, Clara!" Oswin called happily as Clara followed Jenny out of the hanger.

"What is it, then?" Clara asked her, still eating fish and chips with her fingers, not complaining at all about the lack of cutlery. She saw Jenny watching her do this, "Look, I can wash my hands free of grease later."

"I didn't say anything," Jenny said quickly, "You eat however you like."

"What do you want?"

Jenny motioned for Clara to follow her the opposite way to the Bedroom Circle and Nerve Centre, taking the long way around past the swimming pool and the library to get to the console room of the TARDIS through one of the other doors.

"Adam had an idea of a compromise for you," Jenny said, "It's sort of like... witness protection."

"_Witness protection_?"

"Well, yeah. Today he needed my mother's help to get you a house. And he really went to a lot of trouble with it, too, he brought Alpha You along to draw up plans-"

"Wait, Adam Mitchell _built me a house_?"

"Yeah," Jenny said, "Don't worry, he has a personal fortune of about £500,000,000, we finally got out of him. He commissioned it to be built in the 1990s, and it's sat derelict on the moors for over twenty years with no occupants."

"Moors? What moors? Where's this house?"

"West Yorkshire. Haworth. Alpha Clara said if you had to live anywhere that was rural and not a big city, it would be Haworth. Something to do with some book, I don't-"

"_Wuthering Heights_," Clara answered, "That book. My favourite book." She followed Jenny into the console room now and towards the doors. They were already landed there, so Jenny didn't need to pilot them anywhere else. They could walk straight out into the night. It was a very picturesque house, alone on a hill, fully furnished by them earlier. There was a neat brick wall around the garden and a gravel path leading up to door. "This is like that bit at the end of _Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy_ where they build him a replica of his house on the other Earth."

"You're not angry, are you?"

"About what? You're all trying so hard to be nice to me, it's really odd," she said.

"About being uprooted."

"Isn't it really the Doctor's fault?" Clara said, just behind Jenny as she opened the door.

"Maybe it's _your _fault for sacrificing yourself for him. Can you still not remember?"

"Not really," she sighed. Jenny held the door open and let Clara walk in and look around. Her dream house, a lonesome cottage on the edge of the moors overlooking the village of Haworth below, suddenly brought to life for her and given to her by the charity of Adam Mitchell.

"I seriously think Adam Mitchell might be the perfect man, or something," Jenny said, watching Clara ardently as Clara stared around. Staircase on the right in front of the door going to the second floor, living room on the left, kitchen at the back.

"It's sort of like the Maitlands' house, but smaller," Clara commented. The carpets downstairs were beige and very soft and Jenny would like to take her shoes off, except she doubted she would be staying, "Is that my welcome mat? From my flat?" she asked as Jenny closed the door on the night.

"Yeah, we went and got most of your stuff," Jenny explained, "All of your photos, your books..."

"Did you get my seashells?" Clara went into the living room where there was one long sofa and two arm chairs. The sofa was new, because after Clara's remarks weeks ago about not knowing how many times she had shagged on _her_ sofa, Jenny thought she deserved a new one. And new chairs. The kitchen furniture was mostly new, as well. So was the ridiculously huge television.

"Yeah. They're in a box in the cellar, so are most of your... I don't know, treasured possessions? So you can choose where to put them. All safely bubblewrapped up." Jenny still didn't know the importance of those seashells. Clara went into the kitchen and put her fish and chips down on the table.

"What about my clothes?" she asked, and Jenny stopped walking. Sensing her unease, Clara looked over.

"Well, um... they were irretrievable. Just completely impossible for us to bring here, honestly," Jenny said. Clara narrowed her eyes. She had her hand on the fridge door, about to open it to examine its contents.

"Did you throw away my clothes?"

"No, they were... lost..."

"Who lost them?"

"The God of Good Dress Sense, probably..." Jenny muttered.

"Jenny! I can't believe you would throw out my clothes!" Clara protested hysterically, "Do you know how much money I spent on those clothes!?"

"However much money it was, it was a waste. And we kept the nice ones! There just weren't a lot of nice ones! And for the record, we were very limited with how many boxes we had."

"What about my shoes?"

"Alpha Clara picked thirty pairs to bring," Jenny said.

"Only thirty!?"

"Nobody else has almost four-hundred pairs of shoes, Clara! And _we _wanted it to be ten, she argued very adamantly to get that extra twenty," Jenny pointed out, "And your important clothes we kept."

"What, exactly, constitutes 'important clothes'?" Clara asked.

"Your underwear and lingerie," Jenny said.

"Oh, right, I'll just wear a lace bra down to the shops, will I?"

"I wouldn't complain," she shrugged, "You do _have _clothes, we got clothes. All blacks and greys."

"Wonderful," she said dryly, "At least I'll always be prepared for a funeral. A funeral for a bloody stripper... speaking of... there's no blood in this fridge..."

"No, it's downstairs. Your bedroom is in the cellar, you see. We thought it would be better because there would be less danger of sunlight getting in. I mean, it's all properly carpeted and everything. There's a bathroom down there and a _massive _fridge full of blood cannisters. Just in case, you know, there's... someone over and they see in the fridge there's loads of blood... it'd be a bit weird," Jenny said uneasily.

"...Who would I have over?"

"Well, I don't know, anybody."

"Apart from you, there isn't anybody I would want over." There was silence for a few moments. That was the thing, the 'arrangement' of theirs, they hadn't spoken about it at all. If it was ending, continuing, whatever, Jenny didn't know. And she didn't ask. "What's upstairs, then?"

"Second bathroom. Guest room. Library," Jenny said, putting the bottle of blood she had forgotten she'd been carrying down on the coffee table fo Clara.

"_Library_?"

"Yeah. It has a lot of shelves, but you know, you're immortal, I'm sure you'll have time to fill them up," Jenny said, "Also, there's a pretty massive supply of candles and matches in the coffee table." The coffee table was one of those ones where the lid came up and allowed for storage space within. "In case the lights are too bright. And all the curtains are black and light cancelling, and the windows are tinted on the inside, so to us in here the outside looks dark, but other people outside won't notice."

"Anything else you have to tell me?"

"Um, yeah... you remember I said it was like witness protection..?"

"Yes..?"

"You... _we_... might have had to change your name. Just your surname, though," she added quickly.

"Changed it? Changed it to what?" she asked carefully. Alpha Clara, who had orchestrated this, had said she never liked the name 'Oswald' anyway.

"Dalloway."

"Oh, ha ha. Very funny. Did Other Me tell you to say that?" she asked coldly.

"Yeah. But she didn't explain what it meant," Jenny said, "She just said it was funny, and then my mother said not to bother with it because it's really not."

"She's right, it's not, just some weird Virginia Woolf joke, doesn't matter," Clara sighed, "What did you _really _change it to?"

"Cullen."

"_Jenny_..."

"Alright, fine, Ravenwood," Jenny answered, "Which I think is a great name, for the record."

"My mother's maiden name," Clara said quietly. Clara's mother was always a sore subject. Jenny hadn't known why Alpha Clara had been so insistent on changing her name to that, she hadn't known what it meant because Clara had refused to explain that, too.

"...Also, um, Adam's the landlord, you're technically renting, and Alpha Clara went out and got you a job in a bookshop down in the village," Jenny said, trying to dispel the strange mood of the room, but failing, "So if anything breaks, just call Adam, it's his job to fix it. And there's no paperwork, that's all... sorted..." she took a few steps towards the door.

"Where are you going?"

"Oh, I was just gonna go," Jenny said, "Boiler's upstairs, keys are by the door. We got the bike for you, by the way, it's in the garage."

"Go?"

"Well, yeah, I mean... spaceship to build and... stuff..."

"Oh, right."

"This is the Alphaverse you're in, by the way. If you try to visit anybody, they won't know who you are," she added, taking more steps towards the front door, "You start on Wednesday, December 2nd, at four in the afternoon. It's November 29th now, Sunday, seven o'clock," she was opening the door, and starting to step out, Clara staring after her, "Just call if you want anything."

"And what if I want you?" she asked, quite seriously, and Jenny was completely taken aback.

"Well, I... I... spaceship and stuff... I mean, I should really get back to it, I don't want her to start assembling the interior without me, so-"

"Jenny," Clara cut her off as she made excuses for leaving.

"Yep?" she asked awkwardly, halfway out of the door, holding the handle waiting to close it.

"...Nothing. Nothing. Bye, I guess..." she said.

"Goodnight," she said, and then she left quickly, shutting the door, rushing back to the TARDIS before Clara had a chance to open it and start trying to speak to her again, flying off.


	337. Another Girl Another Planet VIII

_DAY ONE-HUNDRED AND SIXTEEN_

_Jenny_

_Another Girl Another Planet VIII_

At one o'clock in the morning, six hours after she had left the first time, Jenny Harkness was pacing back and forth furiously outside of Beta Clara's new house. It was freezing cold and November, and she was trying to write some sort of speech in her head and hastily memorise it. She breathed into her hands, not wearing any gloves, or a hat, or a scarf, getting colder and colder as the minutes went by and she didn't dare knock on the door of Clara's home. The TARDIS was off in flight somewhere because she didn't want to risk even the tiniest possibility of being eavesdropped on, or followed, and since she still didn't have her own ship, she had no way to flee again should the necessity or overwhelming desire to escape emerge.

Every time Jenny was about to knock on the door she would unclench her fist and step back down, shuffling around some more like a sleepwalker to try and thing of what she should say, or to involve herself in the great mystery of why she was so nervous all of a sudden when she was normally so cool and collected around people. But now she was being pathetic and acting like her father, of all people, running off and hiding. As she paced and paced and paced and muttered and muttered and muttered to herself, she was more and more reminded of the fact she hadn't managed to go to sleep for nine whole days.

She couldn't tell if Clara opening the door a few moments later was a stroke of luck or the most mortifying thing that could possibly have happened to her, but happen it did, and for a moment Clara stared at her with confused curiosity, and Jenny sort of smiled and wished she could run away again and never come back.

"Hi," she said, forcing a smile.

"What are you doing? Have you been out here long?" Clara asked concernedly, coming down the two steps up to the door to stand in front of her in the cold late-autumn evening.

"I was just… I remembered that…" she stood awkwardly and rubbed the back of her neck with the freezing, metal fingers of her robot hand. Then she had a stroke of genius, "I remembered that I never gave you Adam Mitchell's phone number, what with him being your landlord and everything." That was true, and it was a very good excuse, she thought.

"Oh, right," Clara said, sounding disappointed. Then Jenny heard voices from within the house, and not just voices, loud swearing.

"Do you have somebody over..?"

"What?" Clara was startled, glancing behind her into the house, then she realised and laughed a little, "No, it's the telly, _Kitchen Nightmares_ is always on More 4 at this time of night. I'll go pause it – do you want a cup of tea? Coffee?" Clara asked, inviting her in and going up the steps back into the house. Jenny followed and wiped her feet on the mat, closing the door behind her, enveloped in the warmth from inside. Her house was surprisingly warm, considering she was a vampire who could get by quite easily with the low temperatures.

"How come it's so warm?" she asked, going into the living room as Clara went to fill the kettle by the sink. Everything she did, Jenny watched.

"The warmer it is, the less dead I feel," Clara answered morbidly.

"Oh, how pleasant," said Jenny.

"I thought you said earlier that you were going to sleep tonight? That you haven't slept for a week, or something?" Clara asked, putting the kettle on to boil. For a joke, Other Her had gotten a large collection of mugs that looked like skulls and put them in one of the cupboards. These happened to be the only mugs Clara had.

"Nine days," she corrected, "I'm so sorry about those mugs, I tried to stop her from getting them."

"Who? I thought it might have been you."

"_Me_? My sense of humour isn't _that_ dark," Jenny said, "No, it was Alpha You, she did it. She also tried to get you an actual coffin, then she tried to convince Adam to buy a sofa that looked exactly like a coffin, and she also wanted black candles. I'll get you some more mugs, some normal mugs. Adam and Oswin brought about fifty mugs back with them from the nuclear apocalypse last week, for some reason. We brought your 'antique candelabra,' back as well, by the way. The one you stole."

"Oh, thank god, Jane Austen would turn in her grave at the thought of anybody apart from me having that candelabra."

"Wait, it was _Jane Austen_ you stole that thing from?" Jenny questioned, and Clara shrugged.

"I wanted a token of our time together, and the Doctor told me I couldn't bring her to the future with me," Clara answered. It was always Jane Austen with her. Jane Austen this, Jane Austen that. Jenny had never met Jane Austen, but she was really starting to dislike her for that sole reason, "What's his number, then?"

"Whose number?"

"Adam Mitchell's."

"…_Oh_, right," Jenny had forgotten her ruse, "Number. I'll text you it."

"Couldn't you have texted me it from the TARDIS?" Clara asked, "You're making me think you have an ulterior motive for coming here."

"Ulterior motive? Me? I'm as honest as they come," Jenny lied. She didn't think Clara believed her, though. It took one dishonest liar to spot another.

"Then why don't you 'honestly' tell me what you're really doing at my house at one in the morning, when you're supposed to be sleeping?"

"I couldn't sleep."

"How come?" Clara asked, pouring the water from the kettle as it clicked off with steam condensing into damn moisture on the bottom of the kitchen wall units. They were made of mahogany, and Jenny was rather fond of them. More fond of them than the skull mugs.

"I was thinking about you," Jenny admitted.

"Well don't I feel special," Clara said, pouring the milk next. Then she went and dumped eight heaped spoonfuls of sugar in the mug Jenny now presumed was hers, since Clara didn't have eight sugars. Eight sugars would rot her new fangs.

"I came to apologise for running off earlier," Jenny said, "I shouldn't have, I should have stayed and spoken to you about all this… _wanting me_ business. I'm following dreadfully in my father's footsteps by flying away like that."

"It was a _bit_ disconcerting, I suppose," Clara said, crossing her arms and leaning on the side of the sink, with her back to it. Jenny was still standing in the living room, waiting to see what Clara said next, because it seemed like she was about to speak. Then Gordon Ramsay swore very loudly on the TV again next to Jenny, and she jumped, and Clara laughed. "Do you want to go for a walk?"

"A walk?" Jenny asked.

"Yeah."

"I don't know, the last time we went out somewhere together, you got bitten by a vampire," Jenny said.

"Lightning never strikes the same place twice," Clara said with a shrug, "I can't exactly become a _double_ vampire, now, can I?"

"I suppose not…" Jenny said stiffly. It was cold outside, was her only issue.

Clara won. Five minutes later, she had been made to leave her warm tea (and she'd really been looking forward to that tea) behind and had borrowed a pair of gloves and a hat from Clara, who got cold much slower than Jenny did, and Clara was locking the door and following her down the path and out of the garden. Nobody else was around, it was completely quiet, barely any lights coming from the village.

"You're not gonna kill me, are you? And dump my body on the moors?" Jenny asked suspiciously.

"No I won't kill you!" Clara exclaimed, "I just… I was bored. I didn't want to stay indoors, and since I can't go out in the day, the only time I can go out is at night. I always go for walks when I'm stressed, anyway," she said, crossing her arms tightly.

"Stressed? Why are you stressed?"

"Because I'm dead, that's why," Clara said quietly, "I'm dead, and I don't have anything left that I used to."

"You've still got me," Jenny said kindly, smiling at her.

"Have I, though?" Clara asked seriously, and Jenny faltered.

"Of course you do," she said stiffly.

"Because you ran away earlier when I tried to talk to you about us," Clara pointed out.

"Yes. I did. But I came back!" she said, "I'm here now, aren't I? Here to… talk."

"Oh, you are?" Clara asked, half with sarcasm because Jenny hadn't said anything about talking about the two of them at all yet, and half with hope.

"I, um… I just came to tell you that I…" and she trailed off and was unable to finish her sentence, and then she sped up a little so that Clara was slightly behind her.

"Well don't run off again," Clara called after her.

"I'm not running off! I'm… speed-walking off…" she said, "Look, I'm really bad at this."

"Bad at what?" Clara asked as they went up a hill.

"At… you know… speaking…"

"Where's all your confidence gone?" Clara asked wryly, still trying to make light of the situation, maybe to make her feel better and get on with the whole thing. Jenny got the feeling that as soon as she _did_ get on with the whole thing, she would be allowed back inside. And _that_ was incentive.

"It's been replaced by feelings for you," Jenny said, walking faster again.

"Ooh, _feelings_, we're finally getting somewhere," Clara said, keeping up easily.

"You know," Jenny said, stopping, and Clara almost walked into her, "You _clearly_ have something to say as well, Clara."

"Me? I do not," Clara lied. Jenny was getting good at telling when Clara was lying.

"Yes you do. Or, at least, you think you know what _I'm_ gonna say."

"I do know what you're gonna say."

"Maybe you shouldn't be so sure. Maybe you should tell me what you think I'm gonna say, and we can compare notes."

"Or _you_ could say whatever it is first," Clara said, level with Jenny because she was the tiniest bit lower on the hill they were stood on, still with her arms crossed, Jenny with a hand on her hip. They were at a stalemate.

"No, I think _you_ should."

"I can't. I just died recently, I'm very emotionally traumatised, maybe I don't know what I'm saying and I'm just seeing what I want to see," Clara said, stepping closer.

"And what is it that you want to see then?" Jenny challenged.

"I couldn't possibly say."

"Well _I_ haven't slept for nine days, maybe I'm just hallucinating everything? Maybe you're not even here?" Jenny asked, leaning right towards her and raising her eyebrows. Clara paused for a moment, about to speak, her eyes glancing over Jenny's lips as her face hovered in the moonlight a few inches away. "Well?" she prompted. With unnatural speed, Clara had both of her hands on her face and was pressing her mouth to Jenny's in a kiss that felt visceral, and frantic. Clara was just as cold as the air around them both, but she didn't care for those moments as she kissed back before she even knew what she was doing.

Clara let her go but stayed dangerously close, her left hand on Jenny's cheek, moving her right hand to take Jenny's left.

"Jenny," she said quietly, "I think things would be a lot easier for us both if you would just tell me that you're in love with me, like I know you are, because I can smell it."

"Wait, _what_? You can _smell_ love?" Jenny exclaimed, "How do you know it's love and not just fear that you're going to bite me and make me a vampire at any second?"

"I'm not going to bite you!" Clara protested, stepping back, dropping her hand from Jenny's face, but Jenny wouldn't relinquish her other hand when she tried to move it away, "And yes, I can smell it, even on a Time Lord, I know what it smells like. It's in your sweat, and you're sweating a lot, aren't you cold?"

"Clara, I'm _freezing_," she said, "And what do you mean, I'm in love with you? You saying that just implies that _you're_ in love with _me_. You've given the game away."

"Obviously I am, you idiot."

"What!? Since when!? I had no idea about that! I had no idea about any of this! Are you _sure_ that you're right?"

"Did you slay that vampire that bit me?" Clara asked.

"Yes, but what's that to do with anything?"

"I thought you hated killing?"

"Well, I don't _like_ it, but if it's necessary then I don't exactly see the problem," Jenny said, and Clara didn't seem to agree with that.

"There's always a choice."

"Well, in that case there wasn't – look, what are you asking me about vampires for?"

"I was gonna be like, look, you hate killing, and then you avenged me without even thinking about it, which equals love," Clara said.

"Oh, yeah. That's a good point," Jenny said, thinking, "I wasn't going to tell you that."

"Wait, _what_? What were you going to tell me?"

"That I _like_-like you and we should go out with each other – I didn't have a clue about any of this stuff, but… hold on, just let me think, it's been a while since I fell for anybody…" she crossed one of her arms, the other one still holding Clara's hand and not letting go, "I guess it makes sense. Why else would I cry for like, two straight hours, when you yelled at me and started ignoring me the other day?"

"_You cried for two hours?_ Because of _me_!?"

"Well, yeah, I mean, probably because I'm in love with you and stuff. I imagine that if someone I was secretly in love with started shouting at me and ignoring at me for something I didn't even have anything to do with, crying for hours is exactly the way I might react," Jenny said.

"This is the most confusing declaration of love I've ever experienced."

"Well, I mean, it's just love, you know. It's no big deal."

"_What?_"

"I've never met a species who take the word 'love' as seriously as humans do. A species who go around trying to undermine each other with things like _true_ love, or love _at first sight_, or _first_ love, or all of these ridiculous categories to describe a purely biological process."

"Ever the romantic," Clara muttered sarcastically.

"What I mean is," Jenny said, taking her other hand, "Falling in love with someone is the easiest thing in the universe. It requires absolutely no effort, it just happens. Sometimes you don't even notice, apparently."

"I feel like I've coerced you now, because you had no idea," Clara said, "How do I know you're not just confused because you haven't slept for over a week?"

"In all honesty, I could be confused," she admitted, "I should probably sleep."

"…Do you want to go out with me? As in date? Be with?"

"Of course I do," she said, preoccupied with still trying to figure out if she was _really_ in love with Clara or if she was just imagining it completely. Clara kissed her again, and she pulled away in order to say, "Who else are you going to go out with? Everybody else you'll either kill or outlive."

"That's not true, I could always go out with your mother," Clara said, "What do you mean, it's 'been a while' since you 'fell for anybody?'"

"Oh, forty years," she said, and Clara stared at her in shock, "I don't count Jack. We slept together like, one time, and then a relationship was forced onto us by all the others we were living with. It was basically just sex, and _sex_ I'm good at. _Feelings_ I'm not good at. Emotions, and just… Eurgh…"

"You're exactly like your father."

"Except I promise I'll never forget you ever existed," she said softly. Clara didn't speak for a few moments. "See? I told you you've still got me. I'm right here."

"You know where I'd rather you were?"

"Where?"

"In my bed. With me. I mean, new house, it needs breaking in, doesn't it?" Clara said, "Then you can go to sleep and think about your feelings some more."

"I've been thinking about my feelings for the last six hours," Jenny grumbled as Clara pulled her back towards the house.

"I'm not living with you, by the way. This doesn't change anything."

"Yeah, well, I'm not living with _you_, either," Jenny countered, "I don't want you to move in, it would be dreadful with everybody else – what are you doing?" Clara had dropped her hand and stooped to the ground to pick something up.

"Just getting something," she said, holding it up.

"A rock. Well done. Put it back now, someone might have pissed on it," Jenny said.

"Ew," Clara muttered, but she didn't put the rock down.

"Do you mind explaining to me why you just picked a rock up from the ground? I feel like I have a right to know these things now that I'm your _girlfriend_, and stuff."

"Ooh, _girlfriend_, I haven't had a _girl_friend for years."

"Me either," Jenny said, "What's with the pebble?"

"You know my seashells?" Clara asked, turning around, "The ones that Other Me was so insistent be wrapped up carefully and brought here? That aren't valuable to anybody but me?" Jenny nodded, "They all mean something, they're all… souvenirs, sort of. Of moments when I would go walking on the beach, and pick one up. Except I can't exactly go to the beach now, can I?"

"I could call the TARDIS down and go to an alien beach and get you a _massive_ seashell, if you want?" she suggested, and Clara laughed.

"No, it's just that this is a moment I want to remember."

"What if we fall out and end really badly, though?" Jenny questioned. Clara sighed.

"Not all of the seashells are happy moments, Jenny," she said, "Maybe I'll tell you what they all mean, one day. But not tonight." Jenny leant in and kissed her again for a few seconds, before she broke away, "Wait, isn't it weird to kiss somebody who has fangs?"

"…I've kissed people with fangs before, Clara, I'm not exactly a human-exclusive person, what with me being an alien in the first place," Jenny said.

"Yeah, but, are you not worried I might accidentally bite you and make you a vampire?"

"No..? Why? Do you want to bite me?"

"Not really. You don't smell _that_ enticing," Clara said, and Jenny stared at her without saying anything, and she gasped, "I mean – not in a bad way! You smell totally enticing! Even more enticing than usual now I have these enhanced senses and can smell love, and stuff! Just not the sort of enticing that means I want to penetrate your insides!" she exclaimed, flustered, and Jenny still didn't say anything, just kept looking at her, "Not that I don't _want_ to penetrate your insides, I so _do_ want to penetrate them. Just not in an aggressive or murderous way. Or with my teeth." Jenny still stayed silent. "…Unless you want me to-"

"Stop talking, Clara."

**AN: Well _that_ concludes this shockingly long vampire storyline. Please refer to the Author's Note of Chatper 733, which says, "Isn't it strange to think that if that one leaf had never blown into that guy's face that one time, there wouldn't be any queer vampire-alien-shit?" Here I am being a forward planner. Anyway, the next storyline is the one set in the future where Clarteen is canon, so if you guys were sick of the lesbians, I've got terrible news for you, because there are more lesbians coming up. Also, guys, that Jenny fic, good idea bad idea? Only one of you responded to the last chapter and I really want to know if it will have an actual audience or what.**


	338. American Idiot

_DAY NINE-THOUSAND FOUR-HUNDRED AND NINETY-EIGHT_

_Alpha Clara_

_American Idiot_

"Wake up, wake up, _wake uuuup_!" someone bellowed, and immediately she found her face soaked with freezing cold spray and was shaken awake by whoever was speaking jumping up and down on the bed next to her, "C'mon, Clara, it's our wedding anniversary!" More cold was shot at her and she flailed uselessly and toppled out of bed onto the floor, and heard cackles behind her from the bed as she kept getting squirted at, trying to scramble to her feet and pulling the lamp onto the floor where it shattered as she did.

Then she was faced with the Doctor, all five feet and two inches of her, standing on the bed with a crooked grin and bright eyes with a vibrantly coloured, orange, blue and white water gun. For a moment it was high noon, they stood opposite each other, Thirteen on the mattress, Clara on the carpet, her face and hair and back dripping wet from the water gun. The Doctor just beamed while Clara grimaced, in the foulest of tempers.

"You're gonna regret that," Clara warned. Instead of saying something back in retaliation, Thirteen just shot a stream of cold water straight into Clara's face and chortled like a child, "Get back here!" Clara shouted, trying to drag the duvet out from beneath her wife's feet. When the Doctor jumped off the other side Clara nearly stumbled, wrenching half their sheets onto the floor, struggling to clamber over the bed after her in pursuit around the circular room. It was like a game of cat and mouse, and Clara was too tired, angry and confused to remember she had an array of superpowers at her disposal as Thirteen just kept shooting at her with the stupid toy.

"You can't even catch me!"

"Well maybe if you stopped moving!"

"What would be the fun in that!?"

Clara growled like some savage creature and made a grab for Thirteen, but she got sprayed right in the eyes and staggered back as Thirteen just laughed, which was when something clicked in Clara Oswald and in a blur of darkly coloured smoke she tackled Thirteen from behind, catching her off-guard by teleporting and managing to wrap one arm around her and keep her restrained, while with her other arm she desperately tried to nab the water gun.

"You have no right to put your hands on me!" Thirteen protested, trying to struggle, but Clara's arm was tightly around her middle and clenched still.

"Sweetheart," Clara whispered in her ear in a low voice, which got her to weaken in her struggling for a moment enough for Clara to rest her chin on the Doctor's shoulder, "After twenty-six years, I have _every _right." She purposely breathed out a long breath on the side of Thirteen's face, Thirteen practically stopping moving completely as Clara furthered her malicious plans by kissing her cheek for a long moment, until the Doctor turned her head and kissed her on the mouth, Clara's face still soaking wet and cold. Clara was half in the kiss and half trying to focus, biting Thirteen's lip while simultaneously clasping her right hand around the nozzle of the water gun, her left hand on the Doctor's right hip. Gently, still kissing her as deeply as she could whilst trying not to get _too_ distracted or over-excited by thoughts of tongues and lips and other such appendages, she pried the water gun right out of Thirteen's hands and found the loosely screwed on cap of the water tank, twisting it off with a mixture of telekinesis and deft finger-work.

Then she let go so that she could see what she was doing, Thirteen still in a relatively pathetic stupor, since after two decades of kisses from the same girl, Clara hadn't lost any of her effect to time. That was when she dumped the water remaining in the tank, which happened to be a lot, onto the Doctor's head, and she gasped and stood completely still in shock.

"I win," Clara mocked, "You are _so_ easy to trick." Thirteen scruched up her brown eyes for a moment and then pouted upon reopening them. Clara tossed the water gun on the bed behind her now it was empty. "If that gun is my anniversary present, I'm going to divorce you."

"Oh, please," Thirteen muttered while pushing her hair away from where it was stuck to her face, "You're _always_ threatening to divorce me. You wouldn't dare."

"I would too!"

"Nuh-uh. Prove it."

"I... no! No, I won't prove it!"

"Because you would never divorce me. Even when I jump on the bed and spray water at you. You're still hopelessy in love with me," she smirked, while Clara scowled.

"Oh, _I'm_ the hopelessy-in-love one? Never mind the fact that _you're_ the one who couldn't even think straight enough to keep hold of a plastic toy two seconds ago?" Clara argued.

"Well if I could think straight, I wouldn't be married to a girl, would I?" Thirteen retorted, going and picking up a pillow that had been knocked to the floor in their scuffle to put it back onto the bed.

"It's not _my_ fault that girls are hotter than boys, is it?" she challenged, and the Doctor laughed, "What're you making the bed for? There's no point, we'll just mess it up again tonight."

"Because the room's messy, I don't want the room to be messy, what does that say about us? About me?"

"Okay, well, nobody except us is going to see our room, and in my opinion it says that you have an alarmingly attractive wife and a sex life that has suffered no lack of libido in over two and half decades," Clara answered, "So the room can stay messy, for all I care." Regardless, Thirteen then went about picking the purple, silk-sheeted duvet off the floor and sorting it out.

"Who is this alarmingly attractive wife and where have you hidden her?" the Doctor asked absently, making the bed on her own. Their bed was large and circular and purple, like everything else in the room. Varying shades of dark purples, plums and deep violets, but the bedsheet and the pillows were white.

"I'd like to hear you make that joke two minutes ago when I was making out with you," Clara retaliated.

"Mmm, that _would_ be an interesting thing to hear, defying the laws of conventional biology and everything. As far as I know, I never regenerated with the ability to om-comm," she said.

"I hate you."

"Hating me before breakfast is a rarity. I haven't even _made _breakfast, I thought we might eat out," the Doctor said, fluffing the pillows.

"Huh?"

"Not in a sexual way," she said boredly, "Idiot. Gotta have something to eat before we get up to any of that business, don't we?"

"Not necessarily."

"Plus, I just made the bed."

"Spoilsport."

"I thought you hated me, anyway?"

"Well now I _really _hate you. And for the record, I could quite easily have sex with someone I hate," she retorted, "When do we ever go out for breakfast, though?"

"I fancied a change," the Doctor said, examining the bed to see if she deemed it to be perfect yet. Clara really didn't care about how neat the bed was.

"You really have voluntarily taken on board a lot of domestic chores since you regenerated, haven't you?" Clara asked. They had a tacit chore rota on the TARDIS and everything. She made the drinks, did the shopping, and did the laundry; Adam did the washing up and the shopping with her; Thirteen and Adam cooked all the food between the pair of them, while Thirteen also cleaned all the rooms herself, including the bathrooms, and offered to wash up frequently as well. Oswin didn't do a lot of anything. Oswin had never done a lot of anything, though.

"It's _my _anniversary as well, and I'm not in the mood to cook."

"We could just-"

"Champagne and chocolate isn't breakfast, Coo," Thirteen sighed.

"It totally is! A balanced diet. Fruit and veg."

"How is it fruit and veg? And who has vegetables for breakfast, anyway? Not me, that's for sure. Y'know, some days I wish Martha was still around to tell you how to be healthy," the Doctor complained.

"Martha has more important things to do than hang around here and tell me how to live my life. Plus, I have nanogenes," Clara said, "God, do you remember back when they all lived with us? Must be twenty years ago or something now."

"I don't know if God remembers, but I certainly do. That PDA rule might as well have been the death of us. Still in effect to this day. Even after everyone left."

"Yep. Now there's only Adam and Oswin to enforce it," Clara said, "And they still hardly ever break it. I wish they'd leave us alone about it. We're married, we can do what we want."

"Well what _you _always want is fondling over breakfast, because you've lost your manners in the last twenty years," Thirteen told her, "Speaking of breakfast, where do you want to go?" she reiterated her earlier point that they didn't have anything to eat. Clara thought for a moment as the Doctor judged the bed to be made neatly enough for her to leave the damn thing alone, then proceeded to walk around it over to Clara, presumably to see what it looked like from a different angle.

"Mc-"

"Not McDonalds."

"Aw. Why do you always refuse to come to McDonalds? I always have to go with Adam Mitchell," Clara complained.

"I'm not going to McDonalds, Clara," she said firmly, refusing to look at Clara, who was standing right by her left shoulder. She was still scrutinising her bed-making skills.

"Why don't we do presents before breakfast?" Clara asked. Normally they did presents _over _breakfast, but the Doctor didn't want to stay in. "Obviously, I've gotten you the same present I get you every year, my continued presence in your life." Thirteen laughed and looked over her shoulder at her wife.

"My present to you was just gonna be going out for breakfast. Thought I might go to a supermarket and get some instant coffee."

"Oh, you are _such_ a romantic," Clara said sarcastically.

"Tesco's own-brand instant coffee."

"You're sending shivers down my spine, Doctor. I think if you don't take me right here, right now, I won't have the willpower left for any coffee at all," Clara said, going up behind Thirteen and resting her chin on the Doctor's shoulder.

"Well we can't have that, I was gonna have you make it."

"You're spoiling me. Next you're gonna tell me they were on buy one get one free."

"Buy one get _two_ free, actually." Clara wrapped her arms around Thirteen again.

"Mmm, I bet it tastes like the imported dirt it's brewed from. What did you actually get me? Is it cigarettes? Where _are _my cigarettes, anyway?" she asked, looking around the room, loosening her grip on the Doctor a little, "I'd hate for that lighter you got me last year to be going to waste."

"Maybe next year I'll get you a smoke detector," Thirteen joked.

"Is it a novelty table lighter?" Clara let her go and went to look for her cigarettes. She either could never remember where she last put them, or somebody frequently liked to hide them from her. Most likely, it was a mixture of both.

"What? No. What's mine, anyway? It's not another dildo, is it?"

"It's a Get Out Of Jail Free card from a Monopoly set," she answered, lifting up one of the pillows to look underneath it. Her lighter was just on the bedside table, with her phone. It was the cancer sticks themselves she was missing.

"Just what I always wanted. Hey, don't... Clara! Won't you put the pillow back where it should be!?" Thirteen argued. Clara had just dropped it back down. She didn't see a problem with it.

"What? You mean-?" she picked it up and flipped it over so it was lying across at an angle. Thirteen scowled. "Do you mean the other one? Should I-?"

"No!" the Doctor protested when Clara reached for the pillow on the other side, walking over, "Sort them out."

"Well I'm _trying_ to sort them out, but you keep telling me not to touch them. I mean," she picked up the one below the first one she'd flipped, much to Thirteen's ardent protests. Then she dropped it across the other one at a funny angle. Thirteen pushed her out of the way, a little angry, and fixed the pillows herself, Clara just laughing. It was always amusing to take advantage of this Doctor's clean-freak tendancies and mess something up. "You know, I really think they'd look better if you-"

"Stop," she cut her off coldly, grabbing her wrist to stop Clara from moving the pillows again, "Away from our bed. Your cigarettes are by the sink. I thought if I put them there, you'd remember to brush your teeth."

"I always brush my teeth!" Clara protested.

"Barely! And you don't rinse the brush." Thirteen had her hands on Clara's waist, and was gently edging her away from the bed, towards the bathroom door.

"I'm not taking advice from some weird alien on how to brush my teeth."

"You're a 'weird alien' to me, you know," Thirteen said, opening the door for Clara, one hand on her arm still, "You go have a shower and think about where you want to go for breakfast."

"Oh, won't you shower with me? It's our wedding anniversary."

"TARDIS hates it."

"No sex, promise," she said, "Cross your hearts."

"What!? You can't swear on _my _hearts! And certainly not both of them! Swear on your own. And clean your teeth," Thirteen ordered her, pushing her lightly in the small of her back to go into the bathroom.

"Are you not coming?"

"I already showered."

"You did not, you're wearing the same clothes you went to sleep in," Clara argued.

"I did! Look, smell my arm," Thirteen said, holding out her arm. Clara did smell her, too.

"Ugh, you do smell clean, as well. Soap and cinnamon. I still don't understand how you smell so totally delicious all the time," Clara said, taking hold of Thirteen's hand, "It's like being married to a Christmas tree." The Doctor was standing in the bedroom still, Clara across the threshold on the bathroom tiles.

"Says you, you literally smell like strawberry laces," Thirteen retorted, "It is so difficult not to-" Clara pulled on the Doctor's arm so she stumbled into the bathroom and was caught by Clara's warm lips on hers.

"Difficult not to what?" she asked, smiling and moving back a little. But not until a long ten seconds had passed.

"I was _gonna_ say it is so difficult not to kiss you," Thirteen muttered, "Apparently now it's literally impossible."

"Well, you have no reason not to kiss me," Clara said, going to kiss her again, but Thirteen stepped away and held up a hand, so Clara ended up kissing her palm instead, at which she scowled and raised her eyebrows, crossing her arms. Thirteen was always doing that.

"Clean your teeth," the Doctor whispered, "I've already cleaned mine."

"I can tell, you taste toothpastey."

"Not a word."

"Shakespeare made up words."

"You're not Shakespeare. I'll get you a towel." Thirteen went to turn around and leave, but Clara grabbed her and kissed her again, "Oh my god, _stop_," she said, though she was laughing.

"I love you."

"I love you, too, now, will you _please_ have a wash?" the Doctor implored.

"_Ugh,_ fine. I guess so," Clara said, and Thirteen closed the door in her face, leaving her shut in the bathroom.

Immediately, Clara went to lean against the door to keep it held shut, because what Thirteen didn't know was that just then, while keeping her distracted, Clara had telekinetically messed up the entire bed. The Doctor angrily shouting her name through the door a second later meant that she'd discovered this.

"CLARA!"

"Happy anniversary, Doctor! Here's to another twenty-six years together!"

"I HATE YOU!"


	339. Star Girl

_Clara_

_Star Girl_

"I think coffee shops in rain will be the end of me," Clara called over to the Doctor. There was a storm outside, and the inside hadn't yet warmed up that much. The Doctor was trying to work the coffee machine behind the counter. It was the middle of the night, they had broken in. She had no internal clock anymore, no bodily notion of the switch from night to day back to night. She quite liked being wide awake when it was dark, though. She felt nocturnal, "Best place for breakfast." The Doctor smiled to herself, but didn't say anything. Clara was just sat in a red, leather armchair at a table for two. She made drinks for them every morning, which was why she was relaxing while the Doctor busied herself with futuristic beverage technologies. "What year did you say it was?"

"It's 2057," she answered.

"Is that what year it would be if I'd never met you?" Clara asked.

"Huh? What?"

"What's 2013 add twenty-six?"

"2039. Did you ever pass math? You're almost tweny years out," Thirteen said.

"I got a C in maths, I'll have you know," Clara said, "When I was sixteen. Which is... thirty-nine years ago."

"Thirty-_four_ years ago, Clara," the Doctor told her, "Do you actually remember how old you are?"

"Uh..."

"You're gonna be fifty-one in four months. Honestly, it's a good thing you're so pretty, isn't it? You can't do anything," she said, finally succeeding in making them drinks, bringing coffee over. None of the cakes or other sweet treats were in the display, so they were stuck without much food, unless the Doctor had something in her bag. "You can't cook, you never clean, you can't do any math."

"I can write poems. And the other one writes books," Clara said.

"Oh, 'the other one does this,' 'the other one does that.' It took Jenny five hours to teach the other one how to fry an egg, Clara," Thirteen said, and Clara laughed, "It isn't funny, what if something happened to me? Then what would you do? You'd have to do things for yourself."

"Well, I'm gonna be old enough to go to a nursing home and retire soon, aren't I?"

"You might as well be in a nursing home now, the amount of looking after you need. How'd you ever get to be a nanny? It shocks me every day," she shook her head and sighed, "What's my anniversary present?"

"Not here, that's what," Clara told her, "Is mine here?" They hadn't had a chance to do presents yet that day.

"Yeah, it's the coffee machine."

"You got me a coffee machine ten years ago."

"And you broke it! Remember? After two weeks," she said. Not once, in twenty years, had Clara correctly guessed what her anniversary present was. Birthdays were different. Every birthday, she got a different first edition of some classic novel, or poetry collection, all signed by the author, and some sort of phenomenally aged bottle of alcohol. And at Christmas, the Doctor had maintained for decades that Christmas dinner itself was enough of a present, which Clara (though she might jokingly complain) secretly agreed with, because it was always gourmet and always had some new, alien delicacy she got introduced to. And she would always get the Doctor some novelty piece of clothing. It had started with hats, an extension of Eleven's love of fezzes, but when Thirteen had come into being, the tradition had morphed into anything ridiculous. Their wedding anniversary was the only time presents were serious, and the Doctor always refused birthday presents other than a cake she always made sure neither Clara nor Oswin had actually touched.

"It disagreed with me!"

"Disagreed with you on what!? It wasn't sentient."

"We just didn't get along."

"It was a machine, just a bit of metal."

"What would Nios say if she heard you now?"

"No doubt she'd shoot me, but it didn't have an AI. Or a VI. Or anything. It was a plain, simple coffee machine. Nios spends every day of her life bored now, anyway. No humans to kill or enslave on Synthoid Prime, are there?" Thirteen challenged.

"Do you ever miss the others?"

"I miss them individually, but not collectively. Too much gossip. I mean, one day I'm gonna be dragged back in time, and look at what I'll be forced to relive? All of that vampire business, and you know how stressful that adjustment period was," she complained. She didn't seem to be in a good mood suddenly, and she crossed her arms and leant back in her chair.

"What's wrong?" Clara asked her gently. The Doctor stared out of the window at the rain and the streetlights.

"I just worry," she said, "I don't know when it'll happen. I could just vanish, at any second. I mean, you told me about that lighter." Clara had, she had told Thirteen everything she knew about that lighter a few months ago, after she had recieved it as a gift. That now, she didn't know when Thirteen would disappear for months.

"Well, _I_ have the lighter, don't I?" Clara said, "So you're safe as long as I've got it." She took it out and held it up for a moment. Since she had regenerated, Thirteen hardly said a word about Clara's smoking habit. And that had been some fifteen years ago now. She had been with this Doctor for longer than she had been with the one who came before. Sometimes she still missed him, though. Anyone would.

"We've never been apart, though."

"We still won't be. Not to you. I'll be there."

"A different you. Not _you_ you," Thirteen said, and Clara smiled.

"You'll be way too busy to miss me. Nobody ever got a moment of peace when everyone still lived with us. Not even when showering, remember? That's right when the communal bathrooms were brought in for a bit," Clara said to her.

"It's not just me I'm worried about, it's you, what'll you do without me? And I'm being serious, we've barely had a week apart for over twenty years," Thirteen said.

"I'll have Adam and Oswin. I could always visit Jenny and get the next best thing to you?"

"Hey!"

"What? I'll pretend I'm the other one. I'll, you know, stand in a freezer for a bit, get some costume make up, plastic fangs, she won't know the difference," Clara shrugged. The Doctor almost laughed, "There are loads of places I could go. Could go see Sally Sparrow? Or Esther? Or Eyeball? I have a network of people."

"Yeah, and I know you'll end up moping around the TARDIS sleeping in the console room next to the phone, just to see if I might somehow find a way to ring, even though TARDISes can't phone past or future versions of the same one," Thirteen said. She was probably right, anyway, Clara knew.

"Go give Oswin some instructions then. Oswin'll do anything if I hate it but it's actually for my benefit, she loves that, she gets to feel morally superior," Clara said, "Just be like, '_you go make that sister of yours have dinner with Esther Drummond or so help me_.'"

"Don't do my accent," the Doctor told her, and she laughed, "And certainly don't do it around Esther. She's way too _your type_ to leave you around on your own, anyway."

"As if Adam and Oswin would pass up the chance to visit her, they like her more than me. And you know loads of others would be there. It'd be like Christmas dinner is when we go over that way. Or I could stay with Nios."

"Sure. Have fun with that," Thirteen said dryly, "So, anyway," she seemed to he changing the subject, but Clara detected an odd tome of voice and found her looking around the floor for wherever she'd dropped her transdimensional, bigger-on-the-inside bag, picking it up by the strap, "I guess I'll give you your present now, seems about the usual time?"

"As if _you_ have a notion of what a 'usual time' is anymore," Clara joked, watching Thirteen unzip the bag and go look through it, "But, I mean, I won't exactly say no to presents, will I?"

"It's just, I've been worrying a lot about the Dimension Stabilisers stealing me from you since you told me about the lighter," she began, picking up Clara's phone from the table without asking her for permission and switching the torch on so that she could see into her bag to find whatever she was looking for.

"I did tell you it looked old as well, though," Clara said, "And that it had six notches scratched into it, for six weddings." They had had four weddings so far. Three to Eleven, one to Thirteen, within the first year of her regenerating.

"I know, I know, I just... ah-ha. I thought I'd get something," she explained, pulling out another bag from within her larger bag, except this one was small, drawstring and soft, "Happy anniversary." She passed Clara the bag and Clara opened it, dropping the contents into her palm. It was two stones, slightly different shapes, but very smooth and odd looking. It was almost like they were made of glass and had some sort of flowing, pinkish mist within them.

"What are they?" Clara asked curiously. The Doctor was always getting her thoughtful, alien artefacts from the corners of space.

"They're usually called 'lover's hearts.' They're made from an incredibly rare mineral that's not too well-known because they don't have any industrial purpose. Basically, in certain conditions, crystals will grow inside of asteroids, like a fungus, and they form phohanite, but only in very small asteroids. So what people do is they take the asteroids, mine the phohanite and compress down, like you do to carbon when you make a diamond, only not as extreme a process. Just like, uh, kneading bread. Then in the end they have a lump of it that they carve into two pieces. Well, as many pieces as you want, really, you have to request it. But if the two separate pieces of phohanite come from the same asteroid, they share a bond, like an empathy bond," Thirteen explained very excitedly, and Clara didn't dare to interrupt. The phohanite was very pretty, though, even if she was still unsure of its purpose, "Basically," the Doctor picked up one of the pieces from Clara's palm and wrapped a fist around it, and to Clara's surprise, it heated up, heated up to about the same temperature as the Doctor.

"That's amazing," she said, picking up the stone and looking at it.

"It works anywhere, anywhen. The phohanite never loses connection with itself."

"It's like holding hands across all of time and space," Clara smiled, looking at Thirteen, "Thank you. Thank you _so much_, you're the best fiancée a lowly Earth-girl could ever ask for."

"Sorry, what?"

"I just said thank you."

"Yeah, and you also said _fiancée_," the Doctor said, staring at her with an unreadable expression. The phohanite stone that belonged to her was still clenched tightly in her hand, while Clara had put hers in her pocket.

"So?"

"What do you mean 'so'!? _So_ we're not engaged, are we? We're _married_."

"Does that mean you're gonna say no?"

"To what?"

"Will you marry me?"

"Will I _what_?"

"Marry me. You know, again? For the fifth time? Am I moving too quickly? Look, I have a ring, and everything," Clara said, a little sarcastically at one point. Sure, she was 'moving too quickly,' it had only been a quarter of a century, after all. When she had put the phohanite away, she had brought an engagement ring out. "It's made of some kind of alloy you find in these underwater stalagmites on Squam."

"_Squam_? When did you go to Squam!?" Thirteen exclaimed, staring at the ring Clara was holding. The alloy was a bright, shining white, but reflected light in a way that made it seem faintly indigo.

"While you were sleeping, a few weeks ago," Clara shrugged, "The stone is still just a diamond because I like Earth traditions. I mean, it's not like I've ever proposed to anyone before." The Doctor just stared at it, and then picked it up, and continued to stare at it. "Doctor?" She didn't say anything. Some long moments went by. "...Look, I'm trying to act all casual but it turns out I'm still unbelievably nervous asking someone I've already married four times to swear themselves to me for a fifth."

"It just threw me, I mean... I'm the..."

"What?"

"I was gonna say I'm the man, but I'm not the man, not anymore, and girls can still propose anyway..."

"Well, girls probably should propose when there are two of them," Clara said, bouncing her leg agitatedly, "So? Are you gonna answer?"

"Answer what?" she asked. Clara stared at her imploringly, and Thirteen just seemed shellshocked. And then she took a deep breath and thought about something for a second, before leaning right over the table and kissing Clara in such an unexpected way, Clara wasn't even prepared. But kissing back was an automatic reaction, it was just something her lips did on their own, muscle memory. The Doctor had both of her hands on Clara's face and was halfway climbing across the table to accomplish this, and Clara was very glad they were there out of hours. "Is that a yes?"

"Yes! Obviously!" the Doctor said, annoyed at the break in them canoodling.

They were both trying to kiss the other through smiles now, and Clara wondered what some of the others they used to travel with might say about the PDA rule if they saw them now. Clara had never tired of kissing this Doctor, never tired of her taste or her lips or the feel of her under Clara's hands, and she didn't think she ever could, and it almost didn't bother her that the Doctor had one knee on the table and one foot in the chair behind because, after all, there was nobody to see them.

"Wait, huh?" Thirteen said, suddenly breaking away from Clara and lifting her other leg to be fully kneeling on the table, practically clawing away over Clara's head to get to something on the table behind theirs, it seemed. Clara slid down in her chair as far as she could and leant to the left to get out of Thirteen's way.

"I - what? What are you doing?" she asked, leaning around her wife awkwardly. Thirteen had one hand on the back of Clara's chair, both knees on the table (dangerously close to their coffee), and was reaching for something.

"Trying to grab this newspaper."

"A _newspaper_? You stopped kissing me for some stupid paper?" Clara questioned, "You know, you could've asked _me _to grab it, instead of going all Spiderman and climbing on everything." Thirteen completely ignored her and finally grabbed the thing, staying knelt on the table like it was an entirely ordinary thing to do, sitting back on her feet and flipping it open. Clara sighed and kept her eye on the coffee and her phone, pushing herself to be sitting up straight again.

"Look, it's from November 3rd," Thirteen said, "Mysterious space debris crashed in Siberia in the middle of the night, but the wreckage has disappeared."

"Probably an asteroid," Clara said, deciding that if the Doctor knocked over her own coffee, she would have to clean it herself, therefore Clara couldn't care less. Accordingly, she picked her _own_ mug back up and took a sip from it. She was better at making coffee than her wife was, but the Doctor had offered, and she wasn't exactly going to refuse having one less thing to do.

"Doesn't look like an asteroid," Thirteen told her, turning the paper around and holding it in front of Clara so that she could see it, "Look at the picture. It's triangular. Like a nose cone from a space shuttle." She guessed it kind of looked like that, but it wasn't the greatest picture Clara had ever seen, not at all.

"Kind of looks like a fish."

"A _fish_? What sort of fish have you been looking at?"

"Like, a rocket fish."

"There's no such thing as a rocket fish, Clara. I'm a thousand years old and I've never seen a rocket fish."

"You can see the sea though," she pointed out.

"Uh, _yeah_, on the _Earth_, _below_ it, because it's _space debris_, you idiot," Thirteen said. Thirteen really did insult her more than Eleven ever had.

"We're not going to Siberia. It's really cold there, and it's our wedding anniversary, and I don't want to hunt aliens, and would you please come back here and finish your coffee!?" Clara shouted, but the Doctor had climbed off the table and had begun to walk away, "Doctor!?"

"Miraculously vanishing space debris is something that absolutely cannot wait, Clara Oswald," the Doctor said, "You should know that by now." Annoyed, Clara picked up her own coffee, phone, and her phohanite stone and followed the Doctor towards the door. The TARDIS was sitting on a street corner nearby, her sister and brother-in-law hiding out on it away from them. They always stayed away from Clara and the Doctor on anniversaries, which Clara liked to believe was out of courtesy, but the more likely reason was that they simply couldn't stand to be around them.

"I don't want to go to Russia!" Clara protested frivolously, chasing Thirteen out into the rain, out from the shop where coffee clung to the air like dust mites.

"Yes you do."

"I don't, though, do I?" Clara said back, then she started doing an exaggerated impression of her wife, "'Hey, Clara, do you want to go to Russia?' 'Well no, sweetheart, I actually don't, I would much rather spend the whole day in bed with you.'"

"We're going. End of story," she pushed open the TARDIS doors, letting them swing back on Clara, nearly hitting her in the face, not paying attention because she was just that interested. She was always like this when she got an idea into her head. Just stubborn, and committed to whatever she randomly decided she wanted.

"Why can't we go _tomorrow_?" Clara whined, following Thirteen into the console room.

"Because tomorrow never comes, it's always today, and everything is the present, so we have to go _now_. Quit complaining, what were you gonna do anyway? Pester me for sex? That's all you ever do," Thirteen said, going over to the controls and flipping the switch that activated the flux capacitor. It wasn't a real flux capacitor at all, it was some weird fake she had, and though she always maintained to whoever asked that it did something very important she couldn't possibly explain, though Clara had it on the very good authority of her sister that it didn't actually do anything.

The central column was a smooth hourglass shape, all transprent, an ethereal, purple glow spreading through the glass that bathed the whole room in bright, vibrant violet. The console was white, most of the buttons on it were silvery grey, matte and faded like the floor was, scuffed from almost fifteen years of being walked on and lived in. It was still mainly circular, though, the weird round lights on the walls. The Doctor called them 'round things' and got very excited about them, but Clara didn't quite see what all the fuss was about. Straight opposite the front doors, on the opposite side of the central column, was another door that would slide open and reveal the living room and the kitchen they shared with Adam Mitchell and Oswin, and the different doors through there would lead to bedrooms or wherever else. There were two floors in the console room, though, the second one replacing the balcony there used to be, except now it served as a place for people to store junk, and there was a second sofa. The first sofa was curved and sat in the room by the console, both of them white and both of them leather. Up on the second level was an American flag handing on the wall, which Thirteen only put there to irritate Clara, and there was also a taxidermy bald eagle for the exact same reason, which she had acquired as a gift a few years ago in the 1860s, and had decided she might as well keep.

"No it isn't!" Clara protested, closing the door behind her, annoyed at being accused of having no interest in anything other than going to bed with the Doctor.

"Oh yeah?" Thirteen challenged.

"Yeah! _I'm_ the one who does the washing up."

"I don't care, we are going. No more arguments," she said, "Go put on something warm."


	340. Muttnik

_Clara_

_Muttnik_

"Ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, _ow, ow, ow,_" Clara said, walking hunched over with her arms crossed, the hood of her coat, her heavy-duty winter coat from another planet designed for colder weather than anything you found on Planet Earth, pulled up over her head, a scarf bound tightly around her neck, two pairs of gloves on her hands, three pairs of socks in her spiked, arctic hiking boots, and a woollen beanie that offered scarcely a thing by way of protection but she thought she looked cute in.

"Oh, cut it out, it's not that cold," the Doctor argued. The Doctor's coat was thinner than Clara's, and she had no hat and only one pair of gloves and one pair of socks, not even bothering to change her shoes into something sensible. Three times she had slipped so far, Clara having to catch her each time. Clara stopped walking and the Doctor looked at her. There wasn't much wind, thank god.

"_OW_," she repeated herself. She was complaining because her face was cold and her lips and eyelids and cheeks were stinging like they were being slashed apart with frozen razorblades. She didn't like the cold, and definitely not the painful cold, like this. They were traipsing around a certain area of Siberia where there were some anomalous heat readings emitting from, heat from the space debris. Thirteen held a tracking device between her gloved hands, the thing blue and blinking like sonar, a blip on the edge where there was an arced line on the display lighting up to show them which general direction they should be going in. Vaguely North-East, it seemed. "Do you even know what we're looking for?"

"No, but it's hot, and it's close," Thirteen said, continuing to walk, her eyes glued to her tracking device. Clara sped up a little and caught her up, not catching her by surprise as she would have liked because her footfalls were so loud on the ice, but catching up nonetheless.

"_I'm_ hot and close, maybe it's me, and we can go home?" Clara asked over her wife's shoulder, but Thirteen just laughed and tried to ignore her. That was the moment that Clara decided to give up being overly stubborn, and stood around in quiet reflection for a few seconds that this was the person she had married, this was the person she had literally proposed to not an hour ago and now had an engagement ring on under her glove, and this was the girl whose arm Clara now took and wrapped her hands around and huddled next to to try and leech her body heat. "Why do I love you?"

"Twenty years ago, you loved to travel," Thirteen said, "Beta You is addicted to the travelling."

"_I'm _addicted to _you_, probably," Clara said, "That's all I care about. Today especially. You've ruined our wedding anniversary. I want to go back to _beeeed_," she whinged, putting her head on Thirteen's shoulder and leaning her weight on her so they staggered to the left until the Doctor pushed back and balanced them again. The terrain was uneven and there were icy rocks everywhere beneath the snow, grey, rocky fells and mountains rising up around them.

"Should've left the bedsheets how they were when I fixed them, then, shouldn't you?" the Doctor retorted, and Clara groaned and dragged her feet for a moment like a child, but she did not relinquish her wife's arm. She had every right to that arm, no matter how bad of a mood she was in. Technically, it was only the Doctor's brain that she ever got into spats with. The rest of her was eternally flawless, soft and perfect.

"Martha Jones wouldn't drag me out to Siberia on our wedding anniversary," Clara complained, pouting, "I should have married Martha Jones. And she's pyrokinetic. She'd be way warmer than you."

"Martha would not have married you," Thirteen said firmly, staring at the blinking, blue screen.

"She would have."

"_No_, because she took a few deep breaths and got over that little crush on you she had and then you were friends," the Doctor said. Entirely true. That was exactly what had happened. She wished she was less honest with her spouse sometimes. First Eleven, now Thirteen, she just told them everything.

"She was in love with me," Clara lied. She wasn't.

"She was not, Clara."

"She was. She told me."

"Of course she did."

"She did! She told me. And she proposed, so I could have married her," Clara continued to lie. What was that she had just been thinking to herself about honesty? Maybe honesty wasn't the word. Maybe she was really very dishonest, even to herself, if she was so convinced she was honest fifteen seconds ago. She confided in the Doctor, was what she meant. She told the Doctor 99% of her truths and secrets, but also an astonishing amount of ridiculous lies.

"When?"

"A while ago."

"Sure."

"Fine, if you don't believe that anyone apart from you could ever lower yourself to love me," Clara said in a fake-upset voice.

"You're putting words in my mouth," Thirteen said dryly.

"I'd rather put something else in your mouth."

"Well, I don't even want to bother trying to figure out what vague part of your own anatomy you just referred to, if I'm honest, Coo. What did Martha say, then?" the Doctor was bored, and humouring her.

"When?"

"When she said she loved you!"

"She never said that."

"But you just said that she did!"

"And you believed me?"

"No! Of course I didn't, I know when you're lying, when you say stupid things about Martha Jones being in love with you, that's when."

"You totally believed me," Clara sneered, even though she knew full-well that the Doctor hadn't believed her for a single moment. She was being annoying for the sake of being annoying.

"I did not!" Thirteen nearly shouted.

"You did! You're so gullible."

"I am not gullible at all! _You_ are incorrigible, you always have been and always will be. The most insufferable, irritating, insult of a woman and I am so in love with you that it just makes me hate you even more," she said, and then she grunted in frustration. Through all of this, Clara was still clinging tightly to the Doctor's right arm. At that moment, she stood on tiptoes and leant over Thirteen's shoulder enough to kiss her cheek, having to lean around the hood of her coat. Thirteen grunted again in anguish, and Clara laughed. "I'm going to be sick. On you, probably."

"That's some fantastically inventive foreplay."

Before the Doctor could proceed to shout at her for continuing to be such a thorn in her side that day, and a downright disgusting thorn in her side at that, something climbed towards them out of the mist and the fine, dusty snow in the Russian tundra that day in November, and the tracker in the Doctor's hands went wild with its beeping.

"What the..? That's not possible..." she said, pulling her arm free of Clara and passing over the tracker to her, going up to it and pulling her hood down so that she could see better. They were lucky it wasn't particularly windy.

Whatever the bit of debris was, it was a large cone-shape and looked as though it had once been silver and shiny. It was much duller now, dirty from space and from crashing down to Earth, mangled but not nearly as burned as she thought something must be. She knew it was true that meteorites burned to tiny sizes when they fell to Earth, so how was this thing, whatever it was, mainly intact? And why was the Doctor so fascinated by it? Perhaps the most worrying thing was that in one of the two near-transparent spheres it had built into it, she was sure some mass was moving, but it was too covered in a weird sort of blueish slime to see. It looked like bath jelly to Clara, and she'd always hated bath jelly.

"Oh my god, Clara! Do you know what this is!?" she exclaimed, going to look at it. Before Clara could answer, Thirteen touched the surface.

"Don't do that! It's still giving off huge heat readings! And it's covered in stuff!" Clara shouted at her, but she kept her hand on it, getting slime on her glove, crouching down in the snow and wiping away a portion from one of the spheres.

"No, no, no, no. Don't you get it? Don't recognise it?"

"No! It's an oversized traffic cone, for all I know - maybe I'll get drunk and put it on my head?" she said dryly, as Thirteen reached into her pocket to get her sonic screwdriver, kneeling in the snow next to the thing, taking off her glove covered in the blue stuff in the process.

"Twist that dial on the right to Setting 4, would you?" the Doctor asked Clara in regards to the tracking device. Sometimes the Doctor called this thing Old Reliable, or Old Faithful. It still worked after taking a great deal of batterings throughout its life, and occasionally Clara thought about giving it a proper name. She twisted the large dial on the righthand side from Setting 4, which would scan for life signs, rather than Setting 2, which was for heat signals. To Clara's surprise, the antenna on the top that looked like a tiny satellite dish extended and span on its own, and she picked up _two_ life signals immediately in front of her. The Doctor, and something else.

"Maybe you shouldn't open that?" Clara suggested cautiously as Thirteen tried to sonic open a panel on the side of the mangled, dirty capsule.

"Sweetheart, this is Sputnik 2," the Doctor informed her.

"It's _what_? _How _could it be Sputnik 2? Sputnik 2 disintegrated on re-entry to Earth's atmosphere in the 1960s," Clara said.

"1958, actually. Sputnik 2 launched on November 3rd, 1957. Do you know what today's date is? It's November 3rd, _20_57\. One-hundred years later," Thirteen said.

"But that doesn't make any sense!" Clara hissed.

"Help me open this thing, would you?" Thirteen said, "She's still alive. We can talk when we save her."

"Her? Who her?" Clara asked, "Hang on - you don't mean the dog?"

"Yes! Of course the dog!" the Doctor said, and Clara came and knelt next to her and dropped the scanner in the snow, which was almsot a foot deep. Clara had no idea what to do, she couldn't even remember the _name_ of the Russian space dog who had died in orbit within the satellite.

"Well - how?"

"She died from overheating, and look where we are, a Siberian winter," Thirteen said, sonicking screws loose. Sonicking the screws was taking ages though, and she had worked Clara up into a panic with her constant complaining and fretting about the wellbeing of the dog trapped inside a pod-like construction at the base of the mangled cone. That was why she fumbled around in the snow looking for the heavy scanning device, picking it back up, proceeding to smash the glass of the pod with one of its corners. "Okay, I guess that's _one _way to do it..." Clara had to keep gently smashing bits of glass until the hole was big enough to see the dog within, who was barely conscious at all. The dog was a small, thin mongrel with patches of black and white fur and a harness with all sorts of wiring connected attached to her.

The both of them dragged her out and laid her in the snow to cool off, heat radiating out of the wreckage of Sputnik 2 next to them.

"Okay, how the hell is Sputnik 2 here, then? Hmm?" Clar asked, wiping the blue stuff off of her own gloves in the snow, making her hands cold. The dog twitched in the snow.

"You see this sludge?" Thirteen said, wiping her ungloved hand on the surface again and getting a large amount of it on her fingers, "This is from a wormhole. It's space refuse. November 3rd, 1957 was the date Laika died from overheating. Sputnik 2 passes through a wormhole and lands here, in Siberia, a hundred years later."

"Then why, exactly, does everybody think Laika died!? If it vanished!?" Clara demanded. Clara wasn't overly keen on dogs, to be truthful. She had never had a dog, and had never really wanted a dog, she was relatively ambivalent towards dogs and most animals. The cat she hadn't minded, back when they still had that cat, but cats were quieter and smaller and needed less work than dogs.

"Imagine the scene; it's 1957, you're a Soviet scientist and the Cold War is approaching boiling point. You're desperately trying to beat the Yanks in the space race, so you send a dog into orbit. And what happens? It disappears. Completely disappears, without a trace. That's not the sort of information you reveal to the public, or to anyone except the highest authorities."

"What about the debris that you _just _said came down in '58?"

"It disintegrated on re-entry, there was no actual debris, it could easily have been a lie told about a stray meteor," Thirteen said, "No, the thing is, that newspaper said _this_ debris vanishes, no trace of it. God, what are you supposed to do when a dog is left in a car in summer and gets too hot?"

"Water, I think, they give them water, through a tube. But I guess that's because in the middle of summer they probably don't have all this snow around," Clara said, looking at Laika, "What do we do now? Go back to the TARDIS?"

"I don't know, I want to see what happens to Sputnik 2 now," the Doctor answered.

She then made to get to her feet, but was stopped straight away by, to Clara's great horror, a gun barrel being held to the back of her head.

"Don't you move anywhere," said a smarmy voice Clara always hated to hear, because she knew who it was. She glanced around to see them, both of them, the other holding a gun on her, two laser revolvers held to her own head, "Neither of you."

"Always a pleasure," Clara said, smiling bitterly, as Thirteen turned around to see them, "We were thinking of inviting the pair of you over for dinner sometime, but I suppose we don't have to go to the trouble anymore." The one on the right, the girl, cocked her revolver and pointed it at Clara's head.

"Oh, try not to shoot her today, Ashley, you'll make a mess of her new hat," the Doctor implored sarcastically.

"Maybe I'll just shoot you instead," Ashley Cargill, archaeologist extraordinaire, threatened, "Make you regenerate again, see if you have a better attitude the next time around."

"Your husband already has the monopoly on shooting Time Lords right now," Thirteen said about the man on the left, "And you wouldn't date. We only ever meet up when we happen to have mutual interests, you know that."

"We're investigating the debris," Austin Cargill, her husband, said. As if Clara needed this on her wedding anniversary, a Soviet conspiracy and a visit from the future's answer to Team Rocket. Not to mention a dying mutt.

Ashley and Austin Cargill, wife and husband, _liked_ to think of themselves as the rivals of Clara and the Doctor, be that Eleven or Thirteen, they were always there trying to one-up them in random scenarios. Ex-Time Agents, ex-Alliance, ex-decent people. They travelled through time looking for artefacts and ancient weapons and hardly caring who they double-crossed in a quest to amass a great deal of personal power, and they despised Clara and the Doctor because of the way they always came swanning in and messing up whatever they had going on at the time, trying to save people instead of just screw them over, and it had been this way since some time in a completely different November nearly twenty-six years ago.

"Came through a wormhole in 1957," the Doctor said, "Solved it for you. Put those guns away now, would you? And let us leave?"

"No, we're taking you prisoner," Austin said.

"Prisoner!?" Clara exclaimed.

"Oh, come on, it's our wedding anniversary!" Thirteen protested.

"Give us a bloody break for once," Clara grumbled.

"Your presence has been requested," Ashley told them.

"Us? Requested? We only got here thirty minutes ago," Thirteen argued, getting to her feet, watching the dog carefully. Laika was still breathing. Hopefully she would be alright, but Clara hadn't a clue what they were going to do with her. "Requested by who?"

"The man in charge," Ashely answered.

"Right. Sure. Who might that be?" Thirteen crossed her arms and raised her eyebrows. The Cargills were not going to shoot them. Well, they might shoot _Clara_, as they had done before, but that was only because they knew she would come back. Thirteen they wouldn't dare fire upon.

"The Doctor. He wants to see you. And bring the dog."


	341. Doctor Doctor

_Clara_

_Doctor Doctor_

Clara, Thirteen and Laika the Space Dog were led by the Cargills through the desolate wasteland of the Siberian tundra, in between mountains and dead old trees in a place that was winter practically all year round, never quite warm enough to thaw ice that had formed hundreds or thousands of years ago. Through mountain passages they walked for not very long at all, emerging out between two narrow cliffs to be faced with a white, snowy valley, where the first thing they saw was an enormous dome made of metal, and other offshoots of buildings coming off of that in all directions.

"What is that?" Clara asked her wife, her eternal source of knowledge. One of the things she loved best about her was her proficiency as a walking encyclopaedia of the entire universe. Well, not the _entire_ universe, but most of the universe that Clara had seen with her.

"It's an abandoned cosmodrome," Thirteen answered, staring at it, frowning, "Which is odd, because I didn't think there were many cosmodromes in Siberia..." The Doctor was having to carry the dog in her arms, which was awake by now and panting. At least Laika seemed quiet, even if she was very cold. To the displeasure of the Cargills, the pair of them had held their kidnapping party up for a good few minutes having an argument about whether or not Clara was going to give Laika her scarf, because Clara said it was a very nice and expensive scarf and she wasn't going to ruin it giving it to a dog. In the end, Clara told her to piss off and refused to say anything else on the matter. "No, scratch that, I'm pretty sure there have never been _any _cosmodroes in Sibera, the positioning is too far away from the equator, you'd need a very unnecessarily powerful propulsion system to successfully make a launch this far North."

"Where did they launch Sputnik from, then?" Clara asked.

"Kazakhstan," Thirteen answered. The Cargills refused to tell them what they meant when they said 'the doctor' had asked for them, and they also refused to lower their guns. Clara didn't even see the point in them having those guns right then, anyway; as soon as she'd seen them she'd telekinetically jammed the charge pack mechanisms. Those laser colts had never been the most reliable of firearms.

"Why _are _you two here?" Ashley Cargill asked, confused. They were both quite gaunt with black hair and eyes that changed colour, and she didn't mean 'changed colour' in that pretentious way people with funny shades of green or blue eyes did, she meant that they changed colour completely in sync with one another in the same way Rose Tyler's did. It was odd and Clara still didn't quite understand why it happened because they had never bothered to tell either her or her wife.

"Saw the article about mysteriously vanishing space debris. What is it, then? A conspiracy? Huh? Are you government agents for Russia now?" Thirteen questioned them.

"That's all?" Austin asked.

"What do you mean? Is there something else going on?" Clara inquired, but they stopped saying anything then. They better get some explanation of what was going on from this enigmatic 'doctor.' But she felt like there was definitely something bigger going on.

"How's the major?" Ashley asked with a cold smirk, and Thirteen grunted in response and Clara rolled her eyes.

"Jenny's fine," the Doctor answered her gruffly, holding onto the dog as they walked down the steep slope towards the old Soviet cosmodrome that wasn't supposed to exist. The country wasn't even the USSR anymore, hadn't been for decades by 2057, yet it was still rife with conspiracies.

"Always good to check in with one's commanding officer," Ashely continued.

"She hasn't been anybody's commanding officer for fifty years, Cargill," Thirteen said coldly, then her eyes spied something Clara hadn't spotted, "Do you see that, Clara?"

"See what?" Clara asked.

"There, in the sky," Thirteen, unable to point, just nodded, "It's like, a shimmering. Photo blur." Clara squinted into the sky for a few moments and saw what the Doctor did - it was a stealth field if ever she saw one, hiding something right above the old complex.

"It's a spaceship," Austin answered.

"Well I can see _that_, but it's a pretty big spaceship. What's going on here?" Thirteen questioned as they approached the building's doors. The doors were metal and rusted, and all the walls were painted grey and icy from the cold weather. Clara didn't know whether or not she should risk hoping that it would be warm inside.

"The doctor will explain," Ashley said.

"Again with this _doctor_ \- doctor, doctor, doctor," Thirteen drawled as Austin opened the doors for them, since they weren't allowed to do it themselves, what with them being prisoners and everything, "Who is this doctor? Huh?" Ashley pushed Thirteen in through the doors and Laika immediately started struggle, prompting the Doctor to put her down on the floor. Obediently, she stayed by her saviours, instead of running back off into the snow and the ice.

"That way," Austin pointed unnecessarily with his gun down a corridor. Lights down the hall were red and lit up.

"Where are you getting the power from for this place?" Clara stared around.

"Electro-redux field, emits from the spaceship and creates wireless power flows. Which means _you _are keeping your business here a secret from the Russians," Thirteen said to the Cargills, "Using that spaceship? Hiding it? What's going on?"

Without answering them, the Cargills lead the Oswalds and Laika (Thirteen minded people calling them 'the Oswalds' a lot less than Eleven always had, who had actively disliked being associated with his wife's surname, for whatever reason) into a control room with only one other person in, sitting there in a corner messing around with an ancient computer terminal with what looked like a rudimentary sonic screwdriver. Clara almost gasped when she saw that it was the Tenth Doctor sitting there. Except he looked older, he had grey hairs, and he stared at them like he hardly recognised them, and he looked at Thirteen completely blankly.

"Doctor!?" Thirteen exclaimed, staring at him. They hadn't seen Ten for years, and certainly not Ten without Rose, but Rose was nowhere in sight.

"Clara!" he greeted her quite happily and stood up to come over. Why did he look so old, though? He didn't pay Thirteen much attention, and she stared at him like she was confused, like there was something odd about him.

"Hi," Clara said, puzzled, glancing around the room, "Where's Rose?" Ten stopped and stared at her, and then Thirteen elbowed her in the side as the dog went and sniffed Ten's feet.

"Rose? I haven't seen Rose for... hang on, do you not..?" he frowned at her.

"Not what..?"

"He's Ten_too_," Thirteen told her, "Tentoo hanging out with a bunch of ex-Time Agents in Russia in 2057."

"I prefer it if you call me the Doctor," he said, scratching the back of his head, "And who might you be?"

"Me? I'm the Doctor," Thirteen said, a little confused, then she asked Clara, "Does he not meet me in the future when I go back in time?"

"No, he was already... gone... by then," Clara said stiffly. Of course she had to go bringing up Rose Tyler to him, her poor ex-husband she had forcibly teleported off the TARDIS over twenty years ago.

"I'm the Twelfth Doctor," Thirteen said, "The Twelfth Doctor of this universe, I can't remember if you met the other one or not..."

"Why are you pointing guns at them? Put them away," Tentoo ordered the Cargills, "I didn't say bring them here at gunpoint, I said ask them for help. Where did this dog come from?"

"Sputnik 2 went through a wormhole in 1957 and crash landed out there a few hours ago, this is the world-famous Laika, thought to be dead in the pursuit of science," Thirteen said, beaming at Laika. They were going to have an argument about that dog in a few hours, Clara could tell, "We came from tomorrow, tracking the debris. Then your two goons dragged us here."

"Why are you... you know..."

"A girl?"

"An American."

"Well, I've been asking myself that question for the last fifteen years, Doctor," she said, smiling, "Do you have any food here, though? I'm starving. The wife and I haven't had any breakfast, and I think we have a _lot _to talk about."


	342. Doggie In The Window

_Clara_

_Doggie In The Window_

"Thing is, in 1951 the Soviets started building this cosmodrome," Tentoo explained, "But realised part of the way through that they'd never be able to successfully launch anything into space from here, so construction was completely cancelled. Look at the computers - they're all hollow inside, never finished. It was never connected to any power supply, so the spaceship has to project the electro-redux field in order to power the place. Not that powering it's any good, no computers, like I said." The terminal he had been trying so sonic with his little invention he then pushed onto the floor and the back fell off to reveal nothing inside.

"Yeah, the spaceship, what kind of spaceship? Whose is it? Why is it here?" Thirteen questioned, "It looked pretty big." Thirteen had gone and searched through all the cupboards until she found a bag of mysterious Russian crisps that were probably a hundred years old, ignoring Clara when she told her not to eat them. They smelt rank, that was all she knew. The five of them were sitting around in the large control room, intended to be mission control.

"It's an old construction vessel. It's big to generate the power, the crew quarters are only designed for a dozen people," Ashley explained. Still no real answer as to why they were there, "We stole it in 4237."

"So there's no big crew? Just the pair of you?" Thirteen questioned, taking one of the crisps, which looked a bit like a wheel and stank of chilli or something spicy, and holding it over the dog.

"_Don't _feed her that," Clara said, snatching the crisp from Thirteen and dropping it back in the bag, "You didn't save her life just to give her food poisoning from the Soviet equivalent of Monster Munch."

"Should've said Space Raiders, it would be funnier," Thirteen said, picking out the one Clara had just dropped and eating it herself. Through all the lives of the Doctor, they just got more and more disgusting.

"No, Monster Munch is completely fitting," Tentoo said offhandedly, sitting down opposite them. He had been pacing, "So! What have I missed? When are you two from?"

"It's our wedding anniversary," Clara said bitterly, crossing her arms and leaning back in her chair, "And this is what I get stuck with. The Soviet Union."

"Clara, it hasn't been the Soviet Union since 1991," Thirteen told her sternly. Laika sat in front of her and wagged her tail to try and pry a crisp out of her. She was quite cute, Clara supposed. Until she shat on the floor. Then she wouldn't be cute anymore.

"Anniversary? How long? Don't you two celebrate every single week, or something? Three weeks since your first kiss dinner?"

"Twenty-six years," Clara answered.

"Twenty-six years here as well!" Tentoo beamed, "I've been stuck on Earth since 2031, I suppose the good wife was aiming for 2013 and got her dates backwards. What's she doing now? Does she still travel with you two?" Clara and Thirteen exchanged a look.

"No, no," Thirteen said, sitting up straight. She had been slouching, chewing on her crisps, "These crisps are a bit soft..."

"Stop eating them then," Clara muttered. She ate another one.

"They left. Twenty years ago," Thirteen said, "Everybody. There was some complicated extradimensional stuff and we found some TARDISes. The Tenth Doctor took one, he and Rose. The Ninth Doctor took one, too."

"They never went back, then? Vanished? The Crash never reversed?"

"No," Thirteen said, "They sort of dispersed. Went their separate ways. Mickey, Martha, Jack, they went back to Earth. So did Donna, in the end, but she gets a lot of visits. We visit everyone we can at Christmas, always fun to see Donna. Where was it she was staying last year?"

"Gold Coast mansion," Clara told her.

"Yes! Australia in the middle of summer-"

"Roast turkey when it's 40°C-"

"It was totally _delicious_-"

"I might as well have been sweating out gravy, thank god we went to Donna last that time-"

"Christmas presents on the beach, it was awesome. Much better than the year before, when she went to Morocco, and then five years ago it was the Maldives, wasn't it?"

"Cuba was five years ago," Clara said.

"Was it? Well, anyway," Thirteen moved on, "Christmasses. Christmasses are just great. Clara hates when we have to visit everyone."

"What about the others? River? Amy? Rory? What about Jenny? How's Jenny?" Tentoo asked urgently.

"The major's a lesbian now, isn't she?" Ashley Cargill asked. The pair of them were bored sitting there. Tentoo wasn't getting to the point, whatever the point was. The real reason they were all there using an old cosmodrome powered by a stolen spaceship from the future. What were the Cargills doing there? How did Tentoo even get there?

"Stop calling my daughter 'the major,'" Thirteen said coldly.

"I thought she liked it?" Austin drawled, "Isn't she with that vampire these days?"

"Vampire?" Tentoo asked. Thirteen sighed.

"It's complicated," she said.

"She's not a lesbian, anyway, that's bi-erasure," Clara said.

"I don't know what you see in these Twenty-First Century commoners, caring about political correctness and holiday homes in Cuba and the Maldives," Ashley sighed, looking at her fingernails. God, those two were annoying. Every time they met them they got more annoying - they weren't nearly so bad the first time. What day had that been? One-hundred and twenty-something? Decades ago now.

"The Ponds left eventually," Thirteen resumed, "Back on Earth. Lots of them are back on Earth. River's with the Ninth Doctor, isn't she?"

"The last time I checked, she was," Clara said.

"Sorry, what vampire?" Tentoo asked seriously, "One of the Great Vampires? I thought they were all dead?"

"Oh, it was a long time ago," Thirteen said, "Other Clara. Vampires. Anyway, it's only four of us on the ship now. Well, five, I suppose."

"Sorry, what was that?" Clara asked.

"Laika makes five," said Thirteen. Clara stared at her for a long few moments and she stared right back innocently, like she hadn't done anything wrong. Clara laughed coldly.

"No."

"Yes! We can't leave her here, can we?" Thirteen questioned.

"We'll take her to a shelter."

"A shelter!? Laika the time-travelling space dog!? It's my spaceship. You never usually object to me picking up strays."

"_Picking up strays_!? You mean _me_? I'm not a stray!" she protested.

"Oh, won't you tell her to be less shrill and shut up?" Austin complained, "How do you put up with the constant whining?" Clara shut up then, glaring at the dog. Laika stared back at her in her little harness with shiny eyes and wagged her tail, and Clara ignored her.

"Which four of you, then?" Tentoo asked, "Who's left?"

"Just Adam and Oswin," Thirteen said, "Only the four of us. Jenny sometimes drops by. I'm the least ellusive of her parents. Anyway, enough about us, it's the same old universe, travelling through time and space, fighting aliens and capitalism-"

"We don't really fight any capitalism," Clara added.

"Speak for yourself, I had dinner with Karl Marx last week," Thirteen said.

"I know you did, and I also remember that I refused to go because you're _always _having dinner with Karl Marx and you never talk about anything interesting. Now, Doctor, what's going on in this base?" Clara asked Tentoo, ignoring Thirteen's huffy complaints about the importance of socialism. Clara was beyond caring about society anymore, the only society she knew was her wife, sister, and brother-in-law. And sometimes Sally Sparrow, but that was only when they went to Haworth and it was always quite one-sided, not to mention the fact Beta Clara always hated when she started speaking to Sally Sparrow. Or Esther. Either of them.

"There's a monster," Tentoo said, crossing his arms, "Only comes out at night, butchers people. All I do these days is travel, travel around, stopped by at a local village and found everybody dead, covered in bite marks. Which is why I was so interested in this vampire."

"I doubt that Clara's gone off one and started killing people," Clara said.

"No," Tentoo ran a hand through his greying hair, still gelled up, "Doesn't quite match the MO for a vampire. Just a thought, it'd make my life a whole lot easier - root through the cupboards for a bit of garlic and bob's your uncle."

"So _you're_ here on a whim - why are _you_ two here? Huh?" Thirteen turned to the Cargills, "And why are you working for him?" Austin shrugged.

"Space debris. We just parked up a little earlier and blew up our vortex manipulator."

"Well, not everyone's as clever as my daughter, we can't _all _power spaceships with modified sweatbands, now, can we?" Thirteen challenged.

"The Doctor said he would fix it if we helped him, and we were sticking around to get a look at this wreckage anyway," said Ashley, "Turns out it isn't nearly as interesting as we thought."

"Hey! Don't talk that way about my new best friend!" Thirteen protested on Laika's behalf.

"Oswin will be delighted to know that you've replaced her with something that licks its own arsehole," Clara said dryly.

"Don't be mean," Thirteen said, "Tell us about this monster, then? This village it slaughtered? Did it get everyone? Every last one?"

"I don't know what it is, but whatever it is, it eats flesh," he said darkly, "Tore them apart. Limbs and bones everywhere. Blood in the snow. Then I came here, found this place, used to have a fire over there because there wasn't any power."

"Hasn't it come after you?" Thirteen asked, "This place isn't exactly Fort Knox, there must be holes in the walls, doors to break down."

"It does," Tentoo said, "But it can never get in. Comes at night, leaves at dawn."

"Maybe it _is_ a vampire and it's waiting for somebody to invite it in?" Ashley mused, "Ask that clone of yours if she's been in Russia recently."

"No I shan't. And she isn't my clone, not remotely," Clara said coldly. Thirteen had stopped eating the crisps and appeared to be thinking. Clara might be annoyed at what the Cargills were saying, but the things they knew about this monster so far really did match up mostly with a vampire, apart from the flesh-eating, but she was sure that if a vampire _wanted _to consume human flesh, it probably could.

"Can we take a look around?" Thirteen said, standing up from the old, dirty office chair she had dragged over from one of the desks, "You know, explore. No danger of us getting attacked if it can't get in here. Speaking of, have you ever seen it?"

"No," Tentoo answered.

"What? You've never been to look?" the Doctor questioned, staring around like she was looking for something, scrunching up the empty crisp packet, "What does it do at night? How long have you been here? What have you been eating?"

"No, I've never been to look, there aren't any windows and I'm not going to go out there. It walks around the Western side, the entrance, where you came in, doesn't go around anywhere else. Hits on the walls and screams. And I have my own ration supplies with me, in that bag, I've only been here a week," he explained, nodding at a huge rucksack sitting in a corner. Laika padded at Thirteen's feet.

"C'mon, Clara, we're going for a walk," she said, and Clara sighed and stood up to follow. It was just as cold inside as it was outside, more or less. She knew that if she didn't go with the Doctor, the Doctor would go off on her own anyway, and she didn't want to get stuck with Tentoo and the Cargills.

"Just make sure to come back here," Tentoo called after her as she picked her back up from the floor and clicked her fingers so that Laika would follow them.

"Sure we will," she sighed, walking off towards the door on the left side of the room, which they hadn't been to yet, they had only been to the control room, "Just want some alone time on our wedding anniversary."


	343. Lightbulb Moment

_Clara_

_Lightbulb Moment_

"I don't trust this place," the Doctor said, holding a lantern they had found on the floor by a door that still had enough gas in it for Clara to light it. Clara walked on Thirteen's right as they prowled through dark, grey corridors. Even with some of the lights on, courtesy of the electro-redux whatever-it-was, a lot of the bulbs were dead regardless of power supply, "It's strange, why would they get halfway through building a cosmodrome before they figured it wouldn't work? And no real power supply? It doesn't _look _unfinished..."

"What about the hollow computers?" Clara asked, trying to ignore the dog sniffing her feet. Her feet were perfectly clean, nothing for the dog to smell.

"Hollow computers..." the Doctor mused, then she stopped in the grey, concrete corridor with no windows and went up to one of the light fixtures hanging from the ceiling, staring straight up at it, "Y'know, fifteen years ago I would've been able to reach those cables."

"What do you want with the cable?"

"I have a hunch," she said, but the cables and wiring were over two feet above her. She passed Clara the lantern and drew out her screwdriver, trying the closest door and finding that it was unlocked already. Clara and Laika followed her in and found it looked a bit like an office, an office complete with an old metal chair. The Doctor put her screwdriver between her teeth and picked up the heavy chair, half-carrying and half-dragging it through the door into the corridor. Clara spied something on the desk of the old office and went to pick it up.

"There's a file here says 'Arkham Outpost,' on it," she said, picking it up, but Thirteen didn't answer. Clara walked out of the office to see her balancing on the chair sonicking the lightbulb with a puzzled expression on her face, "What are you doing?"

"It's independent," she said, "I swear, there is no connection... there were two lights near the door, when we first came in, do you remember?" she asked frowning at her purple-lit screwdriver like it might be broken.

"Can't say that I do," Clara confessed. She hadn't been particularly bothered about the lights earlier, not like Thirteen was. She was trying to grab the cable fastened to the ceiling that linked up the lightbulbs at that moment.

"First two lights, lefthand side of the wall, not lit up," Thirteen said.

"So what? You said the spaceship was generating the power?"

"The spaceship _is_ generating the power, but this doesn't make sense. It's a circuit - or, it _should _be a circuit... you know in school, when they teach you about circuits? The battery powers everything equally, the more lightbulbs there are, the dimmer they all are? It's electricity, it flows where it has a connection, but here?" she said, finally succeeding in wrenching the cable off the ceiling. She wobbled on the chair and would have fallen off, had Clara not grabbed it to steady it, "This cable, look," she held it up to her own ear and seemed to listen to it.

"What? Is it singing?" Clara asked sarcastically, and the Doctor ignored her. Then she put the cable between her teeth and tried to bite it like it was an especially chewy bit of liquorice, "Don't bite that! You'll get electrocuted!" Clara shouted, but was still ignored by the Doctor, who managed to tear a hole in the wire with her teeth.

"Ah-ha!" she said, then she held it out for Clara to see, pulling it between her thumbs to reveal the interior, "It's empty. The casing is for show, there aren't any wires."

"I don't get it," Clara said, squinting at the lightbulb, still yellow and buzzing quite pleasantly above them, as Thirteen jumped down off the chair, "The ship, though. The ship-"

"Enough about the spaceship, _listen_, the spaceship has a range that it can project the electricity. Those two lights near the door in are out of range, but that doesn't make sense unless everything is an independent, internal circuit," the Doctor said, "These lightbulbs are all individually powered, there is no greater circuit in the building. It's more than just not connecting a power supply, there was never intended to _be _a power supply. This place is fake."

"Fake? How can it be fake?"

"Oh, 'how can it be fake?' Easily! It's not a question of _how_, it's a question of _why_, why build a secret, fake cosmodrome?" Thirteen questioned, then she saw what Clara was holding, "What is that?"

"A file," Clara answered, "I told you, but you were distracted by the lightbulb. Look, it says 'Arkham Outpost.'"

"Arkham? What is this, Batman?" Thirteen asked, standing next to Clara to read over her shoulder. On the front of it all that it said was _Arkham Outpost_, and a brown-printed image of a sickle and hammer, predictably enough, then it had the year, 1951, printed in a corner. It was empty when she flipped it open, though. "Huh. Weird."

"Arkham... Why call it Arkham? Arkham isn't a Russian word, it's an American one..." Clara frowned, trying to think of the significance of the word 'Arkham' _apart _from its presence in Batman lore. She was pretty sure this mysterious Soviet facility wasn't anything to do with Batman in the slightest.

"Maybe it's an asylum?" Thirteen suggested.

"Oh yeah, an asylum with a massive dome outside. Hey, maybe it's a nuclear test site? What year was it built? '51?"

"The Soviets invented the atomic bomb in '49, Clara," Thirteen told her, taking the file and looking at it, "But they didn't invent the hydrogen bomb until '53... it won't be a test site, a test site would be... well, real. Real wires, no hollow computers... why have hollow computers? Real-looking from the outside? That's not how terminal assembly typically works, this is a base, not an Airfix kit..."

"Maybe it was built to trick the Americans into thinking there was something here? You know, they had spy planes, and stuff?" she suggested.

"Wouldn't need to have anything inside it if it was, just needs to look scary from above... hold on..." she said, passing the file back to Clara and opening her bag, sticking her hand in it and rooting around its infinite cavity, trying to find something, "Here we go..." she pulled out a compass and held it flat in her palm, waiting for it to right itself to the Earth's magnetic pull. "North is _that _way..." she pointed towards the office they had just been in, then glanced to her right, "So East is _this _way..."

"What's significant about East?"

"The creature won't go to the East, remember?" Thirteen said, starting to walk off. Clara dropped the empty file on the chair they had left in the derelict hallway and followed after her, Laika trotting along with them, Clara holding the lantern now, "We came in from the West. So the East is-"

"That dome. Why does it have a dome? Don't they launch missiles out of them?"

"Yeah, in _Thunderbirds_, not in reality. In reality they launch out of underground silos," Thirteen said.

"So, why is there a huge dome, then?"

"Why is there a huge dome, and why won't the mysterious creature go anywhere near it? Big, fake outpost... nobody here... I don't think Tentoo knows what's going on, you know..." Thirteen said as they walked through the corridors, "Shut down in 1951 because it took the Soviets that long to figure out where they were supposed to be building a cosmodrome?" The more they found out about the facility, the stranger the mystery became.

"...We're not keeping the dog," Clara changed the subject away from their abandoned surroundings. There must be some other reason why it had all been left empty.

"Look how cute she is though!" the Doctor protested, looking down at Laika, who followed them silently and wagged her tail. When the Doctor smiled at her, she barked for the first time, "We saved her, we can't just leave her."

"We could just give her to somebody else! What about Tentoo? He's probably plenty lonely, why can't _he _have Laika?"

"Because _I_ want Laika. Can't you just say she's... an anniversary present?"

"Oh, is the engagement ring not enough?" Clara asked coldly.

"Clara, that's not what I meant-"

"It's just a dog!"

"Yeah, and to the rest of the Time Lords, you would be 'just a human,' and I married you, didn't I?"

"Oh, are you going to marry the dog now? I didn't know you were a bigamist," Clara said, glaring at Laika. Laika wagged her tail and barked again.

"I think she likes you," Thirteen said, and Clara scoffed, "You sound exactly like your sister when she used to talk about Jonesy."

"Yeah, well," Clara rounded on her angrily, but couldn't think of anything else to say as Thirteen crossed her arms and challenged her to argue, "Well... well Oswin won't like it either!"

"Adam will, it's two against two. Anyway, it doesn't even matter right now. We're not exactly in any position to leave, it's gonna be night soon, and then that thing'll be out there, so we won't be able to get back to the TARDIS until dawn."

"Oh, great. Stuck here all night, on my _wedding anniversary_!"

"I'll make it up to you, now come on, we have to find the entrance to this dome."


	344. Under The Dome

**AN: Maybe I SHOULD have gotten into the Christmas spirit this year, but here I am writing a pretty dark storyline about massacred Soviets - although, last year Oswin blew a mermaid's head up with a microwave. Originally, this storyline was going to be set around Christmas, on December 28th, with Thirteen forcing Clara to visit people at Christmas while she complained, and it was going to be set in Antarctica. Anyway, Merry Christmas Eve if you celebrate Christmas, and also there probably WILL be an update tomorrow on Christmas Day, because I mean, what is there to do on Christmas Day? I heard lately that in America there IS stuff to do, but over here in the UK everything is closed, everything except the emergency services. The Victorian Clecho died 123 years ago today.**

_Clara_

_Under The Dome_

"No, no, no... how is that... c'mon... must have missed it..." the Doctor muttered to herself. She was leading them in circles and Laika kept barking about something, but Clara kept telling her to shut up. The cold was getting to her. Brief cold wasn't so bad, but it was more cold than she was ever used to and there wasn't much hope of becoming warm again any time soon, and Tentoo's talk of fire earlier was playing on her mind.

They were walking up and down a solid, grey, concrete wall, the last wall in the building, and there didn't seem to be any entrance to the mysterious dome structure of the Arkham Outpost, and Clara couldn't get the name out of her head, either, there were something about it, something _more _than her Batman obsession. There weren't any windows, either. In the entire facility, there was not one room with windows, it was all just grey and dark with the unnaturally powered lightbulbs that were apparently never intended to work properly. Clara hugged her arms to herself and breathed out a cloud of air that sparkled, freezing like glitter in front of her. The Doctor, as always, was noticeably warmer, but also noticeably agitated, looking for this entrance.

"I don't understand, this place is an enigma... maybe there are design plans somewhere? Maybe we should look for them?" she looked at Clara for support in this idea, but Clara just shrugged. She didn't know what to do, she was frozen. She breathed into her hands and rubbed them together.

"We could go back? Maybe there's a way that we're just missing? Tentoo or the Cargills might know where it is," Clara suggested, "They might have plans. And a fire. That control room was kind of warm."

"Control room, mission control... why make people think this was something it wasn't? Wouldn't the people hired to work there realise after ten minutes that all the computers were empty and the lights didn't turn on?" Thirteen said, "No, this is a conspiracy. I can smell it. Smells like old chili powder."

"I think that was those crisps you ate earlier, sweetheart," Clara said, shivering slightly. She should have made a flask of tea earlier, brought it with them in Thirteen's magic bag, something warm to drink. Tea always tasted different in a flask, though, always tasted slightly odd. But it was better than turning slowly into an icicle. The Doctor shook her head in annoyance at the fact she couldn't find the way into the dome and started walking off again, running a hand along the wall like she was looking for a secret door.

They passed a lefthand turn down into another corridor, which might have been the corridor they had originally come from, but every different direction in that place was completely identical. It was there that Laika started barking, and Thirteen ignored her and continued walking, but Clara stopped, because Clara was less focused on the singular, long wall of the Eastern side of the Outpost than her wife was, and she thought that Laika had been barking at this one spot every single time they had walked past it. She frowned down at the dog, confused, trying to deduce what the creature was thinking.

"What is it?" she asked, not doing what else to do. Laika padded around at her feet and barked at the wall, and Clara glanced at the wall, then said to Laika as though she were speaking to a child, "It's a wall." The Doctor wasn't paying her any attention, just walking off. Clara was sure she would come back when she realised she wasn't following her, and she pressed a hand against the wall and looked closely at it.

The thing was, Clara was the one in possession of the lantern still, hanging it from one of her fingers as it flickered and waned, getting closer and closer to running out of gas. She had been walking far away from the wall so that the wall was mostly dark, but now, when she held up the lantern, she noticed something. This bit off wall was a different shade of grey. She could see where it changed from darker to lighter, and there was a square of it that was a lighter shade.

"Doctor?" she called down the corridor, but Thirteen ignored her. She glanced at Laika and said, "She never listens when there's something important going on." She sighed and in an instant vanished from one spot, to the great surprise of the dog, in a cloud of thin, black smoke, and reappeared straight away in front of the Doctor, who was by now much too used to Clara's impromptu teleporting.

"We're going this way," Clara said, taking her Thirteen's hand with her free one and dragging her back, Laika barking in confusion.

"What? Why?" Thirteen protested.

"Because I said so," Clara told her firmly, lacing her fingers together, because she had the idea that she was going to need to be in some sort of contact with the Doctor in a few minutes, if her hunch about the funny-coloured wall was correct. "There, see?" Clara held up the lantern at the spot where the two greys clashed against each other. The Doctor realised this and leant close to examine it, "There was a door there."

"The door to the dome..."

"Exactly," she said. Laika barked next to her at the spot on the wall again, "And it's making the dog act weird."

"Well, we have to go through," Thirteen said, then she paused, "I don't know if it's a good idea to phase the dog through the wall, though."

"No, probably not, I mean, I phased the cat through the wall once and it went for me," Clara reminisced bitterly on an old memory of Jonesy.

"Okay, uh, you, stay," Thirteen said to the dog, and Laika said down obediently, "Stay right there, okay? Okay?"

"She can't speak," Clara said.

"I speak dog."

"Obviously..." Clara muttered. Laika whined.

"I know it's cold, but you have to stay here."

"If you speak dog, why weren't you listening to her when she was barking?" Clara challenged.

"Well I speak English as well, but I wasn't listening to you, either," she answered.

"Oh, I'm charmed," Clara said, annoyed, and then she dragged Thirteen by her hand through to wall as she still tried to tell the dog to stay put. It wasn't like the dog could get into too much trouble, it couldn't exactly open the heavy door outside and leave, and the rest of the whole complex seemed to be completely empty.

A stink forced itself around them when they went into the dome, and it definitely was the dome, the high, curved, metal ceiling definitely attested to that. It didn't long for them to see what the stench actually was, though, and Clara dropped Thirteen's hand and used that free one to cover her mouth and nose at the sight, while Thirteen just stared.

It was just bodies, hundreds of bodies, frozen and wasting away to just bones, but there was still a smell about the place, a smell of freezing decay, snow blown in from a gaping slash in one side of the dome as though it had been torn apart. Going by their ragged clothes, they were soldiers, some of them, and some of them had lab coats on, all shredded and frozen now. Arms and legs were scattered everywhere, bodies disconnected and limbs lying about. How long had they been there? How had they even gotten there? What had happened?

Not saying a word, Thirteen went and crouched down to the closest bit of bone, which was an arm that appeared to be snapped apart like a broken twig just before it _would_ have reached an elbow, were there an elbow for it to reach.

"Look at this," she said, standing up, picking the arm up and bringing it over to Clara, with such an expression of disgust and intrigue, Clara knew she was probably showing her something important and not just trying to gross her out with a skeleton hand, "You see the scratches on it? They're bite marks." The marks the Doctor was referring to were deep and gouged right into the marrow.

"Bite marks from what?" Clara asked quietly, her hand feeling frozen to the lantern now. It was a lot colder in the dome than it was in the rest of the building, mainly due to the gash in the wall that was letting in the snow and a great deal of light, though she could see that sunset was going to be coming soon outside. This was probably why Tentoo had never found anything - the cut in the wall was too high for somebody to climb into from the outside, and unlike Clara, he couldn't walk through walls.

"Whatever it was that killed those people in the village Tentoo was talking about, tore them to pieces. And no vampire made a hole like _that_," Thirteen said, pointing at the huge slit, "It's like whatever it was tore its way out..."

"But what is it?" Clara asked, "What's this dome for? Why the hell was everybody gathered here at once to get slaughtered in a huge, fake building?" she questioned the Doctor like the Doctor had the answer, but she hadn't a clue, either.

"I don't know, but that over there looks like some kind of control room," Thirteen said, pointing over to a room built higher up against one of the walls, a cuboid with a metal, rusty staircase that lead up to it, like offices on building sites made out of what always reminded Clara of shipping crates, "C'mon." The Doctor took her hand and they tiptoed over all of the bodies. It looked like the entire staff, the entire staff just massacred by some creature that had been in there and had escaped.

The metal stairs were icy and had a fine layer of snow across them, and the door into the odd room was locked tight. Thirteen tried to force it first of all, then got her screwdriver back out and fumbled with it in her cold hands, crouching down and sonicking the lock finally, so that it clicked. They pushed the door open and crept inside, where there was what must be a viewing window, the only window in the entire facility, on the right, overlooking the skeletons, and a desk in front of it. But there was somebody sat in the desk, and Clara jumped when she saw them, all wrapped up in multiple coats, sitting there completely still, facing away from them, in the chair.

Neither of them spoke to each other, they just stared at the figure, a man, wearing one of those stereotypical fur hats with the ear flaps and multiple pairs of gloves.

"...Hello..?" Thirteen asked eventually, but there was no movement. The Doctor narrowed her eyes and stepped forwards, but Clara grabbed her by the arm, "What?"

"What if he attacks you?" she asked, but Thirteen shook her head and ignored Clara, who watched agitatedly nearby, and went up to the man and peered around the side of him, then sighed, "He's dead as well."

"Dead?" Clara asked, going over to the man's other side, and staring at him, holding up the lantern, "...He doesn't look dead." He didn't look dead. He just looked pale. He had a name badge on that was yellow around the edges with running ink from the ice as it thawed each summer it looked so old, reading _Artyom Rokossovsky_.

"Frozen," Thirteen answered, "Whatever it was that attacked, it didn't get him in here... god, he must have seen them all killed..." There was a book on the desk and a candle stub that must have gone out decades ago, one-hundred and six years, if the place really had been abandoned in 1951, and it was 2057 now. There were other papers, as well, and unlocked drawers, and the controls in front of Artyom Rokossovsky, whoever he had been, seemed to be legitimate, they seemed to feed to something. The Doctor sighed and went to look around elsewhere as Clara picked up the book, putting the lantern down on the desk next to the body, who sat in the chair looking just as haunted as Clara felt with him staring, eyelids too frozen to close.

Holding the book under her arm, Clara fumbled in her pocket and decided it was a good time to light a cigarette, dragging one out and flipping the silver lighter open to light it. It was the only bit of warmth and consolation she had, she thought.

"Light me that candle, would you?" the Doctor requested. It was going to be dark soon. Clara walked around Artyom's body to get to the candle and lit it, what was left of it, barely two inches of old beeswax, and the Doctor thanked her and picked it up, crouching and looking at something as Clara took the book back out and flipped through the pages. What the Doctor was looking at was large and metal and was frosted over. Clara's breath was just as visible in front of her as the cigarette smoke was.

"What is that?" Clara asked.

"It's a power generator," Thirteen told her, "Powering that terminal on the desk, and one of the wires leads out there, as far as I can see. But I don't know what it does. Do you smell that?"

"Smell what?" Clara asked absently.

"Asbestos," Thirteen answered, looking around, "This room is coated in asbestos. I wonder what they needed to protect it from... and what they were powering..." Thirteen stood up from the generator, that probably had no hope of working anymore so that they could see what was on the computer terminal, the only real computer terminal in the Soviet outpost, and started to rifle the drawers.

"Listen to this," Clara said, beginning to read from the book, which was mostly empty, like he had planned to write more, but his time had been cut short, "Dated December 3rd, 1951, '_I hate what they are making me do, these-_'"

"Please don't do a Russian accent, sweetheart," the Doctor asked impatiently. Clara pouted for a moment.

"Fine," she resumed, "'_These men are my comrades, they don't deserve this double-crossing, they are too much to be reduced to sacrifices_.'"

"Did you say _sacrifices_!? Sacrifices to what!?" Thirteen exclaimed, and Clara shrugged.

"He didn't really write a lot, our Artyom," Clara said, going onto the next page, "Uh... here we are, '_They are struggling to fit the coil to the Cage roof and have asked for me to leave_.'"

"The cage?" Thirteen frowned. The dates skipped ahead two weeks then, they went from December 5th to December 19th.

"Uh-oh," Clara said, "'_It did not work, there were over one-hundred and sixty meaningless deaths today. I am trapped with no rations to last me. It is not God's work, it is the work of the Devil, the Devil cannot be caged_.' And then I'm pretty sure he could die before he wrote anything else..."

"The Devil cannot be caged?" Thirteen asked incredulously, "What does he mean, 'it' is not god's work? What isn't?"

"This place is the Cage," Clara said, "It must be. For the creature that killed them all, killed everyone in the village. How old do you think it is?"

"That's why it doesn't come around this side of the building or come in, it doesn't want to get trapped again," Thirteen realised, "And do you see that? On the roof?" she pointed through the window to something right in the middle of the dome, at the top, which was just a cylinder with a large, circular other-bit on the bottom of it, hanging down, "It's a Tesla coil. This generator powers the coil, Artyom is the only guy who knew how to use the coil, that's why he was in here, in the asbestos coated room, where it was safe..."

"Oh, god..."  
"Oh, god..."

Clara breathed, finding something written on the last page, the exact same time Thirteen said the same thing about something she had just found in the drawers.

"Look at this."  
"Look at this."

They both spoke again, Clara holding the book out to Thirteen, Thirteen passing a bunch of photographs to Clara. They each stared at what they were holding, neither of them with an idea what they were. The photos sort of looked like butterflies, just very large butterflies that were sort of... burned into the ground, or something. She held one of them up and turned it sideways.

"What is it?"  
"What is it?"

Thirteen was just as puzzled by the thing written on the last page as Clara was by the aerial photographs.

"It's the answer!"  
"It's the answer!"

They told each other, standing right by each other with their elbows touching, just behind Artyom's body.

"To what?"  
"To what?"

"To how it got here!" Thirteen exclaimed.  
"To what it is!"

Clara pointed at the book and Thirteen pointed at the photographs.

"It's photos of the Tunguska Event."  
"It says 'Ithaqua.'"

There was a pause where they looked at each other and both thought.

"You go first."  
"You go first."

"No, _you_."  
"No, _you_."

"Okay, I'll-"  
"Okay, I'll-"

They stared, and Clara kissed her for just a few seconds, because the Doctor stepped away a moment later.

"There's a dead guy right there! Is now really the time!?"

"We kept speaking at the same time! I had to stop it, because usually somebody else does," Clara shrugged, "I'm sure Artyom doesn't mind. You know what blokes are like, they love a bit of lesbian action."

"Clara! He's dead!" Thirteen elbowed her, "Now just... just listen to me, because I know how it got here..."


	345. Shock Value

**AN: So to keep in with the Christmas spirit, on Day 118 it's Halloween! Like, really, in the canon of 3D9C it's been that long since July 5th, the date of the Dimension Crash. Anybody have any suggestions or something they might like me to do? Because I don't have any ideas.**

_Clara_

_Shock Value_

"Atryom Rokossovsky called it 'Ithaqua,'" Clara explained to the Cargills and Tentoo, sitting close to the fire they had now lit in the derelict mission control room, warm enough now that she had taken her coat off for the first time in hours. It was sunset outside, and they were heating up cans of soup of Tentoo's to eat, "In that book I found, all it says is 'Ithaqua.'"

"Which means what?" Ashley Cargill asked. Yet again, the Doctor and her wife had triumphed over the pair of them, but intrigue was defeating their egotism right then, and they cared more about what Clara was saying than any weird competition where only they kept score.

"This place is called the Arkham Outpost, right? Arkham as in Arkham House, the publishers, named after the fictional town H.P. Lovecraft wrote about," Clara explained, "Ithaqua is part of the Cthulu Mythos, you know? It's one of the cosmological alien deities that controls the universe that humanity can't possibly understand."

"But that's a story, it doesn't exist," Austin said boredly.

"No, but whatever that creature is that killed everyone in here and broke out a century ago, they _thought _it was Ithaqua. In the story, which was written by Derleth in 1941, Ithaqua is a god that can control the cold. Ithaqua supposedly inspired the Native American legend of the wendigo, but in reality, the legend of the wendigo inspired Derleth. Well, technically it inspired Blackwood, but anyway," Clara continued, then she saw them frowning at her, as Thirteen prodded the cans on the fire with a metal pole she had found somewhere.

"She studies cryptozoology and the occult in her free time," the Doctor explained next to her. (**Chapter Ref. 695**)

"What's a wendigo?" Austin asked.

"It's a spirit found in Algonquian culture," she explained, "It basically serves to create taboo against cannibalism. The myth says that if one consumes human flesh, for any reason, even their own survival, then they will become a wendigo and go off to terrorise villages, or whatever, eating people. It gorges itself but is impossible to satisfy, meaning it's a warning about famine _and _greed, but it doesn't actually exist, it's just folklore."

"What's it look like?" Tentoo asked. Thirteen didn't know what a wendigo was, either, she was never too involved with Clara's research, but it often proved useful, learning things about various legends and hidden creatures, especially in circumstances like this.

"It varies, it's often shown to have antlers, though, and look a bit like a stag, I suppose, but it doesn't always. But it's always huge, way taller than a person, and strong, and has loads of sharp teeth. For eating flesh, and stuff," Clara said, watching the soup cans to see how long it was until they were hot enough to drink, "The thing is, until 1910, there were no wendigo stories in popular culture, never written about, not like vampires or werewolves that have been thrown into fiction for centuries. Then Blackwood wrote _The Wendigo_, and inspired the creation of Ithaqua, two years after the... whatever it was you were showing me pictures of." Thirteen was listening, and at that passed the metal rod to Clara to poke the cans with, though, what poking the cans did, she had no idea, and picked the photographs off the floor, brushing wood ash off them.

"In 1908 there was the Tunguska Event," she said.

"I thought that was a mid-air meteor explosion?" Austin asked, leaning forwards and squinting at the first photo the Doctor held up.

"It was, meteoroid blows up above the Earth's surface and flattens two-thousand kilometres of forest, right in the middle of Siberia, nobody dies because it's so remote," Thirteen said, "Funny thing is, there have been a lot of these explosions, nobody thought much of it for decades until the 1950s and the 1960s, when it was suddenly proven to be nothing out of the ordinary. And then in 1975, all the photos of the Tunguska Event were burned by the Soviets, all destroyed."

"So why are there photos of it here..." Tentoo mused, a rhetorical question, taking one of the photos from Thirteen.

"Photos of that, brought here, somewhere probably near the site, never destroyed," the Doctor explained.

"That's how it got here," Tentoo said.

"Exactly. It's a lost alien that these people _thought _was a wendigo because of the similarities with the myth, but it's just large, and scary, and hungry," Thirteen answered, "But there's still more, there's still an entire Soviet conspiracy about this facility, because the whole thing is fake."

"They tricked everybody here," Clara continued, "That's what Artyom wrote, Artyom was the only one who knew how to operate 'the Cage,' to try and capture the creature. 'The Cage' is the dome, it's a trap-"

"That's why it won't come in here or go to the Eastern side of the outpost, because they had it trapped and they probably hurt it and made it lash out," Thirteen said, "They lured it here and tried to sedate it with a huge tesla coil attached to the roof, but it didn't work, and it tore its way out and left only Artyom alive, and then he froze to death. It killed the soldiers here and it killed those people in the village just last week, and probably thousands of others, and we don't know how long it's going to live for or if it'll ever die."

"We have to kill it, you mean?" Austin Cargill asked, "Kill the thing? Well, why can't you just reboot the tesla coil and up the voltage enough to be lethal? Lure it in here, press a button, then you've got roasted wendigo for dinner."

"How _did _they lure it in here before?" Tentoo inquired.

"...I think the soup's ready, you know, Coo," Thirteen said absently, acting like she _hadn't_ just blatantly changed the subject away from how the Soviets had really tried to catch the wendigo in 1951. She used her own scarf to pick up a can off the fire, all of them standing on a rudimentary grill they had made from the empty computer terminal, the fire inside it, melting it, with the cans sat on top. She winced at how hot it was, but fortunately they had had the foresight to take the lids off with a can opener _before _trying to heat them up. No spoons, though.

"Oh, great," Clara said, taking one of the cans in her double-gloved hands, "And here I was thinking you weren't going to cook anything today." Thirteen smiled.

"How did they lure it in?" Ashley Cargill reiterated a few minutes later, Clara sat blowing on her soup so that she didn't burn her mouth, but she was _starving_, hadn't eaten a thing all day.

"The outpost is fake," Thirteen answered shortly, "All of it. Fake. Designed to trick the people they sent to work here. The people working here, except Artyom, all thought this was a cosmodrome."

"It's called Arkham Outpost, remember? After the Lovecraft town, like I said? The entire place was built with the intention to catch that wendigo in that dome and use it, probably as a weapon in the Cold War," Clara said.

"Yes, but how did they get it into the dome anyway?"

"We think the side of it all opens up, but it won't anymore, it'll be frozen, just like the generator that used to power that _and _the tesla coil," Thirteen said, "It was the people. You have to remember, the thing is ravenous, they thought it might be the possessed body of somebody who partook in cannibalism, the people were bait, all one-hundred and sixty of them."

"_Bait_? Over a hundred people? Just bait?" Tentoo asked angrily.

"Artyom wrote that they don't deserve to be double-crossed, and they were too much to be reduced to sacrifices. It also seemed like he tried to stop them putting the tesla coil in the dome roof," Clara said, "But yeah. They did. Lots of cultures believed you had to make sacrifices to appease the wendigo, or, feed it, I suppose."

"That's awful! What a terrible waste of human life!" Tentoo protested.

"Yeah, but it was a hundred years ago, we can't do anything about it now except-"

"Avenge them and kill the wendigo," Austin shrugged.

"It's not that easy," said Thirteen, "It's dark out now, so we can't get back to the TARDIS to try and find something with an equal amount of electrical output as that tesla coil, and there also isn't any way to reach or power the coil _anyway_, because the generator has been frozen solid for a century. Not to mention the thing is _never _going to come back into that dome."

"So we go find it," Ashley said, "You forgot about the spaceship. The spaceship is generating that electric field, which could be changed into some kind of artillery piece to charge and shoot it."

"What 'artillery piece?'" Austin questioned.

"The redux emitter on the top of the ship."

"The redux emitter can't be aimed and fired at anybody," he argued.

"All we have to do is remove it and attach a battery, then hey presto, it's a huge cannon," she explained to him, "We charge it up and then we shoot it. Easy enough."

"Will that work?" Austin asked Thirteen.

"Probably, I could help with it," Tentoo interrupted just as Thirteen began to speak.

"...Yeah, let him help," Thirteen said after thinking, "You should probably go do it now, before it gets totally dark. You only need the one, uh, Doctor, and Clara and I already figured out what it is and how to stop it, so it's only fair..." Clara didn't say a word as the Cargills debated taking up this offer, she was sipping her hot chicken soup and thinking that she'd never tasted anything quite as delicious at that moment.

Because time wasn't really on their side, the Cargills quickly decided to take Tentoo up to their ship with him, which only required a simple teleportation matrix and the three of them were whisked away to climb on top of the huge, invisible thing and dettach the redux emitter and turn it into a tesla cannon. Then it was just Clara, Laika and the Doctor.

"Do you think I can have their soup now they've left? Look, Ashley had minestrone, I love minestrone," Clara mused, but Thirteen didn't answer. Thirteen was watching her. Clara slurped more chicken soup. "Why are you staring at me?"

"Look at us, together, _alone_, on our wedding anniversary," Thirteen said, leaning towards her.

"Oh, because nothing screams romance like an abandoned Soviet installation full of dead people," Clara said sarcastically, going back to her soup.

"What are you doing tonight?" the Doctor tried to flirt, but Clara wasn't in the mood to flirt back, for once.

"I have a hot date."

"Oh yeah?"

"Yep."

"With who?"

"A six pack of lager."

"What an exotic name."

"Sometimes she goes by 'Stella.'"

"I'm sorry that I got us stuck here in the middle of nowhere today," she apologised, and she sounded sincere. Clara sighed.

"It's fine. At least if we get killed, it'll be your fault, not mine," Clara smiled.

"...It's sort of fun, though. Solving mysteries, strange creatures-"

"One of these days I'll have to change my name to Velma."

"I'll make it up to you."

"I'm sure you will, just let me get shitfaced first."

"A woman of your age shouldn't be drinking so much," Thirteen joked.

"A woman of _your_ age shouldn't be _breathing _so much." There was a pause. "Do we really just have to sit here now in this freezing outpost and wait for them to build a cannon? What if that thing shows up and decides that five people is now worth the risk of coming back in?"

"I think it's too big to fit in the corridors," Thirteen said.

"Are you really gonna let them kill it?"

"If it's as dangerous as it sounds we can't exactly leave it here or dump it on another planet, plus I don't _really _want to have that thing on the TARDIS, after it killed so many people. And I doubt that village it slaughtered tried to catch it in a big dome, or anything. Trying to catch it didn't work the first time, anyway, even if they _did _have malicious intent to use it as a weapon, so I don't really see how _we _could catch it, _and _get it to the TARDIS," the Doctor explained her decision to allow the Cargills to murder the creature.

"Well, now you just sound like your daughter."

"Which is not remotely surprising. Anyway, it's gonna be a long night, shall we play a game to pass the time?"

"As long as it isn't strip poker, I don't think I fancy pneumonia."


	346. Until Dawn

_Clara_

_Until Dawn_

The pair of them were as uninvolved in the business of slaying the so-called wendigo as possible, which was probably why it eventuated that slaying the so-called wendigo didn't go remotely to plan. They were still sitting by the fire in the fake mission control room hours and hours later, sat in the freezing cold, interminably bored, talking to one another, trying to ignore the howling sounds outside. The howling sounds made Laika uneasy, and she sat buried under the Doctor's coat by the fire whimpering every now and then.

Those sounds had started off as most definitely being the wind, a snowstorm picking up, Thirteen wondering if the TARDIS was going to be alright in such an obscene gale, and then they had morphed into something else. Sure, the sound of the wind was still there, but it slowly ended up accompanied by a horrific, high, screeching sound, not dissimilar to the noise one might expect a bird to make if someone hurt it a great deal, a rattling, phlegmy wail. Then the banging started, loud, metal banging on the door, hits and scratches and shrieks that started ringing out as the time drew on to about two in the morning.

"What time is it to us?" Clara asked the Doctor very quietly, shuffling their chairs closer so they were right by one another, the Doctor staring off in the vague direction of the door and the noises of the wendigo, of Ithaqua.

"Uh…" she said distantly, then she turned to Clara, "About six in the evening." The wendigo, distant and outside, seemed to roar then, and the Doctor winced, and Laika whined again. "I know it's basically evil and has killed a lot of people and is about as sentient as a termite, but I still sort of think maybe this isn't the best solution… maybe we should have taken a look at it first?"

"It ruthlessly killed all those people in the dome, sweetheart."

"I know, but they _did_ hurt it."

"Do you think that village hurt it? You remember what we said, that after that event-whatsit-"

"Tunguska Event."

"Yeah, that – after that, there were more instances of wendigos in popular fiction. And wendigo psychosis, that started to get big in the 1900s," Clara said. Wendigo Psychosis was a queer mental disorder where the sufferer craved human flesh. There was debate as to whether it was real or not, "Maybe because of this thing? Killing people? I know it's never made the news, but there are always whispers." The thing outside howled again and she jumped. "Or screams... plus, what's to stop them getting the idea to try and use it as a weapon again?"

"I guess you're right," she sighed.

"I _am_ right," Clara said, taking her hand. Then the wendigo screamed again, even louder than before, even more savagely and painfully, "Bloody hell, that thing needs to calm down. Christ, can you imagine if I went around screaming all the time?"

"God, you're annoying enough as it is," the Doctor said, "…But I think something's wrong…" She made to stand up, but Clara pulled her back down into the chair.

"It could just be _really_ angry," she said as it distantly made a squawking sound, "Probably best we _don't_ open the doors and have a look? Wait and see what the Cargills say?"

"The Cargills might be dead."

"I don't think they _can_ die. There's definitely something weird about them. Maybe they've found some fountain of youth somewhere in the universe?" Clara suggested, and Thirteen shrugged.

"I _guess_ it's possible…" They paused, and listened. All Clara could hear all of a sudden was the wind, the wind which seemed significantly quieter by comparison to the tortured bellows of the wendigo outside, the tortured bellows which had quite possibly ceased.

"…Maybe it's dead..?" Clara suggested, but the Doctor didn't say anything, just listened to the wind, the silence outside now. She didn't know how Tentoo had coped for the last few days with that thing screeching outside all night, and in temperatures like this.

Three blue lights shimmered and Tentoo, Austin and Ashley reappeared in mission control for the first time in hours, Laika barking at them when they did, Ashley looking furious, Tentoo looking haunted, and Austin looking annoyed but carrying a massive gun. And when she said massive, she meant _massive_, it was over four feet long and had a big transparent chamber with indigo electricity like one of those tesla balls you found in science museums.

"Did you kill it?" Clara asked urgently, glancing between all three of them. Tentoo didn't say a word, just came and sat back down in his chair and stared hopelessly into space. But Tentoo was a 'Doctor' (sort of), which meant he would probably be equally disturbed if they had failed as if they had succeeded.

"_Kill it_?" Ashley questioned her coldly, "I don't know, Austin, did we kill it?"

"It… moves quickly…" Austin Cargill grumbled.

"He missed," Ashely said, "And we only have enough charge for the one shot."

"_One shot_?" Thirteen exclaimed.

"Well maybe _you_ should have come and helped build it instead of him," Ashley motioned to Tentoo coldly.

"Oh, sorry for assuming the three of you were competent," Thirteen said coldly.

"Even if we did have more than one shot, it ran away," Austin defended himself, "It ran away _very quickly_, I might add!"

"Oh, great. It's two in the morning! It won't be getting light until about ten, what if it gets angry and comes back? Or goes and terrorises somewhere else?"

"I didn't _miss_ it, strictly speaking-"

"Might as well have," Ashley muttered, and he ignored her. They never seemed to have the most functional of marriages.

"What do you mean?"

"I hit it in the arm," he said, "I think I hurt it."

"Hurt it?" Thirteen asked, "That's… that's good, we can work with that, it'll have gone back to its lair… sweetheart, get me the scanner out of my bag?" she asked Clara, standing up and going to take the gun from Austin. Austin relinquished it easily, holding it on his shoulder, and then the Doctor nearly dropped it. Clara held out a hand as she picked up the Doctor's circular, transdimensional bag to give her some telekinetic assistance as she brought it around the fire and put it down on the floor.

"Here," Clara passed her the scanner they had been using that morning to find Laika.

"Get your screwdriver and use Setting 93 to charge up this pea shooter," she said to Clara.

"I don't have it with me," she said.

"Why!?"

"I never bring it with me," Clara said. The sonic screwdriver she was referring to was the Eleventh Doctor's sonic screwdriver, the one she had stolen from him years ago. Thirteen stared at her, expecting an explanation, "After the incident with that hippopotamus in Tanzania two years ago. It's fragile after going through an entire digestive system like that." (**Chapter Ref. 754**)

"So?"

"So, call me sentimental, but I don't want to break it. You have a perfectly good screwdriver of your own anyway, Doctor," Clara said, and Thirteen sighed and decided she didn't want to get into one with Clara about the fact Clara still kept her dead husband's sonic screwdriver around. It wasn't like she had stopped loving him. He had just died, and changed, and there was absolutely no reason why she couldn't miss him, even if Thirteen had steadily been deciding she didn't like most of the other Doctors. Clara thought she was being immature when she went on weird rants about them, though. Sighing, the Doctor gave Clara her own sonic screwdriver.

"Can you get me one of those?" Tentoo asked her, looking pathetically down at his own badly put together sonic. It reminded Clara of River Song's old screwdriver, just in even worse shape than hers had always been.

"Time Lords only," she said, and Clara elbowed her in the side.

"He's barely less Time Lord than Jenny, and Jenny has a screwdriver," Clara said.

"Jenny got her own screwdriver."

"Can I see her?" Tentoo asked.

"See her? See Jenny?" Thirteen asked him, like she was shocked at the nerve of him, twisting dials around on her scanner, to ask to see Jenny. She was in a bad mood because they hadn't managed to kill the wendigo, which meant she was going to end up getting even more blood on her hands than she had originally wanted to, and she liked feeling high-and-mighty and detached from things like this. It was sort of cowardly of her.

"Of course you can, I'll sort it," Clara interrupted kindly, "And I'm sure that even if my wife doesn't want to be nice, Jenny will more than happy to get you a screwdriver."

"Well what if Jenny doesn't want to see him?" Thirteen asked through gritted teeth.

"Would you just be quiet and sort out your scanner? Jenny is 233 years old, I'm sure she can handle seeing her _father_. It's not like they ever fell out, what's the matter with you?" Clara questioned her, and Thirteen just shut up and grimaced. Jenny had odd relationships with her parents. Thirteen was the one she saw the most, but that was more down to Thirteen than to her. Eleven used to see her a lot, as well, before he died. Though Nine definitely did like her, he'd always felt oddly detached from her, being as it was his next incarnation that actually spawned her and she wasn't really anything to do with him. Then there was Ten, Ten who was so carried away with Rose, and had been for decades now, he rarely made the time to see his daughter. But regardless, she was still an adult, and she didn't want her parents tagging along with her constantly, anyway.

"So how did…" Tentoo began, but trailed off, when Thirteen messed with the scanner and very pointedly ignored him.

"What?" Clara prompted him.

"How did the Eleventh Doctor die?" he asked. He had been disappeared by Rose before discovering the existence of Thirteen. It was only natural to be curious into the demise of one of his sort-of future selves.

"Oh," said Clara, glancing at Thirteen. Thirteen was still ignoring them, though, reconfiguring the scanner, "He drowned," she answered.

"Drowned how?" Tentoo inquired, and she paused with the sonic for a moment and scratched the back of her head.

"It was his own fault," Clara confessed eventually, after thinking, "It was fifteen years ago. We were in Ireland, trying to investigate these really strange murders to do with this crew of a shark culling vessel who had been in a mysterious accident about thirty years earlier. It turned out that these murders were basically because of these shark aliens who wanted revenge on them, and _somebody_ thought it would be a good idea to go swim after them. And then _somebody_ died and regenerated in the middle of the Irish Sea, and had to be dragged up by the TARDIS two weeks later because it took so long to locate the damn body."

"Must have been a complete idiot," Thirteen muttered.

"You, darling. It was you," Clara told her.

"It was-"

"I don't care which regeneration it was, it was still you, and you're still an idiot. What are you doing, then? What's the plan?"

"Plan is we're going to find it and its lair while it licks its wounds and… well, you know… put it out of its misery…"


	347. Electrocution

_Clara_

_Electrocution_

"I really might get drunk, but I've gone off the idea of the lager... how about wine? God, I'd love some wine right about now. I _so _just want to be drunk right now," Clara said to her wife. It was four o'clock in the morning in Siberia, eight o'clock on the TARDIS. An early morning and a late night had taken its toll, and now she was dragging herself though over two feet of snow basically in the middle of a Russian blizzard, her carrying a frankly outrageously sized gun on her arm with aid of telekinesis, the dog trailing along pathetically in their footsteps with her wife carrying the scanner. They were trekking up a narrow path on a steep mountainside and Clara's shoulder ached and her hands were cold, but the Doctor wasn't in a good mood, so she stayed quiet about her discomfort. The thing was, this Doctor being in a bad mood was unusual, and she wasn't exactly going to solve any of their present problems by complaining and being an arse. In her opinion, the injured wendigo needed to be killed. Maybe even put out of its misery, since they didn't know quite how badly Austin had injured it. She just hoped it was in a cave, she would rather be in a cave than a snowstorm.

"I think we're out of wine," Thirteen said to her eventually. Her eyes were glued to the scanner. Clara was making her walk on the left, by the wall, Clara slightly to the right but slightly behind because the passage was just too thin, and they were getting high now, it was quite a ways down. Laika padded after them. Clara thought they should have left her with the others, but hadn't thought to. She was very attached to the Doctor, anyway, as was Clara, and Clara wouldn't want to just be left behind. Laika couldn't carry a massive tesla cannon, though.

"Shame," Clara sighed, "Are you alright?"

"I don't like killing things."

"I know you don't, sweetheart," Clara said, trying to talk softly while simultaneously being made to shout over the wind, "I don't either. Maybe we won't have to? Maybe it really is reasonable? We just have to be prepared for the worst-case scenario."

"Change the subject. Say some nice things. Please? For me?" the Doctor asked. Clara smiled somewhat sadly, not that she could see that, but she would be happy to talk about something else. Anything else.

"If _I_ stepped up to the plate now and _I_ became the romantic one out of the pair of us, you would be in a lot of trouble, woman. I mean, I'm a _poet_. I have written dozens of highly successful sonnets under various pseudonyms, imagine if I was less lazy? Today would have gone so much better if I'd woken you up with a whole day planned," Clara said, "I have it all in my head. A lie in, I'll sneak out and buy breakfast and we'd have it in bed. Then we would go to Rome in the summer, walk along the Tiber, the Colosseum, you could tell me all sorts of random facts about Ancient Rome and however many fights you saw there. Italian ice cream, leave just before the afternoon gets too hot. Then we'll go have a late lunch in the rotating restaurant at the top of the Space Needle in Seattle, and of course in the evening we'll sneak into the back of a dancing hall in 1940s post-war, booming Los Angeles and stay out late. And oh, then, the best part is when you're having a rest - a stretch of the imagination, I know, you _never _rest - and I draw a bath in the enormous hot tub with so many bubbles and scented candles and mood lighting and lavender, because I know lavender is your favourite."

Throughout the process of Clara saying all this, saying all of this quite slowly because she was partly making it up as she went along, they had gone into a cave, as she had earlier hoped. A left turn, allowing her to creep up on Thirteen's other side. It was dark, and the snow was still deep, and the Doctor sighed and stopped walking.

"What?" Clara asked, smiling.

"Thank you," she said, "Just thank you, for being here. We're going to talk about this day of yours later, by the way. The wendigo is in this cave."

"You don't need to tell me twice, I can smell it," Clara said, wishing she didn't need both of her hands to hold the cannon so that she could cover her nose. The Doctor fumbled about getting an industrial-sized torch out of her bag next and awkwardly held it along with the scanner, which was relatively large.

It stank of rotting meat, like a butcher's shop, rotting meat and dead things, or the putrefying odour of stomach acid and partially digested food. The deeper they went into the cave the darker it got and the more it smelt. There was less and less snow and more and more bones for the torch to glint off white, opalescent skulls and femurs and ribs all over the ground. Clara had no doubt that this was where the wendigo lived, and she found herself suppressing coughs at how horrible the sight around her was. She supposed that nobody had found its den yet because they were all too frightened. Unless the bones belonged to people who had, of course. People who had gone looking for it, or maybe just travellers desiring respite.

"Clara, look up," the Doctor whispered to her. They couldn't hear any signs of life, but she was still being quiet, and something in her tone worried Clara, who did exactly what she had said. Moments later, she completely regretted it. In the darkness of the cave above them hung heads. Dozens of them. Decapitated heads in varying stages of decomposition, some of them with sticks of bloody icicles dripping down from their neck stumps.

"Oh my god..." Clara breathed. They were impaled onto stalactites, all of them, and on the ground there were skulls, so many skulls, "They're like trophies... do you still think we don't have to kill it?"

"Uh..." Thirteen was thinking about her answer when Laika interrupted by barking behind them. Clara looked away from the heads on the ceiling at the dog.

"What is it?" Clara asked her, turning awkwardly and carrying the gun. Laika barked incessantly.

"Clara..." the Doctor breathed as Laika kept barking. At first, Clara thought the dog was barking at her, but after a few moments she realised that it was actually barking at something behind her. Dreading what she might see, a smell of death drifting about her swelteringly. She turned around to see the Doctor holding a torch nearby, but the Doctor was not the immediate threat. No, the thing dropping down from the ceiling in front of Clara, the thing that Laika was barking at, was clever enough to recognise the gun Austin Cargill had shot it with just hours ago.

It was tall, impossibly tall, this beast, this wendigo, over twice Clara's height, almost eleven feet off the ground. Its skin was ash-grey and stretched like a corpse over sinews and bones, an emaciated creature with huge, sharp-nailed hands that hung down past its knees. Its legs, or hind legs, as they more closely resembled, were bent slightly as it dropped from the darkness of the ceiling in front of her. Its head was almost a skull, a bloody, skinless skull of with antlers and teeth like razor blades stained pink from so much blood, and the fur on its face that wasn't on the rest of its near-human, elongated body was dark and matted. And the smell, the smell was something she wasn't going to forget for a long time. It was worse than decomposing bodies, she'd been around thousands of corpses, it was so much worse than rotten meat or sour milk or dirty feet or any other stench people commonly disliked, it was just death. A smell of oncoming death, impended destruction, the smell of the end.

And it hit her. It smashed her in her side and sent her toppling over, slamming into a wall of the cave, so hard that the cannon went sliding through the snow on the decline they were all gathered on as she fell into a slump on a bed of skulls and bones and old blood and dead skin and filth, Laika yowling in the background. It was Laika who drew the wendigo's attention, not Thirteen with her light, Thirteen who didn't know what to do, not until it tried to grab Laika. They both knew that if the wendigo got the dog, the dog was going to die, so Thirteen threw the torch at it. It was a large and heavy torch and it blinded Clara as it went past, but the Doctor succeeded in throwing it right at the back of the wendigo's head, with those Time Lord reflexes she wasn't nearly as accustomed to as her daughter seemed to be. It turned away from Laika, who whimpered, and roared. Its screeches were so much worse closeup than they had been in the Soviet installation, them safely bundled up in mission control.

"You ever heard of mouthwash?" Thirteen said to it, and it roared again, stepping straight over Clara, who lay completely still on the ground, with its huge legs. As it went for the Doctor, the Doctor tried to run away, as Clara scrambled over the ground to get back to the tesla cannon and Laika ran back up and made a grab for the wendigo's ankle, still grateful for being freed from Sputnik 2 that morning, it seemed. Laika bit as soon as Thirteen winced and the wendigo raised its huge hand to slash, the Doctor still not recognising what species it might be. One of the billions of creatures the Doctor didn't know, something new, or something old and lonely. Clara grabbed the gun and struggled to try and pick the huge, heavy thing up, slightly dazed from being thrown across the cave just as Laika bit and the wendigo shrieked and kicked its foot out. The dog was thrown into the wall and the Doctor shouted something unintelligible in dismay as the wendigo came back for her.

Clara shouted something she couldn't remember, could barely understand, as well, dropping the cannon back on the ground and holding out her hand at the wendigo and blasting it with telekinesis. In her panic, she only served to sway it, to send the beast staggering back a few feet, which gave the Doctor the opportunity to go and see if the dog was alright. Clara tried to pick up the tesla cannon almost blindly, her head swimming, sure that she must have hit it on the wall. She could hardly stand and she could hardly summon enough telekinesis to do anything remotely useful. She used it so rarely, she was out of practice. She heaved on the cannon to try and lift it, but it was like trying to pick up another person, and the wendigo was looming.

There was no reason for it to wait, to give her a moment to pull herself together and shoot it in its leering, white-eyed, deathly face. It grabbed her and threw her against a different wall, away from the cannon, holding her against it with one hand.

"DOCTOR!" she shouted, and it roared in her face and she got spit on her cheeks, "DOCTOR, DO SOMETHING!"

It had its other hand on the top of her head, its nails there on her skin. That was when she felt the pressure as it dug. As it tried to burrow into her brain with its hands and kill her, and she started to scream for her wife to do something, anything, to save her, as the pain got so strong that she couldn't teleport or phase or do a single thing she had been so concussed moments ago. She was blind, definitely, blind with great pain, her temples about to explode as the wendigo pierced her skull with its hand, about to rip her head off and stick it in the roof with the rest of its collection, probably eat all the skin off of her corpse. She didn't know if the nanogenes could help her then, either.

A noise like an explosion pulsed through the air and she felt the wendigo scream again, a scream that rippled through its fingers and vibrated through its body into her skull. And then it stopped, and its hand fell away into nothing, and she felt herself slid downwards and crash onto the ground, in the snow, clinging to the most measly shred of consciousness she could find within herself. But she wasn't dead, she knew what it was like to be dead, that dark void, before the nanogenes her sister had graced her with so long ago started to work. And work they did, the pain in her head beginning to subside. Once the process started, it was quite fast, it only took a moment for the nanobots to assess the damage and begin to fix her.

"I killed it, I shot it, it's dead, we're okay," Thirteen was cooing distantly. She was holding her.

"How did you lift the cannon?" Clara asked hoarsely, wanting to breath deeply, but all too aware of the stink around them both.

"Well, it's... it's not that heavy."

"Then why did you make _me_ carry it all the way here!?" she exclaimed, and the Doctor just laughed.

"I need your lighter, sweetheart, we have to burn it, to make sure it stays dead. That thing isn't worth anybody's sympathy... let's go home..."


	348. Easy Living

**AN: And so the glimpse into the future is over, hope everyone enjoyed it, I know I did, I thought it was one of my better storylines and everything.**

_Clara_

_Easy Living_

"Just stay still, Clara," Thirteen said absently. She kept telling her things like that. Clara was lying down on the leather sofa in the console room of the TARDIS while the Doctor walked around the central column and hit buttons and twisted dials. Tentoo stood by the doors under order of the Doctor, something about her mood warning him tacitly to do what she said, and what she said was stay away from the console and don't speak to anybody. Clara wasn't saying anything, either, her head still hurt. Laika was sitting down next to her watching her.

"I'm not dying, you know," Clara sighed and said to her wife. Thirteen didn't say anything. "Do you know where Jenny is right now, anyway?"

"No, but I figure he might like to see Sally, we'll drop him off there. She'll know where they are," the Doctor answered.

"...Who's Sally?" Tentoo asked eventually.

"Sally Sparrow," Clara answered him, and Thirteen pulled a face when she did, "Moved up North, terrible coincidence, lives near Other Clara, she and Esther. Esther Drummond, but you don't know Esther."

"Who is she?" Tentoo inquired.

"Too many questions, ask her yourself," Thirteen said coolly, and she flipped a switched and the TARDIS jerked and stopped, then the dog barked uneasily.

"I know, it takes some getting used to," Clara said to Laika, reaching over and scratching the dog's ear. She panted happily. Probably thirsty, thirsty and hungry. Adam Mitchell would sort it, she was sure, he was good with animals. He was also hiding, though, he and Oswin. They always hid away on wedding anniversaries.

"Well, there you go," Thirteen said to Tentoo motioning to the door behind him. His huge bag was next to him on the ground, "Stick around there for long enough, Jenny's bound to show up."

"Right, well, I'll..." he said, going towards the doors, heaving his backpack up. Thirteen said nothing, she went to busy herself with the TARDIS monitor. Clara sat up, aching.

"She'll be along, I promise," Clara said to him, smiling and nodding towards the doors. She and the Doctor had discussed this, because Thirteen had wanted to leave Tentoo behind. It was only when Clara said they could keep Laika if they took Tentoo to Jenny, as he desired, that she resentfully agreed. Tentoo was gone within a moment, the doors swinging shut behind him, and Thirteen took the TARDIS away as quickly as possible. "What was _that_ all about?"

"What was what about?" she asked sitffly, setting them off into flight.

"I mean that you know full well Jenny's visiting old friends on Tungtrun, and Tungtrun only has the one city," Clara said, "Why not take him straight to her?"

"...He wants to see Sally Sparrow!" Thirteen protested.

"Well, who _wouldn't_ want to see Sally Sparrow?" Clara asked wryly on purpose.

"She's not interested in you."

"No. Anyway, you're all the gorgeous blondes I need in my life, Doctor," Clara said, catching a glimpse of Thirteen smiles, "I _would _prefer cuter dimples though, if you want to make a note of that for the next time you regenerate?" she suggested jokingly, the Doctor coming and sitting next to her on the sofa.

"Now now, we can't _both _have dimples like yours and Sally Sparrow's, can we?" she said. She still seemed sad, though. Clara took off her coat and dropped it on the floor, kicking her shoes off and crossing her legs on the sofa.

"Why not tell him to go to Tungtrun?"

"Because that would be too easy. He's her father, and if you haven't noticed, her fathers are notably inconsistent. If he wants to see her, he'll have to stick around and wait it out until she next wanders down, put some effort into it," Thirteen said. That was more justification than she had expected from her wife. The dog wagged her tail next to them.

"You didn't give Adam and Oswin a chance to say hello, either," Clara pointed out to her.

"I don't think they care," she shrugged.

"No, probably not," Clara sighed, "Are you alright?" She smiled and reached up a hair to stroke the Doctor's cheek. For a moment, Thirteen just stared into her eyes, then glanced up at her head and sighed.

"You have marks on your head, from its hand," she said.

"I'm fine, just a bit of blood and dirt. Christ, we must stink. Of dead things and... dog," she said a little disdainfully. Laika barked happily and Clara dropped her hand from the Doctor's face.

"I just don't like having to kill things."

"Shoot a wendigo with a cannon and you're all heart, but shoot a bit of vinegar at a Slitheen and it's comedy gold," Clara commented.

"Hey! I don't like killing Slitheen!"

"Only because they explode and mess up your outfit."

"That is... that's... that..." she stammered, "You shut up! Just because _your_ outfits always looks so awful that if a Slitheen exploded on you it would only be an improvement."

"This talk on our anniversary! To think, a few hours ago you were cradling my dilapidated corpse in your arms, and now I'm getting all of this abuse," Clara said.

"First of all, you weren't dead, second of all, I wish you _had _died so you might have come back with a fashion sense. I guess you're not as lucky as a Time Lord, though, are you?"

"...We should probably tell Adam and Oswin about the dog. I think she's hungry," Clara said, and the dog wagged her tail, "She's sort of cute, I guess."

"I knew you'd come around!" Thirteen exclaimed, throwing her arms around Clara and surprising her.

"She's not allowed on the bed or the sofas," Clara said firmly, letting the Doctor hug her. The Doctor let go and then kissed her instead, hands on her face, Clara kissing back unrestrainedly and trying to ignore the taste of those chili crisps from earlier in the day

"Bloody hell!" somebody shouted, and they let go of each other and looked around to see Oswin standing by the door holding a mug, Adam Mitchell behind her, "Is this all you do on your anniversaries? Suck face and sha... _what _happened to your head!? What's that thing!? Why is it coming near me - oh my god, babe, kill it!" After twenty-six years, Oswin aged fifty-two, she still wore all black. She still considered herself in mourning for all the people who had died on Horizon.

"It's a dog," Adam told her, then paused and thought, "Why is there a dog here? Why is it in a TARDIS? What _did _happen to your head? The pair of you are filthy, you look like you've been spelunking."

"Might as well have been," Clara muttered, Thirteen standing up. Laika had gone up to Oswin and started wagging her tail and barking happily. Adam stepped in front of her and beamed, crouching before the dog and petting her.

"Well don't pet it, it might have... cancer, or something."

"Cancer isn't viral, you know that, and you've seen plenty of dogs before," Adam told her.

"Yeah, but every time I see a dog it looks completely different!"

"This is Laika," Thirteen introduced her.

"Wait, what?" Oswin asked, "You... you _changed history_!? _The _Laika?"

"Yes, _the _Laika, and no, we did not. Sputnik 2 went through a wormhole in 1957 and came out in Siberia in _20_57, the Soviets lied about it and we happened across the wreckage. Then we ran into the Cargills, again, then Tentoo, an outpost full of dead Soviet soldiers and a wendigo," Thirteen said, "But we adopted the dog."

"_Tentoo!? A wendigo_!?" Adam exclaimed, the same time Oswin shouted, "_Adopted the dog_!?"

"Well, see, that's what _I _said," Clara told her sister, who carefully side-stepped around Laika, who wasn't paying her much attention, to go and stand next to Clara.

"Oh, shut up you, you totally _just _said that we can keep her," Thirteen argued, "And I told you Adam would like her."

"I'm pretty sure the Russians trained her well, though. And she did save my life, Os," Clara said, "That dog helped us fight off a wendigo." Clara and the Doctor then had to sit and explain their entire day and the entire conspiracy involving Soviet sacrifices, a tesla cannon and Ithaqua in the Arkham Outpost. In the process, Oswin was so distracted by the dog and the story that she hardly noticed when Clara stole her mug full of hot chocolate out of her hands and started to drink it, didn't notice at all.

"Tentoo, are you serious? After all this time?" Oswin asked.

"I know, right? Blast from the past," Clara commented.

"I don't get it," Oswin said.

"Get what?" Adam asked, still completely enamoured with the dog. That boy always loved animals. More than Clara, anyway.

"Well, where's it gonna shit?" she asked, basically ignoring everything else Clara and Thirteen had just told them. This was the cat all over again. And that giraffe last Easter - but Clara hadn't let her keep the giraffe, that was a bit too far.

"You can litter train dogs," Adam said.

"What if it shits on the floor, though?"

"Well, that's basically normal behaviour if they're untrained."

"What!? Why do people have them as pets!?"

"It's not a big deal! She's not a puppy, she'll be trained. I'm sure loads of people have shat on the floor when they were babies, anyway. _You_ included."

"_I _am the smartest girl in the universe! I have _never _shat on the floor! I am _far _above that!" Oswin protested.

"Well, you would be, wouldn't you? Because it would be on the floor. Although, maybe not _that _far above it, what with you being so short and all."

"Excuse you, you're only six inches taller than me. That's only half a Subway, and I can eat half a Subway in like, ten minutes. Do not make a blowjob joke, Clara, or I'll stop pretending not to notice you stealing my hot chocolate," Oswin said, somehow sensing that Clara had been about to do exactly that. Clara stayed quiet.

"Well," Thirteen said, clapping her hands together to break the silence that had just fallen, "Adam! You can get things for the dog, can't you? You _are_ the responsible one out of the four of us."

"Oh, I'd love to," he said happily, fawning over Laika some more, standing up, "Are you coming, Os?"

"Coming where?" she asked guardedly.

"Pet shop," he said.

"_A pet shop_!? No chance. No, I'll stay here, with these two."

"No, you can't stay with us," Thirteen interjected quickly, with an awkward laugh. Oswin looked at her shiftily and crossed her arms, raising her eyebrows questioningly, "We, um... we have to discuss something. Very important. Involving baths and scented candles."

"...Ew," Oswin said eventually, shaking her head, "Fine! I'll go to the bloody pet shop. Probably die again of terror or something, but _fine_," she walked past them to fly the ship off, Clara standing up to follow Thirteen away into the rest of the TARDIS, "Oh, by the way, don't shag in the bath, the soap will give you a yeast infection. _Again_."

"Yes, alright, shut up!" Clara hissed at her, and then the door closed and separated Clara and the Doctor from Adam Mitchell and Oswin. Immediately they continued what they had been doing before interruption by Oswin, which was, to put it in the blunt terms Clara was all-too-used to, making out. Or, as her sister would say, 'eating each others' faces,' but Clara was still one level above her sister in terms of vulgarity. Clara still felt cold, anyway, and the Doctor was hot, always hot, in _every_ definition of the word, and was the best relief from the Siberian chill in her bones she had found all day. And it was their anniversary.

"AND DON'T SCREW IN THE BLOODY LIVING ROOM, EITHER! NOT LIKE WHEN SHE REGENERATED, YOU HEATHENS!" Oswin yelled from the next room.

"She's sort of right," Thirteen said, "We did do that. And you smell."

"So do you!"

"We shoud have that bath."

"Mmm, probably," Clara said, and there was a brief moment where they just stared at each other, not inches apart, Clara's hands still on the Doctor's face. Then she just started kissing her again and decided she didn't care what Oswin said.

"Happy anniversary, Clara," the Doctor whispered, breaking away for a moment.

Clara kissed her again, and then said, "Happy anniversary. Twenty-six years and I still love you." Thirteen laughed, and kissed her back.


	349. Ganging Up

_DAY ONE-HUNDRED AND SEVENTEEN_

_Martha_

_Ganging Up_

"So, right," Martha began, holding a coffee mug between her hands and leaning over the table towards Donna, River, Amy and Jenny, all of them listening intently to the story she had been telling, "I go into the living room, the old bloke's tugging himself off in the corner, there's cake all over the piano, somebody's rubbed cheese spread into the carpet and I never even got any of the famous grapefruit jelly. And then, the nerve of them, they fire _me_ and blame me for the entire thing, when all _I _did was unlock the back door for the Chuckle Brothers impersonators. Never should have volunteered in that old people's home."

"But what happened to the rabbit?" Donna asked seriously.

"It died because Rita fed it way too much fondant, there's still a plaque on the wall for it, I think," Martha explained, picking up her coffee much and sipping it, "Thing is, it was all Tish's idea anyway, and she always told me she'd never even _seen _that cat whenever she'd been there."

"Who was stealing the marmalade, though?" River implored.

"Dunno, never got a chance to find out. Might've been that old man though, right pervert, he was, wanking in the back of the room. Prepared me a bit for A&amp;E though, you get some proper weirdos down there on a full moon," Martha exclaimed.

"Like the girl who cut her legs off?" River asked.

"Exactly," Martha agreed, "Honestly, I get ten A*s in my GCSEs and have to put up with people shitting on the floor and telling me it's _my _fault, when I'm only a student and it's not anything to do with me to change a colostomy bag, that's what the nurses do."

"But... but is that actually true? Is it a true story?" Jenny asked Martha, and Martha nodded, "But is it _true_-true or is it Amy-Pond-true?"

"Jenny, I couldn't make that story up if I tried. If you think I could, you're severely overestimating the amount of imagination I have," Martha said.

"What do you mean 'Amy-Pond-true'!?" Amy Pond exclaimed, dropping a slice of toast down on her plate in disgust. They were all clustered around the kidney-shaped table nearest to the kitchen.

"We mean like that story you told about the silkworms last month," Donna said.

"That was true!" Amy protested, looking around at them all, aghast, but they all just stared back at her somewhat challengingly, even River, "Do none of you believe me!?"

"It's just... it just doesn't seem plausible," Jenny shrugged.

"Oh, but a girl ripping off her own legs _is _totally believable, is it?" Amy questioned.

"I could get the crime scene photographs?" Martha asked, "Looked like an abattoir. Photos of her remains I could find, as well, if you like?"

"...Well, _that's_ put me off my toast," Amy complained, picking up her plate and standing up, "I think I'll enjoy my breakfast in the company of my husband, who _does _believe what I tell him."

"Only because you'll kill him if he doesn't," Martha joked, and Amy pulled a face at her and left the room, passing the Tenth Doctor on her way as he came in. He beamed at her and said good morning, but Amy didn't say a word, and his face fell.

"What's the matter with her?" he asked them, gathering that it was something to do with them because of the way the four of them were watching her as she left.

"Somebody brought up her silkworm story again," Jenny said.

"It was you," River pointed out to her.

"Well alright, it _was _me, but it's still a ridiculous story," Jenny argued, picking up her mug of tea.

"What silk worm story?" Ten inquired, going over to the kettle.

"The one where it's the 1930s and some bloke steals dead silkworms from out the back of a silk factory and puts them in a warehouse," Martha paraphrased what little she could remember of Amy's story for him. It _had _been a month.

"That one that Rose is always going on about being a lie?" Ten questioned, picking up the kettle and shaking it to see if it had water in. Why he couldn't just ask somebody else who had already made a drink if the kettle needed filling? The kettle always had enough in it for at least _one_ cup, it was massive. Had to be, with so many of them living there. Some days Martha thought that they should have more than one kettle, three, maybe.

"I assume so," River said to him.

"What are you doing?" Martha asked the Doctor suspiciously as he took out his sonic screwdriver, "Doctor! No!" But he had pointed the sonic at the kettle, in spite of them all yelling at him not to sonic the kettle anymore, because every time he tried to do that he always messed something up, all because he was impatient.

"What?" he asked innocently. And then the kettle exploded. For the third time that month. Except permanently this time. Usually, it would just squirt out a shoot of boiling hot water and burn whoever was closest and jump a little on its base, but this time it downright blew up and all the lights went out.

"Well done, dad," Jenny said flatly. A power cut on the TARDIS? Martha had never seen the likes, certainly not as the result of blowing up a kettle. Yet again. A moment later, though, the lights flickered back on.

"Will you ever learn?" River questioned him, "Now we need a new kettle. The TARDIS isn't going to keep making you replacements, sweetie."

"Well, I can... I can fix it..." he stared at the bits of kettle on the floor and sniffed, "Later. Anyway. Jenny. Why are you wearing a load of old rags?"

"Yeah, why _are _you wearing old rags?" Martha asked her.

"They're not old rags, they're new rags, and they're not _rags _technically," Jenny said, "I'd give you a twirl if I could be bothered standing up. These are my shopping clothes."

"Shopping clothes? More like slumming clothes," River said to her. She held out her arms to see if she looked as bad as they said. Interestingly enough, she didn't look bad at all. Jenny was one of those annoying people who looked good in everything. She could probably wear a clown costume and look amazing. These rags of hers were dark greys and blacks.

"Shopping where?" Ten asked.

"Korix," Jenny answered, and the Doctor and River both made noises of understanding realisation, "See?" she sipped more tea.

"What's Korix?"

"Planet. Permanent desert climate, terrible sandstorms sometimes. Honestly, one minute there's no wind at all, next it's a dust hurricane. Pays to be prepared," she shrugged, "I need ship parts for Oswin to look at. It has this sort of, natural gravity field around it, the entire place was originally uninhabited, but this gravity field dragged so many ships down and they crashed without the propulsion to get back out that they were forced to survive and populate. I lived there for a bit in my seventies, sort of retirement spell."

"Isn't _anybody _going to ask!?" Donna shouted a second later, and they all looked over and stared at her, including Ten, who came and stood just behind Jenny with his hands in his trouser pockets.

"Ask what?" Martha frowned.

"Ask why my hair's done up!" They exchanged confused looks. "Don't tell me none of you lot noticed I've done my hair up!"

"..._No_, of course we noticed!" Martha lied, smiling at her, even though she really couldn't tell Donna had done anything to her hair, "We were all just wondering why, exactly? What's the occasion?"

"Well, I was sitting up last night when I thought, Day One-Hundred and Sixteen? That's almost four months, and if we left in the beginning of July, that makes it October. So I counted all the days from July 5th and found out that tomorrow - which is today, last night - is October 30th."

"No way!" Jenny exclaimed, and Donna grinned, "It's Halloween tomorrow!" Donna's smile fell instantly to an expression of irritation.

"No," she said firmly.

"Well, it _is _Halloween tomorrow," Martha pointed out, "What should we do? Should we do anything? Do we put decorations up? Oh my god, it's gonna be Christmas soon. But proper Christmas. Has it really been that long on here?"

"No, do none of you know what the 30th of October is?" Donna questioned.

"...Halloween Eve?" Jenny suggested after a pause.

"_Halloween Eve_!?" Donna argued, "No, it is not Halloween-bloody-Eve!"

"_Technically_-" Martha began, but Donna interrupted her.

"Today's my birthday!" she finally told them.

"Birthday? Merry birthday!" Jenny said happily, hugging Donna out of nowhere.

"No-one says 'merry birthday,' it's '_happy_ birthday,'" Martha said, Donna surprised that Jenny was hugging her. Jenny let her go after a second though to talk to Martha.

"So you don't want Donna to have a merry birthday?" she questioned.

"Well _that_ isn't what I meant, I was just telling you about our... customs and... culture," Martha said, and Jenny raised her eyebrows.

"She's an alien, let her be," River sighed, then she, Ten and Martha all wished Donna happy birthday as well. River added, "I actually knew, I was going to get you a kettle, but the Doctor didn't seem to approve."

"Oi!" Ten argued, "You did not know! Nobody knew."

"Here I was thinking _I _was the one who forgot everything..." Donna muttered, and nobody knew whether or not it was a good idea to laugh.

"How about a trip?" Ten said eventually, "Come on, it'll be like old times. You, me, Martha, Jenny. And River, of course, we ran into River. You were there when I first met her, funnily enough..." he scratched the back of his head and frowned at that thought.

"If Jenny's going to Korix, so am I," River said, "I have business there, in the black market."

"Oh, please,_ every _vendor on Korix is a black market," Jenny joked, which River found amusing, "It'll be fun, like going to Egypt, only shopping. Who doesn't love shopping? _I _love shopping."

"I'm sure they have shopping in Egypt," Martha told her.

"They do, I've been. Always telling you not to drink the water," Donna said.

"What? Like, _Ancient _Egypt?"

"No, present day. Shame, I'd have liked to go to Ancient Egypt, meet a Pharaoh, maybe a mummy," Donna mused.

"Mummies aren't real, Donna," Ten told her.

"Always spoiling my fun, you!" she scolded him, "Mind you, been to Ancient Rome. Well, Pompeii, but you know what Italy's like, always the same, give or take a volcano... not a pleasant story, though."

"So, Korix, do they sell kettles there, do you know? Asking for a... friend..." Ten asked, changing the subject away from Pompeii, glancing back at the broken pieces of kettle on the floor behind him, "I haven't been for a fair few centuries, is the thing."

"Haven't the foggiest. Nice to find out, though," Jenny shrugged and went about trying to finish the last of her tea.

"Coming, Donna?" River asked.

"Oh, go on then," Donna said, pretending it was difficult to decide whether to go out with them or not, "Korix it is. Actually, better go get some sun tan lotion if it's a desert planet... how about you, Martha? Are you coming?"

"Might as well," Martha smiled, "The old gang, back together. Well, minus Jack. And Rose. And Mickey. And I never met River before the Crash, so it's technically not the _old _gang, more of a sort of, gang-combo."

"Well, then," Ten grinned as Martha puzzled over the logistics of gang vocabulary, "Off we go! Allons-y, as the French say! Just like old times."


	350. Homecoming Queen

_Martha_

_Homecoming Queen_

"It's _boiling _here!" Donna exclaimed more or less as soon as they stepped out of the TARDIS on Korix. Martha had a very skewed perception of heat those days. She might not be as bad as Adam Mitchell for emitting extreme temperatures, but she still didn't really ever get too hot and she didn't really ever get too cold, either. She was just lukewarm and stagnant, which paid off in situations like this one, when she saw they were in the middle of a desert. In the distance, all around them, were sharp, yellow mountains with golden stone to match the golden, baking hot sands. There were three suns in the pale blue sky, and it could almost be the Sahara.

"Boiling? Nah," said Ten, "Been in hotter places. So has Martha, matter of fact, the SS _Pentallion_. Remember that?"

"Doomed spaceship about to crash into a sun with us stuck on board? How could I forget?" Martha reminisced, "I almost got jettisoned into the thing in an escape pod."

"I saved you, didn't I?" Ten questioned her, and she laughed.

"Never lost faith in you for moment," she told him, and he grinned.

"Are you _sure _this is the right place? It looks a bit... empty. Are we in the wrong year?" Donna asked Jenny.

"No, can't you smell it?" Jenny asked.

"What? Don't tell me _you _can tell what year it is by smelling, too?" Donna questioned her.

"Oh, maybe I could if somebody taught me," she said, shooting an accusatory look at Ten, if only for a moment, "But no. You can smell engine fuel burning. Everything here is powered by rocket fuel, they distill it with water. It's pretty inefficient."

"If it's inefficient, why do it? Sounds bad for the environment," Martha commented.

"Korix has no natural resources," River answered, "None except underground water reserves. They don't have a choice. Korix belongs to no empire or strict colony or race, so nobody technically has any right to do supply drops. The gravity is too risky for that, anyway, people get stranded and stuck here all the time."

"But where are the people? We can't walk for long out here, it's worse than it was on Preyonov," Donna said.

"Round the corner," Jenny answered. She was at the front of the group, her clothes looking notably more sensible now they were out in the desert and not in the living room, leading them towards a mountain. Well, not really a mountain, it wasn't tall enough to be a mountain, it was more like a big shard of rock sticking out of the ground. Then Martha looked at it some more, examined it, and realised it wasn't a shard of rock, a cliff, a mountain, it was a spaceship. A huge, crashed spaceship, old and buried in the sand. Jenny lead them around this spaceship and the town she had been talking about came into view. In the shadow of the spaceship an entire colony was build, with shops and stalls and huts and much smaller spaceships sitting around gathering dust, clustered in the dark to escape some of the heat. But with three suns hanging over Korix, there was hardly any way to escape this heat.

"Blimey, how long are the days here?" Martha asked.

"Thirty-two hours," River answered her, "Right now, it's noon, I'd say. It's hottest here in the morning, not like on Earth when the afternoon is the warmest."

"It's never particularly humid, either," Jenny said.

"What year is it?" Ten asked her.

"8050, thereabouts," Jenny answered. They were in the shade now, which Donna was pleased about, but which didn't affect Martha in the slightest, apart from getting the sun out of her eyes, "Lots of these ships are remains from the Drunstal War – the whole planet is basically a graveyard. You can make a lot of money on salvage. At least, _I_ did. The second human empire is drawing to a close about now, sometime in the next five hundred years."

"How about that, she knows her history," Martha commented quietly to Ten as Jenny asked Donna how old she was, which went about as well as one might expect, and she didn't successfully get an answer out of her. She also didn't understand why it was rude to ask a woman her age, either.

"I know," Ten said, watching Jenny lead them towards the town, "It's weird, I keep thinking she needs to be looked after, or… taught things."

"She does, didn't you hear her? She wants to know how to smell and tell what the year and the place is," Martha said.

"Well, that's a… tricky thing to teach somebody…"

"Oh, please, she's the only other Time Lord you've got. I think the lot of you are way too late with her. But you know what they say, better late than never," Martha told him, and he just stayed with his frown watching his daughter, "Have you been to this planet, then?"

"Not recently. Not until thousands of years in the future, when it's a big tourist destination, after they sort out the issue with the suction atmosphere. Although, I've never really heard _how_ they altered the gravity field like that," Ten told her.

"I don't get it, Korix feels like it has the same gravity as Earth."

"It does, on the surface. Above the surface there's this layer of higher gravity that sucks things in until they reach terminal velocity, then they just fall to the ground, like feathers. Like she said, the whole planet's a ship graveyard. Lots of towns like this, built into shade to protect from the suns," he said, pointing upwards unnecessarily as he did, "Famously uninhabited world. Which I always thought was odd, given the abundance of water. Plenty of amino acids too, come to think of… oi! Oi! Is that a kettle!?"

As soon as they got into the town, Ten was immediately distracted and ran off to the left somewhere to chase after somebody with some strange sort of bovine creature loaded up with scraps, like a donkey, and left Martha on her own.

"Doctor!?" she shouted after him, but he had disappeared into a crowd. Her shouting caught the attention of the other three though, and she sighed and caught up with them, "He's always doing that, he has the smallest attention span of anyone I've ever-"

"Oh my god, do you see how shiny that ball is?" Jenny exclaimed out of nowhere, interrupting Martha and walking off. Donna and River looked at her pitifully, as though they were apologising on behalf of both Jenny and her father, and she rolled her eyes.

"_Second_ smallest attention span of anyone I've ever met," she muttered, and the three of them were stuck following Jenny around, because Jenny was the only one of them who seemed to have a legitimate reason to be on Korix. If River had one, she hadn't told anybody what it was. She just stood around looking alert, like somebody important might show up at any moment.

Jenny was holding an orb in her hand, like a crystal ball, with things moving about inside of it.

"It looks like a prophecy from _Harry Potter_," Martha said, and she laughed.

"No, it's just a galaxy swirl, see?" Jenny held it out to Martha, "It's just dust and mist." When Martha looked closely at the object, she could see what Jenny meant, Donna standing next to her and examining the thing as well. It looked like it had an entire galaxy contained within it, moving about and glittering like a real one did, greens and blues, vibrant against whatever else was in it making the background look black and solid. Then Jenny made them jump by shaking it, and River laughed, and the whole thing changed to reds and pinks and an entirely different galaxy.

"You can have that, if you like," an alien called from behind the stall to Jenny, who glanced over and beamed. What the alien was, Martha didn't know, just that it was tall and had a pink coloured head a bit like that of a hammerhead shark, "For old time's sake."

"Jarru!" Jenny said, going and leaning on the stall to speak to him, "It's been a while!"

"Ten years," he said.

"_Ten_ years? A hundred and thirty for me," Jenny said, "I'm only here looking for any engine parts to scavenge. Propulsion systems, you know, don't have to work. Or a kettle, do you have a kettle?"

"No," the alien, Jarru, told her.

"Shame, my dad's looking for one."

"Dad? You? That one you were always talking about finding?" Jarru asked.

"Yep," Jenny answered, "In the end he found me. Accidentally. And now he's run off after a kettle. Anyway, these are my friends, Martha, Donna and River."

"Any friend of Major Young's is a friend of mine," Jarru said.

"And friend of _who_?" Martha and Donna both asked. River didn't say anything, she just crossed her arms and looked at Jenny with surprise, Jenny who glanced between them a little awkwardly with a sort of nervous smile.

"Forgot about that," she said, "I'm a major here, am I?" she asked Jarru, "I lose track."

"Major Young of the Homeworld Alliance, you always said, three thousand years ago."

"Don't mind explaining, do you?" Donna asked her, "I thought the Doctor convinced you that wars were wrong?" Jenny raised her eyebrows.

"Yes, he did, for a bit, then I died and he left and never looked for me for over two-hundred years. The universe is kill or be killed when you're not with him. Anyway, I was a tactician, and nobody in _my_ command ever died," she told them harshly.

"What about the 'Young' part?" Martha asked.

"Oh, I was having a mid-life crisis. Eh, sort of, I suppose sixty-seven is a bit late for that. Or early. When _do_ Time Lords have mid-life crises, anyway?"

"When they start dressing in bowties and wearing tweed and fezzes," River said.

"Sounds about right," Jenny said, "Anyway, Donna never gave me a surname, I change it every few years. Just because right now it's Harkness – did you really think that for two-hundred years I just went by 'Jenny' until I found myself in the unfortunate positioning of being married to Jack?"

"Well… sort of," Martha said.

"No, I have loads of names," Jenny said, then she turned back to Jarru, "Are you sure I can have this?"

"Nobody else wants it, nobody wants anything decorative on Korix," Jarru told her, and she grinned at him and dropped the galactic crystal in a brown leather bag she had hanging over one shoulder, "Vako was looking for you."

"Vako?" River and Jenny both asked. Somebody River knew, apparently. Jarru nodded.

"Well, he was looking _out_ for you," Jarru said, "Told me to tell him if you ever showed up again so that he could clear out of here."

"Did he really?" Jenny asked, sounding intrigued, but distant.

"You mean the slumlord from the Odowl Nebula?" River inquired.

"Ex-slumlord," Jenny told her, "Set up shop here years ago, likes to think himself a thief, hires people to find purported valuables in some of the shipwrecks. People like me. I'm a great thief, but why would he be hiding from me? I haven't seen Vako since… _oh_… _that's_ why… that little shitweasel…" Jenny seemed to realise something that displeased her, then turned back to Jarru, "Where is he?"

"Well, he's… he's right over there," Jarru seemed surprised, and then pointed with a hand that only had two fingers at something with grey skin and tiny eyes that looked like a fat mole, just a mole that was three feet tall and walked on two legs. Well, it shuffled on two legs.

"Thanks Jarru, I owe you," Jenny said offhandedly, glaring at the mole, then she cupped her hands to her mouth and yelled, "OI! VAKO! I WANT A WORD WITH YOU!" The mole looked over with four tiny eyes and instantly turned and started to run, and Jenny immediately ran after him. Just before she vanished around a corner and they had to give chase, Vako the fat mole managed to push one of those bovine, donkey-like creatures right over, like cow-tipping, in the middle of the passage and a crowd jumped out of the way to see Jenny do a somersault after it and then vault straight over the desk-space of one stall, then she jumped and grabbed a bar hanging down on the next desk and swung straight over it.

"Bloody hell," Martha stared after her, but then she had gone.

"I forgot she was like that," Donna said, "You know… acrobatic."

"I bet she's great in bed," River commented, and they both stared at her, "What?" she shrugged, "Don't be so shocked, I go both ways. Well, _any_ way if they're pretty enough…"

"Well, we'd better follow her, before you say anything else pervy…" Martha said, and the three of them gave chase in a significantly less streamlined and energetic fashion, tripping over the donkey-cow-thing and apologising to everybody they came across, following the chaos and mess to find where Jenny had been chasing Vako. They stumbled about all over the place in the scorching heat, while asking everybody they happened across if they'd seen a blonde running through, and they were pointed in the right direction.

It didn't take them long to find Jenny, though, in a much emptier area of the town where there were a great deal more tents, which Martha assumed was more residential, and she appeared to have Vako backed against a wall and was threatening him, stooping down two feet to be at his level.

"What are you doing!?" Martha demanded of her.

"Leave it," River told her. Jenny glanced over for just a second and saw them, but she had her fist, the hard, metal, robotic fist, clenched and held at the side of Vako's head, glaring at him, her other arm holding a tent pole and keeping him pinned against it.

"If you don't tell me where Emmett is, I will break your face," Jenny said to him.

"Emmett? Who the bloody hell is Emmet!?" Donna shouted.

"Tell me, Vako, because the last time I saw him it was a hundred and thirty years ago in the middle of the Furnfelt Siege, and then I wake up one morning and suddenly he's not there and neither are you, so don't try my bloody patience, alright?" she threatened.

"Why should I tell you?" Vako asked in a croaky voice.

"I would, if I were you," River advised him.

"Oh, you've brought Song here to rough me up, as well? A defenceless old man?" Vako pleaded.

"Jenny, let him go," Martha ordered her, and River shushed her again, "Stop telling me to be quiet! You can't just go around beating up aliens!"

"Defenceless my arse," Jenny spat.

"He sold his whole family into slavery to make a profit," River told Martha and Donna, and Martha didn't know whose side she was on anymore. The Master once had _her_ family condemned to slavery, and she could still see herself trying to kill him.

"Go into your little tent and give Emmett to me peacefully, or I will deck you, go get him myself, come back out and kneecap you," Jenny threatened him.

"What are you going!? Have you gone crazy!?" Donna asked furiously.

"Oh, he deserves it," River commented.

"_She_ killed the Doctor, you know," Vako spluttered about River, "Your father. That's why you can't find him. He's dead." And then Jenny really did punch him, but not with the robot hand, with her regular hand, and knocked him to the ground.

"Complete bastard," she commented, glancing to the tent on their right and her left, "I'll be a minute. Watch him, would you? Not that he can outrun me. Trying to outrun me never works, does it, Vako?" Jenny disappeared into the tent.

"He used to have a slavery syndicate before the galactic authorities found him out," River said to Donna and Martha, "Managed to escape all the raids on his… what was it you called them? Farms?"

"Farms for cattle, cattle like you three," Vako snarled.

"Careful there, or _I'll_ hit you in a minute, and I'll hit you harder than she would," River threatened, nodding towards the tent of Vako's. Running back to his own tent wasn't particularly sensible, Martha thought, but it must be his, because it said _Vako's Home Please Knock_ on the side. For someone who had apparently run a slave syndicate, he wasn't nearly as clever as she presumed.

"Have you told her what happened to her father, then?" Vako questioned her.

"Jenny's father is fine," River sighed, "He's around here somewhere looking for a kettle, if you want us to go find him for you? Wouldn't that be nice? Meeting the Doctor?" Vako hissed.

Jenny re-emerged from the tent then carrying some weird device.

"What is _that_?" Donna asked her.

"Gun," she answered shortly, holding the thing up to the light to look at it. It was a huge, bronze metal thing, about two feet in length and looking like it was made from bits of old piping. The barrel was thick and long and the stock was metal and bent and crooked, then the ammunition canister was a big cylinder right in the middle with a gauge and a pump and a lid on it. Jenny looked like she was checking over it.

"If that's what you were looking for, who's Emmett?" Donna asked.

"…The gun is Emmett," Jenny answered, "That's what it's called."

"You name your guns..?" Martha asked incredulously.

"Only some of them," Jenny said, "The special ones. And this one is a very special one that I lost over a hundred years ago, or, I should say, had _stolen_ from me over a hundred years ago, didn't I, Vako?"

"The Doctor won't be happy," Martha said.

"I'm not going to use it, it's mine, I built it, I want it back. Besides, it's too dangerous for the likes of Vako to have," Jenny sighed, lifting the lid on the top of the ammo canister and grinning, "It _is_ loaded, though… hmm…" She shut the lid down and held the gun at her side with one hand, reaching into her bag with the other and pulling out her silver sonic screwdriver, sonicking the barrel until it started to hiss at her.

"Is that smoke?" Donna asked.

"No, it's steam. Steam powered gun. It's _very_ hard to find gunpowder in this day and age for typical weapons, that's why you need improvised propulsion systems. You're lucky you haven't broken him, Vako. Run along, now, before I decide to dob you into the authorities and tell them where you're hiding," she said.

"I need that gun," he said to her.

"I'm sorry? You _need_ it? Why would you need it?" she questioned, "You more than me? I only last regenerated a month ago, I'll have you know, I have a dangerous life."

"To protect me from the noises."

"What noises?" the four of them asked together.

"The noises from the mountain at night."

"Mountain? What mountain? You mean the spaceship?" Jenny asked, pointing at the huge crashed spaceship that towered over them, "That spaceship's older than I am, and nobody can get it in it, you know that. There were never noises when I lived here."

"There are noises now," he said.

"What kind of noises?" River asked him, "Noises coming from the spaceship?"

"From below," Vako said, and then he ran away from them, and this time Jenny didn't give chase, none of them did, just let him leave.

"…I think we'd better find my dad…"


	351. Protecting His Charge

_Donna_

_Protecting His Charge_

The four of them split up to look for the Doctor. Jenny went one way with Emmett the Huge Gun, and River went a different direction, leaving Donna and Martha together because they both thought splitting up was a terrible idea. Jenny and River knew their way around, though, so there was no danger of either of _them _getting stuck somewhere, so Martha and Donna ended up wandering around aimlessly in the heat. If anything, being in a town was even hotter than just being out in the desert itself, because there were so many people and creatures around giving off more heat. Donna felt like she was melting. Her birthday, and she was melting, and they had no food or water and apparently now had to go take a look around a creepy crashed spaceship which, if they had water, she probably wouldn't mind. Wasn't this planet supposed to be full of water?

"It's not you, is it? Heating up?" Donna questioned, wondering if maybe she should take a few steps away from Martha to see if that made a different, but she didn't want to get separated from her and lost.

"No, why would I be heating up?"

"I thought you did when you got excited?" Donna asked, and Martha stared at her confusedly.

"Because nothing's more exciting than sand," she said sarcastically, "Really gets my heart racing, bits of old rock and the smell of engine fuel."

"Well, _sorry _for making suggestion," Donna muttered, and Martha didn't say anything, so they remained in silence for a few minutes until Donna decided to speak again and change the subject, "What do you think about that gun?"

"Oh, _Emmett_, you mean? Why do you think she would name a gun? I have guns at home, and I don't have names for them. Mickey might, though..." she frowned. The guns they kept at home typically were more up Mickey's street. "And Emmett, of all things. It's not exactly the most aggressive name."

"Maybe she knew someone called Emmett? Life like hers, I wouldn't be surprised," Donna said, "Mind you, I feel like I barely know her today. We were there when she was born. It's like she's... she's the same, but different."

"I know! I mean, this whole thing about being a major, and here I thought she swore off wars for good after that day on Messaline," Martha sighed.

"That's what Davros said to the Doctor, though. That he makes his companions into soldiers."

"Jenny was a soldier to begin with. Still, she said nobody under her command died, that's something," Martha pointed out.

"How many did they kill, though?" Donna asked. Really, the last thing she wanted on her birthday was to be posing complicated philosophical questions about soldier-hood and the true nature of war to Martha Jones, and certainly not to the Doctor, but the Doctor was going to have plenty to say whenever they finally found him and he caught a glimpse of the massive gun his daughter was carrying with her. Which, going by the loud shouting they came across moments later, was going to happen sooner rather than later.

River Song emerged around a corner and looked at them with relief when she spotted them through the throngs of extra-terrestrials, and beckoned with her hand at them to follow her.

When they caught up, she said, "They're this way. And they're arguing."

"You don't need to tell me twice," Donna said, "I can hear them." She _could _hear them, and seconds later she could _see _them, Ten and Jenny, the pair of them both furious.

"After all the loss guns have caused, and here you are with that... that thing!" he shouted at her. Her demeanour, in this regard, had not changed since Donna first met her, years ago to her, centuries ago to Jenny, because she was still tenaciously fighting back at her father. Really, Donna thought, they ought to sit down and talk, the two of them. It had been months, and he had been so busy pining after Rose and Jenny had been so used to being a lonely orphan, they had just... not spoken. He had barely spoken to _her _about what happened to her memories either, though. And she knew for a fact that Eleven barely spoke to the Ponds about what happened to them.

"_I'm not going to shoot anybody_," Jenny said, loudly and clearly, drawing out every syllable like she was telling off a child, standing on tiptoes while he was somewhat stooped, and they were still nowhere near eye level. He was an entire foot taller than her. "It's _mine _I want it _back_."

"But you were killed by a gun!"

"Yep. And then you ran off and left me," Jenny said.

"Martha said there were no vital signs!" Ten protested.

"Well don't bring me into this!" Martha argued, "I hardly knew a thing about regeneration." Donna wisely stayed out of it as well, like River, Martha poorly attempting to do the same thing, not that that was her fault particularly.

"Look, look," Jenny said angrily, flipping the hatch on top of the gun's ammunition cannister, "I'll take the ammo out, alright? Non-lethal, happy now? I wasn't going to fire it anyway, it just belongs to me."

"_Non-lethal_!?" Ten objected when he saw what the ammo in Jenny's gun was, which caused both Martha and Donna's jaws to drop, because she drew out a handful of crooked, six-inch long metal spikes.

"Is that what that thing shoots!? Massive spikes!?" Martha asked as Jenny put the massive spikes in her bag with the galaxy crystal acquired from Jarru earlier.

"No, it shoots rainbows," she said sarcastically, "I'm not going to shoot anyone so I don't see what the problem is!" she then shouted at her father. Why was he getting so on at her? Donna might refuse to carry one of those stunguns, but she and Rory were the only ones. Everybody else had one. Then Jack had a blaster and Mickey and Martha both had real guns, Martha had one on her right then, Donna knew. The same woman who had refused to carry a weapon during her time in UNIT. Jenny wasn't the only person whose minutiae had altered over the years.

"I won't let you bring that thing onto my TARDIS."

"It's not your TARDIS," she told him simply, "It's the Eleventh Doctor's TARDIS."

"Well he won't let you bring it on either," Ten said firmly.

"He probably will," River interrupted, "He can be a pushover sometimes."

"My gun, my problem, okay, father? I'm not going to start killing people left and right, I'm not some stupid kid," she said coldly.

Their argument was almost welcomely cut off by a resounding boom, and both of them were so surprised by this noise and the vibration it sent through the ground that made the five of them wobble, they shut up. Silence fell throughout the bustling town on Korix and all eyes panned towards the looming spaceship just behind them, because they had found themselves right next to thing, right in its shadow, the bit where its shard of a body met with the sand and burrowed beneath. The booming sound was not like an explosion, it was more like a pulse with an indistinguishable source, but it was definitely coming from below.

"...Is that the noise Vako meant, do you think?" River glanced between them.

"Probably," Jenny whispered in the ensuing quiet in the town. Everyone was listening, everyone in the whole shadow of the crashed ship, "I can see why he thought he might need Emmett now..."

"Who's Emmett?" Ten asked.

"The gun," Martha and Donna answered him, and he pulled a disgruntled face, not quite forgetting his problem with his daughter.

"Nobody's ever gone on that ship though," River said.

"Nobody even knows what kind of ship it is," Jenny added, staring up at it, tall as a skyscraper and long, "Or when it got here, or who came with it."

"What do you mean? I thought you said people search through the ships for salvage?" Donna pointed out.

"They do, but no-one's ever found a way in. I got paid to scout it once, years ago, figured out that the door is probably buried beneath the sand. Nobody knows how big the rest of it is, though," Jenny said.

"Well it can't be much bigger than _that,_ it's bloody massive!" Donna exclaimed, looking at it, "How can there be no way on? Can't you - I dunno - blow a hole in it?"

"I have a gun powered by _steam_, how easy do you think it is to find explosives here? Anything like that needs to be used for power, getting into this derelict wreck is the least of anyone's problems," Jenny pointed out. The enormous ship loomed above them. Donna thought goldish-yellow was a funny colour for a spaceship.

"You don't recognise it, do you, Doctor?" River asked him. He had just been staring up at it, and then he pulled his pair of fake glasses he used to look clever out of his pocket and put his hands in his trouser pockets. He didn't have his brown coat with him, he'd left it behind when he realised they were going to a desert.

"Not really, but this bit looks like a wing," he said, "A wing tip."

"If that's just the tip, how big's the rest of it!?" Donna demanded.

"That's what she said," Jenny muttered. River sniggered.

"You've spent too much time with Oswin," Martha said to her, shaking her head with genuine disappointment.

"Dunno. I suppose we have to find away inside," Ten mused, "Martha! Can you get us in?"

"Me? How?" she asked.

"With your, you know, fire-thing," Donna said.

"I don't know, I don't know how thick it is, or what it's made from," Martha said defensively, like she didn't want to use her superpowers. Donna rarely used her own powers. Well, _power_, if she had a second one she still didn't know what it was. All she could do was shout extra-loud.

"To be honest, you could probably get in with a sonic screwdriver," Jenny said.

"Didn't _you _try that?" Donna asked.

"Didn't have one last time I was here," she shrugged.

"What about you?" Donna asked River.

"I never had the desire to try and go into the spaceship," River said, glancing at it, "Something about it, it just..." she trailed off and stared at it.

"Hang on..." Ten said, "Do you see that, Martha?"

"See what?" she asked.

"It has a sort of... seems like a perception filter. Can't be a perception filter, though, on a ship of this size? Just enough power to make people look the other way... stay out... we have to get on board that ship. Come on!" The Doctor ran off and everybody followed, much to Donna's annoyance, because it was roasting hot and everyone else seemed to be minimally affected. Nevertheless, she swore to herself and was forced to run after them.


	352. Unto The Breach

_Ten_

_Unto The Breach_

With a clang, he fell to a metal floor and into the dark interior of the crashed spaceship. His daughter had been right, a sonic screwdriver had worked wonders on the metal body panels that nobody else had ever succeeded in opening. He landed flat on his back and hit his head, a square of yellow light glaring above him like a tractor beam. He'd had to climb a little bit up the ship, which was lying on an angle so that the side facing the sun, the side they had run around to be on to get out of the way of the city so that they didn't get any strange looks, was on an incline and was able to be scaled like a very steep hill. Then he had sonicked open a panel, the panel had fallen down just below him onto the sand, and when he had tried to get inside it had been so dark he had fallen a ways.

"Are you alright!?" someone shouted from above, Martha, he thought.

"Yep!" he called back, squinting around, trying to sit up, but his eyes hadn't adjusted yet so he couldn't see anything except the dark, "It's safe, just a steep fall." He thought he heard Donna complain about having to go climbing into a spaceship as he stood up, wobbling, straining his eyes. It just looked like a corridor, but it was too dark to see if it had any traits that would give away what species it had been built by. And the perception device, because it wasn't quite a perception _filter_, was still in effect and giving him a headache.

A few seconds later, somebody dropped down agilely next to him, not falling like he had, but landing assuredly.

"God, did you see that? She's like a cat," Donna said from the exterior of the spaceship, and Jenny, who had been the one to join Ten first, frowned and looked up, "Jumping around all the time. I wish I could do that."

"Do I take that as a compliment?" Jenny called with a smile on her face.

"I would," Ten told her, "I don't know _where_ you get it from."

"Just jump, it's fine," she assured them.

"Easy for you to say," Donna said. River followed them second of all, never a person who _didn't_ take risks, dropping into the ship.

"Not a lot of light, is there? Don't you have a torch?" she asked Ten.

"No," he answered simply.

"The Eleventh Doctor has a torch," she said, like he cared what the Eleventh Doctor kept in his pockets. Although, maybe a torch _would_ be useful.

"Good for him," Ten said. River sighed as Jenny took out her phone and used _that_ for light. More evidence of the bad influence the rest of the crew were on her, in the Doctor's opinions, _mobile phones_. Even if, technically, he did live in a mobile phone, a _very _mobile phone. He couldn't even pinpoint at what point Jenny had gotten a phone, just that when they picked her up on Trancha II in the middle of a Vashta Nerada invasion (**Chapter Ref. 38**) she didn't have one, and then a few days later, she did.

Martha fell down next to him a second later, a bit messy on her landing, but he steadied her as she winced at the pain ringing through her legs.

"Are you coming, Donna?" River called up, the four of them glancing above as Martha copied Jenny's example of utilising her phone torch.

"It's nice and cool in here," Martha added.

"How far's the drop?"

"A few metres," Martha answered.

"_A few metres_!?" she exclaimed.

"Oh, get over it, you'll be _fine_," Martha assured her, "And if you're not, I'm a doctor."

"So am I," Ten said defensively.

"No you're not," River told him sternly, and he was about to argue with her when Donna crashed down and landed on her side, losing her footing like he had. He went to help her to her feet.

"I could have broken my ankle!" she shouted, "On my _birthday_!" Her power came out there, like a gust of wind that brushed through them all and made them cringe.

"We'll get you a cake," Martha promised her, "A massive one."

"Makes a change from never having any food," she said, "Why _do_ we never have any food?"

"I don't know, come to think of it," Ten mused.

"Shall we look around, then?" Jenny interrupted, beginning to walk off, "This place is weird, it's giving me a headache."

"It's a warning field," Ten told her, "Something in here is generating a subliminal signal into the desert to warn people not to come into the spaceship. Sounds like static."

"I can't hear anything," Martha said.

"No, humans won't be able to," Ten explained, following Jenny, who had Emmett the Gun slung over her back. At least she'd taken the massive spikes out of it. What had possessed that girl to build a steam-powered gun that shot spikes? Why _spikes_? And six-inch long ones, at that? "Although, whatever's generating it can't have a lot of power. On full power, something like that would have stopped anybody from setting up a town underneath it. They would have just… stayed away."

"Maybe it's just weak because it's not particularly dangerous?" Martha suggested.

"Yeah, or it's like leaving the tap on. They just forgot about it and it's really completely safe," Donna said.

"But if you leave a tap on for thousands of years, all those drops make a flood," Ten said.

"That metaphor doesn't even make sense," River told him.

"I _mean_ that something might have been building up," he said, "I wonder what they're warning against. Can't have ever got off the ship, otherwise people would know about it… it's weird how nobody ever investigated, though. Including you, River. Archaeologist and all that, would've thought this was right up your alley." River just shrugged. "You know what this reminds me of? When I met Christina."

Instantly, he knew that was a terrible thing to have said. Jenny, at the front, slowed for a second and very nearly stumbled, and Donna and Martha both winced behind him, and Donna glared at him while he bit his lip with immediate regret.

"I mean, not that it's… it's not _that_ similar, just… crashed spaceship in a desert, exploring it… but it was completely different," Ten said, "Totally different. Unimportant. Irrelevant."

"Oh, please, carry on talking about Christina de Souza, it's not like she _ruined my marriage_, or something," Jenny said coldly.

"No offence, but didn't you ruin your own marriage? Making that bet about sleeping with-"

"That bet was Jack's bet!" she interrupted shrilly, "Jack's bet, Jack's fault, Jack's mistake. Can we not talk about this?"

"You're a bit similar to her, you know," Ten mused.

"I'm _what_!?"

"Be quiet, would you?" Martha said to him, "Do you have any tact?"

"You know, I really wonder how Tentoo's doing," Jenny said coolly, and Ten's face fell, "After all that… oh, what was it happened to Tentoo, again? You'll have to remind me." Ten took a deep breath and didn't sink to her level, as she glared over her shoulder at him.

"Well, _somebody's_ not going to be getting a 'Best Dad' mug come Father's Day," Donna said. But that was the end of that. It was also when they approached a doorway, and he realised the ship was on its side somewhat, and that they ended up having to step right over one bit and stoop under another.

"It's definitely a crash landing," he said, wanting to get away from the previous topic of his daughter's failed marriage to Captain Jack Harkness which, in his opinion, was the equal fault of both of them. They had never exactly brought out the best in each other.

"But where are the crew?" River mused, "No bodies, no people, it's all empty. Empty and dark. You would think if they had enough power to keep up that subliminal warning signal, they'd have enough to keep the lights on."

"Not _really_, it's like a distress signal," Ten said, then he sniffed, "Doesn't smell like there's any power, though. Which begs the question, _where_ is that signal being broadcast from?"

"From below," Jenny said, like she had realised something. They had just come to a fork, left or right they could go. Left went up to the edge of the wing, right went down. Automatically, she headed right, and nobody bothered to argue with her, "Like the bangs. Maybe from another part of the ship? This thing's massive, I mean, rooms and hallways built into the wing?"

"Well, might not be a wing, per se, might just look like one. I didn't see any engines on it. I'd like to see a plan of this thing, see how big it really is," he said, "See, I would think that maybe this ship belonged to a race of giants, but these corridors are the same size as on any other ship with a species averaging at six feet tall. Why have a ship this big?"

"You never know, maybe it's not as huge as you think," River shrugged.

"Mmm, maybe," Ten said, staring around.

"So, huge ship crash lands on Korix, everybody in it disappears vanishes with no trace and no way to get out of the thing, but they're not dead?" Jenny said, "Just gone?"

"Maybe it's like that ship we were on last month? The empty one that the Ninth Doctor said went through a dimensional rift and transported everyone living away?"

"No rift energy in here," Ten said, "I'd know if there was. It's something else."

"Something below us," Jenny added, "Which means we just have to keep going down, and we'll find out what all the fuss is about."


	353. Sins Of The Fathers

_Ten_

_Sins Of The Fathers_

They did, eventually, find out what all the fuss was about. Sort of. They traipsed through the dark and empty ship, a desolate, derelict, cool ruin in the middle of Korix's desert for a good while, Donna complaining about the lack of water the whole time. But nobody had water to give her, not yet, at least, and the day was turning pear-shaped. And he hated pears.

He didn't really know how big this ship was, what its purpose was, how long it had been there gathering dust in the desert, but it seemed to go on for much longer than the most interesting thing they found, the most interesting thing being a hole in the wall. It was torn straight through all the metal, which was no mean feat considering the metal of the ship was thick and he still didn't recognise it. But it had been broken through into what looked like a cave. Martha, Jenny and Donna shone their lights down the passage and just saw darkness and rocks, but it seemed to lead downwards.

"Look at the ground," River pointed out, "Worn down, like people came through here."

"Maybe this is how the crew got off?" Martha suggested, "Went into this tunnel and never came back out."

"It definitely looks that way…" Ten said, squinting down, but he couldn't see anything much.

"Can you hear that?" Donna whispered.

"Hear what?" the Doctor asked her.

"Like water," she said, "Running water. Didn't one of you say there was loads of water underground on this planet?"

"You're probably imagining-" Martha began, but River interrupted her.

"No, I can hear it as well," she said, "Donna's right."

"Thank you! _Somebody_ listens," Donna said, annoyed, clearly only thinking about the fact she thought she might be able to get a drink. She had her phone torch out as well, like Jenny and Martha, and it was her, in all of her dehydrated logic, who went off first into the weird, sandstone tunnel, and they were stuck following, Ten trying to summon all the knowledge he had on geology to study the cave.

"When was Korix first inhabited by anybody, then?" Martha asked five minutes later, when they were deep enough into the dark caves that the spaceship entrance behind them was long gone out of their range of vision. It was just darkness, impregnable darkness, that almost seemed to be urging the Doctor to go onwards. And, admittedly, curiosity was killing him anyway.

"As soon as intergalactic travel was invented in this galaxy," Jenny told her, "That was when ships got dragged down. This is a recently inhabited galaxy, though, I mean, I remember the Urcane Wars to try and capture the solar section of the Dark Nebulas, I think I was a wing commander. Which is one rank above _captain_, by the way, Wing Commander Harkness. Well, Miles, I think it was then…"

"What do you mean, 'Wing Commander?'" Ten questioned darkly. What was this he was hearing about his daughter and the military? Surely she had not gone back?

"Oh, yeah, with the Greater Sol Space Fleet," Jenny said, "I always get lumped in with the humans. I wasn't fighting in the Urcane Wars, it was a rescue squadron, carried out emergency evacuations. Didn't see combat, don't worry." She said that last part a little resentfully, like she was annoyed at him for his tone of voice. "Greater Sol being the military outside of the Solar System still under Earthling jurisdiction. It was only a thousand years ago, or so."

"_You joined the military_? After everything that-"

"Oh, stop going on about 'everything that happened,' I knew you for one day of my life," Jenny said, turning back to face him and argue with him, meaning everybody else had to stop as well for their fighting, "One day! Out of more than seventy-five _thousand_ days! You fill my head with all of these ideas and then you just leave! I didn't know what regenerating was, I still barely know! You've _never_ explained. I don't know how many I get, if there are any catches apart from my inability to change my face like you can. What am I supposed to be, grateful? Maybe to you, two-hundred isn't old, but it's older than anybody else I've known until a few months ago, and it's long enough to make my own choices."

"But you've fought! In wars-"

"So have you," River said to him, which he really didn't think was helping this situation.

"Yes, I have. If I think it's the best course of action. I'm not stupid, or a kid, I'm even less of a kid now than when I was born, but it hasn't been two centuries for you, it's been… _years_, at the most, and you… you never talk to me," she said simply, dropping her arms, which she had been using to articulate her point. Not about anything… anything _important_."

"Told you that you should talk to her," Donna said when Ten didn't have anything to say to her. She was right, though. He didn't speak to her about important things. In fact, whenever she had tried to talk to him about Jack, he'd usually just shunned her. He didn't really know what was going on in his own daughter's life, and they lived under the same roof. He didn't know her that much at all.

"Alright," he said finally, "When we get out of here, I will talk to you."

"Is that a promise?" she asked him seriously.

"Of course it is. Cross my hearts," he said, managing a smile. Jenny sighed and crossed her arms and then looked at the floor.

"Thank you," was all she said, and then she kept moving again, taking point as they walked through the tunnels.

"Hold on," River said a while later. The tunnels were twisting around a lot now, the ground soft and sandy from whoever had been walking there previously, the people from the spaceship of indeterminable age and mysterious origin, "Look at this." She was standing by the wall and running her fingertips across it, Donna stepping over and holding up her phone to supply them with light. Ten went and stood next to her, tall enough to see over her head.

"That's strange," he said, reaching over and running his own hand along the wall, getting sand on his fingers enough to lick it off, then he frowned. What they were looking at were carvings, strange carvings, like hieroglyphics, which were either not a language the TARDIS recognised or they weren't a language at all and rather just drawings, like cavemen used to do, that had to be interpreted like dingbats. They were strange though. "Can't be right…" he murmured, repeating his earlier actions.

"What?" Martha asked him.

"That carving, if I had to say so, I'd say it was over ten-thousand years old…" he said.

"That's impossible," River said, "Nobody lived on Korix until after the Seventieth Century, like Jenny said. I would have heard about it, read about it…"

"Didn't you get your degree in the Fifty-First Century?" Ten asked.

"I would still have found out if there was a civilisation on Korix," she told him coldly, "This is impossible."

"Do you recognise the ship yet?" Donna asked him.

"No, haven't a clue. Strange ship, strange symbols, strange planet, come to think of things. How do they extract water from below the surface?" Ten asked.

"They drill for it, like oil on Earth," Jenny told him.

"The planet's backwards," he said.

"Which means what?" Martha questioned him.

"Well, Earth is a cool surface with a hot core, most planets are, they have magma and fire inside them, impossibly hot, but _Korix_… Korix has water instead of lava. Water spouts instead of volcanoes. I've seen them, in the future, geothermal features created by instability of the surface. The further down you go, the colder it is. This entire planet is an enigma," he said, "I wonder what the symbols mean?"

"I wonder why the people in the ship disappeared down here and left a warning?" Jenny added.

"Maybe it's only the surface that's uninhabited?" Donna suggested, "Think about it, maybe there are loads of tunnels. Maybe there's a whole city, and they just never went above ground?"

"Good point. Planet like this, why would you need to go up?"

"Light?" Martha suggested.

"Nah, loads of species don't need light. Just look at the bottom of the sea," he said, starting to walk off again, but faster.

"I've been to the bottom of the sea. Hell on Earth. You were there, remember?" Martha said to him.

"When I got all those bee stings, you mean?" he asked.

"You and Mickey. And I got shot in the foot," she reminded him, "If Atlantis is anything to go by, I'm not sure I want to find out what's hidden down here…"

**AN: Important issue for people to vote on; do I make Beta Clara able to turn into a bat? Cos I kind of wasn't gonna but then bats are adorable and cool and it would be funny and probably useful in some particularly weird situations, and it's not like they're short of being in weird situations. So yeah, bat or no bat? Another alternative is that she turns into mist, like in some bits of vampire lore, and they can sometimes turn into dogs or wolves. But yeah, bat?**


	354. Eternal City

**AN: So reviews aren't working properly at the moment for a lot of people on FF, so I get email alerts for SOME reviews but not all of them for whatever reason and the little number still goes up, but I can't see any reviews past the 28th of December. I'm sure it'll be fixed soon enough, but if anybody has a super urgent question then PM me instead because even if I get the email alert I still can't reply to reviews because it says they're invalid. Also, it's a new year, 2016, so I'm starting my character tallying over, character tallying being the notes I keep of how many times each character has gone out somewhere, in my second attempt to make everything more even. Not that any of you really keep track of how many times everybody has gone out, but I'm turning over a new leaf. If anybody wants to know, Martha was out the most at 23 times by Day 117, and Nine the least at 14 times. This is since Day 50, El Dorado. But considering I have the delegations roughly planned for the next twenty days or thereabouts, it WILL be equal. Starting from now. _Equality_. And they're all gonna be _friends _as well, no more factions and cliques. FINALLY, there is opportunity for another Clarenny chapter on the evening of Day 117, so if people want to see another Clarenny chapter or, likewise, are highly averse to the prospect of a Clarenny chapter, let me know, bearing in mind that Claratoo is not scheduled to make any other appearences until Day 125. But before anybody gets excited, this chapter probably won't feature her turning into a bat. You never know, though, if the mood takes me. That's planned for later, since it was met with such positive reception.**

_Ten_

_Eternal City_

Lo and behold, a city lay before them. Through caves they went for nearly an hour until bursting out onto an obscenely sized canyon of a cavern, with rock and stone above them that seemed to be giving off some kind of cool light almost as bright as the sun on the suface, radiating goldenly. They were on a ledge, the five of them, overlooking the thing, all of the buildings carved out of stone like they had once been part of the very landscape itself. Curved buildings, domes buildings, that rose like mounds of different sizes and pressed against each other seamlessly to prove that once this room had all been one block of stone with everything carved out of it.

And it was empty.

Utterly empty.

Not a person to be seen or a noise to be heard, which struck the Doctor as highly odd when he remembered the booming sounds they had all witnessed from topside that had enticed them all to investigate in the first place. Without those noises, he would have just looked for a kettle until he either found one or until he got dragged away by Donna requesting water.

Speaking of water, though, the place was flooded as well. It was like Venice, with rivers and canals running through the narrow streets and domed, sandstone buildings, and it was submerged in a lowly six inches of water that flowed gently with a current from some underground source. In the glow of the stone ceiling the water glittered gorgeously. Whatever this city was, or had been, it was still beautiful.

"It's light absorbant," Ten breathed in awe, staring up at the ceiling, a grin creeping across his face, "Like glow in the dark, but with the power of a sun... Explorers or natives would have had fire of some description, and the stone absorbs it all and throws it back."

"But it doesn't look like anybody's been down here for years," Martha said.

"It's residual, like a ghost, the ghost of the city," Ten breathed, and they all stared out and took in the golden and turquoise and shimmering view for a few more moments until he shouted, "Better take a look around!" and walked off down the gentle slope that wrapped crookedly around the cavern like a helter skelter and took them to the bottom. His voice echoed like a whisper around them.

"My feet are soaked," Donna complained almost as soon as they stepped into the shallow water filling the streets.

"Do you want water or not?" Ten asked somewhat jokingly, but she scowled at him.

"In my stomach, not in my socks," Donna said in a clipped, harsh voice.

"I don't understand it, this city is so old, look how eroded the bases of the houses are by the water, and how smooth the ground it," River began, pointing out severe notches cutting away at the bottoms of the houses, and the soft, polished stone below them, "That means it's been waterlogged like this for centuries, with a current as weak as this one. Why wouldn't they drain the water away?"

"Maybe they're fish people?" Donna suggested.

"Fish people who only need six inches of water to survive?" Martha asked incredulously, and Donna shrugged, "What are they, tadpoles?"

"Well I don't hear _you _making any suggestions," Donna said. Martha rolled her eyes. If an argument, be it a petty, unserious argument, were about to start up between the two women, it was interrupted suddenly by another boom. The same pulsing sound they had heard from above, only astronomically larger. It made waves in the water and sharp ripples in his head, and he clamped his hands over his ears as for a few seconds the entire place vibrated beneath his feet.

"If this place is uninhabited, what the hell just made that noise?" Martha asked when the noise and its after effects had stopped and Ten moved his hands, "It's not like, a giant or something, is it?"

"A giant? A giant doing what? This city is hardly big enough for giants, it's human-sized," Ten said, "Wasn't humans who lived here, but definitely that sort of size."

"Maybe they were the same people who built the ship, came and built this town? After it crashed?" Donna suggested.

"I wonder who they were..." Jenny stared around, "And why they left a warning... it doesn't look dangerous..." she mused to herself, "And there aren't any bodies."

"No..." he said, half thinking to himself, "There aren't..." He was sure that the smell of decay would be in the air with any bodies around. But there _was_ a smell, a different smell, something sweet he didn't recognise. Sugary, almost.

Not rushing off and following his nose, because the temperature was so perfect in the cool underground and their surroundings were so utterly delectable, they just meandered slowly through the streets, ambling different ways and checking alleys and roads and windows for people. It was like, to the Doctor, everybody had packed up and left this city, and left a warning in their wake. But with no signs of chaos or maltreatment or bloodshed, what was it a warning against? Even if looks could be deceiving, as of yet, there had been no evidence to that fact. It was just empty and wonderful and smelt like... honey. That was the smell. Honey.

"Can you smell that? Like honey?" Jenny asked at the exact same moment he made the connection in his head. She was peering through windows, the golden glow of whatever element was embedded into the ceiling twinkling on her hair and skin and making her shine like a sun all of her own. Her robotic hand glistened in the light as though it were gilded and soft, as did the bronze-coloured gun slung over her back.

"Yeah," Donna said quietly, frowning when she realised she _could _smell it, "I can." Martha murmured something to confirm this a second later, and River stayed quiet. Whether River could smell or not remained ambiguous to Ten, all of her senses did. He didn't speak to her enough to know if she could taste or smell, if she had any kind of olfactory system.

Just as the Doctor thought he might be putting together the pieces of this large mystery and the secret, unknown world below the desert surface of Korix, the famous scavenger's haven, Martha's phone rang with one of the loud, annoying, default ringtones. One of those ones that was trying to sound rhythmic and interesting as it looped, though it didn't loop then; apparently it was only a text.

"Who's that?" Donna asked her. They had all put their phones away, they were unnecessary in the well-lit chamber that was just as bright as a sunny day on Earth was.

"Rose," Martha answered, and Ten perked up and was no longer annoyed by the interruption to his thoughts the ringtone had caused, "She says, could we get some bread on the way home?"

"Well tell her no, we can't, we're in the middle of the desert," Jenny told Martha, "What's wrong with the bread, anyway? I swear we have plenty of bread."

"Plenty of white bread, but she only likes the bread with seeds," Ten said, "She's always going on about it."

"Well maybe _she _should do the shopping," Donna half-muttered, half-suggested, "She can buy her own weird bread. Who likes that bread with the seeds in, anyway?" Martha's phone went again.

"Bloody hell, now she wants orange milk. _Who _drinks orange milk?" Martha questioned, "Why can't she just have green milk like the rest of us?"

"Wait, you can make milk out of oranges?" Jenny asked, "I thought that was juice?"

"No, no, Jenny, she means the label's orange," Ten explained.

"Orange milk is one percent fat," Martha said.

"Oh _that's _what that means? I never pay attention, I just use whatever milk's open..."

"Orange is one percent fat and nobody uses it," Donna began explaining to his daughter, "Blue is whole milk, green is semi-skimmed, red is skimmed." Honestly, she insisted she was a capable adult, then she didn't know the different types of milk. Well, strictly speaking, _he_ wasn't too versed on milk himself. It wasn't the most important thing on his mind usually - _milk_.

"It's also basically water and I wish you wouldn't buy so much of it," Martha complained to her, "It's rank."

"I'm on a diet!"

"You're _always _on a diet."

"Well _sorry_."

"_Anyway_," Ten said loudly, "I think I might know what's going on. Well, a bit. If we look around some more, I'm sure I'll be able to show you..."


	355. This Is Where They Sleep I

**AN: Reviews are working again, which I'm sure you've noticed, but. Also, this storyline is proving kind of dull in my opinion, but, the next one should be better. Honestly I'm surprised people actually _like _the idea of Beta Clara becoming a vampire XD I thought of it and I'm like, this is too dumb, nah. And then convinced myself otherwise over many months and watched a lot of _Being Human_ and I thought everyone would be like, "Well this is stupid," and like stop reading because it was too far. But then, I did give them all superpowers... kind of regret that now but I'm not gonna get rid of them...**

_Martha_

_This Is Where They Sleep I_

"Oh... my... _god_..." Donna breathed.

"It's a _hive_..." Martha said in awe.

The Doctor had led them into another room, another cavern, down a thin and steep tunnel like a stone spiral staircase into a place that was just as vast as the mysteriously carved city above. It wasn't quite a hive, it was more of a nest, but it had secretions dripping down all of the walls that had the viscosity of honey but were pink in colour. Hive, nest, den, _lair_, it didn't matter, because she was sure that this was where the inhabitants of the city and accordingly the spaceship had mysteriously disappeared to. They were on the walls. In mountains and mounds. Hanging from the ceiling and stacking up and dripping pinkish, sweet-stinking goop. They were like cocoons, just slightly darker and with a shine to them that reminded Martha of resin.

"God, what's that noise?" Jenny whinged, holding her flesh hand to her head and pressing her thumb and forefinger against her temples. Martha couldn't hear any noise. Ten stepped out in front of them into a gap in the sea of cocoon fells and hills, staring around with his mouth hanging open he was that fascinated with what they had found.

"It's the warning," he said, a grin sneaking across his face, "It's an insect civilisation, crashed here and carved a city out of stone, like... extreme termites, or something. The noise you humans can't hear that we can, it's sort of like snoring. All of them, together, are making this sound to stop anybody coming and interrupting their mass hibernation."

"It's giving me a headache," his daughter complained.

"Mmm, sorry about that. Did you never notice it while you lived here? When was that, exactly?" Ten turned to face her. She was looking around at the gooey cocoons.

"Ten years ago," she said, "Ten years ago to the people on the planet, anyway. A hundred and thirty for me. And I didn't notice it on the surface. It's just sort of this tacit rule that you don't go in the massive spaceship, and nobody asks questions about it, not until today."

"Not until those noises," Donna added, "And we still don't know what they were. Maybe they were coming from inside the spaceship? The engines, or something?"

"Nah, engines are dead. And engines making those sorts of noises would also have made quite a big crater in the ground," Ten said. He kept walking in circles and looking at the cocoons, "The writing on the cave walls was ten thousand years old. This is the first crashed ship on Korix."

"Alright, Doctor," River crossed her arms, "You have a theory. What is it? Hmm?"

"Well, I mean," he began, taking another look around, "Very big ship, wasn't it? And what's this species? No idea, never seen them."

"You think it was an evacuation!" Martha exclaimed, and he grinned, "Evacuation of their home planet."

"A home planet in an unchartered part of space that was destroyed without anybody noticing," River continued, "Then they crash on Korix, build a city, and... hibernate. Why build the city and then go to sleep down here?"

"Probably a part of their natural life cycles, by my best guess. The city above is being eroded away because this lot haven't been awake for thousands of years, whoever they are," Ten said.

"They didn't have any possessions, though, the city up there is empty, like a museum," Jenny pointed out to him, and he frowned.

"Well, species like this? Probably make their own food, make their own entertainment. Species like this are usually harmless, though. Still," he sniffed, "better not wake them up. Let them sleep."

"Right, great, that explains the spaceship, the subliminal warning and the weird city," Martha said, "But what about the-"

A boom rang out and cut her off completely. It seemed that the lower down they went the louder the thing was, sending ripples and vibrations out through the ground. But something else happened that time, it was like, for a few seconds, Martha was stuck to the floor. She tried to move and couldn't lift her legs or feet and her arms were dragged down to her sides. As soon as the rumble of the boom ceased, she nearly fell over in her eagerness to move, and ended up flailing.

"Did you feel that!?" she asked, "Something pulled me down for a second!"

"I felt it too," River assured her.

"It's gravity," Ten said, "Acute gravity increase. How is that possible? Increasing the gravity temporarily? Doesn't make sense, completely impossible without technology... unstable technology, but technology nonetheless... how old is this planet?"

"Nobody knows, you need specialist equipment for that. No-one comes to Korix voluntarily, dad," Jenny said, "They just get sucked in by the gravity, and then they can't leave."

"Exactly! The gravity! But _why_? Planet with gravity strong enough to pull distant ships from way out of its atmosphere should have enough strength to be the middle of its own system! Should pull in other planets around it, should have about a hundred moons," he said.

"Yeah, but the gravity doesn't affect the atmosphere, it only affects the _outside _of the atmosphere," Jenny pointed out, "On the surface, and down here, the gravity is fine."

"It's not fine, it's _perfect_. Well, sometimes perfect. It's a gravitational field generator. Somewhere down here. So much water, perfect living conditions, but no natives. Isn't that strange?"

"It's a desert planet," Martha pointed out.

"Lots of things live in deserts! It's completely impossible that a planet like this _wouldn't _generate life. And here are these insectoid lifeforms with their perfectly built city and their crashed spaceship and nothing else here. Spaceship like that, gotta be clever," Ten said.

"Right. The sleeping moth-things are clever. Great," Donna said, "I still get it."

"It's a fake planet," River said in realisation.

"Not _fake_, just manufactured. Manufactured with a malfunctioning gravitational field generator that keeps going bang. About to break, by my best guess. And what happens when it does? Everything floats away, that's what," Ten said.

"_They_ built it, these insects," Jenny said.

"Exactly!" Ten declared, "They were dying out, for whatever reason, so they built themselves a new planet. Probably weren't any with habitable undergrounds around. The surface is irrelevant, it's down here that's the perfect planet. Perfect living conditions. They fly over here in their evacuation ship, the gravity's a bit too strong and it drags them in and they crash. Then they go to sleep."

"Why go to sleep?" Donna asked.

"It's just their life cycle," Ten told her, "Like I said, hibernating. Maybe they don't sleep, stay awake for ten thousand years, sleep for another ten thousand, it's all possible. But it won't be possible for much longer if nobody fixes the gravity generator."

"Well how do you fix a massive gravity generator that keeps gong _bang_? We don't even know where the thing is," Martha pointed out.

"The whole planet was built, there'll be a quick maintenance route somewhere," Ten said, looking around. He reached into his pocket and pulled his sonic screwdriver out, twisting it up and scanning the air until it started to get higher-pitched. Holding it like a dousing rod in an outstretched arm, he spun in a circle until locating the source of whatever he was looking for, dead ahead, and ran off towards a wall. Them all watching him, he put the screwdriver between his teeth and pressed his hands against the wall, rubbing his palms up and down the stone as though caressing it.

"Do you want a moment alone with that wall?" River joked, but Ten was too intrigued to ignore her, standing on tiptoes and reaching high above his head until-

"Ah-ha!" he pushed his fingers into the wall and it sank down like a button, and then the stone slid open and revealed a dark little room with a circular, metal base, "Magic door, found a lift."

"Bit of a small lift, the five of us won't fit," Martha said. It would only fit two, three at an uncomfortable squeeze.

"Well, um..." Ten stared at it and scratched the back of his head, and there was quiet in the room, "Well, someone could always send the lift back up?"

"I don't know the first thing about repairing a gravitational field generator," Donna said, "And I'm thirsty."

"The cocoons freak me out," Martha said, "Besides, I can't wait to tell Amy this story."

"Oh, right..." Ten said, looking a little lost, staring between Martha and Donna, "So the two of you are..? Going?"

"Got emergency teleporters," Donna said, taking the keyring out of her pocket and holding it up to him.

"It's not an _emergency_, though."

"Teleporters don't know that," Martha said, shrugging, "And I'm sure Oswin was lying when she said they were dangerous, she wouldn't give us something dangerous, she just doesn't want people using them too much."

"I guarantee she made them take a full day to charge on purpose. She could probably put some sort of weird, infinite battery in them," Donna said.

"Right, well... you could always wait?"

"What, in this hive room?" Martha asked incredulously. Really, she wasn't going to be much good when it came to repairing a gravity generator that freaked her out a great deal, what with it constantly booming and sticking them to the floor.

"Well, I... if you're sure, I mean..."

"I _really _need a drink, since none of you lot thought about bringing water," Donna complained.

"You could have brought your _own_ water, you brought sun cream," Martha pointed out, and Donna clenched her jaw and didn't say anything more, Martha rolling her eyes.

"Just the three of us then?" Ten glanced between River and Jenny.

"Um..." River began.

"Oh, don't tell me _you _have to leave as well! Civilisation on Korix, secret mystery planet! It's right up your street!" Ten protested.

"I'm technically a robot," River said, "I can't be around a gravity generator like that. It's too unstable. The pulses would break me. Tell me what you find, though. I'm _very _interested." Ten looked upset at being left by his friends.

"Still got me," Jenny said into the awkward silence, smiling warmly at her father. Martha would wait for him to leave to teleport away, "Chin up. Well, I guess that would be more suited to the Eleventh one, but... hair up?" He stared at her. "Into the lift, then. Shall we go? I know loads about gravity generators. Well, I know _enough_ about gravity generators..."

"Yeah. Fine. Sure. Have a safe trip, you lot..."

Martha waved at him as he went into the lift with Jenny and the pair of them disappeared behind the wall.


	356. Black Hole Singularity

_Ten_

_Black Hole Singularity_

The gravitational field generator was a huge thing situated right where the core of the planet was supposed to be. Korix was an average sized planet, only slightly smaller than Mars, and it had been ten minutes in a very fast lift that jittered about whenever the generator pulsed. Not surprisingly, it was somewhat awkward. He did not talk to Jenny usually, and the lift was very loud and not the environment for anything other than small talk, but considering the only questions he could think to ask her were either, "_What's your favourite colour_?" or, "_How are you feeling after your divorce_?" he didn't think he ought to say a thing. They went from the most pathetic and mundane question he could think of to a question he very nearly didn't want to know the answer to. So he didn't say a thing. Just wondered if maybe he ought to take the TARDIS out and get Rose some of the milk she so desired later on.

The gravitational field generator was one of the most technologically advanced ones he had seen, but he could definitely see why it was so dreadfully unstable. It was a bright white and blue-coloured black hole. Well, they needed something that sucked, what better than an artificially created dead star? Thank god, he thought, that the TARDIS was powered by the Eye of Harmony and he knew a lot about stabilising dangerous quantum singularities.

"How much do you know about quantum physics?" the Doctor asked Jenny, going and examinating the machines around it that seemed to be carved out of stone. Well, metal was really just highly compressed stone. Whatever the stone was, it was some kind of useful and conductive material.

"Quantum physics? Uh... hm..." Jenny thought, following him, "Not much. I think. I do have a degree in advanced astrophysics. And biochemistry. And maths. Religious studies of the lesser Taraxan System planets. And I guess that technically I'm sort of qualified to be a doctor? Well, no, I was a pretty good field medic with the ICCC for a while in, ooh, 2000th Century, is it? I think so. Gives you pretty basic knowledge of a wide range of species, you know."

"Not quantum physics, though?"

"No. I mean, feel free to teach me quantum physics, father," she shrugged. Every time she called him 'dad,' or 'father,' he felt a tiny smile creep onto his face and into his eyes.

"Well _that _is a black hole," he said, "That's how the TARDIS is powered, by the Eye of Harmony, a star always on the brink of collapsing. This one, though, is having its suction abilities mitigated by these big circle thingies around it." He pointed the big circle things out to her. "And also those sort of pointy electrical whatsits at the top and bottom, anchoring it here."

"Ooh, big circle thingies and pointy electrical whatsits, don't confuse me with these scientific terms," she said jokingly.

"Well, I... you know what I mean. The things. The what-do-you-call-its. Anyway. That black hole won't grow because it's not sucking anything in, and there will be transmitters on the surface. Probably just look like lumps of rock, don't want to mess up the scenery. Very unstable, though. Luckily, I'm very clever, so I suppose I can fix it. Just a simple issue of reversing the polarity of the neutron flow."

"Well that's meaningless techno-jargon if I've ever heard it," she said in a light but accusing way, and he fake gasped.

"I never make up scientific terms!" he protested, walking over to a massive structure that was definitely the device controlling the larger black hole machine.

"No, I mean, I think you already proved that, what with your expertise on the big circle thingies and the pointy electrical whatsits," she said, "Honestly, I'm in awe of your genius. Don't know how I managed without you for two-hundred years." He started examining the controls of the generator console and debated flicking random switches. He was almost overcome with a desire to impress his daughter as she joked with him about his seeming lacking knowledge of technical terms. She hovered nearby and watched what he was doing.

"Well, I suppose these are... what you might call, um... buttons. And there are some toggle switches and flashing lights, as well," he said.

"Maybe there's an instruction book?"

"Instruction book!? I don't need an instruction book! I don't need instructions for the TARDIS, and the TARDIS is infinitely more complicated than this... this plaything. On Gallifrey, this singularity machine would have been the Time Lord equivalent to Jenga."

"Singularity machine?"

"Well, it uses the density of the singularity point in the centre of the black hole where all matter is compressed to a hyper-dense state in an infinitely small space to create the amount of acceleration needed to maintain a gravitational field. Sometimes they're a gateway to another universe, but not in these manufactured jobs. Like leaving an empty doorframe at the bottom of the garden and saying it goes to Narnia. Nothing in there except, ooh, quite a painful death involving compressing," he said, "Like a car crusher. The Rurtun mafia like to throw people into them. Threw me into one, once, had to get myself out using only a hosepipe. Well, hosepipe and a vortex manipulator. Forgot I had the hosepipe, come to think of it..." She stared at him for a few moments.

"They tried to do that to me," she said, as he flicked a switch to see what it would do. Nothing seemed to happen. He took out the sonic and started to scan it to see what he might find.

"Throw you in a black hole?"

"Mmm. Stole a vortex manipulator from them, incidentally. Well, stole it _back_, they stole it from me first," she said, "It didn't even work, hadn't worked for eighty years."

"Why did you keep it, then?"

"Sentimental reasons. I still have it now, it's in my old, broken ship on the TARDIS," she said. He wondered what sentimental reasons his daughter would have for keeping a broken vortex manipulator for decades. Then he wondered what other keepsakes she kept in her ship. "Anyway, I got away from them by fatally stabbing the leader."

"You _what_!?" he exclaimed, turning so quickly with the sonic that a button on the console sparked and exploded behind him and they both jumped.

"Fatal without _medical attention_. As I mentioned, I'm a trained field medic. I saved hundreds of lives in the First World War, you know. And in Vietnam I created a skin balm out of leaves to greatly alleviate the effects of the Rainbow Herbicides on the native people. I saved his life. They have a strict code of honour, those Rurtuns, they let me go because I saved him."

"But you also stabbed him in the first place."

"Nobody ever said the Rurtuns were clever," she shrugged, then she sighed and crossed her arms, "We've barely spent any time together, and I'm still a lot like you. Well, that's what I've been told."

"By who?"

"How are you and Rose?" Jenny asked abruptly.

"Rose? ...Fine. Why?"

"_Fine_? I don't believe you. You've been in love with her for years, and you finally have her and you're merely 'fine?'" she questioned with a smile.

"...Nobody's asked about Rose and I."

"Well I'm asking now," she said, leaning on the side of the generator. Another button sparked next to the Doctor. He kept sonicking.

"Looks like rudimentary limbon circuitry," he frowned at the thing, "Electrical basics. Electrical basics can't power something like that, there aren't enough buttons, no terminal, or keyboard."

"You don't know what it looks like inside, it could be incredibly complicated but those things are incredibly clever and have worked out how to reduce it to simple buttons," Jenny said, "If you ask me, it looks more like a highly advanced neuronial system similar to Serolian engineering."

"Serolian? Why would you say that?"

"We don't know the biology of those insects. Going by the buttons, it's safe to assume they might not have a great deal of _manus_ mobility or capabilities. Maybe buttons is the best way to set up a complicated system," she said, and he looked at her for a long while, thinking about what she had said. She was right. They really _didn't _know anything about their biology. "You have to lower the power-"

"And stabilise the ion cores and the atomic quantifiers," he said, "That's brilliant! I thought you didn't know anything about quantum mechanics?"

"No, but I hitchhiked on a Serolian cruiser once and I recognise some of the electronics. Species all develop the same sorts of technology, circuits and whatnot. You know that," she told him.

"Right..."

"So, you and Rose?" she implored.

"We're very happy," he told her.

"You're a closed book," she said as he flipped a toggle switch and saw the black hole ripple. Whatever he had just done had affected it somehow. He didn't feel anything in the atmosphere, though. Jenny frowned at the generator, and then reached over to twist a large dial around. He watched her do this and resisted the urge to tell her to stop, then the both of them glanced at the black hole and he saw the atomic quantifiers - which were the aforementioned 'big circle thingies' he had now recalled the name of, which were suspended in the air and span around the black hole like a gyroscope - slow.

"What did you do!?" he shouted, "It'll get out of control!"

"It will not, _look_ at it," she said, "It's a pacemaker. This whole device. It's not _reducing_ the power of the black hole, it's _increasing_ it. If we switched off the machines, everything would float away, not be sucked in and destroyed. It just looks like they had the settings too high to maintain a natural, uh, _heartrate_, for lack of a better word. We reduce the strength of those big circle thingies, the black hole balances itself because the pointy electrical whatsits are keeping it in existence. Like an x axis and a y axis. Go on, then. Use your sonic to figure out what the exact setting should be, I've not got a clue. Were you a good Time Lord, then?"

"_Good_? What do you mean, 'good?'" he questioned, going back to his sonicking like she had suggested. She was cleverer than he thought. Well, it wasn't _that_, he supposed, it was just that he was too used to the idea that she didn't know a thing about the real world.

"Were you one of the best Time Lords? Best pilot, most clever? Most wives?" she suggested mischievously, and he nearly laughed, if a little sadly.

"No, I failed the test you have to take to fly it," Ten said.

"Thank god I had River show me all those months ago."

"And I wasn't the cleverest."

"Do you think I could be smarter than you?" she asked curiously.

"Uh... dunno. I suppose maybe we would have the same intelligence, Jenny."

"Ah, you mean how we have the exact same ideologies and physiques? I get you now," she said sarcastically.

"Well, you... you look a bit like your mother."

"My mother!? I was here first! God, that's an odd thought, isn't it? I existed three-hundred years before my own mother did?" she mused.

"It is a bit."

"I _could _be smarter."

"Maybe."

"Anyway, my mother is an American with brown eyes. Here _I_ am, speaking with recieved pronunciation with _blue _eyes. Well, they're naturally blue. I mean, these cybernetic ones are blue as well, but I could change the colour if I wanted..." she said, and he glanced at her, seeing her tapping her metal fingers against the side of the generator, her eyes with that slightly shinier quality than organic ones.

"Does it hurt?" he asked.

"Does what?"

"Having robotic eyes like that."

"Sometimes it aches. It's because there are screws in my skull. Same thing happens with this hand, not very nice. Doesn't matter though, all my appendages will grow back if I ever regenerate again," she said.

"I'd rather you didn't need to regenerate again."

"Is there a limit on it?"

"Twelve times. Well, that's what it used to be. That mother of yours calling herself '_Thirteen_' isn't technically wrong. She defies Time Lord conventions. I'd like to ask her how she did it..."

"Well, you'd better hurry up. Never know when she might disappear back to the future. Now, could you hurry up a bit with that thing? I sort of have a date tonight. And I might do that milk run for your... wife? Girlfriend?"

"Rose. Just say Rose." They had never discussed labels, Rose and himself. It had been over a month, and everything...

"I'll get Rose her seeded bread and orange milk."

"Where are you going, exactly, where they sell bread and milk? An intergalactic farm?" he questioned.

"Haworth."

"_Haworth_? In Yorkshire? What's in Haworth, apart from the Brontë house?" he questioned her. What was she up to? Secret business? "Not _more _sleeping with people you're not romantically involved with, I hope?"

"Of course not! Just, you know. Clara."


	357. Another Girl Another Planet IX

**AN: Have I succeeded in making anybody ship ClaraxJenny yet? _I_ ship it, in case you couldn't tell. ****Way back when, though, 600 chapters ago, nobody shipped Adwin, either. ****I thought I needed at least _one _canon queer couple, since Clarteen aren't canon enough to count and Oslek were only seen in flashbacks. I also sort of think I should have named their chapters "Lock Up Your Daughters" instead, but I like them being called "Another Girl Another Planet." As aforementioned, Beta Clara won't be reappearing until around Day 125, so prepare for a nice break from Clarenny.**

_Jenny_

_Another Girl Another Planet IX_

It was ten o'clock at night as the TARDIS thrummed out of sight behind her and she walked up Clara's garden path, still dressed in rags and still with Emmett the Gun slung over her back along with her bag. Evidently, Clara had heard the sound of the ship outside appearing and diseappearing moments later and came and opened the door and stood in the cold night air waiting for Jenny to walk up the steps.

"Hi!" she called brightly. Clara just smiled and raised one hand in a meek wave, then peered out to look at the sky.

"What do you make of the weather tomorrow? Do you think it'll be clear skies?" she asked edgily, clearly hoping for clouds, Jenny coming up the steps and waiting on the top one to come in, looking up at the weak stars in the sky, orange-scarred by light pollution. There were a lot of clouds though.

"Well, it's December, and you're in England, so I doubt it," Jenny shrugged, stepping inside and past Clara so that she could close the door, which she did, and she scarcely had a moment to lock it behind them when Jenny decided she was bored of not kissing Clara so she decided to change that by standing high enough on tiptoes so that she was the taller of them for once and cupping Clara's face with both hands, kissing her deeply. She was good at standing on tiptoes, anyway, in near-ish future she had trained in dance for a while. Like everything, she had excelled in it. She also excelled in kissing, as far as she was aware, which was probably why she, the initiator, had to break it off. Mainly because she had important things to say to Clara that couldn't exactly be said while lip-locking with Clara's arms wrapped around her. Not that Clara removed these arms when Jenny stepped back the smallest bit and smiled at her, still on tiptoes, she instead moved her hands to be on Jenny's hips and grinned back, revealing those delightful fangs she had grown last week.

"I have to say, that's the best hello I've had in a _long_ time," Clara said, and Jenny laughed and dropped her hands from Clara's shoulders where they had been, "Are you standing pointe?"

"Hmm? Oh, yeah," Jenny said somewhat absently, fumbling in her bag for something, "Just thought I should let you know, by the way, that I have a key to your house. And so does Adam. But that's just because he's the landlord."

"Who needs a key with a sonic screwdriver?" Clara questioned jokingly.

"It's more polite. Got you a present," she declared, beaming when she finally found what she had been looking for, drawing out the uneven, near-spherical shape of the galaxy crystal she had picked up earlier from Jarru, "Been to a planet I used to live on, got given it in return for a favour I did a few decades ago." Clara took it out of Jenny's hands and stepped away from her enough to hold it up to the light. Which probably would have been more effective were the light on, but it was not, because electric lights were too bright for vampires. That was why a second later Clara sighed and walked left into the living room where she had candles set up in a funny, recycling contraption where the melted wax sank into a mould and could be flipped and relit and repeated endlessly, saving the need to buy more.

"What is it?" she asked finally, and Jenny offered the same snowglobe analogy she had given to Donna and Martha, and the same example of shaking it to make, this time, a golden nebula emerge from the ashes of the dusky pink one that came before it. "Oh my stars, that's _beautiful_," Clara stared at it, sitting down on the sofa.

"It's infinite, as well. You'll never get the same system twice," Jenny said, leaning down on the back of the sofa next to Clara's head. Clara looked around to see her smile, and kissed her cheek.

"Honestly, you're amazing."

"Mmm, I know," she said, and Clara laughed.

"Where've you been, then? What planet?" she inquired, staring at the galaxy crystal, shaking it again to create a funny-looking red and green nebula within its glassy cage. It really was a gorgeous illusion of coloured dust particles refracting the light at different angles depending on their postioning. Not that she was going to ruin the romance of it and tell Clara the science.

"Korix, 8050," Jenny said, "Roughly. Desert planet. It's why I'm dressed in these wonderfully attractive grey rags. Been hanging out with my dad all day. Doing dad stuff."

"I'd hate to know what you and the Doctor consider father-daughter activities. _My _dad and I used to go to the park and feed bread to ducks."

"We were trying to stop an artificially created black hole from imploding and destroying a fake planet inhabited by hibernating insect people," she shrugged.

"Sounds exactly the same as going down Blackpool seafront to get candyfloss or rock," she said, "I broke one of my teeth on a piece of rock once." She pulled a frown at the moderately unpleasant memory.

"Well, don't go eating any more or you might snap a fang," Jenny said warningly, and she glanced over and smiled a little, putting the crystal down on the coffee table. Jenny would move it onto the mantlepiece over the fireplace later where she thought it looked nice. The only thing on there were candles. No family photos. They were in Clara's library, upstairs.

"It's not like I need them for anything."

"Uh, Clara, they're _totally_ hot. You need them for my amusement."

"I don't exist just to entertain _you_."

"No, you entertain lots of people," she said wryly, and Clara gave her a flat stare and shook her head a little, "Don't give me that face! Or, maybe do, because it's a cute face..."

"What face!?"

"The I'm-trying-not-to-laugh-at-Jenny-even-though-she-is-hilarious-and-totally-more-hilarious-than-me face."

"Who said you were more hilarious than me!? _I'm _funny, _I _have wit, and sarcasm-"

"And cynicism and a dirty mind."

"And you _don't_ have a dirty mind? Talking about me 'entertaining' people?"

"I was talking about juggling. Obviously."

"I can't juggle."

"Can't you? I can," she said, standing and putting a hand on her hip, reminiscing, "Learnt to do it while I was with a travelling circus."

"Travelling circus? Doing what?" Clara asked, turning around a little and crossing her arms on the back of the sofa, resting her head on them.

"Acrobatics. You know, trapeze and all that. Tightrope walking. I used to cartwheel across tightropes about sixty feet off the ground - this was in the future when bigtops were _huge_, basically like flat-packed stadiums," she said.

"You're _so _hot you know."

"I do know."

"And thus the confidence returns!" Clara declared, and Jenny laughed, "I almost want you to try and talk about your feelings again so that you start stammering and being all awkward and adorable."

"I can be adorable at will! I'm a very versatile person, I'll have you know."

"So, are you gonna stand there all night? Or are you in a rush to leave?"

"I'm in a rush to shower, really, and change, these rags are wrapped pretty tightly, I have hardly any movement. Well, I say that, but then I did do like, three somersaults and a handstand chasing after this alien earlier," she said.

"What are you carrying on your back?" Clara asked.

"Huh? Oh, _this_?" she said, lifting the strap of Emmett the Gun to take it off her shoulders, only then noticing how heavy the thing was, and showing it go Clara, "Gun." Clara stared at her in shock. "What?"

"A _gun_!?"

"Uh..."

"You brought a _gun _into _my _house!?" Clara shouted at her, standing up, "A lethal one!?"

"Yeah. It's totally awesome. It shoots six-inch maintenance spikes, wanna see?" she asked.

"No! No I do not _want to see_! I hate guns! And killing!"

"I'm not gonna kill anybody with him, he's not even loaded, calm down," Jenny said, a little befuddled by this turn of events, that she was now being shouted at.

"Why do you have it with you!? That _thing_!? And _why _are you calling it a '_he_'!?"

"Well, I built him."

"_You built it_!?"

"Look, would you chill out a bit? Guns don't kill people, Clara, people kill people. Nuts can kill as well, but I wouldn't hear you yelling at me if I'd brought you a box of Ferrero Rocher," she countered, "Literally, relax. The gun's called Emmett, named after someone I knew once."

"Boyfriend?"

"Boyfriend!?" Jenny asked incredulously.

"Husband, then."

"_Husband_!? I've only ever been married to Jack, Clara, never anybody else. Never even engaged to anybody. I'm good at sleeping with people, not dating them," Jenny said coolly, "And for the record, I didn't even sleep with the real Emmett; he died, I felt bad. I built a gun and named it after him almost a hundred and fifty years ago, then he got stolen from me by a slumlord and I only just got him back today. He's sentimental more than a weapon, calm down."

"...I just don't like guns."

"I can really see my father's influence on you right now. I don't know why he hates soldiers."

"Soldiers start wars."

"Diplomats and politicians start wars and send soldiers in to sacrifice themselves and try and _stop_ the fighting. If you want to hate anybody, hate the establishment," Jenny shrugged, "And this gun is very innovative and steam-powered, for the record." She leant it on the side of the armchair and Clara stared at it shiftily. "He doesn't have AI, Clara, he won't float around and shoot you." Clara sighed. "I had this exact argument with my father the day I was born. You let him influence you too much."

"He's a good man, Jenny."

"You should be able to form your own ideas, though, not just listen to him," Jenny said.

"What makes you think they're not my ideas too?" Clara questioned, crossing her arms. Jenny sighed.

"I just don't like him. Don't listen to me. I don't know him very well. None of us on the TARDIS do. Besides, he's technically not _my _father, there's a whole Beta Jenny off somewhere that he's never bothered to look for. I feel sort of bad for her. I mean, you'd think he'd prefer to hang out with the daughter who _hasn't _been shagging his best friend for months."

"Mmm, he never seems to like the people I shag, so..." Clara trailed off like she had a thought but it wasn't important enough to vocalise. They stayed stood at odds for a few more moments until Clara uncrossed her arms and dropped them at her sides, "I need a drink." Jenny didn't say anything and watched her go into the kitchen and retrieve one of the skull mugs out of the fridge. She didn't need heightened Time Lord senses to smell the blood in it.

"Does that stuff actually taste nice? Or do you just sort of, suffer through it?" she inquired as Clara sipped it.

"Imagine the most delicious thing you can think of and multiply it by a hundred," Clara said, "It's like, _amazing_. I am _so_ not suffering by having to drink it. Although, everything else tastes a bit shit by comparison."

"Yum," she said dryly.

"Except you. You taste just as sumptuous as always."

"Ever the charmer. Speaking of taste-"

"No, there's nothing in for tea, before you ask."

"No teabags!?"

"Not _drink_ tea, _food _tea. You ought to spend more time in the North. But there's nothing to eat," Clara confessed, "I was gonna go shopping tonight. There's a twenty-four hour Tesco down Keighley." Beta Clara was now in possession of Alpha Clara's old red Ford she usually kept in the TARDIS and never drove anywhere. Mainly because they thought it was best if she maybe didn't drive the anti-gravity motorbike in case Twelve could scan for it and wondered where it had got to. He might not remember Clara, but Jenny didn't think it would go too well if he thought a random vampire had stolen his bike from right under his nose.

"Shopping? Great! I have to go shopping."

"You do, do you? With what money?" Clara questioned her coolly, crossing one of her arms, the one not holding the skull mug full of blood. What a ridiculous stereotype she was becoming, after just a few days.

"Well I need orange milk and the bread with the seeds in it."

"Ew, why?"

"For Rose."

"Why are you buying Rose food? Or, why are you trying to make _me_ buy Rose food on your behalf?"

"It's technically on my father's behalf. Well, sort of, she texted Martha originally, he said he would do it, then I said _I _would do it because I knew I was coming here anyway, a place with shops. Plus, I wanted him to hurry up fixing this black hole, so I had to bargain," she said, "So you won't buy any milk?"

"No!"

"I'll just have to steal it."

"Don't do that!"

"Well then, when Rose gets angry and makes me cease to exist, that'll be on you, won't it?"

"Rose can teleport to anywhere in all of time and space, why can't she get her own weird milk and bread? What's wrong with green milk and brown bread? Or white bread? _Any_ bread as long as it doesn't have bloody seeds in it, what is she, a hamster?" Clara whinged.

"She's not very good at teleporting. Just like_ you're _not very good at... turning into a bat."

"I can't turn into a bat."

"How do you know? Have you ever turned into one?" Jenny questioned.

"_No_, but-"

"Then maybe you can."

"I-"

"You don't know until you try."

There was a pause and Clara clenched her jaw and Jenny looked back with an innocent smile.

"I'm not trying. But fine, you win. Go have your shower and I'll let you come shopping," Clara said, and she beamed and went over to the stairs, Clara following to stand at the bottom of them and shout after her, "I want to be paid back, you know! In sex!"

"I don't think Rose wants to have sex with you, Clara. Hate to break the news."

"I mean you, idiot."

"She doesn't want to have sex with me, either."

"No, I... you know what I mean. Go away. Get out of my sight." Just before Clara looked away and Jenny disappeared around the corner of the first floor landing, the latter winked at her, and Clara, annoyed, huffily went to drink more blood and find a pair of shoes to wear to the supermarket.


	358. Nerd Flirts VIII

**AN: Now THIS storyline should be a good one. I'm gonna try really hard to keep it interesting. I'm trying harder to fix my issue of persistent anticlimaxes and deus ex machinas recently. Unfortunately I shine more when it comes to excessive gore and idle conversation...**

_DAY ONE-HUNDRED AND EIGHTEEN_

_Oswin_

_Nerd Flirts VIII_

Oswin opened her bedroom door carefully that morning, as quietly as possible, wrapped warmly in a black dressing gown stolen from her boyfriend who was lying in bed, awake and waiting for her verdict, in the room behind her. She peered into the living room, small kitchen with its oven, kettle, microwave and island on the left, sofas in the centre on the right facing the television and another of the scenic walls, computer desk in the far left corner and the toilet door dead ahead, and saw nobody. Their 'flat' was empty. The bathroom was silent.

"Oh my god, babe," she breathed, glancing over her shoulder at him, "Our room is empty. The whole place is empty." Adam Mitchell frowned in the darkness and fumbled for his glasses on the bedside table. "They're on the floor," she told him, and he groaned and dragged his hand aimlessly along the carpet trying to find them, "No, like, up a bit... now left... now... no, too far, _no - _there you go." He found them finally and pushed them on, yawning and running a hand through his hair as he clambered to his feet. Oswin didn't care what anybody else thought about him, _she _thought he was gorgeous.

"What do you mean, empty? How can it be empty?" he looked over her head and she pulled the door open enough for him to see, him leaning on the doorframe and wincing against his tiredness and early morning headache.

"Well, exactly," she said.

"What if they've died?" he asked her. What the couple were referring to was the fact that they never got a moment of peace in a place which was supposed to be _theirs_. That was what they got for being the only ones with a bathroom. Unless Nine and River had one, but if they did, they kept it under wraps much more intensely than she and Adam Mitchell did. Thirteen stayed in their room whenever she slept, Jenny had been on the sofas while she felt dejected by Beta Clara, and Alpha Clara had been in there a few nights while she and Eleven weren't on the best terms. Though, Oswin perhaps preferred Clara being sad and in the next room to the running stream of her little sister's thoughts-during-sex when she was across the hall.

"They probably haven't _died_, they'll just be... off somewhere. I don't know. Jenny has her room back now. Clara has her husband back. Thirteen's only here once a week," Oswin told him these things which he already knew full well as he squinted into the living room, still not fully comprehending that they didn't have to hide away in their bedroom in order to actually talk to each other. The side effects of being socially incapable people who craved mutual isolation, except from one another. Adam always got bored and left, while Oswin had to stay to keep Clara company when she was being a brat.

"It's weird," Adam said after a long pause, and she laughed and stepped out into the room. He followed her, making a movement as though to put his hands in his pockets, but he didn't have any pockets on his pyjamas. "Why've you got my dressing gown on?"

"Because my boyfriend has cyrokinesis and it gets very chilly at night," she said to him, going over to fill the kettle as a sort of automatic reaction, part of a routine. Boil the kettle every morning, immediately, without fail, and make a drink for everyone present. It was some sort of custom everyone on the TARDIS shared, and Oswin was beginning to think it was something to do with them being British, that they all just expected to constantly have a cup of tea or coffee in front of them. It was weird. "Why? Do you want it back? Not cold, are you?"

Adam crossed his arms and leant on the side of the kitchen cupboards, smiling at her.

"I'm never cold."

"You're _always _cold."

"Depends on where you're standing."

"Next to you, usually," she said, opening the fridge, "Oh, look at this, there's no milk... ugh..." She flipped the switch on the kettle back to take it off boil. "This is why we should just kick them out, they've drunk all the milk. I told you we should kick them out, but you didn't listen. You never listen to me."

"Maybe that _would _be true, if it weren't for the fact you're the one who invited everybody in here to sleep on the sofas? And the one who suggested we get another sofa basically because of the fact we're a B&amp;B?" he pointed out.

"Well you should just learn to control your woman, shouldn't you?" she retorted, and he laughed. "Do you want your dressing gown back, though?"

"No," he said, rubbing one of his eyes with his fingers, "I have to get dressed and go out."

"Go out? Go out where?"

"Gotta go see my other girlfriend."

"Oh, right. Is she okay?" Oswin asked concernedly. He was talking about his younger sister, after all.

"Yeah, I think so, I just have to meet with some solicitors. Still haven't got custody," Adam sighed.

"Well. You can still have breakfast, can't you?" she asked him, surprised at the announcement of his absence that day. He hadn't told her he was going anywhere, she hadn't made any plans. Everybody was probably busy. She supposed she could go carry on with the spaceship.

"If you're offering to make breakfast, I'm afraid I'll have to leave all the faster," he joked.

"Shall I go get some milk from the living room? I'll take some mugs and make tea in there," she said, taking two clean mugs from the cupboard they had exclusively full of mugs. They had the mug monopoly on the TARDIS. It was like being the sole person in possession of toilet paper in the middle of a crisis.

"Yeah, go on then," he relented, watching her take off his dressing gown, since it was too big to wear outside of their room. It wasn't like she was short on clothes - she wasn't exactly going to be sleeping nude anytime soon, what her boyfriend being like a massive block of ice all night. She even had a pair of socks on her right foot, her only foot. "Do you want any breakfast, if I'm cooking? I'm doing bacon, I think. We have butter, don't we?"

"If by 'butter' what you actually mean is 'margarine?'" she asked him, pausing on her way to the door.

"One of them. They're basically the same. I just like my sandwiches moist."

"That's disgusting, I'm leaving," she laughed a little and moved the mugs so that they were in one hand.

"I love moist things, Oswin."

"Stop saying moist."

"Especially moist bread."

"Gross!" she called, closing the door, but she left it open a little so see if he said anything else, smiling to herself now that he couldn't see her.

"And girls!"

"Ew!" she closed the door finally and she laughed to herself, entering Nerve Centre a moment later still smiling. Then she was immediately caught off guard by having her name shouted, feeling she had been hit she had been so briefly distracted thinking about Adam Mitchell. She still hated him for his ability to take up most of her thoughts. It had always been like this, since the moment he arrived, there was just something about him...

"Oswin! Oswin'll come out," the Ninth Doctor declared.

"I, um, what?" Oswin spluttered, getting looks from some of the others, others consisting of Rose, Donna, Jack and the Ponds. Mickey and Martha were talking with River and Ten at one of the tables, but they weren't paying attention to the lot with their eyes now focused on her, "I'm just making tea..."

"She'll be interested," Nine said. Why Nine was vouching for her, she didn't know, but she walked past them to get into the kitchen, at which point she saw there was no kettle.

"Where's the kettle?" she asked.

"Ask the Tenth Doctor," Donna told her.

"Oi! It wasn't my fault!" Ten protested.

"It _was_ your fault," River said.

"Did you sonic it again!?" Oswin demanded of him.

"Yes," River answered on his behalf.

"Stop doing that," she warned him, "What do you all want with me, then? I might be busy today."

"What do you mean you 'might' be busy?" Rose asked.

"I just might be. Depends on what you ask me to do, or where you're going. I could carry on building that spaceship in the garage if I really wanted. Why?"

"Gwen Cooper called," Jack began. Oswin hadn't spoken to Jack for days, maybe even weeks. She thought Jack might ask her about Jenny and she really didn't want to get involved with those two, even if they _were _separated now. Thank god his ex-wife wasn't in the room. "She says that all of a sudden there's been a spate of alien abductions in Cardiff. Victims disappear, then return, and claim they met Martians."

"Martians?" Oswin questioned incredulously, "Martians in the Twenty-First Century? Abducting people?"

"Yeah, but get this, this is the kicker," Jack continued, "They were _all _lobotomised, and they _all_ showed up in a shipping yard in locked cargo containers, where they had no business being." Oswin had to admit, that did sound horribly intriguing, mysteriously lobotomised Welsh people...

"I thought Torchwood got disbanded?"

Jack shrugged and said, "Can't help but notice things. Besides, I have stuff I want to talk to her about. Torchwood stuff."

"Should ask your boyfriend if there have been any UFO sightings round there," Rose joked, and Donna and Amy laughed.

"Adam won't know. He'd know how to find out, but so can anyone who understands Google," Oswin said, a little irked at them seeming to make fun of her boyfriend. She thought his interests in science-fiction, UFOs and the paranormal was cute, anyway. "Sally Sparrow knows about UFOs. Ever since she met the Werping Angels she's been looking into spooky."

"Spooky Sally?" Martha suggested.

"Well, exactly."

"You know how to get in touch with her?"

"Not a clue. Don't know where she lives, can't be bothered finding out. Anyway, why do you want _me_ to come out? Why would any of you?"

"Why wouldn't we?" Donna asked, "Can't hurt to have the smartest girl in the universe knocking about." Oswin supposed not.

"Because I'm annoying and don't understand social conventions or normality. Or straight people."

"I hear ya on that last one," Jack said, and she nearly laughed, but felt that somehow it would be wrong to laugh. It was as though, in the latest Jack/Jenny debacle, she had gotten stuck on Jenny's side. Realistically, they were equally guilty, and it was also none of her business. But she didn't want to get shouted at by Jenny for speaking to her ex-husband - Jenny _did_ have quite the violent streak on occasion. Oswin opened the fridge then.

"Are you kidding me!? Where's all the regular milk? What's this orange one percent shit? Why are there _ten _bottles of it?" Oswin exlcaimed upon seeing the fridge stocked with orange-labelled plastic bottles of milk. Instantly, people started shouting and blaming Rose, while Rose started shouting and blaming Jenny, who wasn't even there to defend herself. Everything had gone to hell when it came to groceries now Adam had withdrawn his credit card from circulation with the rest of the crew. Oswin pressed her hands to her temples and decided her boyfriend would just have to drink something other than tea for the day. "Right! Whatever! I'm gonna go get dressed, have fun with your disgusting milk, Rose."

"You can't even taste!" Rose complained, but Oswin didn't bother to answer. She had left the mugs in Nerve Centre. They had a hoard of dozens of mugs though, so it didn't matter.

Groaning exaggeratedly, she returned to her room and turned the light on to find Adam Mitchell frying bacon. He looked over expectantly.

"No tea?" he asked.

"No milk through there. Well, there are ten massive bottles of orange milk. They're doing my head in. Shouting about milk. And Ten broke the kettle again. They've invited me out," she walked towards him.

"Are you going?"

"I like it _here_, with _you_, where it's just _us_, and it's _quiet_," she whined pitifully, going up behind Adam and wrapping her arms around his middle, leaning on his back while he fried his bacon.

"_Urgh_, you're so cute, it's the worst," he complained, and she laughed, "I'm not here, though, I really have to see Ellie. I don't know if it would look professional if I brought my girlfriend along."

"Say that again."

"It wouldn't look professional if I brought my girlfriend along."

"I like the part where you call me your girlfriend."

"I quite like being able to call you my girlfriend, too."

"Why do you take up so many of my thoughts? I have so many thoughts and more than half of them are about boys. _One_ boy," she muttered, staying with her arms around him, "Ever since you got here."

"I hate to break it to you, Oswin," he said, moving her hands off him so that he could turn around to face her, "But that's called _love at first sight_."

"Love at first sight does not exist," she told him sternly, for the umpteenth time.

"Yeah, I thought that too, until I saw you, and then all of a sudden nothing was important anymore if I didn't have you, Oswin," he said, leaning down to her level, and she stood a little on tiptoes.

"Well _you_, Adam Mitchell, are full of shit," she told him with a misleading smile, "It's a made up excuse people use to justify teenage pregnancies and elopements."

"You're so romantic," he whispered, kissing her for a second until she pushed him back.

"And you're _so _burning that bacon," she said, and he glanced back at the frying pan. Then he realised he actually _was _burnig the bacon, so he switched off the hob and lifted the rashers up with prongs to drop them on his bread, "I suppose I have to get dressed as well, then."

"You _are _going with them, then?" he said, cutting up his sandwich with the bread knife.

"Uh, people in Cardiff are getting mysteriously abducted by Martians, lobotomised, and dumped back in a dockyard, of _course _I'm going with them," she said, grinning, heading over towards the bedroom, holding the doorframe with one hand.

"Don't let any killer plants sting you. It wouldn't too good if you lost mobility in your only remaining leg."

"Who'd be dumb enough to let a killer plant sting them in the first place?" she asked innocently, and he gave her a disapproving stare until she changed the subject, "_Please _get some normal milk on the way home, Mitchell. All anybody ever talks about is milk. I'm gonna go crazy. Well, _more_ crazy."

"You're not crazy," he assured her, though she didn't know if she believed him, "And yes, I'll get some milk."

"Good."

"Oswin?" he called after her when she vanished into their bedroom, and she came right back out, hanging off the doorframe.

"Yep?"

"I love you."

"God, you're pathetic. I love you, too. But I love milk more," she said.

"As if you've ever tasted proper milk." Oswin laughed and disappeared away again, leaving the door open so that she heard him mutter something to himself about the most intelligent girl in all of time and space being in love with him, and she smiled, and went to get dressed.


	359. Friends Reunited I

_Jack_

_Friends Reunited I_

Captain Jack Harkness had not seen Gwen Cooper for over a month, but that had been a Gwen Cooper from March 2008, before all of their friends and coworkers died. _This _Gwen Cooper was the present version, 2015 Gwen, and he hadn't seen _her _for two years. Nobody cared about Torchwood anymore. The government had more important things to worry about in 2015, like the emergence of the Manifests plaguing the whole country. Probably countless other extra-terrestrial threats that were far more genuine than abductions like this. If Jack were a member of UNIT or the Secret Service, he'd probably ignore Martian abductions, too. But he wasn't, and if Gwen asked for his help, he'd never refuse.

With open arms he greeted her in front of the Wales Millennium Centre, right on top of the Rift and the remains of the Torchwood Three base, everything patched up as though nothing had ever happened, there had never been a devasting explosion six years ago that had destroyed the base and everything inside at the time - including him. One of his most painful revivals to date, he thought.

"Gwen Cooper!" he declared, pulling her into a tight hug as she laughed, though somewhat sadly, the pair of them reunited. Bad things always seemed to happen when he and Gwen were together, though. But then, bad things always happened to him anyway, and to the Doctor. He stepped away from her, the others loitering back. The last time they had been out, Amy was the only one of the present group who had been there that day. There was the pair of them, Rory, the Ninth Doctor, Donna, Rose and Oswin. Then Gwen, of course. Eight people was more than he was used to. "Feels like it's been forever."

"It might as well have been! Four years without seeing you, that's longer than you've ever managed to stay away before. Haven't seen you since the Miracle," Gwen said, then she looked around him to see the others, "Who're this lot, then, another team? New Torchwood?"

"That's exactly what you said last time. And you met Amy, remember? Where everybody went blind and plants invaded Wales?" Jack said, pointing Amy out, "That was the last time I saw you. Good few weeks ago now - _hey_!" he shouted at her in anguish when she slapped him, and everyone jumped.

"So that's what point in your life it is, hmm?" Gwen was all of a sudden furious. When he first met her she wasn't such a loose cannon. It was all his influence, he was sure, making her so angry.

"You really do make the girls go wild, don't you?" Oswin said flatly from behind him. Jack tried to turn and glare at her, but Gwen punched him in the arm.

"Ow! What's all this for!?" he argued.

"Oh, I dunno, maybe for Owen? Tosh? Ianto? Esther?" Gwen questioned him coldly, trying to hit him again, but he reached up and grabbed her hand. She just hit him in the gut with the other one instead and winded him.

"You probably deserve it," Nine said, and Jack scowled at him, "What? You always do in my experience. Who's Esther?" Jack and Gwen ignored his question about Esther Drummond.

"Yeah, thanks for the vote of confidence. I'm sorry, Gwen, what was I supposed to do?"

"Save them," she told him, crossing her arms. At least if her arms were crossed she couldn't hit him, so he straightened back up, wincing a little from her punch, everyone else just watching them like they were a pair of street performers. Maybe he ought to put a hat on the floor and try and claim some money. "You knew they were all going to die, even Ianto! You could have done something!"

"You can't change history like that, Gwen. It was hard enough keeping it a secret, risky enough even _being _there!" Jack hissed.

"Wait, they're all dead?" Amy interrupted, looking stunned, "All of them? The others?"

"Too bloody right they are, no thanks to him."

"I did my best at the time," Jack said through gritted teeth, "There wasn't anything I could have done, not for Owen, or Toshiko, or Ianto, and definitely not for Esther. Esther was in Buenos Aires, we were in Shanghai, remember?" Gwen didn't say anything, and Amy Pond was stunned for some moments.

"We're all surrounded by death, aren't we?" she said quietly. Around them, they got a few odd looks, the TARDIS stationary and presently under the command of River Song, who promised to take it away back into flight once it had recharged on the Rift energy.

"Gosh, and you lot say _I'm _morbid," Oswin commented finally. Oswin who couldn't help but make inappropriate jokes about death at every opportunity. Well, inappropriate jokes about _everything_, in Jack's experience.

"You _are _morbid," Rose said to her idly, and she pulled a face.

"Who are these ones, then? More people you live with? In that box? Isn't it cramped?" Gwen asked. Momentarily, the TARDIS vworped away behind them, ignored by the people littering the streets going about their daily business. It was late in the evening, dark out, maybe five o'clock in the winter, bitter and looking like rain. Last minute shopping, he presumed. Maybe last minute Christmas shopping, though it was only _early _December.

"It's bigger on the inside," Nine said, smiling, stepping past Jack to introduce himself, "I'm the Doctor."

"Which one?" Gwen asked, "Every time I see a Doctor it's a different one."

"This is the Ninth Doctor," Jack said, "If you want a _real_ treat, I should show you the Thirteenth Doctor. She's something else."

"Yeah, she's the Twelfth Doctor, for a start," Oswin chipped in, "She just calls herself Thirteen because she doesn't like the _other _Twelfth Doctor. She also doesn't like you, though."

"Who's the smart-arse?" Gwen asked Jack. Rose snorted at that, and Oswin looked like she was trying to figure out if she should be offended or not.

"This is Oswin Oswald, you met her boyfriend. The rich nerd, Adam," Jack said.

"The cute one with the glasses?"

"Debatable," Amy muttered, and Oswin, who had been pleased for a second, since her boyfriend recieved so few compliments or positive endorsements, looked annoyed.

"You know, I slept with someone called Rory once," Oswin began, and Amy grimaced, while Rory next to her looked uncomfortable.

"Uh, what?" he asked.

"So?" Amy questioned her, her husband going ignored.

"He was pretty bad in bed, and I was wondering if it was a trend?" Oswin mused sarcastically.

"She's the smartest girl in the universe," Jack interrupted before Oswin could start an argument. It was like she tried to alienate everybody, trying to one-up Amy. Rory still didn't seem pleased, but Amy at least let it drop. Everybody was so petty. He was getting sick of it. At Torchwood, they had all gotten along quite well. _Incredibly _well in some cases, he thought, remembering Ianto somewhat sadly. And of course Owen and Gwen's brief affair, but that was some years ago now, "And all she ever uses her intelligence for is to make cheap shots."

"I'm also dead, in case you've forgotten."

"How could we forget? You mention it every five minutes," Rose muttered.

"Maybe _you_ should try being dead and see how _you _like it, Rose."

"Can we just stop fighting? For two seconds?" Jack said, shaking his head at them, "If you were under my leadership, I wouldn't stand for this. People have been abducted, and you're just arguing." They shut up, "The moody blonde is Rose Tyler. Then you've got the grumpy Amy and Rory Pond, and the as of yet entirely polite Donna Noble. Isn't that a change from the usual... Now, where's this shipping yard?"

"...This way," Gwen said finally, motioning for them to follow her. Couldn't be too far, they were in the bay already. The old tourist information entrance to Torchwood Three was just down by the water, but they walked past it. He was beginning to think he should have just come on his own. In fact, he _would _have come on his own, had Gwen not called while he was in Nerve Centre with everybody else.

"I'm the one who made Jack how he is," Rose confessed to Gwen.

"How he is? What do you mean?" Gwen asked her.

"She means how I can't die," Jack explained, "She did that. I'm grateful everyday." He couldn't even tell himself if he was being sarcastic or not about how grateful he was to Rose for immortality.

"_What_? How?"

"She looked into the heart of the TARDIS and pulled the whole time vortex into her head. Made me a fixed point in time and brought me back forever, after the Daleks killed me. Then the Doctor here absorbed it and regenerated into the next one. The pretty one. Don't you remember Rose from the last Dalek invasion?"

"And me, I was there," Donna said, "Saved the world."

"And I thought _my _life was complicated..."

"How come you're in Cardiff, then?" Jack asked, looking around, "I thought you and Rhys took Anwen into hiding? It sure did take Rex a lot of effort to find the pair of you."

"Since the Miracle, things have cooled off for us. They're busy with all these superpowered freaks, anyway. Do you know anything about that? Every time we try and investigate, somebody blocks us. It's like nobody knows anything, but people keep vanishing," Gwen said.

"Superpowered freaks, you say? All the TARDIS humans are those. Call 'em Manifests. Makes _my _ability look like an eight year old playing the recorder," Jack said, "Word of advice, stay out of it."

"Why?" Gwen asked, glancing back at the others, "What causes them? Could I get them?"

"Only if you drink drugged coffee," Jack shrugged. Some of the others were talking to each other now, so he was free to continue his discussion with Gwen practically un-eavesdropped on. Except when Oswin and Nine caught up. Funny, because he thought those two didn't even like each other.

"Drugged with what? Why have you brought so many people?" Gwen whispered.

"They followed me. Don't worry, we'll split up soon enough, that's what usually happens. Chase down different leads."

"Drugged with electrolytes," Oswin supplied, "The powers stem from hyper electrical stimulation of the adrenal gland. Superpowers are dormant in all humans. Sometimes in electrical storms people struck by lighting in the right place might develop them. The last time any of us had anything to do with it was in 2028."

"How _is _that husband of yours? And your daughter?" Jack wondered.

"They're fine. Anwen's five, she'll be six in March," Gwen said, "She's in school now."

"Time flies, huh?" Jack said, "I'm glad you're not in hiding anymore, though. What about Rex? Have you heard from Rex?"

"Who's Rex?" Oswin asked. Nine was listening intently, like he was trying to solve a puzzle. Oswin was just curious.

"Rex Matheson, a CIA agent. To cut a long story short, he had a lot of my blood tranfused into him, and the last time I saw him he came back to life from a bullet wound," Jack answered.

"Then he dropped off the face of the Earth," Gwen added.

"Did he really?" Jack asked, intrigued, "Not with the CIA anymore?"

"Gone."

"Really gone, though? Hasn't tried to contact you?"

Gwen frowned at him, "What's this about, Jack? I'm sure you can get in your magic box and find Rex if it's of that much interest to you. We don't have anybody who can use computers anymore, not after Tosh, and then Esther." They were approaching a shipping yard now, full of huge metal crates. The same container docks where Captain John Hart had cornered and poisoned Gwen years ago, coincidentally.

"Who's Esther?" Nine asked quickly. The second time he asked who Esther was.

"CIA analyst. Gave her life to stop the Miracle in 2011," Jack said uneasily.

"I'll find him for you, whoever he is?" Oswin offered as Nine went off in thought. Nine was oddly interested in Esther, for some reason, "Is there something going on?"

"Don't know yet, I'll get back to you..." Jack said in thought, then added hastily, "If you could try to find him, though, that would be helpful... now, Gwen, how about you tell us about these Martian abductions?" he asked as they stopped outside of the dockyard as night fell around them, rain starting to spit above.

"I'm glad you asked..."

**AN: So, I have a dilemma, which is, I have no clue what to do with Ellie Mitchell, Adam's sister. Like, she _could _go to boarding school, but she could also go somewhere else. She could always go to Haworth with Beta Clara, but that's not an idea that'll really work, then she could go live in the future with Oswin's brother. She could stay with Clara's father, but that might be weird since I accidentally gave her the same name as Clara's dead mother without realising. And she most definitely cannot live on the TARDIS, she has to go to school still, she's like, 15. So if anybody has a suggestion or they think one of mine is a good idea, it would definitely be welcome.**


	360. Whistleblower

**AN: Okay I know these chapters are a lot of discussion and recaps, but it's because I'm setting something up to happen in a couple of days (fic days not real days.) So, apologies about that.**

_Jack_

_Whistleblower_

"Five months ago, Rhys and I were contacted by a whistleblower who worked in the psychiatric ward of Saint David's," Gwen explained, leading them into the dark shipping yard, a drizzle of rain falling around them and making the ground gleam black, "Originally, we ignored it. It wasn't anything to do with what was left of Torchwood, and we thought that if they were locked up in a psychiatric ward they were probably just crazy. But they kept coming after us, followed us home, Rhys threatened to beat them up. Nurse, he was. Anyway, finally we thought we'd better listen to him, and that was when he told us about the lobotomies."

"What do you mean, lobotomies?" Nine asked.

"Well _that's _where it got interesting," Gwen said, taking out her phone, "They show up with no memories at all, covered in surgical scars, and apparently they've all had their brains removed."

"The _whole _brain?" Oswin asked in disbelief, and Gwen nodded, "Do you have any proof?"

"No," she answered, and Oswin seemed disappointed, "But we started paying more attention. This nurse was part of this group of wannabe investigators, in his free time, you know. An enthusiast."

"Oh, great, because we _love _enthusiasts," Jack said bitterly, and for a moment he thought Gwen might hit him again.

"We needed their help, because it kept happening. Anywhere in Cardiff, someone disappears without a trace, and three days later they end up here with their brains removed only being able to talk about Martians, probes and blinding lights. That's too regular for the Rift, so we thought there might be something in the idea of UFO abductions," Gwen explained, which struck him as odd, "The Rift takes people places, it doesn't bring them back after three days all in one area."

"Maybe it _is_ UFOs," Donna wondered, "Do they actually exist? Little green men in flying saucers?"

"A saucer is the optimised shape for vertical flight engineering, and offers more mobility since it's streamlined in every direction," Oswin explained.

"They're grey, though," Nine added, "Grey men. Not green men. Little green men would be ridiculous. Have there been any UFO sightings, then? Strange atmospheric activity? Lights in the sky?"

"Not as far as we know," Gwen said, "And before you say it's a serial killer, all of the crates the victims were found in were sealed from the inside."

"Sealed? What do you mean, sealed?" Amy asked.

"Welded shut, from within. Unless they did that themselves, it's completely impossible. My contact in the police has no idea how it's happening, it's causing a world of trouble for them," Gwen said.

"How is Andy?" Jack asked wryly, knowing that he was who she was referring to talking about her 'contact in the police.'

"He's a detective inspector now, finally took the detective exam. Passed it third time round, mind you, but nevertheless, he's moving up in the world," Gwen said, "Anyway, I assumed you want to take a look around? With your gadgets?"

"Gadgets?" Donna asked.

"You have brought gadgets, haven't you?" Gwen questioned them.

"Yes," Oswin answered when nobody else did, shaking her head a little, taking a tiny thing out her pocket the size of a large mobile phone. It was chunky, though, and had a spinning dish on the top like a satellite.

"Bit small," Gwen said.

"It's only a scanner," Oswin said defensively, "How big do you expect it to be?"

"Scanning for what?" Nine asked.

"All sorts. Different types of radiation, soundwaves, motion detection, temperature, electromagnetic fields," Oswin said.

"That thing can do all that?" Donna questioned her.

"What was it you said this morning about it not hurting to have the smartest girl in the universe knocking about?" Oswin challenged, "Here I am, and you all question my ability to build a scanning device."

"Better split up, then," Gwen declared, "Do you always go around in huge groups? Isn't pairs more effective?"

"Yeah, they are," Jack said, casting dark looks around at the others, but they seemed to agree. The group size was ridiculous, they _did _need to split up, "Oswin, you come with Gwen and I, I want access to that scanner."

"Um, why should _you_ get the genius?" Rose asked him, crossing her arms. Oswin, who had been stepping towards Jack and Gwen because she was, ultimately, a relatively submissive person who listened to the opinions of those around her, stopped and stood still.

"Because I'm in charge."

"_I'm _in charge," Nine interrupted, "Let her make up her own mind. I want words with you, though. The pair of you." Jack was surprised.

"I'd rather go with the Doctor," Oswin piped up then, "You four don't need me. All I'm doing is scanning, I'm sure we'll meet back up."

"Right, well. We don't need you, anyway," Rose said, "Any of you."

"That's swell, Rose," Jack sighed, "Can we go now? We look suspicious standing around like this."

"Fine," Rose, who had assumed the position of leader of the other group, even though Donna and the Ponds seemed surprised and almost affronted at this. Rose stood still, like she was making a stand, and Donna sighed and motioned to Amy and Rory to walk away. It took a moment for Rose to notice her group had left without her, and she made a disgruntled sound and followed quickly when she did. Jack shook his head.

"Didn't used to be like that," Jack said about Rose, "Torchwood in that alternate universe changed her. C'mon, then." He took a torch out of his pocket and switched it on, Gwen copying him. At least _she _had the initiative to carry useful objects around. He assumed she was armed, as well, just like he was. Though, he didn't want the Doctor to know that. "Tell me more about these UFO guys, then."

"They call themselves the Ectociety," Gwen answered, "Don't let the name fool you, they deal in all sorts of unexplained phenomenon, not just ghosts. Amateur paranormal investigators, you know the sort, Cardiff's full of them. Lots of groups started to crop up about ten years ago now, after that spaceship in the Thames. Recently they've all joined together. Online, mostly. Post blurry photographs and talk about them on forums, but sometimes they turn things up. Things like this. And then they meet up and cause all sorts of trouble. Some more than others."

"What do you mean?" Nine asked.

"Well one of the more notable members was called Liam Kent, just a posh boy with a lot of money, started all sorts of nonsense when he left to start up a proper 'agency'-"

"You mean the Paranoia Agency?" Oswin asked abruptly, "_That _Liam Kent?"

"Yeah, something to do with a cloning conspiracy. Then in 2014, in July, it got shut down. All the files erased, and Kent vanished," Gwen said, "There were rumours he went to America, but we never paid attention."

"Adam did that," Oswin said.

"Did what? Who's Liam Kent?" Nine asked her.

"The Paranoia Agency was some group dedicated to unravelling a government cloning conspiracy hundreds of years old. Except what they were actually investigating was Clechoes," Oswin explained, "They thought Clara was the original. Which, I guess is true, but it's nothing to do with the government. They kidnapped one of them, Cara, and kept her in a tube. Then the Eleventh Doctor erased her memory and sent her on a cruise while Adam Mitchell remotely deleted all their data and started encrypting and obscuring information about other Echoes. Liam Kent was in charge."

"Sounds about right," Gwen sighed, "Bit of a weirdo, if you ask me. Anyway, this Ectociety are harmless, but they've always been a bit annoying. Especially some of their 'authorities' on extra-terrestrial life. You remember that woman, Jack, what was her name?"

"Spooky Sally?" Jack suggested, and Gwen laughed.

"That's the one. Liked ghost hunting, she did. Does. Not dead, as far as I know. Hasn't had much of a forum presence lately."

"Wait, wait, wait - Sally _Sparrow_?" Oswin exclaimed.

"I know that name," said Nine. As far as Jack could tell, Oswin's scanner wasn't picking much up. She kept twiddling dials on it while she wasn't talking to Gwen.

"Tenth Doctor met her with Martha," Oswin told him, "Then Clara and I met her in Staffordshire investigating a haunted pub in October, 2014. Clara fancies her. It's awful, she's so creepy about it... she was involved with some Weeping Angels in 2007, I think. That's probably what got her a position of authority in some weird alien group."

"It's a small world, I guess," Jack murmured. So far, they had found nothing. Just crates and crates. Nothing came up in the scanner, or shone in their torch beams. In all honesty, he wasn't expecting to find a lot in this shipping yard, but it was a start, "How many victims are there, then? Last six months, you said?"

"Nine of them," Gwen answered, "All being held in Saint David's psychiatric ward."

"Somebody ought to go see if they have any trace energy on them," Oswin said, "Radiation and whatnot. What do you think the abductors need with human brains?"

"God knows. Rhys still thinks it's a serial killer, doesn't like me investigating, not that that's ever really stopped me. And now Anwen's getting old enough to start asking questions. Thank god nobody would listen to a five year old girl saying her mummy hunts aliens," Gwen sighed, and Jack laughed a little. He missed Gwen, and Torchwood. He preferred Torchwood to travelling with the Doctor. That was why he always went back to it. He'd been a part of it since the 1890s, he couldn't just _leave_, even if it _was_ just the two of them.

"Strange though," Nine frowned, "What was that agent's name? Esther Drummond?"

"Why all the interest in Esther? Did you know her? She never mentioned," Gwen said, glancing between Jack and Nine. Oswin was looking at them, too. They were both thinking, as though they were both trying to solve a puzzle, but neither of them had all the pieces.

"No, never heard of her really. Just something Thirteen said," Nine was perplexed, "Two weeks ago, when we were in that post-apocalyptic Washington D.C. She mentioned 'Sally and Esther.' In a list of people her wife fancied. And then she said..." he stopped.

"What? What did she say..?" Jack asked carefully, shining a torch at Nine, who was just thinking.

"She said she shouldn't have said anything because everyone thinks the second one is dead," he remembered (**Chapter Ref. 800**).

"Are you being serious?" Oswin asked, "Thirteen let something slip about the future? God, that woman's always leaving clues. I'm pretty sure I've heard her mention that whenever she's from there's a pet dog on the TARDIS. She's terrible. And I hate dogs."

"Sorry, are you saying Esther Drummond is alive?" Gwen questioned, ignoring Oswin, "She got shot. Rex saw it! We were at the funeral, and she didn't display any regenerative powers then."

"Christina said something to me," Jack began, "She said that a woman came to her looking for me. And I mean, short, blonde American with brown eyes? I thought she meant Thirteen. But I asked Thirteen, and she seemed pretty sure it wasn't her."

"How could she be alive, Jack?"

"I don't know, something to do with the Miracle? Because she was so close to the Blessing?" Jack suggested, "But then, everybody else who died at the Blessing stayed dead... it's not that farfetched. Lots of people come back to life. I do all the time. So does the Doctor. So did Owen. So did you, that time with Suzi Costello. And Rex. Oswin here."

"I still _am _dead."

"Maybe Esther is as well. But she was looking for me. I have to find her," Jack declared, but as soon as he did declare that, as soon as he and Nine combined their separate strings of knowledge and figured something out that that damned Future Doctor had been leaving clues for, along with Christina de Souza, they heard the unmistakable sound of police sirens approaching in the night.


	361. Man Overboard

**AN: I've strayed annoyingly far from what I was originally gonna do. Because you know how it's Halloween today, I was gonna have them be going through the shipping yard when they stumble across some guy yelling about how he was abducted by Martians. But then it's like, why would they be wandering around a shipping yard, you know? Then I got excited by the _Old World Blues_ DLC of _Fallout: New Vegas_, which will become pretty evident to anybody who knows it soon enough. It still gives me the opportunity to just do classic alien abductions later on. Just flying saucers and tractor beams and whatnot.**

_Oswin_

_Man Overboard_

"Scatter!" Jack Harkness shouted upon hearing the police sirens coming out of the darkness to invade and surround the shipping yard the eight of them were stuck in. Jack disappeared and because of his eagerness to avoid confrontation with the law enforcement, it threw the others into a panic as well, even Gwen Cooper with all her 'contacts' within. Which meant that Oswin, who really wasn't used to acting quickly under pressure after her long life of being a hermit and hiding from all of her problems did exactly that – went off on her own and hid from her problems, which were, in this instance, Cardiff's finest.

She ducked out of sight behind some of the huge metal shipping crates, not knowing the contents of any of them, wondering what the other four were doing. She didn't even know how big the dockyards were, and she maybe thought she should have gone with them, instead, though she was quite interest in this resurrected Torchwood member. What was it with people getting resurrected lately, anyway? She thought _she_ had been a one-off, but people were always coming back to life. Jack, Rory, Clara, _Other_ Clara, Jenny, all of the Doctors – death really wasn't what it used to be. Even her father had apparently returned from the other side. And now Esther Drummond, ex-CIA agent, had joined those ranks, whoever she was.

For a good few minutes she stayed out of sight in the shadows, glad that she had stopped wearing all-red some time ago now. She had only done that so that people could differentiate between herself and her sister easier, anyway. Nowadays she thought they could just ask which one they were speaking to, or count the legs. It wasn't like she hid her prosthetic, unless they were going to a century where the technology of it was unheard of and she might get nabbed and asked to give the secrets of her genius to the government. She really wished the government would stop trying to get secrets out of her. She would have thought that after the debacle with her released all of the Manifests at some random point in the 2010s, Kate Stewart might have got the message that she wasn't the best person to ask for help with bureaucratic matters.

Car doors slammed and walkie-talkies buzzed a few rows of containers away and she listened intently to the Welsh people talking with those weird accents they had that she'd never even heard until that day. Some days she thought there were too many annoying accents in the universe to keep track of, and that was coming from somebody who spoke over thirty languages without the aid of a translation matrix. Joining the Welsh accents after a while was the unmistakeable American drawl of Jack, and Oswin rolled her eyes upon realising he'd not managed to avoid the fuzz at all. Soon enough she realised that Donna had joined him, wherever he was.

Then she was jerked unwittingly out of her eavesdropping by somebody tapping her on the shoulder, and she jumped, and then jumped _again_ when she was faced with the golden-glowing eyes of Rose Tyler, and Oswin elbowed her.

"Get a pair of sunglasses, would you!?" Oswin hissed.

"What?" Rose whispered back.

"Your eyes are glowing gold," Oswin answered flatly, and Rose sighed and took a pair of sunglasses right out of her pockets, putting them on, not that it even did a lot to hide the glow of her irises in the darkness anyway. Earth was weird with its days-of-varying-length. Sometimes it got dark at four in the evening and sometimes it got dark at ten at night, and though she might understand it perfectly well, it still irked her. Days on Horizon were dictated by what time you switched off your lights, but everybody was drawn to light in such a dark, dull place, like a bunch of moths flapping around a flytrap in a swamp.

A Scottish accent joined the fray nearby.

"They're rubbish at not getting caught by the police, aren't they?" Rose commented. Oswin made a noise of agreement, "We can't get caught, we have to stay here."

"What do you mean?"

"I don't know, but there's something here. Or, there will be. I just know it," Rose answered, "Time vortex. Probably something to do with the eyes." Oswin sighed and resolved to just listen to Rose. She didn't have anybody else to listen to, after all, she didn't exactly trust herself enough. The last time she listened to any suggestion she came up with on her own, she had tried to blow up one of Jupiter's moons and kill herself. And some of the TARDIS crew.

They were interrupted by a quiet buzzing sound coming from the scanner that Oswin was still holding, and she lifted it up and stared at it, and immediately forgot about the fact they were meant to be hiding from the police because of what she saw.

"Oh my stars…" she breathed.

"What?" Rose asked.

"This is impossible," she told her, frowning, stepping out from the cover of the shipping crates against Rose's orders, though there weren't any police officers around, "Do you see this? This number?"

"It says sixty," Rose said flatly, as though Oswin had underestimated her intelligence by asking her to read out a two-digit number.

"Yeah, sixty degrees Celsius," Oswin said.

"Well it isn't sixty degrees, that's ridiculous, it doesn't even get that hot in the desert," Rose said. Oswin twisted the dial on the right that flicked through the settings, but it was going crazy on all of the different channels, unable to measure even sound waves, because apparently it was hearing something that was over a thousand decibels.

"Something's scrambling it," Oswin deduced, sighing, "Damn thing's useless with that kind of interference, it's like… _whoa_…" she said, feeling something wash over her like a wave, like the feeling she distantly remembered of one of your limbs going dead and feeling like static.

"You just shimmered – what was that?" Rose asked urgently.

"Let me see your phone," Oswin ordered, and Rose took out her phone and held it to Oswin straight away, but the screen was barely working, it just flickered, like Oswin's image herself, "Some major atmospheric disturbance…"

There was the sound of car doors opening and closing and people talking and engines starting, but Oswin and Rose weren't paying much attention to that, they were both wandering around as though looking for something, Rose beckoning Oswin to follow her, but Oswin felt fuzzy in her head, like a television with bad reception.

Rory staggered out from around a corner in front of them.

"Can you hear that noise?" he asked.

"What noise?" they both responded.

"That one like humming," he said, "The others have left, the other four."

"Which four?" Oswin said, knowing that didn't add up, somebody else was still stranded in the shipping yard.

"With the police," Rory added, "Gone to that hospital, apparently, Jack blagged a lift out of them."

"Did you see that!?" someone Welsh exclaimed from behind Rose and Oswin, and they turned to see Gwen coming towards them. Question answered, at least, "They just left without us! Typical Jack – I'm the one who puts him onto this, and he just ups and leaves and goes to interview a load of brainless psychiatric patients, never mind that I already spoke to them all and know there isn't anything to be found. All they talk about is Martians."

"We're more than capable," Rory said, "I travelled with the Doctor for years, and I'm over two-thousand years old. Sort of."

"Yeah, and I can control the fabric of the universe and worked with Torchwood in another universe," Rose shrugged.

"Why are you wearing sunglasses?"

"Sunglasses!" Oswin shouted abruptly, "That's a great idea!"

"Sunglasses already exist," Rory said.

"No, _vampire_ sunglasses," Oswin said, "Glasses-glasses, for the sun."

"What is it that your sister does to make you explain things properly?" Rose asked.

"Vampires aren't real," Gwen said.

"They are real," Rose told her, "Met some just a week ago. They bit one of us. Now she lives in Yorkshire. Terrible, I'd hate to live in Yorkshire."

"It's not important, ignore me," Oswin said, mulling over her frankly genius idea of special 'sun' glasses for Claratoo that worked like sunglasses without _looking_ like sunglasses, because otherwise she would get funny looks, exactly the sort of looks Rose Tyler was getting right then from Gwen Cooper because of her glowing eyes.

"It's coming from over here, the humming," Rory said, leading them away, and Oswin followed him, still watching the readout of her scanner behave manically. Hopefully it wasn't broken permanently now – she'd spent an entire hour of her afterlife building that. Rose explained to Gwen about the superpowers, but Oswin was far more interested in what Rory was doing to listen to Rose talk about her magically changing irises (the world's most useless superpower in her opinion, even more than the aura-seeing of her boyfriend he barely understood.) "This one," Rory declared, arriving at a shipping container. According to Oswin's malfunctioning scanner, the temperature of this shipping container was almost two-hundred degrees Celsius, twice the temperature water boiled at.

"But it's welded shut…" Oswin began.

"That's the MO of this serial mutilator," Gwen pointed out, "They usually make noise, that's how people find them, if there's one in there."

"Has anybody disappeared in the last three days?" Rose asked her.

"It's a big city, people are always going missing," Gwen answered.

"Hang on, the readings are going back to normal," Oswin said after another glance at her scanner. The temperature was lowering itself again. They all paused until she declared it was back to normal, reading that it was about five degrees Celsius at that point in December.

"You've stopped shimmering," Rose said to her.

"Good."

"Shimmering? Why were you _shimmering_? What does that mean?" Gwen asked.

"She's a hologram," Rory told her.

"A hologram? Holograms exist?" Gwen asked, and Oswin nodded, "You mean like Rimmer in _Red Dwarf_?"

"I… yes. Yes, fine, just without an 'H' on my forehead," Oswin muttered, "Look, I think the main issue is the fact that there's something weird in that shipping crate."

"I'll sort this," Rose said, walking up to it.

"Why? What are you going to – oh my _god_!" Gwen shouted when Rose clenched her fist and punched through the shipping crate, and then with both of her hands tore the thing open, Gwen staring in astonishment. Even Oswin was shocked, she'd never really seen Rose do much to exhibit this superstrength she possessed, she'd just heard the same old story about Rose jumping in front of a train to save the Eleventh Doctor and crumpling the whole thing with just her shoulder.

"Bloody hell, there's a bloke in there," Rose declared, and Gwen held up her torch to the gaping hole in the front of the crate and shone it down to see a curled up heap of a person dressed in rags. They weren't moving, though. Oswin changed the settings of her scanner for life readings, life readings being a hyper-intense motion detector that only showed the most minute of movements – heartbeats, for instance.

"…I think he's dead," she said when no readings came up.

Gwen and Rory both rushed inside to see, Rose and Oswin stepping into the darkness afterwards. It didn't take Rory long to confirm that the man was indeed dead, and also seemed to have the same strange scarring on his head that apparently indicated the removal of the brain.

"Nobody's ever died because of this before," Gwen said, "This shipping yard is turning into a _real_ body dump. And we don't even have a doctor to do an autopsy. Unless you're a doctor – are you?" she asked Rory.

"No, I'm a nurse," Rory answered with a sigh. He closed the man's staring eyes, crouched on the floor by the body, "I don't understand it, what could they want with brains?"

"Maybe they're zombies?" Rose suggested, and the other three turned and stared at her, "What? Zombies want brains."

"Because zombies are always performing complicated surgery, aren't they?" Oswin challenged.

"It's just a suggestion," Rose grumbled, "What do you think it is, then?"

"Not a UFO," Oswin said.

"What makes you so sure?" a voice came from behind them. Not a voice that Oswin recognised, though, and Oswin never forgot a voice. Well, Oswin never forgot anything. They all glanced around to see a pair of random people stepping through, carrying cameras.

"Because we were just stood outside and we didn't see one," Oswin answered, "Plus, aliens don't abduct people. They just don't." One of them took a photo and Oswin flinched. Gwen sighed.

"Why are you here?" she asked them, then she added to the others, "This is the Ectociety. Amateurs, like I was telling you."

"We were staking out the dockyard," one of them said. A boy and a girl. The girl had spoken first, "We saw eight of you go in and only four of you leave with the police, thought you might have found something."

"Yes, it's a dead body," Gwen said, "Don't suppose you know anybody willing to carry out an autopsy on it? Otherwise we'd have to hand it over to the police."

"We could call Martha?" Oswin suggested.

"Martha's on a date with Mickey today, she's busy," Rose said, "Apparently, he thought she was being distant. I can't possibly think why." Oswin was annoyed at Rose's passive aggression and answered sardonically.

"I really don't see what it's to do with me if people fancy my twin sister, Rose."

"And _I_ really don't see why _you_ can't do the autopsy," Rose countered.

"_Me_ do it!?"

"You and Rory."

"I can't do an autopsy! My ex-girlfriend told me that I don't have a future in surgery, and that a high IQ doesn't equal a steady hand, after I gouged Jenny's eyes out," Oswin said.

"Who's Jenny?" Gwen asked, "I recognise that name."

"Jack's ex-wife," Rose answered.

"_Ex_-wife?"

"Yeah, I gouged her eyes out," Oswin reiterated, "And did a pretty poor job of it, apparently, for the record, so I really shouldn't have anything to do with any autopsies, okay? I refuse. I totally, utterly refuse."


	362. Autopsy-Turvy

_Oswin_

_Autopsy-Turvy_

She, Gwen, Rose and Rory were taken to the base of the Ectociety, though it was more of a base_ment_ than Bletchley Park. Apparently, the two who had had been staking out the shipping yard and waiting for any close encounters of the third kind were married, and this was their house. And by god, it was worse than her boyfriend's house, and her boyfriend used to keep a painting of a Xenomorph in his bathroom in a glass case, and he had a replica of the 1989 Batmobile and the DeLorean from _Back to the Future_.

These people, Braden and Grace Sutton, were definitely UFO freaks, who were convinced that the government was hiding from them the true origins of extra-terrestrials. They had photographs of some ridiculous looking spaceship that had apparently crashed into the Thames in 2005, some other spaceship that looked like a rock hanging over London in Christmas that same year, information about the disappearance of an entire hospital abducted by rain and inhabited by rhinoceros people – it just went on and on and on, with Gwen and Rory corroborating all these stories as true. Information about the attempted mass abduction of the Earth's children by something called the _456_, various Slitheen attacks in and around Ealing, this 'Miracle' that Jack and Gwen had been talking about where everybody on planet Earth suddenly became unable to die; the Twenty-First Century was a damn hotspot for alien activity.

"You really think the government are hiding things?" Oswin asked incredulously, picking up a photo of a pale-looking creature that was tiny and looked like it was made of goo with a smile and a singular tooth, the word _ADIPOSE_ written along the bottom in permanent marker. The whole house was full of this stuff, full of files. "Because if they are, they're clearly doing a terrible job of it…"

"I told you they were weird," Gwen said.

"Oh, please, they're just like Torchwood, except _you_ got paid for it," Oswin said. She wondered if Adam Mitchell knew was a part of this Ectociety. It didn't seem very formidable, at any rate, just a bunch of nerds exchanging theories about some floating cubes that had appeared a few years ago across the country.

"Enough of the nerd-shaming, can I put this down somewhere?" Rose asked. She was carrying the dead body and not too happy about it. None of the others had superstrength though, Rory had told her, and the only thing that was getting on her nerves about it was the smell, she said. If there was a smell, Oswin couldn't tell, and would gladly have carried the corpse if she possessed the upper body strength or the desire to do that.

Braden and Grace Sutton lead them down into the cellar at that point, full of even more boxes and files and photos and random devices and meteorite chunks that probably meant nothing, but Gwen was interested enough in them to go look at those instead of helping clear a space on a wooden table that was kept downstairs.

"We usually eat our Christmas dinner on this table," Grace Sutton said.

"Well, if I were you, I'd invest in a new table after we cut up this dead bloke on it," Oswin grumbled. She wasn't happy. Mainly because she had been told that she really did have to do this stupid autopsy, and she most definitely did _not_ want to do any autopsies. It also turned out that the only thing they had to carry out this delicate operation with was kitchen utensils, which was just brilliant. No scalpels, oh no, she was going to have to use a steak knife.

Gwen ordered the Suttons to leave the room then and let them get on with their business since they didn't need any shit photos taking of the body, and they begrudgingly left, muttering something about having to call their relief and let them know they shouldn't go continue the stake out at the shipping yard.

"You'd better help me with this," Oswin said to Rory.

"I'm only a nurse," Rory said.

"Yeah, well, I'm only into computers! I don't know about anatomy or pathology or forensics," Oswin said, "The closest thing I've ever done to surgery was gouging Jenny's eyes out."

"You keep saying," Rose sighed, "Why don't you just call somebody and ask them?"

"Is Jenny Jack's ex-wife?" Gwen asked, and Rose told her yes before getting back to Oswin.

"Like who?" Oswin questioned, "Martha's on a date, apparently, and I'd hate to ruin it by asking her how the hell you dissect an abductee."

"I bet you're just squeamish," Rory said.

"_Squeamish_? _Me_? Me who _gouged out somebody's eyes_?"

"Why did you gouge her eyes out?" Gwen asked, "Do you lot have any idea how crazy you all sound when you talk to each other?"

"She got… acid in them," Oswin said, not in the mood to explain the details of travelling to an alternate universe where the things of H.R. Giger's imagination came to horrifying fruition, "She had to have her hand cut off as well, _and_ she regenerated that day earlier on. She has robot eyes now."

"That's it," Rose got an idea, "Can't you call that girl?"

"What girl?"

"The one with the pink hair who built those eyes."

"You want me to call my ex-girlfriend and ask her how to carry out an autopsy?" Oswin asked incredulously, and Rose shrugged and asked why not, and Oswin thought for a moment, and then sighed, "…Fine. Fine, then." It wasn't like she and Flek were on bad terms, or anything.

"But if Jack only saw me last a few weeks ago, and that was in 2008, and he was newly married then..?" Gwen asked with a frown, "Has he lied about how long it's been?"

"No, they didn't have the most successful marriage," Rose said, "Or the longest. They split up almost two weeks ago. I blame Oswin."

"You _what_!?" Oswin exclaimed, holding her phone to her ear as it rang, "You can't blame me! It's nothing to do with me that she wanted to sleep with somebody who looks exactly the same as me!"

"_What?_" a voice down the line asked when they picked up, and Oswin's eyes widened in horror, because Flek hadn't answered the phone, _Eyeball_ had, and she'd heard something that sounded like it could be about her and her engagement to Oswin's ex.

"Eyeball!" Oswin exclaimed, but nobody else picked up on the embarrassment of that situation, because none of her present company knew that Flek and Eyeball were engaged.

"_Were you just talking about me?_" she asked coldly. Eyeball didn't like her. She didn't like Eyeball. Eyeball probably liked the fact Oswin was ringing up her fiancée even less.

"No, I was talking about Jenny. You know, Jack's wife. You slept with him, remember?" Oswin said, and could practically _hear_ Eyeball clench her jaw in the identical way Oswin or Clara did when they got annoyed at something someone was saying, "She's left him for a version of Clara from a different universe."

"_So what? What's that to do with Flek?_"

"It's not, I have to talk to her about something else…" Oswin took some steps towards the corner as Gwen, who was shocked by the revelation of Jack's ex-wife cheating on him with her stepmother, had everything explained to her by Rose and Rory, "It's important."

"_Why?_" she asked sharply.

"Because somebody's dead, that's why."

"_Probably just you, though, and I don't care about you_."

"Charming. What on Titan would Clara say if she heard us bickering like this?" Oswin retorted, "Let me talk to Flek."

"_No_."

"Why?"

"_Because you won't tell me what you want._"

"Because you won't be able to help."

"_Why not_?"

"Are you a doctor, Claressa?" Oswin asked.

"What_ did you just call me?_" Eyeball asked through gritted teeth.

"You really think I wouldn't look up your real name?" Oswin asked incredulously.

"_I hate that name_."

"I figured that much by the fact you'd rather be called 'Eyeball', Claressa."

"_Why do you need a doctor?_"

"I have to carry out an autopsy because there's nobody else here to do it and Martha's busy so I can't call her, so Rose suggested I call Flek and ask _her_ how you dissect somebody, okay? So unless _you_ know the proper procedure for opening a skull when all you have is kitchen knives and a bloody pizza wheel, let me talk to Flek," Oswin said.

"…_She's in the toilet, you'll have to wait_."

"Oh, brilliant, because there's nothing I love more than talking to _you_, Claressa."

"_If you call me that again, the next time I see anybody from your stupid spaceship I'm going to force them to take me to that cute boyfriend of yours so I can shoot him_," Eyeball threatened.

"Well then _I'd_ just be forced to go and seduce Flek again, like I did all of those years ago by merely existing in the same area she was, because I'm just _that_ seductive," Oswin threatened. They were both being petty now, and nobody was there to stop them fighting, "And you can't kill me, because I'm already dead." The others were watching her, only able to hear her half of the conversation.

"_I don't know, I have good enough aim to get you in the eyestalk,_" Eyeball said.

"You _what_!? Say that again to my face, you little shit, and _nothing_ will stop me from coming and shagging your pretty fiancée," Oswin said.

"_Oswin_?" Flek asked. Oh, great, the phone had been passed over just in time for that to be heard. Obviously Eyeball was scheming. Oswin heard her laugh in the background, "_You're going to _what?"

"I'm not going to do anything, Flek! She threatened to kill my boyfriend!" Oswin protested, and Rose laughed at her, "She started it. I don't like her, you know. She's out to get me."

"…_Did you call for an important reason that doesn't involve threatening to rape me?_"

"I would never! Don't even suggest that!"

"_You said that nothing would stop you from coming and shagging her pretty fiancée, Oswin. It sounds like a rape threat._"

"Well, I… I'm not a rapist, alright? How do you cut up a dead person?" Oswin asked.

"You're not very good at speaking to people, are you?" Gwen said.

"You can shut up, I'm stabbing this dead body for you, Cooper," Oswin argued, then added to Flek, "And by the way, I sort of only have cutlery to use. I have to cut open his skull and see if his brain is missing. Lots of people being lobotomised on my end." There was a pause, and then Flek laughed. "What?"

"_Nothing, nothing, I just… I remembered something you said to me once_."

"Go on?"

"_The day we met, when you asked me if I'd had a lobotomy,_" Flek said. Oswin didn't say anything in response to that, and there was a drawn out pause. Rose continued explaining Echoes to Gwen, because she'd forgotten whatever she'd had explained to her in 2008. "_Well, if you don't have a proper bone saw to cut through the skull, can you at least find a hammer?_"

"A hammer?"

"_Or an ice pick, a mallet? Something like that. You'll have to crack his skull if that's what you need to get into._"

"And here I was thinking you were delicate… this is gonna be _so fun_…"


	363. Head Doctor

_Nine_

_Head Doctor_

The Doctor wasn't fond of driving around in police cars, but he was even less fond of being in the middle seat in the back crammed in between Donna Noble and Amy Pond. That was why he was counting his blessings and the fact that Jack Harkness was the one sandwiched between them and _he _was in the front with the detective in charge of the case, a Detective Inspector James Elliott, who was very interested in the Doctor's standing as a high security governmental advisor under the paranormal wing of the Unified Intelligence Taskforce specialising in events concerning confirmed or suspected extra-terrestrial involvement - at least, that was what his psychic paper said. According to Elliott, since the Manifests started showing up in 2013, all government resources for anything unexplained were being spent down in London to try and contain the threat. Nine knew that in some years, the Hazard Control Corporation would take over responsibility for the Manifests back from the British sect of UNIT, but that was the future, and presently the normal police were having to deal with threats that had once been the responsibility of the Torchwood Institute, going back ten years.

"Has anyone examined these people properly?" Nine asked Elliott as he drove them to Saint David's Hospital. The police had only shown up because of reports of suspicious characters in the dockyards, that was to say, the lot of them, but they hadn't found the other four. Hopefully they were turning up something important. Smaller groups was better, anyway. He remembered the last time it had been four of them in Cardiff together, investigating the new mayor, him, Jack, Rose and Mickey. Those old times seemed so far away, even if they really had only been months ago. The gap for him between regeneration and the Dimension Crash was instantaneous and jarring, and in a second everybody around him had changed by years.

"The doctors have, if that's what you mean. Never anything conclusive, though, and the patients won't consent to any x-rays or MRI scans. Something strange happens when they go near the machines, like electrical interference," Elliott explained.

"Any idea what could be causing it?" Jack asked, leaning forwards in the back with his elbows on his knees, head in between the front seats. Elliott told them no, not a clue. Nine didn't have a clue, either, and wouldn't know anything until getting a look at these people.

"They disappear and three days later somebody leaves them in one of those containers with their brains removed," Elliott said, "Doors melted shut from within, like there was something in there giving off extreme enough heat that the metal just warped. They can't use the containers again, they've had to be thrown away."

"So you don't think they were sealed with a blowtorch?" Jack asked.

"No. In the light, you can see that the whole inside was melting. Nobody can figure what was giving off that heat though," Elliott explained, "What do you think it is?"

"How do you know they have missing brains if nobody's been able to scan?" Amy asked. A good point, how _did _they know about the brains?

"Ah, well, quite a nasty business, that was," Elliott said, pulling into the car park of Saint David's Hospital in the unmarked police car they were crammed in. He hated cars, he really did. They were so small, and they didn't have bathrooms or kettles.

"Oh yeah? Nasty how?"

"One of them got violent, man called Roderick," Elliott said, parking the car close to the doors, "Another patient accused him of making the whole thing up about the Martians. It came to blows and Roderick took a bit of metal piping to the top of his head. Turned his skull into a bowl." He explained this as they got out of the car. Nine thought he quite liked DI Elliott so far.

"He's dead?" Donna asked.

"Dead? Oh, no. Hurt him a bit, but he was fine. They decided to do an operation to correct it and that was when they found out there wasn't a brain in his head. It had been scooped out, they told me," Elliott said, "No photographs though, the cameras wouldn't work."

"And he's still here now?"

"I've been preventing them all from being moved out of the Saint David's psych ward. Not too hard when the doctors want to monitor them because they don't have any brains."

"How did they not realise they had no brains _before_ this guy got his head bashed in?" Jack asked.

"Most of the memory loss and delusions was put down to the severe trauma of whatever happened to them," Elliott continued to explain, "Now, officially, there isn't any proof that the other victims also had their brains removed, but they all have identical cranial scars." He lead them into the hospital, full of doctors and medical staff wearing scrubs and white coats, patients in wheelchairs or on crutches, the poignant smell of disinfectant. At some of the staff, Elliott smiled and said hello politely. They seemed fond of him.

"What do you think it is?" Amy asked Jack.

"First I thought it was a teleporter of some kind, but I don't know," he said, "I don't know of any teleportation device that would give off heat like that without killing whoever was using it. Someone who can walk through walls? A Manifest?"

"We don't get those in Cardiff," Elliott said, "They're London's problem. And if there was one, I'd hope they were keeping a low profile, not becoming a serial abductor."

"I think the answer is something to do with the brains," Nine said, "Why would you take somebody's brain?"

"We haven't a clue," Elliott answered, "Best guess was that it's some kind of sick fetishist. Only a matter of time before somebody turns up dead. Originally, we thought they'd gotten a bit lost, a bit too drunk one night, but that doesn't make sense anymore. That's why I made a call to you people." So Elliott thought he had been expecting them, that made sense. Nine wondered what might happen if the _real_ paranormal wing of UNIT decided to show up. Maybe they were too busy to answer a call of alien abduction, though.

Before they knew it, they were outside the psychiatric ward, which was a door at the end of a long and quite empty corridor that didn't seem as well maintained as the rest of the hospital. If there was anything the Doctor disliked, it was all the stigma against the mentally ill that existed in more or less every species. Even the Time Lords had once rather locked people away and hidden them than tried to understand or help them.

"Look, Doctor," Elliott said, stopping them, "Before you go in there, do you really think this is aliens?"

"Impossible to say at this point," Nine said quickly, to avoid having to tell him anything. It was almost true, anyway. Whatever ideas he had were pure speculation.

"I'm going to have a drink," Amy said suddenly, and Jack, Elliott and Nine looked around at her. She stared at the psych ward with a look of fear.

"You're what?" Jack asked.

"They have hot chocolate in hospitals. I want some hot chocolate..." she said distantly.

"Are you alright?" Jack asked.

"...I'll have one too," Donna, who had been watching Amy with some concern said, "I think she, um... _saw _something..."

"Yeah, a hot chocolate machine by the sounds of things," Jack said.

"Too many people might alarm them," Elliott said.

"See?" Donna said, "You three go ahead. We'll go find the café." Nine didn't know if he was remembering rightly or not when he thought he heard mention of Amy Pond having some sort of premonition ability, which begged the question, why was she so afraid of the psychiatric ward all of a sudden? Had she just had a vision while they were walking down the corridor? By the urgency with which she and Donna left, he supposed she must have...

"Come on, then," Elliott lead the way inside as the redheads vanished around a corner, and Nine and Jack just resigned themselves into following him and wondering what had gotten to Amy just seconds ago.

In the psych ward, there were a variety of people milling about, mingling, playing cards or chess or checkers or eating pastel-coloured ready meals consisting of mushy peas and mashed potato. Elliott just smiled to the staff and announced he was there for a return interview, and one of the doctors, a Dr Stevens, offered to accompany them. Nine didn't object. He didn't want to startle this abductee, any of the abductees, so familiarity was probably key. He still didn't understand how they were managing to function if they were all completely brainless, though.

"Well, that's Roderick," Elliott pointed out to Nine and Jack. Roderick was in his own room, probably because he was such an interesting patient. Where the other victims were, Nine didn't know. He figured they would all have the same story, though, so they would only need to speak to one of them. Roderick, though... well, Roderick was reading a book.

"When was the last time you saw somebody without a brain reading Dostoyevsky?" Jack whispered to Nine. When Dr Stevens closed the door behind the four of them, a silence fell in the room, and Roderick looked up. He was a very nondescript person, apart from his shaved head and the huge scars running across it from where, Nine assumed, somebody had bashed him with some piping. He could see other scars, though, fainter scars, around the top of his head, the way Frankenstein's monster's scars always appeared in pulp magazine illustrations or old horror serials.

"Roderick?" Stevens called, and Roderick looked up, "There are some people here to see you."

"What do _you _want again, Elliott?" Roderick asked Elliott first. He seemed incredibly lucid for someone brainless.

"These men would like a word with you about your experience," Elliott explained.

"I'm the Doctor, this is Jack," Nine smiled, "We heard you were abducted by aliens."

"This sort of aggravation really isn't good for his delusions, I'm sorry, you're going to have to-" Stevens began suddenly.

"He's not delusional," Nine said sternly, then he took out his psychic paper, "We're from UNIT, paranormal branch. I'm a doctor, he's a captain, as you can see our credentials are in order. This man has been abducted and has had his brain removed. Do you think he did it to himself?"

"The work of a sick mind," Stevens said.

"A sick _alien _mind," Jack told him, "And this guy's mind can't be sick at all, he doesn't even have it with him. You should leave, or I'll have to remove you."

"You should do what they say," Elliott advised him.

"This is what happens when they put newbies like you on violent assault cases, you start thinking aliens did it. I thought you were better than that, James," Stevens shook his head.

"Go," Nine said firmly. Stevens finally did what they asked.

"Why do you believe me?" Roderick asked, watching this carefully. Nine picked a chair up from against the wall and carried it over to the bedside, dropping it loudly on the floor and sitting down.

"I think you're confused," Nine said, "Maybe because you've had your brain removed. How are you still functioning, by the way? Reading? Reading is the left half, but what about with _no _halves? I've heard of one side of the brain taking up the duties when the other is removed, but not people carrying on like normal."

"I can still feel my brain, sir. And I'm not confused."

"Why do you think it was Martians? Why creatures from Mars? Creatures don't live on Mars, haven't for thousands of years," Nine told him.

"There's water on Mars, it can support life."

"So can the Earth, maybe a human did it? So do millions of other planets, maybe it was one of them?" Jack said, crossing his arms and standing by Nine. Elliott just listened, "Why are you so sure they were from Mars?"

"They told me they were from Mars," Roderick answered, "They told all of us that they were."

"They? What did they look like?"

"Eyes," he said, "It was dark, and cold, except their eyes, on screens. Eyes and lips making faces."

"You mean machines? Were they machines?" Jack frowned.

"They spoke like people."

"They spoke English?" Nine asked him, and he nodded, "How do you know they weren't just humans playing a joke?"

"Because they changed me," Roderick said, "More than my brain." Just as Nine was about to ask what he meant by 'more than his brain,' Jack's phone trilled and he checked it.

"Be a bit ruder," Nine grumbled.

"It's from Donna. She says they're going back to the shipping yard because of whatever Amy... figured out," he said carefully, sighing, then to Nine he said, "See? It was something important."

"What do you mean, they changed _more than your brain_? And that you can still feel your brain?" Nine inquired, "How are you still connected to it?" Roderick shrugged. "Well, what are they doing with it?"

"I don't know," he told them, "X-rays don't work so nobody can see what else they did. But I have more scars than the ones on my head. They cut open my front and my back, as well."

"Why? What did they do to you?" Nine leant closer to him, "We need to know what they did if we want to find them. We could get your brain back."

"It isn't just my brain..."


	364. Spooky Sally

_Rose_

_Spooky Sally_

"What on Earth is going on?" a new voice asked from the doorway. Rose glanced over to see a woman she didn't recognise, a newcomer, not Braden or Grace Sutton, who were ordered to remain in the room above, but some blonde the same height that she was, looking astronomically disturbed by the sight of Oswin and Rory, both with hands covered in a substantial amount of blood, standing next to a butchered corpse. Oswin had been holding some long metal thing removed from the dead man's back, but at the sight of this new woman arriving, she jumped and dropped the thing onto the wooden dining table and it banged loudly and fell onto its side. Flek had since had to leave the phone and let Oswin figure out how to cut stuff up herself, after something urgent on that hostile jungle planet she lived on had come up, so it was just the four of them in the bloody, damp cold of the Suttons' cellar, skull fragments lying on the wood after being smashed apart with a hammer.

The four of them looked around like they were in the middle of committing some awful crime, and the woman just looked back at them in the exact same way, and Oswin put a hand to her face.

"No, Oswin, don't do that," Rory said, "You have blood all over your hands." Oswin didn't seem to hear him.

"That's Sally Sparrow," she said to Rory, moving her hand to reveal her face covered in blood and turning to the woman, "You're Sally Sparrow."

"Yes, and you're Oswin Oswald, we've met," the woman said, staring at her. So _this _was the famous Sally Sparrow, Rose mused, eyeing her with some suspicion. This woman always seemed to make quite the impression on the people she met. "...Do you want a towel, or something?"

"Towel? Why?" Oswin asked, putting her hand to her forehead. With her other hand she made as if to lean on the edge of the table, except she missed the table completely and almost fell over. Rose rolled her eyes.

"Your face is covered in blood from that dead man," Rose said. Gwen was looking around for anything for Oswin to wipe her face with, who was staring at Rose like she was listening. And then she blinked and frowned, eyes glancing back over to Sally Sparrow. She went to lean on the table again and this time succeeded.

"What did you say?" Oswin asked Rose.

"_You're covered in blood_!" Rose shouted at her, and Oswin's eyes widened and she mouthed a swear word.

"You mean my face?"

"Yes, your face," Rose assured her. Oswin paused for a moment, and then looked like she caught her balance, and shimmered, and then the blood fell from every surface on her projected image and she wobbled a little, having to regain the balance on her fake leg.

"So sorry," she apologised, "Right, uh, I'll..." she went back to whatever the large metal object she had pulled out of the back of the corpse, staring at it.

"What are you all doing?" Sally Sparrow asked.

"An autopsy," Rory answered, "Sorry, who is it you are again? How does Oswin know you?" Briefly, Sally Sparrow explained something to do with Weeping Angels and Martha Jones, then moved on to a haunted pub in Staffordshire, which was apparently where she had met the Twins. Oswin didn't say a word, she stayed very still and grimaced at the metal thing, thinking. Very suddenly, she dropped it again, only on purpose that time, and crossed her arms.

"What is it?" Gwen asked.

"I don't know. Rory, can I borrow your phone?" Oswin asked, rubbing her forehead with the back of her hand, frowning. Begrudgingly, Rory gave up his phone, and Oswin did something with it as he peered over her shoulder. Gwen and Rose were on the other side of the room and accordingly couldn't see whatever they were looking at, "Just as I thought... this thing is causing major electrical interference. Can't take a photo of it."

"Doesn't show up in photos? Might as well be your sister," Rose quipped. Nobody was listening to her to appreicate that witticism, so she ended up annoyed. Only Sally Sparrow had heard, and Sally Sparrow did not understand the vampiric nature of Oswin's other sister.

"It's giving me a headache, too," she said, "It's a replacement spine. Whoever these Martians are, they took out his spine, his brain, and his heart." The replacement metal heart had already been removed before they turned the body over, and was sitting in a mixing bowl on the side.

"Wait, wait, wait. A brain, a heart, a spine?" Rose asked incredulously, "That's _The Wizard of Oz_. And why is this one dead when the others aren't?"

"Maybe this is an accident? A failure?" Gwen suggested. Sally Sparrow had still not really told them what she was doing there. She surely wasn't the person who had been meant to take over the Suttons' stake out of the shipping yard, was she? Why was she just _here_? In _Cardiff_?

"Well what are they failing in? What are they _trying _to do? The others all got dumped back here as well," Oswin said, "It's like they're experimenting on them."

"None of them remember," Gwen said, "They were all lucid, though. We spoke to a few, Rhys and I, you wouldn't know they didn't have a brain by just talking to them. Nobody knew until one of them got into a fight in the psych ward and hit in the head. In fact, I swear one of them told me he could still feel his brain..."

"That's it!" Oswin exclaimed, "This man might be alive!"

"What do you mean, _alive_!? You just cut the poor bloke up!" Gwen shouted right back. Oswin's eyes widened.

"Shit!"

"How could he be alive!? He has no vital signs," Rose pointed out.

"Well I mean, he... he might not, he might... for fuck's sake, I swore I would stop killing people. That's why I have this damn ring on," Oswin cursed, holding up her right hand so that everybody could see the black ring on it. Rose didn't know much about the significance of that ring. "The brains and the bodies are connected, and going by the way these victims are actually functioning, he might still be alive and in horrible pain."

"Except the others are alive," Gwen said.

"But there's still interfence from this signal," Oswin pointed out, "There's still... there's still something."

"Maybe the spine and the heart are transmititng out, looking for the brain?" Sally Sparrow suggested, "There could have been something wrong with that one, if the other ones are fine."

"Could be," Oswin mused.

"Sorry, what are you doing here?" Gwen asked.

"I'm investigating the disappearences and the mutilations. We think it was UFOs," Sally Sparrow answered.

"It definitely isn't UFOs," Gwen said, "There hasn't been anything in the atmosphere or the sky to point to that. We were there when this man was returned, there wasn't a spaceship in sight."

"Do you have a proper job or do you just wander around looking for unexplained phenomenon?" Oswin asked Sally.

"I'm a photographer," Sally answered.

"That would be a 'no', then?" Rose said.

"I'm a very good photographer, though," she said coolly, "And I don't appreciate you looking at me like I'm crazy for believing in aliens, when the lot of _you_ could be aliens for all I know."

"She has a point," Rory shrugged, "Plus, Oswin's an alien."

"I'm not, I'm human," Oswin said, then paused, "Sort of human. Was human. From Titan. Just because I'm not an Earthling doesn't make me an _alien_."

"It sort of does, by definition," Rose said.

"Well, if you're down here investigating, where is it you usually live? Because Wales and Staffordshire aren't close. I don't think. Are they?" Oswin asked Rory. Rory told her yes, they were quite close, and she pouted a little to herself.

"It was London, but I moved," Sally Sparrow said, "Moved North, to Yorkshire. Had to get away from some things."

"Just you?" Oswin asked, and she nodded, "I thought you were engaged..?"

"Yes. I _was _engaged," she said. When Rose strained to see Sally Sparrow's left hand, she didn't see any rings on it. She supposed things hadn't gone well. "I got too obsessed with the paranormal, apparently. He started calling me 'Spooky Sally.'" Rose suppressed a laugh there.

"Are you from the future?" Gwen asked Oswin, changing the subject abruptly, and she nodded, "How far in the future?"

"I was born in 5096. I died in 5121. Vaguely the same time that Jack comes from, but Jack never seems to tell anybody anything about himself. He never even used to tell Jenny things, apparently. Probably one of the reasons she left him."

"If these 'Martians' have the ability to disconnect the human brain and keep it alive somewhere else, maybe they have the technology to control the Rift and use it for the abductions?" Gwen suggested.

"The Rift, what's that?" Sally Sparrow asked.

"Rift in time and space that runs through Cardiff," Rose explained, "I would know if it was the Rift, I don't think it is."

"Then it must be a Door," Oswin said, "A Dimension Door. But not a naturally ocurring one, I think that whatever these Martians are are opening and closing them at will, maybe dangerously. Just sucking up random people and... dropping them back in the same place."

"What's a Dimension Door?" Sally asked. Oswin promptly launched into a long-winded explanation or the Doors that Rose barely cared about. She cared more about the fact Jack was calling her, and sighed and put a hand over one ear to answer the phone, spotting a text from Donna about returning to the shipping yard as she did so.

"Hello?" she said.

"_Yeah, hi, where are you four?_" Jack asked.

"In the basement of some members of the Ectociety with a dead body," Rose said, "Another one showed up when you left, you'll never guess what we found when we did an autopsy."

"_Lemme guess, a replaced heart and spine and a missing brain?_" Jack suggested, "_That's exactly what all of the victims in this psych ward said. The Doctor thinks that wherever the brains are, they're still connected to the people._"

"Yeah, that's what Oswin said... why did Amy and Donna leave?"

"_Amy had a vision, but their phones don't seem to be working, I was wondering if you might have heard from them,_" Jack said.

"Uh, no, sorry..."

"_Oswin say anything else_?"

"Yeah, she reckons that these Martians are manipulating and creating Dimension Doors," Rose said.

"_Tell her that makes sense, because the walls of the dimensions are probably at their thinnest around the pre-existing Rift_," Jack told her. Rose scowled for a moment, before relaying this exact message to Oswin, "_Are you done with your post-mortem examination, then_?"

"I suppose, but I don't know what to do with the body," Rose said.

"_Gwen'll take care of it. Don't tell her I said that, though. Anyway, we need some help, a call just came in to Detective Inspector Elliott that a mysterious creature has appeared in that very shipping yard. The same one Donna and Amy just went to. We're heading that way now._"

"Right. We'll... commandeer a car or something..." Rose said.

"I have a car," Sally Sparrow offered.

"Ah, hear that, Jack? Sally Sparrow has a car."

"_Who?_"

"Some bird Oswin's all over," Rose said offhandedly.

"Oi! I'm - _what_?" Sally Sparrow gasped, and then stared at Oswin, who had gone red, but this time not because she'd rubbed blood all over her face. She smiled awkwardly and made a dismissive handmotion, then pointed to Rose, then twirled her finger next to her own head to indicate she was crazy. When Sally Sparrow looked away, Oswin stuck her middle finger up at Rose.

Jack said something then, but the phone crackled like feedback.

"What was that, Jack?" Rose asked, and got more buzzing in her ear, and unintelligible sounds that may or may not be the mechanically distorted voice of Jack Harkness. "...Jack..? Can you hear me, Jack? ...Can you..." she trailed off when she heard music, and moved her phone away to stare at it.

"What is it?" Gwen asked her, "Has something happened to Jack?" Rose didn't answer, but shook her phone and lifted it back to her ear. The music, whatever it was, just got clearer and clearer, and she turned the phone on speaker.

"What's that sound like to you?" Rose asked.

"It sounds like jazz," Rory told her. It did sound like jazz, "Is Jack playing that?"

"No, it just started coming through, like radio interference..." Rose said, then the line cut off completely, "He said there was some sort of strange creature in the shipping yard, and that Donna and Amy went there and now he can't get through to them."

"We'd better go," Sally Sparrow declared, and they all stared at her.

"What do you mean, 'we'?" Gwen asked her.

"It's my car," Sally said.

"We don't have time to argue, let's go," Rose said, "Forget about the body, we'll deal with that later, and all of its... bits... come on."


	365. Hound Dog

**AN: To the guest who asked, like, six chapters ago which brother of Oswin's I'd make Ellie Mitchell live with, it'd be Fyn, after he and Atoc and their son I can't remember the name of presently move to Venus to go looking for Fyn and Oswin's hologramatic father.**

_Jack_

_Hound Dog_

"Well if it isn't Spooky Sally," Jack said with an annoyed fake smile when he saw five people all clamber awkwardly out of a cramped Ford Fiesta outside of the dockyard full of shipping containers in the middle of the night, the four lost members of their group with Sally Sparrow the Ectociety's Greatest Photographer at the helm.

"And here I was thinking Torchwood got disbanded," Sally quipped at him. They'd had a few run-ins a couple of years ago, as he'd been saying to Gwen hours earlier in their first rundown of the container facility, mainly because she kept trying to get photographic evidence of various extra-terrestrial phenomena. Funny thing was that when she actually went and took some proper photos, her work was pretty good. Jack had considered getting some prints of hers and putting them up in the Torchwood Three base, before the Torchwood Three base had been blown up by the government in the midst of the 456 Crisis.

"Torchwood? You said you were with UNIT, paranormal branch," Elliott exclaimed.

"_Ex_-Torchwood, it _did_ get disbanded, over six years ago," Jack said, trying to maintain the weak cover the Doctor's psychic paper had allowed them originally, "Trust Sally Sparrow to know that. I wouldn't trust her if I were you, Elliott, she makes a habit of selling classified photographs that threaten national security to tabloids."

"Who's _he_, then?" Rose changed the subject when she saw how displeased 'Spooky Sally' was with these accusations, the lot of them gathered at the entrance to the shipping yard Donna and Amy had supposedly slipped off to, even though nobody could get a hold of Donna and Amy anymore. When Jack tried to call them he just got a completely dead line, like the numbers didn't exist. Rose nodded towards DI Elliott with raised eyebrows, and Jack supposed that maybe Elliott was a bit cute. Jack also supposed that since he didn't have a wife, per se, anymore, he could possibly spend a bit of extra time later hanging around Elliott to figure out if he would give him the time of day. The four girls certainly seemed to think he was cute, too. Rory was less than pleased by Rose's observations of the detective. Rory was probably worried about his wife. Jack figured that if he was Rory and he'd punched above his belt enough to get Amy Pond to marry him, he'd be pretty worried, too.

"This is Detective Inspector James Elliott, the detective on the case of the serial abductions and mutilations," Nine introduced Elliott properly as Jack bided his time eyeing Spooky Sally, who'd been engaged last he heard, a huge rock on her finger. Not that he saw a rock on her finger anymore, though... But then, Jack figured he was going to swear off blondes, for a while at least. Blonde girls caused nothing but trouble. First there was Rose going and bringing him back to life forever, then Lucy Saxon hadn't been the best sort of person either, and of course he had to add Jenny to that list, then there was Thirteen acting suspicious all the time and the fact Esther Drummond was causing him no end of problems by apparently coming back to life.

"Oswin, that machine of yours do motion detection?" Jack asked abruptly.

"Well, yeah, when there's no weird anomalies in the fabric of the universe messing with it," Oswin said.

"Rose, stop messing with Oswin's machine," he joked, and Rose gave him a look like she was about to stick her tongue out in annoyance, but had maturely decided against that, so it was just a weak scowl, "C'mon, you're with me. Who else has a gun on them?"

"No guns," Nine argued.

"Stun guns, then," Jack shrugged. Jack had a stun gun and a handgun on his person, not that the Doctor needed to know that. Oswin had no weapons, but Gwen had her 9mm standard issue pistol she'd gotten years before, and Rose was armed with her stun gun as well. Elliott, being as he was a member of British law enforcement, didn't have any weapons on him at all, not even a baton or a penknife, "Just… just everybody stick with someone who has a gun, alright? And you stay out here," he ordered Spooky Sally.

"No chance!" she protested.

"_Yes_ chance," he said. She continued to refuse, and Jack looked at Gwen helplessly.

"Ugh, fine, I'll watch her," Gwen volunteered begrudgingly. Then Rose gave her gun to Elliott on the basis she had had enough superpowers to defend herself, so she stuck with Rory and DI Elliott paired up with Nine and they went into the shipping yard and split up into four twos, Jack thinking he'd definitely got the best end of the deal with Oswin's motion detector, even if it _was_ faulty, though Oswin didn't seem pleased about sticking around with him.

"What's my ex-wife been saying about me, then?" he asked eventually, failing to bite his tongue, him holding out his gun while she skulked along behind him in the dark flicking her scanner between its different settings to try and get a bead on this stray monster. All Jack knew was that it was a large animal and apparently it was shiny. Elliott hardly believed it when the report came through over the police radio. Oswin raised her eyebrows at him.

"I'm not getting involved. You remember when all that stuff was happening with Rose and Tentoo and everybody stayed out of it. I'm staying out of it now," Oswin said, "But for the record, she hasn't said anything to _me_ because I haven't asked because I don't really care. And also you're just as bad as each other. Neither of you has the moral high ground. Now, can we get back to the weird monster?"

"It's shiny and dog-sized," Jack told her.

"What do you mean, dog-sized? What size is a dog?" she questioned.

"Oh, I forgot, they don't allow animals on Horizon, do they? Except for that conspiracy with them battery farming cows on the lower decks?" he asked wryly, "I've heard a lot of things about the milkshakes on that spacestation."

"They don't battery farm anything, there's only humans," Oswin countered, annoyed, "Everything was imported in from other parts of the Human Empire by the Alliance. That was why everybody nearly died in the Dust War, which I'd rather not talk about. You really do know how to broach a lot of sore subjects, don't you, Jack?"

"So you think it's a Dimension Door?" Jack changed the subject.

"I think it's some kind of portal," Oswin said, "The body we found interfered with this device so much I couldn't get any reading of Cosmic Background Radiation, which is what we catalogue in order to tell the difference, because it changes minutely depending on what universe we're in. But something creates extreme heat and picks people up and dumps them, and it can't be the Rift because Rose said she would know."

"And since Rose can only manipulate the Alphaverse, that means that whatever this is is cross-dimensional, right?"

"Exactly…" Oswin said, trailing off. Jack continued walking without her, until hearing her hurry to catch him up and she gently tapped his arm to make him pay attention, "Look at this," she held the scanner out. It looked like the radar of a submarine, pulsing blips on it. Well, one blip, right on the edge of the radial.

"Could be one of us, if that's a motion detector," Jack said.

"No, this thing works like sonar, but not sonar. It's these ridiculously high soundwaves that create a three dimensional map of the environment based on everything that moves. Anything still, like these crates, doesn't bring a reading up, but I've altered it so it takes centre of mass into account and excludes anything with a humanoid concentration point. I mean, it could be a cat, but it might be this thing we're looking for," she whispered to him. They went quiet and Jack held his gun back up, the pair of them following the motion detector left around a corner into another empty area of the dockyard.

They silenced, watching the blip, which was remaining quiet still, listening. Jack thought he could hear faint growling.

"You hear that?" he asked Oswin, but she was paying more attention to the motion detector. One of the shipping containers on their right had the door slightly ajar, and he recognised this as one of the ones where the stray abductees must have made a reappearance, going by the way the door had clearly been opened with a blowtorch. He elbowed Oswin and then motioned towards the shipping container. Going by the blip on her radar, it looked like this was precisely the place where this creature was lurking. "Stun gun or kill gun?" he asked her.

"Stun gun!" she told him like this was a no-brainer. Sighing and wishing he hadn't asked, he followed her suggestion and put the gun he'd been holding away and drew out the stun gun that was made to look like a Colt revolver from the 1890s, the tiny blue screen projecting out of it indicating it was scanning for the appropriate level of electricity to discharge at the first lifeform that came into its sights.

"Why do you have to be so moral?" Jack questioned her.

"Not a discussion I'm going to get into right now," Oswin muttered, "Go see what's in the crate."

Jack sighed and took a few steps closer, at which point he heard the quiet growl grow louder, and whatever was within snarled. He cast a confused look at Oswin, who seemed unnerved by the sounds they were hearing.

It was then that Gwen and Sally Sparrow came quietly around the opposite corner and saw Jack edging closer to the shipping crate, probably hearing the growls, and Gwen held up her gun and came to cover Jack. Gwen stepped over to the door to try and pull open the part of it that was still intact as Jack stepped in front. Then the beast barked furiously and came pelting out of the dark towards him, a blur of fur and light and metal coming straight for him until he pulled the trigger of his very confused stun gun that was having a tricky time registering what this creature was, and a jet of bright electricity shot out from the muzzle and struck the thing in the chest, and it yelped and slumped down onto the damp ground outside the container, illuminated now by the moonlight and a torch Sally Sparrow was holding.

"What the hell is that?" Gwen stared at it.

"Dead, that's what," Oswin told her, "Gun shot a lethal charge because it couldn't figure out what voltage would inhibit it." She looked a little guilty, but Jack was distracted by the creature he'd just shot.

It was the size of a dog, sure, and had the body of a dog, too, and sounded like a dog. Kind of. It was also half made of metal with its brain in a glowing container on the top of its head it seemed to have instead of a skull, some kind of twisted, modified Alsatian with most of its head and chest real (minus the brain case), only one real leg and a real tail. The rest of it was made of metal. A cyberdog. No wonder it had confused the gun, the gun didn't know if it was robotic or organic.

The sound of gunfire eventually drew the rest of the group to the scene, and the Ninth Doctor didn't have anything good to say about the incident involving the mistaken murder of the creature, even if it _had_ been about to maul Jack.

"It was an accident, the gun couldn't tell what voltage to use," Oswin defended Jack after Nine got angry at him for another 'unnecessary act of violence.'

"So they've moved on from taking people to taking dogs?" Rose asked.

"You know what? I don't think so," Jack said, crouching down next to the dog. Oswin was scanning it, as was Nine, "Otherwise they would have taken the brain, the heart and the spine, wouldn't they? But this dog still has its brain."

"Barely," Rory commented, "It's in a case on top of its head."

"This technology is too weird," Oswin said, "It's Earth technology, the way the limbs have all been replaced, and it isn't interfering with any of our equipment."

"The limbs are all different ages," Nine commented, scanning with his sonic, "But the dog itself, the organic matter… this dog is fifty years old. They've increased its longevity hugely."

"This thing is a pet," Jack said, "Look at its eyes and fur, it looks sick, it's been dying for decades and somebody keeps replacing bits of it and bringing it back."

"Then, wherever the people are going, maybe this dog came from there?" Sally Sparrow suggested, "They could have sent it here, or it could have… wandered here. If humans can survive it, I'm sure dogs can."

"Wandered here?" Rory asked incredulously, "How does it just 'wander here'?"

"The technology is of Earth origin, these are all Earth metals, but they're at a Fiftieth Century level of advancement, but Fiftieth Century technology never progressed in this way. As far as I know, _no_ Earth technology has. I mean, you've seen K-9. K-9 was cutting edge once," Oswin said, "This proves it, it's some alternate Earth, whoever these 'Martians' are must be Earthlings who've built some sort of device to create interdimensional portals. Maybe they sent the dog as a test for themselves?"

"What, like Laika?" Sally said.

"I guess so. Laika died, so did… whatever this thing's name was," Oswin said, "When they opened a portal to send this dog _here_, Amy and Donna must have wandered through _there_."

"Which'll be why nobody can get through to them," Nine said.

"You mean they're trapped in another universe?" Rory asked, "Well how do we get them back?"

"We can't get them back," Jack told him, "We'd need a machine identical to whatever one these Martians are using, not to mention dates and coordinates and safety protocols."

"So they're gone!?" Rory shouted.

"Not necessarily," Nine said, "All we can do is hope they manage to get out of that place and back here themselves. It's clearly not too dangerous of a journey-"

"The last one died!" Rory exclaimed.

"Yeah, as a result of extensive cybernetic transplants, who's to say Donna and Amy will even let these things get to the transplant stage? They do both have superpowers."

"Oh, yeah, Donna can shout at them, can she?" Rory questioned.

"It might work," Rose said, "But shouting at it won't do anything. We just have to wait and see."

"And what if they come back dead?"

"Don't think about that," Jack ordered him, "They won't. Those two are more than capable of getting themselves out of being probed. Don't lose faith. Now, we have to figure out what to do with this cyberdog corpse, since we can't exactly leave it lying around here."


	366. Think Tank

_Amy_

_Think Tank_

She woke up struggling, writhing around, bright white lights shining in her eyes. She didn't remember going unconscious, she was unaware of where her memories of walking through the dockyard with Donna ended and jarringly morphed into this clinical hell. There were tethers around her wrists, waist, head and ankles, keeping her held down to some kind of bed, or table, or gurney, something uncomfortable and stiff flat below her. There were voices, too. Mechanical sounding ones, like talking to somebody down a phone, the same crackling quality of a speaker. Hums like machinery, buzzes like dental drills, all sorts of frightening sounds to go along with her own shouting and screaming for the things to get off her. She didn't know what the things were, but she could hear somebody else shouting, as well, a familiar voice, yelling so impossibly loudly just feet away from her head, until they let out one huge wail and the robotic noises all ceased and silence fell throughout the room.

"_What was THAT it just did?_" a male voice said, commenting on whatever had just happened that had stopped them with their drills. Amy's head was swimming from whatever anaesthetic they'd pumped her with, making her eyes water, and she felt like retching, but she was still tied down by metal restraints to what was feeling more and more like an operating table.

"_I think the other specimens referred to it as 'shouting_,'" said a female voice to the first male voice. After the screeching sound on Amy's right, everything else was muffled and she could hear a ringing sound.

"_Ah, you mean it turned its volume knob higher?_" a third, also male, voice questioned. One of the male voices, the first, had an underlying tone of resentment, like he was angry at the other two. Perhaps the other two had done something. The female voice was inquisitive, and the other male voice seemed softer and more curious.

"_The specimens don't have volume knobs, Zero, I believe they use their vocal chords to alter the amount of sound they produce with their mouthpieces. So sensually…_" the female voice said. Great, Amy thought, another pervert. All of her own shouting was met with complete ignorance, and her head ached greatly as she struggled to bring the room into enough focus to see what was happening.

"_If I've told you once, Diana, I've told you a thousand times, stop. Fetishising. The. Specimens!_" the first male voice, not Zero, as the second was apparently called, shouted.

"What the hell's going on!?" the familiar voice Amy now recognised as Donna's since she wasn't shrieking shouted at them, whoever they were. Amy could still hardly see.

"_What's this? What's it doing now? Is it… ARTICULATING? I won't have articulation in MY laboratory, somebody sew that hole it has up,_" the slightly more angry male shouted.

"_Kleitman, we don't have the materials to sew any holes of the specimens' up_," Diana said. Amy noticed at that point that Kleitman, Diana and Zero weren't exactly the most Martian names she'd ever heard in her life. And maybe she hadn't met any Martians, but if she did, she wouldn't expect them to be called Diana.

It was at this frightening point that Amy managed to move just enough to see these mysterious assailants of herself and Donna's, though it was difficult with her head strapped down to a medical bench. Immediately she regretted it. They might talk like humans and have names like humans, but they definitely didn't _look_ human. Not anymore. But at least the premonition she'd gotten in the hospital outside of the psychiatric ward, which had been an image of various human-looking brains being kept alive in jars like something out of _Futurama_, made a bit more sense. Because that was what they were. They were brains, in jars, hovering in the air with big television screens in front of their brain tanks depicting horrifying facial features worthy of debuting in the next _Saw_ film. Two eyes and a mouth was all they got. No nose, just abnormally huge lips and eyeballs, the mouth image flickering on and off and not even opening or closing as they spoke to each other. The eyes were wide and staring, though, darting around violently in their sockets independently of each other.

"_Then get me the materials. Isn't that why you're here?_" Kleitman angrily demanded of the other two.

"_I'm here to study mineralogy and medical sciences_," Diana told him.

"_And I've always been the robotics engineer, I don't know anything about your specimens, Kleitman_," Zero said.

"_SURE, you say that NOW, but you weren't when we first started taking the brains out of these things, were you!? Weren't YOU the one who suggested we take out those other parts? That red pumping thing?_"

"_You mean the heart,_" Zero told him, "_And that was Diana's idea_."

"_The heart is the most _physical_ organ of all,_" Diana said, Amy really not liking the way she drew out the word 'physical,' "_All that blood, and heat…_"

"Amy," Donna hissed nearby, Amy watching the weird brain-jars argue too closely to do much listening, "Psst. Amy. Oi!"

"What?" Amy asked, turning her head very awkwardly to the side against the restraints pressing against her forehead. Donna was strapped down on an operating table in the exact same way that she herself was, and Amy couldn't foresee a route of escape for them. Maybe the Doctor was their only hope?

"What are those things!? They look like brains, _human_ brains," Donna said, and she made to shrug before realising she really couldn't shrug.

"I don't know," she told her.

"Can't you do something?"

"_Me_? Something like what? I'm sure the others will be here soon," Amy assured her.

"You mean before or after those things cut us open and take out our hearts and our brains?" Donna questioned, "Do that ordering thing. The persuasion. Isn't that your power?"

"I never use it though!" Amy protested, "It barely ever works. And it only seems to work on humans."

"Just try! Do some, you know, Jedi mind tricks," Donna said.

"_What is this 'Je-di' of which you speak?_" Kleitman shouted at them, "_Didn't I just order one of you two to sew up their face-holes?_"

"You know, Jedi. Like _Star Wars_," Donna told him uneasily.

"_WARS? In STARS? There have never been any '_star wars_,' we should know, because we are from MARS!_" Kleitman declared.

"_WoooOOOooo_," Diana said next to him, like she was trying to orally add dramatic music to this revelation from Kleitman. Well, Amy thought, she supposed now it made sense why all the abducted Welsh people thought they had been taken by freakish Martians. _She_ might think she had been taken by freakish Martians if she didn't know any better. Donna and Amy exchanged a confused look, and Amy thought to herself, what could really go wrong if she just tried to use her persuasion on these things.

"There isn't any intelligent life on Mars," Donna said, and Amy thought 'intelligent' was being a bit kind to their glorified kidnappers.

"_You specimens no nothing of intelligent life._"

"_These ones are remarkably odd, though,_" Diana interrupted him, "_The anaesthetic wore off on them much faster than it did on any of the others. We haven't even had the opportunity to remove anything other than the brains_."

"You WHAT!?" Amy and Donna both shouted, Donna shouting so loudly again that Amy glimpsed her eyes glow and she rocked the brain-bots like a gust of wind had just blown in. Maybe that was why her head felt so funny. But then, if she didn't have a brain, how the hell was she still alive? And functioning? And thinking? And Donna, too.

"_Brains are of great interest to we Martians_," Zero said.

"All you bloody are is brains!" Donna yelled at theme, "Just look in the mirror, you maniacs!"

"What are you?" Amy asked, "Did somebody do this to you? Take out your brains and put them in robots?"

"_Don't act like you know anything about our far superior Martian brains,_" Kleitman said, then to the others, "_Somebody stop them from talking and operate anyway. I can always mute my aural receptors so I don't have to hear the screaming_."

"Don't you bloody dare," Donna snarled at them, straining to escape from her restraints. That was when Amy's eyes were drawn to something on the other side of the room. Well, two somethings on the other side of the room, in large jars, side-by-side, were two more brains. And one of them… it was like she knew it. Like it was a kindred spirit. Almost like they were telling the truth about removing the brains… though, they didn't have any arms or other visible appendages, so how they were removing vital organs so apparently safely was beyond her.

"Let us out," Amy ordered them.

"_Maybe we should let them out, Kleitman_," Diana said immediately, "_Talk to them_."

"_TALK to SPECIMENS? Have you gone MAD!? You need to stop thinking with your genitals._"

"Let us out," Amy implored again, desperately trying to use her persuasive powers. She was convinced that whatever these things are, they had once been human, and since she had influence over brains with organic bodies, why shouldn't she have influence over brains _without_ organic bodies?

"_They might be able to help us,_" Zero said.

"Yeah, we're great at helping," Donna said quickly, "We'll help you."

"_You could help me by shutting up, for starters_," Kleitman said angrily.

"_We are much too advanced for these simple, uh, 'earthmites' to possibly have any hope of deactivating our complicated cranial spheres_," Diana said.

"_She's right, Kleitman. There's no possible way for these creatures to know the precise location of our off-switches_," Zero added, "_In fact, I don't even remember the location of the off-switches myself_."

"_It's on the underside of your brain tank, you moron_," Kleitman said. They were idiots. Whatever or whoever they were or had once been, they were idiots, all three of them.

"_Even if they did find the off-switches, is it really so bad to think of the specimens touching your underside?_" Diana suggested, and Amy nearly groaned, giving a pitiful look at Donna on the right, who seemed mildly disgusted.

"_I'M going to find your off-switch if you don't shut up soon, Diana_," Kleitman shouted at her, "_Fine. I'm bored. You've convinced me. Release the specimens_." As soon as he said that, the metal restraints on Amy's body slipped away back into the table she'd been lying on, leaving her free. Immediately she tried to sit up and experienced the strangest sensation in her head she had ever felt before, an odd sort of dizziness and detachment, like her head was completely empty and weighed so little she was about to float away at any moment. She supposed it _was _almost completely empty, if what they said about the brains was true. Donna looked to experience the same thing.

"Why are you abducting people from Cardiff?" Amy asked. Best get answers before she and Donna figured away to creep over and switch them off. What were they going to do about it? They didn't have arms or legs.

"_The specimens wander in here, and we return them, better than new_," Diana said.

"_It all started upon the completion of our Dimensional Transmoglyfier_," Zero told them. Amy didn't think 'transmoglyfier' was a real word.

"_Every time we activated it, they would just wander in here, touching our stuff, like VERMIN. As if they understand what any of our stuff DOES. Even I don't know what it does, that's how advanced it is_," Kleitman said. Again, Amy realised, they were idiots, the lot of them.

"_But their bodies were always so inviting, just asking for invasive treatment, for improvement, for replacements_," Diana said, "_Just look at us. We are the pinnacle of human – I mean, uh, Martian – evolution._"

"You mean you took out your own brains and put them in robots..?" Donna asked incredulously.

"_Together WE have defeated the WEAKNESS of AGEING_," Kleitman declared.

"What do you mean, 'improvement'? How did taking out spines and hearts and brains improve anybody?" Donna inquired, Amy utterly transfixed by the sight of her own brain floating in mysterious fluid on a shelf nearby.

"_Even if the puny and inferior mortal body were to suffer great trauma or fatality, the brain would still live on. And with the advanced synthetic heart we implant, risk of heart attacks and heart disease falls to zero. Get it? Zero?_" Zero said, snickering at himself. _Hilarious_, Amy thought dryly, "_With the spines there is a greatly decreased risk of paralysation or other back ailments._"

"Have you ever seen _The Wizard of Oz_?" Amy finally said something to them, dragging her eyes away from her brain. It struck her suddenly that her brain was the thing making her want to look at it so much. Maybe she was more vain than she thought, if she was so interested in the sight of her own internal organ.

"_Well, it's kind of you to call me a wizard, but this isn't Oz, wherever that is_," Zero told her, misunderstanding completely.

"No, and I bet it's not Kansas, either," she muttered, "You were humans once, then?"

"_We are MARTIANS_," Kleitman reiterated, "_Martians who have DEFIED the boundaries of petty HUMAN understanding with our superior THINK TANKS_."

"We won't tell anybody that you're really humans," Donna said, "This, 'dimensional transmoglyfier,' creates, what, windows into different universes..?"

"You mean they have a machine that makes Doors?" Amy asked her.

"Doors occur naturally, remember? Nobody makes them. These are different, it's like… energy. I can feel it."

"You can 'feel' it? Feel what, exactly?" Amy asked incredulously, giving shifty looks to the three brain things that stared right back at her with their oversized, creepy monitors with staring, manic eyes. They freaked her out.

"I don't know," Donna told her. Wonderful, now Donna was being weird, too.

"_Yes, windows_," Zero clarified. Whatever this thing was, Zero seemed to know the most about it, "_We wanted to prove the existence of parallel dimensions, other versions of Earth where it wasn't destroyed by a deadly virus in 1959._"

"_We were very interested in Earth, as we OBSERVED it. From MARS_," Kleitman reiterated. So that was what had happened. They were, what, the last remnants of humanity? Humanity in a universe where everybody had died in the 1950s? That certainly wasn't their timeline at all. It sort of made sense now why they'd seen the need to put themselves in brain machines. It was somewhat tragic.

"Where are the brains from the other people you abducted?" Donna asked, standing up from the gurney she'd been on. Amy followed suit.

"_In the BRAIN ROOM, obviously_," Kleitman told her, "_What do you want with those brains? HUMANS have no need to have HUMAN BRAINS in their possession._"

"Where's the dimensional transmoglyfier?" Donna asked, "Can it take us home?"

"_Where IS home?_" Diana asked, "_How many humans are there? What year is it? Are they all alive? We sent a cyberdog through as a test for ourselves earlier. Could we survive in your mysterious world?_"

"_Survive to carry out more experiments?_" Zero added.

"_As SUPERIOR MARTIANS, it is our SOVEREIGN RIGHT to perform DANGEROUS EXPERIMENTS on PUNY HUMANS_," Kleitman shouted. Why did he have to shout everything? Probably because he was crazy. They were obviously crazy, the three of them.

"No," said Donna quickly, "You've got us all now. There were barely a dozen. We live in a, uh, crater. Nuclear crater."

"Atomic war followed World War Two, in 1947," Amy told them, "No point furthering any of your experiments in the same place. Might as well just give up. Where's the dimension-thingy, though?" They were creeping steadily towards the brain things, Amy towards Kleitman on the far left, Donna towards Zero on the far right, Diana in the middle. They both had the same mutual idea to switch them off.

"_It's just in that room over there_," Kleitman told them, turning to his left. Kleitman turning that far was all Amy needed to find the off-switch, which was red and large and labelled, 'OFF-SWITCH DO NOT PRESS.' She smacked it and Kleitman fell to the ground in a metallic heap straight away. Seeing this, Donna hit Zero and Amy made the finally move on a distracted Diana, who might have made a very unpleasant noise Amy suspected had some very displeasing origins of pleasure rather than pain that she subsequently blocked from her own memory, and it was that easy to disable the brain bots.

"Right. Time to figure out how to use their teleportation machine and disable it?" Amy suggested, going over to the brains. She thought they had best take as many brains as they could with them, not that she really knew what to do with them. Better than leaving the things in the weird parallel world they were trapped in.

"We might not have to disable it at all," Donna said, then she sighed, "Look, I think something happened when they took my brain out."

"Yeah, they took your brain out, _that's_ what happened," Amy said, picking up her own brain jar, before finding it remarkably heavy and deciding to put it back down again until they figured out a legitimate plan.

"No, no, no. You remember Tentoo? The half-human, half-Time Lord metacrisis?"

"Rose only kicked him off seven weeks ago, of course I remember him, created by something to do with you touching a severed hand..?" Amy asked, not really knowing the particulars of Tentoo's 'birth', as it were.

"I was one as well," Donna said, "And the Doctor had to wipe my memories to stop it from killing me. The Doctor-Donna, that was what the Ood always said."

"Do you know the Doctor once sent an Ood to live with Rory and I?" Amy said suddenly, remembering those terrible few days where they'd had no clue what they were supposed to do with a random alien the Doctor had dumped on them. Donna stared at her for a few seconds, and shook her head.

"Right, anyway," she didn't address Amy's remark about the Ood at all, "I think they've unlocked it. Before, with the TARDIS's Chameleon Arch, the Doctor made me back into a proper human, but they took my brain out, and… and now I know that I can do _this…_" Donna went and placed a hand on one of the walls nearby, and the strangest thing happened as Amy watched. It was as though the very surface of the white, somewhat grimy wall started to ripple, and change, and glow, and then part, part like the Red Sea or like a whirlpool. More than just the physical things she could see, she watched reality separate at Donna's touch, watched it change blue and white and soon enough every colour, like a rainbow, like the time vortex, swirling around in an oval shape.

"What the hell did you just do!?" Amy exclaimed.

"It's a portal," Donna told her.

"Are you sure!? It looks bloody dangerous to me."

"It'll take us back to Cardiff."

"How can you know that for sure?" Amy asked.

"The same way you or Rose know things for sure sometimes," Donna said, "It's like… I can see everything. Every dimension, every universe. Time Lords can see the particulars of one world, but I can see _all_ of them…" In its tank, Donna's brain was glowing the same blue that this magic portal was glowing, and her eyes were silver.

"That's your second power," Amy started, "Your eyes, the adrenaline, it must be. I thought you already found out what your second one was?"

"No," Donna answered, "Just the shouting one."

"I swear everybody except me gets cool powers. What do I get? The ability to have random visions that don't make sense, and the power to tell people what to do that hardly ever worse."

"Well, at least you're not stuck seeing auras?" Donna suggested to her in consolation, "Your husband's superhearing never seems to do much good."

"You know that every night I get a running commentary of what Clara and the Doctor are saying to each other? I keep telling him to get bloody earplugs…" Amy muttered, "Wait, do we still have to switch off their transmoglyfier, then?"

"No. They can't exactly switch themselves back on, can they?" Donna said, "They'll just be there, asleep, forever. Suppose when everybody you hang out with doesn't have any arms to push big read off buttons, you don't really need to worry about it. Best go get the other brains, then, take them back with us…"


	367. Runaways I

_Oswin_

_Runaways I_

Donna Noble and Amy Pond came stepping through a blue coloured ripple in the side of a shipping container as easy as though it were a door, Amy with a peculiar, almost haunted look on her face and Donna looking as proud as anything. The group of Oswin, Jack, Rose, Rory, Nine, Gwen and DI Elliott, who had been debating for a long while what to do with the cyberdog remains, all scattered away from the mysterious, glowing thing that had appeared looking like the clear water in a birdbath, and were very surprised to see their two lost comrades appear with their arms full of brains. Well, jars, but the jars were some very technologically advanced jars that _stored _brains. Oswin also noted surgical scars around both of their heads. Surely they hadn't fallen victim to the same thing as the others..?

Rory rushed over to Amy straight away, who told him she was fine and asked for help with some of the brains, at which point Rose offered her superstrong services and took the majority of them from the two other girls, though Amy and Donna both kept hold of one each themselves. The one Donna was holding was glowing. Behind them, the mysterious blue ripple sucked itself away like a vortex and disappeared with a sort of whooshing noise.

"What's _that_?" Donna asked, staring at the canine corpse on the ground.

"They said they sent a dog through, remember?" Amy told her. Amy gave the brain in Donna's possession, the glowing qualities of which were ceasing, a strange look.

"Did they get you?"

"What were they?"

"What was the blue thing?"

"Where did you go?"

Those were just some of the questions suddenly posed to Donna and Amy, the two thoroughly taken aback by everybody else being so worried. And it was then that Donna took up the reigns of storyteller and explained what had happened, which Oswin later thought was funny since Amy was the novelist, though at the time she was a great deal more concerned with the brains. It was a wild story about going to an alternate Earth where the majority of the population had been wiped out by a virus in the 1960s, leaving only a few sparse remnants and some literal scientific 'minds' turning themselves into floating brain tanks to defeat ageing. Apparently, they'd built a machine that could open tears to parallel universes, but according to Donna it had major targetting and coordination issues and just randomly sucked people up in Cardiff. Then the brain-things would carry out transplants to 'improve' these sorry souls. At least until Donna and Amy switched them off and left them there. Which begged the question, Oswin thought, of what the hell the weird blue thing behind Donna was.

"What the hell was that weird blue thing behind you?" Jack asked exactly the question Oswin had been about to. Amy gave Sally Sparrow, who was highly absorbed in this conversation, a shifty look. Oswin took out her phone and started to text places, dates and times to anyone on the TARDIS who might be able to fly it back down to them to get them home, since it seemed things were just about wrapped up in Wales.

That was when it came to light that apparently the removal of her brain by insane 'think tanks' had sparked the revival of the Time Lord part of her biology after the whole business with the metacrisis and the creation of Tentoo. That fascinated Nine almost as much as Oswin was fascinated by Donna's second claim that the removal of her brain had done enough to stimulate her second superpower into unlocking itself; _interdimensional portals_. Oswin thought all her birthdays had come at once, even though this power was nothing to do with she herself. It was the most exciting thing she'd heard for two whole weeks, _including_ the existence of vampires.

To everyone except Oswin's susprise, gusts of wind were conjured by nothing around them and a distinct and easily recognisable thrumming filled the atmosphere as the TARDIS, piloted by someone as yet unknown, brought itself into existence that December night in 2015.

"So you can just open portals to other universes at will?" Sally Sparrow asked excitedly.

"Only sometimes. Who are you again?" Donna asked.

"Sally Sparrow," she answered.

"Rory, why are you covered in blood?" Amy inquired next.

"Spontaneous autopsy using kitchen utensils," Rory answered shortly, and went on to explain further about the most recent disappearence and death and Flek's involvement as Oswin's phone went off and she read a distinctly peculiar text from her boyfriend telling her to meet him in the laboratory. That struck her as weird. They hadn't had to meet up in secluded places for over a month and a half, not since everybody figured they were together. She wondered what his game was, as she stepped into the ship. Except then Sally Sparrow called her name and her mind went blank.

"Hmm?" she asked as everybody went past, Nine talking to DI Elliott about the fact the TARDIS was a spaceship and he was an alien and no he couldn't go on a trip with them, Jack saying his goodbyes to Gwen Cooper.

"Can I see inside the ship?" Sally asked.

Before Oswin could say that it wasn't anything to do with her who was and wasn't allowed onto the TARDIS and she had best ask the Doctor, Nine abruptly and coldly told her flat out no, she couldn't see inside the ship, because nobody was allowed to see inside the ship, which included Elliott and Gwen. Jack was telling Gwen she had to do something about the cyberdog body and the cadaver in the Suttons' cellar, and it looked like an argument was about to brew, so Oswin slipped away and thanked the Tenth Doctor for flying the TARDIS out to them on her way past the console towards the lab. She cared more about Adam Mitchell than the aftermath of whatever mystery she had been dragged out to solve.

"You know, Mitchell," Oswin began upon entering her laboratory at the top of the stairs in the console room, "If you keep sending me mysterious texts telling me to secretly rendezvous in the lab, a girl can get ideas." Adam Mitchell had been slouched forwards in a chair leaning on one of the long work surfaces she had, and upon her entering had startled himself so much he knocked his chair over when he stood up, and Oswin crossed her arms. "Are you alright..?"

"Who? Me?" he asked.

"No, I was speaking to Helix," she said sarcastically. Her sarcasm was made significantly less impactful when a second later Helix actually spoke.

"_My apologies, Miss Oswald. I am alright_," Helix answered mechanically.

"I was being sarcastic," Oswin told it.

"_My apologies, Miss Oswald_," it repeated itself. There was a pause as Oswin waited to see if Helix said anything else. The VI never usually interrupted. Oswin instructed Helix not to speak unless spoken to anyway, lest Nios get in another ideological debate to try and make Helix self-aware.

"What's wrong?" she asked Adam.

"Nothing's wrong," he said quickly, leaning on the desk uneasily.

"What did you want to talk to me about..?"

"About... uh... how much I love you. Obviously. More than anything in the universe," he said. Though her heart might flutter pathetically when he said things like that, she maintained a flat expression.

"Well, you tell me that all the time," she shrugged, "What's going on?"

"Oswin..." he began, then he resumed his tactic of complimenting her for whatever end he was trying to achieve, "Light of my life. Person I love more than anything in the world. My girlfriend."

"Yep?" she asked.

"...My sister's here."

"What? In this room?" she asked suddenly, staring around.

"No, in our room," he said.

"Is she? How come?" Oswin asked, turning to walk out of the lab, but he caught up and tried to stop her, stepping in front of the door.

"Where are you going?" he asked, holding his arm out. He wasn't very motivated to stop her from leaving, though, because she just pushed him out of the way and ducked under his outstretched arm to go past.

"To see your sister, obviously," she said.

"Why?"

"Because I like her," she answered, and he frowned next to her.

"Do you?" he asked.

"Yes, why wouldn't I?"

"She's an annoying teenager."

"We were all annoying teenagers once, Mitchell," she said, the two of them passing through Nerve Centre where everybody was clustered around to look at the disembodied brains of Donna and Amy.

"Why are there brains over there?" he asked her as she exchanged a suspicious look with Jonesy the cat, which stared at her whenever she walked past it. She hated that stupid thing. All it did was eat and poo.

"Donna and Amy's brains got taken out. Don't worry, they're fine, I'll explain later," she said offhandedly. The whole story had only just been explained to _her_. She needed time to take it all in before telling Adam Mitchell about it, "Ran into Sally Sparrow today, as well, investigating mysterious phenomenon. Apparently her engagement got broken off and she moved to Yorkshire."

"Yorkshire? Don't tell Beta Clara, she'll go looking for her now she's single."

"Well," Oswin said, opening the door to their room in the Bedroom Circle, talking as she stepped through, the lights switched on to her great surprise, "Lucky for us Beta Clara doesn't know who Sally Sparrow is to go looking for her." Thank god Alpha Clara wasn't in the room to hear mention of one of her few femme fatales, the other being her Thirteen, who most definitely _was_ there on the sofa talking to Ellie Mitchell with Jenny.

"Hi, Oswin," Ellie said, and Oswin smiled at her.

"Hi. How come your brother's being weird about you staying? And how come you even _are_ staying?" Oswin asked whoever wanted to answer her first. Jenny was on her phone. Why did people just conglomerate in their room? That morning it had been so blissfully empty she almost wished she had stayed and not had anything to do with Martian abductions.

"Because I won legal custody and I don't have anywhere for her to go yet. So she's here and she's not allowed to leave here and go on any 'adventures,'" Adam said to Ellie firmly. She threw herself down on the sofa and groaned in irritated defeat, and Oswin glimpsed Adam shake his head pitifully. She could tell that he had lost an argument with his younger sister, and that was the reason she was with them presently instead of elsewhere at some boarding school.

"Happy Halloween!" Thirteen shouted jovially at Oswin, "It's Halloween today. Not to _me_, and not really to _you_, but to the others here."

"What're you gonna do? Go trick or treating?" Oswin suggested sardonically.

"I could do..." the Doctor said, like she was genuinely debating going out trick or treating, "I'd go as a zombie. Zombies are totally cool. Don't you think, Jenny?"

"It would be funnier if you went as a vampire, mother," Jenny told her absently, and Thirteen laughed, Jenny texting with an annoyed expression, "God, some of the things this woman says. I swear, I'm gonna hang a crucifix above her toilet seat." Beta Clara, Oswin assumed, was who she was texting. Oswin almost told her to please do that because it would definitely be funny, but didn't want to be responsible for any argument that might arise from a practical joke like that.

"What did she say?" Oswin asked.

"She said, 'How's your mother?' with a winky face," Jenny answered grimly, "You know what? Here." Jenny gave her phone to Thirteen, and Oswin distinctly heard the dial tone, the phone on speaker mode. Curious of what was about to happen, she stepped towards the sofa where the three were sat to listen, Adam still loitering in the kitchen out of his sister's way. Oswin wondered where Ellie was going to sleep. The sofa, she hoped. Why did everybody have to sleep on their damn sofas?

Beta Clara answered the phone after just a few seconds.

"_What? You totally interrupted me having a daydream about your mother_," she said.

"Oooh, was it a good daydream? What happened in it?" Thirteen asked, and Oswin had to stifle laughter as she heard Clara spluttering over the phone, "I've been subject to a lot of daydreams lately. It totally sucks being objectified, you know."

Oswin was prevented from eavesdropping any further by Adam tapping her on the shoulder and taking her hand, pulling her willingly into the kitchen so that he could talk to her as privately as possible while the others were distracted.

"You don't mind her staying?" he asked. She sighed.

"Not particularly. As long as you have Eleven's permission? It's his TARDIS, after all," Oswin said quietly, crossing her arms.

"I do, I asked him first. He was glad for the interruption - your sister's got him wedding planning again. She was trying to make him choose between identical shades of white for the seat covers. Actually, one of the options was this sort of pastel lavender I kind of liked."

"God, I hope I never marry you, going on about seat covers," Oswin muttered, shaking her head. She thought he seemed slightly offended by that, but she also didn't care all that much, "Poor man. Anyway, where's she sleeping?"

"The sofas are sofabeds, remember?" he told her. That was true, they were, they just didn't tell any of their 'regulars' because of the hassle of pulling the seats out and moving things all the time, "She can stay on one of them. It's not like there's any danger of her catching us doing it." That was true.

"Did you tell the others?" she asked.

"Not yet."

"You probably should."

"I can't be bothered. I've been fighting with her all day trying to make her go to boarding school, but she keeps refusing. I even suggested she go live with the Cutlers, and I don't even _like_ the Cutlers," he said, "I'm so tired. And now I have to supervise her."

"Be a responsible older brother," Oswin said, "When Reker was born I was always having to look after him, me and Fyn. Mainly me, babies freak Fyn out."

An argument broke out between Thirteen and her daughter that ended in Jenny taking back possession of her phone and muttered something by way of apology for the Doctor asking her what she was wearing, getting up and taking her phone call out of the room.

"What do you think I should do?"

"I don't know. We'll talk about it later, alright? When we're alone. We still sleep in the same bed, and your sister is most definitely not allowed in our bedroom," Oswin told him firmly, and he sighed, looking a little upset at his current circumstances, which it pained her to see, "Hey, listen, why don't we go out somewhere? The Doctor can keep an eye on your sister. She can tell her all about space or whatever. Everyone likes the Doctor. We'll go for dinner or something."

"Dinner? Us? You don't do dates, Oswin," he said.

"I'll do anything for you," she told him sincerely, "Including going and getting fish and chips, or something. I know how you love the seaside. And I've been next to the bloody sea all day. And I had to cut somebody up."

"Well, you can tell me all about it, over dinner, on our _date_, which is a _date_, one of those things you _never _go on," he toyed.

"Don't push it," she said, and he laughed, "Or I'll just go hang out with _my _sister and leave you to it here."

"You drive a hard bargain, Oswin Oswald."

"Always have, always will. Now, you go put your shoes on, and I will go brief my sister-in-law on babysitting."


	368. Eviction Notice

_DAY ONE-HUNDRED AND NINETEEN_

_Eleven_

_Eviction Notice_

Every time Clara made a noise next to him he feared she may have woken up. If there was one person he didn't want to speak to first thing that morning, it was his wife. That was why he was reading, instead, reading _Frankenstein_ as a matter of fact, a novel he had perused perhaps a hundred times, but in none of those other times did it have notes scribbled in it around the words and below the chapter breaks from his sleeping wife, and he adored reading her annotations. Clara's annotations, he always thought, were just as fascinating as the books or poems he was scanning themselves, and they always served to remind him how clever she was, her cleverness being a thing he frequently forgot now that he lived with her and had to put up with her asking ridiculous questions of him constantly. Especially when those ridiculous questions were about what exact shade of white the table covers at their next wedding should be. Or the worst one was when she was debating how many flowers they ought to have in the bouquets, and started saying that eight was too many but six was too few, and she refused seven because it was an odd number and was 'unlucky.' He had proceeded to tell her he needed the toilet and left for an hour and a half in the hope that by the time he returned with a packet of custard creams she would have forgotten about it. Incidentally, she had, but she had just moved onto an even more tedious subject of what the napkins should be folded into. Then he told her that he didn't care and she got upset, so he convinced her to forget about wedding planning and to go have a shower, then promised they would talk all she liked about napkins in the morning. Except, it was the morning right then, and he still didn't remotely want to talk about napkins or anything wedding related. Worse than that, she actually _was _waking up. He wondered if he should just leave and make breakfast and then convince somebody to cart her off somewhere for the day and tell her napkins were the stupid creations of a germaphobic society the Doctor didn't care for.

He looked down at her on his right and stayed completely still, wondering if perhaps human vision was based on movement and was a biological trait he had simply never noticed in them and he might remain hidden from her. Unbeknownst to Clara, she made a cute noise when she stretched and settled back down into the warm patch of bed she had created for herself. Then she opened her eyes and saw him staring at her with a look akin to fear. He didn't know whether or not to say good morning to her. He thought that if he didn't he would look weird staring at her, but equally didn't want to initiate conversation incase she mentioned more wedding things. In the end he resolved that she already thought he was plenty weird, so he didn't speak.

"What?" she asked him, "Do you want something?" In some ways he wanted her not to talk to him, but he didn't say that to her. Instead he told her he loved her. _What an idiot_, he thought of himself - if he told her something like that she was _bound _to talk to him. But what else could he do? Kick her out? At any rate, Clara smiled involuntarily and closed her eyes again, and _his_ eyes were drawn to the dimples in her cheeks for a few moments. Then she opened her eyes again, "Are you reading?"

"Yes," the Doctor answered, and Clara pushed herself up so she was sitting finally, yawning and scrunching up her face at a dizziness which briefly overcame her from moving from horizontal to vertical so soon after waking up.

"Is that _Frankenstein_?"

He told her it was and showed her the cover as he watched her run a hand through her hair, find a few knots in it, try for a second to untangle them before deciding she couldn't be bothered, then settle down and watch him.

"Why do you always read my books? You must have read that hundreds of times, I don't see why you have to read a copy like _this_," she said, taking it out of his hands and holding it so he could see the pages, "One somebody's drawn all over."

"The fact you've drawn all over it is exactly the reason I'm reading it again," he said, going to take it back, but she moved it so that he couldn't, and he pushed himself up on his hands so that he was taller in order to regain some level of masculinty he had just lost by letting her steal a book from him, "I just like your handwriting." She smiled and stared at the pages herself. "It's all cursive."

"I know, I always worked really hard on my handwriting," she said, then she got an idea and pushed _Frankenstein _back into his hands, "If you're interested in handwriting, I _have _to show you something," she declared, leaning across him without warning to try and reach to the awkwardly situated bedside table.

"Why do you have to crawl on me? What are you looking for?" he asked her, leaning back to give her more room. She didn't answer him, but whatever it was she apparently found it and pushed herself up onto her knees a second later, and now she was taller than him, but she also had messy hair and was wearing pyjamas and he was suddenly more attracted to her than he had been a minute ago, and he stared at her as she unfolded a piece of paper.

"Look at this," she said, holding it in front of herself at his eye level. It took him a moment to move his attention away from his wife to this paper, but when he did he just squinted.

"What is that?" he asked, leaning forwards, highly confused.

"It's a list of questions Oswin wanted to ask Other Me, she wrote them down for Jenny, it's the most appalling thing I've ever seen. Even Other Me said so, and she's a proper teacher who has to deal with kids with crap handwriting all the time," Clara said, holding it out in front of herself, "I reckon it's because she taught herself how to write and never went to school." Eleven took the paper off her and stared at it himself, and she sat back down, crossing her legs and yawning again, which caught his eye for a moment until he leant around to put the paper back where Clara had got it from in the first place. "What was it we were talking about yesterday?"

He was suddenly alarmed.

"I haven't the foggiest, darling," he said quickly, "Were you wanting anything particular for breakfast?"

"Hadn't thought about it," she said, then she stared around like she was looking for something, "Have you seen my hairbrush?"

"No, sorry," he said, and she groaned exaggeratedly and stayed still, thinking, for a few seconds, before dragging herself across him and out of bed to look for it. The Doctor closed _Frankenstein_ finally and stuck it underneath his pillow to resume reading later when Clara was asleep again. She wandered about the room next to him in her pyjamas looking for her hairbrush and he carried on wondering about breakfast.

"Are you sure you don't know where it is?"

"Why would I?"

"Maybe you stole it."

"Stole your hairbrush? That's ridiculous, Coo."

"Well you're always using the hairdryer," she reminded him, wandering around, half asleep still, opening drawers at random.

"You manage to lose everything," he told her.

"That's not true!"

"You're always losing makeup or moisturiser or hair products. And anti-wrinkle cream. You don't even age, Clara, I don't understand why you have so much anti-wrinkle cream," he said, spying her hairbrush from across the room on the piano.

"I don't wanna get wrinkles," she muttered defensively, and he rolled his eyes.

"It's on top of the piano," he informed her, nodding towards it when she glanced over at him. She grabbed it quickly and started brushing her hair, complaining about the lack of mirror.

"We need a new room," she told him, "I'm sick of this room. I grew up in it. And I'm sick of the communal bathroom, as well. It's _your_ moody spaceship we live on, can't you do something?"

"Maybe before you started calling her 'moody,'" he said, and she scowled.

"Weren't we talking about napkins last night?" she asked him.

Stiffly, he answered, "No." Technically it wasn't a lie, _they_ hadn't, only _she _had, _he _had been trying to ignore her.

"No, we were. I remember. Did we decide on them?" she said. He had failed in whatever meek efforts he had made to steer her away from this topic. He loved her greatly, but not as much when she started saying things like this to him. He didn't say anything, and she took that as a no. "See, I liked the swans. Look, I'll show you," she walked over and dropped her hairbrush on the end of the bed, leaning across him again to get at her phone underneath her pillow. For a moment he wondered if he might achieve anything by pushing her over when she was balanced in such a vulnerable way, but she would land on his shins and that would be more unpleasantness than it was worth. "I thought... someone's tagged me in a video of how crayons are made on Facebook."

"They've what? Why?" he asked, but she was distracted and staring at her phone.

"They like, pour it out of a bucket into moulds. That's so cool, do you want to see?"

"_Crayons_?"

"Yeah."

"Why would they tag you in that? Who tagged you?"

"My dad."

"Are you secretly obsessed with crayons, wifey..?" he asked carefully, and she raised her eyebrows at him.

"_No_, he just knows I like _How It's Made_. God, it's not that weird. Anyway, I was thinking we could just be boring and make swans out of the napkins, then I thought what about boats? But then I was like, _everyone_ can make a paper boat, so what about some proper origami? Like a dog, or a hummingbird? Then I thought maybe we should just be adventurous and do paper aeroplanes." In no life of his would the Doctor ever describe paper aeroplanes as 'adventurous,' and was almost disgusted to think that the woman he loved would have such terrible choice in words. That was when he decided he really had come to the absolute end of his wits when it came to weddings for the time being, and decided exactly what to do.

* * *

_Rose_

"I just always thought it would be cool to go there," Rose was telling Martha on their way back from the irksome communal bathrooms, after they had run into each other conveniently while she was brushing her teeth. Martha was looking at her incredulously.

"I think it's a bad idea," Martha told her as they rounded the corner into the Bedroom Circle. Rose sighed. That was all Martha said, that it was a bad idea, but Rose didn't see what was wrong with paying a quick and curious visit to Massachusetts.

"So, how was your day-long date with Mickey yesterday?" Rose asked wryly, and Martha shook her head at her.

"As if I'd talk to _you _about it, he's your ex-boyfriend."

"So what? You should bring him out with us."

"I never even said _I _was coming out," Martha reminded her. Then two things happened at once, just as they were about to go from the Bedroom Circle into Nerve Centre to have breakfast before heading out for the day. Rose was in the mood for a bacon sandwich that morning; she was ravenous. Before she could get her hands on one, though, the door to Eleven and Clara's bedroom was opened the Doctor stepped out and shouted her name at her by way of greeting. At the same moment, Amy Pond came out of _her _bedroom with a brain in a jar in her hands. Martha had yet to be made aware of the ridiculous brain situation, and stared at it with the same shock that the Doctor did when he saw it.

"What?" Rose asked Eleven.

"Whose brain is that?" Eleven asked anybody who deigned to answer him.

"Mine," Amy said, "Long story, don't ask."

There was a long pause where he stared at the brain, before calling back to his wife, "Clara, come and look at this brain Amy has." Clara appeared a second later at the door and asked the same question her husband just asked and got the same guarded response. She put a hand on her hip and stared at it.

"Rose, are you going out today?" Eleven asked quickly.

"Uh, I suppose?" Rose answered, Clara staring at him in confusion.

"Excellent! Clara was just telling me how she desperately wanted time away from me for a while," he said. Going by Clara's reaction, it didn't seem like she had told him any such thing. Rose was thoroughly annoyed by this turn of events, as well.

"I did not!" she protested, "I was talking about napkins."

"Yes you did, of course you did, go and play with your friends," he said, smiling. And then he pushed her gently, but not so gently she didn't take a step back out of the doorway, and shut the door in her face. Clara stared at it.

"Sweetheart?" she called through, going up to it. Rose, Martha and Amy now just watched, "Doctor, what's going on?"

"I just think you should go out for the day," the Doctor told her, opening the door for a second and throwing a bunch of clothes at his wife for her to change into, presumably. Rose laughed.

"What have you done?" she snickered.

"I haven't done anything!" she protested, knocking on the door, "Why've you kicked me out!?"

"I'm redecorating!" Eleven shouted through the wood. Rose just shrugged. Clara stared at the others like they would do something to aid her.

"Can't you just walk through the wall?" Martha suggested. For whatever reason, Clara just shook her head, deciding not to indulge her intangibility and maybe respect her husband's choice to attempt to get rid of her, and picked the clothes up off the floor.

"...Where are you lot going out to, then?" Clara asked, and Rose made an irritated noise. Then Martha told her to be nice, and she had to resist making a petty remark about Martha fancying Clara.

"Yeah, where _are _you going? I'll come too," Amy declared, "Well, after I find somewhere safe to keep this brain." This time, nobody bothered to ask her why she was carrying her own brain around.

"Rose wants to go to Salem," Martha said, "Which I think is an awful idea."

"Not _old _Salem, modern Salem," Rose argued.

"Salem? That would be so cool! Can I come?" Clara asked, beaming, and Rose sighed.

"Fine, I guess so. If you get dressed." Clara nodded and walked off to the left into her sister's room, and Rose declared, "Now, if you'll excuse me, I have a date with a bacon sandwich." Leaving Martha to procure Mickey's company for the day ahead, Rose disappeared into Nerve Centre in search of fried meat. She would need all the bacon she could get if she was going to have to spend a whole day putting up with Clara Oswald...


	369. Old Salem Town

**AN: Yes, I did hear that Moffat is leaving and will be replaced by Chris Chibnall, who used to be the head writer of _Torchwood _in S1 and S2 (BTW if some of you haven't watched Torchwood, it _has_ become pretty clear yesterday that I'm bringing a character who originally died at the end S4 back, and also _Torchwood_ is freaking great) and also writes _Broadchurch_ and wrote _42_, which is a pretty good episode of _Doctor Who_ IMO. I mean, Chibnall wrote the episode of _Torchwood_ with the gaseous sex cloud, and all of the episodes featuring Captain John Hart in S2 (another character from _Torchwood_ I'm actually bringing into 4D12C on Day 121, #spoileralert.) So even though I'll be in my second year of university by the time it airs in 2018. I mean, I still think that _I_ should be head writer, but you know, I'm only 17. Maybe one day I'll write my own highly successful television show.**

_Rose_

_Old Salem Town_

It had, of course, been a disaster. Of course the TARDIS had been feeling mischievous, and of course they couldn't possibly pay a nice visit to modern day Salem, Massachusetts. For a few seconds after stepping out of the spaceship she had been awash with hope, quite interested in what the town had to offer, Jack Harkness putting her at ease when he said not to worry about the queer buildings because the people who lived there liked to keep the buildings of old Salem Town standing as a reminder for what had occurred some three-hundred years ago.

Except, when the sextet of herself, Jack, Martha, Clara, Mickey and Amy stepped out of a narrow alleyway between two wooden buildings into a street strewn with straw and animal waste, and a horse pulling a cart crossed in front of them and they saw clouds of people in black and white with funny-shaped hats wandering about, Rose realised it wasn't three-hundred years ago at all. The TARDIS had thrummed away behind them and sounded strangely like it was laughing, the disappearance thankfully covered up by a temperamental horse whinnying and the fact there was a breeze that day anyway, and left them stranded in Salem, the year Rose sensed to be the 1690s. The spring, she guessed. She wasn't sure how literate people were or if she could hope for a newspaper to pass in front of her so that she could see the precise date, but the whispers of the time vortex were enough.

"I told you this was a bad idea," Martha said triumphantly, like them getting stuck in Seventeenth Century Salem was a good thing for proving her right. Rose told her to shut up and crossed her arms, annoyed, wondering if her temporal powers might be so kind as to transport her far away to the future where she belonged, leaving the rest of them there to fend for themselves.

"This is so cool, though!" Clara declared, beaming, staring around at the people like they were an exhibit in a museum. They gave her funny looks. They gave all of them funny looks. None of them were dressed for the time; why would they have been? Not when they thought 'the time' was going to be somewhere circa the year 2000, not this ancient backwater of British colonies. Were they British colonies? Rose hadn't a clue when America had become independent.

Quietly, she inquired this of Jack, who told her that it had been 1776, and began to tell her of a wild weekend he had spent in Boston with Paul Revere, not that Rose knew who that was. She'd never learnt about the War of Independence at school. She'd just learnt about Hitler. Maybe the Ancient Egyptians, once upon a time. Usually she just relied on the Doctor for history lessons, but there was no Doctor with them.

Somebody shouted at Clara that her ankles were on show and covered the eyes of a young boy they had been walking with, presumably their son, so as to protect his innocence. Clara didn't look happy about that. She was slightly happier a second later though when someone shrieked something even worse about Amy, who'd decided to wear short shorts. She didn't know if that was worse than a skirt, considering where they were.

"This place is still a puritanical colony under rule of the British," Jack explained, the leading expert on history in lieu of the Doctor, "And we're gonna stick out like sore thumbs…" they already were sticking out like sore thumbs, getting stared at.

"I was in England around this time, though, and nobody really cared then," Martha said to him.

"Oh yeah? Where was that, London?" he asked, and she nodded, "Well Salem isn't London. It's tiny by comparison right now. People take a lot more notice of things. Especially things out of the ordinary…" It seemed they were all tiptoeing around one major issue now facing them, the only thing that ever sprang to mind when one were to mention Salem.

"When were the, um…" Rose began, but she didn't finish her sentence. Folk wandered past them quite quickly, like they were sinning just by being around them. God, people in the past were religious. And usually religious in the bad sense of accusing everyone _not_ religious of being possessed by some demon.

"1693," Clara was the first to answer her, "That's when the, uh, _things_ happened."

"Why do you know that?" Amy asked her suspiciously, and Clara looked at her flatly and answered with a deadpan tone of voice.

"Obviously because I hunt witches in my free time." Rose flinched at use of the word 'witches.' Martha told her to be quiet. Martha was the most uneasy of all of them, and it hadn't escaped Mickey's notice. Mickey looked very concerned about her as she stared around at the strangers with trepidation. Clara answered seriously, "I had to study _The Crucible _once. Wrote an essay on it."

"The what?" Mickey asked.

"It's a play," Clara said, "Have you never heard of it?" Only Amy had, which Rose then remarked was to be expected because Amy was a writer. Amy then argued that writing and reading were not the same thing, but that didn't change the fact that she vaguely knew what Clara was talking about, "It was written in the 1950s, it's a Miller play." Rose just shrugged again. "Oh, come on, he's a defining playwright of the Twentieth Century! Along with Williams, and Beckett!" An empty pause, "Don't tell me you've never heard of Williams or Beckett."

"Well nobody else is as sad as you," Mickey commented, and she scoffed when Rose laughed.

"I did a degree in literature, it isn't sad! Martha has a degree in medicine but you don't call _her_ sad for being able to do CPR."

"Everyone should know how to do CPR," Martha muttered.

"CPR is actually useful, though," Amy said, "Not like knowing the complete works of William Beckett."

"William_s_ _and_ Beckett, they're two different people…" Clara said. Nobody cared, though, "What year are we in?" she asked Rose.

"Late 1600s," Rose answered.

"Not 1693?" Clara asked carefully.

"It feels like the 1690s. In spring."

"Rose, did you just drop us in the middle of the Salem Witch Trials?" Amy asked her.

"Not _me_!" Rose protested.

"Look, the coordinates were strictly set for November 1st, 2013, just like today's date is to all of us on the ship," Jack said, "If the ship took us here, maybe there's a reason?"

"Is it really the 1st of November?" Clara asked Jack.

"Yeah, we've been on that bloody ship since the 5th of July," Amy told her.

"It's my birthday in almost three weeks," Clara declared.

"What? Is it? What day?" Mickey asked her.

"The 23rd."

"Isn't that the day Kennedy got shot?" Mickey continued, and she crossed her arms.

Annoyed, Clara responded, "_No_, Kennedy got shot the day _before_ my birthday. On the 22nd, 1963."

"By Lee Harvey Oswald, a guy with your surname, funnily enough. Maybe one of your Echoes killed Kennedy?" Jack suggested, and she made an irritated sound.

"Ha, ha," she said dryly.

"Did you say 1963? That's _almost_ 1693\. Isn't that weird?" Rose said.

"Not really. That's sort of how time works?" Martha said to her.

"I think it's weird."

"You're as bad as Spooky Sally," Jack said, shaking his head at her, and she was utterly offended by that. She was in no way as bad as Spooky Sally. Yesterday, Rose had overheard Spooky Sally telling Gwen Cooper that she thought the moon landing was a hoax. It took everything Rose was worth not to tell her that it definitely wasn't a hoax, because Ten and Martha had both seen it multiple times, and Ten had seen it in secret on the moon itself.

"Seriously, though? What is there to do? Shall we just leave?" Amy suggested, "Get back in the TARDIS?"

"The TARDIS is gone," Mickey told her.

"We could just call someone to bring it down."

"Oh, yeah, because calling someone on a mobile phone is totally inconspicuous in a town like _this_ one, full of crazies," Mickey said, like Amy's idea was completely ridiculous.

"You'd turn into that time travelling woman talking on a phone in the background of that old Charlie Chaplin film," Clara said.

"You mean you guys don't wanna know the origins of the biggest case of mass hysteria in American history?" Jack asked them all, and there was a pause, until Rose said that when he put it that way she sort of _did_ want to know the origins of the biggest case of mass hysteria in American history. Then Clara said something about the Red Scare, but Rose wasn't paying her much attention, "C'mon, the spring of 1693? When was it they ended?"

"May," Clara answered.

"You see? Maybe we're the ones who stop it," Jack shrugged.

"Not everything that's ever happened in history is because of _us_," Mickey told him, "Maybe it just ends on its own."

"It's not like witches are even real," Amy, another advocate for them going back to the TARDIS, said, and Martha cleared her throat.

"_Actually_, I met some witches about this time over in London. I was saying about London earlier, none of you listened. You know, when I met Shakespeare. There were these witches, called Carrionites, who wanted to use the Globe to manifest," Martha explained.

"Did you just accidentally end up in _Macbeth_?" Clara asked incredulously. Every time somebody mentioned meeting some famous literary figure she got in a mood, because apparently the Doctor had never really taken her to meet anybody particularly famous. Rose got a real kick out of reminding her that on just her third trip out with the Doctor she met Charles Dickens, at Christmas, with ghosts. Then whenever Donna brought up Agatha Christie.

"Maybe it inspired him, I don't know the chronology of Shakespeare's plays," Martha said defensively, "Ask your husband. He was there."

"What you're saying is, there might _actually_ be witches here?" Jack said, and Martha nodded, "Well then we'd better stay and look around! Look, everybody's going over there." It was true, there was a great deal of people moving swiftly down the street they were on, and Jack immediately tagged along at the back of this cluster so as to avoid suspicion. As interested as Rose was, she didn't think it would be in any of their best interests to get accused of witchcraft.

For better or for worse, they were suddenly stuck in Salem trailing along after a large body of people, and after just a few minutes of following on, Rose realised that they were heading into a square, and at the centre of this square was a set of gallows.


	370. Female Body Inspectors

**AN: This storyline is actually historically inaccurate as the executions of the witch trails actually took place in June and July of 1692, and I ****_would_**** go back and change it if it weren't for the fact I liked that bit I wrote about JFK and 1693 almost being 1963. But from here onwards, I'm just gonna say it's June of 1692. Assume Rose was just wrong about what year she thought it was. More than that, they didn't actually dunk people in 1690s Salem to see if they were a witch, ****_or_**** burn them at the stake, though I am pretty sure they used stocks. Basically I'm utilising my creative license and just writing some exaggerated, romanticised witch trails that are a lot less serious and will hopefully be pretty humorous in the end.**

_Martha_

_Female Body Inspectors_

As if this was what she wanted from today. As _if_ she wanted to be back in the dark ages in a town that stank of dung and injustice, watching a presumably innocent girl get hung. From the way she silently cried, standing on the gallows on her lonesome, Martha assumed all hope was lost. All pleas had gone ignored. Maybe she'd even confessed, not knowing she would face execution.

Incidentally enough, a further thing annoyed her, by way of Rose Tyler's abandonment. Indeed, she didn't want to watch a young girl die, but her name was called out by a middle-aged man with a stupid wig on from a scroll of paper and a black-clad surly fiend pulled a lever and dropped her through the wooden floor where she writhed and twisted in the air, and Martha turned to Mickey for comfort. Clara looked at the floor. Nobody else was there. No, Martha didn't want to watch her die, but she did, and the other three slipped away. Rose had been wrong with the date, as well, it was the year before, June 10th. Raucous people in the crowds cheered aggressively with a drunken ardour, passionate frenzy, believing the girl, Bridget Bishop, to have committed some great evil. Martha knew that this girl was no Carrionite, too – they would be much harder to trap. You couldn't hang one of them by rope any more than you could hang Clara by one, they were escapologists as good as each other.

"Where did the others just go..?" Clara stared around.

"They've just left us!" Mickey protested instantly, and Martha made a disgruntled noise and let go of her husband's hand, angrily looking out for Amy or Jack or Rose. Rose dragged her out, and yet again Rose left her. It was a habit she must have picked up from the Doctor, surely. The Doctor was always leaving and losing people in random places. They'd ended up separated the very day that she met him, and used as a decoy to confuse the Judoon scanners and buy him more time to finish off a plasmavore – a venture he didn't even succeed in.

"What bastards," Clara complained, and an old woman in front of them turned around and gasped in horror. Clara, ever the bastion of unnecessary profanity (fat lot of good that literature degree she'd been preaching about twenty minutes ago did her), just shrugged and asked, "What?"

"A woman should not be using language like that!" the elderly woman, a hag, Martha would say, told her sharply, spitting a little from yellow, crooked teeth. Her breath was strong and smelt like cured meat and mixed with the stink of animal waste products, Martha felt ill. Clara flinched.

"She can use whatever language she likes," Mickey defended Clara, in a bout of rare comradery never seen much on the TARDIS.

"Someone ought to wash her mouth out with soap," the woman snarled.

"Someone ought to wash _your_ mouth out with soap by the smell of things," Clara countered, and the woman gasped, "I'll do it myself if you want. I'm always a slut for women's mouths." Martha rolled her eyes. The woman looked like she might be sick, and shuffled away indignantly, Clara watching her go with a hand on her hips.

"Does everything that comes out of your mouth _have_ to be gay?"

"Well, the things that go _into_ my mouth are often gay, and I've always hated double standards," Clara said, watching the woman leave and drag her feet through the dirty streets of Salem. It was hot, too, was the worst part. Not some chill autumn day, or an early notion of spring, it was June and the skies were clear and the grime around them was baking hot and kicking up a dreadful stink.

"I want a look at that girl's body," Martha said, craning her neck to try and see what was happening to the corpse. She had stopped twitching now, Bridget Bishop, and was just about dead.

"And the things _I _say are gay," Clara scoffed sarcastically. Mickey nearly laughed, but Martha was unamused, but Clara sighed and asked a proper question a second later, "Why? What are you hoping to find?"

"I don't know, a pentagram drawn on her back?" Martha suggested uselessly, "Some sort of forensic evidence. If she's really not a human, she might… revert to some other form. The Carrionites disguised themselves. Any physical evidence. How much do you know about these trials, then?" Martha started pushing her way through the crowd as they moved in the opposite direction.

"It's a pretty exaggerated play," Clara said, "But, uh, the girls afflicted were supposed to have fits? I needed to do context research, but you're asking me to think back about five years in my life… Something about them being worse than epilepsy, supposedly? They never found a cause. But that girl's not one of the afflicted, she's one of the accused. You'd have to find one of _them_ to take a look at."

"Don't suppose you know the names of any of them?" Mickey asked her hopefully. Clara squinted like she was straining her memory as they pushed through smelly people on that scorching summer day. It must be just after noon. The execution had had a good turnout, though. Martha didn't know if that was good or bad.

"Uh… yeah, Elizabeth Parris. She's the daughter of Reverend Parris, the minister right now. She and this other girl, Abigail something-or-other, were responsible for most of the deaths. Miller totally overdid it, but what can you expect from a piece of drama with a socio-political background of McCarthyism?"

"Of what?" Mickey asked.

"You know, the idea behind the Red Scares, both of them. The play's about communism. It was written in the Fifties, it's irrelevant right now," Clara said. They broke through the edges of the people, who had started to separate when they noticed how weirdly the trio were dressed, to get at the people crowding the body. A weeping cluster of a mere few Martha assumed were family, then there was the executioner and the man with the stupid hat.

"Excuse me, can I get a look at that body? I'm a doctor," Martha called. A pause, and she was met with laughter, and she scowled.

"Hang on," Clara told her, searching in the pockets of the jacket she was wearing. Martha had never seen her wear that jacket before.

"Whose clothes are you wearing?" she asked.

"This jacket is Thirteen's, because my bloody husband didn't bother to throw one of those at me this morning," Clara grumbled, "I've gotten him back, though, because I've stolen… ha-ha… this." She triumphantly pulled out a leather wallet. The Doctor's psychic paper.

"What if Thirteen has something you're not meant to see in that coat?" Mickey asked her.

"No, she emptied her pockets," Clara said, a ringing tone of disappointment in her voice, like she had been intending to search it for any damning evidence about her future, but it seemed her wife was too careful for that, even if she _was_ giving her clothes. Nevertheless, the smell of cinnamon wafting off the jacket was much more pleasant than the smell of shit wafting off the ground, "They're transdimensional, though," she passed the paper to Martha, the three of them getting scrutinised by all the 'official' folk dotted about, "I have the Helix handset with me, too, so if you get that body carted off somewhere private, we can scan it. See if there really _is_ anything dodgy going on."

Martha held up her psychic paper resentfully to the stupid-wigged-man, who over-exaggeratedly stooped on the gallows to read it. It took him a while, too; whether he was just a slow reader or he was reading whatever the psychic said multiple times, she didn't know, but he recoiled eventually with a look of indignant disbelief.

"We must allow them to look at the body, George," the wig-man said to the executioner, "This paper states that they are experts in Christian practices of witch exorcisms, and are to be allowed privacy, else the witch's soul will be in turmoil and will continue to haunt the afflicted from beyond the grave." _Really_, Martha thought, _the paper said all that?_ Well, who was she to argue? They'd just acquired themselves a dead body to scan. As long as none of them did anything stupid to muck it up now…


	371. Voodoo Doll

_Rose_

_Voodoo Doll_

As soon as they heard the name 'Bridget Bishop,' they were off, she, Jack and Amy, to find this girl's house before the place was swept clean of any witchy evidence or before the family, whom Rose assumed were the sullen lot weeping in front of the gallows, got back and told them to clear out. The streets were mainly empty, those not at the execution indoors and hiding, but the time vortex was doing that rare thing where a silky, golden path wove its way along the ground, visible to Rose's eyes only, leading them to wherever they were supposed to be.

"Be careful of your eyes," Amy warned her. As far as eyes were concerned, she had a bit of a dilemma, which was that glowing eyes would give her away as a 'witch' if there ever was one in Salem, Massachusetts, but sunglasses hadn't been invented yet. She also couldn't check her phone to see if her eyes were a funny colour. Sure, they might flick between shades of brown, blue, grey and green, and maybe a dark amber didn't look _too_ freakish, but it was the _weird_ colours they might go that worried her. Such as presently, where, she was sure, her eyes were gold to match the pathway on the dirty cobbles.

The houses were all made of wood and the streets were all narrow and still terraced and dark, and it really was like a bizarre version of artist's impressions of Britain at this time. To think, Rose thought, the Great Fire of London had only been thirty years ago. In fact, thirty years ago, the plague was still ravaging the capital city. She thought she'd read somewhere that they still had the plague in modern America, and thought that was crazy and hardly believed it.

"Well, if anybody shows up," Rose said to Amy, remarking on the empty streets, "I'll close my eyes and pretend to be blind." It wasn't much of a plan, but she'd rather not be hung, or dunk, or pressed, or burned at the stake, or even hung, drawn and quartered. She didn't know if the people of Salem _did_ hang, draw and quarter people anymore, but she didn't want to find out. As far as she was concerned, this was a borderline medieval time period, which meant a very real fear of medieval torture techniques, and she didn't want to find out if people still got roasted alive over a spit or stretched so far their joints dislocated. She felt sick just _thinking_ about that last one. She'd dislocated her wrist before, when she was much younger, and she didn't want to relive that experience with every single joint in her body, the pain would wipe her out.

Rose led them up to a house where somebody had graffitied the word _WITCH_ on the door in all capitals in some sort of white paint, and was reminded of the time someone wrote _BAD WOLF_ on the side of the TARDIS, many years ago now, and the Ninth Doctor had forced the boy to scrub it off. Tentatively and not wanting to just walk in on a mourning family, she knocked on the door, and they all paused in wait for somebody answering. It seemed that, apart from them getting dumped right in the middle of the witch trials, luck was on their side, because the house was empty. But the door was still locked.

"Do either of you know how to pick a lock?" Amy asked Jack or Rose. Rose just shrugged.

"Sure," Jack said, waving the two women out of the way and standing in front of the door, "It's all in the timing," he said, and then he slammed his foot into the wood and just kicked it down, and it swung into the house on its hinges and bashed into the wall. Rose and Amy both jumped.

"Right, because that totally wasn't a bad idea, or anything," Amy muttered.

"Well what else could we do? Were you gonna just tell it to open?" Jack retorted, and Amy grimaced, but followed him when he led them into the Bishop residence nevertheless.

Rose found very quickly that she didn't know what was and wasn't a normal thing to find in a New England house in the 1690s. Initially she was surprised that there was no fridge, before remembering there wasn't even electricity. Amy commented that maybe the abundance of candles pointed to ritualistic behaviours of the condemned, but Jack told her that there wasn't exactly any other way to light the house, and were they just supposed to sit in the dark the whole time?

Through the house the three of them crawled, upstairs and downstairs, Rose shocked by the lack of lavatory and wondering where they went to the toilet. Outhouses, presumably. She was really hoping there wasn't a grim trench or a cesspit out in the back garden, though, if there even was a back garden. Martha had told her once that people all defecated and urinated in buckets and threw it outside of windows, one of the many times she reminisced meeting Shakespeare, because apparently she'd almost had a load of human waste thrown onto her head within just a minute of stepping out of the TARDIS for the very first time. They shouted 'gardyloo,' Martha had said.

Searching upstairs drawers, however, Rose actually found something that might be useful. To her Twenty-First Century mind full of pop culture and old superstitions poked fun at for jokes now, it looked like a voodoo doll. It was creepy and made of an awful lot of string, but she couldn't really rule out the possibility that people in the Seventeenth Century just had terrible taste in children's toys. Children's toys were always creepy. She remembered a marionette her mother had got for her once when she was a toddler, and she'd cried until it had been removed from the room. She never saw it again, but had heard Jackie call her 'ungrateful' a few times. She didn't care, the thing was terrifying, just like all those other antique dolls, and rocking horses. She couldn't be in the same room as a rocking horse without keeping a careful watch on it to make sure it didn't start moving of its own accord – a sure sign of ghosts. She'd never really met a real ghost, and didn't quite understand why they liked toys so much, but she knew full well that if she found one she wouldn't stick around to ask it what it was doing playing with a spinning top.

"Oi, you two, come here," Rose called loudly, holding the creepy puppet-doll-thing in her hands. Maybe they shouldn't have abandoned Martha, she might have known what it was. She'd met more witches than the rest of them combined. Jack appeared, Amy preoccupied somewhere else, and Rose showed it to him.

"Jeez, what's that thing? A voodoo doll?"

"Dunno," she said, shrugging, holding it out to him, and he took it and held it up to the light coming through the window. The house was sweltering and didn't smell very nice. She hated going back in time to places before they invented air fresheners, or toilets.

"Wonder what'd happen if we stabbed it," Jack mused.

"I wouldn't if I were you," Rose said, "I swear the Doctor's told me that voodoo dolls are real before. Called it a 'DNA replication module,' or something."

"Yeah, but it doesn't look like there's anybody's hair on it," Jack said, "Looks like a kid's toy."

"I hope so," Rose said. Then Amy called out that she had found something downstairs and Jack and Rose, upon deciding their brief search of the upper floors had conclusively found little more than a child's plaything, went back down to find her in the kitchen sniffing pots full of stuff.

"What do you reckon this is?" she said, holding a pot of familiar leaves out for Rose to sniff.

"Smells like parsley," Rose told her.

"It's just herbs," Jack said.

"That's what I've never got," Amy began, looking pointedly at Jack, "Why do Americans pronounce it like 'erbs'? It has an H."

"Yeah, I know what you mean," Rose agreed with her, and they looked at Jack like he was the font of all knowledge when it came to the particulars of American accents. The people outside in Salem still sounded English to Rose. She supposed they just hadn't had enough time to develop their own way of speaking yet.

"I don't know," Jack said defensively, taking another of the pots up from the counter and smelling it, then he winced and coughed.

"What!? What is it? Is it poison!?" Amy asked immediately, and he stared at her with disbelief.

"No, it's just garlic. Pretty strong garlic, is all," Jack said, putting a lid back on it, "These _herbs_-" he pronounced the H that time to spite them both, "-are nothing more than cookery supplies."

"Well, wait til you see the upside-down pentagram burned mysteriously into the garden," Amy said, and Rose's jaw dropped.

"There's an upside-down pentagram burned mysteriously into the garden!?" she exclaimed.

"No, I was being sarcastic," Amy shook her head.

"Oh."

"There's nothing in this house. Zip. Nada. Waste of time. No evidence of witchcraft or aliens at all," Jack said.

"By god!" somebody shrieked from the doorway into the house, which was a very small house and didn't allow much by way of separate rooms. They all looked around to see a cluster of people blotting out the light coming through the door. A man, with other, larger, official-looking men behind him, "What are you doing in my house!?" Mr Bishop, then, Rose assumed. She didn't know his first name. The other men who carried an air of pompousness around with them like a bad smell (incidentally, they also carried a _genuine_ bad smell) pushed past him to get into the house, and the three crewmembers backed away.

"Look at that! She's holding a poppet!" one of them declared, pointing an accusatory hand at Rose Tyler and the doll in her hand.

"Oh, shit," she said accidentally, and they gasped at her profanity.

"Is it any wonder that those who dress so provocatively are clearly dabbling in _the dark arts_!?"

"We are dabbling in no such thing!" Rose shouted at them.

"Gah! Her eyes! They change to be the same shade of crimson as the Devil himself!" another of the three men, all of them clustered in front of Mr Bishop, probably there for exactly the same reason the three of them were, to look for evidence of witchcraft, yelled, "That woman is a witch, by god, I know it to be true!"

"Great going, Rose," Jack said to her.

"I am not a witch!" Rose protested, but they were coming to grab her, and she was stuck, because she didn't know what to do. She could probably teleport away, or hit them, but hitting them might result in them being killed. Maybe they did already think she was a witch, but did she really want to give them _more_ reason to think that? She supposed she could lie and say she had a very rare form of conjunctivitis that made her irises horribly inflamed. Did they have conjunctivitis in the dark ages? "I – I – I – _she's_ the witch! Look at her, with those herbs!" Rose accused Amy.

"Me!? I'm not a… I'm not…" Amy fell into a trance to the great alarm of Jack and Rose, her eyes suddenly shimmering the brightest shade of silver Rose had ever seen, and she stumbled sideways into Jack's arms. Everybody, even those restraining Rose, froze for the long thirty seconds it took for Amy to come out of one of her visions, her premonitions. "I hate those visions…"

"A vision!" shouted one of the men, "The woman is having visions! Visions of the future, no less! She must be a witch!" They came and grabbed Amy, and though she might frantically order them to stop, her persuasive powers were so hit and miss they had absolutely no impact.

"Hey!" Jack shouted after them.

"What?" one asked him.

"…I'm a witch as well," he said, "I… lay with other men. As I would a woman. I'm obviously a witch." He was grabbed as well, and the three of them dragged out of the Bishop residence, Rose dropping the poppet as she went.

"Could you have picked a worse time to have a vision?" Rose asked Amy sourly as they were dragged through the streets of Salem with people watching them from every direction. Of course, a bunch of weirdos show up and half of them are accused of witchcraft within the first hour. At this rate, she was going to be dead by supper. Amy said nothing. "What did you even see?"

"It's pizza for dinner," she said bitterly.

"What!? Oh, great, we're gonna die, but at least there's pizza for dinner!? Bloody hell!"

"I don't know about you two," Jack called from somewhere behind Rose, "But this guy's strong arms are making me dangerously aroused." Amy told him to shut up.


	372. Ding Dong The Witch Is Dead

_Martha_

_Ding Dong The Witch Is Dead_

Bridget Bishop's stale carcass was lugged into the world's most inappropriate place to keep a human corpse - the back of a butcher's shop. Nobody was going to make cuts of meat from her, not if Martha had anything to do with it, but it was apparently just the only place with a private room and a table. And besides, she muttered something warning about consuming the flesh of witch, that whoever did it would die within a week. It also stank though, and there was a dead pig hanging in the corner. Mickey eyed it suspiciously, like it might do something.

Staring at a pig head on the side nearby, Clara said, "It's like _Lord of the Flies _in here," and Mickey laughed. Martha was too busy trying to deduce how to use Helix's white, oval-shaped handset now they'd gotten some privacy from the much too nosy residents of Salem Town to pay attention. "My sister had to do an autopsy yesterday."

"Really? How'd that go? I saw the job she did on Jenny's eyes, she's not the most delicate operator," Martha remarked distantly, holding the Helix-thingamajig up to the high window to see it better. On the window clusters of black flies were gathered - it was a scene straight from _The Exorcist_. And the smell, god, the _smell_, it was putrid, worse than the muck of the streets outside, just rotten, deacying meat. She felt like she was going to be sick.

"They had to use kitchen utensils, Rory was telling me about it," Mickey told her, and she winced.

"Sounds nasty. I'm glad I wasn't roped into it. Anyway, I'm not doing an autopsy. I can't in a place like this. I doubt we need to, anyway, it's not like we have to establish a cause of death," Martha glanced at Bridget Bishop's face when she said that, purple bruising around her neck and a blue pallor to her face. Her tongue was black and swollen and stuck between equally dark lips, eyelids puffy and closed, "I'm just going to scan, and hope we find something that way."

"I think you just tell it to scan," Mickey said to her.

"Scan the dead body," Martha ordered. Nothing happened. She felt like an idiot.

"You have to start with 'Helix' or it doesn't know who you're talking to," Clara informed her, leaning on the table that the body was on. As soon as she touched it, she frowned and lifted her hands up, finding them covered in blood.

"Gross," Mickey said, and she stared at her hands. Then she phased them and shook them a little and the blood splattered onto the floor, "Do you have to shower anymore? If you can phase?"

"Have you ever been around my sister? That girl smells funky, and _she _never looks dirty. I heard she's started showering, though," Clara said.

"You have the world's most passive superpowers," Martha told her, "They all seem to revolve around getting you out of trouble."

"Yeah, and a fat lot of good they do. Just last week a vampire hit me around the head with a cane and killed me."

"Helix, scan this dead body," Martha sighed, holding Helix out over the corpse. To her surprise and relief, it lit up blue and started speaking to them.

"_Affirmative, Mrs Jones_," Helix said.

"'Mrs Jones' makes me sound like my mother," Martha complained, and Mickey was amused.

"I've always liked Francine."

"_Don't_ call my mother Francine," Martha told him for the millionth time, and he laughed childishly. He was such a kid sometimes, and she shook her head right as Helix, in the midst of scanning, asked her what she would like to be called, "Just 'Martha'," she answered.

"_Affirmative, Martha_."

"Is your mum hot, or something?" Clara asked, and Martha stared at her, and she looked back innocently.

"Has anybody ever told you that you're a pervert?" Martha said, and Clara made an offended face, even though Martha knew full well multiple people had called her a pervert, and it was a frequent adjective used in the description of Clara Oswald. She crossed her arms as Helix completed its scan of the body.

"_Human, f__emale, deceased, aged sixty-one, died of strangulation, three sexual partners, one child, acute ergotoxicosis_," Helix said.

"That thing can tell how many people you've slept with?" Mickey asked, "How does it even know that?"

"I can't believe that's what you focus on, rather than the acute ergotoxicosis," Martha said, then she paused and shook her head, "Actually, I can... I have to look at her feet..." Martha passed the Helix handheld to her husband, and went to try and take off Bridget Bishop's shoes to look for more symptoms of ergotoxicosis. Neither Mickey nor Clara cared about this new information, but the former was suddenly having fun playing with the handheld.

"Helix, scan this body," Mickey said next to Martha, who glanced around for a moment to see Mickey holding Helix up to Clara, on the other side of table with the body on it.

"Oi!" she protested as the blue light scanned her. Martha went back to removing the shoes.

The smell of dead woman feet was one she was not likely to forget, but she'd seen far worse things before than what she found within Bridget Bishop's boots, even if she _did _end up distracted for a minute as Helix declared in its smooth voice, "_Unknown species, f__emale, alive, aged twenty-four, sixty-three sexual partners, traces of chlamydia fourfold, gonorrhoea once, minor traces of lung and liver damage, one tattoo_." Martha and Mickey both gawked at Clara, who for a second looked horrified, then rearranged her face to a flat expression. She shrugged.

"How the hell have you screwed _sixty-three _people!?" Martha exclaimed in horror, "How is that even possible!? Where do you find the time!?"

"...I mean, I thought it was less than that. I defintely thought it was around fifty. I mean, I'm only a baker's dozen out..."

"Well I wouldn't be surprised if a dozen of them _were _bakers. That's ridiculous. It's literally insane. How is it possible to be that much of a slag!?" Martha demanded.

"Hey!" Clara shouted.

"And how come you're an 'unknown species'?"

"Maybe she's a witch," Mickey suggested jokingly.

"You two are probably unknown species too, you know. It's because of the superpowers. We're mutants."

"Maybe it just doesn't recognise you because you've had chlamydia four times?" Mickey asked her, "And what tattoo? You have a tattoo?"

"Yeah, what tattoo?" Martha added.

"My life is my life! I don't have to tell you two. And don't either of you dare tell anyone my damn sexual history, okay? It's private."

"As if anything's private to a girl who's shagged nearly seventy people," Mickey said.

"Sixty-three is not 'nearly seventy'! And it's not even that bad. It's only an average of... of... of seven a year. Seven a year's, like, hardly anything," Clara argued, "And I'm not even ashamed, you're both jealous."

"Oh, yeah, I'm totally jealous of somebody who's had chlamydia four times and gonorrhoea once," Martha muttered sarcastically, rolling her eyes.

"I didn't even know I had that last one," Clara shrugged, "Shit, should I go around and call people and warn them? I should probably tell Other Me... Do you think Time Lords can contract STIs?"

"Maybe, didn't syphilis come from llamas or something?" Mickey said, prompting Martha to interrupt this dialogue and change the subject.

"Right, anyway, put that stupid thing away before it causes anymore trouble." Mickey passed Helix back to Clara, who stuck it back in her wife's transdimensional pockets.

"So what's ergotoxicosis?" Mickey asked. So he _had_ been listening, she thought to herself somewhat warmly. If she wasn't so caught up in pulling vile socks off the feet of a dead purported witch, she might have smiled.

"The result of long-term ergot poisoning," she answered, motioning to the feet, "Gangrene, see? It's a symptom. This woman has been ingesting fungal alkaloids for... god, months, I'd say."

"What's an alkaloid..?" Mickey inquired.

Before Martha could explain, the very men who had originally brought the corpse to the back room of the butcher's and made the butcher himself and his scrawny apprentice clear off returned through the door, stupid-wig-man in the lead.

"We've given you all the time we can," he said gruffly, "People need their meat."

"Clara especially," Mickey said snidely, "She loves meat."

"Oh, hilarious. I get enough of this from my husband every day, you know," she said coldly, meaning inappropriate jokes about her sex life. Martha stayed out of it. The last thing she wanted was to be in the middle of a feud between her husband and... and Clara.

"Enough what? Meat?" Mickey continued to joke. There was something about the atmosphere of living on the TARDIS the way they all did that made everybody suddenly rediscover the hilarity of things they thought amusing when they were twelve. As the months went by, they all regressed in years and in stages if maturity. Soon they'd be sat around laughing at fart jokes.

"Hilarious," Clara said flatly, "No, really, Mickey, that has to be the absolute _funniest_... funny... ugh..." Clara all of sudden reached to hold her head, which was when, mid-sentence, the unthinkable happened. In the presence of three self-proclaimed witch hunters, Clara teleported three feet to her left in a mass of black smoke, that curled around in the air and left a trail from where she had just been.

"Witch! She's a witch!" shouted stupid-wig-man.

"What the hell'd you do that for!?" Martha shouted at her, "You don't see me going around making stuff blow up willy-nilly!" As Martha said that, the decapitated pig's head that had been sitting on another wooden chopping table nearby and watching them for the last fifteen minutes exploded. It exploded, and reddish goo went _everywhere_. It went on Martha, on Mickey, on Clara, and even in the white wig of the idiot in the doorway.

"Are you sure about that?" Clara said, choosing to be sarcastic rather than offer an explanation for what had just happened. Damned power mutations, Martha thought to herself, Clara's dreadfully limited teleportation and her own ability to make things spontaneously combust had never once been useful, or willing. She couldn't do it on command, it just happened. All of the mutations were utterly unpredictable like that.

"They're both witches! My god, John, they're both witches!" another man addressed stupid-wig-man.

"Quiet, Samuel," the man now known as John said, "They were with those other three earlier, watching the execution, don't you remember? Then they split up. These three are probably all witches, as well."

"Oh, are you shitting me? Those idiots got themselves caught _too_?" Clara asked in disbelief.

"Only a witch could utter such profanities!" Samuel cried.

"Fuck you," Clara said in response. Then the three of them were grabbed and hauled off, and none of them thought it would be wise to make an escape attempt. At least their investigation of Bridget's body had actually gleaned some results, though.


	373. Wicked Witch Of The TARDIS

_Wicked Witch Of The TARDIS_

* * *

_Trial of six defendants on charge of witchcraft on the day Tuesday, 10th of June, 1692, in Salem Town. Defendants are AMELIA WILLIAMS, CLARA OSWALD, CAPTAIN JACK HARKNESS, MARTHA JONES, MICKEY SMITH &amp; ROSE TYLER. Chief Magistrate WILLIAM STOUGHTON, Crown's Attorney prosecutor THOMAS NEWTON, clerk STEPHEN SEWALL._

* * *

(Defendants are lined up on the wall opposing the jury, hands bound by rope on the grounds that they are a danger to the court if they were to be allowed full movement. Defendants requested to be tried together. Silence falls in the court as STOUGHTON bangs gavel.)

STOUGHTON  
Order in the court, hear ye.

(The room is quiet.)

STOUGHTON  
These six who named themselves WILLIAMS, OSWALD, HARKNESS, JONES, SMITH and TYLER have been brought to this court today under charge of witchcraft, a crime which many have already been accused of and are facing sentences for presently. In light of evidence from PARRIS and HATHORNE, it should be place in record that these trials have been brought to urgency by the nature of their testimonies. These trusted members of Salem Town and Salem Village have since declared they saw one of the accused shift their bodily self unnaturally some few yards in another direction, clouded by smoke a mere few hours gone. Furthermore, one of them is claimed to have suffered a vision of times yet to pass before us, whilst another is accused with having the guile and ability to cause the vast expulsion of air within the head of a hog, causing an explosion akin to gunpowder within _King &amp; Fisher's Butchershop_, whilst one of them is purported to have eyes in the same crimson shade as the D-vil Himself. Finally, one of them, though presenting no evidence himself alike to these other claims, has declared himself to be nothing less than a witch this very day, and last of all he who consorts with the creatures of S-tan will be treated as equally guilty in this court of the Lord's law. Court is in session.

(When STOUGHTON lists the crimes of the accused there is a chaos which ensues within the court that is aggressively shouted down by multiple male persons.)

STOUGHTON  
Would the woman such named, AMELIA WILLIAMS, declare herself to be she?

(The tall redhead in the line of the accused, standing almost at the six foot mark, steps forward the tiniest of amounts, the feet of the six chained together.)

WILLIAMS  
That's me.

NEWTON  
Is it, or is it not true, that you on this day, AMELIA WILLIAMS, did have yourself a vision of our future?

WILLIAMS  
Sort of.

NEWTON  
What is your meaning?

WILLIAMS  
It wasn't your personal future, or the future of Salem, it was the future of dinner.

NEWTON  
Whose dinner?

WILLIAMS  
Mine.

NEWTON  
So you think yourself innocent enough to declare that you will indeed be having a dinner of your own, you may not in fact be dead by hanging come suppertime?

WILLIAMS  
I hope not, it was supposed to be – (the accused speaks an unknown word and there are gasps within the court.)

HATHORNE  
What word of sorcery is this which the accused dares to utter? What spell of S-tan?

STOUGHTON  
Silence, HATHORNE.

COURT REPORTER  
Would the accused care to spell this incantation?

WILLIAMS  
P-I-Z-Z-A. It's not an incantation, it's bread dough with cheese and tomato on it.

NEWTON  
This strange word is a food? What kind of blasphemous food? From whence does this concoction arise from?

WILLIAMS  
Erm, Italy?

(Collective gasps within the court.)

HATHORNE  
Proof of her evil! She is eating the food of the Italian Catholics, the very food of the Pope, can there be no greater proof?

WILLIAMS  
Since when did the Pope consort with the D-vil? Isn't that, like, the opposite of what a Pope is supposed to do?

OSWALD  
They're all protestants, Puritans, like Cromwell. Don't you know anything about history?

STOUGHTON  
The present is not history, and the court will only deign to speak to one of the accused at a time, you shall await your turn. Enough of this talk of Catholic food, the woman says she is yet to eat any such thing as familiar with it as she clearly is. Did you or did you not have this vivid premonition?

WILLIAMS  
I did.

NEWTON  
So you are a witch?

WILLIAMS  
Maybe. I'm not sure. Are witches real?

NEWTON  
She who sees the future is obviously a dabbler in witchcraft! Do you admit to consorting with these other agents of S-tan? These enemies of the Lord God himself and the Holy Spirit?

WILLIAMS  
I don't have anything against God or the Holy Spirit, personally.

NEWTON  
But you admit that it is possible for somebody to be against God? For such a treasonous creature to exist on this Earth that belongs to the Father himself?

WILLIAMS  
The Earth doesn't belong to anybody, it was formed fourteen billion years ago after the big bang when gravity pulled loads of rocks together.

HATHORNE  
More foul words! She speaks with the same ignorance as any astronomer who claims there to be other worlds aside from this one, worlds in the sky, no less!

HARKNESS  
Oh, the irony.

STOUGHTON  
Enough! Do you, AMELIA WILLIAMS, on this day, the 10th of June, 1692, admit to your guilt and your being a witch?

(WILLIAMS seems to sigh as if she is bored)

WILLIAMS  
Go on, then. I suppose so.

STOUGHTON  
She who interrupts, though coming next alphabetically, shall be forced to suffer her admission of guilt last of all in the line, MISS CLARA OS-

OSWALD  
It's 'Mrs.'

STOUGHTON  
Yet again, thy rudeness knows no bounds. She shall be punished by going last of all. May the court take note of this woman's free admission of her guilt of being a witch, and may a CAPTAIN JACK HARKNESS please step forward and explain hisself, upon his claims earlier on that he was, in fact, a witch.

(WILLIAMS steps back into the line as HARKNESS, a tall and handsome man, steps forward. HARKNESS winks at the COURT REPORTER, that is, myself transcribing. What a lustrous foulness.)

NEWTON  
Are you, on this day, one CAPTAIN HARKNESS?

HARKNESS  
Sure am.

NEWTON  
A captain where? With whom? A captain with the land or with the sea?

HARKNESS  
A captain of the sky.

HATHORNE  
The sky? Impossible. This man is perhaps deranged.

SEWALL  
Perhaps witches can fly?

STOUGHTON  
Fly? Witches? Is this true, CAPTAIN? Can you, of your own will, fly?

HARKNESS  
Nah.

STOUGHTON  
Then what is your meaning?

HARKNESS  
I'm from the future.

HATHORNE  
The future! Nothing so ridiculous. This man, I say, is deluded! This man is under the power of these witches gathered around him and is being forced to declare his guilt.

STOUGHTON  
Enough, HATHORNE, or you shall be ejected from this court upon this day.

NEWTON  
Good sir, I would hate to be the foil of a military man, I was a military man myself, so I must ask if you are speaking of your own will, or if you really are talking under power of these heathens around you?

HARKNESS  
I'm a witch.

(Gasps within the court)

NEWTON  
How to prove it?

HARKNESS  
I can't die. I'll never die.

NEWTON  
Never die? How can this be true?

HARKNESS  
One of these women has bewitched me so and made me into a witch myself. It's pretty cool, though.

NEWTON  
'Cool'? Cool in what sense, CAPTAIN?

HARKNESS  
Awesome.

SEWALL  
Why, this man is clearly suffering a delusion, this man cannot possibly be prosecuted like his witch friends.

NEWTON  
If the court would allow it, I would like the break the general order and question the second man, SMITH, to see if he is fallen under these same wiles as the CAPTAIN?

HARKNESS  
No need. These people are all witches, I say! I have been suffering with them for an eternity now! Only myself and AMELIA WILLIAMS are truly not guilty.

NEWTON  
So it is declared! He is broken from his spell! Which one of them is the ring leader?

HARKNESS  
The ring leader? Why, CLARA OSWALD is the ring leader. She is a succubus, a fiend of a sexual nature. That woman did seduce my wife in this month just past.

(The defendants, minus WILLIAMS all do protest energetically against this claim from CAPTAIN HARKNESS, as though he has betrayed them quite greatly in his giving these accusations. This further lends to the theory that the CAPTAIN was under a spell.)

NEWTON  
Your WIFE? This WOMAN? And another? This is a blasphemy the likes of which the court has never seen!

OSWALD  
Your wife was seduced entirely of her own volition, and not even by me!

HARKNESS  
This woman is a trickster who can multiply herself a thousandfold.

OSWALD  
Stop speaking like you're one of them, oh my G-d.

STOUGHTON  
How dare she use the Lord's name in vain in this house of God!

OSWALD  
P-ss off.

NEWTON  
Clearly, this woman is a witch. No normal woman could ever be so rude and vile.

OSWALD  
Vile!? He made a bet with his wife in the first place that she couldn't sleep with me. HE'S to blame.

HARKNESS  
I was acting under the witch's curse, as was my innocent wife.

OSWALD  
EX-wife, she left you.

HARKNESS  
For a trickster! I beseech you, people of Salem, to find this woman guilty of witchcraft and sentence her to be hanged this very evening. For there are only specific ways to kill these certain witches, for example, MICKEY SMITH would only ever die from being dunked in a river and kept on the lake floor for many hours of time.

NEWTON  
Do you, MICKEY SMITH, on this day, the 10th of June, 1692, admit to your guilt and your being a witch?

SMITH  
Uh, I guess so.

NEWTON  
A witch, I say! He is a witch! Onwards, we must move, AMELIA WILLIAMS and CAPTAIN HARKNESS now cleared of guilt. You, MARTHA JONES, step forward. She who made the pig head explode this luncheon!

JONES  
JACK's a liar.

NEWTON  
A liar, you say?

JONES  
Only AMY isn't a witch. The rest of us are definitely witches. Including JACK. Try to kill him, I dare you, and see for yourself, the man will not die.

HARKNESS  
Because of the spell of a witch.

OSWALD  
Is not the instrument of a witch over a long enough period of time an evil unto itself? JACK betrays us, but it doesn't prove him innocent.

HARKNESS  
How dare ye!

TYLER  
Why is everyone talking so bl—dy weird?

HATHORNE  
This woman swears, therefore she must be a witch.

TYLER  
Great.

SMITH  
My wife is right, AMY is the only one not a witch.

NEWTON  
Wife? How be she your wife, whenst the pair of you do not share a second name? Would she not be MARTHA SMITH? This is heresy.

WILLIAMS  
It's because they're witches.

SEWALL  
Witches, of course. All immoral persons are witches. Perhaps gives her the freedom to reach out to men in their dreams and impose herself upon them.

HARKNESS  
Or women, in the case of CLARA OSWALD, this serial layer of all the sexes.

HATHORNE  
A demon, she must surely be.

NEWTON  
Do you, MARTHA JONES, on this day, the 10th of June, 1692, admit to your guilt and your being a witch?

JONES  
I do.

HARKNESS  
This woman must be burned at a stake to be properly rid of. Fire is MARTHA's only weakness, she is only susceptible to heat. If I am to be executed, they are all to be executed with me.

JONES  
Seriously, JACK, stop talking like that.

STOUGHTON  
Make it so, HATHORNE, I rid you of this courthouse to make these execution arrangements for the witches.

(HATHORNE gets up from his seat and hurriedly leaves with SAMUEL PARRIS following him)

NEWTON  
ROSE TYLER, step forward, please, and do declare to the court whether these allegations of your party are to be true.

(TYLER steps out of the line, unhappy)

NEWTON  
What is this to be heard from our just left witnesses about your eyes turning the brightest of scarlets?

TYLER  
My eyes go all sorts of colours, not just red.

NEWTON  
Aghast! How can this be so? Art thou a witch?

HARKNESS  
A witch that must be killed by pressing.

TYLER  
Shut up, Jack, you're just as much of a witch as the rest of us. Except AMY. Yes, I'm a witch, the five of us are witches, only AMY is innocent. What's pressing?

STOUGHTON  
Pressing would be the crushing of the witch through the piling of larger and larger stones upon the victim.

TYLER  
Oh. (TYLER shrugs.) I suppose that sounds about right. What a good way to go.

NEWTON  
Do you support these allegations of CAPTAIN HARKNESS upon MRS OSWALD this day?

TYLER  
You mean that she seduced his wife? Technically it was a version of her from another world, not her herself. But she DOES get involved with loads of girls.

OSWALD  
What is this, everybody hates CLARA day?

WILLIAMS  
Every day is that.

(SMITH laughs.)

OSWALD  
Thanks.

NEWTON  
Do you, ROSE TYLER, on this day, the 10th of June, 1692, admit to your guilt and your being a witch?

TYLER  
Yes.

NEWTON  
That is confessions from all but two of the accused! Though, one of them is frequently proclaimed to be innocent of all fault.

OSWALD  
She is innocent. She didn't have any vision, it was just a trick, by ROSE. ROSE is always tricking people.

TYLER  
Rude.

OSWALD  
It's true.

TYLER  
Since when?

OSWALD  
Since H&amp;T

JONES  
Not this again… That rubbish got disbanded months ago.

OSWALD  
Yeah, good riddance, I say.

TYLER  
We fixed your marriage!

OSWALD  
With malicious scheming!

STOUGHTON  
Enough, enough! The accused are prohibited from addressing one another. NEWTON, finish your questioning.

NEWTON  
ROSE TYLER, did you orchestrate the vision of AMELIA WILLIAMS' in order to frame her as a witch on this day?

TYLER  
CLARA did.

OSWALD  
CLARA did not.

JONES  
Alright, fine, it was me, I made her have the vision. You two shut up.

STOUGHTON  
Then as I see it, AMELIA WILLIAMS is acquitted and found innocent of all wrongdoing, and may be allowed to leave the court.

(STOUGHTON bangs his gavel twice and there is uproar from those who disagree with his pardoning verdict)

STOUGHTON  
SEWALL, unlock those shackles from that poor innocent woman.

(SEWALL does exactly as he is asked by CHIEF MAGISTRATE STOUGHTON, and WILLIAMS proceeds to leave the court house as quickly as she seems able)

NEWTON  
Do you, CLARA OSWALD, on this day, the 10th of June, 1692, admit to your guilt and your being a witch?

OSWALD  
Yeah, I'm the best witch.

TYLER  
Sure you are.

OSWALD  
Shut up, ROSE.

NEWTON  
Then I put it to you, CHIEF MAGISTRATE STOUGHTON and the jury, that these five persons are all guilty of the heinous crime of witchcraft, and ought to all be executed!

TYLER  
But what if, instead of us being executed, we just sort of do this?

* * *

_The records from the court proceedings from 10.06.1692 do here end with no conclusion or evidence to the genuine execution of even existence of these six individuals. In historical circles, this document is considered often a hoax piece and a fabrication._


	374. Catcher In The Rye

_Rose_

_Catcher In The Rye_

Their daring escape had not quite gone to plan. It had _almost_ gone to plan, if it wasn't for Jack being a wildcard and accusing Clara of being a wife-stealing succubus. Rose and Clara might not be the best of friends, the latter may annoy her quite regularly, but she didn't really think Clara deserved that branding in front of almost the whole town of Salem, and it also wasn't even true. This Clara, Alpha Clara, had not done a thing to wrong Captain Jack. That was why they had all left Jack behind, the five or them. Rose could teleport out of her rope ties, Martha could burn them, and it had been Clara's job to phase herself, Mickey and Jack free too. The only reason they had worked so hard to get Amy let off was because she was the only one of them at risk of not being able to survive an execution. At least Jack had stuck to the plan of convincing the judge to sentence them to death in very particular ways, even if they had managed to escape (quite easily.) It was just good to cover all of your bases, Rose supposed. But Clara had not freed Jack, she had only freed Mickey, leaving Jack to suffer whatever fate they put him through. Perhaps, if the five of them were gone from him long enough, they might try multiple different methods to execute him, once they realised the man couldn't die.

As they ran full-speed through Salem Town, Rose couldn't say she really cared what happened to Jack right then. Jack, regardless, would be fine. Maybe news of his death in a myriad of gruesome fashions would please Jenny, anyway – after all, the last time they had split up, she'd killed him six times and got them all trapped on tour buses in the desert. Rose mainly found herself worrying that an angry mob might come after them with pitchforks and flaming torches.

"Where are we going!?" Amy shouted to Martha, at the helm of the group. It seemed, though, that Martha hadn't a clue.

"Find somewhere to hide!" Martha shouted back. There weren't the greatest amount of people following them. Possibly, they were shell-shocked, because considering Rose didn't believe one bit there were any witches at all in Salem, they'd just exhibited the finest display of witchcraft these New England pilgrims had ever before seen. They were probably caught up questioning Jack, anyway.

"In there!" Mickey, next to Martha, ordered them, and none of them were in any position to argue as he dove into a deserted stable. Well, it was deserted of _people_. They had just invaded the personal space of three very large horses, and it stank, but what else could they do? Rose decided that if any of these stallions or mares or whatever they were started acting up she might be forced to punch one of them. Imagine that, she thought to herself, punching a horse in the face. Crazy.

They all ducked down into the shadows as people ran past, and luckily nobody had seen them all run after meeting Amy outside of the courthouse where she had been waiting for them to cut loose. By this point, they were all pretty good at hiding from undesirable pursuers, and after just a minute of silence they all decided that they were temporarily free from the heat of the townspeople.

"You never finished explaining what ergotoxicosis was," Mickey said to Martha.

"What what is?" Amy asked, frowning.

"Ergotism," Martha said, "That woman, Bridget Bishop, we scanned her and found out she was suffering from ergotism, which can be convulsive or gangrenous, and she _definitely _had gangrene."

"Which means what?" Rose implored.

"It means that she's been consuming alkaloids you get from lysergic acid diethylamide," Martha said, "Or, you know, LSD to you lot."

"No need to patronise us. Why are you so sure none of us know what lysesr… lys… dietmide… what LSD stands for?" Rose questioned her. Martha raised her eyebrows at her in annoyance, and didn't even grace her with a proper response.

"So the people living in Salem are on LSD..? That's what you're saying?" Clara asked.

"No, LSD won't be invented until the 1960s," Martha said, "Look, LSD is made from the fungus _claviceps purpurea_, right? _Claviceps purpurea _is part of the ergoline family, it's the thing that causes ergotism. What is it that the afflicted women are supposed to do?"

"Have fits," Clara told her.

"Exactly, convulsive ergotism. Everyone in this town is probably suffering from it, because that fungus grows on rye, and they make cheap bread from rye," Martha explained, and Rose felt alarmingly lucky that they had a proper doctor with them for once. Martha was proving to be even more of an invaluable asset than the Doctor themselves. No doubt none of them knew the ingredients of hallucinogens and where they grew.

"Are you seriously telling us that the Salem Witch Trials happened because everybody was sort-of taking psychedelic drugs?" Clara asked incredulously.

"Well I don't know if any of them are hallucinating, I don't know much about ergotism when it isn't directly from LSD," Martha said, "Funnily enough, in our century, people don't tend to eat contaminated bread enough for their feet to start rotting. I think we should find the rye field and see."

"Leave it to me," Rose said. Now that everybody knew/thought she was a witch or some other kind of dabbler in the supernatural, she wasn't fussed about hiding her magically changing eyes anymore. Within a second, they had lit up gold, and a shimmering path like dust formed on the ground before her, "I'm definitely getting better at this human-waypoint thing. C'mon."

And so the quintet all left the horses behind and crept from the stables into the summer evening. It was humid and there were bugs everywhere, midges or mosquitos or flies or moths, everything. She wondered if they had fireflies in Massachusetts, then she also wondered if, with her gold pathway in front of her, she would even be able to notice any if they flew past her. She didn't even know at that moment whether or not she had ever even seen a firefly in person.

They all tiptoed through the dwindling light and the orange sky out of the boundaries of Salem, which was a considerably small town now that Rose got a look back at it. It had hardly any streets, though maybe she ought to take into consideration that she had always lived and worked in Twenty-First Century London, and it was almost like another planet. And she'd been to other planets, so she knew what she was talking about.

"Did they really burn witches at the stake?" Mickey asked.

"Not in Salem they didn't. They didn't dunk people, either," Clara said, "They did in Europe. Joan of Arc got burned at the stake for being a witch. But here they hanged all of them, except for this one bloke who got pressed to death. They _did_ press people." Pressing may have been Rose's fate. No doubt that she, the girl who stood in front of a train and stopped it so assuredly on its way to spread a plague throughout futuristic Britain, would easily survive a few boulders being placed on her. She could lift boulders as though they were marbles.

Clara talking more about this play she had studied years ago, Rose blocked out the conversation and focused instead on the gold trail only visible to her eyes. Every week, it seemed, she discovered some new ability the time vortex had to offer her. Teleportation, visions, wayfinding, omniscience, atomisation; most of them she barely even knew how to use. At least superstrength was simple. Just hitting things.

The path died away in the same way that the daylight did, leaving the sky red above them and eerie, as they came just over the crest of a very low hill, beneath which stretched a field of beige-coloured crops. Rye. It hadn't been too difficult to find. She felt it was getting cold, though. Soon it was going to be chilly. Distantly, Rose thought she could see a fire blazing away back in Salem. She didn't know what she hoped it was more – an angry mob after them, or Jack being burned alive. When faced with it, she hoped it was neither. She really hoped that they were completely mistaken and it wasn't June at all, it was November 5th, and they were merely having a bonfire.

"Give me the Helix whatsit," Martha asked Clara, who, from somewhere, produced the relatively large, oval-shaped device that was linked wirelessly to the intelligence inhabiting some parts of the TARDIS. Helix was the thing that controlled the kitchen appliances, rather than the TARDIS itself. Rose thought that this was why the TARDIS barely objected to Helix's presence, because it meant the ship wasn't constantly messing around with the microwave. "Helix, scan for the ergoline fungus _claviceps purpurea_." Helix did just that, a blue light emitting from it.

"I hope nobody sees this," Mickey said shiftily, looking around. Rose wished Helix didn't take so long to scan.

"What unknown sorcery is this!?" someone shouted from nearby, and they all turned around, Martha turning as well and accidentally pointing the Helix scanner at some random person, "Gah! What light is that!?"

It was a woman. An old woman. An old, hunchback woman. An old, hunchback, wrinkled, warty woman. A hag. Dressed in black. She waved a hand as though to get rid of Helix's light, and Martha accordingly moved it away and they were left in the crimson, summer twilight.

"Who are you?" Amy asked of her.

"Me? I'm Lilith."

"Lilith!" Martha exclaimed, "Only a witch would be called Lilith."

"A witch!?" Rose shouted.

"She must be a witch," Clara added. A witch, of course, obviously.

"I am no witch, you fools," Lilith the Crone said to them, "I am merely a more spiritual member of Salem who fled upon foreseeing these horrors they carry out presently, and will be carrying out up until next year's harvest!"

"So you _are_ a witch," Rose accused.

"There are no witches," she argued, "Who be you? The five of you? You are not from here, not from Salem. Not from the New World. You are not even of this time, though I sense you are of somewhere more familiar than I know."

There was a pause among them.

"Are you _sure_ you're not a witch?" Mickey asked carefully.

As the woman was about to say something else angrily at them, Helix said, "_I find high alarmingly concentrations of the ergoline fungus _claviceps purpurea_ in this vicinity, Martha._"

It didn't even seem like Helix confirming Martha's suspicions about the LSD and ergotism were remotely important anymore, because if Rose Tyler was sure about anything, it was that this woman was a witch.


	375. Witch Doctor

_Rose_

_Witch Doctor_

Lilith the Witch who was, apparently, most definitely _not _a witch led them into a little cave she inhabited, a cave which was filled with things resembling dream catchers and odd, deformed animal skins and more poppets with a cauldron boiling in the midst of pearly spider webs. It was the very sort of place Rose Tyler expected to find a witch, some voodoo den, burrowed at the bottom of the rye field. Even Martha said so, and Martha had met real life witches in this same vague era.

"What's in the cauldron?" Clara asked, going over and frowning at it.

"Cauldron!? It's only a stove," she said. Yeah, Rose thought, a stove with a _cauldron_ on it.

"It's green."

"It's my dinner, a simple vegetable stew. You're just as obsessed with witches as the people who live in that godforsaken village are. They do not god's work, they are the true agents of the devil, the fools, the blasphemous fools. Not that I care for their religion," she hobbled about and dropped some leaves into her spooky potion that was not a spooky potion but was in fact vegetable stew.

"But, are you _sure _you're not a witch?" Martha asked her carefully. It was a very tiny cave and they barely all fit in it, Mickey and Amy both having to stoop down. Rose was getting cobwebs in her hair. It smelt like boiled cabbage.

"Bah! Of course not!"

"Well maybe you should try being a bit less... witchy?" Rose suggested, and the woman glared at her with with almost-black, beady eyes, glistening in the dim light of black candles, "Why are the candles black? Who has black candles?"

"They merely last for longer," Old Woman Lilith said to them sternly.

"Other Me has black candles," Clara said.

"Other You is a vampire," Amy reminded her. She was right, Beta Clara's possession of black candles didn't exactly diminish the association something like that had with the supernatural. If Sally Sparrow were there, Rose thought, she would be having a field day, taking photos of strange, dry bat corpses hanging on the wall. Who the hell dried out bat corpses? Rose asked Lilith exactly this question.

"No weirder than those who collect butterflies," she argued. Rose sort of saw her point, but also still thought it was completely weird. In fact, she thought butterfly collecting was weird, too. They always freaked her out, the way their wings were held with nails. "What is your business in Salem, travellers? From whence do you come?"

"From the future," Rose answered. It wasn't like Lilith was going to go telling the people in Salem that she had met people from the future. They would hang her for being a witch. Rose was halfway towards trying to hang her for being a witch herself, in all honesty. Clearly, their surroundings were getting to her...

"The future? What a dreadful place," she said.

"Better than here," Amy said glumly, "We have plumbing and sanitation in the future."

"Unnecessary comforts. I assume you have come to me for a reason?" she asked. What a strange woman who thought plumbing was unnecessary. Rose supposed though that something that didn't exist yet maybe couldn't possibly be considered _necessary_ right then, not by its literal definition. If people could live without something in their life, was it ever really necessary?

"What? We were just in the rye field looking for fungus and you asked us to follow you," Mickey said.

"You were in the rye field looking for fungus?" she asked, "Mushrooms? Mushrooms in a rye field? I've never heard anything so confounding. I'll have you know we make bread from that rye, are you implying our bread is laced with mushrooms?"

"Well, yeah, actually," Martha said, "A fungus that makes people have convulsions."

"Convulsions? I thought that was my vegetable stew," Lilith said, bustling around and using an enormous stick to stir her potion. Who the hell needed that much stew just for themselves?

"If you thought it was giving you convulsions, why would you keep eating it?" Amy asked her.

"Well what else should I eat!?" she exclaimed angrily, "The stew has special properties! The stew allows me to see the future."

"Future stew? Oh, great," Clara muttered.

"You laugh, child, but I have seen things about the future of this town you know to be true, the stew is as future as any of you! Any of you or the mysterious man being burned alive right now," she said. So the 'bonfire' really _was _Jack. Well, assuming the crazy not-witch was right. Rose saw a broomstick in the corner. She thought that if she saw a cat in the next five minutes she didn't care what Lilith tried to tell them, she was most definitely, inarguably a witch. "In the future, these events will be romanticised and talked about in museums! In _museums_, of all the places!" She was right.

"Have you seen anything else?" Amy asked. Maybe Amy wanted tips on how to see _useful_ things to do with the future, not just pizza.

"I have seen you all. Your arrival, your nearing disappearence in a rectangular, blue creation. The five, or six, of you know not what will arrive in your paths. No. You will all face grave dangers, grave indeed," stereotypical prophecy shit, Rose thought, "For there will be trials in a world of water, or ice, I know not which, or both. Trials of stone and fire, trials of clouds and sun, trials of trees and leaves. All of you, even those which reside elsewhere, save for that mysterious contraption which you are deigning to call a girl, will face."

"Trials? What sort of trials? What do you mean?" Mickey implored, taking the mad woman's word as fact all of a sudden. Rose didn't know how far she believed what Lilith had seen in her musty vegetable stew, it was probably growing mildew on top of it.

"Trials! Tests! Challenges! Questions! Creatures! Puzzles! You ask too much, too much! You are, you six, but visitors in Salem! Why should I burden myself with the particulars of your fates? You mean nothing to me, not any of you," she said, which was fair enough really, why _should _she have gone out of her way for them? For all they knew, they might have accidentally led the people of Salem to her door. She would probably have seen that coming though and scarpered, were it true.

"Do you see anything else, though?" Clara asked with some urgency. It seemed that Clara outrightly believed all of this, and had dragged a pen out of her pocket and began writing on the back of her hand as the witch dictated her spectral visions at them.

"Of course I do! I am not an amateur. I see many things, many crimes, dark murders, twin, triplet, quadruplet, _infinite_ victims. And a girl, a girl with great power, the power of lightning, lightining is that which flows rather than blood, the storm is her source of life, says I. Lights in the sky and deserts and metal. A world underwater! A whole tiny universe unto itself, I see return upon return! I see bovine and ocean monsters and strange animals and affairs of the heart, affairs of the lover, the father, the sister. Illness and war, and men from above. You travellers bear so much fruit with just a glance through the stew, though that is all I have. You were led to me by forces not of your understanding, I am sure, as I was meant to deliver that message. Yet now there is a witch hunt, and I must leave, and you with me, you must gather the lost one of your party and escape Salem tonight!" she shouted. And then there was a crack and a puff of smoke like a cheap magic trick and Lilith vanished. In fact, until Rose looked around and saw that it wasn't just Lilith which was gone, but everything save for themselves, she was sure it _had _only been a cheap magic trick.

"What the fuck just happened?" Rose asked. Nobody answered.

The bubbling of the cauldron gone, Clara asked into the silence and the night, "What was that last bit?" Mickey and Martha helped her to scribble all of the words of Lilith onto her arm, her sleeve pushed up, skin writ all across.

"Right. Are we agreed that that woman was _definitely _a witch?" Mickey asked.

"I think she was a Carrionite," Martha answered, "But maybe not."

"She could be a Manifest, you never know," Amy shrugged.

"We should leave," Rose said eventually, "The deaths here are fixed. If anything, we've just made everything worse by reaffirming their belief in witchcraft... We'd better just grab Jack and leave Salem."

"Better than a museum, though, I guess," Martha, who hadn't even wanted to come out that morning, said.

They slipped away into the night, Rose and Clara tasked with retrieving Jack's charred body, while the others called the TARDIS for collection, the words of Lilith the Witch (because she definitely had been a witch) still ringing in their minds.


	376. Date Night XIV

_Clara_

_Date Night XIV_

Was her husband going to let her back into their bedroom after kicking her out? She didn't know. She _did_ know that before she even tried she actually had enough tact to return Thirteen's jacket, leaving it on the sofa in Adam and Oswin's room and having a short conversation with Ellie Mitchell where she offhandedly mentioned Salem, totally forgetting to ask Ellie Mitchell why the hell she was even there in the first place. She would ask Oswin when she got a chance. At any rate, she slipped out and across the hall to stand in front of her very own bedroom door, wondering if whether or not she ought to knock. It was _her _room, but it was _also_ the Doctor's room, and didn't he have a right to privacy as well? Besides, he'd said he was redecorating, whatever _that_ meant, but being as they were on a spaceship, she didn't think it involved paint and plaster. She knocked.

"Who is it?" Eleven asked.

"Your wife," she answered. Silence. "What are you doing? Can I come in?" She still didn't know why he had kicked her out. "I totally had a traumatic day, you know, Jack accused me of being a wife-stealing succubus in front of the whole court of Salem."

"He _what_!?" Eleven exclaimed upon opening the door, opening it the tiniest crack and hardly squeezing himself out. She stepped back with a hand on her hip and a questioning look on her face, the pair of them alone in the Bedroom Circle.

"Whatcha doing in there?"

"What did you say about Jack and succubi and Salem?"

"Why'd you kick me out?" she asked seriously, crossing her arms now, looking up at him. Why did he have to be so much taller than her? He paused and looked over her head towards the end of the room, thinking. "Well don't lie. I have no clue what I've done."

"I was sick of talking about boring wedding things." She was offended straight away.

"What, so you kicked me out!? The thought of marrying me bores you _that much_!?" she argued, and he shook his head in a way meant mostly for himself, clearly regretting telling her the truth.

"I don't understand why you can't make... executive decisions, Coo."

"Don't you 'Coo' me. What do you mean, _executive decisions_? It's your wedding too."

"Clara, it's a strictly human day in the strictly human town of Blackpool where you grew up that we're having for your strictly human family, and _I_ am strictly _non_-human and would very much prefer to stay out of any of the proceedings that are either not major or do not involve food," he said, "Besides, does it not say a lot about our level of trust?" he challenged, crossing his arms right back at her like he had just won the argument. He might have, actually... "Can't you get Oswin's help? I don't understand why you're in such a rush."

"Because... because I..." the real answer, which she did not tell him, was that she was trying to rush because Thirteen had let slip that their first three weddings all took place within the space of a year, and as the days of not-wedding-planning wore on, Clara ended up increasingy more anxious, "I just want a proper wedding." Eleven sighed.

"It will be more proper if the human out of the pair of us plans it, rather that the alien," he said to her. That damned husband had just got out of any further minute marital decisions, and they both knew it, and he was trying to hide his triumph, "Why do you smell of wood smoke?"

"They were burning Jack at the stake and we had to go get him."

"Burning at the stake? In Salem? The Salem Witch Trials? Nobody was ever burned at the stake in Salem," he told her.

"I know that," she said sharply. She _did_ know that, she _had _studied _The Crucible_, as she kept reminding everybody, "Jack suggested it himself. I think they were trying everything when he kept coming back to life. Can we get out of this corridor yet?"

"Hmm? Oh, no, the room isn't done."

"What, exactly, are you doing to it?"

"Everything, making a new one. Except it ended up quite tricky, because all of your... no, Clara, wait, don't - it isn't finished!" he shouted after her when she phased through him and through the wall, "Why did I have to marry somebody who can walk through walls? And who clearly has no manners." He shuffled next to her, both annoyed but also awaiting her approval.

"Well, now, Chin, this really _does_ look like we live on a spaceship..." Clara stared around in awe, because it did. Everything was white and brightly lit and smooth and silvery and futuristic.

The door was embedded into a little corridor of its own, narrow, white walls on either side that lead into the bedroom itself like it was a grove. Dead ahead was a piano. Not Clara's piano from her house, but some odd looking one where the sharps and the flats were silver instead of black and so was the main body of it, pressed seamlessly into the wall as though it were growing out of it.

On the left was the bed, or bed-area. The bed was on a higher level, a foot above the rest of the room. The headboard was flat against the wall with the foot of it pointing out to the rest of the room, room on either side so that she would no longer have to climb awkwardly over the Doctor to get out of bed, or suffer through the pain of teleportion. There were serene bedside lamps and tables on either side and above the bed was a window through which Clara could see dark galaxies.

On the right it was like an entirely different room, when she turned to face it with her back to the bed. Straight ahead the wall at the very end was entirely a bookshelf, as was the longer wall on the left, the room being rectangular, albeit if both of the bookshelves were utterly empty at that moment. Then, like the bed was on a higher level, there was an entire lower level dug into the floor that was a rectangle to match the room and two feet deep, steps leading down into it. In this entrenchment was a long, white corner sofa that fit _exactly _into the trench, leaving just enough space in the bottom right-hand area of it for a clean, glass coffee table. Then along the wall to Clara's right she saw two doors, and a small table on which sat their expensive tea and coffee machine with the mini-fridge that only stored milk and sometimes fizzy pop or coleslaw.

"Oh my _stars_..." she stared around, then glanced around at her husband stood near the door, looking at everything like it was the first time _he_ had seen it, too, "Doctor, have I _ever _told you that I love you?"

"Can't remember," he said, and she smiled. She most definitely forgave him for kicking her out that morning now, if _this _was what he'd spent the day doing. She looked at the floor and saw it was just dull and flat though.

"Are you gonna put carpet in?" she asked him.

"I wasn't sure, ought I? I thought maybe only where the bed is," he said.

"Yeah, do that, but put a rug down here, this space is too empty," she said, meaning the space between the piano, the bedroom itself, and the sort-of living area built two feet into the floor, "Is the bed new?"

"Everything's new."

"Does it have a lot of memory foam?"

"About two inches," he answered her, "The duvet is fourteen togs. I thought I would get silk sheets, but I remembered you saying once the idea of silk bedsheets was ridiculous because you would sweat and it would stick, so it's just cotton." She was unable to stop herself from smiling.

"See, this is what I always thought it might be like living on this ship. But we go from boring borderline hotel room to the bedroom I lived in for the first eighteen years of my life, and now _finally _it's like... I don't know, it's... it's like buying a house as a couple as opposed to just moving into the house someone already owns. You know?"

"Not really. So you were saying something about Salem? What's all the writing on your arm, Coo?"

"Oh, yeah, I have to write that down..." she said, fidgeting in her pockets for a second and getting her phone out to type it up because there wasn't any paper, explaining to him about their strange encounter with Lilith as she did. He gave the same suggestion that Martha had, that she might in fact be a Carrionite. At any rate, when Clara, after typing for five minutes, read him the long 'prophecy' of the witch, he was somewhat spooked. Even more so when she said that Lilith and all of her 'witch shit,' as she described it, disappeared. "Oh, also, Amy says there's pizza for tea."

"Is there? How does she know?"

"She saw it in a vision. The most inconveniently timed vision _ever_, she had it in front of the townspeople. Then again, I accidentally teleported in front of them, and Martha made a pig head explode. Did you know she could make things explode?" she asked, and he told her he didn't, "Did you know Ellie Mitchell is here?"

"Oh, yes. Forgot to mention it. Adam asked my permission to bring her here."

"So of course, because he stroked your ego by assuming you were in the highest position of authority, you let him?"

"Yes. And I _am_ in the highest position of authority, Clara. It'll be fine, she's not allowed off the ship. It's temporary," Eleven assured her. Good, she thought, she didn't think Oswin would enjoy having to hang around with her boyfriend's sister all the time. It was a bit weird. "Anyway, as I was saying before you so rudely barged in here without my express permission; it ended up quite tricky because all of your books and seashells and things that used to be in here weren't your _real _books or seashells, and I was going to ask you if you wanted to go and get the real ones from your father's? Because I remember some of your things we picked up from the Maitlands', and they're in boxes in the wardrobe."

"Wardrobe?" she asked.

"Door on the far left, wardrobe," he pointed it out to her over her shoulder.

"Uh... right... I'll think about that while I have a shower, I _stink _of smoke-"

"You always stink of smoke."

"I haven't had one cigarette all day, I'll have you know. Didn't have any with me," she said, turning to leave the room and assuming she would just get a towel out of the linen cupboard on the way past and would worry about clean clothes at a later date.

"No, no, no," Eleven said, taking her hand and pulling her in a way that made her twirl and turn around, as though they were dancing, spinning her and then leading her back through the room, "I remember what you said this morning about being sick of the communal bathroom, so I pulled some strings, what with me being the Doctor to whom the TARDIS actually belongs." He motioned to the door on the right, the closest one.

Eagerly, Clara opened this new door, but to her mild disappoint she found this bathroom to look the same as their old one, in the days before communal showers. It was still a very nice bathroom though, with its enormous bath on the left and even more enormouse shower. She'd be happy just to have a sink to brush her teeth to herself, really.

"Great, well, _I'll_ have a shower and then ring my dad," she said.

"What? To go get your things? When?"

"Tonight. We'll just go get them and put them places tomorrow," she said.

"_We_?"

"We have not had dinner with my father for... well I don't know how long for. I'll make him like you one of these days, Chin," she told him, and he looked irritated and huffy, like he didn't care whether or not Clara's father liked him. Except she knew that he _did _care, it bothered him, and she cared as well. "Besides, pizza's nice, but I'd rather have a Sunday roast."

"It's a Friday, actually, Clara," he told her.

"We live in a time machine. Anyway, you dragged me to visit Craig and Sophie a few weeks ago, remember? And Craig and Sophie don't even like me," she reminded him.

"Yes they do!" he protested. They didn't, though. She was only ever invited to see them when her husband brought her up in conversation when they attempted to invite just _him_, an old friend. Clara was not an old friend, Clara was the small, annoying, new wife of an old friend they had no attachment to. They were just being polite, and she understood that; the only reason she ever agreed to go to dinner with them was because Craig was a good cook.

"You kicked me out this morning so you owe me," she said.

"I paid you back with the room!"

"Paid me back with the room for _why _you kicked me out," she said, making up excuses to stop him from arguing.

"Isn't the bathroom good enough?"

"You just owe me."

"What for?"

"For... for being so damn good in bed," she said, and he couldn't well argue with that, because it was true and it was also her only asset most of the time, "Now let me have my shower in peace, I stink." And she closed the door in his face.


	377. Date Night XV

**AN: By the way, the prediction that the witch made about the future is a genuine prediction about the next thirty days of fic or so, if anybody wants to try and deduce it.**

_Eleven_

_Date Night XV_

It was times like this that he regretted marrying Clara Oswald. Very easily, he thought, on that first day, he could have just taken off the wedding ring and told her it was a dreadful mistake. Well, maybe he couldn't have taken it off because it was one of those solot rings that burned you if you so much as tried (whose brilliant idea that had been, he still didn't know, but he blamed Jack Harkness), but he could have lied and just pretended he didn't like Clara at all. Except for the fact that he was in love with her, and that would upset her, and he didn't want her to be upset (what with him being in love with her.) It was nearly a paradox. He almost complained to her, as he stood just behind her after she knocked on the door of her father's house, a semi-detached terrace that was close enough to the Irish Sea that he could smell the salt from it.

He had to admit, he might not like going to her father's for dinner, but that was only because her father didn't get along with him. _He_ liked to think that Dave Oswald was a perfectly agreeable man, and going by experience, Eleven wasn't too fond of the people _his_ daughter eloped with, so he could hardly blame him. Dave Oswald ought to count his blessings that Clara hadn't married Captain Jack.

"I haven't brought any expensive wine this time," the Doctor said to Clara.

"It'll be fine, he barely ever drinks wine anyway. He likes snow globes," she told him. Before the Doctor could question this factoid, Clara's father opened the door and she greeted him with a hug. Eleven had been instructed to fly the TARDIS down the same amount of days after the last time they had paid a visit to his father-in-law, which had been Day Sixty-Six. Months ago. He gave Eleven a cold look, but Eleven smiled warmly and they shook hands. As if anybody would like their daughter marrying an extra-terrestrial space hobo.

"Feels like it's been _ages_," Clara said to her father, trying to divert his attention towards her father than her husband. He was a very short man, though, with grey hairs around his bald spot and a permanently stern expression. Eleven remembered that Clara's mother had been quite tall, so it was no wonder which side of the family her short genes came from. It was about as obvious as where Jenny got her blonde hair and her optimism (Thirteen.)

"Well, it might have been," her father said, giving Eleven a shifty look as though he were responsible for stealing his daughter away for great lengths of time. Some fifty or so days wasn't _too_ long, though.

"It's been the same for both of us, as a matter of fact," she told him jokingly, "When's tea ready?"

"Is that all you're bothered about?" her father asked her in the same harsh-but-kidding tone of voice. The same sarcasm. God, the Oswalds were all so sarcastic. And it rubbed off on anybody they came into contact with – he was sure that Adam Mitchell and Jenny had never been so dry-humoured a few weeks ago. Or himself, in fact.

"That and my stuff I've come to get," she said. Eleven hadn't been in the room when she had rung her dad, so he didn't know what, exactly, he'd been told. "Is there gravy?"

"Obviously, Clara," he said to her, and she beamed at her husband like she was proving a point. What point, he didn't know – that she was a freak with a gravy fetish? Maybe. It was just meaty brown water. Or veggie brown water, depending, "Not for half an hour. Unless you want to help?"

"Yeah, sure, if you want to eat charcoal," Clara said, and he laughed. Eleven didn't volunteer his own help cooking. He thought Dave was joking, anyway, and wouldn't want his help in the kitchen one bit, "Well then, should I put the kettle on?"

"Go on, then," he said, and she left, left her husband stranded with his father-in-law. Until she returned a moment later to the two of them stood at anxious odds in the hallway at the bottom of the stairs.

"Do you want a drink, sweetheart?" she asked him.

"Just tea," he said, the first words he had spoken. She left again. "So! David, how have you been?"

"Don't call me David," he said. _A terrible start_.

"I've been fine, thank you for asking," the Doctor continued, trying to be bubbly, "I've spent the day redecorating while Clara was at the Salem Witch Trials, I heard. Don't worry – they're perfectly safe," he added quickly, "Well, unless you're a witch. But Clara isn't a witch." He managed to stop himself before he mentioned her superpowers. He couldn't remember if her father knew about them, but he _definitely_ didn't know about the teleportation aspect of them, that was too recent.

"The weather was nice, it was June," Clara, who could hear everything, shouted through from the other side of the house in the kitchen, "We did see a woman get hanged though. She had terrible gangrene." Eleven turned his nose up at that, he didn't think he needed to know.

"The things that you see when you live in a time travelling spaceship, eh?" he said, and Dave glowered at him, but he kept smiling. He hated visits to in-laws so much. He wouldn't mind coming to that house half as much if it was just vacated of his wife's relatives. "Ridiculous things. Just the other week I was on Mars with these dreadful brain parasites that lived in water."

Dave stepped into the living room and made to check on his daughter in the kitchen, probably checking that she wasn't touching anything they were supposed to be eating later, and Eleven stood in front of the sofa, not sitting down until he was invited. He didn't know at what point in his life he started caring about manners or etiquette.

"Are witches real?" Dave asked Eleven suddenly.

"Witches? Not in Salem in the 1690s. Now, if you go to _London_ in the _15_90s, it's an entirely different story, because Martha and I met witches there the same day we met Shakespeare and saw a performance of his lost play, _Love's Labour's Won_, but the play actually turned out to be a catalyst using the Globe as an energy converter to bring a race of 'witches' called Carrionites to Earth," he explained, "But there weren't any in Salem. Well, I don't think so, I wasn't there. Who was there, Clara?"

"It was me, Martha, Mickey, Amy, Rose and Jack," Clara told him, "There was a witch, she predicted the future. I read you the prophecy earlier."

"I'd hardly call it a prophecy, darling, it wasn't alluding to much specific. Didn't it say 'men from space' and 'strange animals'? You see men from space every day," he pointed out to her, "And that cat's a strange enough animal."

"_You're_ a strange animal," she said, coming back through and balancing three mugs, giving him a mug with, funnily enough, cats on it, "Can we go upstairs now?" she asked her father, "Have to get things."

"What things?"

"Books and things."

"Which books?"

"Most of them, probably," she said defensively. He asked her a few more invasive questions until she said she was just getting her own things which belonged to her and she would show him everything she took before they left if he wanted to see that badly. Eleven thought he just didn't like the idea of losing Clara's things.

As they were going up the stairs with their tea a second later, the Doctor said to her, "He's probably just worried you'll leave and never come back, Coo."

"I'll always come back home," she said, "Where else am I supposed to go if I need a break from everything? Oh, I guess I could stay with Oswin's brother… Fyn, obviously. The hot one who looks like-"

"He does not look like Zac Efron, Clara," Eleven said sternly.

"Oh my god, he _does_. I literally need to see all of her brothers to figure who's the hottest. I've only met two of them. D'you think her dad was hot?" she asked, and he didn't even grace _that_ particular comment with a response. It was perverse and didn't deserve one. They entered into Clara's bedroom, which spooked the Doctor significantly because it was the exact same room he'd spent the majority of his time in for months, just with more _Star Wars_ stuff in it. The Death Star clock took pride of place on one of the walls.

"Oh, are you going to bring the Batgirl cape?"

"_It's a fucking shawl_," she said to him angrily, and he laughed, closing the door and switching the light on, "Hold this," she gave him his tea, and went to retrieve a bunch of plastic boxes from one corner, "I used these when I moved to uni."

"Which university did you even go to? Do you have a diploma around here?"

"Yeah, my dad has it in the spare room, dunno why," she said, "I'd take it, but I don't really need it. I went to Cambridge."

"Did you?"

"No," she said, laughing to herself somewhat as she went and merely started to drag books off of shelves. She didn't have nearly enough to fit in their new room, though, that was the intention. He was sure that if she lived for as long as she had potential to live, she would end up with more books than she knew what to do with. "Leeds, I went to."

"Staying in the North?"

"It's a whole different county! It's like, almost two hours away by car. Maybe. Maybe less than that, I don't know, it's been a while," she argued, "I got a first, as well, I'll have you know."

"How marvellous for you," he said.

"No doubt you collect degrees from Harvard and Oxford, or something?"

"Well, as much as I hate to say you're right…"

"I'm right?"

"Very much so. I heard that my daughter does the same thing, collects degrees. Do you still have all of your schoolbooks in here?" he asked, knowing full well that she _did_ have them.

"Yes, and I'm leaving them behind. If I ever desperately need to read them, it takes less than five minutes to get here in the TARDIS," she said, "You know, everyone acts like I'm some moron, but I always got really high grades, you know. I got three A*s in my A Levels."

"Emma Grayling _did_ say you were clever," he said, sipping his tea, then he winced when he realised it was her tea, and had to refrain from spitting it back out before he washed the taste away with his own and the some dozen sugars it contained, "And I've never said otherwise. What A Levels did you do?"

"English Literature, obviously, but I did History and Music as well. And I did French in Year 12, but I sort of got a U in it so I ended up dropping it. I'm not good with languages, they're boring. And we have the translation matrix now. Do you know my sister speaks fourteen languages? And her boyfriend speaks eight. I swear, I've heard them have conversations before where she's speaking French and he's speaking German, or something, and they just kept _switching_. God, it was weird," she said.

"You're clearly accomplished in the arts, wifey. You'd be celebrated in the Eighteenth Century," he joked, "I wonder how much that has to do with your parenting? Your parents have done a wonderful job of you."

"Yeah, well, they raised a girl who's had chlamydia four times, so they can't have done _that_ 'wonderful' a job of parenting."

"You've had _WHAT_!?"

* * *

"These roast potatoes are to _die_ for," Clara said to her father when they were eating just over twenty minutes later, the Doctor still reeling from this confession from his wife that she'd had five relatively serious sexually transmitted infections in her life. Thank god he was unable to contract them. And also thank god that she apparently got tested regularly enough for them all to be stopped before they caused much damage. He wasn't too keen on the fact she'd only told him when she thought he might have gonorrhoea, of all things, thanks to some joke Mickey Smith had played with the Helix handheld. He was sure there was nothing wrong with either of them presently, though. At any rate, she had nanogenes. He just stayed quiet and ate his parsnips and carrots.

"What was it like in Salem?" Dave asked Clara.

"The weather was nice," she repeated the same thing she had said earlier when asked about Salem, "I did I have to have a shower before we came over because I smelt of wood smoke, though, after they tried to burn Captain Jack at the stake. He can't die, so it didn't really matter, but it didn't half stink. And it was before the invention of the flushing toilet. I'd rather've gone in the present day, like we were supposed to. _Somebody's_ temperamental spaceship thought it would play a joke on us, though."

"Maybe it's because you called her 'moody' this morning," Eleven retorted.

"Where else have you been?" her father asked.

"Oh, lots of places," she said.

"Like?" he prompted, and Clara said in thought, obviously trying to find an appropriate story to tell her father, and an 'appropriate story' was one that didn't include that fertility resort two weeks ago.

"Where were you the day after Jack and Jenny split up? Again?" the Doctor asked her, trying to help her out.

"I can't tell you because Thirteen was there," Clara said.

"I hate that woman sometimes," he muttered, and Clara decided to put more salt on her mash. In his opinion, she over-salted greatly, like she was uneasy, still thinking.

"That haunted house!" she declared, "We bought that haunted house, remember? In Nottingham." They brushed quickly over the story of the Frir that day, leaving out their business with the Paranoia Agency and Liam Kent thinking Clara was the centre of a cloning conspiracy, and Clara commented again on the weather being nice, "We went and saw The Beatles the other week as well, remember?"

"Oh, yes, 1964, the Ed Sullivan Show performance in New York. Had a bet to settle with, oh, uh, which one was it? Harrison, I think. George Harrison. Possibly Ringo. One of those two. Can't remember what it was now," he said, "We dined and dashed in the Ritz Carlton. Didn't have any money."

"You _never_ have any money," Clara told him, then she resumed, "Didn't we go to 1927 a while ago? New York again? That was after Jack and Jenny broke up the _first _time. Just before the Second Prank War. See, what happened was, we ended up stuck on this planet called – what was it called?"

"Preyonov."

"And it was totally a desert planet, _everything_ was orange, everywhere, in these ridiculous tour buses, and we were stuck there for five days. I went to the Lake District a while ago, though, with Oswin. We were away for a week, I think. Needed a break," Clara said, not explaining that the reason she needed a break was because she felt horribly guilty about murdering a mushroom zombie on a desert planet.

"You can always come here," her father said to her.

"No, I know, you just don't like Oswin," she said offhandedly. He didn't say anything in his own defence to that. Eleven thought that Dave Oswald would just rather not talk about Oswin. He didn't quite understand her, "Anyway, that's enough about space and time travel, what's been going on here? Anything I ought to know about?"

"Yes, your aunt's turning fifty," he said, and Clara froze with a bit of chicken halfway from the plate to her mouth on a fork, dripping gravy onto the edge of the plate.

"I'm not going," she said straight away.

"Yes you are," her father told her sternly. Going where, Eleven wondered?

"No I'm not. I refuse."

"You can't refuse to go to your aunt's fiftieth birthday party."

"I'm an adult, I very well _can_ refuse to go and stand around in a sweaty garden in August for five hours while people ask me what I'm doing with my life," she said, "I hate Aunt Fiona, and I hate her garden parties, and you know she's not even turning fifty, she's been turning fifty for three years." He looked at her flatly, and the Doctor wondered which side of the family Aunt Fiona came from. He knew that she had an uncle on her father's side, but that was about it.

"You're invited, Clara," he said, "You're invited, and so is _he_, she wants to meet him."

"_Me_?" Eleven exclaimed.

"He's a time travelling alien who refuses to be reduced to going to silly garden parties," Clara snapped at her dad.

"I don't know, it might be interesting to meet your family," he said. They were going to all end up invited to their wedding _anyway_, maybe it would be better to meet the three-times-over-groom _before_ their next wedding itself, whenever that was going to be. She glared at him. "What?"

"I'm not going," she said firmly.

"She's expecting you, I said you'd come, this Sunday," he said.

"_What_!?" she exclaimed, like this was too short notice for two people who lived in a time machine. Next Sunday didn't have to come for ten years if Clara didn't want it to, "You can't just say I'll-"

"She's my sister, and you make me look terrible by throwing these tantrums."

"_Tantrums_!? I'm not throwing a tantrum! I just don't want to go to stupid party, oh my god," she protested, "And since when did you care what Aunt Fiona thinks of _me_?"

"She just thinks you're not making anything of your life," he said.

"My life is nothing to do with her! Or her party. She's always having parties anyway. She has parties every time _The X-Factor_ final is on. And I hate _The X-Factor_. If you care so much about Aunt Fiona's opinion of me, then surely inviting me to see her won't help? Unless you're hoping I have a go at her again, like I did on Christmas in 2005 when she said all those things about mum and there was that bloody spaceship down London?"

"I was on top of that spaceship," Eleven interjected. He wondered what Clara's aunt had been saying about Clara's mother now. He'd only met Ellie Oswald a few times, but she always seemed entirely agreeable.

"What do you want me to do, tell her I'm unemployed and I've been travelling the world for months with a weird man I eloped with in Las Vegas?" she said.

"Your grandmother told her he was a heart surgeon, anyway," Dave said.

"I'm not going."

The argument went on in circles like this for quite some time and the Doctor just shut up and ate his main course as quickly as possible, desperately wanting to escape, as nice as the food was. The awful part was that Clara finally, bitterly and resentfully, gave up her protests and actually agreed to go in the end. But then they still had pudding to go, and he didn't even think that the sticky toffee pudding with custard would make the mood any more bearable. Tomorrow, he decided, he was going to go somewhere to have a break from all of this marital strife, and somewhere that was most definitely not Clara's Aunt Fiona's garden party. It sounded diabolical.


	378. Unidentified Flying Object I

_DAY ONE-HUNDRED AND TWENTY_

_Adam_

_Unidentified Flying Object I_

Everything was brown. There they were, the seven of them, in the midst of a desolate desert. The hills were brown, the bushes were brown, the sand was brown. It was pale and flaxen in parts, or in others it was like fire with washed reds and dull oranges, some snippets of green where weeds dared to sprout. Maybe a lime-coloured cactus once in a while. To think, Adam Mitchell had only been out of bed for forty-five minutes. An hour ago he was half asleep with his girlfriend, and now they'd just tried to land the ship on a long stretch of empty road to test out his newest car, a Hudson Commodore, a retro thing he'd just bought because it was almost an antique and it appealed to him for some reason. It was cheery red with white-walled tyres and it could seat eight people.

They'd landed that morning, all seven male members of the matriarchal crew, with the intention of only staying there for maybe half an hour. The TARDIS had not been put on autopilot to fly them away, and the console room had been empty. Yet with a painful vworping the thing had disappeared instantly, lifting off the ground and blowing dust around their ankles, rocketing away and spinning wildly as it disappeared in the dry sky.

"What just happened to the TARDIS?" Rory asked, Adam staring after it, vaguely wondering if his new car might partake in the same disappearing act, what with its newly installed teleportation matrix that linked it to the ship. The Hudson didn't move though. Another car of his better not get ruined, he thought grimly to himself. The heat was getting to him suddenly, and he wondered what time it was.

"She's never done that before," said Ten.

"She has," Eleven said to him.

"What? When?" Nine questioned, looking at them both like they had been abusing his TARDIS. They were all so protective over it. Adam remembered that he'd been kicked off because he'd accidentally almost given the Editor and the Jagrafess a TARDIS key after getting his head cut open. He still didn't think Nine had forgiven him.

"Oh, a while ago now, more than three hundred years, when I met Craig. You know Craig, he's been on the TARDIS before?" Eleven looked around at blank faces. Adam sort of maybe remembered Craig Owens, but most of what he knew came from Eleven's wife when she complained about having to go to dinner with them. What was it with those two and forcing each other to go to dinners with people they didn't like? "The TARDIS, it tried to land in Colchester. Amy and I were supposed to be going to the Fifth Moon of Sinda Callista. I step out to look around and see where we are, and before I can get in the TARDIS flies away and can't land. Amy almost got trapped in the time vortex forever. Just like it did there."

"I love hearing stories about how you almost lose my wife," Rory said sarcastically.

"Wait, the girls, might they get trapped in the time vortex?" Mickey asked urgently. They all had significant others on that spaceship, and his little sister was stuck there as well under Thirteen's supervision. The last thing Adam Mitchell wanted was to be trapped in whatever random, roasting desert they were in with a bunch of blokes he barely knew but still lived with.

"Only if the ship keeps trying to land," Eleven explained, "If one of them cancels out the route plan they can fly it perfectly safely."

"But if the TARDIS can't land, how do we get back?" Mickey asked. Then Adam's phone rang, to his surprise. He expected it to be his parents or some lawyer, as he'd been getting calls like that constantly for the last day and a half, but it turned out to be Jenny Harkness. While Eleven fumbled around with some jargon he was clearly making up, Adam answered.

"Hello?"

"_Yeah, what the hell's going on? Why is the TARDIS going mental?_" she asked him sharply, like he was the font of all knowledge. Before he could answer, there was a sound like an explosion in the background, and another like an alarm.

"Is everyone okay?" he asked.

"_I bloody well hope so! What's happening? What did you do?_"

"Don't ask _me_, it's nothing to do with _me_!"

"_It's _your_ new car, Mitchell._"

"Only my girlfriend can call me that," he told her.

"_Yeah, whatever, Mitch, you're obviously useless. Is my dad there?_"

"Uh… yep."

"_Put him on_," Jenny ordered.

"Any specific one?"

"_Any! The console's blowing up!_"

"Right," he said, moving the phone away from his ear and holding his palm over the microphone, "Jenny's on the phone. Wants to talk to her dad. The console's blowing up." There was a quiet for a few seconds and Ten and Eleven glanced at each other, both of them considering themselves equally Jenny's father and having equal right to talk to the girl. They both grabbed for it and sort of pathetically tackled each other and started pushing like they were in a scrum, and Adam and Mickey exchanged a disappointed look with each other. Rory didn't seem surprised. Nine stayed out of things, like a proper adult, which was why Adam went over and gave the phone to _him_, much to his shock and Ten and Eleven's annoyance.

"Hello?" he said to her. Captain Jack watched him talk on the phone to Jenny shiftily, hearing her voice muffled. He took a few steps away, seeming preoccupied about something, "Something's interfering, you have to cancel the route plan to stop the TARDIS from trying to land here… I don't know… Well I don't! Just the desert! … Really? … It's the big switch… Okay, fine, you know how to fly her…"

"Did you tell her it's the big switch?" Ten said.

"Didn't you _just_ hear him say the big switch?" Mickey said coolly to him, and he shut up, crossing his arms in the exact same way Eleven was doing, both of them disgruntled.

"Has that fixed it, then?" Nine asked her, "See? It wasn't that hard… I'm not patronising you."

"She's always been sensitive," Jack muttered.

The phone didn't need to be on speaker for Adam to hear Jenny shout, "_I HEARD THAT_," down the line at him. Jack flinched. Nine seemed to be listening a moment later as Jenny told him something long-winded that Adam hoped wasn't just a rant against her ex-husband, though if it was he wouldn't be remotely surprised. Then Nine told her to stay in the console room, and he hung up, and gave Adam his phone back.

"Well?" Ten prompted him.

"She said we've landed in New Mexico, and the TARDIS probably won't be able to land until we get out of the state," he said, "So we're walking."

"_Walking_? Everyone should fit in the car," Adam argued, motioning to the Hudson, "If you lot want to walk, be my guest." He walked right up to the car and decided that if he just figured which way was North, he could probably find an interstate that ran up to Colorado and would get them far enough out of New Mexico for the TARDIS to materialise. He'd always wanted to go to Denver, anyway. Mickey and Rory were the first to follow him, Mickey calling shotgun. There were room for four in the front anyway though, so it didn't really matter.

"A car? Travelling across America in a_ car_?" Eleven asked incredulously.

"Don't they do that in that book?" Jack, following Mickey and Rory to sit in the back.

"Well, yes, Kerouac did, I suppose. Lots of people probably did, in fact," Eleven said.

"I'm sure your wife will be plenty jealous, then," Adam called through out of the driver's side window, which was on the left being as the car was ancient and American made. It was probably terribly inefficient when it came to fuel consumption, too, but he didn't care much. After all, if he gave less money to charity he could be a billionaire easily. The fact they were going to have to drive on the left unnerved him, too. He remembered when he'd had the Hummer and had been driving it up from Pittsburgh through Pennsylvania looking for the girls when Jenny had had that terrible hen party of hers.

This mention of Clara being jealous meant Eleven was the final person in the front, and Ten and Nine finally lowered themselves enough to slip in the backseat with Jack, who didn't even seem to be up for making any jokes about doing them on it like Adam had come to expect. As he started the car, he noted just how out of it Jack Harkness really seemed, and wondered if it was something to do with this whole being-witch-hunted-and-burned-at-the-stake-in-Salem thing. Nevertheless, within a minute they were off, and within a minute Ten told him he was going South so he had to do a U-turn in the empty road and head the other way, because he didn't want to risk getting caught up at the Mexican border with no passports or papers or visas or anything except a British driver's license.


	379. Nuclear Family I

**AN: Something up with chapter alerts I guess, since the alert for "Date Night XIV" only just came through. Sorry if that caused any confusion, I can't do anything about FF being inefficient.**

_Rose_

_Nuclear Family I_

"Martha, I think you should leave that witch's prophecy alone, it's probably rubbish," Rose told Martha, who was sitting and ignoring her marmalade on toast in favour of reading over and over the prophecy on her phone. She had requested that Clara text her the entire thing after she'd transcribed it from her arm.

"Rubbish like the things you see? Or the things Amy sees? She could have _easily_ seen the future," Martha said, "Anyway, psychics _do_ exist." Rose knew that, but she didn't thinking it was in any of their best interests to try and deduce the future.

"Why don't you ask Thirteen if you're so bothered about it?" Nios asked. Nios was the only other person in Nerve Centre, just the three of them and the ginger cat, which kept rubbing its face on the side of the sofa. She was sat on a different sofa while Rose and Martha were next to each other on one of the kidney tables. Rose missed her old morning routine of reading the newspaper and looking for anything worth investigation of her version of Torchwood. In the TARDIS, there were no newspapers to read, there was no news to watch, it was like being in a vacuum where there were no current events at all. She was halfway towards asking Clara for a book to read, but she wasn't quite _that _desperate.

"Thirteen won't tell anybody anything," Martha said, "She managed to keep Jack and Jenny splitting up a secret, and all this business with vampires. It's this bit I think I get, 'a world underwater, a whole tiny universe unto itself,' it sounds like Atlantis."

"Atlantis?" Nios asked incredulously, "That's real?"

"Sort of, it's a city in another universe that Adam and Oswin think is a video game," Martha said.

"Then she's predicting the past," Rose said.

"_No_, because after that-"

"Martha, you can't change the future. Leave time alone, you don't understand," Rose told her, and Martha glared back at her.

"Oh, I don't understand? Just because I didn't absorb the time vortex?"

"Yes!" Rose argued, standing up, annoyed, "Don't mess with the future, forget about what that woman said, it's for the best." Rose could see how the universe worked even more than the Doctor. If she wanted to, she could see all of time and space like a spiderweb and could see how every event led into every possible outcome or consequence. The butterfly effects of all existence and creation were perpetually at Rose Tyler's fingertips just waiting to be tapped into. But she never tried to access them. She never wanted to see. And here was Martha, going out of her way to deduce something as meaningless as a future set in stone. The future was easy, it could be discovered if one merely sat around and did nothing at all. The hard part was leaving it alone, like resisting the urge to pick at a scab.

"Well where are you going?" Martha called after her.

"Toilet," she answered moodily, but it was the truth. Stupid communal bathrooms, she hated them, but _apparently _the Tenth Doctor couldn't do anything about it. She didn't know why the TARDIS wouldn't listen to him, wasn't in charge of it?

She went to the mirror to check her hair after she'd done in the stall, listening to the plumbing carry the water away and washing her hands, trying to think of a way to pass the time. She didn't know how long it would be until the Doctor was back. All the men were gone, as Jenny had proclaimed upon coming into Nerve Centre from the console room for a moment half an hour ago before returning, and the TARDIS had been prevented from trying to land. They would have to find something to do.

Sighing and thinking about her options when it came to what to bide her time with and wondering if she might try to talk to her mother (she would like to visit, but _really_ didn't want to risk running into her ex-husband), she almost missed the object sitting in the corner next to the door. _Almost_. It was like something willed her to look down and spot it, the TARDIS's psychic interface she realised. She forgot all about that when she saw what it was, though, a plastic stick with a bit of blue on the end face down.

"Oh my god..." she breathed, stooping down to carefully pick up the pregnancy test, for that was what it was, turning it over to look at the tiny display where she saw two lines. _Two_. Not one. Both of them there, and the key on the left as if she didn't know already that the test was positive. She put her hand to her mouth and stared at it.

Somebody was pregnant. One of them on the TARDIS right then was _pregnant_, and she didn't know what to do about it. Who was the father? Who was the _mother_, even? Why did it have to be _her _who found it and not somebody else? She couldn't keep that to herself, couldn't go around making discreet inquiries of all the women around who were hiding in separate rooms. Her first instinct was to take the damned thing back to Nerve Centre and show it to Martha and Nios, until she realised it could very easily belong to Martha. She had to show it to somebody to whom it couldn't belong.

As she walked out of the large bathroom she held it and stared at it and glanced up and realised her best bet was probably the first door she saw - the door that led into Professor River Song's room. River would know what to do, she was centuries old or something, of course she would, and she was a dead robot so it couldn't possibly be hers. Making sure nobody else was around, she went up and knocked on the door, then wondered if maybe she had knocked too hard and hoped she didn't draw anybody else out. River, who never got visitors to her room, opened the door with surprise, a surprise which just grew when Rose barged past her.

"Shut the door," she whispered.

"What? Why?" River questioned, and Rose brandished the thing in her face, "Is that yours!?"

"Shh, shh! Close the bloody door!" Rose ordered, which River now did, "I found it on the floor in the bathroom over there, I don't know whose it is and I don't know what to do with it!"

"Why bring it to me!? I don't want anything to do with any baby," River said, flinching away from it when Rose held it out, "Somebody's peed on that."

"Yeah, somebody _pregnant_," Rose said.

"You found it on the floor? That's a weird place for somebody to leave it," River said, "How far gone are they?"

"I don't know, it's not one of the ones that says," Rose shrugged.

"Can't you look into the time vortex and see whose it is?" River asked, a brilliant idea, Rose thought. This was why she had come to River, River knew exactly what to do.

"Hold this," she said, pushing it into River's hand before she could refuse. River held it at arm's length by its very end to try and get away from the bit with the wee on it. Rose closed her eyes and tried to connect with the time vortex, and found... nothing. Not a single thing came through to her. Her power was working just fine normally, though, when she probed around and discovered that Rory had had eggy bread for breakfast, or that Clara had had marshmallows. Who the hell ate marshmallows for breakfast? What a freak.

"Well?" River prompted.

"Nothing, I can't see anything, I have no clue who it belongs to," Rose said, dropping her arms in defeated frustration. River gave her the test back and they stood in silence for a few seconds. Rose had never been in this room before, but she could see Nine's clothes around. He'd always been messy, she recollected.

"I don't want to have to make room for someone's baby on this ship," River muttered, which Rose wholly agreed with. If she wouldn't have Beta Clara on the ship, she wouldn't have some screaming brat on it, either. She hated kids, and babies, after having that bad experience running into herself as a baby and almost destroying the universe. But what could they do now?

**AN: All I'll say is this: it's not what any of you think.**


	380. Unidentified Flying Object II

_Mickey_

_Unidentified Flying Object II_

"I used to live here, you know," Adam Mitchell said. Adam was driving as they cruised smoothly through the hot American desert, Mickey sat next to him annoyingly close, because Eleven on the far left in the front of the cherry red Hudson had decided he needed the world's most ridiculous amount of legroom. Now, maybe Mickey Smith wasn't the most innocent soul when it came to matters like that, as Martha so frequently told him, but he wasn't so selfish he'd try and spread his feet out in their current setting. It was cramped and hot and all the windows were rolled down and the air con blasted and the radio stayed silent because Adam refused to put on any music because he wanted to avoid the arguments that would cause.

"In the desert?" Rory asked Adam. Jack in the back, Mickey saw in the rear-view mirror, was staring off outside into the distance, eyes glued hazily to the orange horizon. He hadn't said a word. Mickey wondered what was the matter with him, and also that if something _was_ the matter with him, why had he even agreed to come out?

"What? No, in America. In Utah. Underground, though," Adam said, a strange nostalgia coming over him. Nine made a face in the back.

"Yeah, in that museum of van Statten's," Nine said somewhat bitterly. Adam clenched his jaw and cast a look at the Ninth Doctor over the back of his seat, before fixing his eyes back on the road. Everything in New Mexico seemed to be the same. Mickey wanted to know exactly how long it would take to get to Colorado. Not more than a few hours, surely. Just a few hours stuck in a car with all the other men on the TARDIS, three of which were the same man duplicated with substantial variations who were prone to getting into fights with each other. And then Jack, who really didn't seem to be in the Doctor's best books either, _any _of the Doctors. Mickey had been trying to stay as uninvolved as possible in Jack and Jenny's business, though. Nine resumed, "He kept a stuffed Slitheen hand down in that basement, and a Dalek. They tortured it."

"Oh, the poor thing," Mickey said sarcastically.

"And he left Rose to die," Nine continued.

"I did not leave her to die, she was just slower than me! I wanted to get away from the Dalek," Adam defended himself. Mickey hadn't heard anything about this. Maybe a few callous remarks here and there from various Doctors, but Adam never said a lot mostly. He seemed quite quiet, sort of boring. As they were on the topic of Daleks, Mickey wondered what Oswin, the ultimate genius, saw in this rich boy from Devon who used to live in some rich bloke's basement in Utah.

"With your track record, I'm surprised you didn't try to kiss it," Eleven remarked sarcastically.

"You never used to be this sarcastic," Rory told Eleven, who was leaning with his head out of the window halfway, like he was a dog. At that, he pulled himself back into the car and frowned at Rory in puzzlement for a few seconds as he thought.

"No, I didn't, did I?"

"Blame Clara," Adam told him, "I didn't used to be so sarcastic either."

"Neither did Jenny," Jack muttered in the back, proving that he was actually listening somewhat. There was a pause in the Hudson, until Nine resumed whatever half-arsed explanation of Adam Mitchell's old job working for this 'van Statten' character he had been giving.

"Didn't you used to sort rubbish into piles?" he asked jokingly, like he didn't know what the real answer was. Adam scowled.

"I used to catalogue space debris," Adam said.

"Sounds exactly like sorting rubbish into piles to me," Mickey commented.

"Most of them were broken. One was a hairdryer. Then there was a musical instrument," Nine said.

"I still have that," Adam said, "I ought to show it to Oswin…" he added to himself. Mickey wondered what musical instrument Nine meant. Maybe he'd go and find Adam later and make him show it to _him_ as well as his girlfriend.

"And I thought _I_ was a nerd," Rory said.

"You are, Rory," Eleven told him matter-of-factly, and then he turned in his seat awkwardly, much to the dissatisfaction of the other three of them rammed in the front seat, to address his past selves, "You know, the first time I brought this one onto the TARDIS, he understood the theory of it being another dimension unto itself?"

"Ha! Did you?" Ten asked, impressed. Nine grimaced. He and Eleven didn't seem happy about Rory understanding Time Lord technology. Rory changed the subject back.

"I'm not nearly as much of a nerd as Adam Mitchell," he said.

"Why does everybody always call me by my full name? When does anyone call you Rory Williams?" Adam Mitchell questioned. Mickey didn't know why everyone always called him by his full name, probably because his first name on its own was kind of boring.

"Do you have any middle names?" Mickey asked.

"Like I'd tell you," Adam told him, going back to paying attention to where they were driving. They'd trailed off to the left side of the road by accident, and Adam swung them carefully back onto the right where they were supposed to be, lest they draw attention and get stopped, "What's wrong with being a nerd, anyway? It comes in useful. Came in useful when we ran into that Xenomorph, remember?" He addressed this mainly to Nine, who grunted in acknowledgement and then glanced to his right to see Jack still staring outside at the dust the white-walled tyres were kicking up.

"What's the matter with _you_?" Nine asked him. Mickey thought it was pretty obvious what might be up with Jack – it had been just over two weeks ago that he and Jenny had had their _very_ loud breakup. Nevertheless, Jack didn't seem to hear. At the very least, he didn't speak, and Mickey caught a questioning look from Ten that he answered with a shrug.

"Jack?" Ten inquired.

"Huh?" Captain Jack looked around. "Why're you all staring at me?"

"I said, what's the matter?" Nine repeated himself with a softer tone.

"What? Nothing."

"You're being weird," Mickey said. He hadn't been this upset about the split with Jenny a few days ago. Not even in that stressful week where all the vampire stuff was going on and she kept asking him to donate his blood to her new fuckbuddy.

"I'm just thinking about life, y'know?" Jack said, staring back out of the window, "Blondes can be so surprising sometimes."

"_Right_…" Rory said, sharing a confused and worried look with Mickey.

They all stayed quiet for about five more minutes after that, until Adam Mitchell muttered, "Uh-oh," and drew everybody's eyes out of the front window. Crawling along the desert to meet them were big, green trucks and jeeps with men in military uniforms padding around and towards them. The speedometer fell down from eighty to sixty to forty to about five miles per hour and they trundled along the cracked asphalt road to meet a soldier, while Adam pestered one of the Doctors to give him some psychic paper he could use as a driver's license. Eleven was the first to try and answer his requested, but also the first to realise his psychic paper had been stolen by his wife, and he made some huffy remark about having to get Clara her own psychic paper at this rate. In the end, Ten came to the rescue and handed Adam the leather wallet over the back of the car seat in the nick of time.

"What's all this, then?" a soldier, it looked like, stooped down at Adam's window, "There's a roadblock up ahead, you're gonna have to turn back."

"A road block?" Adam asked incredulously, which was when the soldier, the soldier and the automatic gun slung over his back, got wind of his accent and decided to check his driver's license. Whatever Adam showed him on the psychic paper was satisfactory, apparently. Mickey wondered why he hadn't brought his damned driver's license with him in the first place.

"You have to turn back," the soldier ordered again.

"But this is Route 285, we have to stay on it to get to Colorado," Adam said.

"Why do you know that?" Mickey asked. As far as he was aware, they hadn't passed a single road sign.

"I have an eidetic memory," Adam muttered to him offhandedly, going back to the soldier. Oh, of course. Eidetic memory.

"Colorado, huh? Well if you turn back and head west on Route 82, then join again at 54, you can follow that North and get to Denver by the morning," the soldier advised. _The morning_!? How big was this suggested detour? Adam seemed stunned.

"Uh, why's there a roadblock? Can't we just cut through? There's no other cars, nobody will know," Adam pleaded.

"Yes, listen to the boy, I'm friends with the president, you know," Eleven said.

"You? You know President Truman?" the soldier asked.

"I – what? Truman?" Eleven asked.

"You don't even know who the President is, but you claim to know him?" the soldier asked, "God damn limeys."

"_Limeys_!?" every one of them in the car minus Jack Harkness exclaimed.

"I've never heard anybody use the word 'limey' unironically in my life," Adam said with a shake of his head, "What's the roadblock for?" The soldier laughed.

"That's classified, kid."

"Classified? Hold on, what's the date?" Eleven asked, leaning right over Rory and Mickey to get to talk to the soldier 'properly.' Mickey felt like pushing him over so he fell on the gearstick and hurt himself, but didn't want to damage the car.

"The date? How long you been in the desert for?"

"A while, not quite sure, hence my not knowing the date," Eleven said.

"It's July 8th," the soldier said, and there was a pause.

"Could you tell us the year as well? It's because of the, uh, time difference across the Atlantic. We're a few years behind. It's still the middle of the war over in London," Eleven said, and he got a funny look. He always got funny looks, regardless of where he went, though. All the Doctors did, but Eleven especially. It was the bow tie, Mickey thought.

"1947," the soldier said, and Eleven gawped. Whatever he was excited about, Adam Mitchell and the other two Doctors seemed to share in it. Even Jack had looked around from his absent staring out of the window.

"Right then. What route was it you said? Route 82 and then Route 54?"

"Then you're back on 285 and heading to Colorado," the soldier said as Adam started the engine. Without any sort of goodbye to the soldier, though Mickey doubted he was expecting one as he stepped back from the car, Adam made the Hudson shoot off ecstatically in reverse, spinning it around in a dangerous turn that could have landed them stuck off the road in a ditch. Instead they ended up shooting off down the same road they'd been prowling along for an age now. Mickey wondered how much petrol they had, and if the sonic screwdriver would be able to make a car go without any fuel.

"Did you hear that? The 8th of July, 1947?" Adam asked eagerly, looking around, "In New Mexico! You know what that was we just came across?"

"It was just a military checkpoint," Rory said.

"No, no, if I'm where I think we are, then if we head South for long enough down this road, we'll end up in Roswell," Adam said, "This is the date of the Roswell crash, it was last night, a flying saucer was allegedly recovered."

"The flying saucer that turned out to be a weather balloon running tests on nuclear bomb detonations," Rory added.

"Yeah, yeah, that's the _official _story," Adam continued feverishly, getting much too excited. Maybe the whole thing had just been a joint mirage caused by the desert heat. Mickey hoped it was.

"It's not a flying saucer, Adam," Rory told him.

"No, no, he's right," Jack added, "Trust me, I was around in New Mexico for a while in the Fifties, I know these roads as good as this memory-freak here does. There's a USAF base to the North-East. We go into Roswell, maybe stop and get gas, then it's-"

"Route 70," Adam finished, "It goes to Cannon Air Force Base."

"See? I said you were a nerd," Rory muttered, "It's a weather balloon."

"Not likely, Rory," Eleven said, "Doesn't seem a little funny, the TARDIS bringing us here and then struggling to land? The same way it did in Colchester that time? There was a spaceship on Craig's roof then, killing people to find the pilot. It's worth investigating."

"Guess we're breaking into a top-secret air force base then," Mickey, displeased, muttered, sinking down in his seat. To think, he'd wanted to spent the day with Martha, and now he was stuck in New Mexico chasing stupid UFO theories because the Doctor thought there might be something in them.

**AN: Seriously, guys. If you tell me when you like things, I can write more of those things you like. If you tell me when you don't like things, I can write less of those things you don't like. I mean, feedback is win-win. And it means I'm not stressed that I'm churning out shite. Also, this is actually the first time I've written two separate storylines in complete tandem, even if one of them ****_is_**** TARDIS-based. I've been working a lot harder to make this fic better lately.**


	381. Nuclear Family II

_Rose_

_Nuclear Family II_

"Oswin," River declared suddenly.

Rose asked, "What?"

"Oswin," she repeated herself, "She might know whose it is. She knows all sorts of things, and it can't be hers." Both good points, Rose decided. Oswin _did_ seem to know an unusual amount about the affairs of people on board the TARDIS, not in the least her sister and Jenny, and in Rose's mind, Oswin's sister and Jenny – admittedly along with Martha and Amy – were the prime suspects to be the fifty-percent culprits of this unorthodox space pregnancy. Then there was the fact Oswin was a hologram and her boyfriend, what with his cryostasis and lack of any semblance of blood-flow, was most likely impotent.

Rose nodded to go along with River Song's proposition, and River led the way out of the room, Rose checking left and right carefully and hiding the plastic stick behind her back in case anybody other than the girl they were after happened across them. For a brief moment at least, luck was in their favour, because as they were about to knock on Oswin's door, Clara's door behind them opened and Oswin stepped out as though making to go towards Nerve Centre. Upon seeing River and Rose, Oswin stopped and stared.

"Do you two want something..?" she asked, "You know Adam's not in."

"No, he's stranded in New Mexico with the rest of the men," Rose told her, which seemed to be new information. She guessed Jenny hadn't made any rounds to let anybody else apart from herself, Martha and Nios in the immediate vicinity of the living room know about their being stuck in America, "Apparently they have to get out of the state before we can pick them up. Jenny's keeping an eye on it." River hadn't known this either, and she was asked a few more questions Rose had to confess she didn't know the answers to.

"Were you just stood outside of my room to tell me that? The only people in there are Thirteen and Ellie, I think," Oswin answered, "The Doctor's babysitting her."

"Who's Ellie?"

"Adam's younger sister," Oswin explained, "There's some stuff going on where he's ended up with legal custody of her but he doesn't know what to do with her now, so she's been stuck in that room being watched for two days. She's not staying, Rose, don't worry." Oswin added that somewhat sharply. Rose always seemed to be the one trying to get people not to stay on the TARDIS for longer than necessary. Well, she was the one trying to get _Beta Clara_ not to stay on the TARDIS. And hadn't it worked? There was no Beta Clara in sight.

"Right, whatever," Rose didn't care about Adam's sister and so shook her head, "Do you know whose this is?" She held out the test to Oswin, who squinted at it for a few seconds before she realised what it was, then her jaw dropped and she glanced up at Rose as though to ask, "_Is this real_?" to which Rose nodded in response, and Oswin took it in her hand.

"Well it's not _mine_ if that's what you're insinuating," Oswin answered, staring at the thing, "I haven't a clue who it belongs to."

"Are you sure?" River implored.

"Yes," Oswin assured her.

"It's not Clara's?" River continued, and Oswin gawped at the both of them.

"_Clara's_!? Clara is not pregnant, okay? I would know, I would be, like, the _first_ to know!" Oswin protested in defence of her weirdly-close relationship with her twin sister who wasn't really her sister, "I've just been in her room for the last hour sorting out boxes, and she seems perfectly fine and not hiding this huge secret from me."

"Yeah, but, she's a good liar though, isn't she? Maybe she just doesn't want you to freak out and think you're being replaced?" Rose suggested. Half of that was a genuine question, the other half was, pettily, her trying to see how much she could rile Oswin up by suggesting Clara would replace her pseudo-'daughter' with an actual baby.

"_Replaced_? I'll show you bloody _replaced_, Rose Tyler," Oswin said, clenching her fist around the bit of the pregnancy test nobody had pissed on and rounding on her fake leg to go knock aggressively on Clara's door. Clara answered within a second, and seemed awfully puzzled that it was Oswin.

"What? I thought you were getting biscuits from the kitchen?" Clara said to her.

"_Biscuits_, Clara!? Biscuits!?" Oswin exclaimed at her.

"Are you alright, sweetheart? You're acting funny," Clara said carefully.

"Why are you wearing a fez?" River asked. Rose hadn't really noticed, but now she paid more attention instead of spending most of her time trying to ignore Clara Oswald, like she usually did when they were within ten feet of each other, "Is that the Doctor's?" The fez was dark blue. Clara took it off as though she hadn't seen it before.

"No, it's mine, he got me it last Christmas just gone," Clara said, "You know we had that Christmas in August? It's ridiculous. I'm only wearing it because I found it, I'm moving stuff." Rose peered around Clara and saw her room was all bright and different.

"Do you have a new room?" she questioned, raising her eyebrows. Clara closed the door behind her, stepping out into the Bedroom Circle.

"Might do. What's it to you? And what's that in your hand?" Clara asked the second question of Oswin.

"This!? You should know what it is!" Oswin held it out to her face, and she cringed away from it and its urine when she realised what it was.

"Bloody hell, what are you sticking that in my face for, Os!?"

"_This_!? It's only the indicator of your bastard hybrid spawn, Clara Oswald," Oswin said to her angrily. It seemed that Rose had done more harm in good in suggesting Clara was a liar who didn't trust her sister nearly as much as Oswin thought she did.

"My 'bastard hybrid spawn'? It's not a bastard, I'm married," Clara said, and the three of them all gasped, "I mean – no – not that it's _mine_, it's not mine, _I'm_ not pregnant, okay? I don't have a clue who that belongs to, I just know that even if it _was_ mine it wouldn't technically be a bastard, alright? …Oswin?"

"I told you it wasn't Clara's," Oswin said stiffly, shoving the stick back into Rose's hands. Why was Rose stuck being the guardian of the random pregnancy test?

"You know I'd tell you first if I was pregnant," Clara said to her. Above her husband, Rose wondered? Well, probably, come to think of things, she had no clue how the Eleventh Doctor might react to news like that. He was a maniac at the best of times.

"See?" Oswin said triumphantly to Rose and River, who didn't really care about the Twins' particulars.

"Oswin's my one true love," Clara said, and Rose couldn't for the life of her figure out if she was being sarcastic.

"That's nice," River quipped, weirded out by the pair of them just like Rose was, "But we still have the issue of who this test belongs to."

"Well whoever the poor girl is, she's probably not gonna like us all prying around trying to find out, is she?" Clara questioned, trying to take the moral high-ground for some reason, "Where'd you find it, anyway?"

"On the floor in the toilets," Rose explained.

"What kind of an idiot leaves a pregnancy test on the floor of a communal bathroom?" Oswin asked the group at large, which gave Rose an idea she now interrogated Clara about.

"Do you have a bathroom in that new room?" she asked sharply.

"No," Clara said quickly. Too quickly. There was a pause.

"You do, don't you?"

"No!" Clara continued to argue, "Of course not. Why would I?"

"Let me see," Rose asked.

"No," Clara said firmly.

"Why not?"

"Because it's my room, you can't just go in. It's messy, anyway, there're boxes and books and clothes everywhere," Clara told her.

"I can tell you're lying," Rose said, and that instance she really could. Clara narrowed her eyes, and there was a standoffish moment between the pair of them as Clara just put the fez back on her head and crossed her arms.

"Well so what if I have a bathroom?" she questioned, giving herself up.

"I knew it!" Rose exclaimed, "Why do _you_ get a bathroom, when nobody else does, hmm?"

"Maybe you should have just married the Doctor who actually owns the TARDIS in the present then," Clara remarked, and Rose scoffed.

"Rose, it's a toilet, get over it," River told her, "Maybe you shouldn't have left spunk stains on the shower curtain." Oswin snort-laughed and Rose glared at her until she shut up. She didn't have an argument for that, annoyingly enough.

"Who's in Nerve Centre? Just take it in there and ask," Clara said, shrugging.

"Martha and Nios," Rose answered, then paused, "Maybe Jenny, but she was in the console room half an hour ago."

"It could be Martha's, go ask her," Oswin said.

"No! We can't just _ask_," Rose said, "It's rude."

"Oh, but you didn't mind coming and asking me about my 'bastard hybrid spawn,' though?" Clara pointed out.

"That was _her_ who asked that, not me," Rose said defensively, nodding at Oswin, who bit her lip for a second before apologising to Clara for being rash.

"Well then I'll ask them, the sooner we get to the bottom of this, the better," Clara said, snatching the test away from Rose and forcing them all to follow her into Nerve Centre where, before the subject of the pregnancy test could be broached in even the tiniest capacity, Martha and Nios both asked her what the hell she was wearing on her head. Clara took it off and left it on the countertop-bar that separated the kitchen from the rest of the room, getting to the point quickly, "Martha, are you pregnant?" she asked bluntly, holding the test up to Martha's eyes. Martha dropped the slice of toast she'd been eating onto the plate.

"No," she answered, staring at it, then leaning forwards and squinting as though her eyes deceived her when she saw those two lines.

"What about me? Why isn't anybody asking me if _I'm_ pregnant?" Nios questioned, pretending to be offended.

"Alright, are _you_ pregnant, Nios?" Clara asked, trying to be accommodating and stay on the psycho-synth's good side, clearly.

"No, synths can't get pregnant, you idiot. Why would you even ask me that?" Nios asked coldly, and Clara glared.

"Well it has to belong to _somebody_," she said.

"But who?" Oswin voiced the only question any of them had been asking.


	382. Unidentified Flying Object III

_Mickey_

_Unidentified Flying Object III_

They were in the rural Southern states of the USA so, of course, when they rolled into Roswell in Adam Mitchell's shiny red car that was oh-so-conveniently from the time period (he didn't know what might have happened if they showed up in 1947 with a Ferrari Enzo), they found a diner. Well, first they found a petrol station and Captain Jack came back to himself enough to go in and blag them some fuel with his psychic paper on the grounds that he was a federal agent. Jack did the exact same thing when they wanted food, and were sat very awkwardly in a booth by noon, after driving for fifty more minutes to get back to Roswell from where they'd run into the military checkpoint. Four of them actually got seats _in_ the booth, Mickey included thankfully, while Adam got stuck dragging a chair over from some other table and the two remaining members of their party, who happened to be Ten and Eleven, were in the booths on either side kneeling over the back so that they could all talk. They must have looked a sight that Tuesday in 1947.

"So what's the plan?" Eleven asked, leaning over between Mickey and Nine's shoulders to make a grab at one of the four plates of fries Jack had decided to get for them. Fries, and that was all, because he couldn't be bothered taking specific orders. Oh, and cans of Coke. Jack decided he didn't want any food or drink though, and resigned himself to staring gloomily out of the window, pondering whatever he had been pondering all day that apparently had something to with 'surprising blondes,' as he'd stated earlier. Mickey just assumed it was something about Jenny, because the only other blondes he knew were Rose, River and Thirteen, and he doubted that Jack had had a thing to do with any of them.

"Plan?" Nine asked, hitting Eleven's hand away.

"Plan, yes! Gotta have a plan. Thank god I'm here and I'm the Plan Man, isn't that right, Rory?" Eleven said.

"Nobody has _ever_ called you the 'Plan Man' before in your life," Rory told him firmly.

"Maybe Clara calls him it in bed," Adam suggested, and Eleven shut up because he didn't like people talking about his sex life at all, "Can't we just use the psychic paper to sneak in? Jack can pretend he's from the FBI again and we'll just go look around." Mickey thought that that was a good enough idea as any they might have, just sneaking into the nearest air force base.

"Why do you know every road in America, then?" Rory asked Adam, who chewed on some of his chips alarmingly slowly so that he could mull over his answer and probably try to sound like less of a nerd when he answered. Not that Mickey was much better, he used to research all sorts of weird stuff about alien encounters after Rose ran off with Nine back in the March of 2005, so many years ago now.

"I used to get bored when I worked for van Statten. Anyway, it comes in useful, haven't you lot noticed how often we end up in America? I know all the roads in Britain and Ireland as well," Adam said with a shrug.

"You're a weirdo," Mickey said, "I don't know how you have a girlfriend."

"Adam's girlfriend's a weirdo too," Eleven interrupted, getting his own back for the remark about Clara calling him the 'Plan Man' in bed.

"I'll tell her you say so," Adam said. It was true though, Oswin Oswald was pretty weird, from what Mickey knew of her. She just said the strangest things sometimes, even if she _was_ clever. Adam Mitchell was weird as well. Mickey wanted more details of when he'd been kicked of the TARDIS, and figured he would ask Nine or Rose for them later. Rose, he suspected, would be the least biased of the three of them.

"We should probably just do what Adam said and use the psychic paper," Mickey vouched for him in the end.

"What? All of us? That'll look suspicious," Ten pointed out.

"Well then only two of us go and the rest of us can just stay here and eat chips all day," Rory shrugged. Rory was of the same opinion of Mickey, that the Roswell incident was still an overhyped weather balloon and there was nothing spacey about it in the slightest. But the fact remained that the TARDIS, on that day, was refusing outright to land in New Mexico.

"Why don't two of us go as a distraction?" Nine suggested suddenly, like he had an idea, "Two of us pull up in the car and show the psychic paper and see if they show us anything legitimate inside the base. We can pretend to be… I don't know, envoys or something, diplomats from Great Britain sent here to… I don't know, get a look at high end weapons, or something?"

"Great idea," Eleven declared, "You do it."

"_Me_? No!" Nine argued.

"You suggested it," Ten shrugged, "You go in undercover with the psychic paper. The rest of us will… sneak in the back way."

"Yes, sneak in the back way, exactly," Eleven said, agreeing with Ten on every point, "Best if a Time Lord goes in with Adam."

"_Adam_!?" Nine exclaimed, the same time Adam exclaimed, "_Me_!?" in the exact same tone of scandalised voice.

"Well, yes, of course," said Eleven.

"You don't want anybody else driving your fancy new car, do you?" Ten said, and Adam Mitchell clenched his jaw.

"Fine, whatever," he muttered, "Not like I have detailed knowledge of the Roswell incident."

"You mean through Wikipedia," Rory pointed out to him, and he fumbled his words for a moment, and then muttered something about reading books, to which Rory muttered, "Yeah, _comic_ books."

"As if you've never read a comic book," Adam quipped. Meanwhile, Mickey caught notice of Jack still staring aimlessly out of the window. What the hell was he so preoccupied with?

"So it's decided, then?" Ten asked.

"What? No! No it isn't!" Nine continued to protest against the dictatorships of his two future selves.

"It _was_ your idea," Mickey said. If somebody asked Mickey if _he_ wanted to go and hang around Cannon Air Force Base with Adam Mitchell, he wouldn't refuse at all, but thought he might rather go sneak around it looking for secrets with the other four. Besides, it _was_ Nine's idea, and it was probably safer if a Doctor went.

"And you're the most sensible out of the three of you," Rory, who was just bored of the argument, even if it was a very brief one, said, just to play up to Nine and make him stop fighting on this. Adam sighed and accepted his fate as the eternal designated driver. Well, if he did insist on buying such fancy cars and refusing to let anybody else drive them, though Mickey thought that if _he_ had a Hummer and a Lamborghini and Captain Jack Harkness had stolen them and then his part-time shag Christina de Souza had blown them up, he might be a bit careful about who he leant his automobiles to in future.

"I mean," Adam began, also trying to quell the argument between the dejected Nine and the irritatingly triumphant Ten and Eleven, who sensed they had won the argument, and had sensed such since the thing had _started_, "I guess the _ideal_ Doctor to bring to an _American_ air force base would probably be Thirteen, but she's not here, so-"

"Oh, please, I'm just as good as that faux-Yank, she's not even an American," Nine argued, and thus Adam had successfully got him to agree to sneak into the base directly via psychic paper related coercion, "I'll go. I will. I'm better than she is anyway. I bet that woman has shoes with the stars and stripes on them."

"She does, I've seen them," Adam said.

"Why have _you_ seen Thirteen's shoes?" Mickey asked him.

"She sleeps in me and Oswin's room on the sofa. She spends loads of time in there. She's there right now babysitting my sister," Adam said.

"Your sister?" Rory frowned.

"Adam's younger sister is staying on the TARDIS while legal documents involving who has legal custody of her are sorted out and he finds a permanent place for her to live," Eleven explained coolly on Adam's behalf, with a tone that suggested nobody dare argue with him. He was trying to be authoritative. Annoyingly enough, it was working. No-one questioned him.

"You know, she secretly told me once that the _real_ reason she calls herself 'Thirteen' is because there are thirteen stripes on the American flag," Adam said. They all stared at him for a second.

"That can't be true," Eleven said.

"It's totally true, ask her," Adam shrugged.

"No, I don't like her," he said, "She once called me xenophobe, and I have no idea why."

"A xenophobe?" Ten and Nine both asked together in disbelief.

"Well, exactly, that's what I said," he told them. Mickey hadn't heard that one before. He'd barely _ever_ spoken to Thirteen, or Alpha Twelve, or just Clara's wife, whatever she wanted to be called. The Doctor.

"That's a bit ridiculous," Rory muttered.

"…She does have those shoes though," Adam reiterated his point, "I think it's something to do with trying to annoy Clara."

"I'd never try to annoy Clara," Eleven muttered.

"Didn't you kick her out of your room yesterday?" Mickey gave him a loaded question with a smirk, but instead of stammering in pathetic defence of himself like Mickey had come to except, he instead kept his cool completely.

"Well she wouldn't shut up about napkins," he explained, "How would you like it if for hours you had a woman going on about napkins in your ear? I don't care what the napkins are folded into, so I kicked her out. Sort of. It was nicer than that. And I redecorated in her absence. Then she made me have dinner with her father, who hates me."

"Anyway," Ten changed the subject because he didn't care about his other self's marital woes, "Adam and the Ninth Doctor will take the car down to the base and go in the front gates pretending to be military ambassadors on Attlee's behalf, and the rest of us will stay in the car until we're close enough to jump out and sneak in a different way. Agreed?" They all answered in the affirmative, even Jack, who'd not said a word into the planning process or anything beyond claiming to be from the FBI and a close friend of J. Edgar Hoover's to the waitress so that they could have free food, the latter of which Mickey suspected might actually be true.


	383. Nuclear Family III

**AN: Short chapter, but it is what it is.**

_Rose_

_Nuclear Family III_

"Then that only leaves Amy, Donna and Jenny," Rose said, looking around at the other five faces in Nerve Centre, which consisted of River, Clara, Oswin, Martha and Nios. And the cat, of course, who was still rubbing his face on the sofa and brushing against it in a peculiar way. She never paid much attention to that cat though.

"And Thirteen," River added, "I suppose. What about Adam's sister? How old is she?"

"What?" Oswin asked, shocked they'd even think of Ellie Mitchell, whom they hadn't even known existed ten minutes ago, "She's like, fifteen."

"You could be pregnant at fifteen," Martha said, "Easily." Nobody objected to this. Oswin crossed her arms and thought, she being the person present who knew the most about her boyfriend's sister.

"I'm not that close to her, but I feel like she would have told me?" Oswin said, half a question, like she was questioning herself and her own judgement, "Or any of the other girls who are in there, Thirteen or Jenny. Even Clara she might've told. Or Adam, and Adam would have _definitely _told me. Plus, she wouldn't be in the communal bathroom." That was a strange point, Rose thought, where else could she be if not in that bathroom? Though, she'd apparently been living there for two days and Rose hadn't seen her once.

"Hang on," Rose said coldly, "You have your own bathroom as well, don't you!?" Clara glanced over at Oswin expectantly, as though she was wondering what she might say.

"Well, Rose, I have about the same level of genitalia as a Barbie doll, and Mitchell doesn't have any blood flow. There's no danger of us getting up to anything nasty in the shower like there is you and Ten, so _we're_ allowed a bathroom," Oswin confessed. Everything was coming out that day. How many other people had secret bathrooms? She asked that question aloud then, angrily, and stared around at everyone as though daring them to lie to her.

"I do," River said, and Rose remembered seeing a door in River's room and barely taking note of it. She'd been too busy with that pregnancy test, a test which was now floating in mid-air between them all courtesy of Clara's telekinesis, and Rose had washed her hands. None of them wanted to touch it lest they risk getting wee on their hands.

"Basically, if you're shagging the guy who owns the ship, or if there's no danger of shower sex at all, you're allowed a toilet, alright?" Oswin said, "Besides, even if I _wasn't_ a hologram, Adam's only got one ankle that works properly, and in case you're all forgetting, _I'm an amputee_. How easy do you think it would be for me to balance enough to do something like that? It's just not worth the risk." Oswin, in case the sudden guilt Rose felt for managing to forget that titbit of information wasn't enough, motioned to her left leg. For whatever reason the woman was too lazy to get dressed more appropriately than pyjama shorts and the entire leg was perfectly visible.

"Anybody else want to own up to having a toilet?" Rose said.

"I don't have one," Martha told her.

"I don't even _need_ to use toilets," Nios added, "What about the cat? Maybe the cat has his own bathroom?"

"It has the litter tray," Oswin pointed out, "We could get you a litter tray, Rose? I'm sure the TARDIS wouldn't object to that." Rose stopped speaking then, glaring at Oswin and Nios separately since they were on different sides of her.

Just as the debate into the likelihood of Ellie Mitchell carrying an unborn child was probably about to resume, two of the suspects in their investigation came through in the midst of lively chitchat, the one in front carrying to mugs and going over to the kettle, apparently. Thirteen and Ellie herself. They stopped talking, and it seemed Thirteen had been telling a story that instantly piqued Clara's interest about something in her future, probably, and spotted the other six people in the room staring at them. The cat mewed distractedly and Oswin made a grunt-like sound and stepped further away from it, almost so she was hiding behind her sister.

"…What?" the Doctor asked, looking around at all the faces.

"Doctor, are you pregnant?" Clara asked almost through gritted teeth. Rose thought Thirteen was almost the last person it could possibly be on their ship, after all the dead girls and synths.

"Am I pregnant?" Thirteen repeated with an eyebrow raised, then she sighed, "I guess you've all figured me out. It's true, I, the alien who has been married to someone of the same gender of an entirely different species for some decades, and who also hasn't had any sexual contact with anybody whatsoever for almost forty days, am pregnant." There was a pause.

"Well you didn't have to be so sarcastic about it, did you?" River questioned her, and she laughed, "Who's pregnant?"

"Pardon?" the Doctor asked, walking past them all to go into the kitchen. Ellie Mitchell, who was around the same height as the Twins and a little shorter than Rose, stood awkwardly under their scrutiny.

"You're from the future, you obviously know what this random pregnancy test we've found is all about," River pointed out to her.

"I sure do, Song," she said, "And I'm _totally_ not gonna tell you. You all have to remember exactly what Clara's Future Self told Vastra to tell Clara Now over the phone a week and a half ago: _patience is a virtue_. Or, if you prefer, _spoilers_," and she winked at River when she said that, and then went to fill the kettle. "Anybody else for a drink?"

The Great Panic of the Positive Pregnancy Test was forgotten momentarily by the Doctor taking orders for hot drinks, and five minutes later they'd all decided that they'd better sit down, Thirteen letting Jonesy the cat curl up in her lap and go to sleep while she scratched his ears to put an end to him rubbing his face on the sofa. Martha and Nios both emigrated onto the sofas as well, and they were all clustered about with the pregnancy test floating opposite them in the middle of the room where the spherical holobox nobody generally used because they didn't understand it would normally project, were someone to turn it on.

"Ellie, I hate to ask, but is it yours?" Oswin asked.

"Nice to see you not asking her about her 'bastard hybrid spawn,'" Clara muttered.

"Would you let that go?" Oswin snapped at her when the Doctor laughed, and she sank down on the sofa.

"Mine!? Of course it's not mine! Where am I gonna get a pregnancy test from on a spaceship?" she said.

"See? I said it wouldn't be Ellie's," Oswin said with a shrug, "Which leaves Jenny, Donna and Amy. When was the last time Donna saw her husband?"

"Just a week or so ago, while all that vampire stuff was kicking off," Rose said, "Ten takes her."

"It could be Donna's," Martha unnecessarily pointed out, "Or Amy's."

"Or Jenny's," Oswin said. Rose kept a steady eye on the Doctor to see if she was going to give anything away. Didn't she usually leave when pivotal events were happening on the TARDIS? Rose could have sworn she always seemed to be missing just when she might be desired to answer a question pertaining to their future safety. Rose wondered if she would tell her who the test belonged to if she threatened to punch her. Or her wife. Instead she just scratched the cat's ears.


	384. Unidentified Flying Object IV

**AN: By the way, Thirteen totally gave away who the test belongs to in the last chapter. In the next chapter she will most likely continue to give away who the test belongs to, because she's sly as hell. What's crazy is that 3D9C has 816 follows and 4D12C has 73, so it's like, that's less than 10%, where do all those people even go? I mean, if you're still reading this, look at all the people who gave up XD. It does make me worry though that when I get onto the third part of this (which, yeah, will exist) there will be like thirty people still reading. Soon enough you'll all give up and I'll be screaming Adwin fluff into the void to nobody.**

_Nine_

_Unidentified Flying Object IV_

"It _was_ your idea, you know, and _I'm_ not thrilled about it either," Adam Mitchell muttered next to the Ninth Doctor, who was sat slouched in the front of the car with his arms crossed like a child. He'd shown his psychic paper around out of the car window and now they were lounging about outside of Canon Air Force Base, location of the Roswell crash debris, waiting for some superiors to get down there so that they could continue to say they were from MI5 and had been sent by Clement Attlee on important security business, and the telegram must have got lost somewhere across the Atlantic. The engine rumbled on idly and Adam sat with his arm hanging out of the left window.

"You'll get sunburn doing that," Nine pointed out.

"I don't burn, I'm ice cold," Adam told him. Nine spotted the bandages wrapped around the top of Adam's right arm, the one closest to him, what with it being an American car and all, and stared at them.

"What's that?" he asked.

"What's what?" Adam looked around. Outside, soldiers gave them shifty looks. A pricey Hudson Commodore in bright red probably wasn't the sort of car they were expecting to roll up claiming to belong to a pair of diplomats. Maybe something dark and atypical with blacked out windows and a chauffeur with sunglasses and a fancy cap, not this showboat with whitewall tyres and cream-coloured leather seats with jazz crooning out of the radio now at a low volume.

"On your arm," Nine pointed out.

"Oh, _that_? It's from those brain parasites two weeks ago, didn't River mention them to you?" Adam asked. Then he remembered that River _had_ mentioned them to him, and had mentioned Adam Mitchell's unfortunate victimhood at their hands and his peculiar barnacle rash, "It's still bleeding."

"What's it look like?" he asked, wondering if he might be able to do something to help. He doubted though that if Oswin hadn't done anything, _he_ wouldn't be able to do anything. Even the Miracle Medicine wouldn't help poor Adam Mitchell, who was frozen eternally young and eternally damaged with his sprained ankle and his barnacle welts. No blood flow and permanent stasis collectively meant no immune system, either. His body could not repair itself, it could just stay perpetually as it was the day he was drugged with Old Twelvey's coffee, battered and bruised.

"A bunch of sores and funny blue scabs," Adam explained, looking down and frowning at his own arm, "It oozes stuff, too. Sort of dark blue, black stuff, like… I don't know, sort of like ink. According to Oswin, it's going to scar and look strange forever." He said that in a strange, sad way. Nine wondered if maybe Oswin was bothered by her boyfriend and his constant injuries, but Oswin was one-legged, dead, and severely mentally ill, so he highly doubted that. It was probably Adam who was more bothered by it, but Nine didn't care enough to ask him for further details on his, blech, _feelings_. Regardless of that, the soldier who'd originally gone to find a higher up member of the air force returned with a decorated looking bloke just in front of him, a hard-set, square face full of lines and stubble and irritation.

"Where are these damn hoodlums?" he asked, looking directly at the Hudson like he didn't know the 'hoodlums' he was looking for were the two men sat in a cherry-red sedan.

"Hello, hoodlums right here," Nine called cheerily, smiling and waving out of the car.

"Get the hell outta that damn thing," they were ordered, which they both did, Adam Mitchell sighing and cutting the engine off, "Who the hell dayya think you are, showing up here on a day like today claiming to be _British ambassadors_?"

"We have permission from Harry," Adam said quickly.

"From _who_?"

"Harry S. Truman," Adam said, "Look." Accordingly, Nine pulled out his psychic paper with a flourish and held it right up to the eyes of this green-suited General fellow with all of his medals and his surly facial expressions, and he saluted a second later.

"I beg your pardon, sir, I didn't understand the seriousness of the situation," he said.

"Don't salute," Nine told him sharply, still not really knowing what the psychic paper said, and he dropped his hand, "Now I believe a tour of the facility is in order?" he requested. Apparently, a tour of the facility most definitely _was_ in order, going by the way this general or whatever he was started ordering some lower ranking officer to drive the Hudson Commodore off somewhere safe after Adam begrudgingly handed the keys over, leading them inside a thankfully well air-conditioned building so that Adam could put his hoodie back on and hide those strange, blue-leaking bandages of his. They weirded out Nine to look at, anyway.

"Eurgh, look at this," Nine said to Adam, waving a plastic visitor's pass under Adam's nose, who flinched away from it in surprise. They both had a pass, Adam was much less irritated by his than Nine was. He hoped they were presently serving as an adequate distraction, as he wondered how Ten, Eleven, Mickey, Rory and Jack were going to sneak in elsewhere. As long as they didn't get labelled as co-conspirators with them, Nine thought the day was bound to go fine. They'd probably just get shown a few fancy planes and cannons or whatever – it _was_ called Cannon Air Force Base, after all – and then they'd be off on the road again trying to get to Colorado, or some other state since it was such a huge detour. Texas he was sure was bordering them. Arizona, too. East or West was easier than North, but they didn't want to carry on South and get stuck without enough papers at the Mexican border.

"It's just a bit of plastic," Adam told him flatly.

"I remember the last time I let someone give me an ID badge," Nine said, "They were electrified. It was the Slitheen that did it, killed everybody except me in that room. That was just days before Rose and I met you and you almost got the TARDIS stolen off us."

"Yeah, well, I'm sorry about that, okay? I really couldn't care less about holding a grudge against you anymore. I mean, I totally _did_ hold a grudge against you, but that was before the Dimension Stabilisers picked me up and I ran into Oswin," he said. Of course, Oswin changed everything. Love, or something else boring. As if Nine cared that Adam Mitchell used to a harbour a grudge, anyway. What was he going to do – team up with the Master and use the technology of his brain implant to try and kidnap all the Doctor's companions out of spite he had never truly been counted as one? That would be utterly ridiculous.

"Please," the general man instructed, "Let me show you to our most prized piece. Straight over here from the testing sites in Nevada, we call it a _U2_." Ah, yes, thought Nine, these prototype spy planes were going to cause so much havoc in the global sphere of Planet Earth in fifteen years, it almost pained him to be made to see one of them early in development.

"Fantastic," he said, "The Prime Minister will be so pleased, won't he Adam?"

"Very pleased," Adam assured.

"Shall we get started on this tour, then?"

**AN: Two ANs in one chapter, shocking. Basically, would you rather see a kraken as the next storyline OR would you rather see a mysterious zombie-ish plague on a spacestation? Because they're my next two, but which would you rather see ****_first_****? After that I have genuine exposition of over-arching plot points.**


	385. Nuclear Family IV

_Rose_

_Nuclear Family IV_

"I don't really think it's likely to be _any_ of them," Martha said eventually, "And I don't think any of them are stupid enough to leave a positive test in the bathroom for everybody else to see it." Rose couldn't help but agree. Amy Pond, Donna Noble and Jenny Harkness.

"Did she keep his name?" Rose asked suddenly, having a thought.

"Did who keep whose name?" Oswin asked, casting a dark look out of the corner of her eye at Thirteen and Jonesy, whom she was cooing over irritatingly in the corner. Figured that she couldn't do anything useful about their dilemma and just spent her time with that orange fur-ball.

"Jenny, did she keep Jack's name? Is she still Jenny Harkness?"

"Yep," Thirteen answered. Oh, so she'd tell them that, but not anything important? "She has her reasons." What reasons, Rose wondered? Oswin asked her, nevertheless, and she declared she couldn't tell them that. Maybe they'd get back together again, or something. They struck her as that sort of couple, one of those ones who just kept going back to each other. Weren't they both single, anyway? Rose hadn't heard anything about Jenny getting up to stuff with Beta Clara recently. But then, Jack _had_ been sleeping around again. She could hear it.

Conversation was cut short by the doors from the Bedroom Circle sliding open with the papery-noise they made in _Star Trek_, which Rose knew from back when she used to go out with Mickey Smith years ago was a sound effect created by an envelope. That was the noise that accompanied Amy Pond as she strolled into Nerve Centre that morning, yawning, arisen from bed late.

"What's going on in here..?" she asked when she saw them all sitting in a circle. They all glanced between each other, which was when off her own back she spied the floating pregnancy test right there in the middle of the room like a spotlight, "Is that..?" she asked. Thirteen was still muttering things to the cat.

"Is it yours?" Martha asked, being the most mature and sensible out of the group. Amy clenched her jaw and glared around at them.

"You know I'm infertile," she reminded them bitterly, and Rose was mortified that she'd forgotten such a detail, and she rounded on River Song on her other side.

"Why the hell didn't you say that earlier!?" she exclaimed.

"I forgot!" River protested.

"_You forgot_!? She's your _mother_!"

"Oh, please, you're all going around accusing people who, logically, it can't possibly belong to," Thirteen said, "I mean, _me_, for instance. How could you think it was mine? And Clara. You're married to the same alien that she is, Rose, and you'd think that if _you_ knew you couldn't get pregnant, you'd figure she couldn't either."

"Maybe she cheated," Rose pointed out.

"I'd never cheat!" Clara interjected.

"Shut up, Clara, this is nothing to do with you," Rose ordered her.

"You're accusing me of being a cheater!" she shouted in anguish, "How is it _not_ my business? The very thing you're discussing is _my business_!"

"We all know enough about your 'business', thank you very much," Martha said to Clara, who scowled and narrowed her eyes.

"Everybody just _stop fighting_," River said loudly over the top of Rose and the Doctor still bickering about Clara's fidelity, "This baby is tearing us apart and we don't even know whose it is yet." There was silence, and Amy, now interested, left her empty mug on a nearby table and came and sat down on a sofa on her own, isolating herself in cold indignation of the fact they'd forgotten she was barren. Rose decided to apologise later, when this whole business was properly sorted out.

"There's only Jenny and Donna left now," Nios said. Nios only ever got involved in the rest of the crew when something devastating was going on. She was smiling, too. She loved chaos among humans, it was probably the next best thing to killing them, watching them try and stop themselves from killing each other.

"Maybe it's one of those women Jack keeps dragging back here?" Rose suggested, and there was a pause.

"Rory complains about that now more than he complains about Clara and the Doctor," Amy said, offering mild support to Rose's idea that maybe it didn't belong to anybody on the ship at all. They'd already thought it might belong to Ellie Mitchell, who was still in the room and was sitting next to Thirteen to stay out of the way of the rest of them who didn't know her. With them all sat around the middle of the room in a big clump it was like some kind of important, diplomatic conference.

"Oi!" Clara protested.

"Maybe Rory should wear the damn earplugs I made for him," Oswin said in challenge to Amy, and Amy didn't say anything. Rose guessed that for whatever reason Rory just didn't wear them. Maybe he secretly _liked_ eavesdropping on everyone else, but then, _she_ could know everything about everybody if she so desired, it just happened that she very much did _not_ desire. Well, everything about everybody except who was pregnant, clearly.

"You know, I've never seen any of those girls," Martha mused.

"I have," Nios said, "In the console room at night while I'm charging. I think they're prostitutes."

"Well they're probably not prostitutes," Clara said, "Why are they all girls, anyway? I thought he was _way_ into guys. What was that bloke's name he used to brood over? Yanti?"

"Ianto," Martha told her coolly, "Ianto Jones. He's dead."

"Yeah, I know," Clara said sharply back, "I just didn't know his name, _sorry_."

"He's probably just trying to get to Jenny," Amy pointed out, "Those two are like that, they're always trying to get to each other. Then they get bored and shag again." There was a murmur of agreement, "I give them a week."

"Oh yeah?" Thirteen asked, "What are you betting?"

"Excuse me?"

"What are you betting on it being a week until Jack and Jenny are back together?" she challenged.

"Uh…" Amy began, "Well now you're saying that you're making me think I'm wrong."

"Maybe you are," she said wryly, then she went back to the cat again and left them all more confused than they had been before. That scuppered Rose's ideas that they were going to get back together, if Thirteen was getting involved. Who knew, though, maybe they'd get back together _after_ whenever Thirteen had travelled from. She couldn't possibly know _everything_.

"How could it be Donna's?" Amy changed the subject, "She never sees her husband."

"She sees him all the time," Rose told her, the same thing she'd told everybody else just half an hour ago, "Ten took her just last week."

"Oh, I guess it _could_ be hers, then," Amy sighed, "I'll ring her."

"What do you mean, ring her? She's just through there, isn't she?" Rose frowned, nodding at the door behind Amy, who was already taking her mobile out. Amy nodded.

"Oh, so you're just being lazy?" Martha accused. Amy nodded again and put her phone on speaker so they could all hear it ring.

"_What do you want_?" Donna asked groggily. They'd woken her up. That never boded well.

"Hi, everyone was just wondering if you're pregnant?" Amy asked perkily, and there was a beep as Donna hung up the phone. They all looked around nervously at one another, wondering if Donna hanging up meant that yes, she _was_ the owner of the pregnancy test.

They heard Donna before they saw her, her booming, amplified voice bellowing at them that she wasn't pregnant at all as she stormed into the room, and went on to demand who the bloody hell _was_ pregnant, the lot of them flinching away and the test itself clattering out of its suspense onto the floor. They told her they didn't know, but that now there was only one suspect left out of all the girls on the ship: Jenny Harkness.

"Maybe there really is going to be a little Harkness running around?" Amy suggested.

"I hope not," Martha muttered, "Just one of them on their own is bad enough, can you imagine what kind of monster their combined genetics would create?"

"It would be a damn attractive monster though…" Clara mused vacantly, and everybody looked at her, "What?"

"She's right, it definitely would be," River agreed with her. Rose tried to forget either of them had said that.

"_Your_ grandchild, Clars," Oswin told her, "Or yours, Rose. Or River's, even. All this incest weirds me out sometimes."

"Hypocrite," Martha said to her.

"Not that I _am_ doing anything unorthodox with my dear sister here," Oswin began, "But even if I was, technically it would only be masturbation, so you can all get out of here with your inbreeding assumptions."

"Yeah, but, what if it's Christina's?" Rose wondered aloud.

"Oh, yeah, that's a good point," River said, "It could be Jack and Christina's."

"Could be _anybody_ and Christina's, she's never struck me as the most _exclusive_ person," Rose murmured. She didn't like Christina de Souza, and she partly thought that a de Souza-Harkness offspring would be even more problematic than a Doctor-Harkness offspring.

"What if it's Clara's?" Nios spoke up abruptly.

"Oh my _god_, for the _billionth_ time, that test-" Clara began angrily, but Nios interrupted her.

"_Beta_ Clara's."

"Vampires can't get pregnant," River said.

"It could be old," Nios pointed out, "Maybe she was just pregnant ages ago, when she was here before last, with that old Doctor nobody likes."

"Then she would have had it by now, wouldn't she?" Amy said, and Nios shrugged.

"Not necessarily."

"I think you're grasping at straws now," Martha said, "It's probably Jenny's. Jenny doesn't have her own bathroom, and I could easily imagine her losing a pregnancy test and putting it down somewhere stupid." Another pause, the room was full of awkward – dare she say _pregnant_? – pauses that morning, where they sat and thought of more people to blame for their own confusion.

"Won't you just tell us?" Oswin begged Thirteen pathetically, who looked around from the cat like Oswin had interrupted something very important, "Leave that thing alone."

"_You_ leave him alone," Thirteen countered about Jonesy, "And who says I haven't told you already? Maybe you're just not clever enough to work it out."

"That's it, whenever you get back to the future where you belong, Future Me is going to divorce you," Clara told her, and the Doctor sighed and shook her head slightly.

They all jumped when the door from the console room itself opened on the other side of Nerve Centre, and when Jenny Harkness walked in looking nothing more than a little bored and solemn, they all stared at her in shock. She might as well have been a ghost, back from beyond the grave and walking out into the living room to haunt them like the spectre of their whimsical foetus-fantasies she had quickly become. She stopped and stared around at them all.

"What?" she asked, then she spied the Doctor, "Mother, would you leave that cat alone?"

"He's all I have left now that my wife's apparently going to divorce me," Thirteen said. They kept staring at Jenny.

"Seriously, what's happening." It was a question, but she asked it so bluntly it became a statement, an acknowledgement that something really _was_ happening that was so stern Rose knew that if they were to just lie and say nothing, they couldn't possibly get away with it now. Instead, River reached down and pawed at the carpet until finding the test where it had fallen.

"This," River began, standing up to show it to Jenny, "This positive pregnancy test. Is it yours?"

"_That_? Honestly?" she asked incredulously, "Well, yeah, it is mine, I suppose."


	386. Unidentified Flying Object V

**AN: Literally got back to that Jenny fic I meant to write two months ago because I was in that much need for something to write. I mean, you know what it's like – well maybe you don't – can't write too much 3D9C otherwise people get overwhelmed by the amount of content I've suddenly put out. That fic has almost 6000 words by now, and a much higher quality of prose narrative than 3D9C. With longer chapters it doesn't have to be all about every single chapter having to advance the story or do something, so it just sort of goes wild. Like that 22,000 word Halloween chapter based on ****_Twin Peaks_****, where it was a lot slower paced and more descriptive. That damn chapter's the length of a novella all on its own.**

_Mickey_

_Unidentified Flying Object V_

Mickey Smith decided then and there that Captain Jack Harkness, a man whom he really had known for nearly ten years by that point, was not only the world's biggest idiot, but was all of a sudden _insane_. There was no doubt about it, it wasn't just some rough day in his exceptionally long life, there was something majorly wrong with Jack. Something so shockingly wrong that he'd run away from them. Yeah, he _ran away_ from Mickey, Rory, Ten and Eleven. The four of them stood on the sandy grounds of Cannon Air Force Base in shock as Jack's trench coat billowed out behind him and swung around a corner away. Ten had just unlocked the door with the sonic, and it hung ajar and gave way to a little black square of cool interior, but they were too distracted by the sudden dissent of Captain Jack.

"What just happened?" Rory asked. Eleven stuck his hands in his trouser pockets and stared at the spot on the corner of the building that Jack had just disappeared behind. Most of the soldiers who would usually be patrolling, Mickey figured, were out still searching the Roswell crash site for any other debris there might be pertaining to the cover-up of alien life. All this effort, and in sixty years, a the Slitheen were going to strap a pig into a spaceship and ram it through Big Ben and crash it dead in the centre of the River Thames.

"What was that he said?" Ten asked, looking like he'd been slapped he was so confused. Eleven seemed more serious.

"Something about being a better man," Mickey answered.

"It's about time, is all I can say," Eleven shrugged.

"Didn't you used to have more empathy than that?" Rory challenged him, and Eleven raised his eyebrows at his old friend, as Mickey slipped between them to go and inspect the open door that marked their way into buildings with shade and air-conditioning.

"Maybe if the Captain hadn't been so awful to my daughter, I _would_ be more empathetic."

"I think their being awful to one another was a mutual thing," Rory told both the Doctors, "And _she_ did sleep with your wife. A lot."

"She's _still_ sleeping with your wife, as a matter of a fact," Ten added.

"Yes, I know that, I heard all of that from Jenny herself just the other day. Anyway, ignore Jack, let him run off and do what he likes, trying to be heroic. I'm sure he'll be fine," Eleven said, but Mickey wasn't so sure. He supposed that realistically, yes, the Eleventh Doctor was entirely correct, it wasn't like Jack was going to _die_. Not _permanently_. But if he _did_ wind up getting himself killed, the things the American military might to do him probably wouldn't be good for any of them. Mickey knew about what had happened when Jack had revealed his true nature in the 1920s – he'd been the cause of the Miracle, and that hadn't exactly worked out for the best.

"I've never seen him like this, and I know him better than you," Mickey said to both Ten and Eleven. Regardless of Jack's morally grey business with the Doctor's daughter, he was still Mickey's friend, and he was still a damn good friend who'd helped him out on multiple occasions. He'd even been the best man at Mickey and Martha's wedding, for crying out loud, when neither of them could contact the Doctor. "Even after the 456 Crisis, he wasn't like this."

"The what crisis?" Ten asked.

"…Torchwood stuff," Mickey said eventually, not wanting to discuss the 456 with either of the Doctors. He tried to block out those appalling memories, and didn't think that Ten and Eleven ought to be bothered by it. It was done and dusted now, anyway, it had been for years.

"Let's just go inside," Rory said, and they decided to just leave Jack and let him do whatever it was he was trying to, as long as he didn't end up giving them away.

It took a second for Mickey's eyes to adjust to the darkness inside a particularly large building of the air base, and he really hoped that the psychic papers of both of these Doctors would serve them well enough if they ran into any guards. They'd just flash it and it would say something about them having the highest security clearance, or whatever, and that would be the end of that.

Mickey had been inside Twenty-First Century UNIT a few times, and inside of Torchwood Three's base before it got blown up. And along with that, the HQ of the original Torchwood Institute around the Battle of Canary Wharf, so the interior of Cannon Air Force Base, New Mexico, in 1947 wasn't exactly the most impressive top-secret facility he'd ever seen. Even the basement he and Martha had in their house full of weapons and alien machinery was more high-tech and top-security than this bona fide dump. The doors didn't even have ID badge scanners on them, you needed keys. _Keys_. They were as old fashioned as the TARDIS was, and the TARDIS was from the Sixties.

"So, what turned out to be going on the time you met Craig?" Rory asked Eleven.

"Oh, a spaceship on the roof was pretending to be an extra flat and the computer was looking for a suitable pilot. Couldn't find one, everybody it lured up kept burning, made a nasty mould stain. And then Craig – the idiot! – touched it, and I have to go work in a call centre. And I had to play football. It was ridiculous, but your wife thought it was very funny. Craig wasn't a fan, I did everything he did better than him," Eleven shrugged, "I'm very good at football."

"Are you?" Ten asked in disbelief.

"Yes."

"_You_?" Ten continued.

"Yes! Why is that hard to believe?"

"You, the man who flails around pathetically all the time and trips over his own feet?"

"I do not trip over my own feet!"

"You tripped over your own feet just this morning," Mickey pointed out, "While you were making your wife toast, you just sort of fell over." The place was emptier than Mickey expected. He thought they should probably talk quieter, but if there was one thing he knew about the Doctors, it was that covert activities were not their forte.

"Yes, well, I blame that cat for that, thank you very much," Eleven snapped, "Walking around right in front of me making funny noises. Never heard a thing like it, sort of yowling."

"I hate cats," Ten muttered.

"There was a cat that day, as well," Eleven added, "With Craig. Wandered up. Didn't get killed, though. It only killed people who had a desire to leave, and I suppose the cat didn't. I've always quite liked them, really… Ah, here's someone, look, we'll ask him for directions…"

"We'll _what_? Doctor, no!" Rory ordered him, but Eleven completely ignored Rory and hailed down a soldier stood with a very large AK-47 down at the end of the hallway with a beam on his face, "Yes, we're here with part of the high-security Attlee delegation, I think you'll find we have perfect clearance to be here…" he carried on rambling excuses, the others looking at him in horror (even Ten) as he held up his psychic paper. Remarkably, the guard bought it, "We've lost our guide, you see, and somebody desperately needs to take us to the area of this facility where the debris from last night's 'balloon' crash is being held. Do you think you might be able to do it?"

"I suppose so, sir," and the guard left his post to lead them down a flight of stairs into a sub-basement, and that was that. Mickey was shocked. He'd never imagine Ten making himself known in a secret place like that, Ten wasn't quite that self-confident. But here was Eleven, barging into places and throwing his weight about. Maybe he was so incapable of being subtle he no longer even attempted it. Regardless, his plan had worked, and they seemed to have access to the most inaccessible crevices of Cannon Air Force Base.


	387. Nuclear Family V

_Rose_

_Nuclear Family V_

There was mass outcry in Nerve Centre after Jenny Harkness' revelation that the pregnancy test did indeed belong to her. So many questions were thrown at the poor girl Rose could barely keep track of them, some of them frighteningly invasive to do with contraception and Jack's sperm. Rose didn't want to know anything about Jack's sperm or cross-species-alien breeding and was very glad that Jenny didn't deign to answer that question. Then there were some even more insensitive ones about what sort of demonic child the pair of them were going to have, and selfish ones about how could she not think of the wellbeing of everybody else on the TARDIS.

"Wait, wait, wait," Jenny said loudly, interrupting them all and cutting the majority off, "You think _I'm_ pregnant?" she asked in shock, looking between the faces. Thirteen ignored all of this and stroked the cat.

"You just said this _positive pregnancy test_ belongs to you!" Donna exclaimed, snatching the thing off River and thrusting it out under Jenny's nose, who flinched away from it and raised a hand to waft the smell away. It really did stink quite poignantly.

"Well it does belong to me," she said with another shrug.

"Yeah, so you're pregnant," Rose practically told her flat-out that she was with child rather than asking again, and Jenny raised her eyebrows.

"You know, progenation machines in the Sixty-First Century weren't exactly sophisticated enough to facilitate the breeding of their synthesised offspring," Jenny said coolly, and after a pause, she added, "I only have the parts for pleasure, not procreation."

"But the test is yours," Rose continued, failing to comprehend.

"Yes, as in, I'm the one who bought it," Jenny told them.

"But..." Donna frowned.

"Right, look at this thing," Jenny said, taking the test out of Donna's hands and holding it up to them, passing her mug to Clara, who took it, and then a moment later looked very confused as to why she had taken it and let it float next to her in the air in all of her befuddlement, "It has a picture of a cat on it. Did _none_ of you actually look at it?" There really was a little grey splodge on it.

There was a long pause, until Amy said, "I don't get it."

"It's a test from the 2400s for cats! They actually decided to invent them eventually when cats started being used to get rid of vermin on interstellar vessels and the pregnancies needed to be terminated because you can't have a bunch of kittens when you're in deep space with rationed food supplies and nowhere near enough facilities to take care of them. What did you _think_ the cat meant?" Jenny asked them all.

"I thought it meant… you know, like… pussy…" Clara said guiltily, "I mean, it's just slang…"

"The way you're using it, it might as well be a slur," Jenny told her, and she shifted uncomfortably, "You thought that the person who bought a pregnancy test for themselves would be so thick that they needed a bloody _hieroglyph_ of a slang term to understand where they were supposed to stick it?"

"But, wait," Rose began after another shameful silence, "I thought the cat was a boy?" There were murmurs of agreement at this, from everybody in the room who'd been convinced that Jonesy, the _real_ perpetrator of The Great Panic of the Positive Pregnancy Test that had wracked the girls that day, was in fact male.

"Well nobody checked, did they? Everyone just assumed it was the cat from _Alien_, and I was a bit busy being blind that day, wasn't I?" she said, a little annoyed at what now seemed to be them all being plain stupid and not looking at the test properly beyond the two positive bars, "It's just a stray space cat that's coincidentally a ginger tabby from that same universe. There are lots of cats in the universe."

"_Oh_…" Rose realised, "That was why I couldn't see who was pregnant, because that stupid cat's from… what universe is it from?"

"Etaverse," Oswin answered. Rose could only see or affect things in the Alphaverse or with Alphaverse origins, and those alone. It made her life tedious on days like that one.

"It's just a random cat Adam Mitchell picked up," Jenny explained, "I just thought that it looked like it was getting fat, and it turns out its pregnant. I guess it must have picked the test out of the bin and dumped it somewhere else. Where'd you find it?"

"The communal bathroom," Rose confessed. After all, she'd been the one who started this whole panic, "But when did it get pregnant? It's not been off the ship."

"Well, that part I don't know," Jenny said, "I can't believe you all thought it was mine. Me and _Jack's_. I couldn't imagine what kind of child that would be. I haven't even slept with him for over two months."

"But you and Jack were together two months ago," Rose pointed out, "That was even before the first time you broke up, wasn't it?"

"Two months to you," she said, "Some of us spend half of our time elsewhere."

"Well where have you been spending your time?"

"With Other Clara, obviously, Rose," Martha explained to her, then Martha got an idea, "What if we scan it? We must have something to scan it with. Somebody go get the Helix handset."

"Oh, not that again," Clara muttered and Martha snickered.

"It's in the medibay," Oswin answered, heading towards the door that went straight through to the room in question. Rather than them all wait for Oswin to bring the handset back out, they were all so desperate for answers that the ten girls, Thirteen carrying Jonesy, all flocked after her like lost sheep. Jenny dropped the pregnancy test on one of the tables in Nerve Centre as she passed it.

The Doctor put Jonesy down onto one of the three beds as Oswin fidgeted with Helix's calibrations.

"I think you should scan Clara," Martha told her when she was about to scan the cat.

"What? Why?" Oswin frowned.

"I just think that you should."

"Please don't scan me, Os," Clara pleaded.

"Why..? What'll come up? What are you hiding?" Oswin asked. Rose knew that, yet again, the possibility that Clara was pregnant was playing on Oswin's mind. Martha was suppressing laughter though, so Rose wondered what all the fuss was about. _Everybody_ was now wondering what all the fuss was about.

"Just don't," Clara said firmly.

"I think you should. For Jenny's sakes," Martha said.

"For _what_?" Jenny asked.

"Oswin, she just wants it to tell everybody how many people I've slept with because she thinks it's funny, please don't scan me, Mickey scanned me yesterday," Clara assured her, and Rose got the feeling there was some telepathic begging going on right then. Ultimately, Oswin shook her head and honoured Clara's wishes over Martha's, Jenny just looking puzzled.

"Helix, scan the cat," Oswin sighed.

"_Feline, female, alive, aged three, one sexual partner, pregnant,_" Helix answered.

"Pregnant with how many kittens?" Oswin asked.

"_Five underdeveloped lifeforms detected_," Helix said.

"How long has the cat been pregnant?"

"_Six weeks_."

"Anybody know how long cat pregnancies last?" Amy mused, looking around.

"Nine to ten weeks," the Doctor answered.

"And you knew about this all along," Rose said to her, "And you let us run around out there accusing each other? Accusing your own daughter?"

"I totally gave you clues!" Thirteen protested, "I was, like, all over that cat! Plus, it was kind of funny. I knew it'd work out fine _anyway_."

"When will it give birth?" Rose asked her directly, "What day. Tell us."

"Well I have a fair few things to tell you about this here kitty," the Doctor told them, "I gotta give you all some warning."

"Warning?" Clara asked.

"Yep, _warning_, sweetheart. I mean, you all know what happened to River," Thirteen said, nodding at River, "She's a human-Time Lord hybrid because she was conceived on the TARDIS."

"But if the cat's six weeks gone, it can't have possibly been conceived on the ship," Jenny told her.

"Well yeah, there is that. But there's also the fact that those kittens have far less complicated genetic structures and are much easier for the time vortex to leak into, and then, you know, that cat may have consumed a bit of coffee," Thirteen said, "And when I say 'coffee,' I mean spiked electrolyte magic coffee. Damn cats, they get everywhere."

"What are you saying..?" Donna asked carefully, "They're not gonna be normal kittens..?"

"Uh… no. I can't really tell you the particulars, but I'll tell you to be ready around the… mid-forties. Day-wise. I won't be here," she said.

"What?" Clara and Jenny both exclaimed, and the Doctor jumped, and then they both said, "You're _leaving_?"

"No, I'm hiding around that time, I figure," she said, "I mean, don't ask me about it. You'll all find out in a couple of weeks. Patience is a virtue."

"Stop saying that," Clara muttered.

"Right. Brilliant. Freaky cats. What are we supposed to do with five weird kittens!?" Donna demanded.

"I'm allergic to cats," Martha said meekly, "I mean, it's not so bad when it's just _one_, easily avoidable cat, but five kittens…"

"This is more inconvenient than if it _was_ Jack and Jenny's," Amy complained.

"I wish you were all a bit less prejudiced against my imaginary child with Jack…" Jenny shook her head, "Anyway. Can't very well call it 'Jonesy' anymore, that's a ridiculous name for a girl cat."

"What are you talking about? It's almost _my_ name," Martha said, "You don't have to rename it."

"I already did rename it," Jenny declared, "The cat is henceforth re-christened Princess Sparkle Tutu, and there's nothing any of you can do about it."

**AN: I thought I would double update to put you all out of your misery wondering who the test belongs to, and I mean, like I said in 879, it's not what any of you think. **


	388. Unidentified Flying Object VI

_Mickey_

_Unidentified Flying Object VI_

The most remarkable thing was that they actually succeeded in infiltrating a United States Air Force base that might well have been the top priority, security-wise, nationally. Globally, even, the Americans were trying to cover up Roswell. Roswell, the most well-known and well-disputed UFO incident in all of popular culture and factual history, and here they were staring through a viewing window into a big white autopsy room at a dead distinctly non-human body, proving that the Roswell Incident was, most definitely, _not_ the most well-disputed UFO incident in all of popular culture and factual history. How could it be, when they were staring unto the corpse of something almost eight feet tall with three fingers and a head the shape of a light-bulb that gleamed almost as though it were secreting something.

Radio chatter serenaded the quartet as they stared through the window into the cuboid-shaped room right in the middle of a much larger room, a small hanger, storing all manner of things. In fact, Mickey spied what he definitely thought was a Stealth Bomber, though Mickey also _definitely thought_ that Stealth Bombers wouldn't be invented for over thirty more years. Mickey had knocked out the soldier with one clean punch and had stolen all the ammunition from his gun so that he couldn't shoot them, were he to wake up, so they were alone in a room much less guarded than he would have thought.

"This is the first major UFO sighting in American history," the Tenth Doctor said, the Eleventh Doctor pressing his forehead against the glass of the all-white viewing window into the operating theatre storing the alien corpse with creases on his face, "I suppose the first sightings of unidentified flying objects must have been foo fighters, though. Then you've got the stories about wormholes over the Bermuda Triangle-"

"Disputed stories," Eleven added, "Wormhole sucking up ships, how ridiculous."

"Then what does cause things to vanish in the Bermuda Triangle?" Rory inquired, cutting off Ten's brief monologue about the UFO history of the United States, a very interesting history in Mickey's opinion, though he, also, was interested in whatever explanation the Doctor could offer for the Bermuda Triangle.

"Oh, I haven't a clue," he said, "Maybe that ought to be the next port of call – and I mean 'port' literally – the mystery of the Bermuda Triangle finally solved."

"How have you _never_ figured it out before?" Rory asked him in disbelief.

"Well I've never found the time, have I? All you humans with your _requests_ and whatnot – maybe you should wonder why _you've_ never asked me to go there, hmm?" Eleven challenged him, "Anyway, I'm glad this particular mystery is all solved."

"Solved? What do you mean solved? We haven't solved anything," Ten said to him. Mickey thought the exact same thing, but Eleven and Rory seemed entirely satisfied with merely seeing this refrigerated, semi-broken carcass through a window, "We don't even know what it is."

"It's only a Silent," Eleven said, staring straight at it, "Don't take your eyes off it."

"Why?" Mickey asked carefully.

"Well, if you look away, you'll forget it exists," he said, "We had a lot of trouble with them, Rory and Amy and I. Spent a lot of time with Nixon trying to understand them – but that won't be until 1969. Honestly, I shouldn't worry about it. Anybody have a pen? I ought to write on my hand that we saw this…"

"But what is it?" Mickey asked, "What does it want?"

"To go to the moon," Rory said.

"Exactly as I thought. Didn't want to say much, though. Remember how I mentioned the spaceship on Craig's roof?" Eleven began, fishing a pen out of his own pocket when nobody offered him one, starting to scribble on the back of his hand, "It was a Silent spaceship, dead Silent in it. I suppose this fellow just crash landed in an inconvenient place – explains why the US government were always so interested, I suppose. Good friend of ours, Canton, helped us investigate. Do you know, I ought to invite him to the wedding, I can't remember if he was at the first one." Ah, yes, the infamous Third Wedding of Whoufflé, Mickey remembered. He thought that if _he_ wasn't invited, he wouldn't be too bothered at all.

Eleven gave the pen to Rory and told him to write down on his own hand that it had merely been a Silent, then he made a note to himself, miming with his hand as though holding a genuine Dictaphone when in reality he had nothing at all, to make a note of this somewhere. Then he made _another_ note to himself about getting Clara a notebook and that witch's prophecy from yesterday, which was about the time the Eleventh Doctor apparently had a revelation.

"It said, 'Lights in the sky and deserts and metal.' Well, we're in a desert right now," Eleven said, "And I'm sure there were lots of lights in the sky when the spaceship crashed."

"We haven't even found the spaceship yet," Rory pointed out.

"No, I suppose not," Eleven sighed, and then he finally walked off, and the other three were left following him, Ten very unhappy about this because he clearly hated being some sort of underling rather than equal to a man such as the Eleventh Doctor, the Eleventh Doctor who had proven himself to be a complete idiot more infatuated with fezzes and Clara Oswald than anything proper or serious. But then when he _was_ serious it was downright spooky. "Anyway, what I was saying was that the last time I was at Craig's the thing stopping the TARDIS from landing was a Silent ship. I suppose the autopilot system will still be switched on. Mickey! You'll be able to turn it off, won't you?"

"I don't know," Mickey answered honestly. Mickey didn't know how far his technopathy went. He had, a few days earlier, attempted to pilot the TARDIS somewhere using it. He'd received an electric shock for his trouble, and hadn't tried messing with alien gadgets since then, not in the least this murderous computer system that had caused Eleven so much trouble earlier in his life.

"Ah, there you are, that's what I'm looking for," he said, nodding forwards once they were around the strangely situated autopsy chamber and the rest of the hanger was revealed to them, Stealth Bomber and all. There it was, a large silver contraption that looked a _bit_ like a spinning top with spider-ish, metal legs, or a four-legged Tripod like something worthy of H.G. Wells. And it just sat there, rusting and humming.

"Gives me a headache," Mickey muttered, looking away from it. It was like buzzing in his ear to look at that thing. Static interference in his brain, he hated it.

"Well, yes, but go switch it off, would you? Then we can go home without having to drive to Denver. I've never been a fan of Denver. Lots of mountains, don't like mountains," he said, another hatred of the Doctor's that probably didn't have any legitimate gravitas, "And for the record, that thing is definitely made of metal. Like the witch said."

"Fine, fine, whatever you want…" Mickey sighed, and approached.

* * *

_Adam_

"But what's in here?" Adam Mitchell asked. He was asking so many annoying questions on their tour he was sure he was about to get punched by the general leading them, a General McClintock they had since discovered. He and Nine had an armed envoy trailing after them, to 'guard' them, though Adam suspected they were probably under orders to shoot were he and the Doctor to do anything unorthodox, illegal, or even plain weird. And if there was anything the Ninth Doctor was, it was definitely 'plain weird.'

"In there?" McClintock asked gruffly, "Nothing, it's empty."

"What's empty?"

"A spare hanger, that's all," he said. The worst liar Adam had ever met, by far, and _he_ lived with a girl who spent all of her time coming up with ridiculous lies only for her own amusement. He missed her.

"Fantastic, I love spare hangers," Nine declared, "Can we see inside?"

"No," said McClintock.

"What do you mean, 'no'?" Nine questioned.

"I'll have you know that we have President Truman on speed dial," Adam argued.

"You have him on speed _what_?" McClintock questioned them. Adam bit his tongue. He'd made a mistake saying that. His girlfriend would have laughed, but his girlfriend was not there, and he was _this close_ (about a centimetre, if one were to hold their fingers that far apart) to being decked by a star-spangled all-American general. Thank god, Adam thought, that he didn't have that door in his head set to open by anything other than the push of a button, otherwise he didn't know what kind of sticky situation they'd be in, if it was even possible to be in a stickier situation than that, and Adam was thinking that having seen a video of a man trying to swim through a pool of treacle.

"A hotline," Adam continued like the idiot he was, ignoring the Doctor's glares, "You know, a direct link to Washington. Like that one Khrushchev has from Moscow."

"Moscow!?" McClintock exclaimed, "_Moscow_!? You come here and speak about Moscow and those damned red Soviet communist _bastards_!? To ME!?"

"Oh, shit," Adam cursed, cursing even more internally upon remembering that Khrushchev wasn't the leader of the USSR for more than ten more years. Stalin was the big man over there presently. How could he have forgotten basic GCSE History? He'd got full marks in GCSE History at the age of thirteen, and everything.

"This is why I kicked you off," Nine said, "But I think you'll find that we do, most definitely, have clearing to go into whatever empty hangers you might have. And we also have history being international diplomats who have gone over to Moscow to discuss the dwindling British coal trade with those red industrialists." Nine was much better at blending in with these people and schmoozing them than Adam was. Adam decided then and there to shut up, else risk being interrogated by the CIA to try and pry Soviet military defence secrets from him. And boy, did Adam Mitchell have a lot of Soviet military defence secrets stuffed in his brain from his conspiracy research and time with van Statten, along with his general being a history nerd, and the aforementioned GCSE in History.

Miraculously, when Adam stopped opening his mouth and trying to speak to General McClintock and his capitalist cronies, they begrudgingly opened the door. They begrudgingly opened the door to reveal a hanger with what Adam distinctly recognised as a 1987 Stealth Bomber that wasn't supposed to exist for forty entire years suspended from the ceiling. Along with that, there was a gigantic silver thing that looked like a massive dreidel with legs sitting behind a white cuboid with a viewing window pressed into the side of it. Oh, and also, Ten, Eleven, Mickey and Rory were facing the door directly and discussing something to do with switching off the autopilot, Eleven thanking Mickey. Finally, McClintock didn't take kindly to spying a soldier's knocked out body on the floor.

It went exactly as Adam Mitchell thought it would. Within ten minutes – after accidentally revealing that they knew each other thanks to Ten _waving_ at them, saying hello very brazenly, and exhibiting that he was guilty of having even less tact than Adam the Suspected Soviet Spy – they were being dragged off the premises. They really were manhandled quite poorly, too, as messages came over radios about a seventh intruder being found who claimed to be a captain in the US Air Force, but when they looked up his records and found that the decorated Jack Harkness he claimed to be had died in 1941 they'd lobbed the stranger into the same transportation truck they promptly threw the rest of them into, too. All of them handcuffed, they were told that they were being taken _straight_ to the on-site prison, where they would be held for, as Adam gravely feared, interrogation.

"I haven't even got my car," he complained.

"There are more important things going on than your damn car," Jack told him harshly.

"I blame you for this," Ten told Jack coldly, "You were the one who ran off and alerted them."

"It's Adam's fault really."

"How is it my fault? Even if I'd not accidentally mentioned the Moscow-Washington hotline-"

"Which isn't introduced until after 1962," Nine interrupted with a fun fact he wished he'd remembered earlier.

"Well even if I hadn't you still would have worked your way into that hanger, and we still would have found them, and the Tenth Doctor _still_ would have waved," Adam said.

"He's right, it's _your_ fault," Eleven said to Ten.

"Well let's not play the blame game, shall we?" Rory interrupted, "There must be _something _we can do."

"Yeah, _you_ should have turned invisible and called the girls to come get us after that autopilot was deactivated," Mickey said.

"Well I didn't know we were going to be caught, either," Rory muttered.

"It's called 'thinking on your feet'," Jack grumbled.

"And I suppose you did plenty of that, did you, running off and getting caught?" Eleven challenged.

"It'll be fine, I've been interrogated by the US government before," Jack shrugged.

"Says the man who can never die," Adam said.

"Y'know what? I have more important things to worry about than the six of you being stupid enough to get caught."

"What 'important things,' Jack, hmm?" Ten implored, "Because you've just been giving us riddles all day when we keep asking you what's the matter. And now we're on our way to Guantanamo Bay, it looks like, and all you can do is blame everybody else."

"They didn't put prisoners in Guantanamo Bay until 2002, get your facts straight, _Doctor_."

"Well we don't all get kidnapped as often as you," Nine said flatly. All Adam cared about was the Hudson Commodore and _not_ getting waterboarded by federal agents, he couldn't care less about the establishment of Guantanamo Bay detention camp.

"Yeah, yeah, blame me. Just because you're _all_ mad at _me_ because your own daughter _cheated first_," Jack argued. Of course, Jenny _had_ to be brought into things. It was always Jenny with him. Could he not let her go for once? They'd hardly been a proper couple since the first time they'd split up two entire months ago. His pining was getting old, Adam thought.

Somebody in the front of the truck driving them yelled out of nowhere and the brakes were slammed on so hard that Rory was thrown from his seat onto the floor, and they were basically helpless to aid him up because promptly the truck veered and Adam and Eleven landed on the floor, too, the others clinging to the back of the benches running either side of the truck that Adam hadn't thought to grab. The truck halted just as that familiar, that _divine_ vworping noise whooshed around them, music to their ears, the signal of their rescue. Once Adam had frozen and snapped his own handcuffs, he was free to do so for everybody else, and by that point the guards were so freaked out by the presumed emergence of a blue police telephone box out of thin air, they barely even noticed the escape of the prisoners. Not until they were pushing through them all to fling themselves into the safety of the TARDIS and make their getaway, at least.

And still, the Hudson Commodore he'd just bought that day seemed all but lost. Adam nearly cried.


	389. Nuclear Family VI

_Adam_

_Nuclear Family VI_

They, the seven of them, staggered through the doors of the TARDIS into the console room, and the duty of piloting them away fell onto Jack, since the room was completely empty and the ship had, obviously, detected an alteration in the thing preventing it from landing and had steered itself down to meet them in New Mexico. Adam Mitchell wasn't entirely sure _what_ alteration the ship had detected, or what was going on. Apparently it was something to do with silence? Nevertheless, Eleven assured him it had been sorted out. They would just be another mysterious incident to be reported on July 8th, 1947, Roswell, New Mexico, USA, and they would be swept under the rug and overshadowed by that far greater event which preceded their arrival.

Annoyed at the loss of yet another car of his – and no cheap car, either – he decided then that he wanted a cup of tea, and he was also famished, since he hadn't had the opportunity to get breakfast that morning. He'd been very excited about cars and had only eaten a single slice of toast. In his defence, it had been four slices originally, but after two had been scrounged by his sister and one by his girlfriend he'd been left with a lonely slice that was slightly burnt and displeasing. He'd left the crusts, as well. When he remembered that there happened to be leftover pizza in the fridge from yesterday he was overjoyed, going to stick one of those in the oven. What had happened was, after the reported vision of Amy's, the ordering of pizza had become an event. Regardless, they found that the lot of them couldn't possibly stomach so much pizza at once, and now the fridge was half full of them. There was also a lot of beer in there, and Adam didn't for the life of him know whose it was. He suspected Jack or Mickey.

"What's _that_?" someone asked, and Adam glanced over his shoulder from where he'd been bent shoving a chilled pepperoni pizza into the oven to be reheated for a few short minutes, and saw some plastic stick sitting on one of the white tables with blue trimmings and a funny screen on it. Eleven was the one who was asking, staring at it with affront. Adam stared at it, too. Within thirty seconds they were all staring at it, the six of them, Jack still in the other room.

"It's a pregnancy test," Rory said finally. Adam, admittedly, had never seen a real-life pregnancy test. It was bigger than he thought it would be. He supposed he'd never really need one. Rory was the only one of them mature enough to pick it up, Adam thinking to himself, didn't women pee on them? He certainly didn't want to touch something with some girl's piss on it, even if it was a girl he lived with.

"Well?" Mickey prompted when Rory, upon examining it, just stared, "…Rory."

"It's positive," he told the group. In his head, Adam imagined everybody gasping. Nobody did, though, they all stayed quiet, quiet and sombre. Whose could it be? It couldn't be Oswin's, that was all Adam really cared about. It definitely couldn't be River's, either, or Nios', and he highly doubted it belonging to Thirteen. As for Rose and Clara, he really didn't know the particulars of interspecies human-Time Lord breeding, but from what he'd heard a few times from the latter, _she_ always maintained that it was scientifically viable. Besides, he didn't think even Clara, the shameless creature she was, would leave a positive pregnancy test on a table. They had to eat off that table, and everything. Then who, in his head, did that leave? Martha? Donna? Amy? Jenny? He didn't remotely want to entertain the possibility that it belonged to Ellie, though.

"How far gone?" he asked.

"It's not one of the ones that says," Rory told him, squinting at it like it held all the answers.

"Whoever it is clearly hasn't told the father," Nine said. Ten and Eleven both stayed quiet, as did Mickey, as did everyone who thought it might be an indicator of their coming impromptu fatherhood. And everybody knew how well the Doctors dealt with impromptu fatherhood, what with them abandoning their last daughter to fend for herself for two-hundred years.

As though summoned by their confusion, Adam's in particular, the doors of the medibay slid open and out stepped Oswin looking unhappy. Instantly, the pregnancy test was vanished from Adam Mitchell's mind in favour of a significantly more important matter.

"Oswin!" he shouted her name, "Could you get my car back?"

"Your _car_!?" Rory exclaimed, surprised that Adam cared so much less about the test than the rest of them. Well, why would he? It barely affected him. Unless it was his sister's, which he still doubted largely.

"When did you get back?" Oswin asked, taken aback by their appearance, "I thought you were having to drive to Colorado? That's what Jenny said."

"No, we… sorted it, I don't know," Adam said. If he had answers, he would give them, and if the people who _did_ have the answers were less caught up by a plastic stick, he hoped that they would give them, too, "Don't worry about it, but the United States Air Force have my new Hudson Commodore and you fitted the teleport relay on it this morning."

"Well, I suppose, Mitchell," she said, sighing.

"Oswin, whose is this?" Eleven asked her suddenly.

"Whose is..? Oh, _that_? That's Jenny's," Oswin answered, right as Jack came into the room after setting them off into flight, just late enough to miss that bit of revelation.

"_Jenny's_!?" the three Doctors exclaimed. Rory looked disappointed. Oswin seemed to be trying to tell them something else suddenly, but the Doctors were having none of it. They were shouting now.

"That must be why Jack's been acting so strange all day, it's _his_," Ten declared, not knowing that Jack himself was right behind them and was highly confused, "Didn't you hear what he said about blondes? And life? And being a better man?"

"That swine has got my daughter pregnant!" Eleven protested against nothing and nobody, "Why, when I see him, I'll-"

"Hang on," Jack said loudly, "You think _Jenny's pregnant_!? And you think she would've told _me_? And that it's _mine_!? C'mon, if she were pregnant with _my_ kid, I'm the _last_ guy she'd tell. The dads always are." Adam didn't know Jenny well enough to dispute that.

"Well then, what've you been in a mood for about blondes?" Mickey asked.

"Because Esther Drummond died years ago, mysteriously came back to life and tried looking for me, and I still haven't found her and it's my fault when people _I_ bring into Torchwood get killed," he said. Adam didn't know strictly speaking who this Esther Drummond was, but he was sure that in the last few days Oswin had said something to him about being enlisted to find this undead woman on Jack's behalf, somebody taking advantage of the resident genius for once, and he was also sure he'd heard Thirteen say the name 'Esther' more than once, usually in conjunction with the name 'Sally.'

"Still haven't found her, sorry," Oswin said. Adam wasn't sure she'd been looking too rigorously. His pizza was done reheating though, so he went and slid that out back into the unnervingly damp cardboard box it had come in and tried not to freeze it.

"Well if it isn't Jenny's, who's pregnant?" Adam, intrigued, asked her.

"Princess Sparkle Tutu," Oswin answered, and they stared her. Before she could explain what the hell she was talking about, the door to the medibay opened yet again and out flooded all the girls, _all_ of them, including Thirteen, Nios and Ellie, Ellie who didn't seem pleased with what was going on.

"Who's 'Princess Sparkle Tutu'?" Adam frowned.

"This is Princess Sparkle Tutu," Jenny Harkness declared, holding the ginger cat very carefully, "The cat's a girl, and she's pregnant, and I've renamed her."

"You're not calling _my_ cat _Princess Sparkle Tutu_," Adam argued.

"Excuse you, all day I've had people accusing me of nurturing _that_ heathen's partial embryo, so I'll name the cat whatever I want," Jenny said pointedly, nodding at Jack when she spoke. Jack decided at that moment to vacate the room.

"I'm so sick of everybody talking about that bloody cat, I'm going to drown those kittens in a sack when they're born if you don't all shut up," Oswin said loudly.

"But kittens are adorable, Os," Clara told her.

"If I want to see something adorable I'll go look in a mirror, thank you very much," Oswin snapped, and then she made to walk out of the room and Adam, who still cared more about the Hudson Commodore than about _Jonesy_, which was still an entirely acceptable girl's name _and_ boy's name for a cat that probably didn't have a clue what a name even was. Though, if it did, Adam was convinced that it would definitely object to the name 'Princess Sparkle Tutu,' and Jenny was an idiot.

"Oswin?" he called, following her. Thirteen would make sure Ellie was alright, he was sure. Oswin seemed surprised she had been followed.

"Oh," was all she said, "Did you have a fun day?"

"No, the CIA tried to interrogate me and I accidentally implied to the US military that I was a Russian spy in 1947. Did you know that the Roswell crash really _was_ an alien crash landing? We saw the spaceship and everything. It looked like a Tripod from _War of the Worlds_, but with four legs, and it was shorter," he explained, "They've still got my car."

"Car. Right. Yeah," she said distantly, "Is that pizza hot?" He told her it was, and held out the box to her so that she could take a soggy slice of it before opening the door into their room.

"What's the matter?" he asked, going to put the pizza down on the table. No doubt there would be some dozen people trying to mooch it off of them within the next ten minutes. There always was.

"Honestly I'm just annoyed that I was supposed to be helping Clara move into that new room and instead we've spent the whole day fussing over that stupid pregnancy test that turned out to be that stupid cat's, and I hate that cat, just like I hate all living things," she said.

"What about me?"

"You don't have a heartbeat, you're as undead as I am, or as River is, or Other Clara," Oswin said to him. He didn't know whether or not to be offended. He supposed she was right, "And now Jack's gonna be getting on at me to find this woman – seriously, if she's not cute she's not worth my time."

"You don't mean that," he said. Oswin disappeared into their bedroom for a moment while he boiled the kettle and returned momentarily with another of those future laptops Thirteen had that looked like a Toblerone. She sat down at the table on one of the high chairs and bit into the pizza slice while switching it on, and he sat down next to her.

"Is it a good car?" she asked.

"You told me this morning you don't care about cars, and that cars to you are like what a horse and carriage are to me to the power of ten in terms of uselessness," he said, and she smiled to herself. That was an exact quote.

"I'm being accepting of your interests. As long as your main interest is still _me_, I don't see the problem," she shrugged, and he laughed.

"I don't know, it depends how hot this Esther is, doesn't it?"

"Uh, I saw her first," Oswin said.

"She might be straight."

"No girl is straight when I'm involved."

"You're being vain today," he said, "Sort of rapey."

"I've been hanging out with Clara, that's why. Two words that summarise Clara Oswald are 'vain' and 'rapey.' She's also kind of hot though."

"I also kind of agree."

"There you go," she said abruptly, after doing something on her computer that he hadn't paid attention to because he was busy just staring at her, "Car teleported back into the garage, hopefully no harm done."

"Thank you," he said, and he kissed her.

"I still think," she said when she broke away, still chewing pizza, "that you should drive that Batmobile around."

"And I still think that you shouldn't've brought the Batmobile onto the TARDIS to begin with."

"What would you do if _I_ was pregnant?" she asked, and he coughed on his pizza he was so surprised at this question, and at her changing the subject so quickly.

"You can't get pregnant, and _I _couldn't get anyone else pregnant, either," he reminded her, a fact he hated to discuss which she knew full-well.

"No, I know, but hypothetically."

"It'd be a bit soon," he said.

"Mmm…" she murmured her agreement, thinking about all this herself.

"I guess I wouldn't be against having a kid with you though, Oswin," he said.

"It'd be a pretty hot kid."

"Maybe it would inherit your brother's genes and look like Zac Efron."

"He does not! Leave him alone, the poor boy," Oswin said, talking about Fyn as though he were a child. Fyn was not remotely a child, he was roughly ten years older than she was now, despite her being his older sister, and he was 6'3". Adam was only 5'9". "I've always liked kids, though. When I was at my mother's funeral Reker brought my nephew. He's called Nalyt."

"Why does everyone in your family have such weird names?"

"It's the future. At least it's not a boring name like, oh, I don't know, _Adam Mitchell_. God, babe, can you imagine being called _Adam Mitchell_? Of all the dull, common names? I can't think of anything worse."

"At least my middle name isn't Diane."

"There's nothing wrong with the name Diane. If we had a daughter I would call her Diane. I would call her Diane or Clara."

"You would not," Adam told her firmly.

"Alright, I'd call her Princess Sparkle Tutu. How about that?"

"Stupid name."

"Stupid name for a stupid cat," she pointed out.

"I like that cat."

"It's because it's your only friend."

"What about you?"

"I don't count."

"You're my girl_friend_. It says 'friend' in it."

"I'm not your friend though, I hate you. I'm just using you for your money and for your Batmobile, of course," she said.

"Thanks for waiting until we're only two and a half months into this relationship to tell me, I really appreciate the early warning," he said sarcastically, then he remembered something he'd read the other day, "What would you call it if it was a boy?"

"If what was?"

"This imaginary child we're having."

"Maybe it's twins."

"Oh, god no, I have enough twins in my life with you and your sister hanging around all the time."

"Call him Nightwing."

"That's stupid, Oswin."

"Well what do _you_ think we should call him?"

"I think we should name him Zac, after your brother."

"If you don't shut up saying that, I'm going to step on that bad foot of _yours_ with this bad leg of _mine_, the bad one being the very heavy metal one," she threatened him.

"What about Adam Jr.?"

"You're just being an idiot now. I couldn't give a poor child such a boring name."

"I'm legitimately offended."

"Well I'm legitimately trying to offend you, so one-nil to me."

"What's a good old-fashioned Dalek name?" he asked.

"Dalek name? Dalek names are crap."

"I know, I mean, I've always thought 'Oswin' was a really weird name," he said, and she kicked him under the table, gently though.

"Uh… Khek is a Dalek name. Thoth. Raam. Sost. Vok."

"Eurgh, you're right, they _are_ crap," he said.

Their exchange was abruptly and disappointingly cut short, however, when they were interrupted by the other people who frequented their room returning after the pregnancy test debacle had been sorted. Within a minute, Thirteen and Ellie were flocking around the pizza box, and to his annoyance Jenny trailed in after them. They never got time to themselves anymore.


	390. Somewhere Beyond The Sea I

**AN: ****Let's play a game called Caitlin Retcons Herself (Again). These opening chapters were _so_ not going the way I wanted them to. Technically this is the third version of this chapter, in the _original_ drafts Clara wakes up puking on the _Ophelia_ on Day 122. I mean, I've added in this kraken attack and have fleshed out some of the _Ophelia_ characters some more and explained the lore in a duller but more appropriate manner in the next chapter. My 52nd Century mythology gets so confusing sometimes.**

_DAY ONE-HUNDRED AND TWENTY-TWO_

_Clara_

_Somewhere Beyond The Sea I_

Her head exploded in a white pain that split the back of her skull into a billion fragments. Or, at least, that was when it felt like. She went from dark unawareness and absolute unconsciousness to a freakish state of intense sensory overload, with pain rubbing her brain and sounds deafening her like foghorns in her ears and she was cold and wet and lying down with a weight on top of her that out of nowhere stabbed her in the side and then vanished.

In her present state, Clara Oswald was so entirely dazed that she didn't have a clue what was going on, but what _was_ going on, she later learnt as she fumbled around with the amount of awareness as somebody who had drunk an entire bottle of vodka for a dare – and she knew exactly what _that_ felt like – was this: she, Oswin Oswald, Adam Mitchell, Martha Jones, Mickey Smith and the Tenth Doctor had been fished out of the North Atlantic Ocean in a haphazard net made of synthetic rope and had promptly been dumped onto the deck of a very large barge called the _Ophelia_, but the crew of this barge had far more trying things to worry about than the six newcomers they'd just pulled, all of them miraculously alive, out of the sea, because they were under attack.

At least, that was what they were shouting about as Clara stumbled blindly around on a rocking, sopping wet deck in the middle of a thunderstorm so severe she wouldn't be surprised to be told it was a hurricane as it lifted her off her feet and flung her into the icy underwater. She didn't know where she was or _what_ was happening and in retrospect didn't remember most of the things they told her about what had been happening.

Just as she thought she was getting her bearings and the pain from being dropped from a great height and hitting her head severely on the metal floor beneath was dispersing, she was shaken away from reality when a strange, wet tube of some description flung itself down with the weight of a giant's foot onto the ground. It sent ripples through the puddles of water as the rain battered down at her and everybody else, everybody else being either darkly dressed and somewhat familiar or unknown and garbed in vibrant-yet-dirty and shiny yellow raincoats, like one would expect a fisherman to wear.

"SHOOT IT!" somebody, a raincoat, ordered someone else. There was a blinding flash and something red shot through the air like something she could have sworn she'd seen in _Star Wars_ before, and whatever this red thing was it was hot enough to burn itself all the way through the mysterious length of piping. It was only when the tube, a tube which was about two entire metres in diameter and over six metres in circumference and was incredibly slimy and gleamed kind of red, started to leak some warm, blue fluid out onto the deck and accordingly onto _her_ and everybody in her immediate vicinity, that she questioned what it really was.

To her great horror, the enormous tube frantically lifted itself off and lifted the deck of the ship up with it for a while, Clara stumbling back as the plane she was on became uneven and steep, before the even bigger, circular suckers on its paler underside let go and sent them crashing down into the sea and she fell forwards onto her knees as the _tentacle_ – for a tentacle was most definitely what it was – reared itself back up and flailed about spraying blue blood around everywhere.

"What the fuck is that!?" somebody shouted in her ear, and she saw that Oswin was on her left looking damp and utterly desperate, obscured by the heavy rain around them and the darkness of the storm, staring at Clara like Clara really needed to give her a genuine answer. Clara stared at her, though, and noted that everyone else in their crew she had arrived with, dumped auspiciously out of a weak rope net, was turned to stare at the gigantic tentacle.

"SHOOT IT AGAIN!" the same person who had yelled for someone to shoot it the first time hollered over the raging superstorm. Lightning flashed high above as the tentacle came down for what Clara assumed was another attack, and the red bolt illuminated everything even more. 'Everything', however, included a _second tentacle_. This tentacle was looming up on the _other_ side of whatever funny-shaped ship they were on and crashed itself down the same way the first had done as the first was shot again and even more blue blood started pouring out.

"WE CAN SCARE IT AWAY!"

In all this chaos Clara hadn't actually had the time to ask the same question her baby sister had done, that profane inquiry being, '_What the fuck is that_!?' At that moment she didn't care much about what the fuck it was, she cared more about if it was going to try and kill her or not. The second tentacle, as the first drew itself away into the depths of the sea very sluggishly, dragged itself sideways along the deck like it was sweeping. It loomed, two metres high, and she was overcome with the desire to run.

And run she did, kicking of her useless heels as she did, stumbling away barefooted and frozen to the bone, just like the rest of them and the nearest yellow raincoat did. This yellow raincoat, though, turned towards the tentacle and shot at it with the same red-glowing laser contraption that somebody else had shot the original tentacle with twice already.

Beneath the boat there was a rumble like something far below were making noises, and then they were presumably hit from below and the boat bounced in the water as this second tentacle dragged itself to safety. Clara fell forwards again and was caught and steadied by Oswin as the second tentacle's retreat caused and almighty splash in the ocean waters and sprayed them with sea salt and more blue blood, sploshing and sending icy waves and seafoam across the deck surface.

There was another rumble and the shouting man, whomever he was, yelled for everybody to go starboard, which everybody did, going to watch whatever fiendish thing had been attacking them lug itself away. And god, the thing was enormous. If the size of just two tentacles was anything to go on, it was colossal, more so, even. Whatever it was, its shadow in the ocean was the size of a skyscraper. With no exaggeration, even, it was like somebody stuck tentacles on the Empire State Building and dropped it into the sea, that was the sheer size of this monstrous attacker.

In the middle of the frightful hurricane, the rain lashing around and the wind billowing and yet another crack of lightning and thunder almost immediately after lighting up the shadow of the terrifying sea monster, it was, wondrously, fleeing from them.

"What was that thing, Clara, what was it!?" Oswin was demanding of her, then she spotted somebody else and turned on them, "Do you know!? It was huge! How was it so huge!?" Clara turned to see Oswin was yelling at the Tenth Doctor, who was just as lost and filthy and wet as the rest of them. They were a sight, one of such bedraggled confusion that, as they yellow raincoat sailors approached them imposingly on all sides, the six of them were stared at for a long moment.

"Who the hell are you six and what are you doing on my ship?" demanded a tall, frightening figure who was broad-shouldered and square-jawed and tanned and wrinkled with huge hands and scars on his white-haired face, the exact image Clara conjured into her mind whenever somebody were to mention Captain Ahab or Captain Nemo to her. And this, whatever strange ship they were on, was his _Nautilus_ (even if, strictly speaking, the _Nautilus_ was a submarine.)

"Well, see," Ten began, and then Ten paused, and stopped, and looked around, "I don't…" he looked at each of them in turn and in turn each of them shrugged, "I can't… can't really remember, funnily enough…" Clara didn't remember anything, either.

"Doesn't surprise me, you must be fucking idiots, coming out into the middle of the sea in _that_ dinosaur in weather like this," he said angrily, swearing, pointing with one of his huge hands at a yellow thing on the floor nearby, heaped up with a mess of rope netting. Clara recognised it very quickly as a rubber dinghy.

"I, um…" Ten fumbled, "I suppose we must have had a puncture… sorry, what were those tentacles? And that thing, what was it?"

"_What was it_? Only the thing that's been terrorising the Atlantic for six months," the older man shouted at them.

"Just throw them overboard," somebody shouted.

"Just _what_!? Do not throw us overboard!" Martha argued pointedly at the raincoat who had shouted. There must have only been eight of them, eight people plus the six from the TARDIS.

"Throw 'em," someone else shouted too. In the darkness of the night and the chaos of the storm Clara couldn't make out any distinguishing features among the other seven crewmembers apart from the frightening leader-man, and now Clara was scared of these people, these humans she supposed, if they were on Earth as they alluded, just as much as she was of whatever the hell the tentacle monstrosity had been, throwing itself and their boat around like a toy. And what a funny shaped boat it was, too, curved to a point as one might expect from any ordinary ship where they were, but then spreading out like a fan and then rounding out to look like a planchette from a Ouija board, only huge. Huge enough to match the hugeness of the beast attacking them, even.

"Please don't throw us!" Ten argued, "What was that creature!?"

"Are you an idiot!?" another voice yelled.

"It's the kraken," came a fourth, the lot of them bouncing off each other.

"A _kraken_!?" Ten questioned very loudly over the frightful gale. Looking at the long metal tube one of them was holding, Clara figured that that was whatever shot red laser beams, and she would very much like to _not_ be on the receiving end of a double-power photon blast, so the Doctor better talk them out of getting thrown overboard, and he better do it quickly.

"Not _a_ kraken, _the_ kraken," said the leader-man.

"Don't talk to them, Scinto, let's just get rid of them. We're on rations as it is! There's six of them!" the 'voice of reason' shouted. Clara was reminded of when they as a crew on the TARDIS needed to pass votes on if people could and couldn't stay in times of peril, and didn't like being on the receiving end of such ambiguous circumstances.

"Maybe if we feed it it'll leave us alone," somebody suggested.

"WHAT!?" Martha yelled, and sparks came out of her fingertips that made them all step away and silence momentarily.

"A creature that size? _That_ thing? Wouldn't possibly be satisfied on six people!" Ten argued, "Do _not_ throw us overboard! I'm the Doctor! I can help! We can all help!"

"Help what? Help kill it? We've been trying to kill it for months, so has everybody in the fucking Oxsys Fleet! You'd need a bomb to stand a chance. Who even are you!?" shouted one. Clara thought introductions for all of them were in order, but this wasn't the time to ask to know the names of their soon-to-be-murderers. She really wanted to know how they'd ended up floating in the Atlantic in a rubber dinghy.

"Did you say Oxsys Fleet?" Oswin interrupted, her eyes widening in shock, staring around like she knew where they were, her eyes resting on a very large dome-shaped structure nearby, "Is this an oxyves?"

"'Is this an oxyves,'" somebody mimicked her, "Of course it's a fucking oxyves, what else did you think it was? Who the hell are you? Colonials?"

"Look, look, _look_," Oswin began, pleading, "I can help, okay? I can help. What year is it?"

"They don't even know the year, Scinto, nobody will miss them," another argued, "Just throw them over the edge! Come on, _I'll_ do it myself if nobody wants to."

"It's 5133," somebody answered Oswin. 5133? But that was Oswin's time period. That was Oswin's _exact _time period, just like 2013 was Clara's.

"Right, right, look, I can… I can kill it, okay?" Oswin said, frantically searching for a way to bargain for their lives, "You said you'd need a bomb, right? Well, I can do bombs, okay? I can _so_ do bombs, I mean, I'm so great with bombs, I could build one big enough to totally kill that… that monster."

"Oswin! What are you doing!?" Ten asked her.

"I'm saving your stupid lives, that's what," Oswin snapped at him, "And I'll build a bomb to kill that kraken, I swear, just let us stay on this oxyves until we can get rescued, alright?"

"We don't have any raw materials for bombs, don't be ridiculous," Scinto said, "It's too risky to ourselves."

"_Look_, do you want to kill it or not? If you want to kill it, _I'm_ your best bet, I mean, I… I… the Dust War, right? You know the Dust War? The tragedies on Hori – I mean, on Titan Beta? Ten-thousand people dead when an entire district was bombed? With one single explosive device? I can build a bomb out of _anything_, anything at all, especially the organic stuff you have in the Synthesiser," There was a moment of silence, and Clara didn't know what to think of what Oswin was saying. Clearly, Oswin was judging their situation to be far more desperate than she was. What was 'the Synthesiser'?

"Who are you? You had something to do with that?" Scinto asked her.

"I bet she's a Spore," somebody else said. Of course, the Cluster Spores, that was going on right now.

"I'm not a Spore! I mean, I know Spores, I… in fact, forget all that, forget all that stuff, I mean, do you have a voxo?" Oswin begged, "I could just link someone on the voxo and get them to come get us! Of course! We'll just be right out of your hair, okay? A voxo, that's all. Where's the nearest one?" Clara hadn't a clue what a voxo was.

"Bomb Girl doesn't get a voxo," someone snapped, "I heard about that attack – if she's telling the truth, she can kill it."

"Great going, Os," Clara muttered.

"Get them inside," Scinto ordered finally.

"Why don't we throw all of them overboard _except_ the Bomb Girl?" one of them mused. Clara still didn't know who was who.

"Why don't we just call the bloody TARDIS?" Martha shouted at them. Clara was too dazed to remember she had a mobile phone, not like it mattered, because she shortly discovered that hers was broken. So was Martha's. And Adam's. And Mickey's. And ever since that vampire had bashed in Oswin's Sphere it been malfunctioning and the telecommunications were completely cut off. And Ten's screwdriver also wasn't going to work until it 'dried out a bit,' he told them.

"What the hell are those things?" Scinto asked them, "They're prehistoric."

"They're mobile phones, we're time travellers, I'm a Time Lord, the Doctor, I have a spaceship, a time machine, have you seen it? Maybe it washed up in the sea? Looks like a small blue box?" Ten begged.

"A small blue box? That's ridiculous." Apparently not.

"My ship will find us!" he said, "We'll be out of your way within _days_, I swear."

"You'll be out of our way when Bomb Girl there kills the kraken for us." At that, Oswin stared at her feet. Already, it seemed, she regretted offering her kraken-killing services to these pirates.

"What's say we let them stay and make them work the Synthesiser?" someone suggested, "They can help Bomb Girl make this bomb."

"Just let us use the voxo," Oswin said.

"Nobody can use the voxo except for emergencies anymore, not on this vessel," Scinto told her, "This isn't an emergency."

"What? That kraken attacking your ship _isn't_ an emergency?" Ten questioned.

"Thing is," someone began explaining very sarcastically, "Your line manager doesn't like much when you keep saying you're being attacked by a mythical sea monster, especially when nobody's dead yet and there's no real damage to prove it exists. So our links are closed down."

"And you six don't qualify as an emergency, and definitely not one they'll believe," Scinto pointed out, Clara still surprised that line managers still existed in three-thousand years, "There's a lock on it. It's impossible to make outgoing links." With Ten's broken screwdriver, it really seemed like it _was_ impossible, unless Oswin could do something about rewiring this 'voxo'? A voxo being, Clara assumed, a phone of the future.

"Can we stay on your damn ship or not?" Martha finally demanded. Uproar commenced from the crew for a good ten seconds until Scinto finally ordered his crew to shut their faces, and, surprisingly enough, either out of believing Oswin's story about being able to build a kraken-killing super-bomb or maybe out of general human compassion, Captain Scinto invited them into the actual belly of the ship of his for dinner with the rest of the crew, as that was apparently what time it was.


	391. Somewhere Beyond The Sea II

**AN: Team Resort to Explaining Extensive Lore Through Narrative Instead of Through Dialogue and Legitimate Plot Exposition FTW. This chapter is named in spirit, "Things What Clara Learnt Over Tea." I am also doing a much later retcon of Fyn's (Oswin's brother) surname, what with him taking his husband's name and not keeping the 'Oswald', and it will now be Kyris rather than 'Sunk' that it was before, because that's a shit name.**

_Clara_

_Somewhere Beyond The Sea II_

Dinner was a grim affair. They were unwelcome and soaked and the food smelt so appalling Clara didn't even try to eat most of it. The only stuff she did it was the fish soup, which was not very nice either, but it was the only thing that didn't seem to be entirely synthetic. Dinner, though, was the time when most of the information about the Mystery of the Kraken and their being there revealed itself, not to mention information about the 'oxyves' they were on and its crew.

None of them could really remember fully what had drawn them there, but Oswin was convinced that somebody from her century, most likely Fyn, she claimed, must have put them onto it, because the dates were too coincidental. The name '_Desdemona_' in fact rang a great bell with Oswin, Adam Mitchell and the Tenth Doctor, because apparently the _Desdemona _was the name of another of these oxyveses of this 'Oxsys Fleet' they were all banging on about, while the one they were sitting on presently was known as the _Ophelia_. Clara thought this was very unlucky and wondered if they might transfer onto the _Katerina _or the _Viola_, since all of the ships in the Oxsys Fleet were, apparently named after Shakespearean women, and Ophelia was the only character in Shakespeare to have died by drowning, and they _were_ in the sea. To continue, the _Desdemona_ was an oxyves (meaning 'oxygen vessel' according to Oswin) that had sunk a few miles off the coast of Iceland two months ago in mysterious circumstances, and people in the Oxsys Fleet were blaming this kraken, which had recently emerged half a year back, for the sinking of the _Desdemona _and other attacks, most notably that one they had witnessed an hour ago upon their arrival.

Oswin and Ten theorised that somebody from Oswin's century had heard of these rumours and had merely tipped them off, at which point they had done the entirely stupid yet entirely believable and almost expected thing of taking a rubber dinghy out into the middle of the ocean to go see if they could maybe spot a giant squid. Ten assumed that the past him he couldn't remember had assumed that the kraken was really no more than a giant squid mysteriously not extinct as Oswin claimed the majority of sea creatures that had been around in the Twenty-First Century were long since dead, as were most animals, due to the major pollution of Planet Earth.

The major pollution of Planet Earth being a key issue, in fact, in what the hell the Oxsys Fleet was to begin with, which was when they discovered the tragic truth of Fifty-Second Century Earthling life. Humans had expanded to the delirious point of taking over the entire solar system and spreading like a rash over every smidgen of land Earth had to offer, to such a great and vile extent that all of the rainforests had been destroyed. _All _of them. Every tree, Oswin said. _Every single tree_ on Earth was gone. So, the Homeworld Alliance, who were apparently the governing authority of everything in those days, intergalactic or otherwise, had taken it upon themselves to create the Oxsys Fleet, a group of a dozen ships that drifted around the planet's oceans with enormous gardens built onto them in dome-shaped, stadium-sized greenhouses, and that greenhouse was the thing which they referred to as the 'Synthesiser.' They looked like sea turtles without heads or flippers, going by the diagram of the _Ophelia_ pinned to the wall of the mess room.

This Synthesiser, i.e., massive garden, was where they were going to be working, apparently, to earn their keep aboard the _Ophelia_, along with 'Bomb Girl' trying to build an Improvised Explosive Device out of grass seeds and pollen to kill the kraken, which she had said nothing about for the longest while, as though she were hoping people would forget she offered to do it. Clara noticed her baby sister casting no small amount of uneasy glances at the large black ring she had on her right index finger, that one which stored all of the names of the dead from the Bombing of Heph in 5120 and from the end of the Cluster Spores at Quadrant Twelve an unknown number of years later – unknown to Clara, at any rate. Once people had stopped trying to throw them overboard, things had settled down easily enough, even if they were still little more than petulant stowaways.

Then they could get down to actual business, that being the business of introductions first and foremost. Of course, Clara was introduced by others on her behalf (as always), and was dubbed the 'annoying one,' and then the rest of the _Ophelia_'s crew were warned that she might try and sleep with them or something, and told not to talk to her on the grounds that she was famously irritating. Nobody else got a description like this, and the topic of the superpowers they had was never broached. Oswin, though, was hailed as the genius that she was, to her great displeasure, and was also frequently referred to as merely 'Bomb Girl.' Ten, again, reiterated the point that he was a time travelling alien sent to help, and that was when they started learning a thing or two about this kraken.

Primarily, they learnt that on the _Ophelia_, at least, there had never been a fatality as a result of this kraken's attacks. The Doctor found this most fascinating.

"Nobody? Nobody's ever been killed by it?" he implored.

"No," a girl called Malti who had been the one to coin the 'Bomb Girl' nickname for Clara's sister told him, "No-one on the _Ophelia_." Clara was surprised that the crew was so small and had originally been that small. With eight people, Clara had assumed that a dozen or so of them had been murdered at the hands of this bloodthirsty sea-beast, but apparently that was not the case. The kraken claimed zero fatalities.

"Then what does it want?" Ten asked, "Why is it attacking? Does it try to sink the ship?" The storm still howled outside. The ship was advanced enough that it didn't need people manning ropes or climbing up masts and whatnot to maintain it during a storm, it would be fine. And their job wasn't to fish, most of the sea life was decidedly inedible. They even explained that salt from the sea was completely inconsumable due to enormous pollution, which Oswin was very smug about to Clara's annoyance. Their feud about if salt came from the sea or not was destined to never be over unless they simply accepted to let bygones be bygones and accept that, technically, they were both correct.

"Not as far as we can tell," Malti said.

"It sunk the _Desdemona_," a youngish bloke called Alin said, him being the one who had been a very strong advocate for throwing them overboard. The one who suggested feeding them to the kraken was a tall and intimidating girl named Tamun. All these future names struck Clara as very odd, she thought – Scinto, Malti, Alin, Tamun. Not to mention _Oswin_. And Fyn, and Zalur, and whatever the rest of her brothers were called because Clara could never remember beyond those two she had met in person.

"How do you know it did?" Adam Mitchell questioned.

"It'd take something pretty substantial to make a ship like that vanish, okay? And getting dragged down and eaten by a kraken would be one of those," Malti argued.

"But do you know for a fact? For a complete fact that the kraken was responsible for sinking the _Desdemona_?"

"Maybe_ Desdemona'_s husband strangled her to death because Iago told him she was having an affair with Cassio?" Clara wondered.

"Shakespeare really is the epitome of comedic sarcasm," Oswin told her in a comedic and sarcastic way.

"Ophelia drowned, is all I'm saying, so I really don't see that as a good omen," Clara muttered, going back to her watery fish dinner that was making her feel progressively sicker as time wore on.

"No," Alin said, "Not for an absolute fact."

"Interesting…" Ten mused, giving up on his dinner and leaning back in his chair, contemplating.

"Tennyson wrote a sonnet about a kraken," Clara declared.

"Fascinating," Mickey said dryly.

Absently Clara tried to remember the verses of said Tennyson sonnet, and instead got distracted by the aching pains spreading through her bones and limbs and the headache that made her brain feel bloated and swollen, and began to feel a certain inconsolable tiredness creep upon her. She was in pain, she was confused, she was still soaking wet, and the food was vile, and she just wanted to go home and didn't really care about sea monsters.

She sighed, and resolutely decided that until a better solution made itself available, she was just going to try to go to sleep on her sister's shoulder, something which didn't bother Oswin much at all. Not that she really managed it, all she managed to do was avoid awkward questions about how they were identical twin sisters if they were from three-thousand years apart, questions which Oswin managed rebuff by asking what kind of incendiary vegetables they had in the Synthesiser. This ended up being short-lived, though.

"So you're from Titan Beta?" some young and inquisitive character asked, a boy who looked barely eighteen and was remarkably short, shorter even than Adam Mitchell, and Adam Mitchell wasn't all that tall. His name was Wantze.

"Uh, yeah," Oswin said.

"But you're a hologram?"

"Yep," she answered him. He stared at her. "Never met a hologram before?"

"Never met anybody from the colonies before," he said. There were conversations going all around them, people were ignoring them now, finally, even if they were still outcasts and a drain on the _Ophelia'_s resources, which Clara thought was ridiculous, because wasn't there any fruit growing in this Synthesiser? An apple tree or two wouldn't go amiss, "I read this book about Titan Beta once."

"A book about Horizon? Who's been writing books about Horizon? It's just a shiny city on a rock, there's nothing interesting there. It doesn't gather resources or anything," Oswin said, puzzled as to this take on her hometown. Did it class as a hometown? Home-country? Homeworld? Home-planet? Home-moon? Clara quite liked home-moon.

"Maybe you know the author?" Wantze asked quite excitedly.

"I doubt it," Oswin told him, "I mean, I was a huge recluse, the only books I ever read were the ones on quantum physics my father wrote before he died, so I don't think-"

"He's called Fyn Kyris."

Oswin stopped talking and Clara opened her eyes from where she had been slouched listening vacantly and sat back up to frown at her sister.

"Isn't that your brother's name?" Adam Mitchell frowned. Oswin was staring at Wantze, whose jaw had dropped when Adam said that.

"Fyn Kyris is your brother? Wait – _you're_ his sister? The one he wrote the mysterious book about he refuses to try and publish because apparently the Homeworld Alliance won't let him and it's a cover up!?" Wantze exclaimed.

"Wait, _what_?" Oswin asked, "He wrote a book about _me_!?"

"Yeah, my wife leant me it," Clara said to her.

"Your wife _what_!?"

"Leant me the book about you that Fyn wrote and won't publish for exactly that reason," Clara said, "Speaking of which, she told me _ages_ ago to ask you to tell me the story about how you lost your virginity, which apparently Fyn wrote in his book but then when the Doctor got a copy of it you tore the pages out."

"I should think so!" Oswin said shrilly, "How dare he go doing that! God, if you lot would let me use the damn voxo I'd give that boy a bell right now, the little gobshite. Where is this book? Lemme borrow it, I have to see what he's written, if he mentions me."

"I don't get it, what's so bad about how you lost your-"

"Shush!" Oswin cut over Clara, and Clara crossed her arms and sat up straighter.

"It's a pretty funny story," Adam leant around Clara to tell her.

"What? You told _him_ but you won't tell _me_!?" Clara protested.

"I'm not dating _you_, am I?" Oswin questioned. Again, Wantze mumbled a question about how they were identical twins yet they were born and raised three-thousand years apart, a question which neither of them intended to answer. Oswin said to him, "Could you be a sweetheart and fetch that book for me, please?" and he disappeared.

"Yeah, but I'm your… creator! I'm basically like god. You should treat me like god, worship me or something," Clara said pompously, and Oswin raised an eyebrow at her.

"Clara Oswald, the day I treat you like god will be the same day that you learn you're not supposed to butter the bread before you put it in the toaster," Oswin said coolly, and Clara shut up. She was _dying_ to know this virginity story by this point, and wondered if it would even live up to her expectations. Then Oswin said, "Anyway, I don't get why everybody makes such a big deal out of that story. And I told _you_ in confidence, Mitchell."

"I just like the bit with the potatoes," he said.

"Babe, the entire story is the bit with the potatoes," Oswin said.

"Why are you talking about potatoes?" Martha questioned over her shoulder, when she'd been talking to someone about medicine or something (Clara didn't actually know what Martha had been talking about, but she just generally assumed that Martha talked a lot about medicine, which most likely was not true).

"Never you mind," Oswin snapped, and Martha looked affronted and made a face and looked away again as Wantze returned with the book with the name _Fyn Kyris_ written on the front and again Clara noted how synthetic paper weirded her out. Oswin flicked through the pages alarmingly quickly to find something worth her scorn, which didn't take her long, "My god. Get a load of this, honey," she said to Clara, then read, "'_The natural decay of life is something which has suffered total extermination within the modern age and in artificial suburbs like Horizon, along with other galactic colonies of the Homeworld Empire. While in natural habitats things live out their brief tenures and die relatively peaceful deaths, in such an auspiciously stagnated environment even human mortality is dragged on interminably and pulled taut by the vicissitudes of technological advancement, until evolution will invariably meet its end in favour of the entirety of society halting and becoming perspective-lacking, immortal ghosts of misguided innovation._' This arse, he sounds like he's talking about holograms."

"I thought it was pretty good," Clara said.

"Shut up Clara, you're not allowed an opinion on my brother's literature," Oswin told her, then she flipped to the back of the book and found that the publishing date was 5126, which consoled her somewhat because it was before he knew she'd become a hologram, one of these 'perspective-lacking, immortal ghosts of misguided innovation,' as Fyn Kyris would undoubtedly say. Then Oswin sighed and said, "Poor Fynny never used to be so jaded."

"Do you still call him that? Like, to his face?" Clara questioned.

"Of course I do," Oswin said, "I don't care how old or how tall he is, he's still going to be my little brother. I ought to spend more time with him… maybe then he wouldn't write this tripe about technologically enabled immortality if I did. Or, as we in the biz call it, _post-death reversal_."

"I've never heard you call it that before, babe," Adam said.

"You could always spend more time with _all_ of your brothers," Clara said.

"All five of them? No thanks, they're arseholes," Oswin said.

"I thought you liked the one who named his kids after you?"

"Oh, Reker? Well... alright, fine, Dret and Zalur are arseholes and I never get along with either of them. I mean, one of them pretends I don't even exist, the other one is an ex-alcoholic who just complains about his estranged ex-wife and daughter all the bloody time," Oswin muttered, "And as for Jatt, I haven't spoken to him since he was a toddler." Then to Wantze, Oswin asked, "Can I borrow this to read while I'm staying here?"

"If you tell me something funny about your brother."

"Something funny? About Fyn? Uh, he almost kicked my boyfriend out of the house because I told him he was a capitalist," Oswin said.

"What? Which boyfriend?" Clara questioned.

"This one right next to me," Oswin said, over-exaggeratedly and unnecessarily indicating Adam Mitchell on her left. He flinched when she nearly hit him in the face, semi on purpose, "At our older brother's wedding he accidentally stuck his entire hand in a trifle because he was that flustered around Atoc. Atoc being-"

"His husband, I know," Wantze said. Ah, the sexual liberation of the Fifty-Second Century, Clara thought wistfully.

"Right…" Oswin said uneasily, "I figure that's funny enough, right? So I can borrow the book? I'm a genius, I'll have read it by the morning. Just need to find more things to make fun of my _dear_ brother for…"


	392. Somewhere Beyond The Sea III

**AN: If anybody _didn't_ read the last two chapters again after I painstakingly rewrote them because I really disliked how I was doing these chapters, go and re-read those because in the first one they now actually witness the kraken when they arrive instead of just learning about it secondhand. Also, remember when I said this storyline was filler? Well, turns out it's not filler, it's just advancing characters from the 52nd Century instead of the 21st so it threw me off-guard, but there's some important character development for Clara and Oswin together in this chapter, and some more important development for Oswin later on because of the way I've decided to conclude this.**

_Martha_

_Somewhere Beyond The Sea III_

What a day. Even if all she remembered of the day was two to three hours, because before that she had dreamy visions of being on the TARDIS and distant memories of eggy bread for breakfast. No doubt there was no eggy bread on a grim futuristic 'oxyves.' No, the closest thing on the _Ophelia_ was Dairy Sub Two. Dairy Sub One was 'milk', Dairy Sub Two was 'eggs', and Dairy Sub Three was 'cheese.' Of course, they contained none of these actual substances and were _all_ synthetic. All the food was like that, some nutritional-sounding word and a number. Protein Four, Carbo Six, then generic Sugar, with a capital 'S', which was a sort of slimy white stuff that was like toothpaste but it tasted of burnt icing.

So, after mysteriously venturing out in a rubber dinghy into the Atlantic Ocean, which none of them remembered doing, they'd been picked out of Earth's dead and over polluted waters by the moderately hostile crew of a garden barge under siege by a mythical sea monster, and now she had just been led to a bedroom which held two bunkbeds and she was apparently going to have to share with the Twins. This was because, due to the fact nobody wanted to share with a couple, there wasn't enough space for she and Mickey to go off and have any semblance of privacy, or Oswin and Adam Mitchell, for that matter. This didn't bother the Twins, but it bothered Martha. Martha did not want to have to share a bedroom with Clara, and she most definitely did not want to share one with Clara when Clara was with _Oswin_. It was one thing being around the Twins during the day, but during the night? It didn't even bear thinking about what it would be like to be trapped with those two with no escape.

While the Twins talked to each other, Martha slipped away into the en suite bathroom to get changed into fresh clothes in privacy. Though, it wasn't much of an en suite bathroom, all it had was a sink, a mirror and a toilet, and they were all particularly grotty. They were not allocated toothbrushes and nor, when they were allowed to use the showers earlier one, were they given soap or shampoo. After said shower Martha didn't feel much cleaner than she had done before, in all fairness, but she didn't stink of the sea quite as much. She wasn't all that keen on the clothes, though, made of some new synthetic fabrics most unlike the polyesters or rayons of the Twenty-First Century, it was like wearing heavier, fitted carrier bags, and everything was quite smooth and quite cool and all automatically adjusted itself (somehow), though it was never a _completely_ perfect fit.

"Do you think there are any cigarettes on here they might lend me?" Clara mused, lying on the top bunk. The Twins were on the left-hand side of the room, Martha on the right, Oswin (obviously) on the bottom bunk because of her leg. Her leg which she was now holding up and examining in the stark light that was embedded into the ceiling and reminded Martha of those which were pressed into the walls of swimming pools beneath the waterline.

"No," Oswin told her, "There won't be. Not the type that you're used to, anyway, by which I mean the type that contain actual tobacco. I'm sure they have nice, harmless, _synthetic_ cancer-sticks, though." Martha merely sat on her own bottom bunk, not having the energy to try and sleep on the empty top, and wondered what she might do.

"Is everything synthetic in the future?" Martha asked Oswin.

"Yep," she answered, "Absolutely. Can't find a single consumable in the Fifty-Second Century that isn't manmade, not in the human empire, anyway." There was a long pause where Martha tested how plump the pillows were and discovered them to be much less than satisfactory.

"Are you serious about building them a bomb to kill the kraken?" Clara asked eventually, and Martha could tell she'd been wanting to ask that for ages, waiting for the optimal opportunity to do so, when they were as private as they could be.

"In a few days, at most, the TARDIS will get a lock on either that sonic screwdriver once it dries out, on the Doctor himself, or on my Sphere. I'll just very slowly build a dud," Oswin told her absently, "As if you think I'd genuinely try to murder something. I don't kill things anymore, remember? Not anything." Martha didn't bring up all the times she'd seen Oswin kill things – that lobster months ago, for instance, when she'd bashed its face to pieces with a huge branch. Oswin laid her leg down on the floor and kicked it with her other foot under the bed, and then picked up the book of her brother's she'd borrowed from Wantze and had been making fun of for the last two hours. She didn't read any of it out loud anymore, though. Martha suspected this had something to do with Adam Mitchell's absence.

"What's this sonnet, then?" Martha asked Clara, who was lying flat on her back on the top bunk staring at the ceiling. She looked over then, to her left, at Martha, peering through the railings.

"What sonnet?"

"The one about that kraken," Martha prompted.

"Oh, _that_ sonnet? It's just called _The Kraken_. It's by Tennyson, like I said," Clara told her, "I always quite liked it, apparently it inspired Lovecraft's creation of Cthulhu, and I've always been partial to Lovecraft. I wrote a thesis on Lovecraftian cryptids just a few years ago, talked about _The Kraken_."

"Wow Clars, you sure do know a lot about boring old words," Oswin criticised her. Clara, to Martha's surprise, then sat up and lifted her pillow, throwing it down onto the bottom bunk and hitting Oswin straight in the face with it. "Oi!"

"Serves you right," Martha told her, and she scowled, added Clara's pillow to her own pillow to prop herself up, and buried her face in her brother's book again.

"Pass us that pillow off of your top bunk?" Clara asked Martha then.

"Get it yourself," Martha said, and Clara made an annoyed sound and pouted, but did retrieve the pillow, if telekinetically. She got lazier every day, "How does the poem go?"

"It goes something like, '_Below the thunders of the upper deep / Far far beneath in the abysmal sea, / His ancient, dreamless, uninvaded sleep / The Kraken sleepeth_.' Then I can't really remember how it goes in the middle, something about '_enormous polypi / Winnow with giant arms the slumbering green_,' then at the end he says something about fire heating the deep, and, '_Then once again by man and angels to be seen, / In roaring he shall rise and on the surface die._' That's the bit people think inspired Cthulhu, the bit about '_in roaring he shall rise_,'" Clara explained, Oswin stopping reading her book and staring at the bottom of Clara's bunk while she talked. Then Oswin turned to Martha.

"What are you asking her about literature for?"

"Everybody else always tells her to shut up," Martha said, "Besides, it's useful sometimes. The stuff she knew about Salem was useful just the other day."

"You never know, Os, there might come some point where my in-depth knowledge of the Cthulhu Mythos and Lovecraft's Grand Pantheon might come in really handy, like, say, if I were to go to Siberia and run into Ithaqua, the creature based on the Native American Wendigo myth about cannibalisation and the winter," Clara said offhandedly.

"Don't be ridiculous, Clara, like that would _ever_ happen. Run into a Wendigo in Siberia? I have to draw the line somewhere," Oswin sighed.

"Anyway," Clara said, "Back to this kraken. What's funny is – I kind of like the myth of the kraken in general – in artist's impressions and pop culture it's almost always portrayed as being just a huge octopus, right? But in literature the kraken resembles a squid. That sonnet, for instance, inspired Cthulhu, right? Cthulhu being the ancient unkillable god-thing that lives at the bottom of the sea. Cthulhu's described as having a 'squid head.' Then people theorise that the myth also inspired _20,000 Leagues Under the Sea_ and _Moby-Dick_ when they both have famous squid encounters," Clara said.

"Can't get enough of those famous squid encounters," Oswin, disinterested, said dryly.

"Let me use my bloody literature degree for once in my life, Oswin," Clara snapped at her.

"Maybe Tennyson's sonnet also inspired the creation of hentai?" Oswin suggested.

"Very funny."

"Who is Tennyson, anyway? You keep going on about him writing this sonnet like he's famous. I've never heard of him."

"Two months ago _you'd_ never heard of a pineapple, so shut up. He was the poet laureate in the Nineteenth Century."

"He was the what?"

"The poet laureate."

"What's a poet lor-ee-at?" Oswin puzzled.

"The, like, top-poet in the country that the reigning monarch appoints and the government use when they need poems written. Tennyson wrote propaganda poetry about the Crimean War," Clara said.

"What? The king or queen appoint somebody _top-poet in the country_? And make them write _propaganda poetry_?" Oswin asked incredulously, then she looked at Martha, "Is that true?"

"Don't ask me," Martha shrugged, and Oswin pulled a face.

"That's the fakest thing I've heard in my afterlife," she said, "I don't believe you. Will you stop talking about books now?" The conversation of Clara and Oswin dwindled away as Martha yawned and decided she'd do better to just ignore the pair of them and try to sleep. After all, she thought to herself, the aching pains of the day she couldn't remember catching up to her and making her wish for unconsciousness, it was only for a few days.

* * *

Martha awoke, in the middle of the night, to the sound of crying. And not weak crying like when someone was trying to cry in secret and it was just sniffs her and there and a whimper or too, it was full-on sobbing, wailing, a painful, grief-wrought sound which dragged her from her sleep. Stuck unable to fall back asleep when this teary number was accompanied by the orchestra of the thunderstorm outside of the _Ophelia_, Martha was forced to listen.

Very quickly she assumed that it was Oswin having another of those 'attacks' she had every few weeks or so, one of those ones that put her in a motionless slump for the following days brought on by severe emotional trauma in her daily life. She felt like a complete intruder on this scene, but didn't want to make it known to either the crier or the identically-voiced comforter that she was awake, when the latter was trying so hard to keep the former quiet and calm her down. She would like to go for a walk around the boat in the night for half an hour maybe until things calmed down from this sorrowful cacophony.

But Martha was wrong, because it was not Oswin crying and Clara comforting, it was the other way around. This she only realised when the comforter cooed, "It's not your fault, Clara." Then Martha began trying to pay attention to the words when curiousness got the better of her. Everybody knew certain titbits about Oswin and Oswin's life and traumas and death and following disownments and bereavements, all of these things which led to her complexly ragged psychological state, but Clara? Why should Clara be crying in the middle of the night? Why should Clara be crying so painfully, as well?

"It is my fault," Clara whined, "She died because of me."

"She didn't, Clara, it wasn't you," Oswin told her softly. Who had died because of Clara? And what did Oswin know about it? Martha's immediate thought when she realised Clara was the tearful one was that it was something to do with her simply missing the Eleventh Doctor, and Martha was on the brink of thinking some not entirely nice things about her being pathetically unable to be apart from the man for more than ten minutes. But no, it wasn't the Doctor. So who? Her next thought, the only other female she could think of whose death had something to do with Clara was that of her Other Self's, but Other Clara was fine those days, nothing to do with her could warrant this torrent of emotion and the pained sounds Martha heard from across the room.

When she looked over, in the darkness she could see the shapes of the Twins on the top bunk, Clara curled up against Oswin, who seemed more baffled than anything.

"If I hadn't made her go out…" Clara sobbed.

"It wasn't your fault at all, it was the people who killed her," Oswin continued, "It wasn't your fault, Clara."

This was all they were really saying, Clara repeating herself a lot, Oswin having little else to say to her sister other than assuring her that the blame of the death of this mystery woman didn't lie with her. Martha more and more felt like she ought to leave, but she didn't know how to go about it. She couldn't just interrupt and say, "_Excuse me, do you mind if I just go for a walk because I feel awkward being in the same room as Clara crying?_" because that wouldn't go any way to helping Clara feel better.

Then Oswin, looking around the room, met Martha's eyes, and realised she was awake and watching. She didn't say anything, though. Oswin looked at her, then looked away, then looked back and mouthed the word, "_Sorry_." Martha glanced up at the top bunk hanging over her instead, wondering if she ought to roll away and face the wall.

Then Clara declared, "I'm gonna be sick," and vanished in a puff of dark smoke. Martha had never seen her teleport at will before, but the bang she heard in the toilet nearby signalled that she had succeeded. Martha wondered if Oswin was going to follow, but she didn't, she ran a hand through her hair in the darkness and then pressed both of her hands over her face and rubbed her eyes, before looking at Martha again.

"I'm really sorry," she apologised out loud now.

"It's fine," Martha assured her, "Do you want me to go? I'll go."

"No, she'll calm down soon," Oswin sighed.

"What's the matter with her?"

"She had a nightmare, that's all," Oswin said.

"That's _all_? Must have been a pretty bad nightmare," Martha said. They both tried to ignore the sound of Clara being sick in the next room. Oswin didn't know what to say to that. Martha had heard about Clara's nightmares before, now she thought about it. She distinctly remembered Eleven telling them about one she had had _months_ ago, something about the Dimension Crash never happening and her husband forgetting they were married, which didn't seem all that bad in fairness. But nightmares were like that, she supposed.

"She'll be okay," Oswin assured her, "It's better that I'm here when she has them than the Doctor, anyway." There was a long pause, until Martha finally summed up the courage to ask Oswin what the nightmare had been about. "Just her mother."

"What about her mother?"

"Her death, didn't you hear what she was saying? All that stuff about it being her fault. She blames herself. It wasn't her fault though, it's survivor's guilt," Oswin said.

"Why is she having nightmares about something that happened seven years ago, though?"

"If you knew how Ellie Ravenwood died, you'd understand."

"How did she die?" Martha inquired. She'd never gotten any details from anybody about the specifics of Clara's mother's death – she didn't even know Clara's mother's _name_ until Oswin had just told her.

"I can't tell you that, it's personal," Oswin said, "I wouldn't want Clara going around telling people the truth about how I lost my leg. It took her months to tell me. In fact, she only did that time we were away for six days the other month."

"Would she tell me if I asked?"

"I don't know, I never have," Oswin told her, "I wouldn't ask if I were you. She hates talking about it, she doesn't even talk to the Doctor about it. Although, I guess, if you knew how she died you'd understand _that_ as well…" The mystery of Clara's mother's death was suddenly becoming more and more opaque, and Martha had never even thought about it before. Then again, she wouldn't want somebody prying into the particulars of her parents' divorce, so she could understand Clara's desire for privacy. Anyone could, really. Why wouldn't she talk to the Doctor, though?

Clara was still making retching noises in the next room.

"I guess this environment isn't helping, either," Oswin said.

"No," Martha sighed, "It stinks and I'm getting seasick trying to sleep. I have a terrible headache." Oswin made an amiable noise to that, but didn't say anything. She was watching the bathroom door and waiting for Clara to return, though Martha didn't know how long that would take. "You know, it's not normal to have nightmares like _that_ about something that happened six years ago."

"What do you mean by 'not normal'?"

"Hasn't she ever seen anybody about it?"

"Anybody like who?"

"Therapists," Martha said.

"_Therapists_?"

"I'm a doctor, Oswin. And I _was_ a doctor with the military, and Torchwood. Nightmares _that severe_ are a symptom of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder."

"Well then you go and give her your medical opinion," Oswin muttered, "See how she takes it when you tell her she's about as mentally ill as… as _me_, for instance."

"Mental illnesses can be hereditary, you know," Martha said, "Things like depression. _Manic_ depression, even." Oswin looked dead at Martha right then with a look of near-annoyance and displeasure.

"What are you trying to say? I've inherited manic depression and PTSD from Clara?" Oswin questioned coldly, nodding at the bathroom door when she spoke.

"_No_, I mean you might be genetically predisposed because if she _does_ have PTSD and it's never been treated, well, nobody knows how that might affect a genetically identical clone like you," Martha said, not bothering to sugar-coat her words when she called Oswin a 'genetically identical clone.'

"So you want me to blame Clara for me being the way I am?" Oswin asked harshly.

"Of course not. I'm just pointing it out. Do you think I _should_ talk to her? Medically? When we're back on the TARDIS?" Martha asked honestly.

"Do what you like, Martha. But don't blame me if she yells at you or something, Clara likes to pretend that she doesn't have nightmares. She doesn't tell anybody about them at all unless they happen to be there when she has one. She just acts like they never happened." Martha sighed.

"Are you sure I shouldn't leave?"

"It's fine," Oswin said sombrely, "When she comes back she'll be asleep within five minutes, she's calming down, I can feel it."

"She'll be alright, though?"

"Oh, yeah. Give her a day, she'll be fine, back to her usual self, talking about dumb books and poems and plays anybody could care less about," Oswin shrugged and smiled weakly through the gloom. There was a distant clap of thunder, and Martha didn't think too highly about her prospects of managing to fall back asleep. Nevertheless, Clara's retching soon ceased and she soon returned to Oswin, and Martha rolled over to face the wall and try to return to the slumber she had so been enjoying earlier on in the night.


	393. Somewhere Beyond The Sea IV

**AN: Day 122 was supposed to be five chapters but I managed to cram it down to three in my revision of my chapter plan. Thing is I'm rationing myself to 11 chapters only for this storyline because I want it all to fit so that the next storyline starts in Chapter 901.**

_DAY ONE-HUNDRED AND TWENTY-THREE_

_Adam_

_Somewhere Beyond The Sea IV_

Attempting to get a good night's sleep on the _Ophelia_ was impossible. Firstly, there was the raging storm outside which, now that it was the morning, had thankfully subsided enough into muggy grey clouds and a mild fog, and the outdoors were damp and chilly when he had ventured out onto the deck in order to wake himself up a little. The cold temperatures didn't bother him but the outrageous thunder did – he'd never been one who'd been able to sleep with noise all around him, especially not when he'd always had trouble sleeping _anyway_.

Secondly, staying in a bedroom with the Tenth Doctor and Mickey Smith proved, contrary to his earlier belief that things would be quiet, just as loud and irritating as the storm, because they kept rehashing old anecdotes to one another and talking about Martha and Rose, which Adam Mitchell didn't care for one bit, even when they tried to involve him in discussions on the latter. He ended up with his face pressed into the mattress and his pillow pressed into his face trying to block out the sounds of them, and they also refused to turn off the light for the most obnoxious length of time imaginable. Again, he'd never been able to sleep with noise around him.

Thirdly, the aforementioned sleep problems that had troubled him for the majority of the last decade of his life had, in recent weeks, all but disappeared. This he blamed entirely and gratefully on Oswin Oswald's daily presence in his bed, but without her there and with all of this ruckus booming about he didn't get to sleep at all until after three o'clock in the morning. Most annoyingly of all, his phone was just as broken from them semi-drowning as everybody else's were, so he wasn't even able to text his girlfriend for some kind of solace in the night, and he wondered if maybe he was too dependent on her being there.

Fourthly, after waking up irritatingly early after just scraping two hours of uncomfortable, restless sleep, he had suffered yet another dreadful shower aboard the _Ophelia_ in more communal bathrooms like those which he had escaped on the TARDIS due to the hated fact of his cryostasis rendering him impotent, and that led him into the most depressing breakfast he'd had of late, which consisted of bland egg and sausage supplements and 'coffee' which was just hot brown water, in his opinion.

Adam Mitchell sat drearily in the mess room next to Ten, who had not slept and had taken to humming 1980s power ballads at five AM (how Rose put up with him, Adam didn't know, because he thought if _he_ did something like that his girlfriend would slap him), with the other early-risers aboard the oxyves sat around them looking somewhat pleased with the morning's wholly inedible spread. He stared at his 'sausages' and his 'bacon', both of which were the exact same pork substitute, Protein Two, moulded into slightly different shapes and coloured in with identical shades of pinkish-brown, and he remarked to Ten that the sausages looked like stools with blood mixed in. Ten told him to stop being ungrateful, and he sat being annoyed at the fact he'd just put himself off his own food.

Even the arrival of Oswin was little comfort, because Oswin was clinging to Clara (or rather, Clara was clinging to _her_) like a limpet clung to a rock when the tide came in, and he wondered what was going on. She didn't sit with Adam, she sat away with Clara somewhere else, though she _did_ smile at him. He groaned and threw himself back in his chair, Martha emerging shortly after the Twins did. Mickey was sleeping in, clearly.

"What's the matter _now_?" Ten, who'd had an earful of Adam complaining for about forty minutes, Adam whose eyelids were as sticky with sore tiredness as if they had seawater and sand stuck to their irises, asked him.

"Well I'm in love with that girl over there and she's not sitting with me," Adam told Ten, which Oswin heard. She glanced over in surprise.

"I love you, too," she answered almost automatically, smiling at him, before her smile faded and she continued talking to a dejected and bedraggled Clara in a low voice. Clara had grey circles around her eyes and looked about as pale as her undead counterpart living in Haworth. He stared at her, then looked back at his stool-resembling-sausages, and went back to staring at her because he didn't have anything else pleasant to admire.

"You're being creepy," Martha told him, "Where's Mickey?"

"Sleeping in," Adam said with a sigh, turning slightly so he was more facing Martha, sat opposite on the smaller table of the mess area they were in, rather than Oswin on the other side of the room, "What's with Clara?"

"Oh," Martha said, like she hadn't been expecting him to ask. She lowered her voice and leant over the table towards Adam and Ten to whisper, "She had one of those nightmares. Does Oswin have nightmares?"

"No, she doesn't dream," Adam told Martha, "I don't know if she had them while she was alive, though. Why?" Martha explained then her theory about Oswin being predisposed to the severe neuroses she suffered from because of Clara's less-than optimal mental state, "I'll ask if you want? Not now, but later." Martha thanked him in advance, though he didn't know what she was looking to achieve.

"There's still something about this kraken that doesn't add up," Ten mused finally, picking the turd sausage off Adam's plate when it was clear that Adam was not going to touch it. Ten didn't seem to mind the processed muck they served on the _Ophelia_. Didn't they have any fruit or veg growing in their fancy oxygen synthesiser?

"How do you mean?" Martha asked.

"Well, it hasn't killed anybody," Ten told her, "They're all still alive, the only evidence they have of it being hostile is them saying it sank the _Desdemona_ last month, but they don't know for sure. And then they said it ate people? A creature that size wouldn't be sustained on humans, and certainly not so few of them, it was massive! It probably has a whole different kind of prey, otherwise it would be killing people left, right and centre, the bane of the Oxsys Fleet. Are you going to eat that bacon?"

"Have it," Adam sighed and slid his plate in front of Ten, who beamed, having already consumed the entirety of the rations he'd been allocated, which were less than generous. Mickey trudged into the room just then, the last of them to appear, yawning and looking tired. He came and dropped into the seat next to Martha and sat as close to her as physically possible, and Adam, through his annoyance at the fact Oswin wasn't sitting as close to _him_ as physically possible, wondered how cold it was for people not in perpetual cryostasis.

"Where'd they say the _Desdemona_ sank again?" Adam asked Ten.

"Just off Iceland," Ten said, "Why?"

"Rapture – I mean, uh, _Atlantis_, is just off Iceland. I wonder what the coordinates were… Oswin?" he called over, because he thought she might know more about this theory than him. She looked over expectantly, "C'mere." She muttered something to Clara, and it seemed that Clara smiled weakly and allowed Oswin to leave her presence. Oswin left Clara like Clara was a toddler hell-bent on breaking something in her absence, even though she was only going across the room.

"What is it?" Oswin asked him, coming and sitting down.

"Do you know where the Dimension Door that goes to Rapture is?" he asked her, and she seemed surprised.

"No," she answered, "I really have to go back there and figure it out, though, maybe warn people so that they stay away. Why?"

"The Doctor says the _Desdemona_ sank near Iceland," Adam said.

"Could it have been anything to do with that Door?" Ten leant past Adam to inquire, and she thought for a moment.

"Well, I suppose so, considering I don't know anything about that particular one. I don't know enough about the Doors in general to say how large a time period they might span across. They're not single moments, though, after we found that one on Preyonov, you remember?" she said to Adam, who did remember, "It was like a proper interdimensional rift there, but completely invisible, cars just kept flying through it. Went from the Alphaverse to the Zetaverse, I think. How come you don't think the kraken just sank it?"

"It just strikes me as odd that it hasn't killed anybody or shown any hostile behaviour."

"Is it hitting the boat with its massive tentacles not 'hostile behaviour' enough for you?" Mickey questioned him.

"Hey!" Oswin said to Mickey like he had said something awful, "The Tenth Doctor is always hitting _Rose_ with _his_ massive tentacle, and _that's_ not hostile behaviour."

"Thanks for that," Martha muttered.

"Don't mention it, Marth," Oswin said, and then she winked at Mickey's wife. Mickey himself was thoroughly weirded out by this encounter, because he didn't exactly spend enough time around Oswin to know what she was like. Martha, however, _did_, and accordingly ignored her. Just like Ten was doing. Adam was just glad she hadn't said anything about _him_. "I have to go back now, sorry." She began to stand up.

"Do you _have_ to though? Why can't Clara just come over here with the rest of us?" Adam asked, taking hold of her hand so that she didn't leave so abruptly.

"I'm really sorry, babe," she apologised, "Honestly, I'll make it up to you, I promise." She stooped down and touched his cheek and kissed him, and then smiled and left, and he watched her return to Clara ardently.

"That's the first time I've seen you two knowingly break the PDA rule," Martha said jokingly, but Adam didn't acknowledge that she had said much.

"What was her nightmare about?" Ten asked Martha, frowning as he looked at the Twins. It was very strange, Adam supposed, to have Oswin being the maternal carer out of the pair of them and Clara the ill, socially-repulsed, depressed one.

"Her mother's death," Martha said very quietly, then to Adam, "Do you know how she died? Clara's mother?"

"I've no idea, it's none of my business," he shrugged, which was entirely true. And he doubted Oswin would tell him if he asked, and he _knew_ Clara wouldn't, "Maybe Jenny knows? You might be able to get it out of Jenny."

"Why would Jenny know?" Martha asked.

"Well they're going out now, aren't they?" Adam said.

"Who are?" Mickey inquired.

"Jenny and Other Clara."

"Are they?" Mickey and Martha asked together.

"Yeah. I don't know why you're so surprised. Maybe Beta Clara'll tell you as well. I don't know," he said, but he doubted that Beta Clara would tell them anyway. He also didn't know for a fact that Jenny Harkness knew anything at all about Clara's nightmares.

"Does her husband know?" Martha asked.

"I assume so? I don't know, it always seems like he's weird about it," Adam shrugged, "She always comes into our rooms when she has these nightmares. And the other week when there was that stuff with the vampires she had one and wouldn't let anybody go and get him, but I figured that was because they weren't talking." Adam thought maybe he shouldn't be telling them these somewhat personal things, but it was only Mickey, Martha and Ten. They weren't the most malicious people on the TARDIS, and all of them seemed genuinely concerned.

At any rate, their conversation was doomed to end there, because Captain Scinto entered and expressed how pleased he was that they were all already awake and 'ready to get to work.' Adam didn't feel ready to get to work at all, and technically hadn't done an honest day's work in his life. He hadn't needed to, he was a fraudulent genius multimillionaire, and now he was stuck on a barge in a polluted future doing gardening. Today was one of the worst days since he'd been sucked onto the TARDIS, he decided.


	394. Somewhere Beyond The Sea V

_Clara_

_Somewhere Beyond The Sea V_

The inside of the Synthesiser, the dome structure on the back of the turtle-teacup _Ophelia_, reminded Clara nostalgically of a trip to the Eden Project in Cornwall she had been on when she was around seventeen. For the life of her, she couldn't remember _why_ there had been a trip to the Eden Project, because the thing that cropped into her mind first was that it was some Geography trip. But if she was seventeen, high school would have been over and she would have been doing A Levels, therefore it was most likely _not_ a Geography trip. Most likely, she figured, that what with her living in Blackpool, Blackpool famous mainly for Blackpool Pleasure Beach (the most sensually named theme park in the whole of Great Britain), they were all too numb to the 'joys' of roller coasters to amuse them. She herself had never been that much of a fan of anything beyond the spinning teacups and the rapids anyway, so she wouldn't have wanted to go somewhere like that for an end of year trip, which was what she assumed it was. So the result was them travelling for eight hours on a coach down to the south coast and hanging out in a couple of giant golf-ball hemispheres full of trees and jungle fauna, and that was _exactly _what the Synthesiser was, with a lot of piping leading out of it to release the oxygen into the air.

"How do they water the plants?" Clara asked Oswin. Truth be told, they weren't doing an awful lot, not any of them. They were all kneeling carelessly in bits of dirt with leafy buds sticking out of the ground they were, apparently, meant to be cultivating. Usually, they would be under instruction of Malti, the head biologist, but they actually all knew how to do basic gardening and use trowels and whatnot, so they were left shamelessly unsupervised. Well, that wasn't strictly true – Wantze was still there with them and was clinging to Oswin like glue to ask more intrusive questions about Fyn. Apart from them, the six of them were free of any oxyves crewmates.

"Sprinklers, the sea water gets filtered, the process takes about a month," Wantze answered quick as a flash, making Clara jump. People kept giving her funny looks, the other four, and shying away from the company of she and Oswin. Even Adam Mitchell didn't look too sure of whether or not he was allowed to speak to his girlfriend – though, who was disallowing him, Clara didn't know. Surely not her? She wasn't doing anything different from usual. She was just tired and a bit emotionally exhausted, but nothing was impeding her ability to socialise or to listen to the extent where she closed off all communication with people who weren't her identical.

"A _month_?" Clara exclaimed, "How gross is the water that it takes a _month_ to get rid of the pollution and make it good quality?" Wantze seemed offended and shrugged. They were barely twenty and were also scarcely taller than she was.

"Well maybe if the people in _your_ century had changed their ways…" Oswin began, and Clara glared at her.

"Because this era's any better?"

"Uh, Horizon is entirely clean. It's solar powered, it floats using natural magnetism, the electricity is all cleanly produced, okay Clara?" Oswin counted.

"What about those cows?" Adam Mitchell, who was listening, called over. Oswin clenched her jaw and looked at him.

"_What_ cows would those be, Mitchell?"

"I thought you told me about that rumour once that Horizon got all its dairy from battery farming cows in the lower decks, and that was why it was so warm on the lower levels?" he asked.

"That rumour is not true," Oswin told him sharply, "They do not battery farm bovine, everything is synthetic, just like it is here, made out there in space using _solar power_, okay? This oxyves is _solar powered_. The state of Planet Earth is everything to do with the past and nothing to do with the present – it wasn't Wantze here who destroyed the rainforests, after all. _Or_ me, I'm not even from here."

Clara went back to thinking about that distant trip to the Eden Project again, and tried to remember what the purpose of those golf-balls in the English countryside had even been to begin with. They were probably trying to preserve the rainforests or something, simulate the experience of being out in the Amazon Jungle, but only if the Amazon Jungle had conveniently placed vending machines and an extortionate gift shop. All she really remembered was that it had been humid, and she had gotten off with someone. _This_ memory caused her to be even more distracted and sit with her hands folded in her lap wondering who said someone had been.

"Clara?" Oswin asked, cutting Clara away from her thoughts of that hot, indoor summer's day. She couldn't even remember the gender of who it had been, let alone their name or face, or even what they'd _done_, specifically. But she was sure it happened.

"Hmm?"

"Are you okay?"

"I'm fine," she assured her.

"You looked really distant."

"I was, I was thinking about something that happened when I was a teenager," Clara explained, and Oswin narrowed her eyes, and Clara knew what she was thinking so she flatly replied, "_Not_ anything to do with my mother."

"Oh. What, then?" Oswin inquired, Wantze more interested in their conversations than making them do any actual work. Wasn't Oswin supposed to be pretending to build a bomb, too?

"Trying to remember who I got off with in the Eden Project," Clara said, still thinking about it.

"You did _what_ in the Eden Project?" Adam Mitchell exclaimed, and the other three looked over as well. They weren't doing any work, either.

"_Got off with somebody_," Clara said very loudly, then she shook her head, "And now I can't remember who it was."

"Seriously?" Martha asked incredulously, "Maybe it was one of those people who gave you chlamydia."

"If she's in the Eden Project I'm surprised she didn't get dengue fever," Adam muttered.

"You cannot get dengue fever from hanging out in a golf-ball," Clara said.

"What are you talking about, golf-ball..?" Oswin frowned.

"It's like this in here, but a tourist attraction. It's in Cornwall. Aren't _you_ from Cornwall?" Clara asked Adam, who stared at her, slack-jawed, as though she were a complete idiot.

"I'm from Devon," he answered.

"Isn't Devon in Cornwall..?"

"No! It's a totally different county!"

"It's, like, _basically_ the same thing, though. They're right next to each other."

"So what's it like growing up in Yorkshire?" Adam countered, and Martha and Mickey both laughed as Clara glared daggers at him.

"Don't you start. I'll have you know we won that war," she said sharply.

"What war?" Martha snorted.

"The War of the Roses, obviously," Clara said.

"Wasn't that war, like, over five-hundred years before you were born..?" Adam asked.

"Oswin, tell your boyfriend to shut up," Clara ordered Oswin.

"What? Why?" Oswin sighed.

"Because I told you to! Because… because if you don't, _I'll_ imply that _you're_ from… from… what's another moon of Saturn?" Clara asked Adam.

"Enceladus."

"Yeah, that you're from enchiladas-"

"_Enceladus _not _enchiladas_, you idiot," Adam said, and she waved a hand at him to indicate he ought to be quiet.

"That you're from Ence-whatsit. And how would you like that?" Clara challenged Oswin.

"I prefer fajitas," Oswin told her dryly, "Besides, there are no other colonies on Saturn's moons. And I really don't care that much anyway, even if there was. I'm not exactly Titan's most patriotic denizen. Can you really not remember who it was you got off with?"

"I don't even know what gender they were," Clara said.

"You are _literally_ the worst, you've got to start thinking about all the other people who share the exact physiology that you do, Clara. All these total munters you've shagged know what _I_ look like _naked_, and _that_ bothers me," Oswin said.

"Uh, but we're totally hot, so it shouldn't."

"Our obvious hotness isn't the issue in question, honey."

"What about him? _He's_ seen _me_ naked," Clara pointed rudely at Adam Mitchell.

"Yeah, but _he's_ not just some guy I copped off with in a golf-ball garden and can't even remember, is he? He actually means something to me."

"Maybe the person in the Eden Project meant something to _me_ seven years ago," Clara shrugged.

"Right, so if you and the Doctor got a divorce _this week_, you're telling me that in seven years you'll be sat around with your hand on your chin going, '_Hmm_, I simply can't remember anything about this person my entire life revolved around seven years ago was, not even their name or gender.' Although, I guess with _you_, the question of, 'girl or boy?' is significantly more valid, _isn't it_?" Oswin said coolly, shamelessly referring to Clara's business with Thirteen, which was _private_.

"There are more than two genders," Wantze, who did not fit into any gender binary Clara was used and who had corrected them the day before to use 'they' pronouns, said somewhat quietly, not knowing what might happen if they dared interrupt the Twins fighting.

"I know that," Oswin said, "But my dear sister here is so phenomenally shallow-minded that if an orifice into which she may stick her tongue is not blatantly obvious, she generally won't even bother."

"How _dare_ you!" Clara exclaimed.

"Is it not true?" Oswin asked, and Clara scoffed at her very huffily and was about to say something to defend herself, when Oswin turned to Wantze and very exaggeratedly asked, "Oh, _by the way_, do you grow mangoes in this Synthesiser?"

"Oh, that's the _last_ straw!" Clara shouted, "You've just _got_ to go bringing that up again, haven't you!?"

"Well, Clara, maybe if you could keep your nasty tongue off of _my_ mangoes, you wouldn't be such a _mango whore_, now, would you!?"

"You absolute twatbag!"

"I'm not even wrong!"

Clara picked up some gardening-thing from the ground next to her.

"I swear to god, Oswin, if you don't shut your bloody mouth I'm going to murder you with this… this…"

"It's a hoe," Oswin said.

"It's not a hoe, it's a rake," Clara realised.

"I wasn't talking about the rake, I was talking about you."

"You utter-"

The roof exploded and an enormous, pinkish reddish, slimy, shimmering tube crashed down into the trees right next to the six of them and Wantze. Clara had been lifting her rake in a move to strike Oswin, which had undoubtedly _not_ been about to do, because their arguments never usually extended to the point of maiming. Someone usually stopped them. Or some_thing_, something like a kraken, for instance. Clara dropped the rake on the ground and they all scrambled to their feet. The thing was attacking the Synthesiser! It had smashed straight through the roof!

"What the hell kind of glass is that!?" Oswin demanded of Wantze, "It shouldn't be strong enough to break it if it's densi!"

"_Densi_!? Down on Earth there's no need to build things out of densi! That's for deep space outposts!" Wantze told her, and she groaned in frustration.

Whatever they were looking at then seemed slightly different to the tentacles of yesterday, in the way that they were thinner, until they fanned out into some large oval thing on the end which was two metres wide and threw itself around the Synthesiser dome like a feeler, smashing the glass ceiling apart and sending glass shards raining down on them, which Clara telekinetically stopped from injuring anybody.

"What do we do!?" Wantze exclaimed.

"Doctor!?" Martha asked Ten, who was simply staring at it.

"Isn't it amazing? Look at it! It's huge!" Ten said, in awe of the kraken rather than being scared of it.

"Set it on fire!" Adam ordered Martha.

"What!? No! No, no! Don't set it on fire!" Ten protested. The kraken swept its big feeler tentacle thingy around the room, and then they heard a noise outside, a sloshing sound, but _huge_, like a tidal wave shooting into shore, and some huge red thing emerged into view outside, like a skyscraper, towering above them, and when Clara saw the dorsal fin, she was surprised to recognise it as a squid.

But that was the least of their worries, because squid, the bigger the were, were not to be savage monsters. Giant squid were, after all, perpetuated to hunt and kill sperm whales.

"It's _beautiful_," Ten stared.

"It's going to bloody kill us!" Oswin yelled at him.

"No! I'm sure it's completely harmless!" he protested on the creature's behalf. Clara kept expecting it, as it loomed outside, to roar, but she doubted that squid possessed that capability. It was just mindlessly aggressive.

"It's never done that before, pulled itself out of the water," Wantze said.

"Oh, great, as soon as _we_ show up, the kraken starts acting out of character!" Oswin shouted at no-one in particular. That was when the unthinkable happened, because that was when this feeling, extra-long appendage which Clara knew to be an _actual_ tentacle, while the other eight appendages a squid had were technically _arms_, caught some prey. And, of course, by 'prey,' she meant Mickey Smith. He was caught on one of those suckers and, fast as a whip, dragged up and out of the Synthesiser, though the hole in the roof, and away, while Martha wailed and screamed his name.

"The kraken is attacking!" someone announced from the doorway, and they all looked around to see Scinto, but he ended up trailing away when he stared at the roof.

"We know, it just grabbed Mickey!" Adam said to him, and then Scinto beckoned them to follow him to the laser harpoons on the deck, and so they did follow him, and they were in a painfully similar situation to the one they had been in last night. They emerged just to see the tentacle of the absolutely _catastrophically huge_ squid re-appear out of the seawater, Mickey-free.

"Oh my god, it ate him!" Martha screamed in horror, "IT ATE HIM! MY HUSBAND!" Clara nearly pointed out that they did not know for sure the kraken had eaten Mickey, but Mickey was gone and there was a monster clinging to the side of the _Ophelia_, so Clara didn't blame her for assuming the worst.

However, her shouts brought the attention of the squid, and now they could see that its eyes were on the surface, the biggest eyes Clara had ever seen in her life, each the size of a house, and there were _three_ of them, staring out with a strange kind of awareness. But it couldn't possibly know what it was doing, it was just… hungry, that was all, despite the fact that if whales fed plain old _giant_ squid, there was no way for it to get the sustenance it needed from a handful of people – it was tall as a mountain, and again she was thinking of Cthulhu. The tentacle went straight for Martha, its arms wrapping around the ship as it apparently ignored the laser harpoons Scinto and Malti were throwing at it, leading it to bleed more blue liquid onto deck. As the first tentacle dragged a screaming Martha Jones away, a second tentacle grabbed the Tenth Doctor, taking him by surprise, lifting him into the air. It sucked the both of them away and down into the depths of the Atlantic Ocean.

"Holy shit!" Oswin shouted, "What do we do!? What do we _do_, Clara!?"

"How should I know!?" Clara hollered right back at her, both of them and Adam Mitchell the only ones left now.

Then the tentacle returned out of the water and, to Clara's _horror_, it came straight for _her_ next.

**AN: Would people be interested in more Future Clarteen? Like, not for a while really, but I figure that whenever I do finally bring myself to write Thirteen going back to the future (not that that's actually even penned into my plan, and it definitely won't be until after Day 141 regardless, since Day 141 is Alpha Clara's birthday and I'm doing a storyline that most definitely will involve Thirteen that day (surprisingly enough this storyline does not involve Clara)), I'll probably keep jumping ahead to random points. I mean, I had the idea to do two-storylines-in-one again soon and have a legitimate one going on while in between the chapters are, what I call, "****_Regenderation_****," and I'm sure you can all figure out what ****_that_**** is.**


	395. Somewhere Beyond The Sea VI

**AN: I'm off school this following week, by the way, so expect double updates. I don't have anything to do other than write, read, and watch ****_The X-Files_****. Plus, I'm very excited for my coming storylines.**

_Clara_

_Somewhere Beyond The Sea VI_

Clara would like to think that she had conveniently fallen unconscious and didn't remember at all what it was like to slither down the slimy, steep gullet of a squid on growth hormones, but what Clara would like to think and what Clara knew to be true were two entirely different things. It had been an experience, was all she was prepared to say. But what followed was the most surreal thing to ever happen to her in her life so far, even more than the fact her best friend was a duplicate of herself and she was married to a time-travelling alien. She was in total, utter darkness, loud rumbling and sloshing sounds of waves and very distant shouts and bangs rattling the small world around her, and if there wasn't such a ferocious stench about her, she believed she might be dead. She wasn't dead, though. She suspected that if she was dead, she wouldn't feel the pain she did an instant later when a dreadfully familiar scream rang in her ears and some heavy lump fell right on top of her and hit her with some bony appendage – an artificial knee, she suspected – right in the gut, and she was winded instantly.

Clara groaned in pain and pushed the thing off, which made another whimper-like noise and landed with a splash in whatever sickeningly warm liquid they were lying in. Her sister, undoubtedly, had just fallen right on top of her, sucked up by the kraken too.

"Ew, ew, ew, _ew ew ew_," Oswin was saying right next to her, and Clara heard splashing and got water (she didn't know what the liquid was, but she was going to call it 'water' in her mind just to make things seem less-bad than what they actually were) thrown all over her as Oswin stumbled to her feet, then she slipped over straight away – because they didn't have the firmest landscape to stand on within the kraken – and splashed water at Clara again.

"Would you just sit still!?" Clara hissed at her.

"Are you alright!?" the voice of Mickey Smith called. So Mickey was alive, too. There was absolutely no light at all, and Oswin kept fumbling about next to Clara trying to stand up. Clara didn't know what to say to Mickey, and in the end didn't need to, as a loud, male scream tore through the air and somebody else fell with an enormous splash into the belly of the beast, and Clara got an icy chill when they did.

The light of Oswin's Sphere did, at that point, illuminate up the cavern they were all grouped together inside of, and revealed this newcomer to be Adam Mitchell. Oswin dragged herself towards him to help him up, not even apologising for landing so painfully on Clara moments ago.

There was only really one way to describe what it was like on the inside of a kraken, and that was to conjure into one's mind the trash compactor scene from _Star Wars: Episode IV: A New Hope_. _That_, most definitely, summed it up. It was, in that world of semi-digested seaweed and entrails, however, a great deal smellier than human rubbish. The walls were coral coloured, if they could be called walls, and they wobbled about and pulsed and shone. The 'water' was green, and thick, and full of lumps of mushy, partially-digested plant. Clara thought this was odd, because she thought kraken were carnivorous, but this thing didn't have any meat inside it, nor was the liquid she presumed to be stomach acid particularly acrid.

Another scream from above and Wantze, to Clara's surprise, splashed down into the pond that was festering in the stomach of the kraken, landing unfortunately facedown and having to scramble to sit up and get some air. Clara was very surprised at the amount of air within, too. The six of them just sat and didn't talk to one another, taking in their surroundings, all of them thinking the same thing: how the _hell_ were they going to get out of this one? It was one of the trickiest situations she'd been in before, and she was too confused to think quickly enough to take superpowers into account, to her later regrets.

As soon as a seventh person, Ten, was dropped into the kraken's insides and slithered his way down its tunnel-like oesophagus to join the rest of them in their fresh hell, there was a great shift in the gravity and they were sent into a terrifying freefall. For a few seconds, Clara was very nearly floating, and then she was tumbling sideways as, she could only assume, the kraken let go of the _Ophelia _outside and took itself and them crashing downwards into the ocean. The shouts and loud sounds of the ship's engines all of a sudden died away, and there was a silence.

At least, there was until the Tenth Doctor started coughing his guts up and pushing himself up on his hands, sitting back on his knees and lifting a very large lump of green gloopy plant-stuff up with his hand, letting it roll between his fingers and splosh back down. There was absolutely no way any of them were going to be able to manage standing up now, Clara thought, now they were under the sea. Who knew how far down they were already, stuck inside of this monstrous polyp.

They still didn't speak. The Doctor was crawling about on all fours looking at stuff, and nobody knew what to say. The same question played with all of them, them wondering if they were going to die, them having no visible way out. Sure, Clara could phase her way out, but then what? Just let herself drown and drift, a bloated sea-corpse, for an interminable length of time until, if she was lucky, she washed up on a beach and her nanogenes could fix her? Martha could probably burn her way out, or do something fire-related, but Clara doubted fire would carry her to the surface, and even though she might be able to survive the cold of the deep Atlantic, as would Adam Mitchell were he to figure an escape, neither of them had a way to stop themselves starving to death. Mickey, too, though he could breathe underwater, would most likely freeze, as would Oswin's Sphere. Wantze was a perfect human and was, as far as Clara could reason, going to die with them regardless of superpowers. Maybe Ten was the only one of them with any _real_ chance of escape or survival. The TARDIS couldn't land inside of a quickly moving humungous kraken, so where did that leave them? Relying on Rose Tyler, maybe? Clara didn't like the idea of depending on for Rose for rescue, but Rose would not let Ten die, she was sure.

"You know," Clara began finally, "I really wish weird aliens would stop eating me." And that statement caused a riot all on its own, even though all _she_ was referencing with the incident she and Captain Jack had suffered through involving that savage space worm on Eslilia a month and a half ago. That time she'd ended up fully digested and then submerged in white, glowing, liquid faeces. She didn't know if that was worse than her current situation.

In response, Mickey said, "Maybe you should have told the Doctor that _before_ you married him."

Adam said, "You should probably let Jenny down gently."

Martha said, "I'm sure your wife will be _very_ interested to know."

Even Ten said, "You do _seem_ to be making a habit of it." Clara awaited Oswin's remark, which she was expecting to be a dozen times worse than the other ones, but her sister next to her stayed quiet.

"…Oswin?"

"What?" Oswin asked sharply.

"You're never one _not_ to make an oral sex joke at my expense," Clara reminded her, and she opened her mouth as though to talk, but mouthed only a few incomplete syllables and then seemed to stop trying, "Os?"

"I can't think of one, okay!?" Oswin snapped, "I'm actually a bit busy right now, in case you haven't noticed, trying to _not_ be digested by a massive sea monster." Clara shut up at that, and so did everybody else, staying quiet for the longest time with just numbing ocean silence outside to fill the void.

"We're all dead, aren't we?" Martha asked eventually, hollowly.

"Join the club," Oswin muttered. Oswin shuffled up next to Clara, Clara being closer and warmer than Adam Mitchell.

"It's not funny," Martha told her. Ten was ignoring them, busy looking at semi-processed kelp, "How much oxygen do you think we have?"

"Oh, plenty," Ten told her, to her surprise, "This stuff it's been eating has plenty of algae in it." He went back to his crawling around.

"We might die, though," Adam said out loud. Wantze sat nearby with their arms wrapped around their legs in the foetal position, and Clara felt quite bad for them. She would like to assure them that the Doctor would save them all, but she really didn't know. "Unless we find a way out."

"And what way out would that be?"

"We could, you know. Go out the back way?" he suggested, "Travel through the digestive track? Come out the other end?"

"And then what do you propose we do? _Drown_?" Oswin challenged him.

"Mickey won't drown," he pointed out.

"_Freeze_?" she suggested.

"Martha and I won't freeze."

"_Starve_?"

"Clara and you won't starve."

"Babe," she began, "I really don't understand why you think Squidward's chocolate starfish is the place to be right now." Mickey, Martha and Clara all groaned in disgust at that. "_What_?"

"That was vile, Os," Clara told her, and she shrugged. _Chocolate starfish_, Clara thought with repulsion, _of all the things_…

"I couldn't care less, my Sphere will be dissolved by the stomach acid of this fancy fish pretty soon, and then I'll cease to exist," she said indifferently, and Clara sighed, "I imagine this method of death would be a lot more fun if I was into tentacle porn."

"How are you making jokes at a time like this?" Wantze asked her. Wantze was downright _terrified_, and Oswin's talking of death and whatnot wasn't really helping them.

"I'm so sorry," Clara apologised, "I honestly am sorry for Oswin's behaviour, she's ill. Sometimes I don't know_ how_ she came from me."

"I don't understand you two," Wantze muttered.

"Don't worry about it, nobody does," Mickey sighed.

"Well," Ten kneeled up eventually, hands covered in green stuff which he shook off into the pond and made a mess with, "I'm sorry to burst your death-bubble, and all, but I really don't think we're gonna die inside this kraken. For one thing, it's clearly a herbivore, probably doesn't even have the facilities to digest meat. That's why we're not slowly disintegrating from the stomach acid."

"Right, so, it ate us why, then?" Martha asked him.

"I think it's clever," Ten answered, "And if I just…" he then revolted all of them and made Clara feel physically ill by licking some of the plant slop off his finger and making a show of tasting it. In her disgust she hid her face for a moment in Oswin's shoulder, Oswin who made a retching noise, "Ah, see? Radioactive."

"Sorry, _what_?" Martha asked him.

"This kraken is radioactive," Ten told them.

"Are you telling me," Adam began, "That this kraken… is _radioactive_?"

"No, I think you ought to look for the underlying subtext," Oswin said to him, and he ignored her.

"This kraken isn't a kraken at all, it's not an alien dropped to Earth, it's a squid. A mutant squid. Mutated, I assume, by the pollution in the Earth's seas. Grew to be more than thirty times its usual size, changed to eat veg, I assume because of all the other dying species, and then evolved to have three eyes. It must have some pretty good immunity to radiation, this squid."

"Yeah, so why has it eaten us?" Mickey asked him again.

"I think it's taking us somewhere," Ten finally answered, "I think it's more than just _bigger_, I think it's _cleverer_, too. The poor thing, just trying to get some human attention on the _Ophelia_. But, Adam, I think you're right about it being something else that sunk the _Desdemona_, not this squid." Adam seemed pleased with himself.

"You're telling us that this kraken is a _friendly_ kraken?" Mickey asked him in disbelief.

"Well, why not?" Ten questioned him, and he didn't seem to know why not.

"I think we should name it," Oswin declared.

"That's stupid," Martha said to her.

"_Name_ it!? Are you all crazy!?" Wantze exclaimed, "How are you not still terrified!?"

"I've been through worse," Ten said simply, then he just sniffed and scratched the back of his head, "Dinner with Jackie Tyler, for instance. Anyway, name it you said? What were you thinking we ought to call it?"

"_Well_…" Oswin began, clearly with a myriad of highly inappropriate names at the tip of her tongue, "First of all, I think Hentai is the most obvious name…"


	396. Somewhere Beyond The Sea VII

_Clara_

_Somewhere Beyond The Sea VII_

She didn't know what was worse, getting eaten by a kraken or getting regurgitated by a kraken. Possibly the great, deafening retching sounds that encompassed them when they were still all within, along with the muscle jerks that were needed to launch them all out like a spurt from a fountain down the throat of the creature, were a little worse than just being grabbed and thrown by a huge tentacle with brute force. There was still plenty of brute force though, and plenty of Clara thinking she was surely going to drown, or be fed to some curiously carnivorous squid-young. At least, she thought bitterly, the belly of the kraken had been a soft, if putrid, landing.

What followed was most definitely not a soft landing. She was launched like a bullet from a gun out of the beak of the kraken into a world that pressed bright turquoise into her closed, frightened eyelids and burned her vision blue. Where the blue was coming from, she didn't know, but what she did know was that yet again she had fallen from a great height and had ended up injured and, _yet again_, somebody landed right on top of her. First it had been from the fishing net onto the deck of the _Ophelia_ where she was sure it had been Adam Mitchell who'd landed, elbows-first, into her stomach, then it had been her sister kneeing her in the gut just over an hour ago. And now, it turned out, to be Martha Jones, which meant that along with being generally in dull pain, she was also burned, right in her abdomen, a big handprint scorching her skin.

"Thanks, Martha," she said, and then she coughed up some greenish liquid that she knew was the stuff from within the kraken's belly she must have gotten in her mouth at some point during what she dubbed _the Vomiting_, as Martha apologised drearily next to her.

The six members of the TARDIS crew and Wantze the stray sailor from the _Ophelia_ were on a beach. It was a stony pebble beach with large but smooth rocks in dark colours, and all around them was curiously warm, but when Clara looked up and managed to get to her feet, just as damp as she felt she had been for the last twenty-four hours non-stop, she found she had a great deal of surroundings to take in. Immediately she was blinded by mysterious beauty. First of all, they were in a cave, undoubtedly. Second of all, it was the biggest cave she had ever seen in her life, just like the _Ophelia_ was the biggest sea-going vessel she had ever seen in her life, and the kraken – which they had, after long deliberation and a great deal of stubbornness on her sister's part, dubbed _Squidzilla_ – was the biggest squid she had ever seen in her life.

Third of all, after the dark pebble beach dwindled away into equally dark send, an immense forest sprouted out of the ground. It was huge, the trees thirty feet tall in some places, and not any kind of trees Clara had seen before in her life. And the blue glow that was surrounded them was because of some sort of luminescent coating the ceiling had, so it was just like a clear blue sky on a summer's day, with the temperature to match. And behind her the cave stretched out and sloped downwards and there was the sea, like a great rock pool, with the very creature they were so frightened of just… floating there. Floating there with its three gigantic eyes pointing directly at them. It was a remarkable sight, this underground, underwater jungle, so phosphorescent and humble, one of the most luscious and beautiful things she'd had the pleasure to witness, even if it _was_ overshadowed and tainted by the fact she was covered in mollusc bile.

"My god…" Ten breathed nearby, "I've seen nothing like this on Earth before. An underwater rainforest…"

"Technically it isn't a rainforest," Adam Mitchell groaned nearby. He was tentatively examining that bad foot of his with his girlfriend kneeling nearby worriedly. Clara felt bad for Oswin, because they were just combining three of her least favourite things that day: the sea, all natural plant life, and animals.

"But it looks like one, look at it," Martha commented, "Where does it get its water from?" she asked, standing up and staggering in Mickey's direction. Clara lugged herself to her own feet, which ached dreadfully, just like the rest of her, and winced as her burned hand-mark from being Martha's soft-landing slowly healed itself.

"I suppose that it must be a _sea_forest, then?" the Doctor suggested, looking around, "Maybe it gets water when the tide comes in?"

"The tide's going to come in!?" Wantze exclaimed.

"Probably," Ten said, "Shouldn't be very deep, and I doubt it lasts very long, otherwise the trees would drown. I wouldn't worry about it, we'll be fine, if a little wet."

"Well you say that now, but you might develop trench foot," Clara muttered, wiping green plant-slime from within Squidzilla on her borrowed, synthetic trousers. She still didn't know if her recent experiences were any better or worse than that which had happened on Eslilia, or in Rapture, for that matter.

"I've never seen a real forest before," Wantze said, fear subsiding and being replaced by awe.

"I genuinely think we must have stepped into some universe where Jules Verne is fact," Clara said, looking around, "This is totally something out of _Journey to the Centre of the Earth_. I mean, look at it!"

"Alright, Miss Clayton," Adam muttered, and she scowled at him.

"Seriously, stop saying I'm like the woman in _Back to the Future III_, apart from the fact we're both called Clara and we're both teachers who like books and space, there are absolutely no similarities. It's a coincidence."

"What about the fact you're married to a time-travelling doctor from another era who's a genius and is older than he looks who travels with a companion?" Mickey suggested, and Clara made some irritated noises and then scoffed and went back to looking at the gorgeous scenery, not caring one bit for 1980s sci-fi movies with terrible special effects and stupid time-travel mechanics.

"To be completely fair," Ten began, "He was a time traveller."

"Who was? Jules Verne? _Jules Verne_ was a time traveller?" Clara asked, shocked.

"Of course he was – how else do you account for him being a 'prophet' of scientific progress?" Ten asked her, and she stared blankly for a few moments. She didn't know whether she believed him or not, and resolved to ask her husband upon their reunion, which, she hoped, would be soon. It was less a matter of her missing the Eleventh Doctor – it had barely been a day, after all, and she'd had Oswin for company – and more just a matter of her desperately wanting to be in a clean environment with all of her comforts around her, him being one of them.

"But why has Squidzilla brought us here?" Adam asked. Clara glanced back at Squidzilla itself, which was still floating. Upon occasion, it doused itself in more water so that it could remain observing them. She wondered why it was watching.

"I told you, it's clever," Ten said, "This is the last forest on planet Earth, and going by the amount of trees, it's probably inhabited by all sorts of creatures maybe never seen before. The squid wants to save the planet."

"You're shitting me," Oswin said, "It's a squid. Why would it care?"

"Because it can see that people up there are working so hard with these artificial forests because they don't know there's this thing down here they could get oxygen from perfectly naturally," Ten said, "This place is wonderful. Can you feel all that heat? It's volcanic, probably an underwater volcano through these walls, on top of us. Warming it up down here. This poor squid's mutations are a result of your species being so ignorant of your own ecosystem! I assume, that when the tide comes in enough, this is where Squidzilla gets its food from. Has to be a herbivore when all the meat to eat is dead. Can't be many sea creatures around anymore."

"There was something about a sea monster in that witch's prophecy," Mickey said suddenly, "I'm sure of it." Clara, not having her phone anymore, what with it being completely broken, strained to remember what she could of the prophecy from Salem.

"Witch's prophecy?" Wantze asked incredulously.

"Sorry!" Ten exclaimed at them, "So sorry, completely forgot you were here! This is probably a bit much, isn't it? Well, maybe not, but maybe with this lot all being nonplussed and everything. That's what happens when you travel through time on a regular basis. Now, you're from this time period, what do you think we ought to do about the matter of Earth's pollution and this forest?" Wantze was lost for words. Clara wondered if there was any edible fruit around.

"Uh…" was all Wantze could manage to say.

"You'd have to go pitch to the bureaucrats," Oswin told him.

"The Homeworld Alliance," Wantze said. Oswin turned her nose up at that.

"Would they listen?" Clara asked her sister.

"Well, if the wonderfully insipid words of my dear brother are anything to go by, no. Besides, _I'm_ the smartest girl in all of human history, and I can't really think of any effective way to get oxygen up there from down here. Unless they start to colonise and destroy this forest like the rest of them?" Oswin suggested cynically. "They will ignore it or they will kill it. Anyway, they're not exactly dying out up there, humanity."

"The squid brought us here to show us a way to save the planet," Ten told her.

"Nobody cares about the planet enough to save it," Oswin answered him sharply.

"The Cluster Spores do," Wantze protested, and Clara thought, _that's done it_, and Oswin turned her dark gaze straight on Wantze.

"The Cluster Spores are dead," Oswin said, "They don't have their 'Drifter Squadrons' or their soldiers anymore. Do you not think that the influence of some million or so powerfully armed environmental activists claiming Earthling anonymity and becoming practically their own, disconnected species is an indication of the frank lack of care about the ecology the rest of humanity have? The Cluster Spores couldn't change the system, so they left and made their own." Clara didn't point out that the Spores weren't all dead…

"There must be some," Wantze said.

"And even if they were, what do you propose they do? Come and take over Planet Earth and reduce its carbon footprint to absolute zero? They tried going to war, it didn't work," Oswin said, "The Spores can't do anything, the Homeworld Alliance won't do anything."

"Then it's just us," Ten said, "We'll save the planet, the seven of us."

"Six of you," Oswin corrected him bitterly, "I don't want anything to do with this planet, or saving its environment, or continuing any flawed and second-hand Spore ideologies when they're dead. That's how far their activism got them."

"But the squid-" Ten began to argue with her.

"The squid has the perfect toxicological immune system to protect from the radiation and the pollution of Earth's seas – let it live out its days in peace and forget about this forest."

"I can't," Ten told her, "I can't just leave a planet to be destroyed."

"Humanity have lots of planets," Oswin said, having no empathy at all, "There's nothing special about this one. _End of conversation_."

**AN: I like writing about the sea way too much to be honest. I blame ****_Bioshock_****. You guys all know how much I love ****_Bioshock_****. Speaking of ****_Bioshock_****, I'm having them go back to Rapture (Atlantis) soon. Also, you know what bothers me about that crossover plot? I literally had a really good idea for a genuine Atlantis. It was legitimately supposed to be entirely irrelevant to ****_Bioshock _****save from looking like Rapture, but THAT didn't exactly go to plan. It was honestly a really good storyline. Would anybody object if I just mildly have a do-over on that and make up a legitimate, Alphaverse Atlantis using my original ideas that were totally lost in a translation full of splicers and plasmids? I just really like the sea and sea imagery, which is why I'm being such a perfectionist about these kraken chapters…**


	397. Somewhere Beyond The Sea VIII

_Oswin_

_Somewhere Beyond The Sea VIII_

Melodious whines of gorgeously advanced technology culminated like a symphony and echoed among the rich, underwater trunks and stalks as the TARDIS presented itself to them, a wonderful lifeboat of higher intellect and beautiful culture, nothing so dreary and dank as they oxyveses thousands of leagues above. The box dipped itself into the shallows the same way the crew did, the tide steadily rising in their botanical habitat, and it was the prettiest thing she'd ever seen, a blue symbol of rescue.

"What's _that_?" Wantze asked in horror, shying away from the odd-looking cuboid, while Oswin struggled to her feet from where she'd been sat detesting herself and everything around her for the best part of an hour, Adam Mitchell hastening to stand at her side.

"Spaceship," the Tenth Doctor answered. Rather than somebody appearing to open the door and welcome them home, it seemed the TARDIS had locked on to someone or something all on its own. While Ten invited Wantze aboard and attempted to quell their worries about getting into an alarmingly small box which appeared to be made out of wood and was steadily filling up with people – what an intimate dwelling it must look like to an outsider – Oswin just threw herself through the doors into the dryness and the sanctity, ignoring the Doctor turn to start explaining to Squidzilla that he was going to save the planet. She thought saving the planet was a pointless crusade and couldn't care less, and thought that the existence of a giant, three-eyed, radioactive polyp was proof of the futileness of the Doctor's new plight.

The console room was empty, and she was faced with the dilemma of what to do. Of course, though, when immediately confronted with the old-style telephone that was sitting right there on the console, she made the decision to call up her little brother straight away and started questioning him about his over-compensatory prose techniques. Mickey and Martha, though interested in the fate of Squidzilla, were much more interested in the fate of themselves after they went and had a considerable number of showers in the grim communal bathrooms to wash off the smell of mollusc-innards and sea-salt, and just decided to discover the resolution later on, and so they vanished promptly. Adam Mitchell hovered for a few moments longer, before remembering that his sister had been all alone all this time. Somewhat apologetically, he left the room, and she mockingly ordered him to be out of the shower by the time she got back so that she could proceed to rub off all of her skin with sandpaper to try and erase whatever vile smell was clinging to her digital skin. Clara lingered. Wantze, having nowhere else to go and still being rather enamoured with Oswin purely for who she was related to, lingered also. Oswin waited for Ten to get the coordinates of the Homeworld Alliance congressional headquarters and slink off to try his luck coming across as a radical environmentalist protested to 'Save the Squid.' As soon as he was gone, she dialled the fifteen-digit number that would put her through to Fyn Kyris' Horizon comm-link, and she was not disappointed by answerphone.

"_Hello?_" Fyn himself answered quite quickly, and a bitter smile crept across Oswin's lips as Clara and Wantze both loitered and tried to listen in to the conversation. She may not have his book in front of her to quote from anymore, but along with her IQ of 352, she also boasted a fabled eidetic memory.

"Hi, _Fynny_," she drew out his nickname in a purposely irritating tone, and got a pause in response while he waited for her to continue, which she did not.

"_Hi, Oswin_," he said finally, "_Did you want something?_"

"I was just, you know, _wondering_ what you think of this carefully prepared statement of mine," Oswin began, and then she cleared her throat and began to quote Fyn's own words on the topic of human imperialism back at him, "'_It should be noted by the reader that, if they too call themselves a Homo Sapien, they and their life is built on an intricate web of advantageous colonialism and fundamental ideas revolving around the notion that it is perfectly acceptable to rob any single person of their basic provisions in order to facilitate self-preservation_.'"

"_Oswin…_" Fyn said warningly down the phone.

"No, no, just let me continue," she said, "There's this other bit I really like, too… let me find it…" she feigned distracted noises as though she were skimming through his genuine book and not through her own memory, "Ah-ha. '_The virile environment in which humanity basks and breeds and bleeds is one not dissimilar to a festering petri dish of the fungal, rancid persuasion. And this petri dish is a petri dish of CAPITALISM_,'" Oswin over-emphasised the word 'capitalism' for her own amusement.

"_Os! Cut it out!_" Fyn argued over the phone.

"Why should I? I haven't even gotten to the bit about human mortality being dragged on interminably by the vicissitudes of technological advancement until society halts and becomes '_perspective-lacking, immortal ghosts of misguided innovation._'" Fyn was silent. "Do you have anything to say for yourself?"

"_You want me to apologise to you for writing books..?_" he asked incredulously.

"I think you know what I want you to apologise for," she said coolly. Another pause.

"_…For writing books..?_" he asked again.

"No. I mean, not entirely. What's this I hear about you writing a book about _me_? What could possibly be so interesting about _me_ that warrants a whole _book_?" she questioned him.

"_That book was never published, Oswin, there are five copies and _I_ have all of them_," he told her sharply, and she waited a moment and bit her lip.

Then, shamelessly, she asked, "Could _I_ have one?"

"_I wrote it when I thought you were dead_."

"I _am_ dead."

"_I suppose so. Fine. Is that all you wanted? Who told you about my books?_"

"I've been hanging out with a big fan of yours for the last day or so. Massive fan. But do you know, you've still not apologised in the slightest," she said bitterly.

"_I don't know what you're expecting me to apologise for! I haven't done anything! Why do you always have to be so uppity about everything? Just tell me_," he said.

"'Uppity'!? What do you mean, _uppity_!? I am not uppity! How dare you, Fyn Oswald!" she shouted at him using his old name. Behind her somewhere, Clara sniggered, and Oswin shouted very aggressively for her to shut up, and she just laughed even more, and Oswin wished she had something to throw at her. Then to Fyn she angrily said, "Does the word 'kraken' ring any bells?"

"_Kraken?_" he asked.

"Yes, kraken!"

"_As in, the mythical sea monster, a kraken?_"

"Obviously!"

"_Are you alright, Oswin? You seem quite upset, and you're accusing me of having something to do with an imaginary creature which lives in the sea. In case you've forgotten, Horizon doesn't have a sea_," he told her flatly.

"Don't you get clever with me," she snapped, "All _your_ deadpan humour you learnt from me, anyway. Everybody knows _I'm_ the funny, sarcastic one. I'm _always_ the funny, sarcastic one."

"_And the ego-centric one_."

"Shut up! Did you, or did you not, put us here on the TARDIS onto rumours of a kraken attacking oxyveses in the Atlantic Ocean back on Earth?" she finally asked him outright. She was having, right then, one of the worst days of her afterlife.

"_I did not_," he said, and she clenched her jaw and sighed, "_You've been looking for a kraken?_"

"We've _found_ the kraken, it turned out to be an incredibly large mutant squid, and then it ate us, and then it puked us back up in an weird forest about a billion miles below the sea," she told him through gritted teeth.

"_I doubt it was a _billion_ miles, Oswin. _That's_ scientifically impossible_," he spoke to her patronisingly.

"I am going to kill you."

"_And I am going to look forwards to it – would you like anything specific getting in for dinner?_"

"Be quiet. No. I'll bring pizza. I mean, wait - I still don't know who put us onto this kraken," she said, "Do you know? It was in 5133."

"_Considering this is an environment-thing with a mysterious creature, it sounds very Spore-y_," he said.

"'Spore-y'? That's a proper word now, is it, writer-boy?" she challenged.

"_Haven't you called Flek and asked her? It seems more likely _she'd_ tell you about an overgrown octopus than _I_ would, I don't care much for Earth. I've written a book on the subject, you'll be pleased to know_," he said.

"The next time I see you I want every single one of these books of yours, or else."

"_Or else what?_"

"Or else Mitchell won't bring anymore ice cream," she threatened.

"_Fine_," he said, "_I have to go start cooking dinner now, Atoc will be home in half an hour_."

"Tell him I say hi," Oswin said.

"_Bye, Oswin_," he said.

"Bye," she muttered, and hung up.

"What'd he say?" Clara asked.

"Said that I should call Flek," Oswin grumbled, doing exactly that, dialling another fifteen-digit number that would hopefully get her through to Flek and not Eyeball, like had happened the last time just the other day. _That_ had been incredibly embarrassing. In the end, she did get through to Flek, but really didn't want to broach this topic with her. Though, it seemed necessary, "Hi, Flek," she said somewhat awkwardly.

"_Do you have any news, then?_" Flek asked her straight away.

"News?"

"_I assume that's why you're calling? Because you have news about the kraken?_" Well, that settled it, it definitely _had_ been Flek who'd asked them to go find the thing. Oswin trailed the old handset and its long cable over so that she could sit on the stairs. If this was anything to with Flek on a Spore-related crusade revolving around animal welfare, Oswin knew it wasn't going to go well for the two of them.

"Yeah. Slight incident involving some traumatic nearly-drowning events and a Sphere malfunction making me have some… memory glitches…" Oswin said uneasily, "Thing is, at some point yesterday, we just sort of all woke up very confused dropped out of a net onto the deck of an oxyves in the middle of a hurricane with a kraken attacking. Then, the next day, that is, _today_, about three hours ago, the kraken came back and ate us."

"_ATE you?_"

"Yes. All six of us. Well, seven of us, there's someone here who was on the ship's crew…"

"_Well where is it? Is it ready_?"

"Ready for what..?" Oswin asked, and Flek didn't answer, "Like I said, there've been a few memory issues. Whatever you asked me, or us, to do, I can't remember at all. I just know that I hate this thing because it ate me and sicked me back up again."

"_Are you all alright?_"

"Fine now. On the TARDIS. The Tenth Doctor is trying to get the Homeworld Alliance to help him un-pollute Earth's seas, though I doubt he'll be very successful. Turns out the kraken is a mutant squid created by the toxic seas, and it has three eyes and is almost five-hundred feet long, I'd estimate. My boyfriend calls it Squidzilla. It wants to save the planet. Took us to an underwater forest. I can't figure any way to get oxygen from down there to the surface though. Can't say I've ever cared much for the environment." She knew that saying that would annoy Flek, but Flek deserved it after what she'd put them all through.

"_Five-hundred feet?_" Flek asked. Oswin told her yes, and heard Flek mutter something with her hand covering the microphone to somebody else, and wondered what it was. She didn't have to wonder for long. "_The first time you were on Eslilia, Ressy and Clara found-_"

"_Who_ and Clara?" Oswin asked.

"_Ress – I mean, Eyeball_."

"Do you call her Ressy? _Ressy_?" Oswin questioned, and Flek said nothing, so Oswin turned to her sister, "D'you hear that, Clars? Flek calls Eyeball 'Ressy.'"

"Why?" Clara asked.

"Well it's short for Claressa, I suppose."

"Is _that_ what her name is?"

"Mmm," Oswin confirmed. _Ressy_, she thought to herself, _hilarious_.

"_Anyway_," Flek began, annoyed, "_As I was saying. EYEBALL and Clara found that crashed cruise liner when they were first on Eslilia. It's ready to go, to rescue the kraken, we've fixed it all up_."

"You've done what." There was no question intonation in her sentence, she spoke with her fists clenched in frustration.

"_It should be big enough_."

"Big enough."

"_Yeah_."

"Right."

"_Oswin?_"

"What's the date?" she asked stiffly, "What's the time?"

Flek paused before answering, "_May the 6__th__. It's fourteen-hundred hours._"

"Okay." Oswin hung up the phone, then turned to Clara, "Fancy paying a little return trip to Eslilia when the Doctor gets back?"


	398. Somewhere Beyond The Sea IX

**AN: This chapter is angst incarnate, and I apologise. This entire storyline has just been angst. I'll make the next ones more lighthearted.**

_Oswin_

_Somewhere Beyond The Sea IX_

"Unbelievable!" Ten shouted in anguish upon his return to the console room after what Oswin suspected was a failed trip to the Alliance senate, on his part. Wildly, he threw switches and spun dials in the orange console room until they were lifted into a jerky orbit of time-space, shaking about in accordance with the Doctor's bad mood until he let them drift away in the time vortex in permanent flight, as usual, "Can you believe it!? They didn't listen to me! My first question - 'do you want to save your planet?' They think they're doing enough already, and they still don't believe poor Squidzilla even exists."

Clara had been attempting to explain to Wantze nearby the particulars of the TARDIS, and Oswin wondered what the Doctor was intending to do with them. Realistically, they couldn't bring another person onto the TARDIS. Maybe it _was_ an infinite ship, meaning there was most definitely emough room, but a vote would need to be passed and the crew did not take kindly to random, new arrivals. The majority disliked Ellie Mitchell's temporary presence and they very passionately spoke out against the assumption Beta Clara would be moving in for good. In fact, the only guest people had generally liked was Luke Smith when he'd been around, and in that case it had been _him_ who wanted to leave desperately.

"It went like I said it would then?" Oswin questioned him. She had not said a word for an hour, she had just sat there in contemplative, depressed silence wondering what she might say to her ex-girlfriend when she would inevitably have to tell her that trying to rescue Squidzilla from the sea was a ridiulous notion. She toyed absently with the idea of suggesting they somehow figure out a way to get it onto the ship and have it live with them. Ten didn't say anything to Oswin. "So, Doctor," she began, and he looked round at her, "I was making some calls after you left..." She explained to him the situation involving Flek and the Spore Remnants and that old cruise liner that had been lying in a zombified, fungus-infested ditch for decades and was apparently fixed up ready for intergalactic mollusc transportation. Not surprisingly, Ten then declared that they were going to Eslilia.

"What do you mean, 'Spores'?" Wantze questioned, "You said the Spores were dead. Who's this Flek you keep talking about?" Clara told Wantze that Flek was Oswin's ex-girlfriend, and Oswin clenched her jaw and stated that yes, maybe she was, but that had been thirteen years ago for Flek and now she was older, engaged, and the leader of the Spore Remnants compiling just of the dregs of Drifter Squadron Echo after the disastrous assault on Quadrant Twelve in an unspecified year in the 5120s. "But you said the Spores were dead..." Wantze said. Oswin didn't even have the courtesy to answer that as _she _took the helm of the TARDIS in piloting them to the 6th of May, 5133, in the tree city known as Skybound, landing them at three PM rather than two PM just be safe and not have any overlap with the comm call.

Eslilia was as foul as she remembered. Everything was just as painfully green, with its green sky and its lime clouds and its endless emerald foliage. Every time she saw this hellhole she thought her visual receptors in her Sphere had malfunctioned and put an abhorrent filter on the world - but no, Eslilia really was so awful looking. She liked it more in space where things were clean and made of metal and dark and full of stars. She also knew that despite Fyn's bitter opinions regarding people who preferred the '_terrarium environment_' (to quote him) of Horizon, he didn't have the moxie to live on a genuine planet with a non-regulated, non-artificial atmosphere.

Oswin walked with her arms crossed tightly, ducked over and slightly hunched she was that uncomfortable with the planet. And the four of them were still covered with a thick layer of the stuff to be found on the inside of a veggie squid, and she just wanted to have a wash and something hot to drink before going to sleep for a _very _long time. There were people all about, all of them busy with jobs and whatever else. Thank god two of those people, upon anticipating their arrival in the TARDIS at ground level, were Flek and Eyeball. Oswin didn't think she had ever seen Flek and Eyeball together in the same place, and she still couldn't wrap her head around the idea of them being _engaged_. Not because Eyeball was identical to her - if anything, that made it more believable - it was just, from what little she knew of Eyeball and what a great deal she knew of Flek, they seemed like the types to have clashing personalities and never see eye to eye (no pun intended.) Upon seeing them, Clara made a scene.

"Hi!" she shouted, waving at them, and then she went and forced Eyeball to hug her, which Eyeball did not reciprocate and pulled an appalled face at. Oswin stood by trying to avoid eye contact with Flek while also trying to limit her own petty jealousy that another Echo was getting attention.

"You literally stink, why do you always stink when I see you?" Eyeball said, pushing Clara away, wearing the same sullen expression as usually as her eye glowed funny colours in its socket. It was battered and slightly too large and so the artificial one always looked a tad swollen and to be frighteningly staring at whomever she looked at with manic emotion. This was not the case. Oswin did not think Eyeball was capable of expressing any emotion beyond disinterest and annoyance.

"Well I've been eaten and regurgitated by a squid," Clara explained, which Eyeball, most likely, already knew from Flek relaying Oswin's earlier words, "Haven't had a chance to wash yet."

"Don't touch me," Eyeball ordered her.

"I don't get it," Wantze began, "Now there are _three_ of you?"

"If Jenny has her girlfriend over you might be lucky enough to meet a fourth," Oswin muttered, which confused them even more. Poor Wantze was certainly having a time of it that day, having all this weirdness flung onto them with time travel and 'the Twins', as people called she and Clara.

"How are you, then, Os?" Flek asked her.

Avoiding her gaze still, Oswin very flatly said, "I'm swell," and remained looking at various spots on the muddy, leafy floor. She wanted to cry from how dirty and frustrated she felt, and had felt all day.

"_So_, tell me about this wedding, Ressy," Clara, beaming, asked, before Flek could continue to discuss the genuinely important matter Oswin was trying to ignore with them.

"Don't call me-" Eyeball began, seeming less annoyed by Clara calling her 'Ressy' than she would be if it was Oswin.

"I'll call you what I like, I made you," Clara said coolly, though she was still smiling, which made everything she said seem somewhat sinister. There was a pause and she cleared her throat, "So, wedding, details? Or - proposal, start with that?" Flek was growing incresingly uncomfortable at this line of questioning.

"I'd rather not talk about it - there are important things to dicuss," Eyeball said. Flek made a sound of agreement. Oswin, though, was wondering who _had _proposed out of the two of them. Flek wasn't exactly the world's most assertive individual when it came to matters of the heart. In fact, _Oswin _had always been the _more _forward of the two of them, Oswin who was famously hesitant when _romance _was involved.

"No! Go on, please, just-"

"Leave them alone, Clara," Oswin said, "Claressa doesn't want to talk about it." Eyeball turned her creepy, bloated stare on Oswin, Oswin who was not in the mood to be threatened by another Clecho, and especially not this one, and who gave her a similar dark look in return. She didn't say anything in the end. Wantze did, though.

"Wait, you're called Clara and she's called Claressa?" Wantze frowned, and Eyeball looked wholly displeased. Ten found this amusing as well.

"If you think _that's _bad," Oswin began, "You should meet Clarissa, Claretta, Clarice, Cara, Carla, Lara, Ara, Clara, Clara, Clara, and... oh, Clara."

"But what... what _are_ you?" Wantze stared between the three of them.

"Cross-temporal clones," Eyeball answered.

"Clones of who?"

"_Her_," Eyeball and Oswin both indicated Clara, who looked suddenly sheepish.

"Right, anyway," Flek said loudly.

"So you're planning on rescuing this squid?" Oswin asked her.

"Yes," she said firmly.

"And, um, where's it gonna live?"

"The sea."

"And, how compatible is the sea on Eslilia to a lifeform like that?" Oswin challenged, "Do you know how low the chances are of it surviving being carried halfway across the universe to this dump?"

"Hey," Ten interrupted, "Maybe the chances _are _low, but I'm sure there's a way to rescue it."

"Ever the optimist," Oswin muttered.

"Well fine then," Ten said, then he turned to Flek directly, "Do you have any water samples of the sea on this planet for me to have a look at? Wantze must know enough about the chemical composition of Earth's seas."

"Wantze being? You?" Flek asked them, and they nodded unsurely, as though they were in the presence of a celebrity, "You're from the oxyves?"

"The _Ophelia_," they said. Flek smiled.

"I'm Flek Phisj," she introduced herself, "The leader of the Remnants." Wantze seemed starstuck, and Oswin was annoyed. Eyeball, also, was annoyed. Eyeball was always annoyed though. In the end, Flek directed them to the labs Ten requested and expected all four of them to leave to try and figure out if the water on Eslilia was good enough to keep Squidzilla alive.

"No, I want to talk to you," Oswin said firmly to Flek, keeping her arms crossed, "In private."

"I, uh... okay, then..." Flek said uneasily, glancing at Eyeball.

"Well what do _I _do?" Eyeball asked her.

"You can hang out with me and tell me about this wedding!" Clara declared. Clara liked weddings too much. Oswin had never cared for getting married, whereas Clara's entire life seemed to revolve around weddings.

Deadpan, Eyeball said to Flek, "Kill me." Flek laughed a little, but did not seem happy at the propsect of talking to Oswin alone somewhere. Probably because she knew what it would be about. Though, when they finally _were _alone up in that crashed cockpit on top of the highest tree in Skybound where Flek lived, Eyeball and Clara outside, it didn't stop her from asking. Oswin was pacing, but Flek stayed still.

"What do you want?" Flek asked, and Oswin didn't say anything, Oswin just wandered around, wringing her hands a few times.

"So," she began, "So - so you're carrying on, then? Carrying on the Cluster Spore ideology? In spite of... in spite of _everything _the Cluster Spores did? The wars they tried to start? On Phollim? On Earth? On Horizon? My home? And here you are after witnessing all that just... just _continuing_?"

"Os, don't-"

"Don't 'Os' me, Flek," she said coldly, and Flek seemed shocked.

"Os_win_," she emphasised, "Don't start with this now."

"Well I am going to start," Oswin snapped, "That _creature _is from Earth. It lives on Earth. It can survive on Earth."

"Until people start hunting it," Flek said.

"They won't start hunting it! It hasn't killed anybody, if it leaves the humans alone, they'll leave _it _alone. Anybody with the resources to fish that thing is some corporation who don't believe it exists," Oswin said firmly.

"And what happens when nobody does anything? It'll start attacking the ships again, and then what'll happen to it?" Flek challenged her.

"Well maybe it should just be sensible enough to not attack the ships, hmm? It's not stupid, so it should just leave the humans alone," Oswin said firmly.

"You mean, back down in the face of oppression?"

"_Oppression_!? It's a fucking squid, Flek! Nobody is oppressing it! It just doesn't like where it is, if it goes and lives the way it has been for god-knows-how-long before it got on its bloody activist high horse-"

"Like me, you mean? On my 'activist high horse'?"

"You're so narrow sighted! The squid is fine! It _won't _die on Earth, it _might _die on Eslilia, so leave it alone!"

"The Alliance will kill it!"

"Oh, it's always about the Alliance with you Spores, isn't it? Stop being so sanctimonious! It is not your problem, it is not your planet!" Oswin shouted, "You can't just introduce a new species into this ecosystem!"

"We've been studying the ecology for _months _and the squid will be fine," Flek said firmly, "It's better off here."

"It's better off _there_!"

"You think you know everything!" Flek shouted, "Just because you're the 'smartest girl in the universe' doesn't mean you're not a complete _idiot _sometimes! You don't know _anything _about the environment or about animals, _I_ do, _I_ have professionals here, _passionate _professionals, _marine biologists_."

"You just haven't learnt anything, have you? You're still blindly following the Cluster Spores, even though most of them are dead now, no thanks to anything they ever did," Oswin snarled.

"Would you stop being so selfish!?"

"Oh _I'm _selfish!? ME!? Well that's fucking rich! _I'm _the selfish one who can't see past my own commitment to blindly follow a bunch of no-good murderers, right? Me who destroyed all my weapons plans and left Horizon and _died _so that nobody else would be killed because of me? Killed by the people _you _followed. And still follow!"

"They were good people!"

"They were fucking killers, oh my _god_, you're so _stupid _sometimes Flek!"

"It's not the same anymore! It's _different _with me in charge!"

"No it isn't! Just stop with the Spores! Let the Cluster Spores die and be forgotten and stay here in peace-"

"I have to make it so that people remember them for something good!"

"You know what!?" she shouted.

"What!?" Flek shouted right back, and they glared at each other, Oswin seething, until Oswin barged straight past her and pushed her out of the way to get to the door out of the crashed shuttle where Clara and Eyeball stood, blatantly listening in to their argument, but Oswin didn't care.

"_You_," she said directly to Eyeball, "I know what happened on Phollim, with that swamp creature, that one created by toxic waste disposal from Quadrant Twelve. This is like that all over again, so I'd _love _to hear _your _opinion on things, _Claressa_."

"My opinion is that these Spores here aren't the same as they used to be," Eyeball told her firmly. Oswin had expected to end up yelled at it. When Oswin paused, Eyeball resumed, "They've changed now. _Flek_ changed them. Do you honestly think I would be marrying her if this was the same organisation it was ten years ago?"

"You're just angry about the Dust War, Oswin," Flek said, "It was a long time ago."

"It was a _year _ago! _Fifteen months ago_ I was still alive! Fifteen months ago I _dumped _you for these exact reasons!" Oswin shouted back at Flek, "I had everything to live for, but you just couldn't see that there was anything wrong with the weapons, or the bombs, or the ten-thousand people who died because of what _you _and the Cluster Spores made me do!" Oswin continued to argue, Clara stayed quiet, Eyeball tried to be the voice of reason and Flek tried to calm herself down.

"What's going on?" the Tenth Doctor, returning from his endeavours with Wantze and the water supply, asked. The Tenth Doctor who knew everything about the Cluster Spores and about the Dust War and about what Oswin had tried to do on Io just weeks ago.

"Nothing's going on," Flek told him, "Oswin's being ridiculous."

"_You're _being ridiculous, thinking that there's anymore than the _slimmest _chance that the squid could possibly survive here - and even if it did, did you stop to think about its quality of life? About-"

The Doctor cleared his throat, "Well, no, strictly speaking a creature of that intelligence should be able to survive the stress of transportation if somebody explains to it first. And, well, these seas are an entirely viable habitat opt... Oswin?" Oswin was storming off, back towards the TARDIS.

She turned back to shout, "You know what? I hate all of you, I hate everything, I hate that squid, and I wash my hands of it. You all do what you want, but don't you dare _ever _call me again with shit like this, Phisj." She slammed the door of the TARDIS behind her and practically screamed in frustration in the empty console room.


	399. Somewhere Beyond The Sea X

_Oswin_

_Somewhere Beyond The Sea X_

"'_After a seven-year media silence, hopes for the future of the assumed silenced organisation known by fellow freedom fighters as the Cluster Spores have been renewed by the heroic rescue of a mysterious creature from the depths of the Atlantic Ocean_,'" Oswin read out loud. The article was being projected on her holoscreens linked up to the Fifty-Second Century extranet, now that her Sphere was all prepared. The words were supposed to be blue, but they shimmered iridescently as she looked at them through the lenses of Adam Mitchell's corrective glasses that made her eyes play up. He was listening to her and humming absently, and had been humming the same familiar song to himself ever since she'd gotten back and had had two showers - she recognised it as _La Mer_. It was getting quite late, it had only been five o'clock in the afternoon when they got back from Eslilia. It was after ten now. They'd had fish and chips for dinner, which Adam had been insistent on for some reason. She had been glad she didn't eat food.

"They saved it?" he asked her.

"That's what it looks like," she said, skimming through it. She sighed. She was tired of the day and all the arguing and, mostly, her own bitterness. "Unbelievable." Adam sat up next to her from where he'd been lying down as she shut off the holoscreen. "I want nothing to do with that woman again in my afterlife..." she grumbled.

"Flek?" he asked, and she made a noise of agreement, still wearing his glasses and seeing the world like it was an electrical kaleidoscope, "What about the wedding? Will you not go to that? I think Clara might make you go to show some respect for your sister."

"She is not my sister, and I shan't go. Maybe. I'll go if Fyn goes," she said, "By the way, we're having dinner with him and you're bringing pizza, I accidentally agreed to it over the phone. Although, come to think of it we didn't agree on a date... Not for a few days."

"So, when you say phone, you mean 'voxo'?" he asked, "That's a phone, right?" She laughed and looked at him.

"Babe, I speak like, fourteen languages - if you think I can't swap my words so that cavemen like you understand me at the drop of a hat, you are sorely mistaken," she said. He crossed his legs next to her on the bed.

"Could I have my glasses back?" he asked.

"Oh - sure," she said, taking them off and holding them out to him. But as he reached out to take them they ended up both holding the pair, her refusing to relinquish them as something came over her.

"Oswin?"

"I just had the best idea," she said. He tugged at the glasses and she still didn't let go, so while she was distracted by her idea he pried off her fingers himself and she dropped her hand back down into her lap.

"What idea would that be?" he inquired, putting his glasses back on.

"Clara - she should have some glasses," Oswin said.

"Clara doesn't need glasses."

"What? No, not _that_ Clara, _Other _Clara, Beta Clara," Oswin said, "For the sunlight. Like sunglasses, but they don't _look _like sunglasses, they look like normal glasses so that nobody suspects she's, you know, a vampire." Adam stared at her. "What?" Her smile fell suddenly, "Oh, do you think it's a bad idea?"

"No! It's a great idea, you should definitely do that," he said, "But not right now - do it tomorrow, you should sleep right now, it's been a long day."

"I guess so," she said, yawning and rubbing her eyes. She hadn't exactly had the best sleep the night before, for obvious reasons. When she looked around at him she saw he seemed distracted by something, looking off into the middle distance and tapping his fingers on his knee, "Something wrong, Mitchell?"

"Hmm?" he frowned, stopping his tapping and meeting her eyes.

"I said, is something wrong?" she repeated herself. He sighed and scratched his head.

"My sister still won't leave," he told her, "And I think that she should. This isn't a good environment for a kid. She can't stay, but I can't drag her out or anything... ugh, I didn't think any of this through... why'd you go and let me get legal custody?"

"Why did I _let _you?" she asked incredulously, and he threw himself backwards down onto the pillows, and she sat and thought. "Do you want me to go and talk to her?"

"What do you mean? Didn't you already speak to her and try to convince her to go to boarding school?" he asked.

"No. I haven't said a word to either of you on the subject. I mean, I agree with you that this is an unhealthy... place..." she refused to say the word 'environment' anymore that day, "And... well, I was cooped up somewhere my entire life, and it didn't exactly do me a lot of good. I have things I could say to her that would get her to leave, they're just... they're... scary things. And, you know, I don't wanna terrify your sister or something unless it's necessary, and a last resort. Do you want me to speak to her for you?"

"That'd be nice of you," he said.

"Well then I will. You just stay here and look cute," she said, and he laughed as she slid off the bed and went over to the door, though she turned back before she left, "Do you want a drink? I'm thinking that I might use the excuse of getting a drink as a ruse."

"She won't fall for your ruse."

"I'll distract her with my good looks and adorableness," she said, "What with her fancying me."

"She does not. She's fifteen, you creep. Stop trying to make out that everybody's gay."

"I'm not trying to make out that everybody's gay, I'm trying to make out that everybody's gay for _me_. Which is definitely true. I don't get it, Mitchell, are you trying to say that I'm, like, not attractive, or something?" she asked innocently, keeping her hand on the doorknob. She hated doorknobs. They didn't have those in the future, they had buttons, and she decided at that moment that she was going to install some in their rooms.

"I will have that drink, actually. I'll have coffee."

"You're not having coffee, you've had too much coffee today, you won't sleep," she said, and he raised his eyebrows at her, "You can have hot chocolate."

"I didn't realise you were my mother now."

"You're just not used to having a girlfriend," she said, and when she stepped through the door she blew a kiss at him and then smiled to herself, until seeing Ellie Mitchell, sat on the sofa bed watching the television staring at her, and she cleared her throat immediately and stopped grinning at herself, "I'm just, um, getting a drink. Do you want one?"

"Coffee," Ellie said.

"What's with everyone wanting coffee at ten o'clock at night? You and your brother need to learn to take better care of yourselves," she grumbled, "Hot chocolate or nothing."

"Then I'll have nothing and I'll just make my own coffee when you leave," Ellie said stubbornly. God, her brother wasn't nearly so stubborn, he was so passive, "Why were you so angry when you got back earlier today?"

"Angry?"

"You were slamming all the doors," Ellie said.

"Oh. Sorry. I was just... it was... just stuff, you know? Stuff from... from my life, when I had a life," she sighed, and she put the kettle on to boil, and walked over to sit on the edge of the sofa bed where Ellie was eating ice cream she'd found somewhere. Undoubtedly, it wasn't _her_ ice cream. "Speaking of life, how's yours?" She looked at Oswin suspiciously.

"Are you gonna tell me to leave? I'm not stupid, I can tell he's sent you out here to talk to me," Ellie accused her.

"I've sent myself here to talk to you. You know, Ellie, this is my home as well, I live here too. And your brother and I don't get a lot of privacy or time to ourselves as it-"

"Oh, don't talk to me like an adult, you're not supposed to, you're supposed to be cool," Ellie said, and she laughed. In the juvenile microcosm of the TARDIS, full of ridiculousness, immature prank wars and a lack of responsibility, it was very easy to forget that you were actually supposed to be a figure of authority sometimes, even if that meant being a killjoy.

"Well I am an adult, unfortunately, I'm twenty-six entire years old," she said, "And I'm looking out for you like I would if you were _my _sister, and I think that you know this isn't the best place for a fifteen year-old girl. It's incredibly unsafe. Didn't you hear what happened today? Maybe it _did _work out okay, that kraken business, but you must have heard stories, stories about how many times Jack or Clara have died, and then Jenny and that facehugger - it's a dangerous world."

"How did you lose your leg? Was that something to do with being on the TARDIS?" Ellie asked, and Oswin sighed again. She had, after all, been prepared to give this explanation, she thought it might be needed.

"I have five brothers, you know," she explained, "Five of them. One older brother, four younger brothers. My dad, my dad and Fyn's dad and Dret's dad, he died when I was two, I hardly remember him. Our mother remarried and had another kid called Zalur, then he ran off, left the kid, and she remarried _again _and my youngest brothers are Reker and Jatt. And you know, our parents were kind of... well, like yours and Adam's, neglectful. Not abusive, but ignorant, and selfish. Reker's ten years older than Jatt, and when it came about that mother was pregnant for the sixth time, it was Reker's birthday. His parents ignored him all day, they didn't even remember, didn't get him any presents. _I_ did remember, and from then on _I _was the one who took care of Reker, and when our parents got tired of the new baby, _I_ was the one who looked after him, too. Me and Fyn. You know, he named his kids after me, in the end."

"How is that to do with your leg?"

"Look, once upon a time I would do anything to take care of my brothers. And I still _would _do anything for Fyn and Reker, even if I am... estranged. I know what it's like for Adam through there to be worried sick about his younger sibling in this non-forgiving world and to want to do anything to keep you safe, even if you think he's just being a pain in the arse. I ended up dying to make sure my family would be okay, I ended up building bombs to make sure they would be okay, and one of those bombs malfunctioned on me. That's what happened to my left leg. And my right leg, believe it or not, was mangled so badly most of the bone ended up being carbon fibre by the time I bought it. You can't tell right now because River Song never hacked into that one when she did her number on the other, but for over three years of my life I could hardly walk properly at all.

"Ellie, don't put your brother in a position where he has to start doing things like that to keep you out of harm's way, because I guarantee you, he would, and I love that boy more than anything in the universe and the worst thing I can imagine for him is that he ends up like me, with a fate he can't even be angry about because he brought it on himself." Behind her, Oswin heard the kettle click and the bubbling subsided, so she stood up from the sofa bed and wandered over there to go fill up mugs. "You have to go to boarding school where there are people to look after you and you have to behave, because it's only for a few more years and then you're free of the education system or whatever to do as you please. I'm sure the Doctor will take you places with us when you're an adult and you can take care of yourself, but not right now, okay, Ellie?"

* * *

Some time later, carrying two mugs, Oswin awkwardly opened the door into the bedroom again thinking of how she ought to replace handles with buttons to find Adam Mitchell curled up and asleep looking. But he was not asleep, as when he heard the door close he looked over and she smiled.

"So?" he asked expectantly, and she came and sat down next to him on the other side of the bed, him straining to sit up quickly. She passed him his mug of hot chocolate and put her own down on the bedside table next to her.

"She says she'll let you enroll her in boarding school tomorrow," she relayed Ellie's message, and he coughed on his hot chocolate and then put the mug down and dragged Oswin into a hug.

"Thank you _so much_," he said, pulling her so that she ended up on top of him in the mess of their bedsheets, "Seriously, thank you, I love you, I honestly do, more than I can put into words." They lay still for a moment, until Oswin muttered something about taking off her leg and he moved his arms so that she could sit back up and remove the bulky appendage.

"I'm so glad to take that off," she said, "Honestly, I am."

"So, did you and Flek used to have a lot of fights like that..?" he asked carefully, obviously wondering if it was a good question to ask. From anybody else, it wouldn't be, but by now she would answer practically every question he could think to throw her way.

"Uh-huh," she said, "Loads. It wasn't always like that, but it got really strained, with the war and whatnot. It's why we broke up, and why when we're in the same place nobody should ever mention the Cluster Spores. Or _that _happens."

"Have you talked to Clara yet?"

"Talked to Clara about what?"

"Well she came and knocked on the door and asked for you earlier, and you-"

"Said that I wasn't talking to anybody, I remember. I'm still not talking to anybody. Except you. If Clara has something important to say she can say it psychically - I haven't turned off the mind-patch. As it happens, though, my little sister is fast asleep at this moment in time," Oswin told him. She assumed he was expecting her to apologise for her fight with Flek to Clara, which she most likely both should and would, just not yet. Tomorrow. Or the next day. Or the day after that. Definitely eventually - she couldn't exactly do anything to stop Clara being rude and just phasing through the walls and doors to make her talk to her. She just wanted a break from people, unless 'people' was her boyfriend, _he _didn't count.

She lay back down, tiredness overcoming her, and let him wrap his arms around her. And then they stayed there in silence, him freezing cold, her feeling like after the day she'd had she was never going to feel legitimately warm again in her collective afterlife, until her annoyance at Adam Mitchell's cryostasis and eternal body temperature of zero forced her to decide that for once, she was going to do something that benefited _her_, and Oswin was never usually one to do things that benefited her. She made an irritated, grunting noise, and sat back up, drawing up her blue holoscreens straight away and closing the article about the Spore rescue of the kraken to get into her highly complicated Sphere settings.

"What's the matter?"

"I am absolutely sick of you being so cold, because the thing is, _all _my perceptions of temperature are synthesised anyway, they're just synthesised to _reality_. So it would be very easy for me to change the way this Sphere thermally manifests _your _temperature as a physical sensation, so that to _me_, you're warm," she said, "I just think I deserve something good today."

"What language are those settings written in?" Adam asked her.

"Uh..." she stared at them, "One of my shorthand dialects probably. I think I named them once but they all blend together, so... I should really put them in English or something so that people actually understand them if something happens to me."

"How many languages is it you speak?"

"Fourteen."

"Hot." She laughed.

"Just like you will be when I'm done with these settings. See, the reason I didn't want to do it before is I like things to be... real. I still haven't quite finished S.N.O.T. yet, so I can't-"

"Sorry, babe, you still haven't finished _what_? Snot?"

"S-N-O-T would be the _Synthesised Neurological Olfactory Tasteometer_," she explained to him.

"And, obviously, you made the acronym 'snot' on purpose, because 'tasteometer' is not a word."

"Well I never said I _didn't _make it on purpose," she said, "Took me a whole thirty seconds to come up with that, and it's still a work in progress. I keep getting distracted by spaceships and boyfriends and sisters, ugh. What temperature are people?"

"Thirty-seven degrees Celsius."

"I could make it think you're fifty degrees and imagine you're Jenny," she joked.

"Is that what you usually do? Imagine I'm Jenny?"

"I'm imagining you're Jenny right now, stop talking, you're ruining it," she said, "Speaking of which, do you think you might dye your hair blonde?"

"Shall I change the colour of my eyes to blue while I'm at it?"

"No, I love your eyes as they are, all hazel and pretty," she said, "Like milk chocolate. And mine can be dark chocolate. You know, brown eyes are really rare in my century." She closed the holoscreens and laid back down in bed.

"Especially ones as delicious as yours, I'm sure," he said, smiling at her, and she laughed.

"Blue eyes are so boring."

"I always kind of liked them. _Especially _Jenny's."

"Jenny's eyes aren't real."

"But I memorised them back when they were," he told her matter-of-factly.

"Oh, obviously. What with you being such a practiced stalker. Although, you were always _terrible_ at stalking _me_. God, imagine if Jenny knew what we were saying."

"_You _started it."

"She'd jump me," Oswin said, curling up in his arms, "She would. Where does she get it from? She's so... you know, _foreward_. Or pushy. None of her parents I've met are like that."

"She wouldn't jump you, Oswin."

"She would. You don't know her like I do."

"What way's that?"

"Duh, the way you get to know people when they jump you. Anyway, it's time to go to sleep. Time for you to go have some wonderful dreams about tentacle porn and blonde alien girls," she told him, "Unless you have another nightmare about the zombie apocalypse."

"The zombie apocalypse is a real threat, Oswin, especially at four o'clock in the morning when I wake up from those dreams," he said, "But that reminds me to ask you - did you ever have nightmares? When you were alive? Like Clara's?"

Oswin yawned, and then settled back down with her head on his chest, "No. Why?" He paused.

"Martha wanted me to ask."

"She's just worried, forget about it. Clara will be fine. Now go to sleep, I'm _exhausted_."


	400. A Day In The Death

_DAY ONE-HUNDRED AND TWENTY-FOUR_

_Beta Clara_

_A Day In The Death_

As far as being a vampire went, she had yet to discover any benefits at all except for having to go to the toilet less frequently than she remembered. It was all negativity. Well, actually, she supposed that being basically bulletproof and staying young and immortal forever was pretty good, but she _didn't _appreciate that she had to take a particularly awkward route to get down into the bookshop in the village where she worked the late shift from two in the after until ten at night, because there was an obnoxious stream in the way and she couldn't cross running water. She also got the worst migraines imaginable when she was out in the sun, even though she didn't quite end up _burned_, and had been toying for a while with the idea of buying herself a balaclava and looking even more suspicious than she already did, what with dogs and cats howling and hissing at her when she walked past, or birds flying away, or spiders running off, or babies crying. She could also not eat garlic bread anymore, and she _loved _garlic bread.

These were the sorts of trials she now had to face in her everyday life or, as Oswin Oswald would undoubtedly remind her, her every_night after_life, because Oswin just _loved _to remind her that she was inhuman. And, at that exact moment, she was facing another pathetic challenge which any human being would be able to do in a jiffy. But she was not a human being. She was a vampire. And that was why she was presently standing, at half past nine at night, at odds with a small box of Bibles she had been asked by Dylan Danvers to stock. Dylan Danvers being the twenty-something year old bookish, geekish owner of the bookshop who also worked through the early shift of the day and then, because he had nothing better to do, hung around for the rest of it. He reminded Clara somewhat of Adam Mitchell, only he wasn't rich. She just stared at the Bibles.

Clara was incredibly busy staring at Bibles - which kind of made her eyes burn like she was having an allergic reaction - in the very small and very cold bookshop, Dylan himself sitting at the counter waiting for the non-existent customer base they had who came in to buy books at nine PM, when a girl walked in. And not just any girl, oh no, a _gorgeous_ girl, that was definitely the most fitting adjective. And in all of Clara Ravenwood's twenty-seven years of being said gorgeous girl a lot of the time, due mainly to her own narcissism, she had still not learnt that it was rude to stare. So, stare she did. And imagine Clara's surprise when this very girl, this average height blonde she had never seen before in her life (because, let's face it, she would most definitely recognise a pair of legs like _that _even if she were to suddenly turn blind) smiled at her and greeted her by name. And she continued to stare.

"Clara?" the girl asked.

"I, um, what?" she stammered, completely forgetting about the Bibles she was supposed to be stocking, reaching into thin air aimlessly with her right hand as though to grab something. Though, when she kept missing the corner of the bookshelf, she just scratched the back of her head.

"You know Sally?" Dylan asked her. She stared at Dylan who, though he was, admittedly, sort of cute, was almost blurry by comparison to this sapphic daydream that had just pranced through the door.

"Sally? No," Clara said, "I don't, um..."

"What are you talking about - we met in Staffordshire last Halloween," the girl, Sally something-or-other, said.

"Staffordshire?"

"With the haunted pub?"

"Haunted pub?"

"Your twin sister was there."

"_Twin sister_?"

"Is there an echo in here?" Dylan asked, and then he smiled at his own joke and put down the book he had been reading which was, to Clara's annoyance, trashy detective fiction. Clara glared at him for a second.

"Your identical twin sister, Clara," Sally said firmly, "How do you not remember? It's me, Sally Sparrow."

"S-Sally _Sparrow_?_ You're _Sally Sparrow? But you're..." _just as hot as everyone always makes you out to be_, Clara thought, but trailed off and ended up leaning on the bookshelf like the pathetic disgrace to feminism she presently was for objectifying this poor woman.

"I'm..?" Sally Sparrow, who smiled an irritating amount, Clara suddenly noticed, asked. She still smiled.

"Something the matter, Clara?" Dylan asked.

"You're confused," Clara ignored Dylan and spoke to Sally.

"Confused?"

"Yep."

"You're not Clara Oswald?"

"She's Clara Ravenwood," Dylan told her.

"Mmm, that I am," Clara said, nodding, nodding very exaggeratedly and continuing to nod for much longer than one was supposed to nod. Then she stared at her feet, glimpsed the allergenic religious texts that had been silently mocking her and her undeadness for forty minutes, and looked away again.

"Are you sure you're alright?" Dylan asked. She looked at him for a few seconds before registering what he had said, and then raised her eyebrows and asked him what day of the week it was. He told her it was Friday, and she nodded and repeated the word. "What's up? Are you ill?"

"I... am... yes. Yes, yes, I am incredibly, _incredibly _ill. So ill, in fact, that I might... I might die. Terrible, terrible disease," she said, nodding along again and annoying herself with her own very loud body language.

"What, you mean like, cancer or something?"

"Cancer? What? No. Like, a headache... But I, um, it's a really bad headache. Super bad headache. I might, like, pass out, or something, someone might need to catch me," she looked at Sally Sparrow in a very strange way when she said that, and then when Sally stared at her in confusion she made a groaning noise of sheer annoyance at herself, "I mean - what? - nothing. Sorry. I have a fever. _So _delusional right now, it's _crazy_..."

"You do look sort of pale," Sally said.

"What?" Clara asked.

"No, she's always that pale," Dylan answered, "You'd better go home, then, if you think you might infect somebody else." Her permanent paleness was to do with her undead state.

"No, no! I don't have to go home. I mean, what's at home? Nothing. Nothing at all, just recorded episodes of _Come Dine With Me _from during the day for me to sit and watch on my own," Clara said, laughing awkwardly as she did so, going to lean on the bookshelf again. To her sheer horror, she missed the bookshelf completely and fell over sideways and barely managed to catch herself.

"What about that girlfriend you're always talking about?" Dylan, confused, asked her when she reappeared from behind the bookshelf after her little 'episode' stumbling over it.

"_Girlfriend_? Last time I saw you, you had a husband..." Sally stared at her.

"I... I... I'm very sick, maybe you're right, Dylan, I should go home..." she said, realising at the same time that this lie about her being ill would get her out of having stock Bibles. Besides, it wasn't _entirely_ a lie - was she not dead? That was plenty a good enough reason to not go to her low-paying job. Thank god Adam Mitchell charged her hardly anything for her rent, otherwise she might starve. And speaking of _starving_, she was all of a sudden aware of the delicious smell of Sally Sparrow. More distinctly, her blood. Pretty girls who had human blood were, apparently, her only weakness. Apart from the previously mentioned garlic, sunlight and running water. And the evil Bibles, of course.

She resolved to go and find her black sports bottle full of blood and have a drink of _that _to stop her from killing anybody for food. _God_, she thought, noting the irony, _why did blood taste so nice_? And _smell _so nice? And have the _best _texture... Honestly, the thought of that hot, crimson fluid just made her salivate. She sort of disgusted herself sometimes. Just a bit. All of this she thought while using the excuse that she had to wash her face in the tiny, freezing bathroom they had for staff-only. There were funny stickers in the shape of flying saucers on the mirror and one that said '_Ectociety_' on it, not that she knew what Ectociety meant. She stared into the mirror, and nothing stared back. All she saw was the paint-peeled, cream-coloured wall behind her.

She listened to their conversation from the other room, though. Something about cross-dimensions and people having brains removed. At first, though, that seemed completely ridiculous. Then Clara remembered something Jenny had been absently telling her the other day about Donna and Amy...

"What was that about brains getting removed?" she asked when she came back though, going to get her coat, hat and gloves from where they were hung up behind the desk. She asked it as though it were an insane notion.

"Didn't your sister say anything?" Sally asked. Clara clenched her jaw.

"We don't talk much," she finally, begrudgingly, answered. She assumed Sally was referring to Oswin, but she didn't say anything in case she wasn't.

"So you _do_ have an identical twin sister you've never mentioned?" Dylan asked her wryly as she fumbled to put her coat on, keeping a close eye on the now-empty sports bottle. She didn't want anybody getting a whiff of it to realise it contained human blood, _that _wouldn't go down well with her new boss and Sally Sparrow.

"Oh, you'd be surprised how many _sisters _I have," she said coolly, smiling, but making eyes at Sally Sparrow she hoped said _shut up_. Sally better stop talking, else she would have to... well, she didn't know what she would have to do. Nothing, probably. Just mope.

"Anyway, what was that about your spare room?" Dylan asked her. Clara supposed they really were friends, or something, and Sally had just dropped by for a visit. She wondered if she wanted to stock any religious texts while she was sticking around and Clara was feigning illness.

"I can't find anyone to lease it to," Sally Sparrow sighed, "I swear, if I don't find a housemate, I'm gonna get kicked out. I might have to move back to London." Very nearly, Clara volunteered herself. Thank christ she actually stopped herself that time from being a total moron and just shut up. Until she realised that this talk of spare rooms implied something else entirely.

"What, you live around here?" Clara asked, frowning. She thought, if she'd run into Sally Sparrow around Haworth, home of the Brontë sisters, she would definitely remember. She would even have remembered her smell, now she had such a keen sense of it. Reminded her of a dog sometimes.

"Yeah," Sally answered, "Besides, I could say the same to you."

"She lives in that creepy, haunted cottage up on the moors," Dylan said. At the word 'haunted', Sally's eyes lit up like fireworks.

"It's not haunted," Clara said.

"It's been empty for twenty years, since the day it was built. Nobody's ever lived there," Dylan said, "Not until you show up a couple of weeks ago."

"Wonderful," she muttered, "If nobody's ever lived there, how could it be haunted?"

"Well _obviously _because when they filled in the foundations somebody was killed by the cement and their ghost roams the halls," Dylan said, "It's a fact."

"It's not a fact, it's an urban myth," Clara said firmly.

"Are you gonna stack those Bibles before you leave?" he asked, "Because I _was _feeling bad for you and pretending to ignore the fact that you hadn't, but you suddenly seem-" Very loudly Clara coughed. Very loudly and badly, she might deign to add, and not badly as in _severely_, but badly as in _poorly_, as in poorly _acted_ and thoroughly unconvincing.

"I'm so sorry, Dylan, it's just I have this awful headache," she said, scrunching up her eyes as she headed towards the door, "I mean, I'm sure I'll be here tomorrow, though. Busy day, Saturday." No day for them was ever _really _busy. But at least she'd gotten out of stacking the Bibles.

"Well, we should have lunch some time," Sally called after her, and she tripped on the step down outside the shop and grabbed the doorframe for support.

"I, um, yep. Yep, sure, fine. Lunch. Cool. Totally. I can _totally_ do lunch. And you. I mean - _with_ you, lunch _with _you, not _do _you, that would be... totally... I... ridiculous... girlfriend... I... I'm really - I'm so sick, you know, I'm just completely delirious, can't even see straight. Not that - not that you're not straight, you're totally _straight_... Well, I mean, are you?" Clara asked, and then she felt like punching herself in the face. When Sally opened her very confused mouth to answer, Clara cut across, "Don't even reply. I'm gonna go take some, uh, paracetamol..." She finally shut the door. Then she actually _did _punch herself in the face, which was the most physical pain she'd felt since getting bitten by a vampire - apart from the thirst for blood and her sunlight-headaches - and wondered if this was what people meant when they said she was annoying.

Seriously, she thought, wandering off through the empty street to go home and escape the collective tyranny of Sally Sparrow and a box of holy tomes, what was she even playing at? For a brief few moments she managed to convince herself that Sally Sparrow was, obviously, some kind of succubus, or siren, or even another vampire with her spooky, seductive ways. Eventually, though, she just settled for the truth, which was that on occasion she was known to be exceptionally gay, exceptionally shallow, and exceptionally weak-minded, usually the same occasion, and usually when a pretty girl was involved. _Well_, perhaps not, because as soon as she thought–

There was a rattling sound behind her and she glanced back to see what had made it. She found herself looking at the empty street, void of traffic and cars save for those belonging to parked-up residents of Haworth. There was a fine layer of fog and, were her breath warm enough to cloud up in front of her, she was sure it would be doing so. However, there wasn't anything special to be seen, apart from a knocked down bin. Probably a stray cat, though, she couldn't _smell _a cat, all she could smell was the leftover stinks of the people who had walked back and forth all day. Clara sighed and began walked again.

Where had she been with her train of thought? Oh, yes: _Well_, perhaps not, because as soon as she thought that it was a thing exclusive to her encounters with members of the _same _sex, she remembered a myriad of embarrassing conversations with people of the _opposite_, with crazy hot boys she had met at parties. Maybe she was just an inherently mortifying person around anybody considered attractive, which was strange, because she herself was typically considered attractive, not that she could see herself in the mirror anymore to check. You would think she would have learnt her lesson, what with-

Clara thought she glimpsed something out of the corner of her eye and looked around quickly. She could have sworn right there in that street that she'd seen a shadow twitch somewhere. And again, she passed it off, in the empty road, as a cat, or rat, or some other stray animal, and carried on walking. But faster. After all, it wasn't like, if it _was _an animal, they'd want to come near her. As previously mentioned, all animals despised her now. Animals and children. So it really _was _a good thing she didn't work in a school anymore. But she still couldn't shake the feeling of being watched, _or _forget the fact that there were no animal smells on the air around her...


	401. Another Girl Another Planet X

_Jenny_

_Another Girl Another Planet X_

Her spaceship was coming along swimmingly. She predicted that before the week was out it would be finished, as long as Oswin reneged her decision to not speak to anybody apart from Adam Mitchell, and as long as she herself did not get distracted by something or other coming up. Unfortunately for her, though, her phone rang a second later. Before she checked who it was, she figured she would just ignore it and let it ring out, because it couldn't be _that _important. So this she did, paying no mind to her phone as it buzzed on the ship's interior console. Well, not until the vibrations grew so forceful her phone slid down off the console she was sat just underneath messing with the heating system and landed right on her head. She winced as it fell to the floor, and then muttered a curse to herself when she saw it was Beta Clara she had been so thoroughly ignoring. Rubbing the back of her head, she answered the call finally.

"Hello?"

"_You have to get over here right now_," Clara said to her, a note of urgency in her force. Jenny frowned and was too distracted by the bruise on the back of her head to say anything, "_I'm being serious, Jenny!_"

"What is it? What's wrong?" she asked, standing up.

"_I swear, someone followed me home_," Clara said.

"What? How do you know?" Jenny asked. Why would anybody have followed Clara home? Clara left work at ten o'clock at night, who'd be going after her? Some creepy guy, she assumed, the type who wouldn't dare try and get into her house. Nevertheless, Jenny figured Clara wasn't going to decide she was paranoid and let her stay on the TARDIS with her spaceship, so she dropped lightly down out of the hatch in the floor.

"_I just do, okay? _You_ have supersenses, _I_ have supersenses. I'm sure you would know when someone was following you_?"

"Well, yeah, I guess..."

"_Were you busy?_"

"I was just working on the spaceship."

"_You like that spaceship more than you like me_."

"It's because it doesn't make snarky comments about everything."

"_I've never made a snarky comment in my life, how dare you_," she said, and Jenny laughed.

"So did you see this person who followed you?"

"_No. But they kept knocking stuff over. And no, it wasn't a cat or a dog, because that's what I thought at first. I didn't smell any cats or dogs at all, just the same human smell following me_," Clara said.

"You're really liking this new heightened-sense-of-smell thing, aren't you?"

"_Well, Jenny, you'd be surprised at how bad some people are at wiping their arses. Because I know I was. But that's what I have to put up with now - the knowledge that some people are complete mingers_," she said.

"You didn't recognise the smell, did you?"

"_No. Well, I mean... I mean... sort of? Like, I kind of knew it, but I don't know from where_," she said.

"Well olfaction _is_ the sense most closely linked with memory..." Jenny mused, "Maybe it's just someone who... who thought you were dead and is just shocked to bump into you?"

"_I'm in the Alphaverse, nobody here thinks I'm dead, if they know me they probably think I've eloped with _your_ father,_" Clara said, which was true enough, she _did _live in a different universe.

"Someone who recognised you from school, then? Just used to know you? Just surprised?"

"_Why wouldn't they just come and talk to me normally instead of stalking me and hiding?_"

"They were intimidated?"

"_Oh, because I'm _so _intimidating. Are you even coming over?_"

"I'm literally in the console room of the TARDIS right now, calm down," Jenny said, "What's the date?"

* * *

"Thank god you're here," Clara said, opening the front door and dragging Jenny inside forcibly by her elbow, which sort of hurt. Mainly because Clara the Vampire didn't really know her own strength. As usual, the house was completely dark. All of the light-cancelling curtains were drawn and there were no electric lights on, just black candles Jenny could see in the living room.

"I do have a confession to make - I may have stopped off on the way here and got you something," she said, then she gave Clara a paper bag. A paper pick 'n' mix bag. Then she walked past her to go through to the dimly lit kitchen and make herself a cup of tea.

"Are you kidding me?" Clara questioned, "You've just brought me an entire bag of those gummy fangs." Jenny looked around at Clara and raised her eyebrows, Clara scowling, waiting for what they both knew would happen to happen. And what that was was Clara giving up and eating the gummy fangs anyway.

"You be careful with those, they'll rot your teeth," Jenny advised her.

"My fangs, you mean?"

"Your _sexy _fangs. Do you want tea?"

"Yes please. And it's not like I need them anyway. Although, they do come in handy when I have to eat rare meat," she said.

"I can't stand steak how you have it now, it's basically still alive, so much blood, eurgh."

"The blood is the best part, Jenny," Clara told her.

"Freak."

"Since when did _you_ have an objection to eating living things, anyway?" Clara asked, and when Jenny looked over at her she got winked at.

"Do you ever get bored of making oral sex jokes?"

"No. Never," Clara said.

"So, then, how come when you think you're being stalked by a lunatic you call _me _over?" Jenny questioned, "Can the big, scary vampire not defend herself?"

"Because if what you told me you did to those vampires - beating them up with canes and whatnot - is true, then you're obviously my first port of call to come... guard me. Protect me. Anyway, it's what you're _supposed _to do when you're dating someone, stick up for them and make them feel better."

"I guess so."

And then Clara's eyes widened like she had all of a sudden remembered something and she dropped the pair of jelly fangs she had been holding back in the bag and set the bag down on the kitchen table, "I am _so _sorry!" she exclaimed.

"For what? For flirting with me..?" Jenny puzzled incredulously.

"No, no, for... for, um... well, you see, it's kind of complicated but, uh... you know Sally Sparrow?" Clara asked, looking at Jenny with apologetic eyes and biting her lip, revealing one of this infamous yet oh-so-attractive fangs which were very steadily become Jenny's favourite thing about Clara's physiology.

"Sorry, what? Sally Sparrow? _The _Sally Sparrow that Other You totally stalks who is supposed to be really hot, though I've never had the pleasure of meeting her? That one?" Jenny needled her.

"Yes. Precisely. She _is_ really hot..." Clara trailed off. Jenny frowned.

"Have you, like, screwed her, or something? I thought she was straight?" she turned to lean against the kitchen cupboards while the kettle boiled slowly, crossing her arms.

"She is straight! I have not screwed her!" Clara protested, "I just... she... she lives here, and she knows Dylan!"

"Who?"

"The guy who owns the bookshop, him. They're friends, or something," Clara was whispering like she thought someone might be eavesdropping. Jenny just listened and watched Clara's frantic pacing around in the kitchen, "And she - she lives around here, and I didn't know, and then she shows up and I made the _biggest _fool of myself!"

"Oh yeah?" Jenny asked, amused, though Clara could not see past how embarrassed she was about her own crude behaviours to notice this, "What'd you do?" And Clara told her what she had done, about her falling over and saying all sorts of weird things, and Jenny ended up laughing a great deal.

"It's not funny! What if I see her in town, or something? And she _speaks to me_? She smells really nice, I could kill her," Clara said.

"Well, you probably shouldn't kill her," Jenny said, "Not if you're trying to get into her pants."

"I don't want to get into her pants, I'm in _your_ pants," Clara said, and Jenny raised her eyebrows, the kettle clicking off its boil behind her, "I mean - I - not - not right _now _I'm not, but you... sometimes, I mean. Occasionally. And I'm not trying to do her, I just mean, if I make a show of myself every time I accidentally bump into her in, in Sainsbury's, or something-"

"But you only go shopping at, like, two o'clock in the morning, Clara, I'm sure you won't, if that's what you're so bothered about," Jenny said, watching her carefully. She wanted to see if she could make Clara flustered enough to do the same types of things she'd apparently been doing earlier, to see how funny it was.

"You know what it was like? It was like when you ran away from me when I tried to speak to you about us the other week," Clara said, "That's what I was like."

"Well, hopefully you don't go looking for Sally Sparrow in six hours' time to try and shag her."

"Is that the only reason you came back? To try and shag me?"

"I actually succeeded, in case you're forgetting. Besides, I'd never done it with a vampire. And now I'm stuck with you, you glorified corpse."

"Rude!" Clara exclaimed, but then Jenny passed her her tea and the remark was forgotten.

"What's she look like, then? Oh, I know, maybe Sally Sparrow followed you home?" she asked half-sarcastically. Clara shook her head and walked out into the living room to go and sit on the sofa, and Jenny followed her and sat by her side.

"I'd recognise her scent."

"Ooh, how creepy."

"Mmm."

"Is she hotter than me?"

"Of course she's not hotter than you."

"I wanna see a picture of her. Or shall I walk down into the village and look for her? Wander through the streets calling her name?" Jenny suggested.

"_Then_ you'll look like a serial killer."

"Says the girl who memorised her smell. Why don't you search on Facebook?"

"I don't have Facebook, I'm supposed to be dead, remember?"

"Well whatever your Facebook details were three years ago, they're probably Other You's Facebook details now. Or you could text Oswin? Oswin's been trying to find some girl for Jack, I'm sure she could stretch to finding Sally Sparrow?" Jenny suggested, "Although, Oswin's not speaking to anyone apart from Adam Mitchell right now..."

"Why? And what girl?"

"Something to do with tentacle porn, I don't know. And some girl who used to work for Torchwood in, uh, 2011 I think. Esther Drummer, or Drummond, or Drumlins, or something."

"...Right... Regardless, I don't have Oswin's number to text her," Clara said.

"I'll give you it," Jenny said, taking her phone out of the back pocket of her jeans and picking Clara's up off the table to enter the number in, "I reckon she'll reply to _you_, anyway. As long as you don't mention the sea, or the environment, or any ex-girlfriends. Might come in useful, having the smartest girl in the universe at the other end of the phone."

"Next thing we'll be psychically linked."

Jenny laughed and put her own phone down, and then began to text Oswin while Clara was distracted. She wasn't distracted for long, though.

"What are you doing?"

"Texting Oswin. Well, I just finished and sent it, actually," she said. Clara narrowed her eyes.

"...What did you put..?"

"Uh, it says, '_It's your bitch Ravenwood. Send pics of Sally Sparrow ASAP #wankbank_.'"

"It does _not _say that!" Clara protested, snatching her phone back off Jenny, who burst out laughing when she did. Clara almost dropped her mug. "Oh my god, I can't believe you just sent Oswin that from _my_ phone!"

"Clara. It's Oswin. How offended do you think she'll be?" Jenny asked wryly, then Clara's phone went again, "What's she say?" Clara sighed with annoyance.

"She says, '_nudes?_' with a question mark," Clara told her.

"Tell her 'yes'."

"No! Jesus, why can't you text her off your own phone?" Clara questioned. Then her phone went again, and this time she furrowed her brows when she read it, "Oswin says, '_Why don't you just search Facebook?_' and then she gave me Other Me's login details... fine, fine, I'll check bloody Facebook..."

"I really like the digital age and social media. It's great."

"Apparently, Sally Sparrow does not have Facebook," Clara answered after a minute, "Although... oh my god... what..."

"What is it?"

"Other Me, she posted last night, '_Does anybody remember the school trip to the Eden Project when we were 17?_' I can't believe that," Clara grumbled.

"Why? What happened at the Eden Project when you were seventeen?"

"Got off with someone," she muttered distractedly, "Can't remember who, come to think of it... she's probably trying to figure it out, if she doesn't remember either... ugh, I'm done with this." She locked her phone, and just as she did got another text from Oswin saying that Sally Sparrow did not have a digital footprint apart from government records. No social media.

"Maybe she's one of those nutters who think the government's spying on their every move?" Jenny suggested, "I bet the government are really interested to know what you got up to at the Eden Project."

"Well when they find out they'd better tell _me_. I can't even remember what gender whoever-it-was was."

"You truly are the embodyment of modern sexual liberation, Clara. _Anyway_, what have you got in for dinner?" Jenny asked.

"I actually have pizza."

"Just the one?"

"You think that I would have also bought you a pizza on the assumption you would wander in here for dinner before the sell-by date?" Clara asked.

"Well, yes. And also, I didn't _wander in _here, _you_ invited me, so it's just common courtesy to have dinner ready. How many pizzas are in the fridge?"

"...Two..." Clara admitted, and Jenny smiled triumphantly, "You know, if you didn't have the appetite of a bear we could always _share _a pizza."

"No can-do, Ravenwood, I have to keep up my strength," Jenny said, getting up from the sofa to go and switch the oven on and cook dinner, as she was usually expected to do, owing to the fact _she _was the guest and _Clara _couldn't cook to save her life.

"For what?"

Sultrily, winking at Clara over her shoulder, she said, "Oh, you never know."


	402. Face The Raven

**AN: Everything Clara jokingly says about _The Raven_ is foreshadowing for the rest of the chapter.**

_Jenny &amp; Beta Clara_

_Face The Raven_

"Eurgh, I never thought I would relate to the poetry of Edgar Allan Poe so much before," Clara Ravenwood grumbled disdainfully, the pair of them sitting up in her library on the first floor, because Jenny had expressed the desire to see it now that Clara had put all of her books up. Of course, the room had such a great quantity of bookshelves, she didn't nearly possess enough texts to fill all of them. It was one o'clock in the morning, and they were both sitting on the floor due to the absence of chairs, "Like, honestly, this poem might as well have been written about me." Clara seemed to have calmed down a great deal in the last three hours or so, due to Jenny's presence and also pizza. Plus, she liked having books around her.

"Maybe it was. I mean, what with time travel and everything, who knows what fictional characters you might have based on you?" Jenny said, "What's this poem then? Or - should I say - _Poe_-em?"

"No you should most definitely not."

"Aw."

"_The Raven_, obviously."

"Good lord, that's half of your surname. How creepy," Jenny said, "Fate must be at work. Destiny, or something."

"It's a very famous poem, you know."

"I've heard of it, though I fail to understand why you think it's anything to do with you."

"My middle name is Lenore."

"Like the washing detergent?"

"Like the girl in the poem!" Clara protested, "It was a joke anyway, I don't have a middle name. Just because you're not literary enough to appreciate me. I should've married your dad back when I had the chance."

"How's it go?"

"It's long."

"Oh, because we have such a busy schedule of hiding from stalkers in your library planned you can't possibly read me one measly poem," she said sarcstically.

"Well, no, it's only the start that reminds me of me," Clara said, perusing the pages of the book of Edgar Allan Poe's complete poetical works she was holding. It was quite a battered old thing, "Listen, listen, '_Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary, _/ _Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore_.' Literally me right now, at this very moment."

"Terrifying," Jenny said.

"Well, I know, it really is. Then he says, '_Ah, distinctly I remember it was in the bleak December_.' And it's December right now."

"I'm shaking in my boots."

"Your boots are downstairs."

"It's a metaphor."

"It's a lie."

"That's what a metaphor is, Clara."

"That's semantics."

"Carry on?" Jenny entreated, and Clara cleared her throat. Jane Austen's old, stolen candelabra sat burning away on the floor nearby, the only source of light. Her robotic eyes were a great help in times like this.

"Well, see, then it's like, '_From my books surcease of sorrow—sorrow for the lost Lenore / __For the rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore_.' And that's totally you, _you're _a rare and radiant maiden."

"But I'm not named after a washing detergent. And I'm also not dead."

"I suppose not. Anyway, then he goes, '_And the silken, sad, uncertain rustling of each purple curtain / __Thrilled me—filled me with fantastic terrors never felt before._' Then in the next stanza, '_Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there wondering, fearing, / __Doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before; / __But the silence was unbroken, and the stillness gave no token_,' which totally means that someone is creeping around and is gonna come and, like, I don't know. Mess me up."

"Well, if said someone turns out to be a raven, I'm sure we'll both be fine. I could take a raven in a fight," Jenny said, and Clara, shrugging dismissively and enjoying her attempt to bleed a personal prophecy out of a two-hundred year old poem, went to take a sip of blood out of one of her skull mugs. To her annoyance, though, she discovered the mug to be completely empty, "I'm out of tea - shall I go get us more drinks from downstairs?" Jenny offered. Clara said yes and handed her the skull mug, drained dry of blood and stained pinkish within.

"Could you beat the raven in a fight if it '_Perched upon a bust of Pallas just above your chamber door / Perched and sat and nothing more_'?" Clara asked.

"Well, you see, _Ravenwood_," she said, smiling when she used Clara's surname, a surname which Clara was oh-so-enjoying when it provided her with poetic antics such as this, "If I had that problem, I'd just punch it. Or, you know, I'd go and get Emmett and then shoot it through the heart with a six-inch, metal railway spike. Then it would perch upon a bust of Pallas just above my chamber door _nevermore_." She closed the door and left the room at that - quite the exit, if she did say so herself.

She still managed to hear Clara call after her, "_Quoth the girlfriend_," though, and she smiled and went down the stairs, jumping the last two steps and going into the kitchen to put the kettle on to boil, then nipping into the staircase that went down to the cellar and Clara's incredibly cosy bedroom with its faux fur rug. This bedroom also had an en suite bathroom just as good as the fancy bathroom on the first floor, and another room which held an incredibly large futuristic stasis fridge full of blood bags. _This _was what Jenny was looking for, one of these bags. And then, no doubt, Clara would make her sit and hold the mug for ten minutes to warm it up a bit so that she could freakishly feel like it was fresh from the source which, of course, it was not. The source, after all, had been busy fighting a kraken for two days and hadn't smelt very nice the last time Jenny had bumped into her in Nerve Centre. She'd put her off her dinner.

As she stood in the kitchen tapping her fingers against the counter, waiting for the kettle to finish boiling, she lifted up the black, heavy, light-blocking blinds and peered out into the garden in the twilight. She thought she could see a rose bush that hadn't been there when the house had been given to Clara the other week, but she remembered that Clara liked roses. After all, she did used to have a window box of them back at her old flat, even if they _were _dead and dry.

Jenny dropped the curtain back down and went to retrieve the sugar jar from another point in the kitchen, when somebody grabbed her ferociously around her neck and tried to drag her somewhere, and she didn't need heightened Time Lord senses to know this was not some weird game being begun by Clara Ravenwood on the floor above. Whoever it was also punched her with their other arm around the side of her head and dazed her in what she knew was an attempt to knock her out, not that it worked. She mustered all of her strength – which was, if you hadn't gathered yet, quite a _lot_ of strength – and wrenched the arm around her neck free and bent it back, her assailant thoroughly underestimating the amount of defensive capabilities a 5'1", innocent-looking, young blonde girl might have. However, Jenny was shocked to be faced with someone even shorter and younger than she was, someone barely out of childhood.

"I don't suppose you're a stately Raven of the saintly days of yore?" Jenny asked, not letting her guard down as whoever-it-was nursed their arm she had bent back quite far.

"I'm _what_?" the weirdo asked.

"Never mind. Inside joke. Who the hell are you?" she demanded next. She didn't know who this girl was, but she knew that she had her vampire-bashing cane hidden in Clara's coffee table, and she also had Emmett the Spike-gun downstairs under Clara's bed (neither of which Clara knew about.) The girl came back in to try and punch Jenny in the face, but Jenny utilised those keen reflexes of hers and grabbed the fist as it came flying towards her. Distracted by the fist, the girl thought she might be able to get in a debilitating kick to her abdomen, but Jenny grabbed her foot, too, in mid-air, and was surprised by the fact the girl had enough balance to keep upright. Then it was_ Jenny_ who underestimated her opponent when she jumped off the floor and did a wild, spinning kick with her _other _foot and clipped her straight in the jaw and she let go of the twisting foot and twisting hand.

"Where's the vampire?" the girl demanded, coming back to try and kick Jenny, but Jenny punched the kick out of the air, and then they were in a relatively advanced battle of hand-to-hand combat, and she wished she could draw the girl a few metres into the living room in order to get her Victorian cane out of the coffee table.

"Vampire? Vampires don't exist," Jenny said.

"There's a blood bag next to the kettle."

"That's my fake blood for Halloween."

"It's December."

"Well I've been in a coma."

"Very quick on your feet for someone who's been on a coma."

"Very quick on your feet for someone who still eats school dinners," Jenny quipped back in retaliation, all the while blocking kicks and hits and taking a thoroughly defensive position. There was a nasty kick from some _very_ hard-soled boots aimed right at her head for that particular remark.

"Tell me where the vampire is," they asked again, which was when Jenny noticed at least _three_ stakes in their belt. Seriously? A vampire slayer? In _Haworth_? Looking for _Clara_? Clara who, to Jenny's knowledge, was not rampantly feasting on the blood of the innocent in the middle of the night? Clara who couldn't even cook toast and who refused to eat anything with mustard in it because she thought it was 'too spicy'?

"You should probably watch less _Buffy_ and do more homework – GCSEs are in a few months," Jenny said.

"Stop making fun of my age!" she protested.

"Stop having such a funny age then," Jenny countered, and actually failed to block a sailing punch that caught her straight in the nose and made her eyes water. That punch got her into such a fury she swung a punch back at the slayer, except this punch, rather than being made with her left hand like the others, was with her _right_ hand, and her right hand was very solid and made of metal and also met its mark and caught her just next to her left eye.

"What kind of hand is that!?"

Jenny then took advantage of the girl's daze at her robot hand and made a dash into the next room, vaulting over the sofa and retrieving her cane out of the coffee table.

"Are you too tired to keep fighting and you need your walking stick?"

Jenny swung it at the girl and tried to clout her with it, thinking of the irony found in beating up a vampire slayer with the weapon of vampires, but she brought up a hand with reflexes that were nearly abnormal and grabbed it, not even flinching at the force on her palm. To get her to drop it Jenny had to kick her sharply right in the gut, and she let go and stumbled back.

"I was getting it for you – I figure you might need it in ten minutes."

"I could beat you in five."

"I suppose you sit enough exams you're used to working under timed conditions?"

"Oh yeah? Well get a load of _this_," she said, and then she reached behind her and from a back holster drew out –

"Is that a fucking katana!?" Jenny exclaimed. And a katana it was. Yeah, _seriously_, a _katana_, "You're not even legally old enough to drink, how do you have a katana!? Is this what they teach in school now?"

"It's not as much as a relic as _that_ thing, where'd you get it, the 1800s?"

"As a matter of fact, yes. And you can't talk, _you're_ holding feudal Japan's most deadly sex toy."

"_Sex toy_?"

"Have you not got to sex education yet in primary school?"

"It's a sword, not a dildo!"

"Anything's a dildo if you merely apply yourself, kiddo." She did _not_ like being called 'kiddo.'

The girl slashed straight for her head with a lethal movement, no longer aiming to simply incapacitate Jenny, and Jenny's only defence was the thankfully sturdy cane. Then the girl squinted at her in puzzlement.

"Don't I know you?"

"I work as a dinner lady during the days."

"Is that because your vampire-friend is asleep?"

But still, as it turned into a sword fight suddenly where they were still more or less equally matched, the girl stared at Jenny as though she were desperately trying to place her face.

"Ashildr!?" Clara suddenly shouted from the stairs, and both Jenny and the mysterious murderous girl who had somehow broken into Clara's house (how, Jenny didn't yet know) looked over.

"Clara!?" the girl shouted back.

"Jenny!" Jenny shouted, beaming, and they both stared at her, "What? I felt left out." Then she bashed the girl – this Ashildr – around the back of her neck with her cane, and Ashildr came back brandishing the katana, "I'm so glad we're finally meeting each other's friends, Clara," Jenny said, kicking at Ashildr's hands to knock another swing from her katana off course.

"Stop trying to kill each other! Oh my god! What are you doing in my house!?" Clara shouted at them.

"She started it!" Jenny protested, blocking another katana-attack by holding her cane in front of her like a bar, hands at either end.

"You're supposed to be _dead_, Clara," Ashildr said as Clara came and stood in the living room and stared on in horror.

"Were you following me!?" Clara demanded of her.

"_Dead_!" she shouted back.

"I _am_ dead!"

"_You're_ the vampire!"

"What? Vampire? V-vampires are not real, don't be ridiculous," Clara scoffed.

"I can see your fangs."

"They're for Halloween."

"How many times – it's _December_!"

"Tell her you've been in a coma, Clara, quick," Jenny said, still in the midst of her cane-sword fight with some girl Clara supposedly knew.

"But after everything on Trap Street-" Ashildr started saying.

"Everything_ where_? Wait – you – _you_ know how I – Jenny, stop hitting her! – you know how I died?"

"Of course I do, I was _there_, and I was there for all the decades afterwards, when we were…" Ashildr trailed off and finally stopped trying to stab Jenny, at which point Jenny reluctantly stepped away enough to be out of immediate blade-range, watching these two stare at each other with a frown on her face.

"When we were what..?" Clara asked carefully, stepping back, "You knew me when I was frozen? You know what happened?"

"When we were together," Ashildr said.

"_What_!?" Clara and Jenny both exclaimed, and then Jenny turned to Clara and said, "Seriously, Clara!? She's, like, twelve!"

"_I_ am _billions_ of years old," Ashildr snapped.

"Imagine that, going through puberty for all of eternity."

"Who is this girl? I recognise her," Ashildr asked Clara, but Clara was talking to Jenny.

"She's an immortal Viking, the Doctor made her immortal when she was eighteen," Clara said.

"_Eighteen_? _You're_ twenty-seven! You're a pedophile."

"I am not! First of all, I can't remember _any _of this ever happening," she said very sharply and partly directed at Ashildr, who stared at her like she was a ghost, "Second of all, the legal age in this country is sixteen. And third of all, _you're_ two-hundred and eight, so that makes you a hypocrite."

"Well… well…" Jenny spluttered, "Well _she's_ billions of years old, so she's clearly the pervert."

"Those clothes make you look plenty like a pervert," Ashildr quipped, and Jenny raised her cane to strike her again, "How are you two-hundred years old? Who are you? Where do I…" Ashildr seemed to realise wherever it was she recognised Jenny from.

"Ashildr! Are you carrying stakes!? Did you come here to kill me!?" Clara shouted, but Ashildr was approaching Jenny with a look about her like a cat about to pounce, and Jenny stepped away carefully, nearly bumping into the armchair.

"The Polaris Death Charge," Ashildr said.

"The Polaris _what_?" Jenny asked.

"You! _You're_ Major Young!" Ashildr rammed straight at her and in her surprise at Polaris being mentioned Jenny, disgracefully, dropped her cane on the floor, and ended up being held at sword-point against the wall by an irritatingly child-looking girl who was just as lethal as she was misleading, "You ordered all those people to die!"

"What people to die!? I ordered nobody to die! What year are you asking me about?" Jenny asked.

"4881," Ashildr said through gritted her teeth.

"_That_? That was the year I left the Alliance," Jenny argued back.

"You mean you ran away because a million people died on Deftan because of you," Ashildr said, then she turned to Clara, "I told you about this when you kept moping about her and looking at her photo on your phone, remember? And you swore you wouldn't speak to her again because she was a mass-murdering liar?"

"I don't remember anything," Clara snapped, "I'm sure it's not true."

"It's not," Jenny assured her, but then she was distracted, "You were looking at pictures of me on your phone when you were all frozen? That's sweet." Clara became briefly flustered.

"You, Major Young, on August the 16th, 4881, ordered the pointless massacre of a million soldiers on Deftan when you assumed control as the highest-ranking officer and initiated the Death Charge on the Nomatee Base." Most definitely, Jenny knew, that was not true – but her stint in the Polaris Wars and the Homeworld Alliance had been decades ago.

And _then_ her memory was cut completely short by a searing, hot pain in her chest, and she slid down to the floor with a katana sticking out of one of her Time Lord hearts, overcome by shock. Clara gasped and stared, and in an instant she had moved across the room in a blur of unnatural speed as Ashildr stood by thinking her actions justified.

"And I thought acupuncture was supposed to be relaxing…" Jenny choked.

"Oh my stars, oh my stars – what do I do? What do I do, Jenny?" Clara asked urgently.

"You can't do anything," Ashildr said, "She deserves it – when you let me explain, you'll see. Just like you did before you forgot and… what exactly happened to you? Because I saw you die-"

"Clara… come closer…" Jenny breathed, and Clara completely ignored Ashildr and her questioning because, for god's sake, her girlfriend had just been fatally stabbed in her home by a homicidal vampire-slaying old acquaintance with a _katana_. Who the hell carried a katana around these days?

"What? What is it?" Clara asked, kneeling right down next to Jenny and lifting a hand to stroke her cheek.

"I have to tell you something…"

"What?" Clara implored.

"If I die here…" she gasped, and Ashildr muttered something behind her about this being 'the most melodramatic death she had ever seen,' "My last words… I want you to know… we're no strangers to love… you know the rules and… so do I…"

"What…" Clara asked in a tone of voice much less tender than the one she had previously been using as Jenny Harkness bled out into the carpet with a three-feet long sword sticking out of her chest.

"A full commitment's what I'm… thinking of… you wouldn't get this from…"

"_Jenny_…" Clara said warningly, her hand on Jenny's cheek freezing up with annoyance she was trying to quell.

"Any other guy… I just wanna tell you how I'm feeling…"

"Oh my god."

"Try to make you… underst-"

"Could you die a bit faster, please?" Clara asked through gritted teeth. Ashildr was thrown into confusion. Apparently, the resurrected Viking had never been Rickrolled.

"Lemme get to the chorus… I'm never gonna gonna give you up… never gonna let you down… never gonna tell a lie and… hurt you…"

"No, it goes, '_Never gonna run around and desert you_.'"

"Well then what's the fucking point…" Jenny said, and then she shut up and her head rolled to the side, and when Clara fumbled a second later to try and find a pulse in her wrist, she couldn't, and she was overcome by very complicated emotions involving grief and distress, hope that Jenny would wake back up, and _complete_ irritation at what her 'last words' had been.

"What did I just witness?" Ashildr asked, Clara closing Jenny's eyes and getting back to her feet, groaning and pressing her hands over her face for a second.

"The reason I'm going to dump that damn alien as soon as she heals herself, that's what," Clara muttered, "And now _I_ have to tell her parents."

"What sort of alien? What parents? Who are her-" Ashildr was cut off by Clara decking her completely and knocking her into unconsciousness onto the floor. Thank stars for superhuman vampire strength, she thought.

"Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit…" Clara muttered. She didn't know what to do. Yes, she had been with Eleven when he had regenerated into Old Twelvey (she was annoyed that the Alphaverse habit of calling him that was rubbing off on her), but Eleven had not died from a sword through his heart. When she looked around the room, she spotted her phone lying there on the floor, knocked off the coffee table when Jenny had fetched her cane which Clara hadn't even known was in there, and she made a dash for it and rang Adam Mitchell.

"_Hello? What is it?_" he asked.

"I-" she began.

"_If you've, like, broken something in the house, can it wait? I'm literally about to take Ellie to find a boarding school now she's finally agreed to go_," Adam said, and Clara remembered Jenny mentioning Ellie Mitchell's presence on the TARDIS a few days ago.

"Get a Doctor on the phone now. And not a medical one, an alien one."

"_What? Why?_"

"Because their daughter has just bled to death in my fucking living room, that's why!" she hissed angrily.

"_Oh, shit, I'll… Thirteen's right here_…"

"What!? I – no – maybe not-"

"_What's the matter?_" asked that American accent, "_Have you been having more wet dreams about me?_"

"Jenny's dead. Get here NOW."

**AN: That moment when you have to write a major character death but because the last storyline turned out so dark you have to do it in a humorous way… Also, I know that Ashildr goes by the name "Me" but that, like everything else in the canon, is stupid, so I am going to ignore it.**


	403. Lock Up Your Daughter

**AN: I initially wanted Eleven to be the Doctor who gets called to Beta Clara's in this storyline, but it didn't fit with the stuff I have planned for later chapters today. Besides, I really like writing Thirteen and Jenny.**

_Beta Clara_

_Lock Up Your Daughter_

She paced frantically backwards and forwards with a dead girlfriend in her living room, a sword sticking out of her and blood everywhere, and an unconscious _ex-_girlfriend (if what Ashildr said was true) handcuffed to the leg of the sofa, waiting for the Doctor to show up. Thankfully, it didn't take very long for the sounds of the TARDIS to fill the chilly night sky outside, it being half past one in the morning, and when they did Clara went through to open the back door, seeing the blue box in her garden. And it was still weird seeing that TARDIS, any TARDIS, and knowing it wasn't somebody coming to invite her for a ride, knowing that part of her life was practically over.

"Where is she?" Thirteen asked Clara urgently, pushing Clara back inside the house and closing the door behind them. Honestly, she thought she would rather have Eleven there than Thirteen, because here was yet another tiny, attractive blonde wandering around in her house, except _this _one had an overwhelming aroma of cinnamon that was just a hair's breadth away from becoming overpowering, but as it stood it was entirely too intoxicating, "Stop smelling me, would you?"

"How'd you-"

"Because I have literally known you for decades, Ravenwood. _Two _of you," Thirteen said, unnerving Clara by that shared habit of, upon occasion, calling her by her surname that Jenny also had.

"Living room," Clara sighed, pointing. It was open plan, anyway. Wasn't like there was a door between them, the Doctor could see right through to the bleeding, soaked, crimson corpse of her only daughter.

"Oh my god, Clara, you didn't even take the sword out yet!?" Thirteen exclaimed in horror, "How is she supposed to heal with a... what is that? A katana? Who the hell carries a _katana_ around, that's totally weird. C'mon, help me get it out."

"No, no, wait," Clara said, "Her hand and her eyes - don't we have to do something about them? I mean - won't her right hand start to grow back? It can't grow back if there's a robot one screwed in."

"Oh, darn it, you're right," she muttered.

"Didn't you know this was going to happen?" Clara asked as Thirteen started to search her pockets for something, "From the future?"

"Gimme a break, sweetheart, I knew it would happen but I didn't know _when_, I don't memorise what happens on precise days," Thirteen said, then she pulled something long and thin out of her pocket. Initially, Clara believed this to be a sonic screwdriver, "Oh. My. _God_. Check this out! I thought a bear ate this when I was in Yellowstone the other month!" She brandished it in Clara's face.

"Your daughter is dead and you're worried about a _pez dispenser_?" Clara asked in disbelief.

"Uh, it's a limitied edition _Wonderwoman_ pez dispenser, okay?" she asked, and then she clicked a sweet out of Wonderwoman's neck into her palm and ate it, "You want one? Jenny'll want one."

"No thank you." The Doctor put the pez dispenser between her teeth and finally fished her sonic out of her pocket, which Beta Clara had never seen before, this thing being white and smooth and sleek with no extendable 'claw' part like the green one she was so used to. And the light on it was purple.

The detachment of Jenny's robot eyes and all their tiny screws and the insertion capsule and the rest of it, along with her robot _hand _and an equal amount of tiny screws, took a worrying amount of time. Clara had to begrudgingly go and search around her house to try and find Jenny's own sonic, the silver and pink one that was just as sleek as Thirteen's, if a little shorter and a less like a _Harry Potter _wand, in the process discovering Emmett - the ridiculous steam-powered spike-gun - was hidden under her bed. This and the sonic, once she found it hidden under a bookshelf, she brought back with her to the living room. Meanwhile, however, they spent enough time getting rid of artificial appendages that Ashildr woke up and found herself handcuffed to the sofa.

"These are the least sturdy handcuffs I've ever come across. I'd appreciate not being contaminated by your sex toys, Clara," Ashildr said.

"Is _that _why you have those?" the Doctor questioned her in shock and surprise, and Clara didn't say a word, she was just holding Jenny's hand. Well, her cold, metal, now-detached robot hand. She didn't know what to do with it, would Jenny want it back?

"They were a joke birthday present when I was in uni, I've never used them. Surprisingly enough, I'm not into that. Besides, if I was, I'm sure _you _would know," she said somewhat coolly to the Doctor who raised her eyebrows but resolved that this was true.

"Why? Why would she? What's going on? I have a lot of questions I'd like answering," Ashildr said.

"Well so do I," Clara said sharply, "Like how did you get into my house and why are you trying to kill me? Because as soon as you saw who the 'vampire' was, I couldn't help but notice you nearly put your sword down."

"I did put it down, I put it down right through your pretty new girlfriend's heart," Ashildr said, "Speaking of, I'm not sure she'll fit in a coffin if you don't take that thing out of her chest."

"She won't be going in a coffin, she's not dying any time soon," the Doctor muttered in regards to her dead daughter, who was very dead, Clara couldn't help but notice. Clara also couldn't help but notice the stink of Time Lord blood which really wasn't remotely appetising.

"Oh, I was assuming Clara slept in a coffin and that's why she would be in one," Ashildr shrugged. What with her being cuffed to the leg of the sofa and all, she was having to lie down in an incredibly awkward and, Clara assumed, not altogether pleasant manner so that she could see what was going on with the three of them around the coffee table, "How are you gonna bring her back, then? Same way they brought _you _back? How was that, again, because I swear I remember that happening." Clara did not answer, because the Doctor was telling her to pull out the katana after finally removing the second of the two insertion capsules that were drilled into Jenny's eye sockets to house her prosthetics. Reluctantly, she got to her feet and put her hands around the hilt of Ashildr's sword.

More or less as soon as the katana was dragged out of Jenny's left heart, the girl gasped in the way Clara knew Jack did when _he _came back to life, and she coughed and more blood started pouring out of her and she fell into the Doctor's arms on her left. Clara stared at the blood sword, not knowing what to do with _that_, either. _Or _what to do about all the blood in the carpet, if she were to be a tad insensitive about Jenny's death and all that.

"I'm impressed - how'd she do that? And who's the other blonde, anyway?" Ashildr, who had had absolutely nothing explained to her but who seemed relatively relaxed handcuffed to a sofa in Clara Ravenwood's living room, inquired, nodding at the Doctor.

"She did it because she's my daughter," Thirteen answered.

"And you are?" Ashildr asked strangely politely. She was even smiling, "The proud daughter of a mass murderer who ordered the massacre of a million people in the Polaris Wars?"

"She's the Doctor," Clara told Ashildr. Jenny was whining that her head hurt and she couldn't see, and Thirteen was cooing things in her ear to try and calm her down. Clara knew from experience that being brought back to life was a confusing and downright debilitating occurrence. Ashildr's amused, somewhat bored yet calm expression suddenly morphed into one of disdain, near disgust, as she turned her eyes back on Thirteen crouching at her blind, handless daughter's side. Clara just decided to drop the katana on the floor in the end, out of Ashildr's grasp.

"She's _what_?" Ashildr asked coldly.

"She's the Doctor, that's Jenny Harkness, her daughter, who is also a Time Lord, which is why she's not... dead..." Clara lost her words when she saw Jenny cough up strange, glowing, green and gold mist, sort of like excess regeneration energy but not quite.

"If she's a Time Lord, why is she not changing?" Ashildr continued to pry, "And if _she's_ the Doctor, why is she..."

"What? A girl?" Clara asked bitterly. Ashildr looked away from mother and daughter and raised her eyebrows at Clara.

"An American."

"Clara loves the accent - though this one here would never admit it," the Doctor, proving she was listening, called over her shoulder. She then tried to entreat Jenny to partake in the many joys a pez dispenser of some unknown but possibly vile age had to offer, "Thank god I married the other one."

"Hilarious," Clara said dryly, sitting back on the floor. She put Jenny's robot hand down next to her and pressed her fingers to her temples, and then declared that she needed a drink, so she went and retrieved the blood bag from the kitchen which Jenny had been getting for her before Ashildr's fatal intrusion, putting her sharp fangs to good use and biting it open, before pouring a quarter of its contents into her stained skull mug. Then she downed the entire contents of that, suddenly ravenous for human blood, and poured herself a second mug before finally returning to the living room. Then she was ordered back again by the Doctor to fetch a glass of water, which she did, leaving her own mug on the floor where she had been sitting. Ashildr eyed its dark crimson contents with displeasure.

"I feel like I'm missing something. You're the Doctor, but you have a daughter, and you're married to _her_?" Ashildr nodded incredulously in Clara's direction, "I always got the impression the Doctor never quite liked Clara in that way. Much to her frequent dissatisfaction."

"Yeah, I don't recognise you, either," the Doctor muttered, "Coo, I think _you're _the only one out of us all who really knows what's going on."

"'Coo'?" Ashildr questioned.

"Force of habit," the Doctor muttered.

"Which Doctor are you?"

"Thirteen," she answered.

"The Thirteenth Doctor?"

"Nope," she said, smiling. Poor, blind Jenny was trying to sit up and wondering why the ground she had bled into was so damp and awful. Clara didn't know how much comfort _her _presence gave in comparison to the Doctor's, so she remained a few feet away, onlooking as Ashildr was.

"If you're the Doctor and she's your daughter, who's the father?"

"Progenation machine," Jenny answered for herself, "And don't give me that schtick about 'not being a real Time Lord,' I've had it for over two centuries. And I kind of like that I don't have enough regeneration energy to change my face, I'm pretty fond of it."

"Ashildr was a Viking that Old Twel- I mean, that the Twelfth Doctor, brought back to life using alien technology," Clara began, Ashildr intereupting and continuing.

"Except he brought me back forever, ditched me, did not explain what had happened to me or what I was, and refused to let me travel in the TARDIS. Then I ended up travelling with Clara here while she was temporally locked, but apparently she doesn't remember," Ashildr explained concisely.

"Well, no, sorry, I don't remember a thing," Clara shrugged hopelessly.

"Your story reminds me of mine," Jenny said to Ashildr, "We might get a long if you hadn't murdered me needlessly."

"I was avenging those soldiers who died in the Polaris Death Charge, _Major Young_," Ashildr said, and Jenny flinched.

"It'd be Major Harkness these days, strictly speaking," Jenny muttered. Clara was still at a loss as to why Jenny so firmly clung to Jack's name. She kept meaning to ask but getting sidetracked by inappropriate moments - this being the most inappropriate moment of all so far, she figured.

"Harkness? Your name is Major J. Harkness?" Ashildr asked, "_Harkness_?"

"That's the way people who have met Jack say that surname," Jenny informed them. Jenny's hollow eye sockets and right stump were weirding Clara out a little, she had to admit, "Have you met him? Jack Harkness? Captain Jack Harkness?"

"He can't die either. Is he related to the Doctor as well? A son?" she asked.

"God, no!" Thirteen exclaimed.

"Ex-husband," Jenny answered.

"Still doesn't explain the mysterious female Doctor business."

"Basically, you're in the wrong universe," Clara said, "I guess both of us are. You and I are from the Betaverse. _This _universe that we're in now, that these two are from, is an alternate universe created before the Eleventh Doctor regenerated. In their universe, the Eleventh Doctor married another version of me, which meant that he regenerated into _her_ instead of into - who they call - _Old Twelvey_. And then we all ran into each other a few times, and there was this stuff involving me being fuck buddies with-"

"Eurgh, don't swear," Jenny told her suddenly, and she frowned.

"Pardon?"

"I said, _don't swear_. It's not necessary."

"...But you always swear, Jenny, you swear almost as much as I do," Clara said slowly, and Jenny 'stared' (sort of) at her and spoke very hoarsely.

"Do I?" she asked, "I can't believe I was friends with benefits with you while I was still married to Jack..." Ashildr fake gasped at that, while Clara was highly concerned for Jenny's sanity all of a sudden.

"How scandalous," Ashildr said.

"Just forget about it, I'll explain later," the Doctor assured Clara who reservedly continued, trying not to swear now.

"Right... um... yes... the nature of me and Jenny's... _friendship_... meant that when I died - with you, I guess - the people who live on the Alpha TARDIS, them mainly being two other versions of me, found out, and did not like that the Doctor let me die. So they came graverobbing and resurrected me with nanogenes. Then Jenny could tell you a wonderful story involving vampires which I also cannot remember, because about four days after I was resurrected _that _way, I ended up getting bitten by a vampire," Clara said, "Is that explanation enough from us yet?"

"Clara, I think I would have noticed if I went to another universe. Interdimensional rifts tend to burn people up when they go through them," Ashildr patronised her, and she grimaced.

"Dimension Doors are not interdimensional rifts, take it up with my sister-in-law," Thirteen grumbled in reference to Oswin Oswald, "Not explaining right now."

"Oh, I should really apologise to her for flirting with her all the time..." Jenny said. More unprecedented weirdness. Clara could have sworn people said Jenny did not change in the slightest when she regenerated, much unlike her parents. Clara nearly asked her if she was feeling alright, until she realised that Jenny had been stabbed through the heart and had no eyes and only one hand, and that was a stupid question.

"So, why are you a vampire slayer now?" Clara asked Ashilr, who tried to reposition herself.

"It's a one-off. Someone told me there was a crazy murderous vampire on the loose in Haworth," she shrugged. But this, to Clara, was major news.

"Who told you that?" Jenny asked, turning hollow, creepy features on Ashildr.

"Can we get a blindfold in here?" she joked cruelly.

"If they told you, who else did they tell? I won't let anybody hurt her," Jenny said adamantly, trying to sit up some more and actually managing it this time, in all of her blindness. How long did it take for eyes to grow back?

"Maybe you should worry about protecting her after you get your eyes back, hmm, Major?" Ashildr questioned, "Besides, as if I would have tried to kill her when I saw who she was."

"Calling me that to bother me won't work, it doesn't," Jenny said coolly.

"Doesn't bother you that you ordered-"

"The Polaris Death Charge. Yeah. No. I didn't. I remember now. Took me a-" here she started coughing quite violently and heaved up some blood, spitting it onto the carpet. Clara wondered how much it would cost to get this carpet cleaned, and what lie she would have to tell so that people didn't think she was a serial killer. Then Jenny started asking for her.

"I'm right - ew! Don't wave that at me, it's spurting blood!" Clara protested when she held out her hand stump, Clara flinching away.

"Go get a towel, jesus," the Doctor told her.

"Right - yes - okay," Clara said, getting up and hurring into the kitchen to drag a number of tea towels through, along with some kitchen roll.

"That wasn't me who ordered that charge, _I_ left because _I_ disagreed with it! It was wrong, a distraction technique that did not even work. I didn't assume command of the army, Major Cargill did," Jenny said, "_He _ordered that, _I _commandeered an evacuation ship and went and tried to rescue people, okay? He must have used me as an easy scapegoat."

"Did you say _Cargill_?" Thirteen and Ashildr asked together.

"Why? What does that mean, who is it?" Clara asked, trying to stem the bleeding from Jenny's handless wrist.

"Cargill caused the greatest military defeat in the history of the Homeworld Alliance? Austin Cargill?" Ashildr asked.

"Yes," Jenny answered.

"He's the one who told me there was a vampire in Haworth. Well, he and his wife - would you take these handcuffs off of me please?"

"_Handcuffs_?" Jenny, who had been dead during the last bit of discussion about the handcuffs, asked confusedly.

"Clara's into bondage, did she not tell you?" Ashildr said.

"I'm not into bondage, ignore her, I'll explain about them later, don't worry about it," Clara sighed and took another swig of her blood from her mug.

"Why does your mug look like a skull? And why are all your candles black? You're really taking this vampire thing seriously, aren't you?"

"It was a joke," Clara muttered, going and slumping down next to Jenny against the wall, self-consciously sipping her blood with Ashildr watching judgementally, "So, who's Austin Cargill..?"

"I have no idea. Sort of," Thirteen said, "They, like... they're like... they're totally like frenemies, that's what. They'll just be doing it to mess with you. Probably won't've told anybody that'll get you into _too _much trouble, but..."

"I don't even know them!" Clara protested.

"You will though. Time lines and all that. Other You and the Eleventh Doctor haven't met them yet, either, but they will. And then they will enter into a feud that is yet to be over, but they usually don't do anything _too_ bad... in fact, they usually end up being helpful, Ashley and Austin. Y'know, we had Christmas dinner with them six years ago," the Doctor mused.

"Well that's just brilliant, isn't it? How do these people I have never met even know where I live?" Clara asked.

"How should I know? They're like River Song, we meet out of order, you and I - well, Other You - and those two," the Doctor said, "If I were you, I'd get Adam Mitchell to install a burglar alarm."

Ashildr interrupted, "This is all well and good, but can I leave yet? I promise I won't murder anybody else. Sorry about that, by the way. If you're telling the truth about Cargill. Bit of a funny accident."

"I'd hardly say it was funny, you killing my daughter."

Ashildr added to Jenny, "Can't say I think much of your parenthood."

"Hey!" Jenny and the Doctor both objected.

"Can I have my katana back?"

"No," Thirteen said, "You cannot." Ashildr slid down the sofa huffily.

"Seriously, take these handcuffs off me!"

"Oh my _god_, fine," the Doctor grumbled, taking the key off of the coffee table and freeing Ashildr finally, who sat up properly straight away and then staggered to her feet.

"Well, sorry about intruding on your family gathering-"

"You caused the family gathering when you stabbed my daughter," the Doctor pointed out, "But for the record, I'm sorry about Old Twelvey dumping you. I would offer you a place on the TARDIS, but technically it isn't _my_ TARDIS right now because I'm from the future."

"There are also, like, seventeen people living there and you have to pass a vote to be allowed to stay," Clara said.

"And you killed my daughter, obviously," Thirteen added, smiling coldy.

"Let it go," Ashildr said, "It was ages ago."

"It was, like, an hour ago!" the Doctor argued. Ashildr shrugged and went to pick up the katana.

"Leave the sword," Clara sighed, taking it herself, "But what did you mean about us being together?"

"Maybe I don't want to talk about it," Ashildr muttered, putting a hand on her hip. Clara, wielding the katana in a semi-threatening manner (though this was by accident, she really forgot she was holding it), stood up, drawing herself up to full height which was taller than Ashildr. "There's not a lot to talk about, _you _were frozen, _you _did not breathe, or get injured, or eat, or use the toilet, or have any bloodflow. None at all. And that's all _I _will say, now can I go?"

"...Gimme those stakes," Clara ordered, and Ashildr rolled her eyes and handed Clara the three stakes on her belt, a fourth stake from her back pocket, and two more tiny stakes wrapped around her ankles, "You had _six stakes _and a katana?"

"And two crucifixes and garlic spray."

"Right. How'd you get in?"

"The front door was unlocked," she shrugged.

"It _was_? Shit... Ugh. Hey," she turned to Thirteen, "Do you think Oswin might be able to think of some amazing home security system?"

"Well she _is _the smartest human being in all of existence," Jenny answered, staring with her eyeless face. It was _really_ creeping Clara out.

"Right... do you-" Clara had been about to ask Ashildr if she had a phone, but instead was met with the front door closing, and she didn't see the point in trying to follow. She sighed. "Great. She didn't even tell me how I died, or about what happened while I was frozen..."

"Yeah, sorry... Help me get her on the TARDIS, it's still parked outside and you're a lot stronger than me," Thirteen asked, dismissing Clara's woes about still not knowing the truth about what she'd been up to.

"What? Oh, right. Yeah. Sure, sure..."


	404. Nerd Flirts IX

_Oswin_

_Nerd Flirts IX_

It was a getting on to be mid-afternoon that day, and Oswin was still refusing to talk to anybody she wasn't dating. Not that, as it happened, there were a lot of people dropping by to try and talk to her, but she was enjoying the solace nonetheless. Even Adam Mitchell's absence wasn't an entirely detrimental facet of her day, as he had left to go and drop Ellie at some posh school. She hadn't paid attention to the particulars.

Since eight o'clock that morning she'd been sitting at her boyfriend's fancy computer setup searching with whatever means she could to try and find this mysterious back-to-life girl Captain Jack was so insistent on reuniting with. Because as it stood, all they knew was that apparently Esther Drummond, an ex-CIA analyst from Washington D.C. who had died from a gunshot room in 'undisclosed circumstances', was not nearly as dead as her record in the databases of the Central Intelligence Agency would like to have them believe. Not that she thought it was some government conspiracy, if she were to give her honest opinion, it would be that this girl, if she really _were _back to life, had not been resurrected by any government body.

Regardless, she began hacking full databases at all levels of security from organisations across the entire Twenty-First Century globe, and compiling them into a search engine. No doubt something like that might actually come in useful anyway in their line of work, if she called it that.

She was just in the middle of downloading files from the British Secret Service when she heard the door being unlocked behind her and Adam returned, sister-free. She glanced over her shoulder from the desk, which was in the corner on the left closest to the door in their rectangular room, her back to the kitchen and the rest of the place, and smiled at him in greeting.

"Honey, I'm home," he said somewhat sarcastically, and she laughed slightly and went back to her computer, hearing him yawn. He hadn't slept all that well, and made a beeline to the kettle, presumably for more coffee. She worried that he drank too much coffee sometimes, but she didn't say anything at that moment, she was distracted.

"So you got rid of her, then?"

"Yeah, _finally_," he complained, "Now I don't have to worry about her being on her own anymore. I can't help but think she's gonna cause trouble though..."

"I'm sure she'll be fine," Oswin assured him. His sister wasn't nearly as awful as he sometimes made her out to be. She might like Ellie, but she also liked Ellie's brother, and privacy, and the quiet. At least it had been Thirteen Ellie had always asked questions of, and Thirteen had answered in droves, things Oswin and Adam and whoever else were not allowed to know. She suspected they were merely things to do wih her own future - she had heard Clara's name in the whispered stories dozens of times.

"Wow," Adam said.

"What?" she asked, spinning around to face him in the swivel chair. Her leg was detached on the floor next to her in case she needed it, but she was managing just fine kicking herself around the room on the chair.

"We're completely alone. And you're _sooo pretty_," he said in an annoying voice, and she shook her head.

"It's like I'm dating a teenager," she said.

"I had an idea while I was out," he said.

"Do tell?"

"I'm gonna get a coat."

"Bravo, Mitchell, your genius is unmitigated," she said, slow clapping a few times.

"Everybody else on this ship - all the blokes - have, like, those long coats! I just want one," he said, "I'm gonna spend fifty grand on a tailored, fitted coat."

"Well, it's your fifty grand to spend on whatever you like," she said, talking to him as though he were a child, which he did not appreciate. She couldn't help but think that fifty grand was a bit much for a _coat_, but it was, as she had said, his money. He could do what he wanted, "I didn't know you were such a fan of tailored clothes."

"All my clothes are tailored."

"That shirt you're wearing right now with the Death Star on it is tailored, is it? And those jeans don't fit properly on your arse," she told him as he poured himself a mug of coffee.

"...The jeans actually _are _tailored... they're just not that new. And they're my favourite jeans, don't be mean," he said, "Do you want a drink?"

"No, I have one right-" she was interrupted by somebody knocking on the door, and Adam obediently went to answer it, since she was still isolating herself.

"Hi, I have to talk to you," Clara, Oswin assumed, said, and then she pushed straight past Adam and came into the room. Adam was too shocked by what he saw to stop her, and so was Oswin when she saw her sister in her room with shorter hair than she was used to, covered in blood. Beta Clara.

"Holy shit, whose blood is that!? Have you killed somebody!?" Oswin demanded of her, wishing she had the ability at present to stand up in shock. Behind her, her search engine compilations were busy at work looking for Esther Drummond.

"What!? No! It's Jenny's," Clara said, and _then_ she launched into a complicated story involving some girl Clara knew once breaking into her house and killing Jenny as revenge - it was all quite interesting and Oswin wondered if she might go visit Jenny who, apparently, was in her room healing herself, "Anyway, sorry for intruding on your isolation, Oswin, it was him I wanted to speak to. I need the carpet cleaning, and a high-tech security system."

"Try locking the door," Adam suggested sarcastically.

"Why would you _not _lock the door if you thought someone was following you?" Oswin asked.

"It was an accident, okay!? It was one time."

"Yeah, and it cost my step-niece-in-law a regeneration," Oswin said.

"Your _step-niece-in-law_?" Adam asked incredulously.

"She _is _my step-niece-in-law, shut up," Oswin argued, "She is my niece in some weird capacity, okay? Now shut up, drink your coffee." He smirked to himself for annoying her, but _did _sip some more of his drink.

"Right, whatever, can I have a security system or not? Considering you lot are the ones who brought me back to life and put me in hiding and changed my name in the first place?" Clara asked.

"Christ, fine. But it'll have to wait, I have other stuff to do," Oswin said, "Like finding this girl for..." she glanced back at her computer screen, "Oh my... babe, come look at this." Adam, Clara following because she was nosey, came over to look over her shoulder. "I've found her." And she had.

"Took you long enough," Adam said.

"Oi!" she shouted at him as he stooped down next to her to see the computer screen.

"What does her file say? Tower of London?"

"UNIT HQ is the Tower of London," Clara said, "They have everything there, including the Black Archives."

"Look at this, look at this," Oswin said, "Maximum security, dangerous prisoner, volatile, cell must be... rubber coated?"

"That's odd, why rubber?" Adam asked.

"Prisoner possesses... _what_? Prisoner possesses _electrokinetic capabilities_?" Oswin stared, "But it says there they suspected her of being a Manifest, but it turned out to be a false positive."

"What's a Manifest, again?" Clara asked.

"Someone who has superpowers. In our universe, there's a crisis in the UK involving trying to track down and capture Manifests, but the duty of capturing them was passed over to the Hazard Control Corps in 2018. But _this _record is from October 2018, _after _that, they're keeping her in holding there instead of in Silverstorm because she's something they don't understand," Oswin said, "Keeping her in a rubber coated cell. Mitchell, go find Jack." Adam vanished to go search. "Look at this though, Clars-"

"_Clars_?"

"Yeah, look," Oswin, ignoring her, said, "Her old CIA profile is, like, mild-mannered, hardworking, intelligent, polite - she has no negative traits and nothing negative ever reported about her apart from stuff to do with the Miracle in 2011, when she died - how does a girl like _that _end up becoming 'dangerous' and 'volatile'?"

"Well... well maybe she's not, maybe they're just scared because they don't understand her?" Clara suggested, "If _I _got locked up by UNIT, _I'd _get those labels as well."

"Yeah, well, if you got locked up somewhere without blood you _would _be dangerous and volatile," Oswin said, "But there aren't any recorded incidents except... a soldier she put into a coma for a month, but here, she made a statement, _she_ said it was by accident. The doctors said it was the equivalent of being struck by _lightning_, and all she did was touch him... this medical data is ridiculous though... where's Martha? Someone get-"

"I'm right here," Martha and Rose, Adam Mitchell trailing behind them, then came into the room. Oswin's break from humanity was, apparently, over. Well, maybe not, since nobody in the room was technically _human_, what with them being three Manifests and a vampire.

"Jack's not here, he's gone on the pull," Rose said.

"Are you kidding me? He goes on at me for the last week to find this girl and as soon as I do he goes clubbing?" Oswin asked in disbelief.

"I know, it's ridiculous," Rose said, then she spotted Claratoo, "_Why _are you here and why are you covered in blood? Have you killed somebody!?"

"No! Jenny regenerated, it's fine now, long story," Clara said.

"It really is a long story," Adam said, "Kinda boring too. She got stabbed by some girl Clara used to know, the end."

"What is it you were saying about me?" Martha asked Oswin, replacing Claratoo at Oswin's side. Rose came and hovered at her other as she went back over the details of this Esther being a dangerous and volatile prisoner who injected a blast of electricity with the power of a lightning bolt into a UNIT soldier by accident, also explaining that whatever she was, she was not a Manifest like the rest of them.

"Look at these EEG readings they took, though," Oswin said, showing Martha the data, which Martha stared at with her mouth hanging open.

"That's impossible," she said, "Her resting electrical brain activity is almost five _billion_ Joules, that's the same amount of power that a bolt of lightning has. She would short circuit the electrodes, no human body can store that amount of energy, even a Manifest, it's too extreme, it would need to be discharged somehow. It should not be possible to get readings like that at all, if that somehow _was _possible, the EEG would be disrupted."

"Yeah, but it hasn't been disrupted," Oswin said.

"Maybe it's what's keeping her alive?" Rose suggested, "If she was somehow resurrected, maybe this is a symptom of that?"

"I figure it must be, she needs the energy of a lightning bolt in her just to keep her on her feet, she probably-"

"Oh my god," Martha said, then to Rose, "Give me your phone - you have that witch's prophecy, right?" Rose muttered something about being sick of Martha ranting about that prophecy, but handed her phone over regardless and Martha skimmed through it, "It's right here, _this_ is right here: '_a girl with great power, the power of lightning, lightining is that which flows rather than blood, the storm is her source of life_'! It must be talking about her, this Esther." It did seem to ring true, Oswin thought.

"How long have UNIT had her? If this is from the end of 2018?" Rose asked.

"Since, uh... November, 2014. Got picked up by the police after breaking and entering a power station, eventually got passed over to UNIT on suspicion of being a Manifest," Oswin explained.

"They've had her locked up in the Tower of London for _four years_?" Rose exclaimed, "Well... well we have to do something. Who cares about waiting for Jack?"

"They're on alert for Jack looking for her anyway. But they're probably also on alert for us lot prowling around, too," Oswin said.

"We'll just fly the TARDIS into her cell," Rose shrugged.

"You can't do that, the Tower of London is TARDIS-proof," Claratoo said. Rose looked at her for a moment. "...What?"

"Do you know your way around UNIT HQ?" she asked.

"Well, yeah, I mean, I've been loads of times," she said.

"And youdon't show up on CCTV, do you? Or any cameras?"

"No," she answered.

"Well then you can come," Rose told her, "Good thing Jenny got stabbed, really, isn't it?" Clara's face fell.

"I really should get back to-"

"You're coming, end of. You and me. And Rory, Rory's invisible and he has superhearing," Rose said.

"No, no - I don't think - I have-" Clara protested fruitlessy, because Rose had assumed leadership of whatever rescue operation they were about to mount, and she was stuck being a part of it thanks to her vampiric traits. Oswin thought it was sort of funny.


	405. Shock Jockey

**AN: Time for the world's worst rescue mission. By the way, Esther is great and so is Series 4 of Torchwood, the only one she appears in. If some of you guys have not watched Torchwood - like me two years ago - you should check it out because it's ****_awesome_****. And the headwriter of S1 and S2 is the new headwriter of ****_Doctor Who_****, so it's kind of like getting new, actually-good ****_Doctor Who_**** like, two years in advance.**

_Esther Drummond_

_Shock Jockey_

Esther Drummond was lying on a cot-like bed in a white-walled, rubber coated cell, holding a copy of _To Kill a Mockingbird _over her head and reading it for roundabout the seventeenth time. It was one of the few books they allowed her to have, books and a pack of playing cards. She was not allowed anything electrical, the only electrical thing in the room was the light above, which was awkwardly placed and cast a peculiar shadow over the half of the room with the cot because of the heating vent that ran above her. Day in, day out, it whirred obnoxiously and there were clattering noises within from what she suspected were rats or stray pigeons. She had stopped believing she was really being kept in the Tower of London about two years ago, and instead decided she was in a facility deep underground and miles away from any main lines of electricity or large power sources. She even fancied the idea that she was in a little prison all on her own, maybe she was _that much _of a mystery to the British authorities she had been arrested by. Maybe, unknowingly in the night, she had even been _moved _to somewhere in a completely different country, or somewhere under the sea. It was so quiet sometimes she thought she could be underwater somewhere, in some secret place.

Alas, those images were shot to pieces by the sounds of thunder when storms came, and she was left believing the things they told her. Though they didn't tell her things often. Sometimes they told her Captain Jack Harkness had been spotted nearby so they were upgrading their security briefly in case he tried to break in, then they kept muttering things about some 'gang' he was with, and she sighed with internal, painful sadness that he must have just moved on and found a new Torchwood, as he always did. Who could blame him? She was dead. She had died seven years ago, resurrected three years later shooting lightning from her hands and syphoning electricity out of plug sockets and power cables, and they still had no answers for her about what she was. Mainly, because for so long, she had kept up the hope that somebody she trusted a great deal more than the British government might show up and be able to shed some genuine light on the situation.

The toilet sat in the corner along with a pretty pathetic excuse for a shower, though at least there were no creepily placed cameras as, of course, electronics were not allowed near Esther. This shower made the whole floor permanently damp and crackle with static when she walked across it, cringing at the sensation it brought her and her wet socks. It wasn't nice, she didn't get soap, all her clothes were white or grey or both and soft and boring, but their semi-comfortableness was the only decent thing she'd found in four years. Certainly not the food, the food was mainly porridge and soup and bread, and to drink she had water and if she desired milk. No coffee, no solid meat, no desserts, no nothing. But she'd gotten used to it.

Mindlessly she read, again, about Bob Ewell's attempt on the lives of Jem and Scout Finch, yet again thwarted by the enigmatic recluse Boo Radley, when she started hearing voices. Her immediate reaction, as she froze in her cot, Harper Lee's words hanging perilously above her, was that she was going crazy. She'd finally cracked. She was about to enter into a one-woman remake of _Cabin Fever_, minus the cabin, or _The Shining_, minus the hotel, and next thing she was going to be yelling through a broken door brandishing an axe trying to kill her family. Though, she suspected she didn't have a lot of family left, and she also did not have an axe, and the door was made of metal. It really was inescapable, they had taken every precaution.

Still, though, the whispers continued. Whispers coming from above. And banging noises, sounds not unlike the ones she always blamed on stray rodents in the air ducts, just louder, more pronounced, more... clumsy. She said clumsy because she heard a particularly loud bang from the ceiling, and then could have sworn she heard someone mutter 'ow.' She folded down the corner of the page she had been on - she was disallowed bookmarks for some reason which apparently involved self-mutilation - and clung onto _To Kill a Mockingbird_, swinging her legs over the side of the bed and waiting to see what might happen. The bangs grew louder and louder and voices, though muffled, were very nearly distinguishable. Then it all stopped, right above her. More whispering. She tried to make out the voice of Jack, perhaps, or that of Gwen Cooper or even Rex, if Rex had survived the Miracle like they told her he had. She was just another fatality, like Vera Juarez, killed in the line of duty and then unceremoniously resurrected by alien technology - not that the Unified Intelligence Taskforce knew that. She had kept it from them.

There was a strange, high-pitched buzzing noise, a drone, like nothing she had ever really seen before. And then, from a panel in the air vent, a screw fell out. Dropped right there on the floor next to her, and she lifted her feet up and pushed herself back on the bed. Another screw fell, then three, then four, and then with a crash the whole panel fell down and she jumped and nearly shrieked, glancing back up at the darkness. But she couldn't see anyone, no people, though she heard hushed arguments still. Whoever was hovering above her, they didn't seem to get along all that well. Two girls, at least. Then an irritated male voice ordered them to shut up, all three of them painfully English and not who she was hoping to see.

Then there were metallic sounds of an awkward kerfuffle, a soft noise of somebody getting hit, and then a slight, deep-voiced scream and a rope came flying down out of the air vent and there was a bang like something had hit the floor. There, appearing out of nowhere like a mirage or a phantasm, was a man, his neck bent against the floor and his ankle stuck in the rope.

"Pull me up a bit, Rose!" he called, and somebody wrenched him up off the floor so he was hanging just lower than Esther's eye level, Esther staring in unspeaking shock with wide-eyes because who the hell was this blonde skinny guy that had just fallen - _invisibly_ \- out of an air vent!? "Hi. Are you Esther?" She nodded uneasily, "We've come to rescue-"

"Is she hot?" somebody called down from above and interruped this rescuer, because had that really been what he was about to say? They had come to _rescue _her? Esther didn't say a word still.

"What?" the man asked, "Uh..."

"What's she look like?" the invasive female voice persisted. Esther still said nothing - this was the weirdest rescue she'd ever experienced, and she _had _been rescued before - and the man mouthed something to her that looked suspciously like the word sorry.

"Short and blonde with brown eyes. And American, apparently. So that's exactly your type, right?" he said, Esther feeling thoroughly objectified and semi-violated, hearing a harsh laugh from the vent that was different to the voice asking the funny questions.

"Dammit, I love blondes..." the original pervert muttered.

"Say that again, and I will stake you," the voice that had laughed said.

"You're not a natural blonde anyway, so-"

The rope holding up the man abruptly slackened and he crashed down to the ground and groaned, Esther still silently observing them and wondering how these three idiots had gotten past UNIT security in the first place - it was like _The Three Stooges_, or something. Then there was some brief argument involving someone getting punched, and to Esther's shock a huge dent appeared in one side of the vent. Whatever scuffle was going on, it didn't end well, because just seconds later the entire duct came ripping away from the ceiling above and two girls fell out and landed near the edge of Esther's cot-bed, about the size of one of those camp beds you could buy to put sleeping bags on. They landed on top of each other and a blonde pushed a brunette away with great, careless force.

"I'm Rory," the man drew her attention away as the women argued, "I am so sorry about those two. We're here to rescue you - if you're Esther Drummond."

"I am Esther Drummond," she said quickly, "I am."

"Right, the blonde one is Rose, the other one is Clara," Rory said, getting to his feet and rubbing the back of his neck, wincing, then he sat down next to her on the bed and she pulled her feet up and pushed herself more into the corner, "Rose? Would you be professional? Didn't you work for alternate universe Torchwood?" _Torchwood_!?

"She-" Rose began, pointing at Clara, who was alarmingly pale and covered in dried blood.

"Ignore her," Rory cut her off. Clara said nothing, and Rose sighed and came over.

"We're friends of Jack," Rose said finally.

"And it took him four years to find me? Why isn't he here himself?" Esther asked.

"He's on the pull," Rory told her.

"Which means what?"

"He's looking for someone to sleep with," Rose said, "Out clubbing. His wife left him a few weeks ago. Didn't she, Clara?" Clara, who had been mooching around the room looking at the walls, glared at Rose.

They embarked upon a ludicrous story, many intertwined ludicrous stories that even a million perusals of the best works in the English language would, without extensive elaboration, be painfully unable to fathom. And fathom them, Esther Drummond could not. She was no idiot, far from it, but they talked of complicated and somehow exceedingly petty affairs and marriages to aliens and other worlds and other times, the past and the future, and _manifests_ and monsters and prophecies and she, for all she was worth, did not have a clue what any of these things meant. Ultimately, she made the decision to merely play dumb and withhold whatever key information about her enigmatic resurrection she stored until they made good on their constant assurances that they really were a rescue party, and the only reason Captain Jack Harkness was not there was because they didn't think it fit to wait when they'd already accidentally, through skimming military files, made her entrapment for the minimum of four years a 'fixed point in time', whatever that meant.

For all the explanations she got about Jack's torturous marriage to the daughter of an alien, there were a dozen overly-defensive, sensitive rebuttals from Clara in the corner who was, _apparently_, a vampire, covered in the very blood of this wife of Jack's presently. And then this girl, Rose Tyler she said, launched into more tales of alternate universes and crossed dimensions and inter-temporal portals and something about disembodied brains, killer robots, dead future girls, the 'time vortex'. She couldn't make heads or tails of it and, finally, she had had enough and shouted over the top of their droll and pathetic arguments that she would, very much, like to be rescued finally, and wished they would just stop whining and complaining about each other for five goddamn seconds. When she yelled, the light crackled and glowed faintly blue for a second, the bulb behind the glass fizzing.

"Right. Rescue. The rescue sort of relied on the ability to crawl back up into that air vent..." Rory said, but the air vent was ten feet above, and to Esther it seemed like they were just trapped in there with her until the next lot of soldiers came to give her her next scheduled meal of tomato soup, as it was every three days, at which point this wannabe rescue party would be dragged from the premises.

Suffice it to say, to her great and gracious surprise, her expectations were not met.


	406. Date Night XVI

**AN: Having a stressful week right now so let me live for writing a pretty chilled Day of mainly fluff. The next two chapters are mainly fluff as well. Don't hate me for my OTP wish fulfilment, my laptop is literally getting fixed so I have nothing to stream _Supergirl_ or _The X-Files _or _Gotham_ on.**

_Eleven_

_Date Night XVI_

"Sweetheart?" Clara, lying down on the sofa with the pillows from her side of the bed propping her up, asked him. She had been in the middle of stacking books on their new bookshelves when she had been distracted by her own heavily annotated copy of _Othello_, and had begun to read it because of some reason to do with fancy futuristic jungle-barges being named after Shakespeare characters.

"Mmm? Yes?" he asked, examining that seashell collection of hers she had yet to tell him the origin of, though only with his eyes. She would not take kindly to him touching them.

"If you thought I was cheating on you, would you strangle me?" she asked.

"You've been reading too much Shakespeare, darling," he told her boredly, looking over at her. She looked at him over her shoulder, and then moved to be sitting with her elbow on the armrest and her chin on her hand, keeping her page in _Othello_ with her thumb.

"Would you, though?" she asked him strangely sweetly, giving him eyes. What sort of eyes, he didn't know. Innocent ones, he suspected.

"Well, what would you propose I do if I suspected you of cheating? Surely you wouldn't expect me to merely trust you, or ask you myself? Clearly, Shakespeare thought positive communication between newlyweds was awful, and Shakespeare _was_ a genius. Who are we to refuse to follow his wonderful example of what is clearly the perfect marriage?" he asked, practically suffocating on his own sarcasm and suppressing a smile on his face. He maintained a serious expression though and leant on the bookshelf with one hand on his chin, a thinking expression, meeting her eyes.

"I appreciate your sense of humour-"

"As always."

"-but what would you _really _do if you thought I was cheating?"

"Wallow in my own paranoid misery? Oh, I know, ask your sister," he decided.

"What if I was cheating on you _with_ my sister?"

"Well I suppose then I really _would_ be forced to strangle you, you deplorable nonce," he said.

"_Nonce_? That isn't what _nonce _means, Chin," she said.

"Why are you _reading _a play, anyway? If you're so interested we could always go and see it. I hear it's on at the Globe in 2030," he said. She sighed and closed it finally, walking over to stick it back on the bookshelf where it belonged with the rest of her Shakespeare. "Clara?"

"What?"

"We live in a time machine, do you want to go and see _Othello _at the Globe in 2030?" he asked her. She stood and thought.

"I dunno, I mean, it's pretty heavy for an impromptu date - and it _does _always annoy me how he never just _asks_ Desdemona if she's cheating on him," she said.

"In 2031 they're doing _Twelfth Night_?" he suggested.

"Yeah, let's go see that," she said, "But when?"

"We're not exactly busy, Clara," he told her.

"I'm stacking books!" she protested, "I was supposed to stack them, like, three days ago but there was all that stuff with that pregnancy test and those bloody cats. What are you gonna do with them?" They were both leaning on the bookshelf opposite each other.

"_Me_? It's nothing to do with me."

"They're on _your _TARDIS, they might as well be your children," she said matter-of-factly. He stared at her.

"I have a child, as a matter of fact," he said, "She lives down the hall, and she's not a cat. In case you're forgetting."

"How could I ever forget your daughter? She's like an alien Desdemona."

"Yes, and if she's Desdemona that probably makes _me _a racist. Would you give over with that play? You're not being very convincing about the fact you don't want to go and see it. We _could _go see it right now, in fact. Get dressed up and everything - I could wear a tuxedo, and a top hat. Any excuse to wear a tuxedo. And a cane, I love a cane," he said, "I know - what if I wore a tuxedo all time? And a top hat?"

"_I know_," she said, copying his excited tone of voice and stepping towards him, "Why don't you wear a top hat in _bed_?"

"Well, that would depend," he began, letting her stand on tiptoes in front of him.

"On what?"

He leant down a little and whispered, "On if you're being serious." On her tiptoes, she pulled him towards her with her hand on the side of his neck and he kissed her, because that was clearly what she was aiming for. Besides, as oddly human as the activity of kissing _was_, he did enjoy it _greatly_, especially with his wife. Alas, their lip-locking by the bookshelf was cut irksomely short by very loud, aggressive knocking at the door.

Clara let him go and he rested his head on hers.

"Who the hell could that-" she began.

"CLARA!?" shouted Rose Tyler, interrupting her.

"Do you think she'll go away if we ignore her?" the Doctor half-whispered, and then she kissed him again as though it were decided that the pair of them were going to undertake this ploy of selfish ignorance.

"NO I WON'T GO AWAY!" Rose yelled, and Clara jumped away again. Rose continued banging her fist on the door and shouting Clara's name. Eleven was at a loss to how she had heard that comment.

"Oh, for..." Clara muttered, leaving him to continue his examination of the bookshelf, wondering why she had ordered her books in a very strange yet oddly specific way, since she had been so thoroughly controlling about where things went on the shelf. She answered the door and the annoying shouting stopped, "Yes? What do you want?"

"Is it your sister? Off to continue being a nonce?" Eleven, knowing full-well that it was not her sister, asked wryly, smirking to himself. The wall prevented him from seeing Clara or their visitors, but he looked in her general direction when she shouted at him.

"Stop calling me a nonce! It means pedophile! If I was having sex with my sister, I wouldn't be a pedophile, would I!?" and then she apologised to whoever it was and asked them what they wanted.

"To see your husband," Rory (so _that _was how Rose had heard his remark) said.

"Wait, wait, wait," Clara said as Eleven walked over to lean on the wall next to her, seeing four people outside, one of whom was a blonde he did not recognise, but she had almost impossibly long hair and looked notably dishevelled, "You shouted _my _name and asked for _me_, yet it's my husband you want to talk to?"

"Well I'm here now, feel free to continue being a sexual deviant," Eleven said, smiling at her, and she glared back at him. Then he spied all the blood on who he presumed to be Beta Clara, standing there, unimpressed and morose, "Whose blood is that? Have you killed somebody?"

"No I have not killed anybody. It's your daughter's, someone broke into my house and stabbed her with a katana," she answered.

"A _katana_!? But - but - is she okay? She regenerated, didn't she? Did she?" he asked urgently.

"Yes, she's fine, just... blind and handless. Until her eyes grow back. And _I've _just been covered in blood for, like, three hours - speaking of which, before you get all of this stuff launched on you, can I stay here tonight?" Beta Clara asked him, and he frowned.

"What? In here?" he asked confusedly, motioning back into their bedroom.

"No! In Jenny's room, obviously, I'm exhausted, and someone broke into my house and tried to kill me so I'd rather not go home just yet," she said, annoyed, "And I'm really not fussed about lightning girl over here."

"_Lightning girl_?" Alpha Clara and Eleven both asked, Beta Clara motioning to the mysterious and _very _bewildered-looking blonde.

"Yes - can I just stay? I'm going to pass out any second," she argued.

"Yes, yes, fine," Eleven sighed and waved her away.

"Hang on - Clara?" Alpha Clara called.

"What?" Beta Clara, who never liked it when had to talk to her doppelgänger because she wasn't as used to clones of herself as the other was, asked resentfully with her hand on the doorknob into Jenny Harkness' room.

"Do you remember that trip to the Eden Project when we were seventeen?" she asked. Beta Clara looked away for a moment.

"No, I do not remember who we got off with. You're three years younger than me anyway, surely you're more likely to remember it than me?" she challenged.

"Maybe you have super vampire memory or something, how should I know?"

"I don't even remember being turned into a vampire in the first place! Leave me alone," she said, then she vanished into Jenny's room and slammed the door.

"What's going on, then, Rose?" the Doctor asked pleasantly as Alpha Clara rolled her eyes at the bad mood of her Other Self. He stepped forwards so that his hand was along the edge of the door above Clara's head, "Who is this girl?"

"This is Esther," Rose introduced her. Esther was alternating between staring at the space where Claratoo had just vanished and staring at Eleven's disgruntled wife, "You know, the girl Jack's been obsessing over all week?"

"Oh, yes, of course! _That _Esther!" Eleven smiled at her warmly. She remained confused by dual Claras. He wasn't going to lie, on occasion he himself was confused by dual Claras. "Wonderful, why is she here? Not that you're a burden, of course, guests are always welcome on the TARDIS."

"Great, because she's staying with you two because Jack's not here," Rose declared.

"Sorry, what?" Eleven's face fell.

"You're not going to be inhospitable, are you?" Rose asked, "I mean, I just thought it was better since you have your own bathroom and everything? Give Adam and Oswin a break since they only just got rid of his sister?" Rose was still being bitter about them having their own bathroom still. It was almost entirely Rose's fault that the ridiculous bathroom situation had come about in the first place - Eleven thought she should count herself lucky Clara had persuaded him not to steal all the food two and a half weeks ago. Not that anybody else knew about that.

"Of course we aren't, Rose," Eleven said, "After all, it is a wonderful shower. Don't you think, darling, how nice it is to shower and go to the toilet in peace?"

"Oh, yeah, it's awesome," Clara said, "To think, Rose, if you and I hadn't had such a wild night in that bathroom together, we might all still be allowed to have privacy."

"Don't even start," Rose said to her.

"That's not what you said to me all those weeks ago. Pretty sure what you said was, 'don't even _stop_.' And I didn't stop, no siree," Clara said, and Rose began to walk away. Rory already had walked away, "Just let me know, Rose, if you wanna revisit the shower any time soon?"

"Shut up! That never happened! It never would happen!" Rose shouted.

"But we had such a good time!"

"You wish, Clara."

"I do wish, I wish all night long. You have a sexy walk," she added, and Rose made an almost disgusted sound and vanished into a door, leaving Esther Drummond alone in the corridor. Clara turned to Eleven then, "She's pretty hot. I get why you fell in love with her."

"Yes, yes, that was three-hundred years ago. Let Esther in, would you? And could you go look in that linen cupboard for spare blankets? We don't have any," he asked her, and she sighed but stepped out of Esther's way and then left after her, leaving him to introduce them. "Well first of all, make yourself at home. Second of all, I'm incredibly sorry for how petty people on this ship can be. Honestly, some days it's like living in a soap opera, and I deplore soap operas ever since I got cut from _Holby City _in 2007 - do you know, I was supposed to be Dead Body #3! I ought to tell Clara about that when she gets back."

"Why are there two of her?" Esther, whom he now realised was an American (another blonde American, _just_ what he needed.)

"Oh, alternate dimensions. One of them she married me, one of them she didn't. And now the one who didn't marry me is dating my daughter - who, I'm sure it was mentioned - used to be married to Jack. Very briefly. But she's 208, she can date who she likes. As long as they aren't Captain Jack Harkness... though she has kept his name. Anyway, anyway, that's not important. What _is _important is that _I _am the Doctor, I'm an alien, 1200 years old, and when I die I regenerate and change my face. Well, not _just _my face. Then there was some complexity involving the things that stablise the dimensions on the TARDIS - that's this spaceship you're on board, stands for Time And Relative Dimension In Space - we call them the Dimension Stabilisers. Anyway, they broke, pulled everybody here including multiple past versions of me and a girl version from the future. Are you following?"

"Yes," Esther said.

"Good, good. So the ship is a time machine, I'm a Time Lord, all the other humans here are Manifests, then there's the vampire you met, Jenny my daughter, Nios, who is a synth, a robot and a hologram. And speaking of holograms," he began as he heard Clara return to the room, "If you think two Claras is weird, wait until you get a load of Oswin."

"Leave my sister out of things if you're not going to be nice," Clara ordered him, going and dumping a spare duvet and about three plush pillows on the longer part of the corner sofa.

"How many togs is that duvet?" Esther asked.

"That? I don't know. Fourteen? Fifteen, I reckon?" Clara shrugged, "Why?"

"Because I've been sleeping on an awful cot in a white cell for four years and a fifteen tog duvet might literally be heaven," she said, staring at it.

"A cell!? Four years!? Where? Why?" Eleven asked in shock.

"In the Tower of London, with UNIT," she said.

"UNIT!? Well they've really gone down in my estimations! I ought to have a word with Kate about this. You have her phone number, don't you?" Eleven asked Clara.

"No," she said, "I have her address from when we went and shit her up in 2028?"

"That woman - honestly, her father would never have done something like this, god rest his soul. Why were you locked up in UNIT?" he asked. That was where he and his wife were met with a _shocking _(pun most definitely intended) revelation that this girl, Esther Drummond, had the resting brain activity of a lightning storm and had not been allowed to touch any electrical objects when she stayed in the Tower of London. "You live on electricity?"

"And food and water," she added, "Speaking of, I don't wanna sound rude, but have you got anything to eat around here?"

"Well, we still have that pizza, don't we?" the Doctor asked.

"She's not having any of that pizza, it's five days old," Clara told him.

"So?"

"_So?_ So it's disgusting."

"Well _you _eat out of date coleslaw."

"Oh my god, it was only two days out of date, and _somebody _had to eat it. Do we have anymore, do you know?" she asked.

"No! Honestly, you're an animal."

"You could do a roast?"

"If you want a roast you can go to your father's. Which you did only the other day - I don't understand how you consume so much gravy, it's abhorrent. Now be quiet, would you?" he said to her, and she rolled her eyes, "We have a guest and you're being rude." It was true, Esther had been watching them both talk to each other as though she were an intruder.

"Sorry," Clara apologised to her, "Thing is, we don't spend a lot of time around other people when we're both together because they sort of refuse to hang around with us."

"Okay..." Esther said uneasily.

"Do you want a drink? Any drink. We can go out somewhere and get something?" Clara suggested, "Besides, we haven't had tea yet either. Ooh, we could go to a fairground and get candyfloss?"

"Candyfloss is not a meal, and no. A month ago we went to the Ritz, and now you want to go to a fairground?" Eleven challenged her.

"You have a problem with fairgrounds?" she asked him as though she were offended on the behalf of an imaginary fairground. He shook his head and didn't bother answering her.

"Do you have coffee? I haven't had coffee for years," Esther asked, "A mocha?"

"Sure, sure," Clara said.

"You know how to make mochas?" the Doctor asked her.

"Uh, yes? I was a barista for like, almost five years, you know," she told him, and he stared at her, "Did you not know that? I figured you must have realised when you stalked me for my entire life. And you have the nerve to call _me _a nonce or a sexual deviant. Why did you think I'm so good at making hot drinks..? It was, like, my job while I was at uni." He continued to stare at her.

"I had no idea. I suppose you learn something new every day."

"Well, that's what happens when you get drunk and elope with somebody you don't actually know all that well in Las Vegas, isn't it?" Clara said.

"You eloped in Las Vegas?" Esther asked them.

"If you know how to make mochas, why do you always make me go and buy them!?" he exclaimed suddenly.

"...Chill out, it's just coffee. Besides, as if you ever buy them, you have no money. And _we_ have no coffee..." Clara crossed her arms.

"I kinda want McDonalds," Esther said.

"Oooh, that's a good idea," Clara decided, "What do you think, sweetheart?"

"No, I refuse," he said.

"You _always_ refuse McDonalds, I don't understand why," she said, "Well _I'm _getting McDonalds with Esther, _you_ can just stay right here and... I don't know. Do whatever it is you do when I'm not here. Read, or something."

"Yes, I might continue reading all of your _Frankenstein_ annotations," he said, and she sighed, "Or I might go see Jenny. I suppose Other You will be in the shower washing off that blood. I'd best show some fatherly support..."

"Mmm, probably, what with her dying and all. Oh, if you do, get her to text me if she wants McDonalds. And Other Me, I guess," she said.

"She's blind, Clara."

"Well then get her to call. Or you text from her phone. Or make Other Me text, I don't know," Clara shrugged, going to find her boots where she had left them, "I just feel like your daughter isn't as bigoted as you when it comes to fast food. Besides, she _did _die, and I figure if I died I might want McDonalds. In fact, I _know _that when I die I want McDonalds."

"It's bad for you," he told her. She just shrugged.

"What's the date, by the way?" she asked.

"The date? It's the 6th of November." She stared at him.

"_Is it_? God, we've missed Bonfire Night," she said.

"Oh, what a shame, Martha will be disappointed."

"Ha, ha."

"What's Bonfire Night?" Esther asked.

"On November the 5th we light fireworks and set fire to straw dummies and pretend they're Guy Fawkes because he tried to blow up parliament like, five-hundred years ago and failed, so we celebrate the king surviving. Although, it's cold, and you always end up stinking of wood smoke. Plus, my family always used to eat spare ribs, and I don't even like spare ribs so I would just sit and eat a lot of garlic bread - which is all well and good until you're stuck in the middle of autumn at some relative's house tasting old garlic and stinking with your least-favourite aunt telling stage-whispering to everybody that you're a waste of space and your English degree is pointless. And _then _I stopped going to Aunt Fiona's bonfires," Clara said. More about this mysterious, evil aunt she did love to complain about, "Not that _that's _important."

She went and picked her coat up off the floor where she had dropped it, then looked at her husband and suggested they get coat pegs or a hatstand, and he sighed and said he would sort it because he didn't have anywhere to hang _his_ coats, either. Then he watched her leave, her assuring Esther that they would go to a discreet McDonalds somewhere where nobody would ever see them again and it was totally fine that she was wearing all-white pyjama-esque clothes and looked like she had escaped from a secure mental institution.


	407. Last Of The American Girls

_Alpha Clara_

_Last Of The American Girls_

"Whatcha doing?"

"Jesus!" Clara exclaimed, jumping with she realised Thirteen was speaking to her and had been leaning on the wall right outside of her bedroom.

"I didn't know Jesus was into that," she shrugged. Clara glared at her. What was she doing just standing around out there? What if Eleven were to come out and ask her what she was doing? Or anybody? Esther Drummond hovered confusedly behind Clara, and Clara couldn't quite imagine what it must be like to just be picked up unceremoniously by the TARDIS and shoved into the bedroom of a married couple with a bunch of alternate versions of people. It was a good thing she had yet to meet Oswin - though Thirteen was only a stone's throw short of her sister-in-law when it came to weirdness. She had already made a strange impression of herself on the ship's newbie by skulking around in the first place. Clara figured she was just bored because she didn't have Ellie Mitchell to babysit anymore, relating all of her decades' worth of adventures to her that she refused to tell anybody else, and even if Clara _did_ understand her motives, she was still jealous.

"What are you doing?" Clara asked her coolly.

"I asked you first," she said, smiling.

"Don't flirt with me."

"I'm not flirting, sweetheart," she said defensively, then Clara raised her eyebrows and she realised her mistake, "I mean, _not_-sweetheart."

"...Esther, this is the Doctor," Clara said to Esther, "Another one. From the future."

"Yeah, I mean, I guessed I'd better introduce myself before you got a load of schtick from everybody else for being That Other Blonde American Girl or something," she shrugged, holding out her hand for Esther to shake.

"I can't really touch living things," Esther admitted sheepishly. Thirteen clenched her fist like she was annoyed at herself for not realising (or possibly for forgetting) something like that. Thinking of which, Clara was absolutely sure she had heard this Doctor mention the name 'Esther' before.

"You're right, I am so sorry. It would _totally_ suck if you accidentally electorcuted somebody. I mean, unless it was Jack. Or Clara, that'd be kind of sucky," she shrugged, crossing her arms and leaning on the wall, still smiling. She leant on the wall the same way Eleven did.

"'Kind of sucky'? Aren't you supposed to be in love with me?"

"Well I _am_, but it didn't bother me that much when you fell off the diplodocus the other week. _This woman_," she began, addressing Esther, acting as though she knew her quite well, "What was it, three weeks ago? We're in the Natural History Museum in London in 1951 and she _climbs up _the diplodocus fossil, falls off, and dies. I mean, how am I supposed to have any sympathy? Besides, you were fine." That confused Esther, as it would anybody.

"I was not fine, I had to shampoo my hair _twice_ to get rid of all the blood. _Anyway_, we're going to McDonalds, and I don't appreciate you creeping around out here," Clara said, walking past her.

"Yeah, and I kinda thought Esther would appreciate hanging out with somebody who doesn't have a stupid accent." Esther laughed, and Clara was offended. "Plus you need somebody to fly the TARDIS."

"...Fine... Don't try to touch me up or anything, though," Clara said, annoyed, stalking past her.

"I've literally never tried to touch you up."

"Yeah, well, don't start..."

* * *

It was always a surreal experience to be sitting in a relatively rural McDonalds at some god-awful hour of the night in a suspicious little group clumped together in a corner, especially when you all kept getting strange looks because one of you went and claimed two burgers, three milkshakes, two mochas, forty chicken nuggets and five portions of large fries on the FBI. That seemed to be something this Doctor did a lot, pretended to be from the FBI to get free things. It worked, though. Clara spent the majority of that particular 'dinner date' marvelling at the ludicrous amount of food Thirteen was capable of eating.

"Right - what is the metabolism of a Time Lord?" Clara asked, holding a chicken nugget with one bite out of it in her hand, Thirteen having already eaten near enough two of the chip portions, one of the burgers and fifteen nuggets, not to mention finishing a large milkshake, and they'd only been there for half an hour. The bloke behind the counter was looking at them pretty shiftily.

"Uh..." the Doctor thought, "Like, six-thousand calories per day? Sixty-five hundred? Something like that."

"That's how many calories a day you burn!?" Clara exclaimed, "_Over six-thousand_?"

"Uh-huh. Over three times as much as you," she said, "It's like, a hundred and fifty watts. The amount of energy I get from that is the reason I can happily stay awake for a week."

"You only sleep once a week?" Esther, who was even more surprised at this than Clara, what with her not being subjected to aliens with freakish appetites on a daily basis, asked. The Doctor nodded and ate two more chicken nuggets at once.

"I thought you said you were gonna save some of this for Jenny?" Clara asked her.

"_Jenny_? Wifey, that girl just _regenerated_, she might as well be on a two-hundred watt metabolism, I'm gonna have to clean out the kitchen before we leave for her," Thirteen said. Clara was just glad they hadn't been persuaded to get McDonalds for everybody else on the ship, since apparently they'd had KFC. Which annoyed her somewhat, because neither she nor Eleven had been offered any KFC at all, and she _loved_ their tubs of coleslaw.

"So this regeneration - what happens?" Esther inquired.

"Well," Clara began, "You're married to a man for who knows how long and then suddenly one undisclosed day he dies and changes gender and you're like, 'thank god I'm bisexual.'"

"That's a very shallow description," Thirteen commented, and Clara shrugged and ate a handful of chips when she turned back to Esther to explain in more genuine terms alien regeneration, "When I die - as long as both of my hearts are still intact and I'm not decapitated or something - I do a little trick where I change my whole entire self and come back as a totally different person. Apparently an American this time - speaking of, Coo, do you like these sneakers?" _That_ was a sly sentence on the Doctor's part. First she used a pet name because she just couldn't ever seem to fully stop herself, second she brought shoes into the mix (and everybody knew how much Clara adored shoes, even if she was annoyed at the Doctor calling them 'sneakers'), and third her shoes were a pair of high-top Converse with the stars and stripes on them.

"I'm going to set fire to them while they're still on you're feet," Clara said, "You're not even American, why do you do this? Most Americans don't even seem to like you."

"I kinda like her," Esther said.

"Oh no, she's totally justified for saying that. Ronald Reagan put me on a most wanted list for the CIA in 1984. Which I for one think is ridiculous, because here _I_ am showing up at the Pentagon all off my own back to tell them how to actually succeed with the creation of SDI, so they get SDI off the ground but then I 'accidentally' may have mentioned that I also hung around a lot with Trotsky in the 1890s and he had me deported," Thirteen said, a story which Clara had never heard before. Then she turned to her and said like she had experienced an epiphany, "I think I was wearing these exact sneakers, too."

"SDI was never fully initiated by the US military though," Esther said. Clara didn't know what 'SDI' was, in all honesty, and had originally thought her wife had said S_T_I and was embarking upon a tale about contracting a venereal disease from one of America's most popular presidents.

"Yeah, because they didn't trust me or my solutions to their problems. 'Cept - no offence to you less-intelligent humans - _my _solutions were the only ones you guys had," she shrugged.

"Wait until she tells you about the time Andrew Johnson kicked her out of the White House in 1867 for being 'too red,'" Clara said, a story which she _had _heard before.

"I think it was Jackson," Thirteen said, "I always get those two mixed up. They were _both_ awful people, though."

"How many Time Lords are there, then?" Esther was enthralled by some of the things the Doctor was saying about American presidents, and Clara wondered if she might start spewing all of the same stories to Esther that she had been to Ellie Mitchell for the last week. The Doctor began chewing slowly, and Clara wondered if she might have to break the silence and reveal the truth of the Time Lords' de facto extinction.

"Just me," she said, "Me and the other Doctors, but they're all still me. And when I come from I never see them anymore - who wants to hang out with another version of themselves? Apart from, I dunno, terrible narcissists in their mid-twenties." Clara tried to ignore that comment most definitely directed at her. "They all died. There was a war."

"What about Missy?" Clara asked.

"She doesn't count, she's from the other universe. Plot twist: they're not dead in that universe. I don't know the particulars of it. I'm pretty sure they had something totally, super-major to do with Other You's death," she shrugged, "We were playing Solitaire together two days ago, on MSN."

"_MSN_?" Esther said in near-horror.

"Don't even ask," Clara said, "And what do you mean you were playing it _together_? Solitaire is one player."

"Maybe it was Pinball?"

"Also one player."

"Chat Roulette?"

"_Chat Roulette_!?" Clara exclaimed, "Sweetheart, Chat Roulette is not a game, it's just masturbation webcams and pedophiles."

"How do you have a daughter if there's only one of you? Is she, like, half-human?" Esther asked.

"_Jenny_? Half-human? God help you if you ever suggest that to the girl. No, she's... sort of a clone. But only sort of. We're not, like, _identical_ or anything. I mean there's a vague resemblance, but she's from a single-parent progenation machine. Don't mention it to her whenever you meet my pride and joy." _Pride and joy?_, Clara thought. Thirteen turned to her next anyway. "Are there any rules you guys give to newcomers?"

"Don't let Jenny have sex with you?" Clara suggested.

"Well there's no danger of _that_ happening for about a dozen different reasons," Thirteen said.

"Uh... pfft, I dunno. How come you shoot lightning, anyway? I haven't seen you shoot any lightning yet," Clara addressed Esther and changed the subject.

"Because I haven't accidentally touched anybody yet. If I did, they would get electrocuted. I can't help it. I can power electrical devices without them being plugged in, though. UNIT caught me trying to syphon electricity from inside a power station. Once there was a power cut in that cell though, it was like I couldn't breathe. I _need _the electricity," she said.

"But why?" Clara asked, "How were you brought back to life?"

"Alien technology," Esther said.

"Say no more," Thirteen interjected, "I'm serious. Tell her husband later. He can figure stuff out, you'll have answers by tomorrow, promise. But right now we change the subject."

"Touchy," Clara muttered.

"Not to you I'm not."

"I'm not _that_ into you."

"Um, trust me, Clara, you're _definitely _into me. But change _this _subject too, Esther doesn't want to be dragged into any of the weird lesbian feuds on the TARDIS."

"_Feuds_?" Clara frowned, "I wouldn't say there were any feuds, and not between us, especially."

"Oswin and Flek?"

"Flek doesn't live with us."

"Jack and Jenny."

"That's not a _lesbian_ feud, that's a you-cheated-on-me-so-I-cheated-on-you-we're-both-idiots-as-bad-as-each-other-and-now-we-can't-be-in-the-same-room feud," Clara said, then she resolved to genuinely change the subject and went back to Esther, "You know, I've always been fond of the name Esther. Ever since I read _The Bell Jar_." Esther stared at her.

"Are you kidding me?" she asked.

"What..? Do you not like _The Bell Jar_?"

"I apologise for my wife's Plath obsession," Thirteen added.

"It's a bit hard to like a book when the whole thing is about a girl with the same name as you trying to kill herself," she said.

"Oh, I guess so. Because I could never get into _Sons and Lovers_ because of Clara Dawes in it. Also because all the Oedipus Complex stuff freaks me out..."

"God, imagine if your name was Lolita," Thirteen mused.

"Lolita's name isn't even Lolita, she's called Dolores," Clara said.

"How many people would know that though? And regardless, Dolores _Umbridge_ is a more prominent and arguably less desiresble literary figure," Thirteen told her, crossing her arms.

"I wouldn't give anybody featured in _Harry Potter_ the honour of being called a 'literary figure,'" Clara pointed out sharply, "And maybe people would know what her name is if they bothered to read the book."

"You can't blame people for _not _wanting to read that book, just like you can't blame people for _not _wanting to read _A Clockwork Orange_," Thirteen argued.

"_Lolita_ is a masterpiece of lyricism, I'll have you know, even if the subject matter is a bit... blue."

"_Blue_? You're calling a book about a rapist pedophile _blue_?" she questioned, "Could you have picked a more passive adjective?"

"It's a good book. And besides, he _does _end up dying paifully in prison," she shrugged, then she saw Esther looking at them, "Oh, I'm sorry, are we being rude?"

"No, no," she said, smiling, "I'm happy to listen to the conversations of other people. Never been a big socialite. Have you met any other presidents?"

"Nixon," Thirteen said, "But ask Clara's husband about Nixon, that was him, he'd love to tell you about it, I'm sure. I did _warn _him about Watergate..."

**AN: So, I _would_ avoid this fluff, _but_ Esther Drummond is not a permanent crew member as some of you may or may not have figured already from Thirteen's allusions. If you think of, say, Luke Smith as a guest character, and Esther Drummond and her cohorts are recurring characters and will have other non-TARDIS based 'adventures' elsewhere. So, because of this, there will be minimal interaction in the regular course of 3D9C between Esther and Thirteen, so this genuinely my only chance for that. This chapter wasn't even going to exist until two days ago. And the next chapter is the last chapter of fluff and is, yes, _more_ Clarenny, _but_ it has minor revelations in it. Also, my sincerest apologies to the very excited guest who figures that the Third Whoufflé wedding is on Day 141, i.e., November 23rd. Now, that's not true. The venue they're using will be booked for the date the 23rd of November, but what with them living in a time machine, they will not abide to that constraint and as a matter of fact their wedding isn't even scheduled in my plan, and whatever venue this is they haven't even found it yet. I may, however, do a Whoufflé-exclusive storyline that day, because it seems fitting.**


	408. Another Girl Another Planet XI

**AN: Seriously guys, my laptop is away getting fixed so it's like my soul is broken, and I'm having a tough week anyway, so I will write as much fluff as I damn well choose, no complaints.**

_Beta Clara_

_Another Girl Another Planet XI_

She waited a great length of time before emerging from Adam and Oswin's bathroom, doing so much scrubbing of her skin to try and wash the blood off herself she felt like Lady Macbeth. She was incredibly grateful, however, to discover the existence of a cache of 'emergency blood,' this done when Oswin presented her with a large flask full of the red stuff that was Clara's new ambrosia. All in all, it had been almost an hour since their return to the TARDIS with Esther in tow, and this was when she finally decided to brave going into Jenny Harkness' room and facing... whatever was waiting for her. Well, she _had _already seen Jenny very briefly upon her return, but only to procure a towel and steal some clothes she was now most definitely entitled to because she had nothing else to wear and didn't fancy trying to get anything out of Alpha Her's wardrobe. She was very surprised to return and find an obscene amount of McDonalds stinking up the place deliciously. Jenny was sitting with a pair of rather fetching sunglasses on that made her look like a bombardier from the 1950s eating chips with her left hand only, but she looked up at the door when Clara came in and Clara saw her frown.

"Can you see me?" she asked immediately.

"I can see very dark shadows right now," Jenny answered, "And I'm very sorry but I don't know who you are."

"I'm the vampire," she answered. She noticed a strange, large bandage on the end of Jenny's right arm that looked like a mitten - hiding her weird, growing-back hand, Clara assumed.

"Oh. Hi. Would you mind telling me what's what out of all this food? I'm having trouble determining just by smelling," she asked.

"Only if you share. Where'd you get all this?"

"Courtesy of my mother," she explained, "And of course I'll share. I don't even know what most of it is."

"Well..." Clara began staring around, pushing some of the food away so that she could sit down next to Jenny on the bed, "I think she emptied the entire shop, christ..." She picked up a box of six chicken nuggets.

"Is there a chicken legend?" Jenny asked. Clara stared around until she spied a box that declared its contents to be such, and picked it up and held it out to her, having to nudge her in the shoulder with it so that she could find where it was.

"What's with all the food, then? A bit peckish?" she asked, looking around for a drink. She spied them on the bedside table on Jenny's side.

"Something to do with energy for the healing process, I don't know that much about regenerations. That's what mum says, anyway," she said, "All I care about is the fact I'm _starving_." Clara could smell that all of the drinks (there were _four_) were chocolate milkshakes, so she leant over to try and grab one. "What are you doing?"

"Huh?" Clara turned to face her and her sunglasses, about two inches away from her nose because of the way she was leaning across her to get to the drinks, "Getting one of these milkshakes. Why?"

"Because you're suddenly very close to me and I didn't know what you were doing. I didn't know there were milkshakes," she said.

"Do you want one?" Clara whispered, leaning even closer than she had been before, though this time on purpose. She was also smiling, though she suspected Jenny didn't know that.

"What flavour are they?"

"They smell like chocolate."

"Okay. Why are you so close to my face?"

"Why aren't you leaning away?"

"Generally when girls get a few milimetres away from your face they're trying to kiss you," Jenny explained, and then Clara laughed and relented and did kiss her, softly, as she picked up a milkshake. Then she broke it off and sat back down. "Where's this fabled milkshake?" she asked when Clara slurped.

"Literally on your left, get it yourself," Clara said.

"You made it seem like _you_ were going to pass me one," she said, disappointed, taking another bite from her chicken legend. Clara was exponentially tired and was not looking forward to trying to sleep in a room that stank very pungently of fast food. She shrugged, then realised Jenny couldn't see.

"Oh well," she said.

"Where've you been, then? You didn't say a lot when you came to steal my clothes."

"Oswin found out where that girl, Esther, was," Clara said, and she then related back the entire story of breaking into the Tower of London and then back out again with a girl who managed to, somehow, entirely short-circuit the whole facility, including some annoying laser tripwires.

"Laser tripwires? I'm great with those, I wish I could've gone," she muttered, "The day I was born I did about fifteen backflips in a row over some lasers, my father was very impressed, as was Donna." Clara, after having a brief moment of contemplation to imagine how hot Jenny Harkness doing fifteen backflips over lasers must have been, finished by saying she hadn't stuck around for long and Esther was apparently rooming with Other Her and Eleven. There were more important things going on in her life than some old flame of Jack's (if she _was _an old flame) coming back to life. "Is she pretty?"

"Uh-huh," Clara answered.

"How pretty?"

"At _least_ a seven. Easily an eight. Nine at a stretch," Clara said.

"Is she nice?"

"She seemed nice. I don't know, I was more focused on arguing with Rose because she tried to punch me and broke the air duct we were in and totally ruined the plan. We had to improvise and bash the door down. I sort of just hid away," Clara answered, "Why? Are you jealous?"

"Jealous?" she asked, puzzled, "Why would I be jealous?"

"Well, you know, what if I cheated on you?"

"Why would you do that?" Jenny asked.

"Well I wouldn't, I just mean..." she didn't know what she meant, she had been joking, and usually she was used to Jenny saying something mean or sarcastic - or both - back at her and there would be some mildly amusing repartee, but Jenny seemed oblivious to this motive.

"You shouldn't cheat on someone - I mean, just save them the pain and break up if you're not happy," she said. Though Jenny could not see it, Clara was staring at her with chewed chicken nugget floating around in her mouth. She swallowed it before speaking again.

"You cheated on Jack, remember?"

"Yeah, I know, I was thinking about that, and I should apologise. I mean, he's still really upset and it was equally my fault, and _I'm_ not really upset anymore so there's no reason for him to be," she said.

"...You're going to _apologise_? To _Jack_? For _me_?"

"No! Nothing to do with you - _I'm _the one who persuaded you to be friends with benefits and then lied to him about where I was going. I just mean, we're all adults, he has to move on at some point. And I don't want people being angry at me," Jenny said, but Clara couldn't help but think this sounded awfully suspicious. She admitted that maybe she was a _little_ paranoid about the fact Jenny and Jack still lived together and, on a not entirely unrelated note, she still hadn't got this explanation from Jenny about why she kept his surname.

"...Jenny?" she asked.

"Mmhmm?" Jenny, back trying to eat her fries after finishing the chicken legend, asked.

"...Why did you keep his name?"

"Okay, okay," she relented, "I guess I'll tell you, there are a few reasons. Firstly because the name 'J. Harkness' scares the heck out of a lot of people, and I also kind of like being Commodore J. Harkness because it's a rank higher than captain... but I also like Major Harkness. Secondly, I change my name all the time _anyway_. My first surname I stole was DeLacey - that was after Emmett DeLacey, the guy the gun is named after. Then when I was a sous chef in Venice it was Aloisi, when I was a smuggler in Berlin it was Kitzler, when I was with the Alliance it was Young, it's been Miles, Woolf, Dyer, Raxis, loads. Now it's Harkness. But anyway.

"I was DeLacey when I lived in Louisiana brewing moonshine in the 1930s - a whole different story involving the Depression and Mardis Gras, ask me about it another time - but when the Second World War started I moved from America to Britain and joined the military as a medical officer and ended up attached to the 133rd Squadron of the RAF. They were an aviation squadron and in early January they were stationed in Cardiff, right? And the leader of that squadron was one Captain Jack Harkness. On a different note, the Jack who lives here on the TARDIS was a Time Agent who then travelled _back _to the 1940s after they stole two years of his memories. So there's Jack and Captain Jack, the latter being the 'real' one.

"Captain Jack ended up dying as part of a routine training exercise that turned into an attack on the 2nd of January, 1941. Then when Jack showed up in a stolen Chula spaceship he took his name and assumed his identity and that was when he met Rose and my father and joined the TARDIS crew, back when he was still mortal. It was a matter of convenience. But I keep Jack's surname because I knew the guy he took it from in the first place, he was a good man, he never lost a soldier," Jenny explained.

"Were you and him..?"

"He was gay, Clara," Jenny said flatly, shaking her head a little, "But there you go, mystery solved. Why? Would you prefer I became Jenny Ravenwood?"

"Kind of has a nice ring to it," Clara said quietly. There was a pause which grew a little awkward until Jenny picked up a box of mozzarella sticks and cleared her throat.

"So what was that Ashildr was saying about you looking at pictures of me on your phone?" she asked wryly. Clara said nothing. "Are you blushing?"

"No," she lied.

"I guess I can forgive you for not calling me at all while you were frozen if you thought I was some mass-murdering psycho-general who needlessly got a million soldiers killed and never told you about it," Jenny said, "I can't believe that you got caught looking at pictures of me, though."

"Well - I - no, I mean - look, I had a huge, unrequited crush on you and I'm in these photos too, it's not _my _fault you don't remember me taking them, it's not like you were asleep or anything," Clara said, "And even if it wasn't unrequited, I still _thought_ it was. And I don't even remember anything to do with Ashildr."

"I think it's cute," Jenny said.

"_I_ think it's embarrassing..." Clara muttered. They were quiet then, Clara eating a cheeseburger, interrupted by her phone going off. She glanced over at the screen. "What the_ fuck_?" she said when she saw what she had been sent over Facebook, picking up her phone and staring at it.

"Don't swear, Clara," Jenny said.

"You'd swear too if someone you don't even know just sent you a dick pic," Clara said, holding her phone sideways to see it from a different angle.

"Someone _what_?"

"Well not _me_, _Other _Me, it's her Facebook I'm on... oh... oh god, he just sent me a message saying 'Remember the Eden Project?' Jesus christ..." she muttered, "I remember it now. He had a weird birthmark on his penis. Still has."

"You can't just send someone a picture of your penis, that's awful," Jenny said.

"Well it's not like I asked," Clara said defensively.

"That's not what I meant. Someone ought to teach this guy a lesson."

"Why don't _you_ teach him a lesson?" Clara suggested.

"_Me_!?" Jenny exclaimed.

"Well I did watch you fight Ashildr with your stick for a while before I intervened - I mean, I was confused and you were _really _hot - I'm pretty sure you can beat up some guy I went to high school with... even if he is apparently a professional bodybuilder now..." she added after going onto his profile. He was sort of fit... Jenny wasn't saying anything. "Jenny? ...What's the matter?"

"What's the matter is that I've died twice in as many months and at this rate I'll be dead permanently by the end of the year," she said, switching the mood completely. Clara locked her phone and put it face-down next to her so she couldn't see anymore perverse texts she might get, "I mean, I got stabbed. By a katana. I can sort of forgive the facehugger because it launched at me and I had absolutely no clue what it was, but there was a girl standing right there with a sword and I ended up letting my guard down enough to get stabbed through the heart."

"Jenny, Ashildr is millions of years old," Clara said, "The Doctor told me once that she became, like, a master in everything."

"She's still just a human though. _I_ am not, and all of a sudden I'm... weak, or something."

"You're anything but weak," Clara said quietly, shuffling closer to her on the bed and basking, as usual, in the warmth she emitted. She was like a sun all of her own.

"You know what it is, Clara?" Jenny turned to face her, even though she was still blind.

"What?"

"I've let myself go."

"_Let yourself go_? You're literally, like, ripped. I mean, you're tiny and you can't really tell how much of your body mass is like, sheer muscle until you sleep with you, but seriously. It's like, a religious experience."

"You're a vampire, don't go saying things like that."

"I'm serious. You're like... a ballerina, all petite and dainty but then someone touches you and you're like a stone made of dense muscle. You must have about zero percent body fat or something. Get ready for another story about my sexual promiscuity, but one time me and this gay guy I knew went to watch this ballet version of _Hamlet_, I think, literally because we were both nineteen and wanted to watch attractive people run around in leotards for two hours. Anyway, skip ahead until eleven that night, we're in a nearby pub and the dancers all walk in and I end up pulling Ophelia - I can't remember what her real name was, but she played Ophelia - anyway, it was some of the best sex I've ever had is what I'm getting at. It honestly might have been _the _best until you showed up," Clara said, "Ballerinas are so hardcore. Although you should have seen how bruised her feet were, god, and they bled a bit. That industry is so unforgiving, and here I am sitting around just reading books acting like my life is so damn hard."

"Right... as touching as that story of you shagging some girl eight years ago is, Clara, for the longest time I haven't actually stuck to any fitness regime. Which I used to, because I was an acrobat for ages, and then about five years back I went out of practice," Jenny explained, "I have to get the TARDIS to make a gym. No doubt my father has never stepped foot in a gym in his life... this hand better hurry up and heal."

"What's it look like?" Clara asked, slurping even more chocolate milkshake. She once heard a rumour that McDonalds milkshakes weren't legally allowed to be called milkshakes because they didn't contain any milk, but she didn't really think that was true. Probably something some weird vegan told her a few years back, or a random kid at Coal Hill.

"I can't see it," Jenny reminded her that she was blind.

"Oh my god, I'm so sorry, I didn't..."

Jenny laughed, "It's fine. It feels very small and raw and I would rather not take it out of the weird dressing Martha put on it to show you."

"Aw," Clara said.

"You know what I was thinking about earlier?" Jenny seemed to want to change the subject away from her own fitness. Clara hoped she wasn't going to become all sporty and start doing Zumba, or something. She really hated Zumba. Before Clara could say anything Jenny asked her another question, though this one was just to direct her to wear the milkshakes were.

"What were you thinking about?"

"The first thing you ever said to me."

"What? Like, _ever_? Over a year ago? Before Danny died?" Clara asked incredulously. Whatever those words had been, she did not remember them. Jenny nodded and Clara winced. "Oh, god... what was it I said? I bet it was awful..." (**Chapter Ref. 371**)

"You went home ill or something, remember?"

"Because I fainted and went a bit weird after seeing _the Eleventh Doctor_ in the staffroom, what with me previously being in love with him and adjusting to the new one poorly, trying to hide my new, budding relationship," Clara said.

"Well, yeah. Then they got me to go your flat and prepare you for the news of what was really going on. Isn't that weird? They send me along? Just like the other week when you were turned into a vampire," Jenny said.

"Maybe we're meant to be," Clara said grimly.

"Anyway, I said 'hi.' Then _you _interrupted me and said, 'if you're selling something, I'm not interested.'"

"Eurgh, how embarrassing."

"Then I had to explain everything. And I barged right into your flat and made myself tea and in the end my dad got decked by your boyfriend, so it wasn't very productive. If I was more insensitive I might comment that it's amusing he was worried about my father's presence in you life when, unbeknownst to all of us, your future girlfriend was hanging around in the kitchen," Jenny said.

"Yeah, well, I can't eat anymore of this food," Clara sighed.

"How much is left?"

"Three burgers, a chicken salad, and two portions of chips. And two more milkshakes. Do Time Lords get acne? Because if you do you're in for one hell of a break out tomorrow," Clara said, gathering up all the rubbish and taking it to the bin in the corner of the room. She then switched the light off and threw herself back down onto Jenny's bed.

"I've never had a spot in my life," she said.

"You lucky swine. Now I'm going to sleep, because it's like, six in the morning to me."

"Goodnight, Clara."

"Goodnight."


	409. Modern Prometheus

**AN: So this storyline I've been pretty excited for for _ages_, and it _should_ (if all goes to plan) be kind of lighthearted and comedic.**

_DAY ONE-HUNDRED AND TWENTY-FIVE_

_River_

_Modern Prometheus_

"I just don't get it, though," Rose continued talking about the same ridiculous thing she had been for the last twenty minutes over her Cornflakes, "How does the sea still exist?" Nobody had an answer for her. River was sitting at the same table as Rose and Nios, and River Song never could understand why Nios bothered to spend any time in Nerve Centre. If, as she constantly raved, she really did deplore all of humankind, why did she sit with them in the living room while they all ate breakfast? Not that River was eating anything either - she couldn't really, not anymore - but _she _thought of the crew as her friends, and besides, there wasn't much of a place for her anywhere off the TARDIS anymore, so she might as well spend time with the cohorts of the Doctor and whoever else he dragged along.

Nios stared at Rose sidewards as she contemplated the oceans, mushy cereal in her mouth, Nios understanding Rose's sudden infatuation even less than River did. Nios spent more time with River than she did with anybody, which River always put down to them being somewhat kindred spirits, both of them machines, except River had once been organic and was hundreds of years old, and Nios had existed solely mechanically for less than a decade.

"I think you should drop it," Nios advised her. The Tenth Doctor had been subjected to Rose and her confusion for the entire morning already and was apparently showering, though she suspected this was to do with him desiring to escape anymore questioning.

"But it doesn't make sense," Rose complained.

"Maybe it just doesn't make sense to _you_?" River, insensitively, suggested. Rose swallowed her mashed up Cornflakes and dropped her spoon in protest in her bowl, turning a glare with sparkling, turquoise eyes about as blue as Nios' on River.

"And what's _that _supposed to mean?"

"Well you're not a fish," Nios interjected, "So what's it to do with you? If you were made to be in the sea, you would have gills, just like if _I _was made to be in the sea, I would be waterproof to more than a depth of ten feet."

"Why are you waterproof at all in the first place?" Rose asked.

Deadpan, Nios responded, "Rain."

Before Rose could retaliate again and keep on her topic of why the ocean still existed, or had _ever _existed, they were all distracted by the arrival of a blonde. There were a lot of blondes on the TARDIS and, in River's opinion, they were all equally troublesome (she was sitting next to two of them, and she was one herself.) This one, however, she did not recognise. Rose did, though.

"Esther!" she called in greeting. River realised that this was the mystery girl Captain Jack Harkness had been looking for for the better part of a fortnight, and wondered when she had arrived. It was quite early, barely eight o'clock, and there wasn't anybody in the room save for the three of them. Esther having nowhere else to sit and being flagged down imprudently by Rose Tyler forced her to come over and perch herself on the chair furthest away from the trio, who were sat at one of the tables. Rose, quite jovially, made the introductions, "Everybody, this is Esther Drummond, the girl Jack got all weird about. She's been locked up in the Tower of London for four years because she has lightning powers, but she's not a manifest. Esther, this is River and this is Nios, Nios is a robot."

"I'm not a robot," Nios said flatly to Rose.

"Well, you're sort of a robot."

"I'm not a robot," she repeated her statement a little more coldly.

"By common definition-" Rose began, and Nios repeated herself for the third time until Rose relented and told Esther that Nios was a synth from the late Twenty-Second Century. Nios did not say hello, she just sat in silence and eavesdropped, like River knew she regularly did. She was nosier than Rory - and Rory's nickname was 'the Nose.' River didn't get an introduction at all, not even an incorrect one, like Nios'. In fairness, she didn't know how much there was to introduce. Rose moved on, leaning close to Esther like she was going to confide something in her, "You're clever, right?"

"Uh..." Esther said. The only thing she had said so far.

"Good," Rose said, as though Esther had replied in the affirmative, "You know the sea, right?" Esther frowned, River rolled her eyes, and Nios groaned in annoyance. Rose ignored all of this dissuasion and continued regardless, "Well it's full of salt, right? And we put salt on roads to melt ice because it absorbs moisture. So why hasn't all of that salt we get from the sea absorbed the entire sea?"

"It's a stupid question," River said.

"I guess because of ratios?" Esther suggested.

"Oh, are you American?" Nios asked, and she nodded. Smiling, Nios said, "I killed an American once."

"You know, Nios," Rose was getting a bit miffed now with people not taking her gripe with seasalt seriously, "You're always going on about killing humans and whatever, but I've never actually seen you kill a human."

"Who are you suggesting I kill? You?" Nios said, looking at her. Nios was an incredibly monotonous person, with possibly the dryest sense of humour River, in all her centuries, had come across. At least recently.

"Well no, not _me_... what about... what about Jenny? Kill Jenny," Rose said, pointing at the door where Jenny Harkness really had just entered, which River was surprised by, because she had heard a rumour that Jenny had regenerated after cockily picking a fight with a Samurai in fuedal Japan and getting run through with a katana - apparently it had all been something to do with the opium trade. Well that was what Oswin, when River had overheard her discussing katanas with Martha over KFC last night in Nerve Centre, had told her when she asked. Jenny definitely had regenerated, though, because for the first time in a month and a half River saw the girl with two organic hands. Another blonde who caused trouble. If Thirteen deigned to make an appearence, they'd have a full set.

"Jenny is a Time Lord," Nios, slowly and patronisingly, reminded Rose. Rose seemed to be deciding whether or not to punch Nios' android head off right then as a confused Jenny came over to nose around and see what they had been talking about, as anybody who had just entered into a room while somebody was dared to try and kill them would. She sat between Esther and Nios, before realising she did not know Esther.

"Who are you?" she asked. She seemed very tired.

"Esther Drummond."

"Oh, _you're _Esther?" Jenny said, a beam splitting her face, and River thought she was about to hug this new person she had met, "Clara was right, you _are_ pretty."

"Clara's not still here, is she?" Rose, annoyed, asked.

"Yeah," Jenny answered, "I guess she'll leave some time today. She has to clean my blood off the carpet." She grinned as she spoke. "She'll be through in like, five minutes, she's only gone to the toilet." Rose moodily went back to her neglected Cornflakes.

"Is the thing about the katana true?" River asked her.

"Oh yeah, totally," Jenny assured her. Wow, River thought, so Oswin really hadn't been lying about the Samurai and the opium...

"You're not what I expected," Esther said to Jenny.

"Expected? From me? Who's made you expect things from me?" Jenny asked, "What _were _you expecting?"

"Everybody seemed to mention you, is all," Esther said, "Jack's ex-wife who cheated on him with her stepmother and is an alien who eats a lot of food and comes back to life."

"Your reputation preceeds you," River said to her. Jenny seemed unhappy thinking about that, so she changed the subject, "How's the hand?" Jenny held out her hand and stared at it, "And the eyes - your eyes have grown back too, haven't they?"

"I don't have night vision anymore," she said disappointedly, "And my nails are so short, they need a manicure, but they have to grow more first."

"How awful," Nios mumbled. Jenny ignored her comment and then remembered that she had originally come into Nerve Centre so that she could cook an entire packet of bacon rashers just for herself, ignoring Rose's comments that that was unhealthy, especially since she already stank to high hell of McDonalds.

"Your body won't stay so perfect forever," Rose quipped, and Jenny stuck her tongue out and skulked away to the fridge the same time a very fervent Jack Harkness, in his pants only, came bursting into the room. By how messed up his hair was, River assumed that his time on the pull the night before had been successful. It was a very strange reunion she witnessed though, with everybody observing as Jack, almost mad, tried to hug Esther and, though she protested... succeeded. Unfortunately, due to this business with lightning, after a few seconds Captain Jack was about as burned as barbecue ribs and was frazzled, dead and on the floor. Esther seemed more embarrassed than anything else.

"Idiot," River tutted, "He should have listened to you."

"No means no," Rose added. Jenny in the kitchen watched for a second and then went back to dumping a full pack of bacon into the biggest frying pan she could find. Jack sizzled on the floor. He would wake up in a minute.

"So it worked?" Esther said to them.

"What worked?"

"Trying to stop the Miracle, they told me it did, but I didn't know for sure," she answered. Oh, of course, River remembered hearing about that - everybody on Earth ceasing dying for a few months. What a weird business it had been. Esther explained that it had been something to do with Jack's blood, and so Jack had become mortal while everybody else had become _im_mortal. River was shiftily watching Jenny fry bacon while waiting for her to make some snide comment - but she hadn't said anything snide yet all morning. Before Jack could return to life, Clara came into the room. Which, River couldn't deduce immediately.

"Do you want anything for breakfast, Clara?" Jenny asked her. So it was Beta Clara. Beta Clara looked at Jenny for a long moment, frozen near the door, not yet noticing Jack's temporary corpse.

"I'm the other one," she said finally. So it was actually _Alpha _Clara. River hoped Beta Clara would leave soon, she didn't like having to keep track of all these clones they were stuck with, especially when she didn't really like them all that much. Well, she was mostly indifferent to them now, unlike Rose, whose friendship with Clara had subverted into an odd sort of dislike out of envy for something. For what, River neither knew nor cared. Undoubtedly it was something petty and not worth her time.

"I know, I was just asking if you wanted anything for breakfast. I mean, my dad _always_ has to cook you breakfast, I should give him a break," Jenny said.

"Oh, right. How about some of that bacon?"

"No, the bacon's all mine."

"What, _all _of it?"

"Mmhmm. There's none left."

"...What about an omelette, then?" she suggested eventually, then she saw Jack's body and decided to ignore it and go and sit on the other table, and Esther drifted away from Nios, River and Rose in favour of Alpha Clara's company. Then Jenny asked Esther if _she _wanted anything, and she also declared having a fondness for omelettes. Biding time until Jack awoke, Clara asked Jenny the same questions about her hand and her eyes that River had done, and got the same response.

Jack gasped back into life with burns in his boxers and flopped over onto his front like a fish, coughing.

"Wakey, wakey, rise and shine," River cooed at him sarcastically. Rose and Nios both laughed a little.

"Esther!" he shouted again, like he had forgotten she was there.

"Don't touch me, I'll electrocute you... again. I can't touch anything living," she told him quickly.

"_Electrocute_? What do you mean, 'electrocute'?" he asked, standing up and brushing black dust from his own burnt skin off of his arms. Esther, with some adlibs from Rose and Clara, proceeded to explain all about how she had apparently been revived with some kind of alien technology, the origins of which she did not know, and had been holed up in the Tower of London from 2014 to 2018 with no sign of rescue. When Jack asked why the hell nobody had told _him_ they'd found his old friend back to life, Rose got into a brief shouting match with him about the fact he had been out on the pull last night. Jack then got in a very bad mood, regardless of Esther's resurrection. He had been in a lot of bad moods recently; River blamed Jenny. In the end, after his reunion had been completely trampled on by Rose's complaining and yet another death under his belt, he made to storm out.

"Wait - Jack - can I talk to you?" Jenny called from the kitchen as he was about to leave. There was a spell of silence as Jack stared at his recent ex-wife and she looked back hopefully, an omelette cooking away behind her along with her bacon.

"_You_?" he said finally, and she nodded, "No way." Jack passed Beta Clara on his way out, who stepped as far out of his way as she possibly could and he completely ignored her presence. Jenny sighed and forgot about it within a moment, asking this Clara also what she wanted for breakfast. Surprise, surprise, when she saw Jenny was already in the midst of making _one _omelette, she also asked for an omelette. She was holding something in her hands, River observing because she wanted to know what Jenny could have wanted with Jack - weren't they finished?

Rose started talking about the sea again, turning her question on Alpha Clara now, so River resolved to listen in to whatever Beta Clara and Jenny were talking about to deduce either what Jenny wanted Jack for, or what Clara was holding. Jenny kept fidgeting with the fish slice she was holding in her new right hand, swapping it back and forth as she pushed her bacon around.

"Look what Oswin just gave me when I went to the toilet," Clara said, holding up whatever-it-was.

"Are they glasses?" Jenny puzzled, and Clara said that they were and they were designed to work as sunglasses and shade her eyes and also eliminate all UV rays so that she could see when she went out in the daytime, but they looked like regular glasses so she didn't look like a weirdo, "I've _always _said you should get glasses because they make you look cuter. Y'know, I've been thinking about getting fake ones. I mean, a good amount of my parents all carry fake glasses around so that they look cleverer."

"My sister clearly just has a thing for glasses," Alpha Clara called across from the other side of the room, Beta Clara sliding them onto her face and blinking, "She did give them to her boyfriend as well. And she steals his all the time. It's like a fetish, or something."

"If Oswin has a thing for glasses, doesn't that mean you also have a thing for glasses?" Rose challenged her.

"Oswin has an IQ of over three-hundred, it doesn't mean I do as well," Clara said.

"She has _what_? Who?" Esther asked in alarm.

"My sister," Alpha Clara said, "Sort of. It's complicated."

"And you're a bit less pervy," Rose said.

"I would like to think I'm a _lot _less pervy than that woman, even if she _has_ told Helix to call me Pervert Supreme this week," Clara grumbled.

And then there was not much by way of conversation because there didn't seem to be much to talk about. Princess Sparkle Tutu the Pregnant Cat was asleep on the sofa, and now River looked at it, it definitely did seem abnormally fat. It was really a matter of weeks before half a dozen freaky little mutant kittens were bestowed upon them for looking after, and _then_ they had to find people to pawn them off on. Esther seemed unhappy that she had recieved such a brief and traumatic welcome from Jack, and that he had immaturely stormed out. Though Jenny, when she finally sat down with her monstrous amount of bacon stacked up on a plate, assured Esther that Jack would get over himself later and she ought to go talk to him at the end of the day. If River had to, she would say Beta Clara wasn't too pleased at Jenny talking about Jack and offering pity towards him. Rose started talking about the sea again and River had half a mind to go and sit somewhere else.

Just as she was about to genuinely do that and move to whichever sofa had the least amount of ginger cat hairs stuck to it, the Eleventh Doctor had to go and make a particularly alarming entrance, bursting in through the doors and shouting something about Frankenstein, of all things, doing that flailing thing he did and pointing at Esther Drummond. They could never all just have a _normal_ breakfast, could they?

"What are you talking about?" Esther asked him.

"You!" he said, "Like Frankenstein's monster, getting" - here he made an odd noise River knew was supposed to be electricity - "all, you know, _revived_. Electrically. Lifts the Creature up in the lightning storm! Clara knows, I was just reading her copy of _Frankenstein_, and it reminded me of you. And, better than that, there's an old friend of mine, Nick, who'll be willing to help find out a way to manage this condition of yours."

"Your 'old friend' _Nick_?" Alpha Clara asked him incredulously.

"Yes, Nick! I've told you about Nick before, gave me an anti-gravity pen, wonderful chap. What's that you're eating?" he asked suspiciously.

"Your daughter has cooked omelettes," Alpha Clara explained.

"_Omelettes_!?" he practically shouted, glancing between the half-eaten omelette on his wife's plate and his daughter and her gargantuan bacon supply. Bless him, River thought, he'd always been very sensitive about his omelettes. Jenny quite proudly told him then that she used to be a sous chef. "Did you?"

"Yeah."

"You've never said."

"Well you never ask me about myself, do you?" she said to him, "None of you Doctors do, except Thirteen but she's known me for way longer. I have great stories."

"Well, I'll... I'll ask about them later. We should have dinner. Clara's always having dinner with her father," Eleven waved a hand vaguely in Alpha Clara's direction. Jenny smiled and told him sure, but on the whole it looked like he, at least, had experienced something highly surreal and unprecidented. "Anyway. Off to see Nick. Anybody else want to come?"

"I don't want to come out," Rose began, "But I have a question for you, Doctor. About the sea, and salt..."


	410. New York, New York

_Eleven_

_New York, New York_

What a wonderful spring day they stumbled across in Nineteenth Century New York City, on the hunt for an old friend of the Doctor's - a particularly amiable and favourite acquaintance of his, really, up there on his list with old Chamberlain, Nev to his friends, who'd always been an excellent fellow in the Thirties, until the stress of the job began to get to him. The exact date escaped him, but it was languid and temperate and gorgeous, the skyscrapers around them looking strangley malformed as they were nowhere near as tall yet as those towers in Manhattan would become. There were still forty years until the Empire State Building was more than a thought in somebody's head, and those art deco monstrosities of the Rockefeller Centre were yet to exist either. No, everything was very small and seemingly much cleaner.

"Isn't this nice?" he said, stepping out of the TARDIS on a street corner with few cars skimming past and great conglomerations of drifting, buoyant pedestrians on the pavements, "Of course, you wouldn't even recognise that this is Times Square. Look at it, no billboards, no gridlock traffic - America as it was intended, back before all of the consumerism and the advertisements took over. Ruins the scenery, all those flashing lights."

With him there were five others; his wife, of course, who had for once decided to join him on one of the more regular TARDIS escapades instead of insisting if they were together they were together alone; then there was also Claratoo, who was in a great deal of discomfort and had a black umbrella held over her head to protect from the sunlight, glasses he had never seen before on her face, so pale she seemed malnourished; and River meandered along thoroughly jaded and unimpressed by downtown New York in this decade; even Nios wasn't the most thrilled, and he wondered why she had tagged along. So, of course, he was more than happy to have the new and refreshing addition of Esther Drummond the Lightning Girl, who was blown away by the minimalistic, pre-big business metropolis.

"But - but doesn't this thing stand out? What's it supposed to be?" Esther, awestruck, spoke of the TARDIS. Apparently he had already missed the bigger-on-the-inside moment he so adored, which disappointed him a little. He was cheered up by the fact he could fainly smell hotdogs rather than exhaust fumes.

"It's a police telephone box from the 1960s - back in the day, these were all over London. And of course it doesn't stand out, it has a percrption filter, makes you ignore it unless you know what it is," he said.

"I'd watch yourself," Clara jokingly advised, "Next thing you know, he'll get you drunk and try to marry you. Honestly, he did the same thing to me, _and_ to Marilyn Monroe."

"I'm not going to apologise for the fact Marilyn Monroe was very taken with me, Clara. Marilyn Monroe hasn't even been born yet, anyway. Off we go, it's this way," he said, pointing with his hand. He would much prefer to point with a cane or something, but he didn't have one. He _had _asked to borrow his daughter's vampire-bashing cane, if purely for aesthetics, but she had unfortunately told him she did not have it with her. And then she had withdrawn to bed because she was still healing internal, sword-originating injuries.

"Contrarily," Claratoo grumpily began, following him like everybody else around the first corner they came to, "He might get you killed tragically." River, though he knew she was joking a lot more than Claratoo in this sour mood of hers was, murmured knowing agreement of her statement.

"Oi! It... _you_ gave your life heroically, I'll have you know, Song. And as for you, I have absolutely no idea. And as a matter of fact, neither do you. Though I offer my most gracious condolences for you current... condition," he said, giving a small bow.

"Thanks," she said sardonically, giving him a bitter fake smile in the shade of her umbrella.

"I would offer you something in consolation, my daughter's hand in marriage, for instance, only I'd hate to risk damaging it after she only grew it back yesterday," he said, smiling politely at her. Claratoo did not seem happy, and because of this Nios was very amused, because she had such a cruel sense of humour.

"I don't know, you do wear wedding rings on the _left_ hand?" Alpha Clara suggested.

"I could always get you a sympathy card and a bunch of orchids? And then we could all listen to _My Way_. What about sausage rolls, or those little triangular sandwiches you always have when people die? No garlic bread, though, obviously."

Claratoo pulled a face and then Esther interjected with more very welcome questions, possibly saving the mood from being spoilt. A very slow car trundled past.

"What about us, though? Don't we all look weird?" she glanced around at the group, "People are staring."

"Oh, probably," he shrugged, seeing these staring folks across the street. He beamed at them and waved, "Nevermind about it, we shouldn't be here long. I doubt any of us will see them again. Now where's this workshop... I haven't been here for years. Doesn't help that it's supposed to be a secret - old Nick's supposed to be in Colorado."

"Who is this guy, 'Nick'? How can he help me with the power to shoot lightning? Has electricity been invented yet?" Esther asked.

"Planet Earth is on the very cusp of electricity and power stations and... lightbulbs, for instance. The beginning of the American industrial revolution is just around the corner. The telephone is still new and exciting," he said, "Wonderful time, love it here, great place for a wedding, I always... hold on a moment..."

When the Doctor stopped, everybody else stopped too, as they turned onto a street where three police officers were questioning - if questioning was the word, he would possibly say they were _roughing up_ \- a relatively tall and lanky fellow. The Doctor stared in horror at his well-dressed old friend being accosted by the three uniforms, and saw they were clearly arguing. The people walking past gave the quartet a wide berth, or crossed the road, so the Doctor did the opposite and crossed to go towards the pugilist disturbance rather than away just when one of the officers pushed his friend in the shoulder and he dropped a parcel he had been carrying.

"Excuse me, excuse me!" he shouted, "What are you good fellows doing to this kind man? He's a friend of mine, you know, and I don't appreciate you giving him this sort of treatment. I ought to complain to your line manager."

"_Line manager_?" one of the officers questioned him.

"This man here is a good pal of... of..." the Doctor paused when he had reached them, frowning.

"Cleveland," his old friend muttered.

"Yes, excellent, Mr Cleveland. President Cleveland. Very good friend of his, and you wouldn't want the president down here, now, would you? Because he would come all the way across from Washington with his little horses in his little carriage and _then_ you'd be committing treason, and how would you like that?" he challenged them, crossing his arms.

"This man isn't even supposed to be in New York, he should declare himself to the authorities," a different, grimy looking cop said to him.

"_Declare himself_? This man is a genius, not a bottle containing one-hundred millilitres on a commercial aeroplane," the Doctor said.

"A what-o-plane?"

"Don't exist yet," his friend told him.

"No, and neither do body-cams, either I assume. Despicable treatment. I work for the FBI, you know."

"The what?" a cop asked.

"The... the... the White House. I work in the White House. Look, right here, I have it on paper, _The White House_," he waved his psychic paper in their faces, "Have any of _you _ever seen the White House? Because I can tell you, it's more ivory than white, and in a thousand years it will be eggshell and then they'll renovate. Shall I draw you a picture?" he asked, and they stared at him, and then finally decided that he was a lunatic and he wasn't remotely worth their time, so they gave his friend a snide warning about 'watching himself' and then slunk away to the other side of the street. The Doctor watched them leave with his arms crossed, and then turned with a smile to his friend, "What's all that about, eh? Got the rozzers on you? Not caused another state-wide power cut, have you?"

"State-wide power cuts? I believe you have your dates mixed up again," he told the Doctor.

"Oh, do I? How unfortunate. I was aiming for 1900, how far off am I?"

"It's '93. How did you know where I would be?"

"Well, I didn't. I'm just in the mood for one of those famous, American county fairs. Do they exist? How long have you been living here, again? Do they have prize pigs? I've always wanted to meet a prize pig. Ah, here's Esther, Esther will know - Esther! Do they really have county fairs over here?" he asked her.

"Yeah, sure," she answered.

"With pigs? Do they put hats on them?" he asked eagerly, and she shrugged, "I hope they do. We ought to go to one, all of us. Maybe I'll take Jenny - do you think Jenny likes pigs? What about dodgems? Have they got dodgems?"

"What's a dodgem?" Esther asked, and he stopped and thought.

"...A bumper car," he remembered finally.

"Oh, sure. Probably. You call them dodgems?" she seemed amused, but then River interrupted.

"I think you're getting distracted," she told him patronisingly, and he paused.

"Yes, you're quite right. Anyway, this is Nick, my good friend," he said, putting his arm around 'Nick's' shoulders, "Nick, this is Esther, she can shoot lightning, wants your help so that she possibly stops shooting lightning. It's very inconvenient, killed a friend of ours this morning," he patted his shoulder.

"I do wish you wouldn't call me that, _or_ touch me with those hands. I haven't a clue where they've been, and you're always a brute when it comes to personal hygiene," he quipped, pushing Eleven away from him. Then he turned politely to Esther, "Nikola Tesla, at your service. I would shake your hand, but maybe that's not for the best if what he says is true."

"Wait, wait - when you said, your 'old friend Nick,'" Alpha Clara began, "You actually meant Nikola Tesla? _The _Nikola Tesla?"

"Well he's always telling me I'll be famous one day. Who's this, Doctor? She looks like that girl you always used to draw in that notebook when you stayed with me for a while," Tesla said to Eleven, trying to embarrass him on purpose.

"Notebook? Don't be ridiculous," Eleven scoffed, though Tesla was telling the truth. Eleven cleared his throat, "Yes, anyway, this is Clara, my wife."

"Another one?" Tesla asked jokingly, stooping down to pick up the package he had dropped on the floor when the police had been over.

"Very funny," the Doctor mumbled, "Moving on, this is River, my dead ex-wife. She's a robot. An automaton, with an advanced brain encoded into her. And this is Nios, she's a robot, too. Well, a synthetic person. A feat of human ingenuity. Do you know, Nios, if it wasn't for this visionary here, you might not even exist." Nios gave him a cold look but said nothing.

"Neither would Tinder, probably," Beta Clara commented, scowling around. Honestly, he didn't know _why _she had agreed to come out in the sun. Just because she would be bored with Jenny napping. She might be welcome, but he wondered if she could have just gone home and made her own afterlife easier.

"Oh, what a shame," Esther, _very _sarcastically, said.

"What's Tinder?" Eleven asked, and there was an awkward pause he did not understand, "What?"

"Never mind, Chin, it's not important," Alpha Clara assured him.

"Right. Anyway, the one with the umbrella is Clara as well, but a different one, from a parallel universe," he said, "In one universe she married me, in one she didn't, to put it the short way. And is there any other way except the short way when Clara's concerned?" He was the only one who laughed at his own joke.

"I will bite you and drain you of blood," Beta Clara told him flatly.

"It is never a good idea to bully one's own wife," Tesla said, examining his parcel. The Doctor dropped it without comment.

"What's in the box, then, Nick?" Eleven slapped his back again, "Old Nicholas. Nicky."

"I hope you pay for my dry cleaning," he said.

"My hands are perfectly clean, I'll have you know. What is it, though? A new invention? Something genius? Hair curlers? An electric guitar? Or - I know, a _key_tar, I've always wanted a keytar. Have you invented a keytar?" he asked eagerly.

"It's just a new toilet roll holder," Tesla told him.

"Is it? Oh, how boring. I expected more from you. Anyway, Esther, Lightning Girl. Do you think you can help? Where's your top-secret New York lab? I couldn't really remember the address," he said.

"I never gave you the address. But far be it from me to refuse to help a Lightning Girl," he said, smiling at Esther, who was borderline starstruck.

"The joys of time travel, eh? What a good first trip. Not an awful first trip, like Donna's to Pompeii. Simply dreadful... Off we go, then. Lead the way, old boy," Eleven smiled at Tesla, and Tesla finally sighed and beckoned for them to follow him to wherever it was his secret lab was. Secret labs were the Doctor's favourite clichés.


	411. Nikola Tesla & You

**AN: 4D12C is officially longer than 3D9C. Wait til you get a load of 5TC. Part of me _wants _to use American spellings in Esther's narrative, but then part of me doesn't care and can't be bothered will spellcheck changing "apologize" back to "apologise." Forgive me, but I am English and I am stubborn. Also, you guys know how I don't like historical inaccuracy much? Well, this storyline may be a tad historically inaccurate and I'm taking many creative liberties with timelines and dates for certain things being invented.**

_Esther_

_Nikola Tesla &amp; You_

The Doctor was weird, that was a given, but he was in equal parts wonderful. What kind of a life she had just stepped into, she did not yet know, but she liked it. This was the world that had made Jack what he was, she had met the very girl who had made Jack what he was and all of the people who were just as extraordinary as he was. Somebody being immortal and from the future was, suddenly, commonplace, and _she _was the biggest enigma of all.

Here she was now in a secret, sub-basement but well-lit laboratory belonging to none other than Nikola Tesla _himself_, the father of modern electricity and all modern technology in some capacity. Twenty-four hours ago Esther had been stuck in a rubber-coated white cell with one light and an open shower and a toilet in the same room, no hope of eating real solid food or of watching television or having access to something as simple as hair conditioner, and it was as though she were in a dream, but a better one than she knew she could ever have dreamt up herself. She gawked at the things which this lab beheld, plasma globes and broken old tesla coils and gizmos and gadgets she could scarcely fathom the uses of; it was a wonderland of science. Things buzzed and whirred and she heard noises of generators and engines and so much electricty rushing around the room she felt if she were just able to syphon the smallest bit of it she might gorge herself on this Nineteenth Century gold dust. It was a workshop gilded with genius, and now _she _was there, very nearly suffering the feeling of insignificance if it wasn't so overpowered by awe.

"And you see things like this every day, in that box? _Every day_?" Esther asked in wonderment of the others around her, of River and Nios or either of the Claras. The Doctor was examining an old Tesla orb and trailing his fingertips across its crispy, violet discharge. It hummed in his hands.

"Every day," River Song assured her. She wasn't going to lie and say that revelation about River Song being the Doctor's dead ex-wife hadn't come as a total, scandalous surprise, and now she couldn't help but wonder how the hell they all managed to get along with each other. It sounded like a riot - and not a riot in the good sense, a riot in the literal sense - with all these exes and affairs. Jack and Jenny, for one thing, but boy, this Jenny hadn't been what she was expecting, some tiny, blonde English girl with polite manners and shiny blue eyes. Esther could barely believe that she served as the foil to _the _Captain Jack Harkness, but who was she to judge? She didn't know a thing about Jenny and she knew even less about relationships on a whole. It was like living in a play.

Tesla disappeared for a second to put his toilet roll holder wherever his toilet was, and Esther continued to stare around.

"This is prehistoric," said Nios flatly. Everything Nios said seemed to be flat. She had the attitude of one of those teenage girls who tried way too hard to be 'cool' and 'disinterested' and 'hate everything.' Even if she was apparently a psychotic synthetic slave built by humanity in the near future, she lived with so many humans that Esther, the newcomer that she was, couldn't possibly believe she _really _despised all of them, she was just making a show to big herself up.

"Well to me _you're _prehistoric," River quipped at her. Beta Clara skulked over in a corner as though she didn't belong, as though she even belonged less in that situation than Esther did. She put her umbrella down and leant on it, looking much paler than the other in the yellow lighting. The other Clara and the Doctor were talking to each other in low voices the way married people often did, as though nothing else around them existed. Esther suspected Clara was asking him about this alleged notebook.

"How _did _you put up with them last night?" Nios asked Esther when she saw her looking at them as she took in the room.

"How do you mean?"

"They have a reputation," Nios told her, "I'm glad you're here. It means I'm not the new one anymore." Nios talked to her, but she neither looked at her nor got too close. Her eyes were pinpricks of sapphire that seemed to glow exuberantly.

"A reputation for what?" Esther inquired.

"Well _he _has the stamina of a hummingbird and _she's_ a raping nymphomaniac, apparently. That's the sort of stuff Rose says," Nios shrugged indifferently.

"While the first one is most definitely true," River conceded wryly, flipping idly through a notebook of pencil-scrawled calculations she had found on one of Tesla's many desks, "But you shouldn't listen to the things Rose says about Clara."

"I don't think I want to hear them in the first place..." Esther mumbled. If there was one thing that she didn't have the remotest interest in, it would be sex. She had never cared, nor would she ever care, about sex, or any sort of companionship with someone else like... _that_. She liked friendships, that was all.

"What other things does Rose say about Clara?" Beta Clara interjected. Esther jumped. She had appeared almost from thin air - she had either just moved incredibly quietly or incredibly quickly. Or both. Regardless, Esther was startled and ended up knocking something with her hand. It was just their luck that what she touched happened to be another of the plasma globes, the type Tesla had invented that were scattered unapologetically in teenager's bedrooms or science museums in the modern age. As soon as her skin came into contact with it, the same moment Tesla returned from setting up his toilet roll holder in the bathoom, it exploded. It exploded so hard that there were barely any shards of glass and just powder, halfway towards being reduced back to sand, and the core sparked and a little trickle of smoke came out. Nios and River both made a point to step out of Esther's reach, and she put her hands to her own face in horror, and then clenched her fists and stuck them in her pockets out of harm's way.

"I am _so_ sorry! It was a total accident - I didn't mean to touch it!" she apologised, and Tesla stared at her. In fact, everybody stared at her, except the Doctor, who was also looking at Tesla (or 'Nick' as he kept calling him.)

"Fascinating," Tesla said finally, looking at her with the same awe she had just been displaying when she looked around his laboratory, "Does that happen to _anything _electrical you touch? Anything at all?"

"...It _can_... but it's because she scared me," she admitted, nodding at Beta Clara, "Usually I would just syphon the electricity out of it, or do the opposite and give it more juice..."

"'Juice' as in electricity?" he asked, and she nodded.

"Ah, I have an idea," the Doctor declared, and accordingly rummaged through his pockets for a moment, putting his hands much deeper in them than the conventional physics she knew would seem to allow, and drew out a metal stick she recognised as a flashlight, a heavy-duty one.

"What is that? It's remarkable," Tesla stared.

"Just a torch, old boy," the Doctor said. Every time he said 'old boy' to Tesla he was met with an odd, questioning look from his wife. He unscrewed the bottom and dropped the batteries out of it onto the floor, and then held it out to Esther. She sighed and assumed he wanted to see her execute a parlour trick wherein she would make it light up. And, because she had not been able to get her hands on anything with more electricity than the lightbulb UNIT used to 'feed' her for four years, she very willingly obliged. As soon as she touched it it lit up spectacularly. "So you can give or take electricity?"

"Yeah, but I still need it around me. I've been in power cuts before. It's... not fun. Do you think he can cure me?" Esther asked the Doctor, who crossed his arms and studied her.

"It's difficult to say without knowing the exact technology used on you," he said to her, then he turned to Tesla, "She died, you see, and got brought back to life... how many years later, was it? And how did you die?"

"Three years. And I was shot," she answered.

"You don't _look_ like a corpse of three years. Do you still have the wound?" he inquired curiously.

"No, it healed. Everything healed," she said.

"What about wounds you've sustained since then?"

She shrugged, and said, "Electricity heals me. I don't heal at all without it. I once had a bleeding paper cut for five days while I was at UNIT until they let me get at a car battery."

"Sounds delicious," Beta Clara said, with an almost woozy expression across her. Everyone stared at her, "I mean - how awful. All that blood. I can't... can't think of anything worse, honestly..." And then she pulled out an inexpensive hip flask. Esther didn't need to ask to know it contained human blood, and would also prefer not to think about it.

"Excuse her, she's a vampire," the Doctor said to Tesla.

"A what?"

"A creature that hasn't quite entered the realms of popular culture. Anyway, anyway, I suppose I ought to ask what those policemen up there were after you for. Nobody's supposed to know you're here, remember? The parcel had a fake name on it as well, I saw," the Doctor said. He seemed quite thrilled with his observations, but Tesla remained unimpressed.

"Oafs, they were bribed to come after me. By that disagreeable Edison no doubt," Tesla complained, "It did sound very peculiar though. Some alumni in the field of science have started acting strangely, apparently, going mad. That was what they were saying, accusing me of causing madness, and then they listed a lot of names I have only ever seen on guest lists of Mr Edison's when he hosts a large demonstration, like the electrocution of that elephant in the fall. All of that to discredit me!"

"Madness? What sort of madness?" the Doctor inquired.

"How should I know? I haven't heard a thing of it until this morning when they intercepted me in the road," Tesla complained, "I'm supposed to be anonymous right now - I'm studying the effects of electrical conductivity in these skyscrapers, you see." Esther may have said 'wow' out loud there, but if she had nobody paid her any notice, "Whatever it is, if he's trying to blame _me _for it, it will hardly be good. Feel free to investigate, Doctor, I have a few ideas of how to help your friend and they may take a while."

"Great! Investigating! I love investigating. Investigations are so... investigative," he said, making a big show of him thinking of 'investigative' as though he were going to use a word that was actually interesting, "Anything specific about these mad scientists, then, Nick?" Tesla flinched.

"Yes, yes, I suppose the police did say something about 'funny business in Brooklyn.'"

"Brooklyn! Wonderful, I know _exaclty _where to look," he beamed.

"As do I," River Song interrupted, "Menlo Park."

"...Well then we shall split up," the Doctor declared indifferently, "Clara and I will go to the Brooklyn Institute, you four can go to Edison's laboratory in Menlo Park."

"You two?" Nios asked incredulously, "You two will get distracted. Someone else ought to go with you."

"Well I refuse," Beta Clara muttered. Nios and River quickly also said that, and Esther thought she was back in high school with people calling dibs on things. It was pathetic. She stared at the three of them.

"I would have offered anyway," she said decisively. Whatever this weird reputation the Doctor and Alpha Clara had was, Esther had yet to see them be anything but hospitable and friendly. She had never been the type of person who succumbed to gossip, and she wasn't about to start.


	412. Hard To Swallow

**AN: Some copious amounts of idle conversation in this chapter.**

_Eleven_

_Hard To Swallow_

New York in the spring was divine as always. He could smell both blossom and concrete, both nature and industry. They were on the precipice of the American industrial revolution, the country would be fully modernised in thirty, forty years. In sixty it would be the most powerful country in the world. But here it was a green, lush embryo, pre-everything.

"How do you know Nikola Tesla, then?" Clara asked him. Esther trailed after them taking in the scenery, though she looked distant. A pigeon crossed their path conveniently when his wife inquired this of him.

"Well, that would be how," he pointed at the pigeon. Clara stopped walking for just a second, but couldn't stay still for long because he kept moving. She was smoking again, and it disheartened him. It had been a few days since he saw her smoke last, and he thought she might have quit again, though for good.

"I don't get it," Clara said. Esther caught back up to them as their paced slowed, Clara's eyes fixed on the pigeon. He knew that she was resisting the urge to scare it. She flicked her cigarette butt towards it in the end and it flew away, the butt glowing orange and burning out on the ground. She stamped on it and went to light another.

"We're there now," he pointed at the museum, the Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Sciences, very large and cream coloured. In a hundred years it would simply be the Brooklyn Museum, and would be a great deal larger, "I wish you wouldn't do that. It's such an old-fasioned habit," he accused.

"We're in an old-fashioned time, sweetheart," she said coolly, as she lit it with one of those brightly coloured disposable lighters he always found lying about the place. This one was green. "Tell me about the pigeon."

"Well, Nick, he likes pigeons. His favourite pigeon is going to die in thirty years and he'll be devasted. In love with it, you see," he explained. Clara frowned at him with her cigarette between her teeth.

"Sorry, Tesla was in love with a pigeon?" Esther, who was listening after all, questioned. They had all stopped now, just in front of the museum. He had half a mind to force Clara to finish her latest cancer-stick before they went in.

"Yes, yes," he said to her offhandedly, watching his wife smoke. She didn't seem to realise that that was the reason his expression seemed so disdainful, and she skulked away towards the museum a second later. He resumed what he had been saying to Esther directly, leading her off with him in Clara's wake, "I always thought it quite strange. I assume that there's a pigeon coop on the top of that building he's in. Thank god he died before the war and the carrier pigeons! No doubt he would despise knowing they sent them off on dangerous missions behind enemy lines."

"How come he knows about things that haven't been invented yet?" Esther asked. He thought she might be shorter even than Clara, and unlike Clara Esther was not wearing high heels that day, as she padded along next to him. He did so love new people.

"Oh, well, after some... business involving Amy and Rory - you've met Rory, haven't you? Yes. Well. Involving them getting stranded permanently in, oh, New York as a matter of fact, down in Manhattan. Terrible, really, right when the Depression hit, and I've been in Depression-era New York even further before that with Martha. And _New_ New York, but that's a story for another day. As I was saying," they drew up to the doors of the museum now, Clara stood waiting and now listening, "They ended up stuck, and I was highly upset and went into a mourning period in Victorian London with this lesbian lizard Clara doesn't like much-"

"Uh, she and her wife are both biphobic," Clara interjected.

"You can't expect much tolerance from Victorians, Clara," he told her knowingly.

"Speak for yourself, I have that Echo who was a lesbian prostitute and I'm sure all of the women she slept with for money very much tolerated her," she quipped.

"I was in London," he resumed talking to Esther, "And said lesbian prostitute Echo of Clara's died and I went looking for her, and stayed with Tesla for a while. Ended up telling him a lot of things, this and that, about the future. He can be trusted, and I was at a low point. Then I became a monk, Clara remembers that part, don't you?"

"I never forget somebody with bad BO," she said assuredly, then Esther asked what an Echo was and they both said it was too complicated to explain concisely at that moment and they would explain later. "Door's locked," Clara told him. She finished her second cigarette and did not light a third.

"Well why didn't you unlock it?" he questioned her. She had a multitude of ways in which do to that. She had her (_his_) screwdriver, she had her telekinesis, her intangibility. Superpowers, however, would require more complicated explanations to Esther. It wasn't that they were keeping things from her, it was just that now wasn't the time to delve into the complicated events which made up their recent past. Clara's answer was merely a shrug. She coughed and gave him a look daring him to comment, but he did not. "Typical," he said, "Can't trust a woman to do a man's job."

"Your attitude is about as old-fashioned as my smoking habit," she jibed, and he ignored her and dug his screwdriver out of his pocket.

"What's _that_?" Esther, staring at it, asked.

"A screwdriver," he said, "A sonic one."

"A _sonic screwdriver_?" Esther asked incredulously.

"Yes, I open doors with it."

"Wouldn't you be better off with a sonic _key_ for that?" Esther puzzled. Clara and the Doctor both stared at her, as though she were an imbecile. She began to mouth things that may have been apologies for speaking out of turn, not that she understood _why _she had spoken out of turn.

"A sonic _key_? Don't be ridiculous. What'll be next - a sonic pen? Sonic lipstick?"

"...Don't both of those things exist?" Clara whispered to him, putting her hand on his shoulder briefly. He was two steps lower than she was at the entrance and able to lean over and whisper in his ear. He caught a whiff of the tobacco on her breath and ignored it.

"That's beside the point, Clara," he said, "Now, stand back. Things could get messy."

"They won't," Clara assured Esther, and he made a disappointed face. He was trying too hard to impress yet another impressionable human girl. Human girls always were _incredibly _impressionable. Naïve, too. Esther Drummond was no exception.

The Doctor held the sonic screwdriver at the door handles as though it was a gun, but even he thought it was anticlimactic when it whined at the door. This was made worse by the fact that, even when he extended it and Clara vacantly made an innuendo next to him about it he had heard her make a thousand times before, nothing happened. It just moaned, sounding pained, whirring, glowing. And then the green bulb on the end blew up. _That _had never happened before. He dropped the screwdriver in shock.

"My tip exploded!" he exclaimed. Clara, not fully appreciating the seriousness of the situation, burst out laughing, "Clara!"

"If I had a penny for every time you said that..." she began, but did not need to finish her sentence. Esther was in too much shock to care about Clara's euphemisms, "Hang on, I have to text my sister..."

"What do you mean!?" he demanded, scrambling to pick up the little bits of screwdriver on the ground, "It's my screwdriver! My sonic screwdriver!"

"Oh my god, here," she muttered, digging out her own sonic - which was still _his _sonic - the same time she took her phone out to text Oswin, sniggering to herself. He snatched it from her.

"It wasn't that funny. You're a child sometimes." Clara said something else about tips exploding but he didn't pay attention to her. For a fleeting second, he wondered if the benefits outweighed the risks of pushing her down the museum steps behind them. This time, he changed the settings so that he was scanning rather than tricking the lock, and found some most enlightening information, "It's locked."

"No shit, Sherlock," Clara commented. He was beyond telling her not to swear.

"I don't mean like that, I _mean _that somebody using a _different_ sonic device has made it impervious. It's like that woman with the Adipose, except the lock is much more advanced," he said, "Who would do that? Sonic technology like this doesn't exist for millennia, it isn't human." Clara was about to put her phone away when the text tone went off and she glanced at the screen, pulling a face.

"God, she's disgusting," Clara said, putting her phone away.

"Why? What did she say?" he asked, regretting asking immediately. As if he wanted to know the details of Oswin's latest dirty joke. They got worse and worse every day. How one woman could spend so much time thinking about masturbation after she escaped adolescence was a mystery to him.

"Well _I _told her about that exploding tip malarkey, and she said, 'just remember to swallow.' With a winky face. And the aubergine emoji," Clara said, then to Esther she added, "Unbelievable. The smartest human in all of time and space. I apologise in advance for whenever you have to meet her." Eleven wondered what kind of opinion Esther was forming about his sister-in-law. A bad one, probably.

"You mean eggplant, right?" Esther asked.

"Hmm?" Clara frowned, then thought, "Oh. I mean, I guess so. I - jesus christ!" she shouted. The Doctor had just kicked the door in, "I could've just walked through it, you nutter!"

"It's done now," he shrugged, "Excellent, no security systems. Free to break in anywhere. This was the golden age of crime and stealing things. This and the Twenties."

"And as we both know, you've never paid for a thing in your life," she said. He held the door open for she and Esther.

"Yes, and I don't intend to start," he smiled, "My foot hurts now."

"I'm not bloody surprised," she grumbled.

"Perhaps a foot rub later?"

"Only if you get a new wife, I'm going nowhere near your feet. I don't know where they've been," she said.

"In my shoes."

"Very funny."

"Now..." he began on a different note, looking around the empty museum, "What do we think Thomas Edison has been up to? Anything, I suppose. Never really met Thomas Edison - I didn't much like the way he stole patents."

"That's funny," Clara said, "You've met Hitler but Edison crosses a line."

"I didn't _want _to meet Hitler, that was River, and she did almost kill me," he reminded her.

"What are we having for tea?" Clara changed the subject before Esther could ask about Hitler, which she had definitely been about to. He'd met all sorts of people, not all of them as excellent company as Nick Tesla was.

"How should I know? What do you want?" he asked.

"What do you mean, 'tea'?" Esther inquired.

"She means dinner," he said, "She's from the north. She speaks funny. Don't you, darling?" he smiled at her, but her expression remained flat. To Esther, he said, "Ask her what time dinner is."

"What time's dinner?" she obeyed.

Looking her husband dead in the eye, Clara said, "Noon."

"See? Ridiculous. She says all sorts of odd things. I do love it, though," he added when she kept glaring, looking at her now rather than Esther, "Makes life more interesting, all those double negatives. When she mumbles in her sleep her accent gets worse. It's adorable." He wasn't really talking to Esther. Esther knew this and drifted away to look at some tribal statues no doubt stolen from some native settlement somewhere.

"Will you ever stop making fun of my accent? You know it's not even that broad at all," she told him sharply. She was sensitive about it, so he really should probably stop harassing her or else she may just stop talking entirely, and she _was_ his favourite person to talk to, after all.

"I shall stop when it stops being cute."

"It's not cute, you know it's not cute, it makes me sound thick because of regional prejudices."

"Well, it could be worse," he shrugged, "You could have Adam Mitchell's accent, then everybody would accuse you of being inbred like they do him."

"Uh, Adam Mitchell is from the _West Country_. Everyone in the West Country is inbred."

"Wifey, I don't think you're helping your own case here when it comes to the elimination of regional prejudices and accent-based stereotypes," the Doctor told her, "Though, I suppose we're being rude again, aren't we? If only we were at home, we could talk forever." Clara smiled. Then there was a noise like an explosion from another part of the museum, and all of the windows shook.


	413. Smile For The Camera

_River_

_Smile For The Camera_

The Menlo Park laboratory was a cluster of buildings in a large, rectagular pen. The biggest of these was a longhouse-esque building, made of wood and painted white. The various other buildings of the complex were smaller, through the metal fence they looked just like sheds, perhaps one at the back behind the longhouse that could be a house. A house for whom, River Song didn't bother to hazard a guess. She remembered seeing pictures of Menlo Park when it was snowy, but it was the middle of May presently; the grass was emerald coloured and there were some butterflies around.

They approached on the back of a horse and cart carrying supplies to a local shop in the area - River had procured them a lift to the lab with her psychic paper. Well, it was Nine's psychic paper. Maybe at one point in her life, she did have her own little wallet, but when she died in the Library she had lost most everything by way of materialism. The cart driver dropped them off and waved them away, giving Beta Clara an odd look. She stood grimly by with her black umbrella above her head - River supposed a simple parasol just didn't do the job of protecting a vampire from sunlight. She wondered if Clara might burn if she stole it, but she wasn't _that _cruel. That was the sort of thing Rose might do, anyway, and she would be damned if she was going to stoop to that level of pettiness. In the bright, late-spring sun, Clara did not cast a shadow onto the ground. She may as well be a ghost.

"You look weird," Nios commented brashly to Clara. River, quite possibly in charge now since the other two she was with were both idiots when it came to being sensible, walked between them and towards the fence of the lab, peering through the gate. There were a sparse couple of people within, the nearest of which she hailed down.

"I'd rather look weird than have the sunlight kill me," Clara said stiffly. She reminded River of Morticia Addams looking the way she did now, dressed all in black with pale skin and sallow eyes, not to mention those shiny fangs she glimpsed every so often, when Clara said certain words. And her fingernails were oddly sharp, almost claws. Did she have coarse hair on the palms of her hands, like Dracula, River wondered?

"Why are you wearing black? Are you trying to look the part of a vampire?" Nios jibed. Clara didn't seem to want to say anything back. River harshly ordered them both to shut up and drew out her psychic paper.

"No visitors today, ma'am," the man who had sauntered over, who might well be a hired goon, said. He looked lower class and out of place in a lab of science, like he'd just been dragged off building trainlines, or like an ex-lumberjack. One of those types. With the end of his thumb he pushed up the flat cap on his head and trailed his eyes across Nios, but Nios did not notice.

"We've been invited by Mr Edison," River explained, holding up the psychic paper, "We're physicists from Great Britain, here on the business of setting up a new international laboratory in Sussex. See?" she spoked very politely to the man, who skimmed the psychic paper only with a glance. He was trying to keep his eyes on Nios, which she now realised.

With what River supposed was as much coldness as the synth could muster, she said to him, "What?" Nios looked at this man, who was tall and not all-round unpleasant looking - though he wasn't the sort to capture _her _attention - as though he were filth on her shoe. River was amused as she imagined Nios' internal monologue: '_How DARE a HUMAN look at ME like THAT._' Hopefully she didn't kill him, though.

"You have the most beautiful eyes," the man crooned to her. He sounded like he came from Wisconsin, or somewhere further west. Clara and River both supressed laughter, and Nios did not know what to say. She was definitely debating murder, though she knew she might not get to return to the TARDIS if she did something so reckless, so in lieu of violence she had no assets. Honestly, River thought, she ought to just say something sweet and assure their passage into Menlo Park to look around, since it was this cowboy blocking their way.

"You disgust me," she said finally. He looked hurt. River and Clara were suddenly ablaze with apologies, Clara the one to come up with the excuse that, they really were so sorry, but their poor friend was a recent widow, and had come to America on their excursion to avoid men. The cowboy offered the deepest sympathies and, still eyeing Nios though with guilt evident on his face, he opened the gate and let them in. When he wasn't looking, River glared at Nios. She had nearly cost them their investigation.

They walked straight up to the two-floored longhouse building and knocked on the door, a spindly man opening it and staring at them in surprise. No women around, unfortunately. Just the three of them. The cowboy watched from the gate, watched Nios presumably. River wondered if a boy had ever tried to come onto her before. She told this professor-looking bloke the same thing she had told the other, that they were opening a lab for Edison across the pond in Sussex and had permission to just have a look at the general setup. Suspiciously, he asked where Sussex was, and she flatly told him it was south. That seemed enough for him - he didn't really know what he was talking about, she thought.

Funnily enough, the interior of this lab was like a less advanced copy of Tesla's. No plasma globes or tesla coils though, not surprisingly. Just a lot of men, and a croaky-sounding phonograph playing upbeat piano music in one corner. A lot of clattering, stuttering, metallic sounds. They got stared at. Something in a large black box on a tripod whirred nearby. It was dark enough that Clara put her umbrella away, and the shady scientist who had opened the door to them initially asked them, precisely, what sort of project they were undertaking in _Sussex_, saying 'Sussex' suspiciously, as though it were an imaginary place and he was resisting the urge to do air quotations.

"Studying the plausibility of wireless communication," River said.

"_Wireless communication_?" he said patronisingly, "Impossible. That's the sort of science-fiction Tesla comes up with, like that damned alternating current. Thank god the crook's in Colorado this week." So Edison might know Tesla was in New York, but these lackeys of his did not.

"Perhaps," was all River said. So, they were looking for anything that might be causing scientists to act strangely and go mad. Where to start with the questions? Thank god Clara Oswald (or had she accepted the Ravenwood name now?) was so inherenty nosy, as she poked around the funny box that had been pointing at them.

"That? That's Bill Dickson's," said the scientist. This lanky man didn't seem too nice; River might stoop to saying he was a twat, "He's out back smoking."

"What is it, though?" Clara reached up to tap the side of it, and a different scientist, some stocky, broad-shouldered imbecile, made a lunge for her wrist to stop her from touching it. She pulled her hand away with ease, but he winced like she had hurt him. "Go on, tell me." He stared at her and then at his wrist - River supposed she was now much stronger than she thought.

"What's going on?" asked a tall man coming back in from outside from the opposite end of the longhouse, with dark hair and an equally dark and impressive moustache. It didn't take more than three words for her to realise he was obviously Scottish, and he walked quickly towards them and their minor kerfuffle.

"She's asking questions about your machine, Bill," said the snide, original scientist.

"It's William, not Bill," he said sharply, "Be on your way, Hartley, go back to your new telegraph pole design." Hartley, the snide one, skulked away. The stocky one left before William Dickson, a name which River recognised, could tell him to scarper. "What's your business?" River said the same thing about Sussex and wireless communication, "Trying to get a heads up on old Tesla, eh?"

"Yes, yes," River said, smiling, then she motioned to Clara, "My companion here was wondering what that device next to her was?"

"Your _companion_?" Clara asked coldly, and when River looked into her face she saw death looking back, the brown of her eyes was not warm any longer, it was cold, like petrified wood, and she glared.

"Yes, that's right," River smiled.

Through gritted teeth, Clara questioned quietly, "What have I _ever _done to you?"

"Oh, shut it, it wasn't that bad, and it's not technically incorrect, either," Nios grumbled next to her. She was still feeling violated by the cowboy outside complimenting her eyes, which were as extraordinarily blue as they always were.

"That? That's my and Mr Edison's kinetograph," he said, seeming quite excited. River realised then - William Kennedy Laurie Dickson, this was him, the man who invented the film camera. And that's what that box was, "I left it running when I went out, ah..." he refrained from cursing in front of them, the womenfolk that the were. Ah, the vaguely misogynistic manners of 1893. He flicked a switch on the back somewhere and the trundling noise it had been making dissipated slowly to silence. "It makes a record, you see, of images, on celluloid."

"A camera?" Clara asked urgently, then she added, "I mean, uh, nothing, nothing..." It had been filming them when they came in, that was what she must be worried about, because if anybody watched it back and saw she didn't show up, as River assumed she didn't since she also had no shadow, the consequences would be dangerous.

"Well, I suppose you could call it a camera, but it isn't still, it _moves_, you see. Thanks to Mr Edison helping me to cultivate it - he has been a great influence. He almost solely developed the sister machine of this - the kinetoscope. That's how you _watch _the pictures," he spoke to Clara like she was a child, but she was worrying too much to really notice. What should they do? Destroy the film? Vampire mythology was surely not integrated enough into society for them to recognise that that could be a probably reason why she didn't show up. And besides, they would be long gone in a few hours, she was sure. Clara was fretting needlessly. "I could show you, but Mr Edison has strict policies about when the films are reviewed. And the kinetoscope is not here, he has taken it for another display. Did you not hear about it? How long have you been in New York?"

"Not long, why?" River asked.

"It was demonstarted at the Brooklyn Institute, these two weeks just gone, on the 9th," he said, "There was an article about it - I suppose you were in Sussex?"

"Yes, we were," River assured him. May the 9th? The Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Sciences? This invention seemed to be a clue, but - what did a motion camera have to do with geniuses going mad?


	414. Old Grudges New Mutiny

**AN: So, I know the majority of you are American, and I just gotta say, you guys go crazy over Girl Scout cookies, right? It's wild. And us over here are all, what's the fuss about? So this weekend someone I know bought imported Girl Scout cookies of yours - thin mint flavour - and we're eating these cookies and (for any fellow Brits) they taste just like mint Penguins but, like, not as nice? Like I'd way rather go down the shops and buy a huge multipack of Penguins for £1. And I know you guys also don't have Penguins because I guarantee some of you are really confused right now - they're chocolate biscuits. There's shops opening all ****round what sell American food, and I saw Lucky Charms in Tesco the other day. Now, I'm just gonna say this once, but marshmallows? In breakfast cereal? And I thought the UK was unhealthy but there you all are having marshmallows for breakfast. Speaking of, though, what with Esther Drummond being fresh off the boat from Washington D.C. and all that, if any of you have suggestions for other cultural differences I can address through her you all might find amusing, throw them my way. I already have planned to have someone explain what a lollypop lady is, since you don't have those across the pond. It's in Torchwood where she explains to Gwen different words, correcting "petrol station" to "gas station," "crisps" to "chips," "cashpoint" to "ATM." And that whole thing about the lemonade? You have _flat _lemonade? Over here that's lemon _juice_, lemonade is fizzy. That's what the 'ade' means, like, you have appleade and orangeade too, because it's fizzy, which is also why we call it "fizzy pop" instead of "soda."**

_Eleven_

_Old Grudges New Mutiny_

They walked in on quite the scene, quite the wild scene indeed. There were three people, one of them an old and wispy man bustling about looking confused, the other two a man and a woman, arguing loudly about something broken on the floor. They were both sallow and relatively tall, the same height in fact, both with dark hair and dark eyes. Whoever the were, they looked related, and they were shouting. He, Esther and Clara stared at them. The old man did not seem involved, but they kept mentioning him as they fought.

"You broke it!" the woman shouted.

"_I_ broke it? _You _were holdin' it," the man argued.

"Well _you _were tellin' me to change the invasion levels!"

"Invasion levels?" the Doctor interrupted them. They had been going around in circles, anyway, accusing each other. They both looked over then and frowned at the trio, Esther stood nervously by. Esther was most likely unnerved by the fact he and Clara were at a loss to what was going on - companions always ended up overly worried when he was confused. To think, this was supposed to have been a _simple _trip to visit his old friend. "That's a mind probe," the Doctor realised, reconstructing the broken debris in the floor in his mind, "Who are you? Why do you have that?"

"Shall we?" the man asked the woman. Indifferently, she shrugged. And then they both reached back and drew guns, laser revolvers, silver and shiny with a little red dot down the barrel shining in his eyes. They pointed their guns at the Doctor and Esther, and pulled the triggers, these ones not needing to be cocked, but nothing happened. Then the guns flew out of their hands across the floor and the two intruders stared after them.

"Cool trick," said the woman, "What was that?" They didn't seem nearly so bothered about the loss of their weapons as Eleven had at having a gun pointed at him, wondering for a split second if he was fated to regenerate into a Yank that day. Esther had jumped and almost screamed, and the lights had flickered wildly above them. He assumed that was something to do with her.

"Who are you!? Why are you trying to shoot us!?" the Doctor demanded. Honestly, thank god for Clara saving them with telekinesis, though Esther did seem very puzzled. There was no time to explain, though. Without Clara, he may really have died there. They may both have, unless Esther pulled a marvellous trick out of her hat - maybe her electric abilities would heal the wound? He would of course regenerate. They could always shoot him mid-cycle, though.

"Thought you might be the cops," said the woman. Whoever they were, they definitely both had Irish accents. Eleven spotted both of them were wearing wedding rings.

"Oh, because the police obviously know what a mind probe is," Clara argued.

"Not _those _kind of cops," the man said, "The kind of cops who might chase a couple of hard-workin' archaeologists through the portals of time and space just because of a few minor warrants to do with smugglin' and the like."

"Maybe a few outstandin' claims of murder, but not _serious _murder," the woman shrugged, "Gross damage to property. But who might you be?"

"Archaeologists - I hate archaeologists. And what murder? Who have you been murdering? Who's after you?" Eleven kept asking.

"Only people who get in our way - like you, if you don't buck up and tell us who ya are," the man said. They took turns speaking as though they thought oddly alike.

"Are you siblings?" asked the Doctor.

"_Siblings_!?" they both shouted in abject horror, and the man added, "Not on my life," while the woman said, "I should pull your teeth out for sayin' a think like that."

"Then you're married?"

"Aye," they both said.

"So are Clara and I," he said, motioning to Clara, who seemed surprised that he was introducing them. But what else was he to do? He wanted them to talk, so in turn, he had to talk as well, "And this is Esther, friend of ours."

"And what about you, then? You clearly think you're a big-shot," the woman said snidely. Whoever the pair of them were, they didn't think much of other people at all. He wondered what they'd been doing to the elderly man shuffling about and ignoring everything going on around them.

"I'm the Doctor."

"The Doctor?" the woman asked.

"Hey, you're that bloke who goes around helpin' people and all that!" the man beamed, "Can't say I've ever thought much about helpin' anyone myself, mind you, usually just scare 'em off if they get in our way. Hope ya aren't planning on foilin' us?"

"Depends - are you working for Thomas Edison?" Eleven asked them carefully. It was an odd situation, because he couldn't help but feel threatened by them (he thought they looked the type to be carrying a myriad of concealed weapons, like Jack or River), but it was also a very nice day outside and sunlight poured in, and they were managing to seem somewhat polite, even if they did casually talk about murder. The Doctor knew all sorts of people who casually talked of murder. His own daughter, for instance, didn't seem to have much of an aversion to taking lives if it suited her, or she thought she was justified.

"_Edison_? Of course we're not, we have more integrity than _that_. We're just lookin' for the source of all this mischief he's been causin'," the man said, still smiling, but it was the kind of smile a maniac would wear as they killed someone. Sadistic. "Where're my manners, though? I'm Austin Cargill, this is my wife, Ashley." Eleven had never heard those names before. Looking around, neither had Clara, nor Esther.

"What? You've not heard of us?" Ashley, as her name was, questioned, "Oh, c'mon, we aren't infamous enough yet for the Doctor and the Phantom to know who we are?"

"The who?" Eleven and Clara both asked.

"You! You're the Phantom, aren't ya?" Ashley frowned.

"Maybe not yet," Austin told her.

"When are you from?" the Doctor, ignoring whatever that Phantom business was, questioned.

"Careful, now, you don't want to go ruinin' it all with _anwers_, do ya?" Austin joked.

"What sort of intergalactic bandits would we be if we told you everything? Besides, s'far as I can see, we don't owe you anything like that," Ashley shrugged. The Doctor decided that they were weird. Very weird. Austin paced over to where the guns were lying on the ground nearby.

"Now, if you'll excuse us-"

"-Now we know you're not out to arrest us-"

"We'll be on our way," Austin picked up both of the guns, holstered one, and tossed the other back to his spookily similar-looking wife, "We thought we might have lunch before we kill one of the greatest innovators of the Twentieth Century."

"You _what_!?" the Doctor shouted, but they disappeared, in shimmers of blue light that surround them like outlines and sucked them both away, Ashley after Austin, and rippled the air for a brief moment. "No, no! Come back!" But they were gone. The old man they had been mentally probing shuffled about nearby still, like he hadn't seen anything even slightly out of the ordinary, like two people teleporting.

"Did you know those guys?" Esther asked.

"No, never seen them before in my life," he muttered, annoyed, "Teleporting away like that - that technology is much too advanced for this time, and the relay is stolen. No doubt they're just criminals who _call _themselves archaeologists when what they really are is thieves. Grave robbers, no less, wandering around here looking for things. Trying to kill Edison."

"But - Edison doesn't die yet, not for ages, right?" Esther asked. Eleven wandered through the space where they had just been, the air humming like it was charged. Was that because of the teleport relay or something else? He scanned around himself with the sonic and found that whatever relay they had used was jammed just like the door had been, and he couldn't retrieve them from whence they had gone.

"No, no he doesn't. And it's fixed, too, so he _definitely _won't be dying until he's supposed to," the Doctor said, then he went up to the old man finally and stooped down a little to be at his eye level, but he had glassy eyes and couldn't focus on anything, "Hello? Sir? Anybody home?" the Doctor waved a hand in front of his face, clicked his fingers by his nose, and then knocked on his forehead lightly as though it was a door. Then Clara grabbed his hand and ordered him not to hit the 'poor old man' because it was 'cruel.' The lights continued to flicker above them.

"What's with the lights?" Clara, looking around, asked. Eleven straightened back up and crossed his arms, stared at the old man, before following Clara's gaze. Clara's gaze rested on Esther, and it didn't take more than a second for the Doctor to see what she was looking at. Esther was absently making electricity crackle between the fingertips of her left hand - her right hand she was chewing the thumbnail of. It was blue and white and sparked like the coils in Tesla's lab as it jumped across her hand. She noticed them looking.

"What?" she asked.

"That - there - with your hand," he pointed. She stopped doing it and made a fist.

"Oh - sorry."

"No, no, don't apologise! That's the coolest thing I've seen since Clara started teleporting," he said, then to his wife, "Don't you think electricity is cool?"

"You think everything is cool," she told him.

"You can _teleport_?" Esther gawped.

"Uh, I guess. It's complicated. It's actually really painful and I can't do it at will, and I can't go more than a few metres. I'd rather not have it at all, do you know how often I teleport at exactly the wrong moment? It's terrible," Clara complained. True enough, he thought, she _was_ always in a great deal of pain afterwards. If they were home, she would usually go and sit in the bathroom in the dark for ten minutes until her headache ceased. Once, a week or so ago, she had teleported in her sleep and crashed onto the floor, and hadn't been at all happy about that. He didn't know if anybody had explained to Esther about Manifests yet or not, but now was not the time.

"Can you shoot it?" the Doctor asked, "The electricity, can you shoot it?" And then Esther sighed and scratched her head for a second and, with a look of resignful boredom, held up her left hand, opened her fist, gathed electricity in it so it trickled down her arm like water and lit up the veins of her hands blue, and then a jet of it sparked out of her palm like a miniature lightning bolt and scorched the floor. The Doctor jumped and ended up grabbing hold of Clara's arm, and she looked up at him as if to say, "_What the hell are you doing?_" and he let go and straightened his bow tie to salvage his masculinity. Esther looked at them for comment, and Clara stared now at the burn mark on the floor.

The old man behind them suddenly gasped a huge breath, like he was choking and they all turned to see what was happening. The man trained his bulging, yellow eyes on Esther Drummond and made a lurch towards her, and then stumbled and Clara moved to catch him. Eleven glimpsed a badge on his front declaring him to be Mr Paige, the curator. And now he was shouting something at Esther that sounded like it was about direct current.

"Direct current! Nothing comes close! Nothing as good as marvellous direct current!" he shouted.

"This!" the Doctor exclaimed, helping Clara in dually keeping the man on his feet and keeping him away from Esther, who would kill him if he touched her, "This is the madness! It must be. How strange."

"What's direct current mean?" Clara asked.

"Direct current, you know, the War of the Currents? Between Edison and Tesla? Direct current snd alternating current?" he said, and she looked at him blankly, and the old curator still ranted about how direct current was superior. Eleven sighed, "I'm sure you've heard of AC/DC?"

"_That's_ what that means?" she said.

"Yes! Honestly, I forget how young you are sometimes," he shook his head at her, and she seemed offended. As the curator shouted, he flailed his arms and dropped something on the floor in front of them, a scrunched up piece of glossy paper, like a magazine. "What's that?" he indicated it, and Clara let the curator go and picked it up from the ground, unfolding it.

"It's a flyer for the demonstration of ah, uh... kin-et-o-scope," Clara said, pronouncing the 'O' like it was lowercase rather than uppercase.

"It's kinet-_oh_-scope, Clara," he told her, "It's a rudimentary projector, has eyeholes in it like binoculars and you watch the film back."

"Whatever. Kinetoscope. That. Was being demonstrated here on the 9th of May. There's an ad along the bottom saying it's sponsored by Edison's General Electric - is that his company?" Clara asked.

"Yes. And that demonstration was in the last two weeks. What's say we find the others and pay a visit to this company of Thomas Edison's, hmm? I think I'd like a word with old Tom."

"Well, I-" Clara began, and then the lights flashed on and off again and it interrupted her, "What _is _doing that? Is it you?" she asks Esther.

"Me? No, I'm not doing anything," she shrugged, "I don't really influence things by just being near them and not touching them."

"How strange..." the Doctor mused quietly, letting the curator, who was settling back down into whatever catatonia he had been stuck in before, go. He stepped over the mess made from the Cargills' broken mind probe and immediately stumbled across a step ladder for maintenance nearby. This he picked up awkwardly - it was heavy - and brought it back into the room and set it underneath one of the flickering lightbulbs. Climbing it, Clara watching and telling him to be careful, he unscrewed the lightbulb and stared at it. Sniffed it. Held it up to the light from the windows. Then he dropped it from that height and it smashed on the ground where Esther had shot her lightning, and he jumped the lower two rungs of the wooden ladder and picked up the metal bottom of the bulb.

"What is it?" Esther asked.

"It's almost burned. The filament, almost completely gone, like something overcharged it, overcharged all of them - but what could do that? Very strange..." he put it in his pocket, and the flyer when he took it from Clara, "Come on. I think we have what we came for. Do you think they have hotdog stands in this century? I rather fancy a bite of lunch."


	415. Are You In The Know?

**AN: All of the vague references to _Frankenstein_ lately (Eleven always reading Clara's copy of it) is sort of weak half-arsed foreshadowing for Esther's 'condition' basically. I write too many storylines revolving around electricity to be honest. (By the way, I'm not a fan of Thomas Edison, excuse the caricature evil-mad-genius-scientist stuff as me taking creative liberties for comedic effect.)**

_Esther_

_Are You In The Know?_

It was a skyscraper before skyscrapers were commonplace, the building where Edison's General Electric, the precursor to the domineering General Electric purchased by J.P. Morgan in some decades' time, was located. So she was being generous, really, in calling it a skyscraper at all. It was relatively tall, but not astronomical. Perhaps forty storeys high? Still, it was the biggest building she'd seen so far in New York. They stood across the street, a highly conspicuous conglomeration which did nothing but remind her of her days on the run with Torchwood years ago.

"Shouldn't we be hiding? If he knew where Tesla was, surely it can't be hard to find us?" Esther asked. Maybe there were no biometrics or security cameras in 1893, but there were still security guards. Still guns, and people who knew how to use them, and she'd already been fatally shot once in her lifetime, she didn't want it to happen again. She didn't put a lot of faith in her ability to use lightning as a projectile and defend herself.

"Wha'?" the Doctor asked. He was eating a hotdog and his mouth was full.

"She's right," River said, "We're being indiscreet. You've always been like this - this is why you die so much, you know. How do you suppose we get into his building and search it? All of it?" They all just stood around in silence. They kept getting looks from people wandering around. Esther was thinking, though, because it didn't look like any of the people around her had any foreward planning.

"Torchwood made plans," she said. River laughed a little coldly, though the coldness wasn't directed at Esther, but rather the others.

"The Doctor doesn't like Torchwood," she said to Esther.

"Jack's little gang of murderers? Eurgh," the Doctor grumbled, "No, no. None of that. We ought to just go have a word, you know. Talk to him. Chew the fat a little. Thomas Edison probably loves to talk."

"Yeah, but how will you get in? You can't walk in. If the lab was guarded, this building will be as well," Esther argued.

"She has a point. You _are_ an idiot," Beta Clara muttered. He stared at her with his mouth hanging open and mushed up hotdog in his mouth. His wife ignored him, and all of this.

River turned to Esther, "Do you have any ideas? Ex-CIA? Ex-Torchwood?"

"And I suppose _you_ have plenty of ideas?" the Doctor jibed.

"I always have more ideas than you, sweetie," she said. He scowled and glanced at Alpha Clara behind him and Esther saw him roll his eyes and she smiled slightly. Esther was sure River saw, too, but she just paid attention to Esther.

"Uh... that paper, how does that paper work?" Esther said.

"Psychic paper!" the Doctor declared, finishing his hotdog, wiping his hands on his jacket. Then he fumbled through his pockets looking for it.

"The paper shows people whatever the person holding it wants them to see," River said, holding up her own wallet, but the paper was blank, "Oh, if only the FBI existed right now. You can get in anywhere if they think you're with the FBI. See?"

"See what?" Esther asked, squinting at it, "It's blank." River frowned and looked at the Doctor, who looked back and then stooped down next to Esther and stared at her like she were a science experiment.

"Funny. That's supposed to look like an FBI badge for... what ridiculous alias is that?" he questioned River when he looked at it, "Does that say _Dana Scully_? Put it away." River glowered at him. Of Esther, he asked, "You're not a genius, are you?"

"I..."

"What's your IQ?"

"One-fifty," she said.

"Oh, well. Another clever person to challenge my intelligence..." he complained.

"Chin, don't be an arse," Alpha Clara said, "My sister is the only person who does that and she's not even a dick about it most of the time."

"Your profanity is so endearing," he said sarcastically.

"Whatever, sorry for being clever, but you have to be clever to be a CIA analyst. Listen, make that thing say we work for pest control and follow me," Esther said to River, motioning for them to cross the road towards the building. River did not delay in abandoning the others, though Nios seemed displeased at being left with the Doctor and the Claras, "We're fumigators and there's a dangerous cockroach infestation in the next door building so we're doing a routine evacuation because they're carrying a strain of... uh... what's a fancy word for diarrhoea?"

"Gastroenteritis," River said, "Is that something Jack's come up with before?"

"No, he usually likes to pull the fire alarm, but I don't suppose they _have _fire alarms... Excuse me," Esther called to a man standing outside of the building on a different face than the one they had been lurking opposite. To this man, she relayed all the information she just had to River, and then River ordered him to wait outside while they, the professionals, went ahead and evacuated the premises.

This they did, the whole bottom floor, and when people started filing out it caused enough cover for the other four, even as out of place as they all looked, to sneak in unawares. They only had to evacuate the bottom floor, then they could take the stairs and avoid seeing anybody else. Anymore guards could be told the same ruse as the rest of Edison's employees, doing whatever it was they did. Admin work, maybe.

"Right, well," the Doctor began a little pompously, as though it had all been his doing, _Esther's_ plan to clear General Electric. She was getting used to things now, though. A little over the shock of being in New York City in 1893 brushing shoulders with Nikola Tesla and now, it seemed, Thomas Edison. "Where to, next? Cellar, no doubt. Which way is down?"

"Not the basement, upstairs," Esther told him, going towards a signposted stairwell, "There's something up there, electrical, I can feel it." And so she walked off and River and Nios followed her second of all, and then the Claras, and then the Doctor. She heard him mumble something to Alpha Clara about his 'authority' and she told him to 'shut up about his bloody authority' because apparently he had 'scraped back more authority than the other three Doctors combined.' Esther didn't know any of the others apart from Thirteen, but there was something odd about the way she talked in relation to the rest of the crew, probably because of her being from the future like she'd been saying yesterday. "How many people are even in your crew?" she asked. There were a lot of stairs, so there was time to fill with conversation.

"Oh, I don't know. Twelve?" the Doctor shrugged.

"_Twelve? _There's nineteen people staying on the TARDIS presently," River said. He tripped on one of the stairs.

"_Nineteen_!?" he shouted, and Nios told him to shut up, "There are not. I want names. Give me names, Song, go on," he challenged her.

"Well there's the six of us here now," she said, "Then there's three more Doctors, your daughter, Jack, Rose, _my _parents, Mickey and Martha, Donna, Clara's sister and Adam Mitchell. And what about Adam's sister? She makes twenty."

"No, Ellie left yesterday," Alpha Clara said. The Doctor looked like he might be having an existential crisis at this news. Was she a permanent member then? Without even meeting all of them?

"Are you letting her join, then? Without one of your bloody votes?" Beta Clara argued, "I thought only the people brought by the Dimension Stabilisers are above the votes?"

"It depends how annoying they are," Nios said, "I passed the vote quite easily."

"Jenny and Oswin vouched for you," River said. This Oswin intrigued Esther somewhat, this sister of Clara's. There was almost an eagerness from Clara (Alpha) for Esther to meet her. And as for Adam Mitchell, she was damn sure she'd heard the name _Adam Mitchell_ before, it was sorely familiar. It was just names and names and names from these people - she didn't know how they all kept the goings on straight in their heads. "Did you even have a vote?"

"What - _she _got away with not having a vote!?" Beta Clara demanded.

"Listen, Clara," Alpha Clara said to her as they climbed the flights of stairs. Whatever was at the top was generating an almighty amount of electricity - it made her feel that strange sort of thirst she had when she was near a substation or an electronics store.

"Don't you start talking to me, you freak me out enough."

"You know that they don't like us," Alpha Clara told her calmly. What an odd thing to say, in such an odd tone of voice, as though she were consoling a child. But it was pitiful and tragic, too - what had happened to her to make her speak this way? The moment grew tense and River and the Doctor both watched uneasily without comment, the former with more guilt and the latter with more pain. If she really was going to stay, there were a lot of politics she was going to have to learn. Beta Clara glared at her counterpart and then stalked up the stairs ahead of everybody else. Nobody said anything else for the rest of the trek.

When they reached the top floor they found a metal set of doors, and Esther could feel whatever it was harbouring electricity right behind them. And, as though they were expected, the door wasn't even locked. What a lab it was inside, an extraordinary inversion of Tesla's quaint, basement dwelling. The ceiling was windows, a transparent dome, an incredible skylight. It was enormous, concrete curves built into the square building to make this room circular and tiled and it looked just like something in the imagination of Mary Shelley. Then there was an incredible device which was like a generator and a tesla coil and all sorts of things all combined into one great electrical resource which enticed her with its lights and its static and the crackling sound it made. In front of this huge monster sitting in one corner of the room was a desk, right in the centre. It was large and curved to the same degree as the walls, and at it was a man, with paper and machines, including one which looked oddly like a computer - though that was impossible. This man, though, who stood up and looked at them, was Thomas Edison. And this must be his office.

"Thomas Edison!" the Doctor shouted. Did he always shout peoples' names at them in greeting? He was actually beaming, but this looked like just the place to hatch some evil plan. Esther wanted desperately to wander over towards the peculiar generator-thing. She could usually sense the difference between alternating current and direct current - but that? That was neither. It was new. It was _alive _(again, she thought of _Frankenstein_.)

"Doctor Who," Edison - smarmy - said, holding the side of his coat. He was smug about something, "I've heard about your involvement with Aleck Bell." Meaning the inventor of the telephone, Esther assumed. The Doctor ignored this fact, however.

"That's my name, don't wear it out. Now, then. You see. I've been hearing some funny rumours about you and your inventions, lately, Tom," the Doctor said. Nick and Tom, what a man for nicknames he was. Edison did not seem threatened, though Esther supposed a buffoon in a purple, three-piece tweed suit wasn't the most intimidating of heroes (if he could be called such.)

"Please, old sport, save it," Edison said, "I know you're here on dear Tesla's behalf, since he suspects a frame job is afoot, courtesy of me. The man would be correct - but it'll be too late to do anything to stop me by the time he discovers this. And as for you? You'll all be... well, let's see what happens to unearthly types when faced with the Kinetostorm, shall we?"

"_Kinetostorm_!?" the Doctor exclaimed in sheer horror, and then he paused, "What's that?"

"My newest invention. The invention that will change what it means to be human!" he exclaimed, and Esther expected a flash of lightning, it would fit the mood perfectly. But it was a sunny spring day, so there was none, unless of course she supplied her _own_ lightning.

"I always hate when people say that," the Doctor grumbled.

"Alternating current, direct current, it is child's play, human play."

"_Human_ play? If you're not a human, what are you?" the confrontation prevailed.

"Oh, I am a human, Doctor. As human as... well, are any of you humans, strictly speaking?" he said mockingly, and Esther thought, perhaps they were not humans? Well, no, they really weren't at all anymore. But how did he know so much? "I'm afraid you're all helpless, however. I have recieved aid from the stars themselves to bring about the ultimate power source, _living _power. And it was all so simple. I will be the world's first billionaire, you'll see."

"What is this Kinetostorm? How does it fit in with the kineto_graph_? Kineto_scope_?"

"It rather is a modified kinetoscope," Edison said, meandering across his lab to a large rectangular box-thing against one of the walls. A kinetoscope, Esther assumed, "You see, my young and naïve friend William Dickson spoke to me today over the telephone about some people from Sussex opening a lab. When I said their was no such project, he sent me a tape reel he recorded of them, in hope of identification. And now I have a weapon to use against you, because the celluloid is already set up within this device."

"You evil man," the Doctor shook his head, "How dare you film anybody without their explicit permission - that's a violation of basic privacy rights, you know. Wouldn't be admissible by the BBC. Despicable."

"Watch and learn, Doctor. Watch and learn." Thomas Edison flicked a switch on his little box and there was a pause. He stared at them, smiling, waiting. And they waited too. Esther debated electrocuting him, but the risk of making him dead was too strong.

But _then_ something happened. And that something was River Song screaming. She buckled and fell to the floor as though every inch of her were in pain. Thomas Edison cackled and everybody scattered, not knowing how they might be affected by this weapon. That wasn't the only terrible thing destined to happen, though, because as Esther scrambled out of River's way her hand accidentally brushed some part of Beta Clara, some shred of skin she hadn't managed to protect from the sun. Though it was against Esther's will, electricity still sparked out of her fingertips into Clara and there was a bright flash like a bolt of lightning in the very room with them and the sound of a female shriek. The flash died down, River still screamed, there was the sound of Clara's black umbrella and dark flask full of blood crashing to the floor. But there was no girl there any longer.

"Did she just-"

"Turn into-"

"A bat!?"

The Doctor, Nios and Alpha Clara shouted together and Esther stared in horror because it _was a _bat, quite a large one, right there flapping about in the room wildly. So _that _was what happened when vampires got electrocuted. River carried on wailing and everybody was trying to pay attention to the manic bat and Edison's torture of River. What was more urgent?

"You let her go, you fiend!" the Doctor yelled at Edison.

"The girl - how did she do that!?"

"Never you mind!"

"I saw the electricity! It is drawn to her," Edison said, "Something about the machine - it never hums like that. What _are _you?" he was more interested in Esther Drummond than Clara the Bat, somehow. The bat flew around the room in panicked circles - no doubt Clara was having a horrible time of things now.

"She's your worst nightmare!" the Doctor bellowed.

"I don't understand," Nios interrupted, "That film - all three of us were on it - whatever it's doing, why is it only doing it to River?"

"She doesn't show up on film," the Doctor motioned to the bat, "Legend says it's because she has no soul."

"But... but what does that make me? Why won't it hurt me? I was on the camera! River's as far from... from being _organic _as I am!" she protested, but she was more distraught than angry, "Do I not have a soul, Doctor!? Is that what this means!?"

"Edison! Turn off your infernal contraption!"

"Give me the girl and I will," Edison bargained, "It draws upon the electrical circuits within humankind. Humans will become my battery, and I will drain them and join the greater civilisations in the stars high above! But she - _she _could power any ship to the sky the same as a thousand people, the way the machine reacts. That girl - that girl is my _foolproof patent_, Doctor. That girl will make me famous!" Esther wanted to shout at him that he was already damn famous, but Edison was going towards the doors, and they had saved neither River _nor _Beta Clara, and now Nios was having a crisis as well and the whole of humanity was at risk. And where were the Cargills? They said they were going to kill him after lunch.

"Never," the Doctor declared, "I don't make deals with villains."

"Suit yourself - but the Kinetostorm will launch today in Central Park, and there's no way to stop me," he said, and he then promptly vanished out of the doors. Nobody gave chase. The Doctor went to River, Nios did nothing, Alpha Clara stared at the bat flying around and was trying to calm it down somehow so it might land. In the heat of the moment, Esther shot a blast of electricity straight at the kinetoscope playing back the tape that had managed to capture the essence of River Song and blew it to pieces, and her screams of pain stopped. With tapes like that and a much larger device, Thomas Edison was intending to take over the world with help of the oblivious William Dickson, _Pinky &amp; the Brain_ style.


	416. Photonic Resonation Chamber

**AN: In a terrible mood because I missed the opportunity to name Chapter 910 "Welcome To New York" instead of "New York, New York" after the Taylor Swift song - and I'm never normally one to miss the opportunity to name a chapter after a Taylor Swift song. I also, in that chapter, missed my planned window for some damn good Clarenny, but it's had to be rescheduled because I forgot. I also almost forgot that this storyline was meant to introduce the Cargills _and_ Beta Clara's ability to turn into a bat. It's actually gotten very complicated later to litter across all the clues and information I have to, more so to do with the overarching storylines and the characters than the 'Monster of the Week' type stuff. All the Esther Drummond stuff comes to a resolution on Day 126, though, until she's part of different storylines later.**

_Esther_

_Photonic Resonation Chamber_

The lab was quiet but for the hum of the 'living generator', as Edison had alluded to it being, and the very loud squeaking of the loose bat flying around in panicked circles above them. Beta Clara was not a very good bat, as far as Esther Drummond could see, and Esther Drummond knew a lot about bats. She stared at the Bat as the Doctor helped River to her feet, nobody making any move to pursue that dastardly evil genius, Thomas Edison. Alpha Clara seemed to be attempting to coax the Bat down.

"Do you think she can still understand English?" Alpha Clara asked her husband. Nios stood having a crisis about the ability of a machine to have a soul, and Esther supposed that if someone had just made it seem like _she _might not have a soul and she was also a fragile synth she would have a meltdown, too. The Doctor said nothing, and Esther saw Clara turn her questioning eyes on her, and she just shrugged. Clara sighed and put a hand on her hip, "What if I grab her telekinetically?"

"Oh, I wouldn't do that, darling," the Doctor, River pushing him away from her and insisting she was fine, said to Clara. He left River's side now she was leaning against the wall somewhat shaken to stand next to Clara and cross his arms to observe the Bat, too, "You'll frighten her even more. I know exactly what it's like to suddenly change bodies, you know, and it's very traumatic, so I can't imagine how frightful it must be to change bodies into a _bat_. If this is the first time she's done it, of course." Going by what happened next, Esther assumed that it very much _was _the first time, because the Bat flew headfirst into the wall and fell to floor. Esther proceeded to step forwards to cross the room, before remembering she could touch nothing and letting the Doctor and Clara go examine it instead. And then curiosity got the best of her and she followed them swiftly anyway.

"I'm seriously so sorry - it was an accident," Esther apolgoised, talking first to the Doctor and Clara, before directing another apology at the Bat itself, which sat awkwardly on the floor with its wings half splayed out squeaking.

"What if you shock her again?" Clara suggested.

"Best not," said the Doctor.

"But vampires can only die from a stake through the heart. Or burning. Or decapitation. Or garlic. Or sunlight. Not _electrocution_."

"Electrocution is both burning _and _bright light and I wouldn't think the same trick would happen again - lightning never strikes twice, and all that. All Esther's done is triggered an ability she didn't know she had, and I'm entirely confident she also has it within her power to change _back_. When she stops fretting so much, that is," he said the last sentence quite loudly and at the Bat directly, whose frantic squeaking paused for a moment, "I'm sure she understands us. Take some deep breaths, or something."

"What sort of bat even is that?" Clara asked.

"A fruit bat," Esther said, "Which is kind of ironic, since fruit bats are one of the few totally non-carniverous species of bats, and she drinks blood. They're also the biggest." They stared at her. "...What? I like bats, okay? They're my favourite animal. Weird that she's not a vampire bat."

"Lucky to have you then, I suppose, aren't we?" the Doctor said. The Bat squeaked again, and he grimaced at it, "That's very rude of you. She said if it wasn't for you, Esther, she wouldn't have turned into a bat in the first place. I speak bat, you know. Now we'd better have a look around, and _you _can stay right there and try not to fly into any walls again." He left the Bat on the floor, and Clara followed him. Ordinarily, Esther may have stayed with the vampire, though she was much too intrigued by Edison's diabolical plan and his odd generator to do that, and she could sense her presence was most definitely not welcome. River shuffled towards Edison's desk as well, and surprisingly, Nios was the one who came to watch the Bat. She muttered something about being soulless as she did.

The thing on the desk which she had originally assumed to be a computer, even though computers didn't exist for about a hundred years, looked even more like a computer when she saw the front of it. Spookily, in fact, like a computer...

"Is that a computer?" she asked. The Doctor stared at it, and then seemed very puzzled and pulled out Edison's chair and sat down. Clara lit another cigarette and began to rifle through the papers on the desk while Nios cooed to the Bat and River lingered. Esther kept glancing at the huge machine right behind them. She wanted to touch it. She felt like it wanted her to touch it, as well, like whispers in her ears that buzzed. The computer, though, was made of metal and the keyboard looked just like a typewriter. She was almost sure it _was _a typewriter. To her even greater surprise, when the Doctor turned it on text came up, square and orange in colour against a black background.

"Monochrome - dreadful. Do you remember monochrome, Clara? Or are you too young?" he asked. Clara clenched her jaw for a moment.

"I've never actually seen a monochromatic computer, no," she admitted as though this were shameful. Esther hadn't really, either. The Doctor turned and stared at her to his left searching through files.

"What year were you-"

"1988," she said, "Shut up. You asked me to marry you, you can't start regretting it now." How old was the Doctor? He didn't even look thirty yet.

"That's a computer, how is there a computer here?" Esther asked the Doctor, who was frowning at it with his chin on his hand, reading the orange text on the screen.

"It's not human technology, that's why it's orange," he told her, speaking more to himself, however, "There's something else going on here, something he's manipulating... Why do you keep looking at that machine?" he asked her. When she asked about the computer her eyes were firmly trained on the machine itself.

"I don't, um... there's something about it. Can't you feel it?"

"I don't feel anything," he said, spinning around in the chair to face the machine like Esther was. The smell of tobacco was like heavy silt in the air, that and the crackle of electricity, "It just looks like a funny generator. Why?"

"I don't know," she said, stepping towards it and holding out her hand, "It's like it's... calling to me..."

"What does it say?" he asked her seriously, putting his hands together and observing her. Clara was pointing something on a piece of paper out to River, so everyone else in the room was preoccupied. Esther didn't answer though - how could she? She didn't know what it said, it wasn't like words, the whispers were almost voices but they were not coherent at all, it was like thick breaths going through her.

She pressed her fingers against the metal and her veins lit up on her hands in that odd way they did whenever she syphoned electricity out of something, but she was not syphoning anything right then. She was communicating, somehow, with _something _that lived in the generator, and the air, and the computer - the whole damn building. It was a connection, suddenly formed between her and this machine, this thing, that was living and breathing against all logic. The whispers were shouts and screams, they bellowed through her head but they still weren't words, they were waves and waves of static and distortion weaving its way through the voices in the machine, a fizzing, shrill cacophony. It grew so overwhelming that she dropped her hand away and stared at it. Silence collapsed around her.

"What? What is it? What's wrong?" the Doctor asked. She wiped an eye that had been watering - tears? She didn't hear a single word she understood, but somehow she knew.

"It's alive," she said, "The electricity in this building - it isn't alternating or direct, it's alive."

"Yes, that's what Edison said, how can it be alive?" the Doctor asked.

"_She's_ brain dead, isn't she?" Clara interrupted, and nodded at the Bat across the room.

"I - what?" the Doctor asked.

"This is relevant - if you scanned her brain, it would look dead, right? She has no electrical activity?" Clara said, and the Doctor told her that yes, he assumed so, "Well that's what it is," she moved her smoke-streaming cigarette out of her teeth and into her fingers and waved it as she talked, "It's what my sister's always saying, you know? You remember when I told you about Sally Sparrow and those ghosts?" The Bat squeaked again and flapped its wings, but went ignored. The Doctor said he did. "Those ghosts - they were... they were like... consciousnesses, right? The... electrical consciousnesses of people, or something, in the wood, because wood stores ghosts. The wood that built the pub was struck by lightning, so the electrical ghosts had this sort of bond with it, right? And the soul thing - Nios doesn't... have a consciousness stored through an electrical nervous system. River still does. Other Me doesn't. That's what that is, it's what the thing harvests. That's why that curator was basically catatonic - they don't function anymore. He drains their... well, their souls, for want of a better word. That's the Kinetostorm, it's why he wants Esther, living power."

"Oswin might as well be in the room," River muttered. Clara scowled at her.

"Zuarion!" the Doctor shouted, and Esther jumped. _Again_ with the shouting. "This computer is Zuarion, so is that machine! The Zuar are a race of healers, you know - a little like the Chula and their nanogenes. They've always had highly advanced medical technologies. I ran into a stray one once who crash langed on the East Coast of America, took him home, never recovered the ship! _You _were brought back to life with Zuarion technology from that crashed spaceship! Edison must also have found that spaceship - or a different one - and salvaged their technology and he's using it _here _to generate electricity from human beings. He's twisted it and made it aggressive, but those souls - it's keeping them alive. If we can find a way to reverse the process, we would save everybody, and then when the machine is empty we destroy it! Your electrical powers, Esther, these abilities come from somebody using Zuarion resurrection technology in a lightning storm. Struck by lightning, like the tree Clara mentioned, it made you into _this _and gave you your abilities. That's how the trapped energy communes with you, because you're both creations of stray Zuar technology."

"But - but who?" Esther asked.

"You don't know who brought you back to life?" River asked her.

"I know his face, he never told me his name, then I scared him off by accident in the middle of the lightning storm, because there _was _a huge storm, you're right," she told the Doctor, "I got struck by lightning a couple of times that night, and I mean, I guess I looked like a zombie before I started miraculously healing. He just ran off, and I came to the UK to look for Jack or Gwen, and UNIT caught me at a power station in, uh, Shropshire or someplace."

"Why you, though? You were in Torchwood, died in the line of duty - it can't be a coincidence," the Doctor said.

"Maybe it wasn't," River said.

"Look, I don't know, okay? But if you know the technology, can't you find a way to cure me? I keep hurting people," she said through gritted teeth. She hated hurting anybody. He looked at her for a long moment.

"No. Sorry. It's in irreversible biological process, like vampirism or manifesthood," he said, and then he left and started fussing about the machine trying to figure out a way to save the people trapped inside.

So there was nothing they could do to help her, nothing at all. _Great_. She clenched one of her fists.

"Hey, Esther," Alpha Clara said softly, walking over, "My sister might be able to do something, alright? She's cleverer than he is. She figured out that thing about the ghosts I was saying, okay? She practically _is _one. I'm sure she can do something." Esther just nodded. What did she mean about this sister of hers being 'practically a ghost'?

"I can save them," she said eventually, "The souls in there, I can pull them out and release them."

"You can?" the Doctor said, "Brilliant, Esther. You do that, I'm going to wipe all of the data on this funny looking computer. Clara, if you see any schematics in her, burn them. Destroy everything. He can't be allowed to rebuild this thing. And then we have to find out where he's gone."

"We already know," River said, "There are memos down here about a surprise demonstration of the Kinetostorm in Central Park at four o'clock on May 22nd, that's today, in barely an hour."


	417. War Of The Currents

_Esther_

_War Of The Currents_

They arrived too late to Central Park.

The emerald grass was scorched and marred with twisted, metal refuse which all originated from one epicentre, an epicentre which was now a great big tangled mess of splintered wood and glass and complex, broken mechanisms. Bodies were strewn about in amongst the trees and the bushes with the hot, yellow sun beating down on the aftermath. Everybody was unconscious. Not dead, not as far as Esther could tell, they were perfectly _alive_, they were just knocked out. Including, she noticed, the culprit himself, that intellectual rogue Thomas Edison. He lay, charred and sooty, in the centre of the mess.

Their whole party was separated out in an odd way. Esther was off to the right trying to simultaneously stay attached so she didn't get lost but also stay out of any arguments, because they had a lot of arguments, she had noticed, these people who lived together. Alpha Clara walked a few steps behind the Doctor, who walked in zigzag patterns around the bodies and checked for pulses every now and again. She was smoking and he was pretending not to notice, but Clara was as attached to her cigarettes as she was to her husband and whatever vow of silence it was she took when the others were around. River was sort of more in the middle, with Esther and the Doctor at opposite ends of their haphazard formation, peering at the debris and inspecting it. Then there was Nios, who had Beta Clara the Bat hanging off her finger, which Esther assumed was much sturdier than a human finger because that fruit bat was the same length and width as a Subway sandwich, roughly, and couldn't have been at all light.

"Are they dead?" River asked the Doctor, who had been checking to see but also not saying anything to anybody. It had taken them too long to drain the generator, destroy Edison's kinetoscope and the film he had of River Song and Nios, burn all of his papers and erase the orange-coloured digital memos on his advanced, scavenged computer. Then they didn't have a TARDIS to take quickly there and the only taxicabs were horse-drawn – cars were not nearly so commonplace yet, they were in an America right after the introduction of intercontinental railways and the death of the Wild West.

"No, they're not," Esther told her with a meek smile, trying to be helpful, because the Doctor seemed disinclined to answer. He'd been so jovial that morning, like a child going to a theme park for the day, off to meet his best friend 'Nick Tesla,' wandering around the Brooklyn Institute pointing out which tribes stolen artefacts really came from. And now he'd almost had a fall from grace – in Esther's eyes, at least. He had changed into someone less buoyant and seemingly much older. How old _was_ he, exactly?

"Do you smell that?" he said suddenly. Nios was disconnected from everything and paying more attention to Beta Clara, who'd been silent for a while and was maybe calming down. Esther kept looking at her apologetically, wondering how she could possibly make it up. After all, Beta Clara had been one of the ones to rescue her, her inability to show up on cameras proving a huge benefit, and this was how Esther had repaid her? Even if it hadn't been on purpose, it was still unfair, and she still felt guilty. "Smells like almonds."

Esther sniffed, and it _did_ smell like almonds, but that wasn't good. That was at least _one_ thing the CIA and Torchwood had taught her, "It's plastic explosives," she said, "Semtex. Semtex smells like almonds."

"Impossible," River said, "Semtex won't be invented until the 1960s. Somebody was probably just eating almonds."

"But what about those two people?" Esther said to both the Doctor and the Alpha Clara, and Clara looked at the Doctor and expected him to speak for her. What was with her? When it was just she and the Doctor (and Esther, but Esther was quiet enough that she was sure they forgot she was there quite frequently) she was fine, she would speak to her heart's content and make all kinds of possibly unnecessary comments. And now she would not speak unless spoken to, she just stood around, embittered and careful, smoking those cigarettes. But she looked like she had things to say and she was keeping her mouth shut – why, Esther wondered?

"What people?" River asked sharply.

"Well, no, they were just… not important, doesn't matter," said the Doctor quickly. River narrowed her eyes at him and he cleared his throat and turned his back to check the pulse of another sleeping New Yorker. River didn't even bother to ask Clara, she looked straight to her right at Esther. Previously, Esther had obediently followed the Doctor's lead of not mentioning those Cargills, or whoever, but now she was seeing that maybe he wasn't quite as useful or omniscient as she thought. He and Jack both, they were so elusive and enigmatic, but then mysteries got solved, and she learnt more about Jack everyday now. Jack Harkness didn't seem quite as extraordinary anymore now that Rose Tyler had explained how he was created, that it was really all an accident and _she_ was the extraordinary one when it came to Jack's immortality.

"Who were they?" River questioned Esther.

"I don't know! These people, they were in the museum, they said they were married, they had some device they were using on the curator, and they said they were gonna kill Thomas Edison. Then they, I don't know, teleported, or something," Esther told her all she could remember, and River groaned in annoyance and turned her eyes back on the Doctor, who was pretending to be totally innocent.

"What?" he asked her.

"_What_?" she mocked, "What do you mean, 'what'? _Why_ didn't you tell us!? Why would you keep things like that!? You don't think we might all need to know about people with advanced technology trying to kill Edison wandering around?"

"It didn't seem relevant at the time," he told her coolly. Clara still said nothing, but in the seeming absence of her ability to speak, she still pulled faces and rolled her eyes at some of the things her husband was saying. It was nearly like she was invisible – or, trying to be.

"I can't tell how offended I am about him thinkin' we're not relevant!" shouted a man's Irish accent, and Austin Cargill and his spookily similar wife sauntered out from some vague point behind the wreckage of Edison's now-destroyed Kinetostorm.

"Them!" Esther pointed, "It was them."

"Aye, us it was," Ashley said, "We thought you were dead, River."

"You know the Cargills!?" the Doctor demanded of River, and River ignored him completely, while the Bat squeaked some more and unfurled her wings a little to draw attention to herself, but only Esther seemed to notice. Nios told her to shush, but the Bat was panicking again. Beta Clara didn't seem to have very strong resolve when she was a bat.

"Well, you two never were very good at thinking, were you?" River sniped at them, "Why are you trying to kill Thomas Edison?"

"The further the technological advances of the human race, of course!" Austin said quite happily, but then he drew out his gun. If Esther had to put money on it, she'd say they were definitely both insane. "If this maniac dies, humanity will be able to colonise Mars by the year 1990! And here ya all are defendin' the bastard!"

"His death his fixed," River said boredly.

"_Fixed_?" Austin asked her, then he turned to the Doctor and pointed his gun, "You there, in the funny outfit – is this cockroach's death in however-many-years a fixed point in time?"

"Yes," the Doctor answered bitterly. He almost seemed to be bitter because he wasn't the main attraction. What was that Alpha Clara had been saying to him about his 'authority' earlier?

"I was really lookin' forward to maybe stampin' him to death, too. But then, I _would_ have gotten blood on me new shoes," he sighed, and actually put his gun away, "Still – s'pose he can't get into too much trouble now the eight of us have worked together and you've destroyed all of his research?"

"Unless ya haven't destroyed his research?" Ashley added. The Bat was still squeaking.

"Of course we have," the Doctor muttered. He was definitely not in a good mood.

"Well, all in day's work, eh?" Austin shrugged, "We'll best be off, we're gonna miss Elvis' last performance if we keep chin wagging."

"But – these people!" the Doctor argued, "Look at them! They could have died!"

"Boo-hoo, less than would've died if we didn't blow it up," Ashley said indifferently.

"They could be comatose, all of them! Brain dead!" he protested, which was true enough. Esther couldn't tell the extent of the damage blowing up the Kinetostorm mid soul-sucking had done, only that they were alive, "You've completely disregarded the quality of life of all these innocent people!"

"Well if you weren't plannin' on blowin' it up, what _were_ ya gonna do?" Ashley questioned.

"I was… well I was… well… just switch it off, or something!" he argued, but had they not all discussed just minutes ago that the best course of action would be to blow up the Kinetostorm? Get Esther to do it? And Esther had been willing enough, too. What was the Doctor playing at?

"You know we were going to blow it up anyway," River said what Esther was thinking.

"I don't care what we were planning to do! You can't be so reckless, showing up here, trying to kill famous historical figures! Who are you!? Who!? No! No, no – don't do – DON'T!" he shouted, almost running towards them, because what had just happened while he shouted angrily at the Cargills and the Cargills remained utterly unimpressed was Austin had just flung an arm around Ashley's shoulders and the pair of them had disappeared again in a haze of blue light. The Doctor made some angry, roaring sounds and scanned the air with that screwdriver-thingy, holding it to the sky and spinning around in a circle. Then he groaned in anguish and hit the screwdriver against the palm of his hand. Needless to say, again, the teleporter was irreversible.

"Who were they?" Esther asked River while the Doctor messed about next to the Kinetostorm wreckage futilely trying to trace the Cargills' relay.

"Idiots. Worked for the Time Agency, probably. Went freelance. Now they're just troublemakers – like to think they're like me or Jack," River said.

"You and Jack?" Esther questioned.

"We're from the same century," River answered.

"What century? What's the 'Time Agency'?"

"The Fifty-First. And it's defunct, it doesn't matter," River told her, and she refused to answer more questions about Jack and moved on to Esther's disappointment, because she had learnt more about Jack in the last twenty-four hours than she had in all the many months she'd spent with him, "I wouldn't even try to figure out what they gained out of this – because I guarantee they only had selfish reasons. They caused a lot of trouble for me a few decades ago when I was trying to get my hands on a vortex manipulator." The Doctor made another angry noise. "Ignore him."

"What's the matter with him?" Esther asked quietly.

"Lots of things, probably. I don't talk to him that much. You'd be better off asking Clara," River said, almost resentfully, but not quite.

"Right then!" the Doctor, furiously, shouted. Esther winced, but everybody else seemed nonplussed by his rage, "If you're all so lacking in empathy you don't care about any of these people – it's back to Tesla then, is it!? Yes! Fine! Off we go!" It was like when one of your parents got mad at you asking them for something, but gave in and then made you feel bad about it because of how angry they were, and Esther was stuck following him with the others.

But what was she now to do when they got back to the TARDIS? Where could she go? She really didn't want to be stuck in one small room with the Doctor in his bad mood and his wife and her sudden quietness, but she didn't know anybody at all enough to slip away and join them, too. Except Jack. But she didn't know where Jack would be. She made up her mind that, at the next opportunity, she may go and find him, because she had a lot of questions and a lot to catch up on, she felt, and thought he might make her feel like she belonged in this new life more than she did then.


	418. Electro Bolt

_Esther_

_Electro Bolt_

Tesla called it 'the Syphon.' He had not let them into his lab. He had been waiting outside with his blueprints and declared he had to leave New York to go back to Colorado Springs because he had some brainstorm about the conductivity of Earth's atmosphere which desperately warranted investigation. He had not had time to explain his invention, but that and a battered old notebook he palmed off on the Doctor before vanishing in a horse and carriage taxi to get to the nearest train heading southeast. Esther got the feeling that the friendship between Tesla and the Doctor was a little more one-sided than the Doctor was willing to admit, but regardless, he kept the notebook tucked away in his jacket and thrust the schematics into Esther's hands, a large piece of thick paper with fingerprint smudges of pencil lead all over it. Then Tesla was gone, and Esther was a little downtrodden because she thought he at least might have some insight into her condition. Did all her hope really rest with Clara Oswald's mysterious sister? It seemed likely, as the TARDIS thrummed and brought its blue self down next to them, and she still thought it was one of the weirdest things she had ever seen in her life.

She rolled up the schematics and went inside and tried to figure out if she was disappointed or not - at least Tesla had said sorry to her for rushing off, and maybe this Syphon really could help her and she was giving him a raw deal by judging before she knew, strictly speaking, what it did. Nios was still in a bad mood, as was the Doctor, and River seemed less than happy, too. As for Beta Clara, Esther didn't even know what she must be feeling; was getting turned into a bat more traumatic than getting turned into a human lightning rod? 'Lightning Girl'?

And then, inside, the group scattered. Nios said she would deliver the Bat to Jenny because she was sick of carrying her, River left without a word, the Doctor moodily said he was going to the library and stalked away with hunched shoulders. Clara watched him leave with her eyebrows raised, holding her fingers as though there were a cigarette in them, but her she had stamped her last one out outside because people didn't like her smoking on the TARDIS, apparently. When she noticed this, she clenched her fist, then saw Esther looking at her uselessly.

"I'm sorry about him. There's been a leaderhsip crisis lately. When everybody got pulled onto the ship, all of the Doctors sort of thought they were 'in charge,' but then... well, you know, stuff happens, everybody else is more than capable. Honestly, I doubt he'll even come out of the library until some ridiculous time in the middle of the night," Clara sighed, going and sitting down on the steps of a flight of stairs which Esther had yet to venture up. So she was talking again, then? Why did she she talk around Esther but not the others?

"How come you were so quiet earlier? When everybody else was around?" Esther sat down next to her on the steps. It seemed like Clara desired another cigarette, the way she kept fidgeting with her fingers. She smelt of tobacco.

"Oh," she said, and then she paused and drew a pack of gum out of her pocket, spearmint. She offered one to Esther, but Esther declined. Clara talked as she chewed now, "They don't like when I speak."

"What? What do you mean..?"

"I mean that, if I said everything I wanted to say, somebody would punch me in the face. Why d'you think the other one is in such a bad mood about being here? She's only here because she's worried about Jenny - she doesn't live with us," Clara said, "Amy broke her nose because she wouldn't stop being annoying, I heard."

"But that's awful. That's, like, assault!" Esther exclaimed.

"Why? Don't you think I'm annoying, too? Everybody thinks I'm annoying. It's my thing, I'm 'the annoying one.' The only people I don't piss off are my husband and Jenny, apparently."

"You're not annoying," Esther said. She smiled.

"You're a breath of fresh air, you know," Clara told her, "A new person who's _nice_. Not some pain in the arse old man or a teenage girl." Esther didn't know who she was talking about. "C'mon, though. You have to show these schematics of Tesla's to my sister." Clara stood up so Esther followed suit, her plans to find Jack delayed by the new mission to deliver plans to Clara's genius sister. "Oh, you are _lucky _you missed all of that Cult bollocks months ago."

"You kinda swear a lot."

"Yeah. Swear a lot, smoke a lot - I would drink a lot, too, if my husband didn't get rid of my stash," Clara said, showing her up the stairs, pushing a large button that opened the door.

"But, why?" Esther asked.

"I've been through a lot of shit, Esther," Clara told her, "It's not important." She then smiled in spite of that statement and dragged a keycard out of one of her pockets and swiped it in another door, "Before you meet Oswin, I just have to tell you one thing. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry for anything she might say." Esther didn't know what that meant, but the door slid up into the ceiling and Clara sighed before going in. "Os?" she called.

"Oh, hi, honey," said a voice that sounded exactly like Clara's. And then Esther saw a girl who _looked_ exactly like Clara, too, just with longer hair. She was sitting at a desk which looked like one of those long tables you got in high school science labs. She was building something, it looked like, and she glanced up, and then she stared at Esther. To Clara, she said, "Who's the arm candy? I recognise her from the dirty videos you were masturbating over two nights ago." Clara sighed.

"Oswin, be nice," Clara said.

"I am being nice! If I were her, I'd take your wanking habits as a compliment!" Oswin protested. Esther now saw why Clara had apologised in advance.

"This is Oswin Oswald," Clara said to Esther, "She says things like that all the time to everybody. She's the one Jack got to find you in UNIT," Oswin bowed a little in her chair and smiled, then Clara turned to speak to her instead, "Oswin, this is Esther Drummond. She's pulling your leg about the wanking thing." Esther nodded slightly.

"_Pulling her leg_? I can't even believe you would use that phrase in my presence, you insensitive arse," Oswin said to Clara. She turned sideways in the chair to face them, which was when Esther noticed a shining, metal prosthetic leg where Oswin's left leg was supposed to be, and she ended up staring.

"I know you don't care. By the way, I'm having dinner with you and Adam. Husbandy has gone off in a mood to the library and Jenny won't cook because she's busy taking care of her girlfriend, I assume," Clara told her.

"Why?"

"Esther accidentally electrocuted her and turned her into a bat and she hasn't been able to change back yet," Clara explained.

"Seriously? Well, she probably deserved it, the moody twat. And that's _me_ saying that, and _I'm_ a dead manic-depressive amputee," Oswin said, puttig some emphasis on the last word and meeting Esther's gaze when Esther finally stopped staring at her fake leg. But what did she mean, 'dead'?

"Sorry. I don't mean to stare," she apologised.

"Oh, don't mention it - I'm gorgeous, who _wouldn't _want to stare at me?" she said, then she winked at Esther, who was very taken aback and didn't really know what to do.

"Don't flirt with her, Os, she's not into you," Clara told her. Esther had never much cared for 'flirting' and would prefer if people just didn't try their luck with her, not anybody and not ever.

"Everyone's into me."

"No, they aren't," Clara said firmly. Then the door slid open with a whooshing sound that could be out of _Star Trek_ and a boy walked in with dark hair and glasses and two cups of coffee, sort of short. "Adam, I'm having dinner with you."

"That's nice," the boy said, then he asked Oswin, "Why does you sister want to have dinner with me?"

"The waste of space over there wants you to cook for her because Eleveny is being a brat," Oswin told him.

"I was gonna buy Pizza Hut," he said.

"Oh, I don't mind, I'll have Pizza Hut," Clara interrupted, smiling. He passed one of the cups of coffee to Oswin and then stood with the other and stared at Clara with a frown. She just smiled, either not caring or not understanding that that wasn't what he had meant.

"Great," he muttered.

"This is Esther Drummond, by the way," Clara said, then to Esther, "That's Adam Mitchell, Oswin's boyfriend." _Adam Mitchell_ \- again, she recognised his name, but she didn't know where from, nor did she know his face from anywhere.

"Hi. What's that you've got?" he asked her, motioning to the rolled up schematics of Nikola Tesla she was holding. She hadn't had a chance to show the schematics to Oswin just yet.

"They're schematics for some invention," she explained, and then Clara added the part about it being expected Oswin would build it. Oswin didn't seem happy, and complained she was already having to build a dimension hopping device for Jenny and a home security system for Beta Clara, then she said something about snot Esther didn't quite catch. Still, Esther, careful not to touch her, handed the plans over and she went and unfurled them on the desk. "You're bugging me - do I know you?" she asked Adam Mitchell, who seemed surprised.

"Know me? I don't think so."

"I swear I do, I know your name from somewhere," she said, but she still didn't know. Not for a few more minutes, at least, _then_ it struck her, "Didn't you win International Child Genius in the 1990s? Hang on - are you the millionaire software developer?" Oswin laughed a little coldly.

"Shut up," Adam muttered at his girlfriend.

"He stole the software and claimed it was his," Oswin said, and he scowled, "You know he has a replica of the 1989 Batmobile down in the TARDIS garage? You never told me you won Child Genius, babe."

"I won it every year I was old enough to enter," he boasted, and Esther couldn't tell if Oswin was genuinely impressed, "They invite me back to spectate every year, but I haven't been since I was twenty. Just because I'm not as clever as _you_."

"Well, nobody's as clever as me," Oswin said absently, putting random bits of metal down as paperweights on Tesla's drawing, "If I spent all my time looking on the entire human race for being less intelligent me I'd have an even worse time of it than I do already." She sipped some coffee.

"Y'know, people used to say _I _was a genius," Esther said, and Oswin choked on her coffee quite violently and ended up spitting some onto the floor and having to put her mug down (**Chapter Ref. 534**).

"P-pardon? What was..? What... you just say?" Oswin stammered. Clara and Adam both looked at her like she had suddenly lost it. Oswin stared at her and leant on the side of the desk, "Esther. You don't really know me - but I think we should get married."

"_What_!?" came three voices in varying degrees of shock, objection and plain confusion.

"You'll marry a girl you met five minutes ago, yet you _still _sometimes deny that you even _like _me?" Adam Mitchell questioned her.

"Well I don't like you, do I? Especially not when you're being a twat-block," Oswin said. He scowled and sat down in the chair Oswin had vacated when she stood up to get Tesla's plans from Esther.

"This is Sally Sparrow all over again."

"She's way hotter than Sally Sparrow!" Oswin protested. Again with this Sally Sparrow - who was she, and why'd she have such a profound effect on everybody?

"Stop being a pervert for five seconds and get back to the bloody schematics," Clara said loudly to Oswin. Esther was growing very uneasy with this turn of events - she really didn't know if she was being objectified or not. Oswin clenched her jaw, and then began to comment on the plans.

"It's a passive wireless electrical generator," Oswin said, "The convex funnel on the top of it allows for greater specimen dampening by lowering the mass but heightening the surface area - the electricity is drained away and converted into useful energy and goes to power whatever the thing is plugged into. Technically, it's not a 'syphon,' it's an... _output mitigator_... It takes excess electricity out of Esther and utilises it elsewhere to make her more safe and lower the danger of her emitting a fatal electrical discharge. But his maths is all botched, would you look at this? It's so inefficient, it can all be lowered..." she picked a pen up off the desk next to her and started crossing out things Tesla had written and scribbling over his notes, which Esther almost felt was like defacing a great masterpiece of art, "See, if you change the materials and the shape of this generator core to be a magnetically suspended sphere allowing for higher efficiency of polarity transgression, then you reduce the excess and the waste energy product by about two-hundred percent! How ineffective is this thing? What's the problem, Clars - why didn't you come to me straight away? I could've built it by now. If you lower the specifications here to increase the efficiency to the max, then you raise them all again to change the size but keep the, uh... what is that... a singularity matrix. If you keep the singularity matrix balanced and equal then you can essentially use Esther to power a house and have no electric bills _and _keep her electrically regulated. Not that Esther lives in a house. I can get it silent running, too, if I use izonal electricity instead of AC or DC - which are, offence intended, prehistoric. But this is junk, to be honest." If Esther had doubted Oswin's intelligence, she doubted it no longer.

"It was the Doctor, he just got some idea in his head that we go visit Nikola Tesla and make him build something for Esther. He calls him 'Nick', it's weird," Clara said.

"Your husband is too insecure when it comes to how clever _I _am," Oswin said.

"But - wait - if you can do all _that_, then can't you fix me?" Esther asked her.

"_Fix you_? No," she said, "Maybe you're the one with the perspective problem, if you think you're broken in the first place. That electricity brought you back from the dead, it's alien, it's the thing keeping you alive. No lightning, no Esther, get it? Can't cure you, can't cure Clara, can't cure Adam, can't cure - hell - _me_."

"You? What are you?"

"Me? A hologram. I'm dead," she said, "Died tragically in 5121. Next thing you'll be saying Clara hasn't even told you we're not _actually_ sisters." Esther, shocked, said Clara hadn't told her that. Then she got told a complicated story involving what they called 'echoes' and a 'time stream' and the Doctor and all sorts of things she never would have dreamed possible once upon a time.

"What about that thing? That Shape Alterer Whatsit," Clara said.

"The Shape Alteration Inducer? Well, yeah, that _might _work at transforming her back into a human," Oswin shrugged.

"Wait - couldn't it help Beta Me, as well!? Couldn't you make her human? Or at least change her back from being a bat?" Clara asked.

"I don't know. Probably."

"Well why haven't you!?" she demanded.

"I blew it up."

"You _what_!?"

"_Blew it up_, Clara! After all that trouble it caused with the body-swapping over a month ago, I didn't think it might ever have a _useful _purpose. And besides, it might not have worked on someone brain dead and someone else with an EEG reading of five-billion Joules," Oswin said coolly, "And as far as I'm concerned, it's not that bad, alright? Now, what I'm really interested in is _that_." She nodded at Esther's hands, and Esther immediately stopped what she had been doing. She'd been holding her hands almost together, a habit she had developed in the last few months really, fingers almost touching, sending little blue crackles of electricity between her skin on either hand.

"Oh, sorry," she stopped doing.

"No! Keep doing it!" Oswin told her, enthralled.

"What kind of electrokinesis do you have, then? Is it like, full-on lightning shapeshifting and travelling through power cables like Livewire from DC Comics, or like, loads of different, super-powerful abilities like Cole MacGrath in _inFamous_? Or is it just kind of minor discharging and electric-shots like Elle from _Heroes_? Or - is it like the Electro Bolt plasmid in _Bioshock_ or the Shock Jockey vigour in _Infinite_?" Adam Mitchell asked, and she stared at him. Oswin cleared her throat.

"Yes, I'm sure Esther fully understands that you're a massive nerd now, Mitchell," she told Adam, and then she told Esther to just ignore his 'royal dorkness' and he said she was being 'a meanie,' which she laughed at. Then Oswin got an idea and said to Esther, "What about gloves?"

"Gloves..?"

"Yeah, like, properly designed gloves for you, I mean. Comfy ones. There are plenty of materials that don't conduct electricity that are more comfortable on your skin than rubber. Unless you're into rubber, or something?" Oswin suggested, and Esther stared at her for a minute. It was just sex, sex, sex with these people, wasn't it?

"I'm not into anything," she mumbled, getting tired of it.

"Well how about I make gloves, then? I'm always making stuff for people. Then they tell me I'm nasty - how am I nasty? I do so much for this ship," she mainly said that to Adam Mitchell, who just drank more coffee, "Ungrateful load of... ugh. Gloves, then?"

"Sure, I guess," Esther said finally.

"How about marriage?"

"Uh..."

"Oswin, stop trying to get her to marry you," Clara ordered her.

"But I'm in love with her!"

"You're making me kind of uncomfortable," Esther finally said, and they shut up.

"You're just... you're incredibly pretty. I apologise. Like Clara said, I have no notion of social boundaries or appropriateness," Oswin told her.

"Well, thanks, I guess... can I go find Jack?"

"He's on the razz again," Adam told her, "Off to some gay bar, he said. Left about half an hour ago."

"_Seriously_? I'm back from the dead, and he can't even... he can't-"

"I have Gwen's phone number," Oswin interrupted, "If you want to talk to Gwen, maybe? Catch up with her?"

"Why do _you _have Gwen Cooper's phone number?" Clara questioned.

"Because she gave me it, _duh_," Oswin said, "The other day. With the brains and stuff, you know. I told you about it. I have Sally Sparrow's phone number, too, though I wouldn't give you that in a million years." Clara glared. Then they started arguing about something and Adam Mitchell stepped around them to be next to Esther and out of the way.

"Are they always like that?" she asked him.

"Oh, yeah. Constantly. Are you staying here, then? On the TARDIS?" he asked her.

"I... I don't know. I want to talk to Jack. But I'm just not sure if this is the place I want to be for... for_ever_."

"Yeah, well, for an infinite spaceship, it sure is claustrophobic sometimes."


	419. Pteropus Vampyrus

**AN: Seriously, _Torchwood: Miracle Day_ is just too good, all of _Torchwood_ is, go and watch it if you haven't. Actual, canon quote from Esther Drummond: "****I spent six months compiling the malware list [for the CIA] - it's something of a passion of mine." What a major nerd with a passion for malware. She also drives a light blue Mini, which Gwen Cooper said was rubbish.**

_DAY ONE-HUNDRED AND TWENTY-SIX_

_Martha_

_Pteropus Vampyrus_

"Well you have to drink it _somehow_, and I'm not pouring it out onto the table," Jenny Harkness said annoyedly to the large fruit bat sitting on the table. She was trying to coax Beta Clara into drinking blood out of a cup with a straw in it, but as far as Martha could tell, Clara wasn't cooperating. Martha was sitting on the nearest sofa with Mickey drinking coffee and trying to pay more attention to the holobox than to Jenny's antics with her new pet chiroptera, but it was proving difficult, especially when they were having a conversation where only half of it was even understandable. Clara the Bat squeaked. Martha hadn't known that was the sound bats made, she thought they more cawed or squawked like a bird. "A bowl? Like a dog, you mean?" The Bat squeaked again objectionably.

"Just tell her to get over herself," Donna, sick of hearing the one-sided argument, grumbled. When Jenny told Donna Clara could understand English perfectly well, Donna very loudly repeated herself, and the Bat continued to squeak.

"Why'd you bring her in here?" Martha asked as Amy, across the room sitting at the bar-like window in the strangely curved kitchen-wall (as they called it), muttered something bitter about wanting to have a 'quiet breakfast' without any 'flying rodents.' Martha might feel bad for Beta Clara, but she could feel bad for Beta Clara if Beta Clara was in a different room away from the rest of them, so she saw Amy's point.

"Because I wanted breakfast but she wouldn't let me leave, she kept flying at me," Jenny explained.

"Needy girlfriend, much?" Amy said, and there was a smattering of laughs which Jenny did not appreciate, "What's this about a new girl, anyway? Don't we have to vote if someone's staying with us?" As she said that, the doors between Nerve Centre and the Bedroom Circle slid open and a small, dishevelled blonde Martha recognised from the photograph on her UNIT file came in looking lost. They all stared at her and she stopped and stared at the fruit bat on the table.

"Oh my god, she hasn't changed back? I'm so sorry - is there anything I can do, or?" she asked worriedly.

"Why would _you _have anything to do with Clara being a bat? And who _are _you, anyway?" Amy questioned her somewhat coldly. She very resentfully ate Coco Pops and grimaced.

"Are you _ever _in a good mood?" Martha asked Amy, who glared at her.

"I'm Scottish," she said, like that was somehow an answer.

"Now you're stereotyping yourself," Donna told her. Amy told her to shut up and ate another spoonful of cereal, and the new girl stood awkwardly in the middle of the room until Jenny beckoned her over to sit down.

"I'm Esther Drummond," she finally answered.

"She's the Lightning Girl," Jenny said quite happily. Beta Clara squeaked at Esther in a manner which could be considered aggressive, so Esther sat in the furthest seat from her. Jenny cast a disapproving look at the Bat and hissed something at her about not being rude. She then went about introducing Esther to everybody else, "This is Martha, that's Martha's husband, Mickey, that's Donna and that's Amy. Donna and Amy don't have any brains, Mickey is also Rose's ex-boyfriend, Martha might set you on fire by accident _but _she's the only actual, medical doctor. They're nice enough when they're not being bitter about new people."

"It isn't _our _fault that all the new people usually sleep with _you_ and cause loads of trouble," Amy complained.

"That was one time!" Jenny protested. The Bat somehow managed to look ashamed, "Esther won't sleep with me."

"What if she sleeps with Jack?" Donna pointed out.

"Well so what if she did? What's it to any of you?" Jenny said indifferently, "That would be _their_ business, wouldn't it? Nobody's _forcing _you to be nosey gossips." Martha would have objected to that if she thought it was worth her time, because she did not consider herself to be a 'nosey gossip' at all.

"Jack and I don't have any business and we never will," Esther said quickly, and there was a silence.

"Well there you go. You all just want something to talk about," Jenny said. Again, Martha didn't like being generalised, but she sighed and spoke to Jenny, changing the subject.

"How're your eyes, then?"

"Oh, they're fine, but they don't have night vision or a zoom feature," she pouted.

"What happened to your eyes?" Esther inquired.

"Oswin gouged them out last month," Jenny answered, smiling politely. Esther stared at her in horror.

"She _gouged your eyes out_!?" Jenny nodded. "Why!?"

"Someone had to do it," she shrugged. Then she started trying to make Clara drink blood through a straw again and Martha realised she had run out of tea, as had Mickey, Esther sitting in shock. Donna started talking to Amy about the pair of them having another spa day to 'get away from everything' (though Martha wasn't too sure what 'everything' was), so Martha went to fill the kettle.

"Either of you want anything?" she asked Jenny and Esther as she held the kettle under the tap.

"Coffee, please," said Esther, looking shaken.

"There is no coffee," Martha said, "And there's... one teabag. And no bread. Or milk..."

"Martha?" she heard behind her, and looked at the door to see Adam Mitchell had just come in, "Is there any coffee?"

"No."

"What about tea?"

"No."

"Milk?"

"There isn't any anything," Martha told him, "Have you stopped going shopping?" Adam didn't say anything, just scratched the back of his neck guiltily. Martha saw the bandage on his arm from that barnacle sore he'd gotten weeks ago that wouldn't heal. "You have, haven't you?"

"There's plenty of orange milk," Jenny said.

"Nobody likes orange milk except Rose because she's a weirdo," Amy said.

"Alright, fine, who wants to come shopping, then?" he said, annoyed, "But I'm not paying."

"Hang on, if you don't pay, how are you gonna go shopping?" Esther asked, staring around at them. There was a sense of unease for a moment.

"Steal," Mickey answered her finally.

"_Steal_? You can't just _steal_, that's _illegal_," she hissed like some member of law enforcement was listening in.

"She's _great_," Jenny said, smiling at them, "She's been locked up in a tower for years and she's _still _this innocent. Even after hanging around with Jack."

"I'm always in the mood for a robbery," Amy said finally, "Can we rob Waitrose? Because I always hate the posh twats who go to Waitrose."

"Next you'll be after Booths..." Donna muttered.

"Nobody goes to Booths," Mickey told her.

"I'll come shopping," Martha volunteered. She didn't have anything else to do.

"Somebody say shopping?" Captain Jack Harkness stuck his head into the room behind Adam, and everyone stopped talked. Here he was, the man of the hour, who kept going out on the pull and forgetting all about his responsibilities at home. "What?" he asked. Surprisingly enough, Jenny was the only one who _didn't _seem bothered about Jack. Esther, however, was a mess of passive aggressive body language and looked the complete other way.

"Martha and Amy and I were going to go shopping," Adam finally told him stiffly.

"Esther and I will come," he said.

"Esther and you will do _what_?" Esther asked him.

"Go shopping," he said, and she stared at him. Martha though, did he not get that she was basically furious at him for repeatedly abandoning her? "This is Martha Jones - have you met Martha Jones properly? Helped save the world in 2007 and countless times since, I'm sure. Worked for UNIT, worked for Torchwood, went freelance alien hunter with Mickey over there - _also _ex-Torchwood. Speaking of, Adam," he turned to Adam Mitchell, "I need another favour from your clever girlfriend - I need her to check up on who's accessed the high security government files of me, Martha and Esther from 2013 onwards. Then I also need her to find out the same thing on Special Agent Rex Matheson with the CIA, Dr Owen Harper, Toshiko Sato, Ianto Jones and Gwen Cooper. I want her to find anyone worth investigating who's been looking into Torchwood."

"What's going on, Jack?" Esther asked him in a bored tone of voice, though it was a faux bored tone because she was clearly interested as Jack sat down next to her and, by coincidence, next to Jenny, only he had his back to her. She was still unfazed. Adam said something about getting dressed and disappeared.

"Yeah, why do you want to know who's been looking at Torchwood files? Most of those people are dead anyway," Martha told him.

"Yeah, including Esther, so who the hell brought her back to life? Can't be a coincidence. That's where I was last night," Jack turned back to Esther, "I went to find Rex, but he's gone underground." And that was when Esther seemed to forgive him, because he hadn't been out at a gay bar at all. "I thought it might have been Rex who brought you back."

"If you bothered to speak to me you'd know that it wasn't Rex because I saw his face," Esther said.

"Whose?"

"The guy who brought me back, I don't know who he was, I just know his face, he didn't say a word. Then he ran away," Esther said, "I scared him because lightning kept striking me and I was fine." Then the Bat squeaked a very sarcastic sounding squeak - well, Martha thought, the Bat was Clara, of course it was going to be sarcastic. Clara's middle name should be Sarcasm by now. Jenny told her to shush, and then Jack seemed to realise she was there and looked over his shoulder.

"What's with the bat?" he asked.

"She said, 'Oh, lucky you,' to Esther," Jenny answered him.

"Whaddaya mean, _she_?"

"I accidentally... may have... slightly... turned, uh, Beta Clara, is that?" Esther asked, and Jenny nodded, "Into a bat. By electrocuting her."

"Oh yeah?" Jack asked, then he said to Jenny, "That's funny," and turned back to Esther. It had been a very tense few moments with interaction between Jack and Jenny Harkness, exes supreme who still shared the surname. "I gotta get my coat." He stood up.

"You and that coat," Esther said, shaking her head but smiling. He smiled back at her when he left.

"Who's Rex?" Amy asked.

"CIA Agent," Esther answered, "Joined Torchwood during the Miracle, like I did."

"You stopped that, then?" Martha asked, "You, Jack, Gwen and this Rex?" Esther nodded. "God, I remember that, lasted for months. They called me into the hospitals, then they tried to transfer me to one of those Overflow Camps, but Mickey found out about those 'modules'. Then that one in Cardiff got blown up. That was Gwen, I assume?"

"Uh-huh."

"I don't understand, what's 'the miracle'?" Amy asked.

"Everyone on Planet Earth stopped dying, how do you not remember?" Donna said to Amy.

"What year?"

"2011."

"I was with the Doctor. What do you mean, everyone stopped dying? How does everyone stop dying?" Amy asked.

"That was the question," Esther said, "It was a morphic field. Everyone became immortal, but Jack became mortal."

"Sounds like a story for another day," Amy said. Martha crossed her arms and stayed leaning against the counter in the kitchen, wondering if she ought to take her gun shopping or not, and Amy went back to her cereal before complaining that it tasted funny because of Rose's orange milk. Martha wouldn't lower herself enough to put that stuff in her tea.

"Hey," Esther addressed the group, "What's, um... what's the deal with Oswin..?"

"Why? Has she said something weird to you?" Martha asked, "You should ignore her, she's ill."

"Ill with what?"

"PTSD, mainly, I think," Martha said with a sigh, "Manic depression. She has these flashbacks, sometimes she won't move for days. Has she been weird?"

"She asked me to marry her..."

"She never asked _me _to marry her," Jenny muttered, and then the Bat flapped one of its wings a little and squeaked in aggravation, "What? I'm upset Oswin doesn't think I'm marriage material."

"Well, look what happened to your last marriage," Amy pointed out to her.

"That's not very nice - and I keep meaning to apologise to Jack, but he won't give me the time of day," Jenny said, ignoring the squeaks of the Bat for a few more moments until saying to Clara, "Fine, alright!? But you _will_ drink this blood if I do." Jenny stood up, a little annoyed, and held out her hand so the Bat could crawl onto it, and she passed Jack on her way out of the room.

"Why'd she ask you to marry her?" Martha frowned, wondering what Clara had asked Jenny to do. Hopefully all it had been was to leave the room and not anything... _weird_. And by _weird_, she meant in any way related to bestiality. Although, they weren't exactly the same species in the first place - not that she condoned zoophilia.

"I don't know, it was five minutes after I met her," she shrugged, then Jack interrupted.

"Who asked you to marry them?"

"Oswin," Martha answered.

"Did you say yeah? That girl's pretty good in the sack, isn't that right, Adam?" Jack said as Adam Mitchell re-entered the room, slapping Adam on the back, and Adam buckled and nearly fell over. "Careful there, don't want to hurt your bad foot. Did you hear your girlfriend proposed to Esther?"

"What? Yeah, I was there, she was kidding, you all know how she doesn't think anything she says through," Adam mumbled, then to Esther he said, "She made those gloves, though," he held something out to her.

"Gloves?" Jack asked.

"To stop her from electrocuting anybody else," Adam explained, "She says she's sorry about... proposing," then he addressed Jack, "Also, about the Torchwood files, she said no."

"She said _no_?"

"Well, no, she _actually _said, 'tell Jack to go eff himself or I'll inject his bones with an acid that dissolves calcium and then put his mushy body through an industrial blender.' Only, she didn't say 'eff.' She's busy. Can't someone else do it?"

"I'll do it," Esther volunteered, putting on gloves that looked just like black leather driving gloves, but were undoubtedly a lot more complicated, "After shopping, I mean."

"Sure. Go ahead, Esther. Y'know, maybe you _should_ marry Oswin, be a good influence on her and teach her to be nicer, huh?" Jack said smarmily to Adam Mitchell.

"Well _you're _perfectly capable of using a computer yourself, Jack. And besides, _I'm_ nice and it hasn't changed her one bit. Now what supermarket are we going to rob, again?"


	420. When Bovine Attack

**AN: This chapter marks 200 chapters since the very first Clarenny chapter. And as you guys know, I'm Clarenny's #1 Fan. Some insight for you into that ship, it, unlike Adwin, was not my invention. Also, when Beta Clara and Twelve stayed, it was never _intended_ to happen. Then it was never _intended_ to go on more than once. Then they were never _intended_ to fall in love or end up dating. By this point, they still weren't supposed to have _said _they loved each other, they just sort of blossomed in a much more independent way than the other ships. ****FYI, this storyline is gonna be _short_. Like, four chapters roughly, including this one. ALSO, _gore warning_ for this chapter.**

_Adam_

_When Bovine Attack_

Oswin was texting him incessantly as he prowled down supermarket aisles with Jack and Esther. Jack had a trolley, as did he, but Esther did not. There was something odd about her. Well, not _her_, not her as a person, but the way she held herself and acted when she was around the crew. It was more than just being worried about being new, it was just as though she were as visitor, as though she were itching to be elsewhere. Maybe she was, he thought. Maybe he ought to ask her about it when Jack wasn't around talking about Torchwood at her. Adam Mitchell would like to point out that, to him, it didn't look as though Esther was all that interested. Besides, she'd already been on the phone to Gwen Cooper last night, he knew, so she was most likely already aware of everything Jack was telling her.

He leant on the back of the shopping trolley as they rolled down the cereal aisle and he kept his eye out for anything that wasn't muesli, because he hated muesli. Unfortunately for him, Oswin 'liked the texture,' and so she ate it, but he thought it smelled funny so if she asked he would just say Waitrose didn't have any muesli.

_This shop is full of posh crap_, he texted Oswin. She was supposedly giving him an inventory of their cupboards so he could get everything _they_ might need separately to the others, but he was pretty sure she was just bored.

_Like you?_ she replied.

_Mean_, he texted back. Then there was a moment of silence from his phone and he dropped a huge box of honey Cheerios into his trolley. And then he decided that they might as well have _two _boxes of Cheerios.

"There's no Lucky Charms," Esther disappointedly.

"There's Weetabix though," Adam said, grabbing a box of Weetabix, then he frowned and asked Oswin if they needed eggs and if she wanted any porridge. She replied that they did need eggs, and she asked if they had any muesli. While staring straight at a box of muesli (_rabbit food_) he responded in the negative. Then she sent back a sad face, and he relented and got the damn stuff. He regretted it immediately, but did not put it back. That damn woman had him wrapped around her finger and she wasn't even _trying_. Adam looked up from his phone and saw that Jack had vanished, leaving just Esther staring at boxes of porridge.

"What about Froot Loops?" she asked.

"No Froot Loops, either," he told her. She seemed aghast. "You could have the special _man _cereal, though," he said, nodding at a box of weetabix. Only, it wasn't called weetabix, it was called 'Protibrick' and it was ridiculous, "If regular cereal questions your masculinity too much." Esther laughed. "Where'd Jack go?"

"Beats me," she said, "I think he said something about bacon."

"Trust Jack to go look for the meat," Adam sighed. She laughed again, "Where in America are you from, anyway?"

"D.C.," she answered, "Never left until Torchwood. Then I ended up going all over the place. Well, actually we went on vacation to Boston once, but I was, like, six, and the whole time we spent looking at memorials for the War of Independence." He told her he used to live in Utah, though technically very deep underneath Utah, and was inclined to tell her about their business in New Mexico in 1947 the other day when his phone went again. "Who keeps texting you?"

"Oswin. She's asking if I'll cook fajitas for dinner," he said, and he texted back that he would, and he also indiscriminately said:_ Esther Drummond is super interested in cereal and when I lived in America_.

"You cook a lot, huh? Don't you have, like, a personal chef?" she asked, "Do you have a butler? Or a chauffeur?"

"...No. There's a guy who cleans the windows on my house once a fortnight," he said.

"What's a fortnight?" she asked him when his phone buzzed again. The text read: _Is Esther Drummond wearing any pants?_

"Two weeks," he answered, staring at his phone screen when a second text came straight through: _Because I'm not_. Then a third: _Not any undergarments at all_. Then fourthly she sent a winky face.

"Adam?" said Esther, and he realised she had been saying something and he had had his eyes glued to his phone.

"Uh, yeah..?" he said, but then his phone went off a fifth time: _Have fun imagining that and trying to hold a conversation with her. But for the record I'm telling the truth about the half-naked stuff_. "Could you hold on a second?" he said to Esther, then he texted Oswin a string of heart emojis and stuck his phone in his pocket and decided to ignore it. "Sorry."

"Did she have something important to say?"

"She was, um... she was just... asking about muesli, is all," he lied. Semi-lied. She _had _been asking about muesli. Then she had been sexting him.

"Did you really steal Cyborg?" she asked him, changing the subject. She seemed to be pretty interested in him and his software, 'Cyborg' being the antivirus, anti-malware, anti-_everything_ program he had... acquired.

"You know Henry van Statten? The guy who owned GeoComTex?" Adam said.

"And mysterious disappeared..?"

"Uh, yeah. Well - in Utah - I worked for him. Straight out of university, and all I ever did was try to figure out what some of the alien junk he recovered and buried down in his underground lair was. I don't know what happened to him - there was an... incident... involving a Dalek. You know Daleks?"

"Of course I know Daleks, _everybody _knows Daleks," Esther assured him, and he smiled a little uneasily, wondering how she might take it if she ever found out about Oswin's conversion. People never seemed to take that well, as though she was going to start shooting lasers out of her eyes like Supergirl. But an _evil _Supergirl, with a toilet plunger and flashing lights on her head. And tentacles.

"I don't know what happened, I left afterwards with Rose and the Doctor. Then there was this, uh, this thing, with um... brain chips... and I, uh... look, it doesn't matter, I ended up back in Devon at home and I didn't... I didn't quite _nick_ it, Cyborg wasn't _my _software, but I rewrote all the code for it from memory. When it was van Statten's he called it 'Pinnacle.' And any subsequent versions were all me - it's basically a... Franken-software," Adam explained, rolling the trolley around onto the crisp aisle and looking at the frankly abhorrent amount of damn Kettle Chips there were. Nobody needed that many Kettle Chips. Where were the Doritos? They should have gone to Tesco. At least Tesco would have Lucky Charms for Esther if she wanted home comforts.

"That's so cool!" Esther said to him.

"It is..?"

"That software totally changed the encryption protocols for secure file mechanisms globally - the Cental Intelligence Agency use a specialised program _derived_ from Cyborg to protect their reconnaissance servers," Esther said, and he stared at her. Maybe _he_ should ask her to marry him, too?

"What is it you did for the CIA, again?" he asked her, throwing a multipack of Quavers into his trolley. They would have to come back for even more trolleys eventually. Shopping was always a complicated process.

"I was just a data analyst," she said, "Y'know, go through websites and look for trigger words. 'Darkweb.' 'How to make a bomb.' 'Terrorism.' Just online surveillance."

"So the government really are watching our every move?" he asked jokingly.

"Yep, they sure are. They see everything..." she sighed. She gave off that 'temporary' vibe again he kept getting from her.

Jack rolled back around the corner, pushing the trolley hard and jumping onto the back of it so he glided along for a moment. It looked like he'd literally cleaned out the refrigerated meat section, and Adam tried not to comment.

"Jack, I don't get it," Esther began, "You wiped all record of Torchwood in 2011 with that malware - what are you hoping to find? There aren't any Torchwood files any more, there are no records, there isn't a single result on Google."

"Well that's the most interesting part," Jack said, while Adam thought - if the CIA used _his_ software to defend themselves from cyberattacks, how had _Captain Jack _managed to erase Torchwood from all records? "Because somebody found you, Esther. And why bring _you _back to life unless they _knew _you were a member of Torchwood? You think they needed some blogs monitoring? Some Facebook pages being watched? No, it's your connection to me. To us. Someone's trying to get involved - Gwen's already been in hiding for years, but now Rex?"

"Maybe he's undercover somewhere?" Esther suggested.

"He's not, I checked. But the thing is, _all _dead Torchwood members with bodies were in the Torchwood Archives in Cardiff, but they got blown up during the 456 Crisis when the government shut us down. All apart from Ianto, but his body will have been taken to wherever it was the government disposed of those dead, and I don't know where that was. A mass grave, maybe? Furnace? God help whoever burnt Ianto, he deserved so much better," Jack grew very bitter when he mentioned Ianto, he always did. Then he changed his tone and went back to Esther, "Maybe it's just you they were interested in. Who knows? We have to find out where they got their information about _you _from, Esther." To Adam, it didn't look like this mystery was one that was going to be solved any time soon, so he just hung around wondering which aisle to go down next.

Amy and Martha elsewhere in the supermarket, the five of them were interrupted from their shopping trip by a loud but muffled male scream, and Adam dropped the packet of custard creams he had been holding right on the floor. He, Jack and Esther froze for a second, and the screaming continued, coming from outside definitely. Amy ran past the end of the aisle and saw them and stopped.

"Didn't you hear that screaming!? Come on!" she shouted at them, and ran off. Martha followed like a rocket a second later, and then Adam and Jack abandoned their trolleys and dashed off in pursuit. Well, Jack did. Esther was wearing heels and he had his sprained ankle, so neither of them could follow all that fast.

As was common in a lot of supermarkets, the windows running along one side of the building were absolutely huge, floor-to-ceiling almost. It was the middle of the night and they had cut the power in the shop so the security system wouldn't catch them, the darkness inside and out allowing them to see relatively clearly what was going on outside. It was a man, and he was running, and screaming, and trying to climb over the high metal fence on one side of the carpark.

"What's wrong with that man?" Esther asked.

"Looks like he's had a few too many drinks, huh?" Jack joked. Amy laughed. Martha and Adam both stared out of the window - he was terrified. The poor man, he was running for his life, but running from what?

"I don't think so," Martha said.

"It'll just be some bloke after a night out," Amy shrugged, "See? Look what he's running from." Amy nodded out of the window and pointed slightly at the open, opposite edge of the carpark, where there was no fence. A cow stood there. The man fell from the fence he had been unsuccessfully trying to climb and scrambled around to face it, and then he screamed terribly again and dragged himself on the fence to his feet. Adam saw dark blood stream from his palms where he had just cut them on the metal. "Maybe he's just got a phobia. You know, like those people who can't even go into the same room they saw a spider in once."

"Spiders are scary," Esther said, "And it's bovinophobia. Fear of cows." Esther Drummond was the font of all useless knowledge, apparently.

"Scarier than cows, that's for sure," Jack commented.

"What's it doing?" Adam frowned at the cow. It dragged its foot along the floor, "But... but isn't that what bulls do? Before they charge?" The man screamed again. Every scream got more and more piercing, sounds of pure fear in the face of this cow. Then Adam could have sworn they heard him pleading with the beast. He crawled along the floor towards them, in the safety of the supermarket, and then spotted them through the glass.

"Please! PLEASE let me in! Oh _god_, let me in, LET ME IN! It'll KILL ME!" he begged.

"Somebody let him in, christ," Martha said, going over to the door, but the door was locked. She sighed. No-one rushed. She asked for a sonic, but nobody had one. The man kept screaming. And then the cow _ran_. It made a strange, angry, mooing noise and ran at full speed for the man banging desperately on the window for their help. With its head, it rammed him in his back and his face smacked the glass so hard it went red and bloody and he screamed and dribbled blood. Esther put a hand to her mouth.

"Oh my god, oh my god..."

"Holy cow," said Jack, "I mean - not cow. What the hell is this?" The man let out some pained noises, his face broken from the force with which it had hit the window. The cow backed up then, its own face red with blood, but the blood of this man. It mooed and rammed him again. And again. And _again_. And the man was dead after just two, so Martha stopped her attempts to open the door as his body was reduced to a pink-coloured splatter of pulp on the dirty window. Esther was looking away and grabbed for Jack's arm to hold her up, but Adam had seen worse.

The cow backed off again and the man's mollified corpse slid downwards, bits and pieces of skin and flesh stuck to the surface in front of them, one of his yellow eyeballs bulging out of his battered head and hanging on a crimson thread of sinew against his bruised cheek. The body fell to the ground. And now what? The cow saw them. They were being held up in a bloody Waitrose by a psycho cow.

"Uh... what do we do?" Adam asked carefully.

"That cow! That cow it just - it just killed that man! It killed him!" Esther said. She was maybe crying, but Adam didn't pay enough attention.

"Do we kill it?" Amy asked unsurely, "I've never seen a _cow _do something so brutal." It stared at them outside and mooed threateningly. Cows freaked him out, and now maybe _he _would be the one with the cow phobia.

"How do we kill it? We can't get outside," Martha hissed, like the cow was listening.

"Smash the window," Amy suggested, "There must be a fire extinguisher around here somewhere... Or can't you melt it?" she said to Martha.

"Oh, _sure_, or _you _could persuade it to break," Martha retorted sarcastically, "We should call the police."

"Yeah, I agree, call the police," Esther said, and Martha looked smugly at Amy.

"And what are they gonna do!? Have a barbecue? Hmm?" she asked.

It seemed, though, that the conversation about how to break the window to murder the evil cow needn't have continued. The cow mooed again, mooed terribly, and had backed away to the other end of the carpark. While they had been so briefly distracted with Amy and Martha arguing, it had moved without them noticing. It pelted at them, emitting a moo like an air-raid siren as it did. Adam had grown up in a rural village in the Devon countryside, he had seen angry cows before - but this? _This_!? It was unprecedented.

It shattered the bloody glass with its face, the stupid thing, and impaled its head on a segment of the fractured window in the process. Then it hung their limply. The window didn't go the floor, there was about three feet of regular, concrete wall until it started, and the cow stood with its neck on the concrete, pierced from all angles through its bones by glass. They stared and backed away. It wasn't quite dead.

"Someone should maybe put it out of its misery," Martha said quietly, looking around.

Amy stared dead at Esther, who was terrified and traumatised because they had just witnessed a murder-suicide involving livestock, and ordered her to shock it.

"Shock it!? No! No way, I refuse, it's... it's gonna die anyway, I mean..." she said. The cow mooed weakly and Esther whimpered.

"It's in pain," Jack whispered to her.

"I'm not killing a cow!"

"Well I didn't bring a gun," Jack said.

"But you _always _have a gun!" Esther protested.

"A gun would only hurt it more, you can kill it painlessly - look at it, it's suffering. Somebody's done something to it - you see its eyes? They're green," Jack pointed out. They _were _green, quite a bright green, too, with darkly coloured veins spreading across them.

"What do I do?" she asked Adam, of all people.

"Well, it... you should probably do what he says..." Adam admitted. Well, what could he tell her? If he had the ability to kill it, he thought he probably would. But what could he do? Freeze it? And Martha could set it on fire but _that _wasn't painless, either. It mooed again.

"Fine, okay!? I'll... I don't..." but nevertheless, she slid off one of the gloves she had on - which Oswin called 'damage control gloves' in private - and reached up a very shaky hand. Adam was enthralled by these abilities of Esther's though, and he was even _more _inappropriately excited (given their situation) when the veins in her hand lit up electric blue and sparks crackled like a shock baton from finger to finger to finger on her left hand. Then came a blinding flash from her arm and zap of electricity as extreme as a full-blown bolt of lightning slipped out of Esther and found the cow immediately. There was a mark of light in the air for a few moments and the cow hadn't even made a sound, it just convulsed and died instantaneously.

"Right, so, what the hell just happened?" Amy said after a long pause, and then they heard police sirens in the distance, and realised they were breaking and entering a Waitrose in the first place, and they needed a whole different plan of action.

**AN: By the way, do you guys like Esther?**


	421. Mad Cow Disease

_Adam_

_Mad Cow Disease_

Adam Mitchell, Martha Jones and Esther Drummond all hid out of sight behind the supermarket, which was quite out of the way of any town or anything, and there was a convenient bottle bank they could linger behind. Jack and Amy were turning themselves in for breaking and entering because of some plan Jack had where he knew the police would have more information about these cow deaths, but that didn't exactly leave the three of _them _with many options. They stood and listened to the conversations and the West Country accents - they were on the outskirts of a village in the middle of Cornwall - trying to pick up words and stay hidden. Jack's voice had dwindled a few minutes ago and vanished into the sound of car engine, a few people remarking about what an American and a Scotswoman were doing robbing an out-of-the-way supermarket.

"This is crazy, we just came _shopping_!" Esther whispered. She sounded angry, but not at them - Adam didn't know at what. He didn't know sometimes if being able to read 'auras' was a blessing or a curse. Strictly speaking, they were not really _auras_, they were more sort of him being aware of everybody else's emotions. Not that there weren't colours around people, there were, but he suppressed and ignored them.

"Yeah, this happens a lot. You get used to it," Martha said to Esther, and Esther stared at her.

"_Get used to it_? What if I don't want to get used to it?" Esther hissed, and then Martha told her to be quiet because the police were talking. Maybe she was in shock. Maybe watching a cow ram a man to death, bash its head through a window and then having to kill it was enough to make someone go into shock?

"...Anothur wun," one of the officers said to a colleague, "This's sixth this week. Last week we 'ad ten - and them people at thee hospital what survived've been actin' funny."

"You sound like them when you're drunk, you know," Martha said to Adam.

"My accent is nowhere near that heavy," Adam argued with her. It was not. His accent was hardly even noticeable - he'd worked to try and lose it because of people like Clara Oswald who accused him of either being a farmer, being incestuous, or both.

"I can't believe that cow killed that man... and _I_ killed that cow..." Esther said, leaning on the wall. Adam and Martha looked at her and then exchanged a glance.

"Well do something," Adam said to her, "Look, she's shaking, she just saw that man gored to death, and _you're _a doctor."

"Esther, are you alright?" Martha asked seriously. Esther looked at her.

"I'm not in shock, or anything, okay? I'm _fine_, I just... it's just... that man and..." she clenched a fist and held it up to her face like she was trying not to cry. Adam took out his phone to call Oswin while Martha told Esther that it was going to be fine because they were going to go to the hospital and find out what was going on. He took some steps away from them, further away from the police at their messy crime scene, to see if the road on the other side of the Waitrose was clear enough. It curved around the back and was out of view from the prying eyes of law enforcement.

"_Have you thought anymore about me being half-naked_?" Oswin said by way of greeting.

"I - what? No, I've been distracted. Listen, I need you to send one of my cars to me, like, _now_, please," he said, "And not a stupid one, send, uh... send the Porsche, okay? The 911."

"_Um, okay? What's going on, Mitchell?_"

"There was this cow - and it killed this man, it rammed him to death and then smashed a window with its head and Esther had to kill it, and now Jack and Amy have been arrested for breaking and entering so please just send the car, Oswin," he said, praying she wouldn't do something stupid.

"_I will, I will! Just take some deep breaths, Adam, and... and I don't know, think about something that makes you happy, you're frantic and you need to calm down before you try to drive anybody anywhere,_" Oswin told him.

"_You _make me happy."

"_Well then think about me. And let me know what's going on, okay? Cows don't normally gore people to death, right?_" she said.

"No. His face was against the window and his eye fell out."

"_Eurgh, that's grim. We'll talk about it later, okay? I'm sending the car. I love you_," and then she hung up before he could say it back, but admittedly he was too distracted to be bothered. In a blue haze the Porsche 911, as promised, shimmered and fell six inches to the ground, half on the road, half on the grass. He dug through his pocket for his keys and it took him a minute to find the one for the Porsche. Martha volunteered to sit in the minscule backseat, having to crawl in awkwardly because the thing only had two doors. They probably confused the police when they drove past in the white sports car with its obnoxious engine that came out of nowhere, but they weren't doing anything illegal. After all, the burglars had already confessed. What they were going to do about the food situation, though, Adam didn't know.

"I wish I still had that bloody Hummer..." he complained as he drove, the heating on quite high because Esther kept muttering that she was cold. He was going the same way the police cars had come from, hoping it got them to whatever hospital they were after.

"Hummer? What happened to it?" Esther asked.

"The woman Jack cheated on Jenny with last month blew it up for kicks, I heard," he grumbled, "And my Lamborghini. The worst part was that he didn't even _ask _to borrow them."

"How did this car get here?"

"Teleportation matrix. Doesn't really fit through the TARDIS doors," he said, "How far away do you think this hospital is?"

* * *

Adam swore under his breath at the vending machine that wouldn't give him his Twix. Martha, thank god, had identification with her that proved she was a medical doctor, but Martha and Martha alone was allowed into the 'special ward' where the victims of the cow attacks were, so he and Esther were stuck outside in a waiting room for visitors on plastic chairs. It was one o'clock in the morning, and he wondered if he might try his luck with the hot chocolate machine, which was right next to him, since this one had eaten his cash.

"Do you want a drink?" he asked Esther, who was just nearby.

"Huh? Oh. No, thanks," she said.

"What about soup? There's soup. I wouldn't go for the soup, though," he advised.

"No, thank you," she said again, and he went and stuck some money in to get himself a coffee when she called over, "Actually, do they have hot chocolate?"

"Yeah. Don't get your hopes up, though," he warned, smiling, "Hospital vending machine drinks are never very nice, and I've been in a lot of hospitals."

"How come?" she asked.

"Oh, my mum had leukaemia, that's all."

"That's _all_?"

"I mean - she's alright now, she got better because I got rich and could afford all sorts of expensive treatments you don't get normally on the NHS," Adam explained, picking up his coffee and waiting for the machine to squirt Esther's hot chocolate into another polystyrene cup. He never liked those cups because, though they might prevent boiling water from burning you, they also made it impossible to tell if your beverage was cold enough to drink yet.

"My mom died in 2003," Esther said, "Then I ended up looking after my older sister. Reported her to child protective services... she died, they told me. After the Miracle. Jumped off a roof. I have two nieces in foster care now." She sighed and leant back against the wall.

"I'm sorry," he told her, picking up the hot chocolate and sitting down next to her, "That's hot, by the way. Unless you want me to cool it down? Cryokinesis has its perks, after all."

"_Cryokinesis_? Like, ice?" she inquired as he passed her the cup.

"Yeah. I'm in a stare of permanent living cryostasis," he told her, "It means I don't age, but I don't have an immune system, either. And for weeks Oswin wore socks and a dressing gown in bed because she was cold. Then she reprogrammed the way she, uh, simulates temperature... It's why my foot's bad. It got sprained maybe two months ago, and it won't heal. And I have this weird barnacle on my arm - but you don't want to see that. Some Martian brain parasite thing." Some porters wheeled an old man on a bed past them, and a nurse came through the opposite way.

"Is it always like this?" she said.

"In a hospital?"

"_No_, Adam, in your life," she said, though she smiled a little, but then it faded, "Dangerous, I mean. Is it always so _dangerous_? Clara said something, yesterday, that she's been through a lot, what did she mean? The, uh, the Alpha one, I think. Not the vampire."

"Yeah, it is," he confessed, "I mean, you just want to do something harmless like go home for Christmas for a few days with your girlfriend, and then you wake up on Christmas morning and find that a mermaid broke into your house and somebody had to blow its head up with a microwave." She stared at him.

"That _happened_?" she exclaimed, and he nodded, "Oh my god..." She sipped some hot chocolate and winced because, presumably, it was too hot.

"Not very nice, is it?" he said.

"You're asking _me_? I haven't been allowed anything with chocolate in it for four years - Zeus might as well have made this himself for all I care," Esther told him.

"Clara's had some nasty injuries, though," he began, addressing her earlier question, "That's why she says she's been through a lot. I figure it all started during the First Prank War-"

"The _First _Prank War? As in, more than one..?"

"We've had two. They're hell. The prank that ended the Prank War was one that ended up putting Clara and Oswin in a coma. They used to hate each other - I mean, I heard Jack and Amy only brought Oswin back just to piss off Clara at her Second Wedding. They didn't have fun in their coma, though - the pain was real. Clara broke her arm in four places, four open fractures, and there wasn't anywhere to go to heal. It's why she started smoking again, to cope with the stress of this life."

"You're not exactly making it sound appealing," she said to him carefully, hoping that he would say something good about living on the TARDIS, clearly. He didn't say a word, he drank some of his coffee instead, "Is it just this? Every day?"

"Nobody goes out _every day_, it's exhausting. Oswin hasn't been out for ages because of this kraken thing."

"So... you sit on a spaceship... isolated from the world... no news or weather or... _reality_... or you go out and, what? Watch people die?" Esther asked him.

"People... no, they... they don't _always _die... and it's a really big ship," he told her.

"It seems claustrophobic. Just your group? Cut off from the world? Used to this kind of _chaos_? After the Miracle I just wanted things to settle down again..." she sipped more hot chocolate, and he watched her, and he knew she was right about them and the TARDIS and what it was like. It _was _claustrophobic. If he didn't have Oswin...

His thought was interrupted by the girl herself, calling him, and he coughed on some of his coffee and tried to stop Esther from seeing Oswin's name in his phone, which she had changed at some unknown point (while he was sleeping, probably) to _Cannibal Clunge Muncher_. He was unsuccessful, however, and a moment later Esther asked him, "What the heck is 'clunge'?"

"It means, um, vagina... it's just, it's slang, sorry. From _The Inbetweeners_, you know?" he said, and she looked at him blankly, his phone still vibrating in his hand, "Seriously? You don't know _The Inbetweeners_? Not even the crappy US remake that got cancelled?" Esther shrugged and told him nope. "Your country has no culture." She laughed and he stood up to answer, going over to the vending machines again. He caught it on the last ring, he supposed, too, which possibly accounted for why Oswin answered sounding so worried.

"_Hi? Hello?_" she said urgently.

"Yeah, hi, what's wrong?" he asked.

"_Are you okay? Why did it take you so long to answer your phone?_"

"I'm just in the hospital with Est-"

"_The hospital!? Why? What's wrong? Are you alright? You're alright, aren't you? Are you?_"

"I'm fine, Oswin," he told her, "We're only here looking into these cow attack victims, but they're only letting Martha see them so Esther and I are waiting outside. Why'd you call?"

"_You're okay, though?_"

"Yes, I'm okay." There was a pause. "Oswin?"

"_It's because I googled these cow attacks and there were these crime scene photos and they were really brutal so I was worried about you and that you might have been gored to death by a psycho cow!_" she said very quickly, in one breath, and he leant on the wall and smiled to himself. He didn't _want _to worry Oswin, but her being worried had the sole good side-effect of her also being adorable. "_Don't laugh at me._"

"I'm not laughing! You're cute."

"_Well _you _won't be cute when a cow murders you, Mitchell._"

"Oswin. A cow isn't going to murder me. If one comes near me, I'll freeze it, alright?"

"_What about when it defrosts?_"

"Well then I can put it in an oven at two-hundred degrees centigrade and have burgers within half an hour, can't I?" he said, and there was another silence and he thought she was smiling. "So," he cleared his throat, "Did you find anything else out about the cows?"

"_I found out that Clara is trying to convince Jenny to beat up the guy who sent her that dick pic the other night?_" Oswin said.

"Uh..."

"_Oh, you mean the animal-cows? Not my sister? Right. Sixteen victims in two weeks, twelve of them dead at the scene. Get this, though, babe - eleven of the cows committed suicide_," she told him.

"Sorry, what? Hold on, Os," he said, going and sitting back down next to Esther because he thought it might be an important thing, this that she was saying. Esther was surprised.

"_OsWIN,_" she corrected him.

"Os_win_. Sorry. Could you say that again? Esther didn't hear," Adam said, putting the phone on speaker.

"_I said that in two weeks there have been sixteen victims of cow attacks, twelve of them dead, four in intensive care, eleven of the cows committed suicide_," she repeated herself.

"How does a cow commit suicide?" Esther asked.

"_It doesn't say. There are some pretty nasty photos, though, some of them impaled, walked into roads, I think_," Oswin said, "_But listen to this, there was one man, as well, who attacked someone else brutally in a public place. And he was mooing, apparently. And then he killed himself, surprise, surprise._"

"Where's his body?"

"_Police custody, for autopsy. Nothing on autopsy results yet - maybe they haven't done it? Didn't you say Jack and Amy were arrested?_"

"Yeah - get them off, would you? Do something?" Adam requested. More porters rushed passed.

"_Like what, exactly_?"

"Call the police and say they're MI5 agents and you're their handler. I don't know, make something up - pay their bail with my credit card if you have to," he told her.

"_Fine, fine._"

"So is this thing local, national, global-?" Esther asked a new question.

"_Local, only in whatever village you're all in. That's all that's online, though, and I was just checking you were okay. I have to finish creating this stupid security system for Clara because she's an idiot who can't even lock a door_," Oswin grumbled.

"Well, I appreciate it," Adam sighed.

"_I wasn't talking to you,_" she told him, then she said, "_Bye, Esther_," and hung up the phone.

"...I'm sorry," he told Esther eventually.

"She's not gonna leave me alone, is she..?"

"She might do - she probably will if I point out to her how much it used to bother her when Jenny always flirted with her," Adam said.

"Or you could point out that I'm asexual and totally _not _into... that. Or anything. With anybody," she told him, "Rex used to say I was a-_everything_, til I told him to stop because it bothered me." She sipped more hot chocolate.

"Well I'll mention it to her," he said.

"Martha said she has PTSD," Esther told him.

"Yeah, well, she does," he answered, "Not because of anything that happened on the TARDIS, though, because of things when she was still alive. Being converted into a Dalek... well, you can't come out of that and be okay. If she were here right now, she would sort of look into the middle distance and sigh and say, '_I've never been okay._' She says a lot of things like that."

"Will she not mind you telling me?"

"Probably not."

"What about how she lost her leg? Was that... anything to do with being on the TARDIS?"

"No, she lost that because of a bomb she built. These people - they, uh, they said if she didn't build bombs for them they would kill her family. And she has a big family, she has five brothers. It malfunctioned," he explained with minimum detail, because really, everything to do with Oswin's life and the Cluster Spores and Horizon was far too complicated to get into right now, "I'm pretty sure someone shot Clara's foot off with a shotgun once, though."

"But I know Clara! She has both of her feet, I've seen them," Esther said.

"Y'know nanobots?"

"Yeah?"

"She's got this cloud of... Martha's back," he nodded at the doors at the end of the corridor. Martha walked through with some weird blue thing looking like a plastic bag over her like she'd been in surgery, and a face mask on. She tore off the face mask and whatever other medical covering she had on and dumped in the nearest bin. "Find anything?" Adam asked.

"Beyond severe injuries? Not really. They think it's a new strain of BSE and they're on the lookout for human neurological degeneration, but beyond physical injuries there doesn't appear to be any neurological trauma _or_ any signs of an infection," Martha explained, "The only interesting thing is the aggression of the cows - those cows wanted those people _dead_. Which is odd, because I didn't think cows really had a concept of murder."

"Or suicide," Esther commented.

"Suicide?"

"Eleven of the cows committed suicide," Adam told her, "Oswin called me and said she looked into it - all local crimes, nothing national."

"And there was one guy," Esther added, "Who attacked somebody and then killed himself, and his body is being held in police custody awaiting autopsy."

"We'd better get to the police station, then, hadn't we? See what all these cow sucides are about," Martha said, blatantly confused, walking off faster than the other two, "Were you talking about nanogenes?"

"Esther was asking about Clara's injuries. You were there when her foot got shot off, right?"

"Yeah, because _you _and your bloody girlfriend sent us off to fight a crazy surgeon while _you _went and sat in a garden! Have you ever seen three crucified women hanging from a ceiling in an operating theatre?" Martha said, lowering her voice to a whisper since that maybe wasn't the best thing ti bring up in a hospital.

"What? That sounds like something out of a video game," Esther said.

"It was - it was an alternate universe where _Bioshock _was real," Adam told her. To _his _great joy, Esther Drummond actually seemed to be the one other person on the TARDIS apart from his girlfriend who actually knew what the hell that meant.

"Have you ever seen a woman tear a crossbow bolt out of her own face, then light a cigarette and walk off like it was nothing? _I _got shot through my _foot _and I _still _have a nasty scar. What about when she fell out of that escape pod and got impaled? You could see straight through her abdomen, and she tried to fight this massive lobster," Martha said.

"Not to mention the time she burnt her face and the whole inside of her mouth - wasn't her tongue covered in blisters?" he asked her wryly, and immediately regretted it.

"What? How does _that _happen?" Esther asked.

"I'll kill you," Martha said to Adam, glaring and walking off.

"What? I'm just saying..." he mumbled innocently. Esther asked him again what he meant and he told her not to worry about it, "Ask Jack about the stuff with the worm on the planet Eslilia, and he'll tell you all about the 'shit' Clara Oswald has been through - literally."

"That does not sound like a conversation I actually want to have..." she mumbled.

"What _do _you want?" Adam asked her. She sighed.

"To go home."


	422. Happy Cow

**AN: I feel like for some reason I've vilified Jack in this whole Jack/Jenny breakup and I really ought to give the man some character development and actually write him competently for once.**

_Amy_

_Happy Cow_

"Why does this always happen to us?" Amy complained to Jack. The pair of them sat in a dingy, small holding cell, a square window with criss-crossing bars glaring down at them and a bench along the righthand wall. They had yet to be processed at all because everybody was focused on the latest in a long line of cow murders.

"Gwen used to say trouble followed _me_, but I think it's the Doctor. It rubs off on you after a while - you'll never be free," Jack said, "Wouldn't wanna be, though. Then I'd have a normal life. Imagine me with a normal life, huh?"

"Well, marriage didn't go well, so I doubt anything else you tried would," Amy said. She sat in the corner against the wall with her feet on the bench, leaning back. Jack's demeanour fell a little when she said that.

"Y'know something?" he turned to her with a strange look on his face, manic almost. He leant nearer to Amy, him halfway down the metal bench with his feet on the ground, "That bet she always holds against me? That one that makes it look like we were as bad as each other? _She _made that bet."

"What bet? The bet about sleeping with Clara?" Amy asked. Jenny always adamantly maintained that Jack had made that bet, that bet that had sent their relationship into a spiralling downfall. And she wasn't going to pretend she was above gossip. Jack nodded his head slowly and leant away again.

"That's the one. Guess I, the measly husband, never had much of a chance really, huh? Not when she had designs on that girl for weeks before anything happened," Jack slouched down against the wall. Amy watched him. Nobody had talked to Jack about it, not anyone, and then he'd ended up going out a lot and had distracted himself by obsessing over finding Esther. But Esther was found, and now Jack was talking.

"Do you hate her?"

"Not really," he said, staring dead ahead at the wall, then he glanced at Amy on his right, "I kinda want to, though. But I don't. I figure that since she hasn't tried to kill me, she might be happier. Besides, she's right when she says it started to get on the Doctor's nerves - an opportunity I couldn't pass up, really. But don't go telling Jenny I called her an opportunity."

"She still uses your name, you know."

"It's a good name. Opens doors. Sometimes it also opens fire, though, usually on me. The woman's just about as infamous, but she has too many names to pin it all on one person. I'd rather not talk about it, though. I'm not big on talking about things," he said. She'd gotten more out of him than anybody else had. The TARDIS was a better place if Jack and Jenny weren't fighting - the pair of them were just as ignorant as each other to the havoc they wrought on everybody else. She bitterly remembered the Second Prank War; she had not liked living in a bus in an alien desert for a week.

"So, why would a cow kill a man?"

"Dunno. What do _you_ think?"

"Maybe they're just sick of being bred and slaughtered?" she suggested, "It could be like _Animal Farm_, but with cows in charge instead of pigs."

"Oh yeah? The cows have started a communist society in Cornwall?"

"Do you have any better ideas?"

"Coincidence?"

"That's not an idea, that's an excuse when you can't think of any."

"Well maybe one day it really _will _be all a coincidence and we can just go home. If you can call the TARDIS home."

"Have you ever called _anywhere_ home, Jack?" Amy posed to him.

"Not for centuries," he said with a sigh.

"God, you're as bad as the Doctor. Trying to make yourself into a mystery," she told him, laughing a little, "You men with your egos. I bet you show up and mess peoples' lives up too, don't you?"

"Like who? Like Esther, you mean?" he asked sharply, and Amy stopped laughing. She had been joking, she hadn't thought of that, "She's the only one who gave her life to stop the Miracle, and she was the most innocent of all of us. She didn't deserve to die, but she did, and that was my fault. Thought I could maybe redeem myself by getting her back - do you think I can?"

"I think you should talk to Esther about that. You should probably talk to Jenny, too. She _does _keep complaining that you ignore her every time she tries," Amy said.

Jack Harkness began to say something else, probably another bad thing about Jenny or a snippet of self-hatred for what happened to Esther Drummond, but somebody knocked on their cell door once, loudly, and then the little window panel slid open and a young face peered through and eyed them both. Jack and Amy looked right back at him as he examined him.

"Are you Agents Harkness and Pond? With MI5?" he asked. _Agents?_

"That's us," Jack said immediately, "Don't appreciate this manhandling. Well, I appreciate _some _kinds of manhandling." He stood up, put his hands in his trouser pockets and Amy saw him wink at the officer. She stood up too.

"They let Americans into MI5 these days, do they?"

"I'm on loan from the CIA," he lied. Who'd told the police they were secret agents? "Here to investigate this cow business, see it isn't, uh - well, that's classified."

"Got any ID? Either of you?"

"It's in my other coat," Jack said.

"You have more than one of those coats?" the officer asked. Amy watched this exchange with her eyes narrowed.

"Oh yeah, got a whole collection," Jack grinned and stepped closer to the door, then leant towards the officer, "Wanna see? I can make arrangements." The officer stared at Jack for a moment - Jack's lips, actually, to be specific - then went red and cleared his throat.

"Some of your fellow agents are waiting outside, claiming they want to see the autopsy results of the Donovan boy," the officer said quickly.

"What took them so long? Take us straight to the morgue, pronto," Jack ordered with a crooked smile. The officer was even more red than he had been a moment ago, and he slammed the panel shut. Amy stared at Jack.

"And you say Jenny's the one who can't keep it in her pants?" she crossed her arms.

"Nothing wrong with some harmless flirting, _Agent_ Pond," Jack said as the officer unlocked the door. She raised her eyebrows at him and shook her head as she followed him out of the room, "Lemme know if you make up your mind about the coat." The officer stared at him. "Which way are the other agents?"

"Oh, just this way, Agent Harkness," he stammered, unable to keep his wandering eyes off Jack, and Jack didn't try to stop him.

"Why don't you show us?" Jack coaxed, then he whispered, "And I prefer _Captain_ Harkness." There was a pause, and then Amy was sick of it.

"Come on, Jack," she grumbled, dragging him away by his elbow. They'd barely even been there an hour, and it wasn't the world's biggest police station by any means, they didn't need a guide who fancied Jack to show them around. Adam Mitchell, Esther and Martha were waiting in the foyer for them. The officer did not follow, he stayed in the corridor with the four holding cells and Jack waved at him over his shoulder, "You are bloody ridiculous, you know that?" she hissed.

"Friendly conversation," he retorted.

"Why is everyone so into you all the time?" Amy asked him, letting him go when they rejoined the group.

"Fifty-First Century pheromones, that's why. Evolved to be more appealing. You guys are just lucky Oswin's dead, or everybody would be all over her like a rash," Jack said wryly, looking at Adam Mitchell when he spoke. Clearly, Adam wasn't pleased about his comment, "I'm sure she'd only see it as a benefit if you were involved, though, Esther."

"That's not funny, Jack," Esther told him.

"You're spoiling my day here," he complained.

"And besides," Esther said quietly to him so that the officer in front didn't hear, "Oswin's the one who called up and got you two let off."

"I'll be sure to thank her later. Where's this morgue, then? Who's the 'Donovan boy'?" Jack questioned. Amy wondered if it was ever possible for Jack to behave himself. Probably not. Honestly, in a weird way Jack and Jenny were made for each other, they were both so destructive and reckless sometimes, but those traits didn't exactly make them the most stable couple as far as matchmaking was concerned. Besides, for some reason, Jenny actually seemed _happy _now, though Amy couldn't understand what anybody saw in Clara.

It was Martha who began to explain everything, "Sixteen people in two weeks all dead, all killed by cows, and twelve of those cows committed suicide afterwards."

"How, exactly, does a cow commit suicide?" Amy asked incredulously.

"You saw the one at the supermarket - it was too dark for a cow to see inside, they don't have the _best _eyesight-"

"Just like Adam Mitchell here," Jack pointed out in a serious tone of voice, like he had just made a genuine and helpful point as Martha followed after a middle-aged and overweight PC who took them to a narrow set of stairs.

"I'm only colourblind..." Adam mumbled to himself.

Martha resumed, "It saw its reflection and charged at _that_. These cows, it's like they've gained a sense of consciousness, self-awareness, if they recognise that a reflection is a reflection of _them_. Cows don't have the intelligence for that."

"Yeah, but whose autopsy report are we looking at?" Amy persisted.

"I'd prefer to look at the body myself, but it's Terry Donovan, local farmer's son. He went crazy, attacked someone, and killed himself. While mooing. He thought he was a cow," Martha said.

"So the question is, why?" Jack said, "Where have you three been?"

"The hospital, with survivors of the attacks," Esther told them.

"No weird symptoms from them, or anything?" Jack asked.

"No, why?"

"Because what if this farmer kid got attacked by a cow, survived, and then..."

"What? Decided to become a cow?" Amy stared at him, and he shrugged, "Like a were-cow, you mean? You honestly think that the most likely thing happening here is _were-cows_?"

"Maybe this guy was bitten and none of the others were? Or maybe it's plain old Mad Cow Disease?" he suggested as Amy shook her head at him. Were-cows was something Eleven would come up with.

"It's not BSE, they've checked for that," Martha told him exasperatedly. Amy supposed lots of people had been suggesting it was that, and they might have to go burning livestock again like they did decades ago. The stocky PC who was leading them didn't really seem to believe they were a collaboration of MI5 and CIA agents, but what could he really do about it?

He held open the door for them into the morgue, which was the smallest morgue Amy had ever seen - not that she'd really seen a lot of morgues. But she'd watched _CSI_ before. There were just three of those freezers in the wall, and there was one table. And on the table wasn't even a person, there was a cow, which was enormous and had glass in its head and its legs frozen upwards in rigor mortis. The cow from the supermarket Esther had killed - it had a burn on its face and everything. Esther looked uneasy about seeing it again and stayed out of the way.

"Dr Fisher, some visitors for you," the officer said gruffly. He _definitely _didn't believe who they were. Amy was nearly offended until she remembered that they were lying. Well, Esther was only sort-of lying. This Dr Fisher looked out of place in a village morgue, her looking up from papers on her desk and being tall with long dark hair and good looks. It was like if Amy was coroner - she just thought she wasn't the type of person you would expect to spend their days around dead bodies. Fisher was even taller than Jack, though, and Amy wondered if she might like the numbers of some of her old contacts in the modelling industry.

"I'm Capt-" Jack began, but Martha loudly and callously cut him right off from his usual flirtatious greeting spiel.

"I'm Dr Martha Jones," she said, smiling pleasantly and holding out a hand for Fisher to shake. The height difference was extraordinary, "I'm in charge here."

"Since when were _you _in charge?" Jack questioned.

"Since you got yourself arrested," Martha said, which Amy thought wasn't quite fair, because they had voluntarily been arrested so that the others could get away and they could investigate the police station. Not that they'd been successful - but that was beside the point... "We're with MI5. We need to look at the body of Terry Donovan."

"He was cremated two hours ago by order of the family," Fisher said.

"Did you do an autopsy?" Martha asked.

"_Yes_, but I was just about to take my lunch break," she said.

"Don't you think your lunch break can wait, hmm?" Amy questioned. It was the middle of the night, what was she doing taking a lunch break?

"_I've_ been on shift here for thirteen hours with all these murders and I'm supposed to be doing _another _cow autopsy because there aren't any vets willing to come and take a look at things, so no, my lunch break can't wait."

"I'll do the cow autopsy, you go have your lunch and don't come back here until we leave - our business is classified. But get us your autopsy report first," Martha ordered her, showing whatever ID it was she had that declared she really was a doctor. It was nice having someone around who knew what they were talking about.

"Fine," Fisher said coolly, though she seemed practially relieved for Martha's arrival. Hopefully they could stop the cow murder-suicides and give the woman a break, she was probably much more agreeable when she hadn't been cutting people up for thirteen hours. She gave the autopsy report to Martha and left the room, and then Martha gave the report to Adam Mitchell and told _him _to look through it while she roped Jack into helping with the autopsy. Adam, annoyed, went and sat down in Fisher's chair until Esther told him she would look through any computer files and he had to move and go sit on the floor. Amy was the only one without anything to do, and ended up spectating a very unpleasant bovine autopsy as a result.

It didn't take long for them to find something useful, but Amy felt a little ill from seeing Martha cut open the cow's head with an electric bone saw. It was like a buzzing pizza wheel.

"This says there was an unknown mutation at work in the Donovan boy's brain," Adam Mitchell said, "Toxicology found a 'miscellaneous chemical amalgam', says it was 'expanding his synapses'."

"Sounds like a euphemism," Jack commented.

"We don't have time to run a toxicology report on this cow," Martha said, and then she succeeded in cracking the skull open. When she opened the cow's head, it didn't seem like they would really need to do a full toxicology report, however, because like the eyes of the cow were green, so was its brain. So bright it was nearly glowing. "Well that's what I call a miscellaneous chemical amalgam."

"Look at this," Adam stood up, holding the autopsy file out to Martha, "This Donovan's brain looked like that, too." Amy leaned awkwardly around the dead cow to get a look at the photo. The brain did look like that, except it wasn't all green, some of it was still pink and red.

"It must be some sort of chemical infection," Jack said, "I've never seen anything like it."

"Can't you scan it? With your wrist-thing?" Esther called over. Esther was staying as far away from the dead cow as possible, and Amy didn't blame her. She seemed very shaken by the day's events - it reminded Amy of when she had been eaten by a Star Whale on her very first real trip out with the Doctor. It had not been pleasant.

"It's a vortex manipulator," Amy told her, then she said to Jack, "Do you try to tell people as little as possible on purpose? Does she even know what century you're from?"

"Fifty-something, right? Somebody told me yesterday," Esther said.

"_Yesterday_?" Amy exclaimed, then she ordered Jack to tell her, because, "Nobody else does this."

"The Doctor does," he retorted.

"The Doctor probably doesn't even remember his own name by this point," Adam muttered.

"All I'll say is this - I won Rear of the Year in 5096."

"5096?" Adam frowned, "That's the year Oswin was born." Jack shrugged. (**AN: That's canon, I didn't make it up, he really did win RotY in 5096 and entirely coincidentally that's the year I said Oswin was born in**.)

"I guess she and I are meant to be. Better move out of the way of us, huh?" Jack said. Adam didn't appreciate all these remarks Jack was making about his girlfriend, and Amy wondered why Jack was making them to begin with.

"Scan the bloody cow, Jack," Martha said.

"I'm doing it!" he protested, making a show of rolling up his sleeve and holding out his arm. A fancy blue light show projected itself out of the vortex manipulator and honed in on the cow brain for about five seconds, then it died away, "Huh. It's not a virus or a pathogen of any sort. Whatever this is seems to be caused by ingestion of certain chemical. An alien chemical. I don't recognise it."

"Well, if the meat of the cow is green as well, maybe this kid ate the cow meat and that's how he was affected in the same way?" Esther suggested, looking over her shoulder from the computer, "Because all of these cows came from the same farm, the Donovan Farm, not surprisingly. If I access the police database on the linked metropolitan area network, it says the farm was searched last week but no arrests were made."

"Well what can they arrest anybody for? The cows are the ones doing the killing, and they're dead," Jack said.

"How about gross neglect of livestock? Potentially causing a nationwide health crisis?" Martha suggested coldly, "If Esther's right and it's passed through consuming the meat, who knows how many people could be affected? It could be in shops already."

"It could have been in that trolley full of meat you got," Adam Mitchell added to Jack.

"But if the meat's green, who'd eat it?" Amy interrupted.

"Well there's only one way to find out of it even _is _green," Esther said, nodding at the body. About a minute later, Martha had made a deep cut in the side and revealed that the meat of the cow itself was not green.

"It's probably gotten in the blood, but only really has a neurological effect. And he probably thought he actually _was _a cow because of getting it _through_ the cow in the first place, not directly from the source. Whatever the source is," Martha speculated, "And this meat could essentially be sold to the general public without them knowing."

"Well whatever it is, I haven't a doubt that we'll find it at this farm," Jack said firmly, "So we'd better commandeer a police car. Speaking of cars, how've you three been getting around?"

"Adam got a Porsche dropped off," Esther said, and Adam shot her a look that meant she should have stayed quiet, "What?"

"A Porsche, huh? I'm driving."

"Like hell you are," Adam protested, "You and Amy can commandeer a car, you're not coming anywhere near any of my cars ever again, Jack, not after the last two Christina de Souza blew up."

"That name's a bit of a mouthful," Esther said.

"So was she," Jack smirked. Esther didn't appreciate that.

"Fine, we will. You could convince that bloke you're trying to slip it up to drive us," Amy suggested sarcastically. Jack, however, evidently thought this was a brilliant idea, and he grinned and told her so, and then declared they all leave and drive to the farm. Amy wondered if Adam would let _her _in the Porsche so as to rescue her from having to put up with Jack's vulgar flirting for the whole journey, but didn't bet on it...


	423. Mystery Meat

**AN: I'm rating this chapter M rather than T because it's pretty brutal, bleak and depressing to be honest. I feel bad for Esther more than anyone.**

_Esther_

_Mystery Meat_

Was it too much to ask that the day went peacefully? Was it too much to ask that her whole _life_ went peacefully? Honestly, she almost preferred being locked up in the Tower of London like a princess in a fairy tale to watching cows butcher people – in the most vile show of irony she'd ever experienced.

As they pulled up to the gate of the Donovan Farm and Adam Mitchell cut the engine of the white Porsche, Esther was halfway towards asking him if she could just sit it out and wait in the car for them to solve this whole thing and figure out what they were supposed to do about the fact they had failed to do any shopping. She nearly suggested that she just borrowed the car and somehow went and got some food while they were all busy. She didn't, though, and in retrospect, she definitely wished she had.

It was the middle of the night, everything was quiet, the fields around the buildings were empty. No cows. Which Esther thought was odd, because it _was_ a cow farm after all, and it would be a bit ridiculous if the twelve suicidal cows had been the _only_ cows they had there, because it wasn't very many cows at all. As she, Adam and Martha stepped out of the Porsche, a battered old police sedan rolled up behind them with its sirens off, and thankfully it looked like Jack and Amy had left the cop with the crush on Jack far behind at the station. Jack climbed out onto the road and Amy climbed out into a muddy puddle and tripped, catching herself on a dirty stone wall and swearing. Esther had never liked swearing.

"In there then, huh? The creepy old farmhouse?" Jack said, staring at it.

"What are we even looking for? Who are we looking for? What do we say to them? What do we _do_ to them?" Esther questioned frantically. She felt like they were following some protocol they'd lain out for themselves, that any moment they were going to assume some formation, pull out guns, go marching in, kick the door down, heroically save the day. But they just stood.

"It looks like rain," Amy Pond commented, "We'd better hurry up. I don't have an umbrella."

"Do you have any plan? Any at all?" she stared around at them all in turn.

"There's never normally time to make plans," Amy said, "We planned for Clara to seduce Martha three weeks ago?" In a burst of fire a small lantern hanging off the gate to the farm exploded and Esther jumped. Martha's eyes had briefly changed silver.

"I was on drugs. And the next thing I blow up'll be _you_, Amy," Martha threatened her. Amy rolled her eyes. Esther decided she did not even want to know, and she just hoped there wasn't anybody waiting around to try and shoot her as Jack went and pushed open the gate to the Donovan Farm.

"Who's waiting for us in here, then? There's a car over there, so I figure they're home," Jack asked with a slight grunt because the gate was heavy. They walked through into a muddy field and Esther wobbled. It wasn't the nicest farm she'd ever been to – it was quite bleak, in fact.

"The father, that's all," Esther, who knew about the farm from the police files, answered, "Carl, I think. There used to be a wife, she died five years ago, farm started going under financially, not much more in the files. No arrest records for the son or the father until they brought Carl in for questioning last week. Like I said, they didn't find anything to charge him with."

"He might not even know what's going on," Martha said, "For all we know, somebody _else_ put something in the cattle feed."

"Like who? If the farm was going under anyway, I doubt it would be a competitor," Jack said, "Besides, it was definitely alien. How many people would think of taking some alien goo, or whatever it is, into a farm and feeding it to cows?"

"And you think it's more likely he fed something weird to his _own_ cows? Risk losing his livestock when he was already in debt?" Amy joined the conversation. Adam Mitchell wasn't saying a word – he was on Esther's right and he kept glancing back to check his Porsche was okay and idly thumbing his phone in his pocket. He didn't seem to want to be there anymore than Esther did.

"Maybe the cows just ate something random in a field while they were grazing?" Martha suggested.

They had been heading towards the farmhouse itself, presuming that the farmer was probably inside there wondering why his cows were killing people – Esther didn't really think he had a lot to do with it, she didn't know what was going on, she had no ideas – but their talking was interrupted by all of the lights in the barn on their left switching on. Through boarded up windows the yellow glow glared out at them and then there was a very loud noise of machinery.

"God, I can't believe I forgot my gun…" Jack complained. Did they seriously have _no_ weapons? Just superpowers? She thought she might slip off one of her gloves, just in case, and did exactly that on her left hand, sticking her fists into her pockets to keep them out of the way. They rerouted and backtracked for a minute until getting to the door of the barn, the barn which had the very large doors for moving large amounts of livestock (it was a _huge_ barn), and then a significantly smaller, people-sized door on the right. Jack, taking the lead as usual, found this one to be unlocked. He habitually reached for his gun before realising _again_ he didn't have it, and then took point anyway because, after all, it wasn't like he could die.

They walked into a slaughterhouse. She didn't know if it had always been where the cows were killed, but these cows had most _definitely_ been killed, they'd all been shot in the head with a shotgun.

"How did he get a _shotgun_?" Adam Mitchell whispered to whoever would answer him.

"It's not nearly as hard as you think getting guns in this country," Martha whispered back, and he seemed unnerved and self-consciously crossed his arms about himself, like that might protect him from a shotgun. Esther felt like doing the same thing, though, keeping her fists balled up and ready to shoot lightning from them if she definitely had to.

There were maybe twenty cows or so, all dead, bits of greenish brain lying about in hay and straw and blood. And the smell – it was one of the worst stenches she'd ever suffered through, as bad as the overcrowded hospitals and the Overflow Camps during the Miracle, all of this wasted, rotting meat. She thought she might become a vegetarian when this was all over. A vegan, even. She held her right, gloved hand up to her face and covered her mouth and noise. It reeked.

"What're you doing in my farm!?" a man shouted from the other end of the barn. The farmer, Carl Donovan, definitely. He was very old and very thin and very wrinkled, blood-soaked and holding a long shotgun in his hands in front of a very large machine. Esther didn't know what it was, but it was large and silver and looked sort of like a skip, with a fat, curved tube sticking out of one end. It was switched on and rumbling, and Carl Donovan was on the higher level of the barn, the second, wooden floor that was like a lot of rickety catwalks. Here he balanced precariously above the machine.

"Just, uh, looking into these cow murders," Jack began slowly, "We're government agents… Special ops. Care to shed some light on the subject, Carl?" He looked lost trying to negotiate a dangerous armed man without being armed himself.

"We think that your cows might have eaten something strange," Martha said quite calmly. They kept glancing at the machine. Esther didn't know what it was though.

"Sumthin' strange? Course they 'ave, and it's my fault. Ain't no point hidin' the truth no more. Not now mine boy's in the ground."

"Do you think you could come down from there to talk to us?" Martha asked him. He narrowed his eyes at them, but did not move.

"What's going on, Carl? We can help, you know," Jack said, "Just put the gun down and step away."

"I thought they'd grow, tha's all," he whimpered, his face quivering. He dropped the shotgun all the way from the catwalks to the ground and it shot off in a random direction and blasted a hole through one of the walls, "I foun' it, foun' this jar. These worms what was eatin' it, they grew _huge_, jus' these earthworms, worms size of cats, still completely 'armless. The farm's been in debt – Terry never knew – I jus' wanted an edge."

"That stuff you found in a jar? It was alien, Carl. An alien chemical. Made the worms grow, it wasn't your fault what happened to the cows," Jack said. Esther was beginning to understand – he thought the cows would grow to be _huge_ cows, but cows were more complicated lifeforms than simple earthworms, so Esther supposed that feeding them this alien stuff, whatever it was, had caused the original mutations that had made the cows kill.

"An' they was fine," Carl practically ignored Jack and stayed toeing the edge of the catwalk, glancing down at the machine beneath, "I thought nothin' 'ad 'appened, tha's all, then I takes one of them for slaughter, an' I kills it, and that was when they saw. They didn't wanner live this way no more. They understood they was gonna die. An' I fed some of that first cow, fer testers, to Ter. And then myself." The silver machine rumbled dangerously.

"What happened wasn't your fault," Martha said. She was talking about the cows rampaging and killing sixteen people, Esther guessed.

"But it was, wonnit? Them people's dead cos of me, but I've stopped it now. These cows won't be hurtin' anyone no more, an' neither'll… neither… will… neith…" It was like he began having a fit or something, he started shaking, wobbling, like he might fall off the wooden catwalk at any given moment. This must be what happened to his son. Terry thought he was a cow after eating the meat, so it only stood to reason that so would his father. And his father really _did_, and his eyes glinted like solid, dark emeralds in the oblique lighting, and then he mooed. Ordinarily, Esther would find a grown man mooing like a cow quite funny, but not in this case, in this case it was just weird and scary. Then Carl Donovan fell from the wooden catwalk straight towards the silver machine.

The din of the others screaming around her was cut off by the shock of what happened next, because that machine, Esther figured out, was an industrial meat grinder. One that made mincemeat. One that whole cows could go through and come out in sticky pink threads. And Carl Donovan had just fallen into the thing headfirst, and it was sickening. The rumbling grew and there were sounds like dull crunches and she was frozen in place. Jack ran up to try and stop the machine, started hitting it, like it would do something. As Donovan's legs stuck rigidly out of the top of it, it got jammed. Jammed by what, she didn't know – something he had on him, probably – but it got jammed. The meat that had been coming and pouring out into a clump on the straw-ridden floor stopped, facing them. And then it exploded like a bubble and blood sprayed everywhere out of the old funnel at the front as it broke off and left them getting blasted by pulp like it was a wood chipper. Nobody even moved until the body had stopped going through and the machine totally fizzled out, and by then they were all covered in blood.

To think, they had only wanted to go shopping.


	424. Hello, Goodbye

_Esther_

_Hello, Goodbye_

Esther was legitimately debating, as they hauled themselves back into the TARDIS when it finally rescued them from the hell she was now convinced Cornwall was, becoming a vegetarian. She was covered in the blood of a poor, dead soul and couldn't rest easy with the knowledge that if she had realised what that machine was she could easily have drained power from it and short-circuited it.

Oswin piloted the ship down to them and she promptly threw herself at Adam Mitchell in a hug when he came through the door, even though he tried to warn her not to because of the innards splattered over him. Why was nobody else as fazed as she was? Sure, they weren't _happy_, but they seemed more bothered about the inconvenience of being covered in blood, rather than the loss of life. She didn't like it.

Amy, Martha and Jack all had the exact same idea to go and immediately wash. Oswin told them that when the others had heard about the cow incident, Donna, Rose, Mickey and Rory and had decided to go shopping elsewhere. Apparently Adam would need to go shopping separately for he and Oswin, though, and he muttered that this time he would go during the day and he would pay like he ought to. If they'd just done that in the first place, none of this would have happened. It ended up being just the three of them in the console room, and Esther stared at her feet.

"I think I might shower, too," she said eventually.

"Uh, no, you, um, can't..." Oswin told her somewhat awkwardly.

She sighed and said in a voice which was almost broken, "Why not?" and they looked back at her with a pity she resented, like she was a child. She was older than both of them.

"Clara's, erm... she's... _busy_..."

"Busy doing what?"

"She and her husband," Oswin elaborated. Esther frowned.

"What about them?"

"They're busy."

"So? Busy doing what?"

"Doing... y'know... _stuff._"

"Why does that mean I can't use their bathroom?"

"Clara and the Doctor are busy in their bedroom doing things which are private which married people do and you cannot go in and use the shower because that would entail you walking past them and their 'private things', I'm sorry," Oswin confessed, and _then _Esther got it. It was only the afternoon, and they were up to... _that_? Ew.

"Wait, how do _you _know?" Esther put to her.

"We have a psychic connection. I hate it. It's like having two people screwing in the flat above you and you'd _like _to ignore it but it's so bloody loud that..." she trailed off and cleared her throat, "Never mind, I'm sure you don't want to know."

"You can use our shower - she can use ours, right?" Adam offered Esther, then asked permission from Oswin, who thought for a moment.

"I _think _so - but I'd knock first to make sure nobody else is in there," Oswin advised, and she nodded. Oswin said she had to do something in her lab so Adam offered to show Esther which room was theirs, promising to Rose he would return to Nerve Centre as they passed through it to help stock the shelves. Esther didn't know _why _he promised this, but he did. He didn't come into the room with her, and she walked in mid-conversation.

"...think a lot of people would benefit from a gym, to be honest with you, father," Esther recognised the voice of Jenny Harkness talking to yet another man she hadn't met with gelled hair and a blue suit, who was holding a mug and leaning on the wall, thinking. Jenny watched him with one hand on the countertop. A Clara - she could only assume Beta Clara - sat at the table with a third mug between her hands, "Hi, Esther," Jenny said, then she did a double-take, "_Whose _blood is that?"

"...I don't wanna talk about it. A guy sort of fell into a machine that makes mincemeat and it kind of exploded on all of us..." she said uneasily.

"Are you alright?" asked the man, "Are you the Lightning Girl everybody's talking about?" Esther nodded. He beamed and held out a hand for her to shake, but she had taken off her gloves, "I'm the Doctor."

"The _Tenth_ Doctor," Jenny added for Esther's benefit.

"I can't shake your hand, sorry. I'll electrocute you by accident," she apologised. Clara had not said a word and watched Esther with a strange look about her, one which Esther did not like; one like a cat's when it was about to strike and its pupils dilated hugely - her pupils _were _dilated hugely, in fact.

"Oh, right. Still, glad to have you aboard," he smiled. She felt a pang of guilt.

"Yeah..." she smiled, but it was obviously fake. Clara stared at her, "So you're not a bat, huh? Changed back?" Clara said nothing. "Clara?" Still nothing.

"Clara," Jenny said loudly, and Clara blinked and looked at Jenny, who raised her eyebrows at her.

"What?"

"Don't be creepy."

"I'm not... I..." Clara broke the handle off the mug she was holding and it snapped in her hand. She looked at it, then met Esther's eyes, "Sorry. You smell delicious. Jenny, where's my... blood..." She spotted a dark bottle of blood on the counter next to Jenny, and Jenny passed her it, "Thanks..."

"I'm really sorry about turning you into a bat, again. Seriously, I can't imagine - honestly, I'm so-"

"It's fine, don't worry about it. It was an accident," Clara sighed, then she smiled and stared at her again, and Esther grew increasingly nervous under the vampire's gaze while she was covered in so much blood. Jenny very loudly cleared her throat and Clara blinked, met Esther's eyes properly, then swore quite loudly, "I'm sorry - do you think you could shower? The toilet's empty. Please shower before I try to bite you and get electrocuted again."

"God, how bad is your bloodlust?" Esther inquired.

"Esther," Clara said seriously, meeting her gaze scarily and leaning over the table, "If you were to say to me right now, 'Clara, please lick this blood off of my entire body in this room in front of Jenny and the Doctor,' I would do it without hesitation."

"Would you control yourself? For my sakes?" Jenny implored. The Tenth Doctor was evidently uncomfortable. Esther nodded in acknowledgement of this strange threat and headed back towards the shower.

"The blood is the life, Jenny," Clara smirked at her, then Esther was sure she saw her wink and saw Jenny roll her eyes. But she had disappeared into the bathroom by then.

The TARDIS, she decided, was her friend. The others were always saying the ship was alive and listened to them, and she had been very sceptical about that truthfully, up until fresh clothes and a clean towel appeared for her in the bathroom out of nowhere, and she would _definitely _have noticed if somebody had come in. She spent a long time in the shower, thinking. Thinking about what she ought to do, about the fact that, if she were being honest, living on the TARDIS was too much for her. She did not like the idea of being stuck in space forever with no real world, and as every minute passed she felt more and more trapped.

She left the bathroom to the sound of an argument between Oswin and Jack. Oswin was trying to make him leave and he was trying to make her build him a new gun, saying he had 'misplaced' his. The Tenth Doctor had left, Adam Mitchell had not returned, and Jenny sat next to Beta Clara at the table and talked quietly to her while Clara observed the argument. Every time Oswin refused him this new gun, she found an even more colourful way in which to say it, and Esther did not wish to repeat _anything _she heard come out of Oswin's mouth. Esther's arrival caused the row to be nullified, however. Oswin pointed at her and thought for a moment about what to say.

"I finished building that Syphon earlier," she declared, which was a relief because Esther thought she might have been on the brink of a second proposal, "I call it the Syphon _2.0_ because I changed a lot about it. It was kind of shit, really. No offence to Nikola Tesla." Esther thought she definitely _did _mean offence to Tesla, but she didn't say anything about it.

"_Syphon_? What's that? Sounds painful," Jack said.

"It'll help her balance her electrical output and make her safer," Oswin explained shortly, "Jenny, come help me with it. It's heavy and you're freakishly strong." Jenny sighed and said she would, putting her mug of coffee down next to Clara and vacating the room with Oswin. It was just Esther, Jack and Clara now, and she knew enough about the TARDIS crew to be acceptably nervous about Jack and Beta Clara being in an enclosed space together.

"You doing okay?" Jack asked her.

"Sure," she lied. He narrowed his eyes - he did not believe her.

"I'm sorry about that whole licking-blood-off-you thing. Especially with Oswin being weird around you - I'd hate for you to think _I _was, too. It was just... fresh human blood. Has this effect on me," Clara apologised, "But you _did _turn me into a bat so we're sort of even." Esther nodded. Clara eyed her with the same concern that Jack did. "You sure you're okay, Esther?"

"Do you live here?" she asked Clara.

"No," she answered, "I've only been here the last few days because Jenny regenerated. I was about to leave when I finished my coffee, actually."

"Why don't you stay?" Esther asked.

"...Do you want to come and sit down?" Clara asked her, nodding at the five other empty chairs at the dining table in Adam and Oswin's kitchen, and Esther sighed and accepted her invitation, sitting down opposite. Jack meandered over and hovered nearby to listen in, but Clara just ignored him.

"Why don't you live here?" Esther asked again.

"Because it's awful," Clara told her, "It's different. You know I'm from another universe, right? I'm parallel world Clara. But I never lived with that Doctor, either, I always liked having my own life and my own stuff, I just liked the travelling as well. But it's not the same here. The stuff they see, it's not... it's like, in the Betaverse things were more... tame. You know _Alien_?"

"The movie franchise..?"

"Yeah. That. There's an alternate universe where _Alien_ is real. The Doctor and I ran into the Alphas in that universe. It's like they're gore-magnets, or something. That was the other time Jenny regnerated, a facehugger got her. She lost her hand and her eyes because of acid blood - seriously. We run into them, and _that's _what we deal with. This ship is not nice. They tried to force me to live here - they're doing it to you, because they think you're dangerous, that's why nobody's even asked you if you want to stay. But you know, _I_ didn't stay, and I'm a lot more dangerous than you are," Clara said.

"Where do you live?"

"In this cottage on the outskirts of a village in Yorkshire - that's in the north of England. I work in a bookshop. I used to be a teacher, but it's not exactly the best profession for a vampire," Clara said sadly, "Not safe." Clara's life sounded like an idealistic bubble which Esther had dropped all hope of achieving probably more than ten years ago. A daydream. If she could have a life like that in a quaint little village...

"Really? What did you teach?"

"English. It's not all that great, but I'd rather live like that than like the Other One any day of the week," she said. Jack still listened, and did not argue, "You don't have to stay if you don't want to."

"Yeah - but - but where would I go?" Esther said.

"Couldn't she live with you?" Jack said to Clara. Clara seemed momentarily shocked he was talking to her, but he didn't act like he was doing anything out of the ordinary.

"She _could _if she didn't smell as appetising as a bacon sandwich to me," Clara said.

"But if you tried to bite her she'd electrocute you," Jack pointed out. Adam Mitchell came in behind them looking clean and free of blood - he must have showered elsewhere, in those communal bathrooms everyone kept complaining about.

"That's not as much of a deterrent as you think. Besides, the whole point of me living in an isolated cottage on my own in the moors is to keep me away from people who smell like food," Clara said, "I like Esther, but I also like me, and don't want _me_ to have to suffer though having the cute-blonde equivalent of a cheese feast pizza waltzing around in the spare bedroom."

"I really don't think I would want to live with her at all now she's saying that," Esther told Jack, and Jack seemed nearly annoyed at Clara, but Adam's appearence in the room and him going over to get a can of Pepsi out of the fridge reminded her of something he had told her earlier, and she turned to speak to him, "What's the story about the worm?"

"What worm?"

"Some worm on some planet," she said.

"Eslilia," Adam told him, sitting in the seat two down from Clara, leaving the one Jenny had been sitting in free. A grin broke on Jack's face and he pulled out the chair next to Esther.

"You wanna hear _that_ story? It's a hell of a story," he said, leaning closer to her, and she didn't quite know if she did, "We're on this jungle planet, Clara and I, end up going through these tunnels. Long story short, tunnels break, we're knocked out, we wake up hanging from the ceiling of this cave with this white goo-thread around our ankles and wrists..." Jack proceeded to tell Esther about them having to hide from an enormous savage space worm in a pool of the worm's own glowing faeces. While Beta Clara grew increasingly uncomfortable - though it did seem like she had heard this story before - Jack grew increasingly amused. But it worried Esther, that something like _that _could happen out of the blue?

During his story, Oswin and Jenny returned carrying a large device. The Syphon 2.0, undoubtedly. It was about a metre tall and had a glowing blue core that was spherical but looked a little like a strange kind of crystal in the centre. She expected it to hum, but it was completely silent, and the core rolled around like a ball, suspended in the air in a column created by three perpendicular triangular structures, which were thin and stood on the ground by the shortest egdes. A metal ring at the base of these triangular objects - which Esther thought looked like fins - connected them together rigidly, as did a second metal ring at the tips, creating the internal shaft holding the floating, sapphire core. Up and down the edges of the triangles electricital pulsed up in rings and then dispersed at the top into the air.

"See? I said I could get it silent running. It powers everything around it wirelessly," Oswin explained, looking at it.

"And you _just_ built that? In twenty-four hours?" Esther stared at it in awe.

"What? No, like, five? Kind of slow. The TARDIS helps with construction," Oswin said, "Dunno where to put it, though. Where're you staying?" The room went quiet. "What?"

"Esther wants to leave," Jack told her.

"And go where? You can't go back to Washington, it would be too dangerous, that's why Clara lives in the middle of nowhere in a different universe instead of going back to Blackpool or London," Oswin said. There seemed to be more precautions around Clara staying anonymous than she had originally let on.

And then Clara made a noise like she had just had an idea, and exclaimed suddenly, "Sally Sparrow!" and everyone stared at her.

"Have you moved on to just blurting her name out randomly mid-conversation?" Jenny asked her.

"_I think she's losing it_," Oswin stage-whispered to Jenny, and Jenny told her she wasn't being nice and she scoffed, not caring about Clara's feelings.

"I am not - look - she lives near me, remember? I was telling you?" she said to Jenny, and Esther was getting a little annoyed at the constant, unexplained references to this random woman, "She was in the shop because she's friends with Dylan complaining that if she doesn't find a housemate she's going to get kicked out. She has a room going, _and _she knows about who you lot are, doesn't she?"

"_Spooky Sally_? Really?" Jack asked incredulously, "She's a nutcase."

"Shut up, Jack," Oswin snapped at him.

"Will you just make me a new gun, Oswin?" Jack changed the topic completely, "I'll go if you say-"

"Holy shit, fine, get out of here you pain in the arse," Oswin ordered him, and he grinned at her, "I'm serious, I don't care how worried about Esther you are, fuck off."

"Is there really need for the swearing?" Jenny voiced Esther's thoughts.

"I'm the smartest girl in the universe, I'll say what I like," Oswin bragged, and after shouting at Jack a few more times he finally relented and said goodbye to Esther, promising to call her. "Clara has a point, that's a good idea. You could electrocute her if she tries to murder anyone. If you _have_ to live somewhere else, Haworth probably would be best."

"I've never murdered anyone," Clara muttered defensively, looking at her phone screen, "But I _did _just get Sally's number off of Dylan."

"Yeah, but, wouldn't I need to pay rent? If she's gonna kicked out? Where am I gonna work? Get money? I mean, I... maybe I should just stay, it would be easier, right? Besides - the Doctor - it's _his _ship, don't I need his permission to leave?" Esther said quickly.

"If you want permission, _I'm_ his daughter and _I_ give you permission. He wasn't involved when you were rescued, he doesn't need to be involved now," Jenny shrugged.

"I'll give you a job," Adam Mitchell said suddenly.

"A job doing what?" Oswin asked him incredulously, "Following you around and telling you how cool she thinks you are?" She crossed her arms and raised her eyebrows when she spoke to him.

"_No_, if you remember correctly there were a lot of issues last month with hunting down _your_ sister's Echoes," Adam said, "Esther could keep them safe. Keep all of us safe and hidden from the likes of UNIT - every Manifest on this ship _is _wanted. And she could look for anything, you know, weird, and put someone onto it?" then directly to Esther, "That's basically what you do for the CIA, right?"

"Well, yeah, I-"

"Well, then, I'll pay you... £500 a week," he said, and she stared at him.

"What's that in dollars?" she asked.

"$724.29," he answered immediately.

"It's really hot when you do maths like that," Oswin told Adam. Miraculously enough, he proceeded to trip over absolutely nothing while standing absolutely still, and Oswin winked at him.

"Do you want me to call her and ask, then?" Clara addressed Esther, and now she had a decision to make. It came down to staying on the TARDIS in what she had already decided was a living nightmare, or going and doing more or less her old job with a 'friend of the family' (the crew reminded her of a family, and they seemed to be so inter-married and inter-dating they were all somehow related, weirdly enough) and getting paid a relatively decent amount for it. It was a no-brainer - though, what had Jack meant by 'Spooky Sally'?

"Go ahead. Can't be worse than watching a guy fall int a meat grinder."

"He jumped into it," Adam told her.

"Yeah, I was trying not to think about that..."

"I'll call," Jenny said to Clara.

"Why will _you _call?" Clara questioned. Jenny held out her hand for Clara to pass her phone over, but Clara refused.

"Because I've heard how you act around Sally Sparrow."

"I don't act anything around Sally Sparrow."

"Give over, Clars," Oswin said, "You'd probably do something stupid, like ask her to marry you even though you know nothing about her and talked to her for, like, five minutes." Everyone looked at her. "What?" She remained oblivious to her hypocrisy.

"If _I'm _giving her permission to leave, she's _my _responsibility, so you should let _me _talk to Sally," Jenny said. Then Clara groaned very exaggeratedly, like a child throwing a tantrum, and gave her phone to Jenny, who thanked her in a tone of voice implying she was said immature child. "We should probably have dinner with her."

"_Where _have you drawn _that_ conclusion from?" Clara frowned.

"If Esther lives with Sally Sparrow, then Sally Sparrow needs to be told about all the parallel worlds and Esther being the Lightning Girl and you being a vampire. In fairness, she needs to be told that _anyway_. Also because I'm hungry," Jenny explained. Surprisingly enough, Clara was displeased by this suggestion. Regardless, Jenny was ringing the number now, and she answered in an almost impossibly chipper phone voice and got straight to business. "Hi! Is this Sally Sparrow? ... You don't know me personally, but you know my father. I'm Jenny Harkness, I'm the Doctor's daughter... Yes, _the _Doctor... Yeah... Yes, I'm an alien... Listen, Sally, I'm actually dating Clara, and - well, no, that's the _Other _One - no, not Oswin - _look_, we on the TARDIS reckon we've found someone to house-share with you, because Clara heard you were about to be evicted the other night... Uh, yep, she has a job... But there's some stuff we have to tell you first... Esther Drummond... Can we come over and have dinner, maybe? ... It's fine, we'll get something on the way... Nah. What's your address? Oh, and the exact date? ... Sure, eight o'clock. This is Clara's phone, by the way... Yeah, bye!" Jenny talked as though Sally Sparrow was already an old friend, and then hung up and gave Clara her phone back, then said to Esther, "She says yes. She was packing her things to be kicked out, she's very happy about us finding you."

Then, dryly, Oswin commented, "An ex-CIA agent and a conspiracy freak sharing a house? Sounds like the beginning of a sitcom."


	425. Wuthering Heights

_Esther_

_Wuthering Heights_

"Who is she, though?" Esther asked Jenny Harkness and Beta Clara. They were standing in a fish and chip shop which stank of vinegar in the village where Clara lived, stopping off before going and seeing Sally Sparrow. To think that seventy-two hours ago she had been locked up in the Tower of London, and had been for nearly half a decade, was crazy. She still wasn't over it, the end of her involuntary incarceration, come so suddenly out of nowhere when an invisible Rory Williams crashed down out of a ceiling vent. The lights in the store where bright and glared and the floor was dirty from people tracking mud in and out earlier in the evening.

"I dunno, I've never met her," Jenny, leaning on the counter, told her, while they waited for their order. Clara lurked with her arms crossed and kept squinting in the lights - she didn't seem to be in too good of a mood and kept muttering to Jenny about preferring to go home because she was tired of being on the TARDIS for so many days. Esther thought she understood that quite well, not wanting to be on that darn ship, and didn't really know why Jenny was insisting they have dinner. But she was insisting in such a nice way, all smiles and pleases, that Clara repeatedly found herself unable to put her foot down and just go home.

"Why does everybody talk about her, though? I must have heard her mentioned about a dozen times just in the last couple of days," Esther said.

"The Twins fancy her," Jenny told her, then she turned to Clara, "Could I have some money?" Clara raised her eyebrows at her and said nothing, and Jenny pouted, "Please, Clara?"

"Fine," Clara relented, as she always seemed to, and dug around in her jacket pocket for a moment and drew out a clump of plastic wrappers, "Oh my god, how many Starbursts have you eaten? I'm not letting you borrow my clothes anymore, you just fill the pockets with rubbish." She finally managed to find a note of money, which was largish and sort of purple in colour. Great, she thought, now she was gonna have to learn what British money looked like. It didn't help that when they got their change back the coins looked to be hexagonal, some of them. Jenny was the one who carried all the food, which was four paper bundles with grease stains on them, because Clara said she owed her for giving her the money in the first place. Jenny didn't argue.

"Why did Jack say she was 'spooky'?" Esther asked, walking next to them through the empty streets of the village. There weren't any other people and the ground was damp and shone in the moonlight. Cars lined the sidewalk by the terraced houses, "And Oswin said she was a conspiracy freak..."

"Maybe she is," Jenny shrugged.

"She hunts ghosts, or something," Clara answered, but she didn't seem like she was in any kind of mood for conversation. Esther's breath floated in front of her hazily in the dim glow of the streetlights as she walked, lugging a suitcase behind her. She personally thought the suitcase was a little presumptuous, but had been advised to bring it by Jenny. Esther didn't know what to think, but had never really been a judgemental person, so she decided to stop asking questions. It was clear that both Clara and Jenny were equally curious about Sally Sparrow, anyway.

The house they had been directed to was sandwiched in the middle of a long street of brown terraces, with an overgrown garden and narrow, bleak facade. But still, it was a house, and not an apartment, and it was not a cell, either, and she had never been a fan of horticulture so the garden hardly bothered her. There were three thin steps going up to the door and two empty glass milk bottles sat outside, and Jenny made Clara knock against her will. It was her fault really, though, she was second closest to the door and had made Jenny carry the food so she didn't have a free hand. She stepped out of the way to let Jenny talk, though, and talk Jenny did when the door was opened to an average height woman with dishwater blonde hair.

"Hi! I'm Jenny, Jenny Harkness," she introduced herself. Clara said nothing. Esther stood at the bottom of the steps into the house and waited for her turn to speak, "You've met Clara, and that's Esther."

"Hi," Esther said, "Sorry if this is all a bit inconvenient, or anything."

"You're American? That's interesting. And of course it's not, not anymore inconvenient than me getting evicted is," Sally answered, then she asked Jenny, "Do I owe you anything for the food?" as she opened the door and stepped aside to let them in.

"Dunno, Clara paid, I have no money," Jenny answered.

"Me either, I was just asking out of politeness," Sally confessed, then she directed Esther to just leave her suitcase at the foot of the stairs and pointed them into the kitchen. She did not know how long Sally Sparrow had been living in this house, but she'd made enough of a mark on it. It was messy, from what she saw, but not messy to an ungodly extent. For example, though Sally had done the washing up, she had not put the clean dishes away and just left them dripping water into the draining board. It was a very lived-in house, and she had not been anywhere that looked truly _lived-in_ for the longest time. "You definitely have a job, though, right?"

"Oh, sure, Oswin's boyfriend pays her to... what is it you did for the CIA?" Jenny asked Esther. While Sally was getting plates out of a cupboard which was made of plastic but had a decal on it that made it look like pine, she stopped.

"The CIA?" she asked.

"I was a data analyst," Esther answered both of them, sitting down. Jenny doled out food, and Clara stayed quiet, "Just used to sit at my desk and read blogs for a living."

"Like, spying, you mean? For the government..?"

"Counter-terrorism," she answered, "Anyway, I haven't had anything to do with the CIA since 2011 and I defected, kind of, and they labelled me a traitor for a while. It was during the Miracle, you remember the Miracle?"

"Oh, _that_?" Sally asked, and Esther nodded. "Huh. Oh - I'm Sally, by the way, Sally Sparrow."

"I know, everybody keeps talking about you," Esther told her, and she frowned.

"Who? On the TARDIS? Why?" she asked Esther, but when Esther shrugged she turned her eyes on Jenny and Clara, who did not answer either.

"It's like you're a celebrity, or something," Esther joked.

"...What's your name, again?"

"Esther Drummond."

"It's _what_?" Sally exclaimed like Esther had maybe sworn. Uneasily, Esther repeated her name somewhat slower. "Oh, right. I thought you said Wester Drumlins. Kind of sounds like your name."

"How spooky," Jenny commented, "Where's the salt? Do you have any salt?" Sally had just sat down, but had to get back up again to find the salt wherever she kept it.

"What's the point of this dinner, then?" she asked, sitting back down and handing Jenny a small, cheap looking salt shaker, "You said you have 'things to tell me'? Like, why are you dating your stepmother?"

"Yes! Things, great..." Jenny said a little absently, putting a practically deadly amount of salt on her dinner.

"You're gonna have a heart attack and regenerate again," Clara told her.

"I have two hearts so I'm half as likely to have a fatal heart attack."

"Or _twice_ as likely..." Clara mumbled.

"That Clara is from a different universe to the _Other_ Clara," Esther answered, "I mean, I think. I've only been on their ship for two days, really. I'm pretty sure that the difference is one of them married the Doctor and one of them didn't. Is that right?"

"One-hundred percent," Jenny confirmed, "And anyway, it isn't like Clara _raised_ me, I knew her for about three months. And three months out of the two-hundred and eight years I've been alive isn't much. It would be weird if she _did _raise me. If anything it's weirder for her because I'm her best friend's daughter."

"Sure. Weird," Clara sighed. She was not eating a lot. "Do you have anything to drink?"

"Just Dandelion and Burdock," Sally answered. What in the world was _that_? Whatever it was, Clara said she would have some, and so did Jenny, and so Esther did not refuse, either. Besides, she was thirsty. The table in the kitchen was heavy and made of gnarled, dark wood, and had an encyclopaedia stuck under one leg to keep it from wobbling. Only one of the chairs appeared to be from the same set, the others were plastic and mismatched, and there were only the four and then a wooden stool sat in the corner by a door Esther assumed led to a basement or a pantry. Whatever this drink was, it looked just like Coke or Pepsi. It did not, however, _taste _like Coke or Pepsi.

"What _is_ this?" Esther asked, holding it up and staring at it.

"Dandelion and Burdock," Sally answered.

"Like, really? A soda made from a weed?" she asked incredulously, and Sally nodded, "Well, they don't have this in Washington, that's for sure..."

"The state or the city?"

"The city." Esther sipped it again and resolved that while it tasted completely weird, it wasn't quite undrinkable.

Sally laughed a little and then asked, "Why would anyone move from Washington D.C. to Yorkshire?" That was when Esther, with helpful additions from Jenny, had to explain the entire, long-winded thing about her technically being from 2018 (presently, it was the December of 2015), about why she was wearing gloves indoors, about dying to stop the Miracle, about being brought back to life and now having to secondarily feed off of electricity the same way people had to consume food or drink (or blood, as the case may be.) Sally Sparrow listened to this with fascination, though it had still not been explained how _she _knew the Doctor and why, if she did, she didn't travel with him. The Doctor seemed to pick up more or less everybody he came across, going by the volume of people who lived on the TARDIS.

The conversation only really changed from this when Clara drew out that dark bottle full of blood she carried around everywhere with her and Sally asked her what she was drinking. Then there was a funny sort of silence in the kitchen, because Esther hadn't a clue if the plan was to tell Sally that Clara was a vampire, or that she had died and was living in Haworth under an incredibly similar premise to Esther, both of them dangerous and needing to be kept isolated and monitored. It all rested on Jenny, in the end, because Clara looked to her for advice instead of saying anything herself. She was still being in a quiet, bad mood.

"There's something you should know about this Clara," Jenny finally said to Sally Sparrow.

"Go on?"

"She's a vampire." The silence remained. The bit of fish on Sally's fork slid off and dropped down onto the greasy paper and she stared at Clara. "She's not going to kill anyone, though. She's never killed anybody, don't worry."

"That's... that's _blood_ in there?" Sally asked. Clara sighed and told her it was. "But... but _whose _blood? It's not, uh, whatshisface's, is it? The one who can't die - Captain Showboat or whatever it is he calls himself?" Jenny snorted with laughter at that, as did Esther.

"I am _so _telling him you said that," Jenny said, "You know he calls you Spooky Sally? Oh - that's funny, isn't it? Because CIA agents are called 'spooks', aren't they? So, you could be Spooky Sally and Spooky Esther." Jenny was beaming, and even Clara in her sullenness managed a meagre kind of smile and ate another of her chips.

"I'll just go the whole way and change my name to _Mulder_ while you're at it," Esther muttered, and Sally laughed because she understood what Esther was talking about, while Clara and Jenny did not.

"You're really a vampire? Is that why you refused to stack those Bibles for Dylan the other night?" Sally asked her with a wry sort of grin, practically enamoured with Clara now she knew this about her.

"Uh, yeah," Clara admitted, "They burn me if I touch them. These glasses I have on protect my eyes from the sun."

"Give me them," Jenny interrupted, and Clara turned to her right to look at her. Jenny smiled and Clara, a little confused, took the glasses off and passed them to Jenny. It wasn't like she needed them right then, they were inside and it was the nighttime anyway. Jenny slid them on and then asked Clara, "Do I look cute?"

"I think you're incapable of ever _not_ looking cute," Clara told her.

"Extra-cute, though."

Clara smiled warmly and then said, "Sure." Jenny seemed awfully proud of herself. The pair of them had significantly less weird conversations than the Doctor and Alpha Clara. It wasn't nearly as alienating when they spoke to each other.

"You don't understand how much I miss my robot eyes," she a little sadly.

"Why?"

"They had night vision! And zooming in! All sorts of things - I'm gonna get some glasses. My parents all have glasses to make themselves look cleverer, and besides, night vision's totally useful," Jenny said.

"Well I'm sure Oswin won't object to making you glasses - she certainly fancies you enough," Clara said, and Jenny just smiled quite happily. Clara was still not in good spirits, though.

"But what do you mean _vampire_? Not like a vampire in film, right?" Sally asked.

"_Exactly _like that," Jenny spoke on Clara's behalf, perhaps sensing her low mood, "She sleeps in the day, drinks blood, doesn't have a shadow, can't cross running water, can't eat garlic... it isn't Jack's blood, though. Jack refused to donate any on the grounds Clara 'stole his wife.'" She did inverted commas with her hands.

"Doesn't matter whose blood it is, but nobody's dead," Clara said quickly. Esther didn't know whose blood it was, either. She didn't think she wanted to.

"Can you turn into a bat?" Sally asked eagerly, and Esther coughed on the fry she had been eating.

"Yeah. But not really at will. I don't want to talk about it."

"And you don't have a reflection? Seriously?"

"I _really _don't want to talk about it," Clara reiterated. She seemed as subdued as her counterpart, and Esther was sure that even if Sally _did _keep asking questions, Clara would adamantly refuse to answer any of them. Jenny glanced at Clara and watched her for some moments, studying her and her mannerisms with borrowed glasses still on her face. Had she finally cottoned on to the fact Clara definitely didn't want to be there and would rather be at home?

Jenny cleared her throat and addressed Esther, who spied her taking Clara's hand under the table. Clara seemed surprised about that, but Jenny acted oblivious.

"What is it you need, then?" Jenny inquired.

"Need?"

"Well, I assume you need a computer, right?" Jenny said, "So we'll get you a computer and drop it off at some point - Adam can buy one, or something - but what else is it you want?"

"Well, uh, a cellphone would be nice? A bank account? Fake papers?"

"Right, sure," Jenny said, "I'll sort it out for you. Adam will. He built Clara's house for her, I'm sure he'll sort you out with a computer. That boy's too nice, really, isn't he?" Esther murmured her agreement - Adam Mitchell _was _too nice, impossibly nice.

"What? That creepy cottage on the hill?" Sally frowned.

"Yeah, time travel and stuff," Jenny said, "But, uh, we're gonna go, I think." She dropped Clara's hand and stood up, picking up their paper trash as she did. Clara was relieved and surprised, "You two'll be fine. Oh - that Syphon, obviously. Tomorrow. Someone will drop by tomorrow for you, alright?"

"Really?" Sally asked, "You're off?"

"Yeah. I mean, I regenerated just two days ago, I'm pretty exhausted still. Don't hesitate to ask if you have anymore questions, though," Jenny said, then she added, "Oh, and, technically Esther is a fugitive. Don't grass her up, and don't tell anyone Clara's a vampire dating a time travlling alien, or that Esther is the Lightning Girl." Then Clara actually managed an attempt at being sociable in her last few seconds in Sally Sparrow's house.

"Just, you know, drop by if you want anything. Milk, or whatever..." she offered. Sally already knew which house was Clara's, but for Esther's benefit she reiterated, "It's like she said, mine's the creepy, lonely house up on the hill out of the way of everything."

"Don't uh, you know," Jenny called back, opening the door for Clara, "Don't electrocute anybody. Or tell any tales, alright? I'll see you tomorrow, both of you, probably. Someone will. Bye!"

"Bye," Sally and Esther both said, and Clara waved meekly and then they were gone. But it was like Jenny said, they'd probably see them tomorrow. Sally stared after them at the closed door.

"Don't you guys say 'cheerio' over here?" Esther asked.

"I've never heard anyone say 'cheerio' unironically in my life," Sally told her, "Or 'toodle-pip', before you ask about that. Besides, maybe I'm surprised you didn't say 'howdy' as you came in earlier?" Esther laughed and continued eating. Jenny had eaten alarmingly quickly, she was like a vacuum, like her mother. "Those two are weird, aren't they?"

"Everyone on that ship is weird."

"Including you?"

"Oh, sure," she said resentfully.

"What's the matter with Clara? She always acts strange around me."

"She has a crush on you. That's what they say when they mention you, you're like, That Girl Clara Is Weirdly Obsessed With," Esther explained, and Sally stared at her, "Did you not know?"

"No! Why would I!? I don't think about that when it comes to girls," she said, crossing her arms and slumping down in her chair.

"Hey, if it makes you feel any better, neither do I, and Oswin asked me to marry her yesterday about five minutes after I met her," Esther told Sally, who just sat there and had a mild crisis about this revelation. Esther added, "She also _really_ hates it on the TARDIS. She just wants to get home, I guess."

"How can you hate it on the TARDIS? Why aren't _you _staying on the TARDIS? Instead you're coming and living with someone you don't know, in England," Sally was glad of the change of pace.

"Because a couple of hours ago I saw somebody fall into a meat grinder, and according to everybody who lives there, it's dangerous. I don't really like danger," Esther confessed.

"A _meat grinder_? One that makes _mince_?" Esther nodded. "Was there a lot of blood?"

"Yes. It went everywhere. Hence why I decided I didn't want to live there anymore. They all acted like it was normal - I mean, this cow, like, killed this man. And then killed itself-"

"The Cornish Cow Killings?"

"The what-now?"

"Those murder-suicides!" Sally exclaimed.

"I... I mean, I guess so..."

"Was it aliens?" Sally asked urgently, leaning towards her, and Esther leant away.

"It was some goo, growth thing - look, I'd way rather not talk about it, if you don't mind..." But she got the feeling Sally _did_ mind. She'd put herself off her food talking about the cows again, though. "But, uh, yeah. They were all totally fine with it. I'd rather be... anywhere else." Sally Sparrow ate her last fry and thought while she chewed it. "How do you know the Doctor?"

Sally Sparrow seemed like she had been waiting for Esther to ask her that question, and embarked upon a well-rehearsed tale about moving angel statues, going as far as to add in what 'Wester Drumlins' meant and remarking for a second time that it sounded spookily like 'Esther Drummond.' It seemed that the Doctor had just never asked Sally to join him on the TARDIS, he had been distracted doing something else with Martha Jones, and nobody had asked her the second time _or_ the third time she had run into them. She also cared to mention her 'ex-fiancé,' but did not dwell on it, and Esther was not inclined to ask.

"You'll want the grand tour, then?" Sally asked, changing the subject welcomely.

"Yeah, actually, that'd be swell."

"Well, this is the kitchen," Sally told her, standing up, "Obviously. That's the cellar through that door, but it's cold down there and there's a lot of spiders..." Esther stood up too as Sally left the room to go into the hall and nearly tripped over Esther's suitcase. The living room was astonishingly messy, really. There were photographs in piles everywhere, camera equipment shoved into corners, paperback books in little piles. There was a small couch, a love-seat more or less, and an armchair. There was another doorway at the back of the room with no door in it, "Through there's the boiler and the washing machine, then to the right there's a toilet but the toilet's broken and the landlord won't fix it so you might as well just never go in..."

"What's all the photos?" Esther asked. They were mostly of the moors and of abandoned buildings.

"I'm a photographer. I don't make a lot of money, which is why they were going to evict me..." she said, "But you're here now, so I can go unpack my things upstairs." Sally then led Esther back out of the room and up said stairs, Esther carrying her suitcase with her as she went. At the top of the stairs, there was one door on the left and two on the right. It was the door on the left that Sally pointed out as Esther's room, and then the first door on the right was the bathroom with the toilet that _did _work, though apparently the taps in the bath were broken and the landlord wouldn't fix _them_, either, so it was showers-only.

"It's fine, I can't bath anyway, I'd electrocute myself," Esther said.

"How _do _you shower? If bathing electrocutes you-"

"It's different, there's less water, I hate water," Esther said.

"Huh. Anyway, my room's upstairs."

"How many floors does this house even have?" Esther asked as Sally showered her the partially hidden, bent staircase that went to the attic above.

"Four, including the cellar. It's Victorian," Sally said, "Honestly, this house is almost as old as your entire country."

"Funny," Esther commented.

"That's it, really, though," Sally said, then she realised she had forgotten the second door on the right, "That's just the spare room, has boxes in it mostly." Sally walked past Esther in the narrow hallway to open the door to Esther's room for her, and really, if Esther's room didn't have a toilet or a married couple in it, she was more than happy. It was bigger than her room in her old flat in Washington, anyway, she mused when she looked in. The bed was just a single, but it was better than a prison cot or a couch at any rate. "You should probably wash those sheets, though - they've just been sat there gathering dust for months."

"You have no _idea_ the relief I feel that I'm not in a prison or a spaceship right now," Esther said, "And it's all so quiet, and there's grass outside and it's not inner city - you know that phrase? The grass is always greener? Well, lemme tell you, the grass sure is green here."

**AN: So, I'm gonna go ahead and spoil my own fic, but just because Esther Drummond is leaving the TARDIS does not mean she's leaving the story, since you're all so fond of her. Sally and Esther are basically gonna become paranormal investigators, and it's gonna be great and I'm very excited for those storylines because you guys have no clue how long I've been planning these two and their dynamic. Who _doesn't_ like girl detectives, though?**


	426. Another Girl Another Planet XII

**AN: Really, I would _love _to start a Sally Sparrow &amp; Esther Drummond side-fic, but the audience would be so small and it's the most niche thing in this fandom there's really no point, it would be even stranger than an Adwin side-fic. It would be called _Spook Squad_ or _The Spooksters_ or _Spookery_ or something.**

_Jenny_

_Another Girl Another Planet XII_

It was just a short walk back to Clara's house, but Clara maintained her quiet demeanour the whole while, really. Jenny talked a lot and Clara smiled when she did, but said very little, and that worried her, because it reminded her of the way Alpha Clara was. Jenny didn't like the idea of this Clara suffering through the same jaded, cynical existence one bit, and grew progressively worried as they climbed the hill that went to Clara's lonely cottage.

She had been in the midst of musing what sort of glasses she ought to get, now she was most definitely dead-set on getting them and was still wearing Clara's, when Clara dropped Jenny's hand to go and tear a note off of her front door which had been taped there.

"What's that?" Jenny asked, frowning at Clara as she read it. Clara squinted at the paper, them held it out in front of her at varying distances in an attempt to decipher the message it held. She went as far as to turn it sideways.

"It's appalling, that's what," Clara answered, passing it to Jenny. After properly examining it for just a second she was able to determine that the horribly illegible scrawl was Oswin's handwriting. She told Clara this, and Clara said, "Why the hell is Oswin sticking notes on my door?"

"It says '_Day 145_,' at the top," Jenny said finally, "Whatever this is, it's from the future... uh... '_Dear Necrotic Fang-Face_'-"

"Definitely Oswin, then..."

Jenny resumed, though she cringed as she read it, "'_Dear Necrotic Fang-Face, the boyf and I have taken the liberty of sneaking into your house while you were staying with us in the past and have had your gal pal's menstrual mishap cleaned from the living room. We have also installed a burglar alarm because you are an idiot. The locks have been changed. There are keys for you to insert repeatedly and liberally into tight holes as you see fit under a stone by the door. Yours truly, Your Sexy Sister With the Tighter Arse._'" Jenny held the note out for Clara to take when she had finished reading it, which she had done very slowly as she had to translate each word from the vile scribble it was so that it made sense.

"Please burn that," Clara ordered, not touching it.

"You shouldn't burn paper, Clara, it's bad for the atmosphere," Jenny said, and Clara stared at her flatly and then shook her head, bending down to push over a very large stone on the right of her door to reveal these keys Near-Future Oswin had mentioned. There were six, three back door keys and three front door keys. "It's nice to know we're still together in eighteen days?"

"I guess so," Clara said vacantly, "Two of these are for you, I think. Then two are mine and the others are spares. And Adam Mitchell probably has a set." She held two of the keys out to Jenny, who stared at them, "What?"

"I don't know. This is, like, a milestone here, getting keys to your house."

"I asked you if you wanted a key to my place weeks ago when I still lived in London and you just insisted you would use your screwdriver," Clara reminded her.

"Well, yeah, but that's breaking an entering and it's rude," Jenny said, and Clara smiled a little. It was another of those things that had changed, she knew, an abundance of caring about politeness had replaced the mean streak of sarcasm she had had before, that which had been borne from a highly traumatic regeneration, resentment towards careless parents, and frustration with her doomed marriage to Jack. And now it was gone.

"Just take the keys," Clara held them out, and Jenny did take them and sort of continued to stare at them a little while Clara unlocked the door and went in. Lo and behold, the bloodstain really was gone, which was a great relief for Jenny, who had not been looking forward to a reminder of her mortality marring Clara's carpet. Clara was growing distant again though, Jenny noted as she locked the door.

"What's the matter?" Jenny asked her finally, getting to the point now they were in Clara's house. It was warm, Adam and Oswin must have left the heating on whenever they left earlier. No doubt Jenny would have to tell them later of their outing on Day 145, so they could fulfil their 'destiny' when the time came in two and a half weeks. Clara sighed. "Clara?"

"I'm thinking," Clara answered, and she surprised Jenny by going and sitting down on the stairs to the next floor, the third step up, and she leant on the wall and stared ahead into space. Jenny finally took off Clara's sun-glasses and put them down on the small table by the door where there sat a landline phone and Clara's keys.

"What about? I'm worried about you," Jenny told her, and Clara looked up and met her eyes. She was slumped against the wall, and she said nothing in the end, just looked away again. When Jenny went and sat down next to her she did not protest at all, just stayed being morose. Every time Jenny saw Clara, this Clara, at every separate instance going back weeks, she got progressively unhappier.

"It's just a lot of things, you know? A _lot _of things."

"What things?"

"I'm just not handling my life right now as well as you think I am," Clara confessed. She did not look at Jenny, "And it's just one thing after another and everything being dictated to me by other people. I'm not free from that TARDIS, I never will be - even you're probably just here to keep an eye on me."

"Of course I'm not."

"What? You mean, you _don't _report every tiny little thing I might do to whoever? To your father, to Oswin? Trying to assess how much of a risk to society I am?" Clara asked her coldly, glancing at finally, and Jenny looked back with confusion. Clara was clearly expecting her to admit to the sort of convenient espionage dating somebody allowed.

"I never talk about you to any of them," Jenny told her, "Not at all. I don't believe for one second that you're a risk to anybody."

"I died, right?" Clara began saying something different, "And it's worse, because I don't remember it. The most life-changing thing that's ever really happened and I live with the fallout without any of the initial cause or knowledge or memory of what really happened. Then I have to leave everything behind, my whole life, and there's just you. It's _just _you. There isn't anybody else. My own father thinks I'm dead..." she paused there for a moment, but took a deep breath and resumed, and Jenny listened to every word intently, "And then you got killed."

"But I regenerated," she pointed out, "You knew I would."

"How should I know who you would regenerate into, though? Who you _have _regenerated into? I don't, do I? We haven't even slept together."

"It was barely three days ago," she said.

"That's not... that's not why it bothers me," Clara finally spoke directly to her, finally met her eyes, "I mean, your... the Doctor, the other... he regenerated into a person who could not possibly fall in love with _me_. Your mother might exist as a product of allowing herself what she wants, but _him_? He was created out of some kind of crude revulsion at the sheer _prospect _of falling for a human. He never had that Crash as the necessary emotional catalyst, and what if you did the same thing? The Eleven you live with has already said he _did _love me _before _Trenzalore, even, and they have _that_, and we have _this_, but what if you just decided it was inconvenient in your subconscious and suddenly you don't even care for me... like _that_... anymore?" It was one of those key moments were in a film or on television, if any character was giving a speech like this to their significant other, said significant other would be fundamentally expected by the laws of genre tropes to interrupt them with a kiss to 'prove' their 'true feelings.' Jenny just let Clara continue, though, because it was definitely rude to cut people off like that while they poured their heart out. "And because all I have is you, and if that happened, and if I _didn't _have you because every single other person either thinks I'm dead, _is_ dead, or doesn't even remember who I am, I don't... I don't even know what I would do. And I still don't know if I can stop worrying about that yet."

"I really don't like him sometimes, you know. Old Twelvey. I almost shot him in the head, didn't I? Do you remember that? I missed on purpose, obviously, but... only a moron would attempt to eliminate their feelings like that. Especially when there's really not much reason other than prejudice against humans why they weren't allowed to flourish. I don't have any of those. I'm _definitely _still into you, Clara," she smiled, "How could I not be? You're a hot vampire, and I love you. It's really not changed much at-"

What had she _just _been thinking about it being rude to interrupt people while they were talking by kissing them? Well, Clara had just done exactly that, because Jenny had not read any of the signs people usually gave when they were going to try something like that, because she had just accepted that someone _wouldn't _just cut her off like that. But the time it took her to think that was also the time it took for her to realise she was actually kissing back, and Clara's lips were cold and so were her hands as they crawled over Jenny. At least, they were until she regained self-awarness and grabbed both of Clara's wandering wrists to stop her from her sensual pursuits.

"What?" Clara asked. Jenny tried to lean away from her but she was being coercive and leant towards her right back, trying to make what she thought was an inevitability of the situation inescapable for Jenny.

"Stop trying to touch me," Jenny said, letting go of Clara's hands.

"Why?"

"Well," she began, putting her hands on Clara's shoulders and pushing her away, trying to avoid meeting the look of betrayal and puppy-like upset in her eyes "I have things to talk about as well, you know."

"What things? Can we talk about them in three hours?" Clara asked her.

"It's not even ten o'clock at night, Clara, would you calm down about sex? You know, you ought to spend more time with Esther," Jenny advised.

"And Sally Sparrow?"

"Maybe not Sally Sparrow, but you _know_ she's straight _anyway_," Jenny told her. Clara made a disgruntled sound and crossed her arms, slumping against the wall again.

"Fine. Be _boring_, then," Clara muttered. Jenny raised her eyebrows at her for a minute until she sighed, "...Sorry... sorry. What's wrong? Are you still worried about your own mortality and your rate of deaths going up?"

"Yeah, I am. You know, something I learnt from looking for the Doctor for two centuries is that he doesn't half have a reputation. I mean, all those names he has? The _Oncoming Storm_? People across the universe are terrified of him, the 'Last of the Time Lords.' A long time ago, when I was in a particularly bad mood about his elusiveness on this, uh... Ubos, I think, was the planet... anyway, anyway, I made up my mind that _I_ wasn't going to have that sort of reputation. And then that girl-"

"Ashildr?"

"Yeah, then she _kills me _because I'm suddenly famous for slaughtering a million people on Deftan even though it was Cargill who ordered that damned Death Charge-"

"I forgot to - shit, oh my god, I'm so sorry," Clara exclaimed in horror, "I was so distracted by the fact I was a bat, I didn't - we met them, those Cargills, those ones who told Ashildr there was a vampire living in Haworth."

"You met them!? Where? When?" Jenny asked urgently.

"In New York, the 1890s, but they teleported away and the Doctor couldn't follow them," Clara said, "Irish, right? They were Irish."

"That's them... and he's slandered my name and I _died _because of his lies. I have to clear it..." she said in thought for a moment, "The problem is, I'm most likely wanted in the Forty-Ninth Century for warcrimes I didn't commit, so I'll definitely not be able to do anything too legal. And this idiot could be anywhere..."

"What do you mean, you won't be able to do anything legal..?" Clara asked slowly, carefully.

"I don't know yet... I'm gonna have to go do some investigating," she sighed in the end, "This isn't good, though. They came after you, maybe this is how they're coming after me? I don't know why they would be, though... well now I'm going to have to retrace my steps for two-hundred years and find out what else they've managed to wreck."

"Don't do anything..." Clara began, but trailed off before she finished, "Don't hurt anybody."

"I don't plan to," Jenny assured her. No, she didn't plan to hurt anyone, but plans could change on a whim. Maybe when Clara had lived long enough, she would understand the way the world worked for herself, instead of learning half-thought out pacifist idioms from Jenny's father. Anybody with that much survivor's guilt would preach peace like that - Oswin was a shining example. What she needed was information, and for information she needed scare tactics, and by 'scare tactics' she meant she would have to retrieve Emmett from under Clara's bed where he was stashed. "I don't think committing any regular crimes is going to help me try to prove myself innocent of warcrimes."

"Be careful, though," Clara implored.

"Of course I'll be careful," Jenny turned and smiled at Clara and her worried expression, "Let's not talk about that, alright? Don't bother yourself with my business. What was it you were saying about your dad?" Clara was taken aback.

"I, um..." she said, standing up, "I don't remember mentioning my dad." Jenny stood up too and went to pull her boots off and leave them by the door. "What's that you're doing?" Clara asked, staring at her.

"Taking my shoes off..?"

"Why's that, then? You're intending on staying a while?" Clara asked, crossing her arms. Jenny narrowed her eyes at her - she knew what Clara wanted her to say. Jenny cleared her throat.

"You said, 'even my own father thinks I'm dead,'" she did not sink to Clara's level of subtext.

"Well he does."

"Yeah, but... well, if worst comes to worst, I don't want you not to have anybody else. And I don't like the idea of you sitting around worrying I might not come back every time I leave," Jenny began.

"So what? What are you suggesting?"

"That you and I go and tell your father you're not dead," she explained, "I mean, it's only been a couple of weeks. It isn't like it's been _years_, we could... we could say you're in witness protection, or something. In hiding. You faked your death. Or the government did, something like that." Clara stared at her. "We can figure out the specifics later. If you want to, I mean."

"...Isn't that dangerous?"

"Well he's _your _father, what do _you _think? Do you think he can keep that you're alive a secret?" Jenny asked, "Probably shouldn't tell him you're a vampire or about the TARDIS or anything, though. I know what it's like not to have a father, or anyone."

"Do you mean that?"

"Why wouldn't I?"

Clara then threw herself at Jenny, more or less, and hugged her tightly with her face buried in her shoulder. It sort of hurt though, because Clara was stronger than she was now, and _she_ was pretty strong to begin with.

"Thank you," Clara said when she let her go.

"You don't have to thank me for being a decent person," she laughed slightly, and Clara looked at her, "What?"

"Do you think you might want to be an _in_decent person anytime soon?" Clara asked. There was a pause and Jenny looked away for a second and thought quite seriously about this proposition.

"_Fine_, Clara, you win. You've got me. I'll sleep with you," Jenny gave up and tried to feign annoyance, and Clara beamed like a child (the irony) and then took Jenny's hand and pulled her towards the door down into the cellar. Gosh, that woman had a one-track mind. The most one-track mind Jenny had ever come across. "I want coffee afterwards, though."

"Oh, you can have all the coffee in the _world_," Clara whispered to her, kissing her on the stairs.


	427. Lone Wanderer

_DAY ONE-HUNDRED AND TWENTY-SEVEN_

_Jenny_

_Lone Wanderer_

Clara had fallen asleep quite early - well, early for her - at about three in the morning, and while for the last few days Jenny had found herself sleeping with almost the same convinction as a human might, her recovery and her worries about 'Major Young's' deadly reputation had kept her awake. Even with Clara wrapped around her breathing softly, she could not fall asleep. It was with heavy hearts that she had decided she really had better try and sort out this whole mess and had detached herself from Clara Ravenwood, at four AM, and had slipped off upstairs to shower quickly and get dressed into some stray clothes of hers that she found lying in the bottom drawer of Clara's dresser. She thought it was sweet how Clara had washed these clothes she had left and had then put them away in a place of her own, and as she had left her goodbye note that wintry morning she had kissed the top of the girl's head. The note was as follows, in Jenny's fancy calligraphy-like handwriting which Clara always said she enjoyed reading:

_Clara,_

_Gone back to the TARDIS to try and find out who's behind this smear campaign, sorry if you wake up cold. There's a flask of coffee on the floor on your side of the bed which will stay warm all day for you. Text me when you wake up. How about dinner tonight to make up for me ditching you? Let me know. And yes, I will be careful, I promise._

Instead of signing her name or writing 'I love you', Jenny instead doodled two hearts at the bottom, and then she folded it over and left it lying on her own pillow, making sure to pull the sheets up over Clara's bare torso and put her dressing gown over the edge of the bed where she would be able to get to it when she inevitably woke up freezing. In the back of her mind, Jenny thought it served her right for sleeping naked, she should have put some clothes on. It was Clara's life, though, and maybe she would learn one day.

So, with the emegency teleporter that was on a keychain now holding the keys to Clara's house she had so graciously accepted the night before, she returned to the TARDIS straight into the clutches of Oswin Oswald's empty laboratory in the middle of the night. The following hour until just after five she had spent enlisting the TARDIS's help in the creation of these glasses she had been so antsy to get, really for weeks. And Clara's had just been the kicker. Besides, when would the ability of night vision ever _not _come in handy? Plus she looked cute, and she had never been one to turn down something that made her look cute.

After that, she finally got to work on what she had left Clara to do in the first place, and sat with a largish tablet from the same time period (the 4880s) in front of her, scrolling idly through the redacted records she could access. She would have to hack to get anything higher up, but the Homeworld Alliance would be able to tell if someone had hacked into the top-security files keeping the true origins of the Polaris Death Charge of 4881 hidden from public knowledge, so she thought she best not look at anything higher than the clearance she had. Besides, even if she did hack in, she doubted that the reports were anything more than falsified lies courtesy of Austin Cargill anyway. All she was looking for was a staff roster for August the 16th of that year, and then she could move on. But a tragic amount of things were deleted or above her access level, and she was looking at digital documents where whole segments were marred with routine omissions.

At seven o'clock in the morning, Clara Ravenwood was still miles off from waking up and Jenny Harkness was still miles off from finding a solid lead in her own endeavour, so she gave in to her craving for a cup of tea and sonicked her way out of Oswin's lab. Nios was charging in the console room, as usual at that time of day, pretending to be on 'standby' or 'hibernating.' She was perfectly conscious, though. Jenny said hi absently as she walked past, and Nios said hello in return, but Jenny didn't stop to chat. She was very surprised to find that at seven AM, Nerve Centre was not empty. On the holobox in the centre of the room the projected image of a low-class soap opera from then Thirty-Third Century glared down at the four people in the room. Whatever it was, it was being watched by Jack, who slouched dourly on one of the sofas. Nine and River were talking quietly to each other at one of the tables, and Jenny was taken aback because she didn't think she had every really seen them actually _speak _to each other or even exist much in the general vicinity of the other. The last person was perhaps the strangest of all; Thirteen, sitting cross-legged on the floor in front of the oven in the kitchen, staring at it.

"How's Esther, then?" Jack asked her in a somewhat bitter tone of voice. He was lying down on the sofa and watching whatever was on. He didn't look at her.

"Fine, I reckon," Jenny answered him politely, smiling, still holding her tablet with the doctored Alliance documents staring up at her through the screen. She walked past him to get into the kitchen, then had to awkardly walk around her mother to get to the kettle.

"What happened to Esther?" River asked, breaking off her conversation with Nine.

"She's gone, is all," Jenny said. River stared at her in disbelief.

"Gone where? She shoots lightning bolts, where could she possibly be? We have to find her," River declared. Nine said nothing, but he looked disappointed. Perhaps he was upset that he had not had a chance to meet Esther Drummond, the famous Lightning Girl.

"To live with Sally Sparrow."

Thirteen then made an objectionable noise and muttered, "Damn floozy."

"Pardon?" Jenny asked her.

"Oh, nothing..." she said, "It's hard to like somebody when your wife's been pining after them for... a couple years." 'A couple years' was probably the biggest understatement Jenny had heard for months, "You'll see."

"You just sent her to live with that woman?" Nine asked, "The spooky one? Who thought there were UFOs abducting people in Cardiff?"

"She lives ten minutes away from Clara, in that village," Jenny explained, though she did not like mentioning Clara around Jack, out of consideration more than anything. Who wanted their ex going on about their new flame all the time? Nobody, that's who. "We can't keep her on here like a prisoner."

"Shouldn't the Doctor have had a say in this?" River argued with her.

"I'm not a child, and neither is Esther. If you absolutely need an alien to say they're responsible for her, then _I'm _responsible for her. She can probably look after herself, though," Jenny said coolly to River.

"It'll be fine," Thirteen said absently, a spoiler for the future. She would undoubtedly not say anything more than that, but if it _wasn't _fine, she would most likely have stayed silent.

"Ten minutes away, huh?" Jack asked, "Kinda _spooky_ if you ask me. What'd you tell her? Tell you're an alien? Clara's a vampire? Better watch out with her, Torchwood used to monitor her blog in case she revealed anything dangerous."

"She calls you Captain Showboat," Jenny told him, and everybody else in the room laughed. "Are you going to let me speak to you yet?" she asked seriously, and the laughter died away.

"I'll think about it," Jack said eventually, but he still didn't sit up on the sofa and look at her as he talked.

"Why are you wearing glasses?" River changed the subject. Jenny was very nearly amused by the reactions other people had when she spoke to Jack; they all grew incredibly nervous, like they were watching a bomb being defused. She wondered what they thought might happen - probably that she would kill him. She wouldn't. She was too indifferent towards Jack to want him dead, or to rise to anything he might say to her. She just wanted to say sorry.

"They do everything my cybernetic eyes used to," Jenny explained, "Only without the gouging part. I didn't enjoy that part half as much as the low-light vision." Then she remembered what Clara had been saying about Cargill yesterday, that they had run into them while a select few members of the crew were out in New York, and she knew that River had been there.

"What?" River caught Jenny looking at her.

"Who's Austin Cargill?" she asked carefully, putting the tablet down on the countertop she was leaning against and crossing her eyes. Thirteen still watched the oven. River stared at Jenny.

"All sorts of things," she answered. Finally, Jack sat up on his sofa and looked at her.

"Cargill?" he asked, "Him and his wife?"

"Not interested in his wife," Jenny answered, "But you know him, don't you?"

"What do you want me to say? He's a mercenary, scavenger, bounty hunter, criminal," River shrugged.

"Ex-Time Agents, he and his wife," Jack said, "They run around causing trouble. Why?"

"The girl who killed me, she was in Haworth because the Cargills told her there was a vampire there causing trouble that she should slay," Jenny began, "But she killed me instead of Clara because Clara knew her, and she thought I was responsible for the Polaris Death Charge."

"The biggest military defeat in the history of the Homeworld Alliance? When they ordered a million of their own soldiers to storm the Nomatee base and got them all killed?" River asked, staring at her like she was a criminal, "What did you have to do with that..?"

"The general wound up dead so there was a power vacuum, and Austin Cargill and I were the next highest ranking officers in the Alliance hierarchy, because there weren't any colonels," she said, "Then there was, uh... a malfunction in the sanitation facilities... and I had to go and fix it, and I got back and there was this mission a-go, and that was why I defected and I stole a shuttle and saved a few hundred people..."

"What do you mean 'wound up dead'? And a 'malfunction'?" River inquired.

"Can you say, 'blatant sabotage'?" Jack coldly joked.

"Look, it doesn't matter if it was sabotage, because none of the sewage was getting filtered into clean water properly and people were dying. I couldn't let people die, nobody _ever _died under my command," she said. Maybe she wasn't angry at him, but if somebody was going to question her leadership then she was going to defend herself.

"What were you doing in the military?" Nine asked her. He had been listening and not enjoying what he was hearing about her and her military past - it was true enough that she tried to keep it away from the prying ears of her parents, though Thirteen was still watching the oven.

"Trying to stop wars and achieve peace," she hasn't him, "Isn't that the point?"

"Austin Cargill ordered the Polaris Death Charge, you're saying?" River interrupted the pair of them, maybe to save Nine getting a load off Jenny when, if this conversation continued, she would inevitably end up having a go at him, "And blamed _you_?"

"Well somebody blamed me - I've been reading redacted documents, the only information I can get out of them is that _I_ was somehow responsible, _I _was a scapegoat because I disagreed with that stupid Death Charge but it was already in effect and I didn't have the authority to order a retreat. I defected and went to live on Korix in the Eightieth Century. It was a hundred and forty years ago," she explained, "I just have to find someone who can tell me what happened..." Nobody said anything more and she went to pour herself a cup of tea, like she had come into Nerve Centre to do in the first place, "Or Cargill himself, if either of you know how to find him?"

"That's about as easy as finding your father," River remarked. Well, she thought bitterly, finding her father had only taken her two-hundred and seven years. This was looking dangerously like a wild goose chase, and she did not have the time, expertise or much of the motivation to go on an intertemporal, intergalactic manhunt for Austin Cargill. Finally, though, her mother's behaviour sitting right there in the middle of the floor irked her enough to ask.

"What are you doing?" she said, and Thirteen ignored her so Jenny nudged her in the side with her toes, squeezing the teabag in her mug.

"I'm baking a cake," she answered. Now that Jenny looked, she noticed a whole lot of baking utensils strewn about in the kitchen, bowls and whatnot, an electric whisk covered in brown cake batter. Thirteen pressed her head against the glass door of the oven.

"Why?"

"Because I want a cake - it's carrot, Clara's favourite. I only put it in twenty minutes ago, you can lick the batter off the whisk if you want," Thirteen said. Jenny was not one to turn down the opportunity to eat cake batter, and it was with great pleasure she pulled the whisk heads out of the plastic motor so that she could get at them.

"You better wash that well when she's done, you don't know _where _that mouth might have been," Jack commented, staring at her. She stopped what she was doing mid-lick with her tongue on the metal and scowled at him.

"I've brushed my teeth. And stop ogling me," she ordered him, and he did, to her surprise. She thought he might sit there and leer at her for the next fifteen minutes.

"When did you start baking?" Nine asked Thirteen.

"A few decades ago, when I decided that cakes are _awesome_," she said, smiling at him, though there was something about Thirteen's general demeanour that seemed sad.

"What's the matter?" Jenny asked her concernedly.

"Y'know, you are just _so _sweet when you worry about your dear mother here," Thirteen said, which sounded a little odd since they looked more or less the exact same age, "It's only homesickness. It has an expiry date, I'm fine."

While she licked the batter - which was delicious, and she very much looked forward to eating the cake itself whenever it was done, assuming she was allowed a slice - she picked the tablet back up and continued to scroll through old documents, eventually deciding that the vaguest and most tedious route of investigation was probably her _only_ route of investigation. So, thinking this sadly to herself, she opened the soldier roster for the Alliance Deftan Outpost during the month of August and had a great deal of names to search through, alphabetised by first names over surnames. And that was where she saw it - Corporal Aldo Koltn, personal aid to Major Austin Cargill, dishonourably discharged from the Homeworld Alliance on the 23rd of August, 4881. A week after the Death Charge. It was just her luck that Aldo Koltn was wanted by the Alliance military police on suspicion of smuggling and selling on dangerous medical supplies illegally, because they had information about where he was, and what better starting point than Cargill's ex-personal aid? By 4885, his file read, he was known to be working with a smuggling ring on Zeniph Nega. The good thing about a man like that - any information he had on Cargill could be bought or bargained out of him, he had no loyalty and selfish motivations.

"What have you found?" River interrupted Jenny's thoughts, and she looked up.

"Hmm?" she mumbled, whisk making her unable to articulate.

"You've clearly read something interesting, you've had that whisk just stuck in your mouth for the best part of five minutes," River pointed out. She let go of the whisk to reveal it was now slightly bent becaue she had been biting down on it, and then she dropped it and its new saliva coating into the sink. She would wash it later.

"Cargill's ex-aid, Corporal Aldo Koltn, is working for smugglers now on Zeniph Nega," Jenny answered. Zeniph Nega was an intergalactic slum of a spaceport, a lawless criminal haven, run by gangs and criminals. It was not under the jurisdiction of the Alliance, so they couldn't get at Koltn. But _she_ could.


	428. Winner Takes All

**AN: Originally, this storyline was supposed to be Jack, Jenny, Nine, River and Thirteen. Then I decided that Thirteen did, like, ****_nothing_**** for the story and was just a nuisance, so I wrote her out. ****_Then_**** I decided that Nine and River were kind of pointless here too, as much as I sort of do like writing River lately (how times have changed), and I really thought it would be more beneficial to the story if this was just Jack and Jenny. And besides, there are some good secondary characters coming in later to make up the balance of characters.**

_Jenny_

_Winner Takes All_

The headquarters, meeting places, storage depots and business fronts of a few dozen of the Forty-Ninth Century's most infamous crime syndicates could be found on Zeniph Nega. There were no police, it was volatile and lawless, people were shot in the street for next to nothing. People were dishonest and they stole and there were gang fights every week, and this was where Corporal Aldo Koltn was, working for the Trifaj, an intergalactic smuggling ring. In fact, the foremost intergalactic smuggling ring. Drugs, weapons, people – every kind of contraband imaginable was what they dealt in, and their chief members were to be found drinking in a shady bar called Nebulon on the northernmost point of Zeniph Nega.

Koltn was sitting in Nebulon at a circular back table playing a game called skrips with a deck of Preyonovian cards, which were different to Earthling cards in the way that there were seven suits and thirteen cards in every suit, which made any game a great deal more complicated than simple blackjack. He was paying skrips with two other people, a human girl with black hair and a scar across one milky, blind eye, an assortment of knives on her person; and a Finj, sitting there, blue and hulking over with his wings furled back and bulbous, buggy eyes on the top of his head. Finally, there was one last empty chair opposite Koltn. The table was covered with silver cards that shone like they were made of aluminium and battered old credit sticks with amber-coloured numbers burning into their digital readouts. Behind him were two guards he hired to defend him at all times, lingering like the paid brutes they were and getting a lucrative paycheque.

"What's the buy-in?" a soft voice asked, and Koltn and the woman with one good eye looked up to see a second woman – or dare he say girl, she was that young – standing there with one gentle hand on the back of the empty chair. She looked familiar to Koltn, but he couldn't place her. She was tiny and blonde with blue eyes and circular glasses, and he supposed she was lost. The Finj just stared at his hand and didn't pay her any attention.

"It's high-stakes, baby," Koltn said to her, "You sure you're in the right place?"

"Oh, I'm sure," she smiled at him. There was something cold and calculating in her eyes, and she asked again, a little more coldly, "What's the buy-in?"

"Ten-thousand," the woman on Koltn's left answered the newcomer.

"Deal me in," she said, dropping a credit stick with exactly ten-thousand onto the table and pulling out the chair, sitting down. What, had she just won a lot of money in one of the grotty casinos on the station? No doubt she had batted her eyelashes at somebody and the house let her win some loose change for her to lose somewhere else. The woman on Koltn's left, did just that, dealt her out a hand of ten cards from the deck by her side. A tall man with a fancy-looking military coat sat at the bar on the other side of the room and watched the game distantly with a dirty glass of some putrid tonic in his hand.

* * *

Jenny was something of a master when it came to playing skrips. It was the poker of that century, only it took more skill, bigger risks, because while with more suits and cards it was easier to win, it was also easier to lose. Of course, her talents at skrips in the future made it nearly impossible for her to lose at poker itself in the past, and she'd been kicked out of casinos before for 'cheating.' She could feel Jack's eyes on her back as he observed from across the room. He had a gun, she did not. He was there as backup. Maybe they were divorced, but if he wanted her to suffer through the pain of death for her involvement with Clara Ravenwood, he'd already got his wish. And besides, when it came to doing deals with smugglers in the shadiest parts of the galaxy imaginable, Captain Jack Harkness was the only person she really trusted to be sensible. Everybody else on the TARDIS was too cocky and thought a man in a weird suit was going to show up and rescue them in a spaceship if anything went slightly awry, but that had never been the case in Jenny's experience. So Jack, because he had refused to just lend her his favourite revolver, lurked.

Within five minutes she had cleaned Minok - a renowned assassin sitting on Koltn's left and her right she recognised from wanted posters on suspicion of carrying out hits on top-ranking Alliance military staff - and the unknown Finj out completely. And then she did it again, getting a triple flush twice in a row with three ordered cards from three separate suits down on the table. Koltn was either very good or getting lucky, though. She didn't really remember him from her time in the Alliance over a hundred years ago, and it didn't seem like he recognised her. Minok twisted a knife in the table to try and scare her into quitting, because she presumably looked like a pushover, as blonde and minute as she was. When the Finj lost all of his credits he kicked over his chair and stormed out of the bar completely, making some clicking noises in his own language she recognised as swear words. His wings batted in anguish as he stooped down, being eight foot tall, to get out. Minok and Koltn both watched her as she won the game in the Finj's absence.

"Another game?" Minok asked stiffly as Jenny collected the credit sticks up in front of her and revealed herself to have achieved another flush. Okay, admittedly, _maybe_ she was card counting a little. It was a habit she couldn't help. Jenny looked at Minok.

"I'll give you all my winnings if you leave me and him alone," she said to her, nodding at Koltn, who looked taken aback but did not protest. He was probably into her. In fact, she could tell by the way he kept looking at her that he was. Minok took this offer immediately and Jenny held out all four credit sticks to her, because the amount in the pot had been almost one-hundred-thousand credits, and you could do a lot with that sort of money. The money hadn't been hers, anyway, she had pickpocketed a credit stick and then sonicked it to give her the desired figure to meet the buy in.

"Do I know you?" Koltn asked her with a wry look in his eyes. The Nebulon was dimly lit and smelt of smoke and alcohol and had that metallic stink of fuel or fuel-like substances. There was another pungent smell she recognised as being that of a drug called ChemXed. His two paid goons lingered behind him, but it was clear they didn't think much of her.

"Oh, I'm pretty sure you do, Koltn," she answered. Minok had pushed the cards in her direction to deal them back out, but she had picked them up and had been shuffling them. She had once convinced a croupier-turned-magician to teach her how to do the elaborate shuffles. It was these dexterous card tricks she was doing as she talked absently to Koltn.

He leant over the table towards her and asked mock-seriously, "Did we sleep together? Because, baby, I sleep with a lot of women. I've probably got your message on my comm-log somewhere, I'm sure I'll get to it." He winked.

"In your dreams," she said, doing a riffle shuffle. She hadn't done card tricks for years, since she'd been with a travelling circus, but she had been an acrobat rather than a magician.

"I've always been taught I should go for my dreams," he said. He wasn't nearly as an hot as he thought – he wasn't half as attractive as Jack, and Jack was sitting behind her. Clara was so above both of them in that category Jenny didn't even factor her in. She laughed.

"I have a girlfriend," she told him, then before he could say something pervy, she said, "I think, Corporal, that you might know me by the name Major Young?" She shuffled the cards again and Koltn fumbled and she heard him draw his gun, but evidently he did not want her to know he had just drawn his gun.

"What do you want? What are you doing here?" he asked her coldly, his whole demeanour changing. And _now_ he was scared, and the guards behind him noticed this and moved their hands to be right by their guns.

"I was looking for you," she said, then she put the cards down and leant her elbows on the table. He might be a bigshot smuggler now, and she assumed he had been smuggling out to the Trifaj even back when he was still a soldier, but he wasn't that intimidating. He wasn't going to shoot her until she gave him a reason to.

"Who's the guy in the coat?"

"I don't know anyone in any coat," she lied easily, "I'm looking for Austin Cargill. I want to find out why he used me as a scapegoat in the Polaris Death Charge. Why he ordered that in the first place. And _you_ were his personal aid, so I figure you might know where he is now better than anybody else, since he packed up and left the Alliance just as fast as me." Koltn watched her.

"Sure, I have information," he said finally.

"Then give it."

"What? Just like that? I have a gun on you, you know, _ma'am_," he said snidely, "You're not doing anything without me shooting you." She could kick the gun out of his hand the moment she got the slightest inkling he was actually going to shoot her, she was plenty safe.

"Now, now, Koltn, I don't think either of us really want to end up dead. Just tell me how to find Cargill."

"Do something for me first," he said. A deal, great. She'd expected this.

"I'll pay you," she said, and he laughed.

"I don't want money, I have enough of that. No, I know _you've_ got a thing for helping people," he said, "And for mysteries, right? There's this ship. The _HAV Icarus_. It's docked here right now." 'HAV' stood for 'Homeworld Alliance Vessel.'

"The Alliance wouldn't come to Zeniph Nega," she told him.

"It's been here for two days, just drifted in, on autopilot to get to the nearest magno-station," he told her, "Nobody's got on and nobody's got off. Rumour has it that the _HAV Icarus_ picked up a dangerous criminal who was carrying some sort of biological weapon. I want that biological weapon, I could make a profit in manufacturing."

"Help you get a dangerous weapon? No way," she said.

"The people on that ship might be dead, might be dying. Aren't you supposed to be some kind of hero?" Koltn questioned her, "Do you know anything about your reputation, Young? Couldn't you help them find a cure?" Whatever this weapon was, if it existed, the likelihood of it affecting _her_ were minimal. "Besides, if you don't go find it, somebody else will, and who knows what _they_ might do?"

"I just want information about Cargill, don't make me drag you into the bathroom and beat it out of you," she said coldly. Maybe this regeneration wasn't quite as nice as everybody kept telling her. She didn't really _want_ to beat Koltn into a bloody pulp, but the fact remained that she could, and Koltn knew that. To emphasise her point, she then _did_ kick his gun out of his hand and it clattered onto the floor nearby. It was a nice-looking plasma sidearm, a light shade of matte silver with a glowing-green ammo cartridge hanging underneath the barrel. She smiled at Koltn. "Just tell me where to find him." The guards behind Koltn were now keeping a tight hold on the handles of their guns, fingers at the ready to shoot her if she pulled anything. But she had both of her hands in plain sight. It wasn't for them to know that Jenny's hands were about as dangerous as any pistol they might point at her.

"Get me my weapon, or we have no deal," he said. She didn't even believe, by this point, that he _did_ know anything about where Cargill was. She thought he was bluffing because he wanted her to investigate the _Icarus_ instead of somebody he regarded as slightly less expendable, or a competitor. But this rumour about a biological weapon must be quite powerful if it was stopping all of these intergalactic criminals from investigating themselves. Instead, Koltn had managed to find someone with an intrinsic sense of morality and a desire to be a do-gooder. Lucky him.

"Get out here, Aldo," somebody interrupted them from behind Jenny somewhere. She looked around in her seat and pushed up her glasses (which was enjoying very much), and saw a trio of gangsters wearing the circular symbol of the Trifaj on their alien-leather coats standing by the door to the Nebulon, addressing Koltn.

"Why? What's going on?" Koltn asked.

"Regent is questioning your loyalties," said the leader, who was much taller than the other two, "Leave the girl alone." That was not good. The Trifaj were infamous, and Regent was the codename of their leader. If Koltn had a gripe with Regent, then she had just got herself mixed up in something she really shouldn't have.

"Really? Why's that, then? Have any of you three even _met_ her? Because _I_ have, so I think I know a bit more than you three grunts about what she is and isn't questioning." Jenny met Jack's eyes for a moment, both of them wondering what they should do, and she saw him reach for his gun as well, just in case. Revolvers were just as lethal as they had always been, even after nearly three-thousand years.

"She knows you lied about the Jovoso job," the leader said.

"She doesn't know sh-" He was shot straight in the head before he had a chance to finish his swear word, and then all hell broke loose. Koltn's two bodyguards drew their weapons immediately, already firing, and the three by the door shot back with equal verve. Glasses blew up and somebody shot the jukebox next to the toilets so that it exploded. With Koltn lying dead, she managed to slide under the circular table they'd been sat at and throw it onto the ground as a shield while the shootout commenced. Then she heard somebody shout to 'get the guy in the weird coat', so Jack had just gotten involved, and she looked over the edge of the table to see he had his revolver trained on one of Regent's lot. One of Koltn's guards shot Jack in the face with a nasty sort of mini-shotgun that made a mess of him the same time one of Regent's men shot that same criminal with a laser blaster and vaporised him into a pile of ash. Then he turned his gun on _her_.

"Can't have anybody else getting their hands on Jovoso loot," he said with a derisive laugh, a scar splitting his face on one side from the edge of his mouth to his ear. He shot and Jenny ducked and lunged for Koltn's lost gun, and then she lobbed it straight at him almost like a boomerang. He had probably been expecting her to shoot him with it, and the element of surprise she gained by doing the unpredictable meant he didn't have a chance to avoid the heavy firearm and the butt of it struck him right in the temple and he fell to the floor, unconscious.

_Great_, she thought, getting up from behind the table slowly to see the havoc now wreaked on the Nebulon. Everybody in the room, even the bartender and the patrons who had nothing to do with Koltn's betrayal of the leader of the Trifaj, was dead or unconscious. Well, they were _all_ dead apart from the one Jenny had skilfully knocked out. She heard the tell-tale gasping for breath that meant Jack was back to life, and saw him drag himself up with blood all over his face from where he had collapsed behind the bar. She flinched.

"You look a mess," she told him.

"Did that guy say Jovoso before he shot me?" Jack asked her.

"Well, he said it after he shot you as well," she said, sighing and looking around at the carnage. Now what? She might have to pay visits to all of the individual families and say their children or parents or siblings or whoever had died unfortunately in a bar shootout on Zeniph Nega.

"The Jovoso Diamond – the Jovosos are the royal family of the planet Nox," Jack told her, wiping his own blood from his face, but he was grim to look at, not quite healed, "Y'know the Koh-I-Noor?"

"I guess?" she said, crouching down next to Koltn's body and searching through his pockets to see if he maybe had anything that might be useful in her hunt for Cargill.

"Well _they've_ got a diamond, too, an _Arcadian_ diamond, the _last_ Arcadian diamond, worth more than a quadrillion-quadrillion credits, more than the wealth of every planet in the whole Milky Way galaxy to the power of ten," he said, clearly expecting her to say something in awe, "Jenny? Did you hear me? If we find that diamond-"

"C'mere," she said, lifting something out of Koltn's pocket. Jack walked over as she held out something about the size of her palm, gleaming so brightly it threw off the light from every direction and created a colourful, rainbow-like glow around itself, "Is _that_ an Arcadian diamond, by any chance?" Very carefully, Jack took it from her.

"Oh, you bet it is," he said, and he stared at it for a long time, and she just watched him. This was an odd situation they were in. He'd only tagged along because he was protective of his gun and, though he lied about it, worried she might get killed again. They had not 'talked' like she kept asking him, and now the two of them were in possession of something which had a value with over twenty zeroes.

"Should we, I don't know, give it back to the family?"

"_Give it back_? What, so they can lock it in a room on its own and never look at it? It's beautiful," he said, in awe of the diamond, "The most valuable substance in the whole galaxy. A friend of mine – I say friend – once almost got himself killed in a scheme to get one of these. Turned out to be a bomb designed to blow up the killer of some woman, the killer being him. Held Gwen hostage until we could save them both." She didn't listen too much to his story.

"Put it in your room and stare at it then," she told him indifferently. She may have, once, added, "_Nice of you to have something beautiful in your room you might not cheat on_," but that was neither nice nor, strictly speaking, correct, "Forget about that diamond, Koltn's dead."

"I bet he didn't know anything anyway," Jack told her.

"He still said that there was an Alliance ship docked here, didn't you hear him? Just drifted in on autopilot, nobody's got on or off for days? Might have been carrying a dangerous, biological weapon and a fugitive?" she said to him, and he dropped the Arcadian diamond in his pocket and looked at her as she walked past him towards the soldier she had knocked unconscious.

"I don't know who I trust less with a biological weapon, criminals or the military," he said.

"So we'd better go and make sure _neither_ of them get their hands on it," she said, "Besides, you can't die, and it's probably not designed to affect Time Lords… what do you think of this?" She picked up Koltn's plasma gun from the floor and showed it to Jack, "I think I might keep it. Not like he needs it anymore."

"Sure. You keep the gun, I'll keep the diamond." She really couldn't care less about Jack's diamond, but it _was_ a nice gun, "What's the name of this ship?"

"The _HAV Icarus_."

"We'd better get going before somebody else decides to get on board first, then."


	429. Oh, Calamity!

_Jenny_

_Oh, Calamity!_

Not surprisingly, there were very few objections to she and Jack entering the _HAV Icarus_ that day. The ship was a frigate vessel she knew from her time when she had been Commodore Young in the Star Fleet, that being the Homeworld Alliance's navy. The navy in the future was a funny thing, she always thought, because while the regular military was the same thing more or less, the Star Fleet was a combination of a navy and an air force. Nevertheless, Commodore was one rank about Captain, which presently made them Commodore Harkness and Captain Harkness, and Jenny found this very amusing. So they were easily allowed to go on board, once she sonicked the doors open with her pink-lighted screwdriver, and everybody lurking outside and watching simply assumed they might die as a result of the biological weapon they all assumed had been activated.

On board the _Icarus_, it was pitch black, there were no lights on anywhere. This struck Jack more than her as odd, because of the fact the ship had been dark for days, yet there had to have been _some_ power flow active because the autopilot had brought the ship to Zeniph Nega to begin with.

"Maybe it's a ghost ship," Jack suggested, "Doesn't look like there's anybody on board, and it isn't very big."

"Looks can be deceiving," she muttered, getting out her phone and switching on the torch so that she could find the in-case-of-emergency 'command box', as it was called, which held important supplies for the acting commanding officer in a time of crisis. It was right by the airlock door, as she expected, and it was locked tight until she punched the metal right in the centre and the whole panel fell off. It was about the size of an ordinary fuse box.

"Could you not have sonicked that open?" Jack questioned her, crossing his arms and leaning on the metal wall. The ship was very low-ceilinged and he was nearly having to stoop, another thing she found funny.

"I wanted to see if I could open it by hitting it," she said defensively, "And look, I did."

"You'll get bruises."

"That's not your problem," she said, flexing the fingers of her right hand because he was right, she probably _would_ get some light bruises on her knuckles. It was her new hand, too. There were two torches in it and a gun, though she didn't bother mentioning the gun because they were both as armed as they would like to be. One of the torches she took for herself, dropping her phone in her pocket to conserve the battery after checking she didn't have a text from Clara. Suffice it to say, she did not. The other torch she held out to Jack.

"No thanks," he told her, digging out one of those metal, silver, foot-long industrial torches out of his own pocket and switching it on in her eyes so that she was momentarily blinded before he swung it away. He did that on purpose, she was sure. "I've got my own. And mine's bigger."

"But mine will last longer," she retorted immaturely, "No innuendo intended, we should probably go look around the cockpit and see if there's some sort of system diagnostic that we can run to see what's really going on, because I'm pretty sure this isn't a power outage, and somebody's just cut the lights."

"Good call, _Major_," he said. Hilarious, she thought to herself dryly, "You never know, it could be like the _Mary Celeste_."

"Who's that?"

"Not who, _what_, a ship, where the entire crew mysteriously disappeared," Jack said, "It was probably a wormhole, you get these sorts of wormholes that only suck up living things, everything else stays behind-"

"I know, I ran into one a few months ago with the Ninth Doctor," Jenny told him, "It's where we got that Static Bomb that Oswin went all weird about because it's 'dangerous' or something."

"That was a spaceship, though, the _Mary Celeste _wasn't. The entire crew disappeared in the 1870s leaving all their cargo and belongings on board, and none of them were ever seen from again and they found it drifting near Portugal. Maybe this is like that?" he suggested.

"Well we won't know until we have a look around. Anyway. Are you going to talk to me yet?" she asked him now they were trapped on a seemingly empty spaceship and he couldn't actually get away from her. Even if he tried to run, she was both faster and stronger than he was. They _would_ talk eventually, she wouldn't rest until they did.

"What's there to talk about? We were together and now we're not," he said simply, "That's all."

"No it's not, Jack, you know it's not," she said, shaking her head slightly. She held her torch up next to her eyes, night vision also active on those damn useful glasses of hers.

"Well it seems like _you're_ the one who has something to say, huh? Not me. I'm happy to let bygones be bygones," he told her, "How's Clara?"

"She's not exactly in the best of places, if you must know, though I doubt you have any real concern," she sighed, "Misses her father, and I know what _that's_ like. Look, Jack, I'm sorry. That's all I want to tell you, I'm sorry."

"You're _sorry_? What are you 'sorry' for?" he asked her quite harshly, and she stopped walking and looked up at him and his expression of challenge and disbelief.

"For making that stupid bet, that's what," she answered him, "Also, I sort of feel bad about when I killed you those six times, but that was… I don't know, way over two months ago to me. I shouldn't have made that bet, or slept with her, or carried on sleeping with her, it was so… _so_ wrong, alright? And I'm not going to do anything to change that _now_ and this isn't me saying we should get back together, because that would so be a terrible idea and I really do love her, regardless, but I shouldn't have cheated. And I shouldn't have made you into some kind of storybook villain to try and justify myself. Everybody keeps saying we're as bad as each other, but I'm pretty sure I'm worse. So there you are, all of my latest post-mortem guilt." And then he was looking at her, so she cleared her throat and began to walk again.

"Hang on, you _love_ her? Since when did you 'love' her?" he stayed where he'd been standing in the corridor, "But you still maintain that you never loved me?"

"I didn't," she said, "And that's not actually a question you, or anybody, has a right to ask, and I don't have any obligation to answer. You know what happened, and I left you, and I don't regret the part where I left you because, honestly, we should have just stayed apart after the first time."

"Then why'd you say yes to me in the first place if you never felt anything?"

"I'm not young, Jack. Maybe I'm nowhere near as old as you, but I'm old enough to know when I do and don't love somebody," she semi-lied, "It was lust, and if you thought any different then I'm sorry for that as well. Besides, Jack, in all seriousness, if somebody found Esther and brought _her_ back to life, then I'm sure it's pretty likely that Ianto Jones is knocking about somewhere. And that's me trying to find a genuine silver-lining, not take a cheap shot." Jack stopped arguing then.

"Well then I guess I'm sorry for using Christina de Souza to get back at you," he finally said, and in all truthfulness Jenny hadn't really been expecting an apology from him for that, hadn't even really wanted one. She'd been more focused on lightening her own moral burden, "For a master thief, she wasn't quite as good in bed as I expected." Jenny raised her eyebrows and he started walking again with his torch, walked right past her and then some and she had to catch him back up.

"Was she not?" she asked, because _now_ she was interested, call her immature, though she suspected that he was lying, "I could be a master thief. I'd be a better thief than her. I ought to go gate-crash one of her jobs."

"She's the one who gave me the hint about Esther. I thought she was talking about your mother," Jack told her, "Esther somehow found Christina de Souza and asked her about _me_."

"I was a thief during the Furnfelt Siege," Jenny told him.

"You were involved with the Furnfelt Siege? On Korix?"

"No, I just took advantage of it and stole a hoard of white dwarf core crystals from this death-ray one of the sides had, and I had my gun nicked," she said, the gun in question being Emmett, who she really wished she had brought with her now. She liked Koltn's plasma sidearm, though.

"Maybe you _should_ go up against Christina. She's a lady, you know."

"So am I, a _Time_ Lady," she argued.

"I thought you preferred 'Lord'?"

"You know me, Jack, I go both ways," she joked, and he nearly laughed. In fact, she was sure he _would_ have laughed, which would perhaps mark a milestone in the reconciliation between them Jenny was attempting to achieve, were it not for the fact that there was a buzzing sound overhead of feedback and then somebody started speaking to them over the ship's intercom.

"_Who the hell are you two? What are you doing on MY ship?_" the voice, a girl's voice, demanded in a very angry-sounding whisper.

"Really puts a dampener on your wormhole theory, doesn't it?" she remarked quietly to Jack.

"We're just looking around," Jack called up to the voice, shining his torch around in an attempt to spot any camera or speaker where the voice was coming from.

"_Are you infected?_" the voice asked.

"Infected with what?" Jack questioned her right back, and then their unknown observer cackled manically.

"_You must be infected_."

"Neither of us are infected by anything – listen, what's your name, soldier? What's your rank?" Jenny changed tact.

"_Warrant Officer Eriska, but what's that to you? I'm in charge of this ship, and you're not getting anywhere near me. You might as well just leave. Nobody's infecting me, nobody – I'm clean, and _you're_ going to die,_" the woman taunted them.

"Oh, how uplifting," Jack mumbled.

"Listen to me, Eriska, we're with the Homeworld Alliance," Jenny began, "I want you to explain to me what's going on here, who's in charge?"

"_I'm in charge. I'm the only sane one, the only clean one, none of you are clean. I have the cockpit so I'm in control_," Eriska said.

"That's not true, I'm not infected, I'm Commodore… Harkness," she said 'Harkness' instead of 'Young' in case they knew she had supposedly slaughtered a million soldiers on Deftan, "I'm your superior officer, I'm ordering you to turn the lights back on."

"_There is no Commodore Harkness on this ship, you're a liar, you're infected_."

"Nobody's infected with anything," Jack said, "Neither of us, we've just come from outside."

"_It's in the air, you idiots, the AIR. You won't know you're infected, nobody does, except me, but you are, you're trying to give me it, it makes you crazy_," Eriska continued.

"The only one who sounds crazy right now is you," Jack told her. Eriska then swore very loudly and accused them of being 'crazy infected' a few more times before the intercom cut off. Undoubtedly, though, she could still see and hear them, and it didn't exactly change that they needed to get into the cockpit. Jenny was sure that she and Jack were more than a match for her, though – unless she _was_ infected by some strange pathogen, because then who knew what might happen?

Jenny drew her gun then, as did Jack, and they both held their weapons in front of them and crept silently towards the cockpit at the helm of the ship. She'd once served on a vessel with almost identical specifications, thankfully. Though, as they approached, they heard voices, loud voices, arguing with each other, coming from just around the next corner, and they exchanged a cautious look and went to listen.

"…you just put them on the door," another female voice said, "They're plastic."

"And then what? We don't have a detonator," a male voice argued.

"We'd need a fuse," said a second female voice.

"They'll just blow up," the first girl countered, "I'll shoot them from a distance."

"How do we know how much is enough to blow up the door?" the male said. It seemed to be just three people, and they sounded like they were arguing about planting plastic explosives on the door into the cockpit.

"_This door is fireproof,_" Eriska shouted over the comms again.

"You're infected, Eriska!" the male voice called, and then there was a loud gunshot and a cackle from him and the other two girls told him not to shoot off his gun, "Well I've never had a gun before." Were they just maintenance crew? They seemed to be. A ship of this size ought to have an admiral of its own, but where was the admiral? What had happened?

"_YOU'RE all the infected ones!_" Eriska yelled.

"We're all clean, it's _you_!" the second girl said.

"_YOU touched the body, Whaley_!" Eriska named the second girl.

"I didn't touch anything!" Whaley shouted right back. What body?

"I'm gonna shoot it," the first girl said.

"On three," Jack whispered to Jenny, him deciding they ought to put an end to this fighting before somebody really _did_ blow up the entire front of the ship. In the dock of Zeniph Nega, the only part of the spaceship connected to the station itself was the door through a tunnel and everything else was in the vacuum of space. This made an array of military explosives doubly deadly.

Jack counted down and on three the two of them leapt out from their corner with their guns drawn on the conspirators, Eriska still jeering loudly over the comms.

"Put your hands up, all of you, I'm placing you under military arrest as the highest ranking officer here," Jenny shouted. However, they did not care that she was the highest ranking officer, they didn't care one bit, because the trigger-happy youngish boy then shot straight at her. If she hadn't been expecting it, it would probably have hit her in the side of her thigh as he wasn't the best shot. However, dodging bullets was a useful skill she had worked very hard to perfect over a century ago. Truer still, if Ashildr had _shot_ her instead of _stabbing_ her, she might still be stuck in her last regeneration.

In retaliation for that, Jack shot the boy squarely in the forehead and the back of his skull exploded. Whaley dropped the gun she had been holding without even cocking it onto the ground and ran off away from them in the opposite direction with a savage scream, the same time the first girl pulled the trigger with her gun aimed at Jenny's head. But the gun jammed, and she dropped it too, and Jenny seeing what was about to happen didn't even _think_ to shoot. The girl came sprinting, full-speed, for Jenny. All that was really left to do after that was to clench her right hand into a fist and bring it hurtling into the girl's face. She was knocked, instantly unconscious, to the ground in a crumpled heap.

"_YOU'RE ALL CRAZY! YOU'RE ALL INFECTED! ALL OF YOU! YOU KILLED HER!_" Eriska bellowed. Jenny didn't bother to point out that whoever the first girl had been, she wasn't dead at all, but the boy definitely was. He lay in a pool of his own blood and brain matter by the explosives stacked in cream-coloured bricks in front of the door to the cockpit.

Whaley, though unseen, was suddenly pleading with somebody, and as Jenny was about to try and ignore the annoying pain in her right hand from punching too many things and go investigate, a man holding a gun brought the girl kicking and screaming into view. Whoever he was he looked to be wearing an old military jacket like the British Army wore back in the Eighteenth Century, a bona fide redcoat, and he had a tiny but dangerous looking gunpowder pistol pointing at Whaley's head. Jenny pointed the gun stolen from Koltn at him but Jack lowered his weapon. Then he put it back up again.

"Drop the girl, Hart," Jack ordered him.

"Not the first time you've had to say that to me," he retorted, and then he shot Whaley in the head and her corpse fell to the ground at his feet.


	430. Chasing Shadows

**AN: I genuinely find all of the companions as, like, significantly more interesting characters than any of the Doctors to be honest, which is probably why it always seems to be the companions who solve the mysteries and the Doctors are just sort of icing. Also, here's to adding more ****_Torchwood_**** characters.**

_Jenny_

_Chasing Shadows_

"Why'd you have to do that!?" Jack shouted at the redcoat.

"You already did it to him!" the mystery man pointed at the body on the floor with the blood around it.

"_He_ was a threat, _she_ had dropped her gun," Jack hissed angrily.

"She could have picked it back up again," he shrugged, "Anyway, I only let that one drop in the hope you might let me pick _that _one_ up_." He winked at Jenny, who put her hands on her hips in response and just raised her eyebrows.

"You couldn't handle her. God knows, I couldn't. Calls himself Captain John Hart, this one," Jack explained to Jenny, and she didn't know if the remark about this redcoat not being able to 'handle her' was a compliment or not. Whoever he was, it suddenly seemed like Jack was trying to keep him away from her, "You remember that story I told you earlier about the guy who wanted to steal the Arcadian diamond? Well that was him. Almost got Gwen killed, didn't you?"

"But I like Gwen!" Jenny said, aghast, "I mean, I've never met her, but I like what I've heard… hold on, Koltn told me the rumour was that there was a fugitive on this ship as well…"

"Oh yeah? Well it must be him," Jack said, still with his gun pointed at Captain John Hart, "Are you infected?"

"Oh, don't _you_ start with that too, Jack," Hart told him, "Besides, that's not the most important question. The most important question is, why has the crazy intercom girl stopped shouting?" That was true, there was an unprecedented silence from Warrant Officer Eriska in the cockpit. "Well, no, the _most_ important question is what's _your_ phone number?" he asked Jenny directly.

"Feel free to strangle him," Jack muttered to her.

"Autoerotic asphyxiation is some way to go," Hart said with a smarmy grin. Jenny was trying to see another way into the cockpit that didn't involve using the dangerous and armed explosives, because Eriska really had gone dark. This was worrying because Eriska, like everybody else except Hart, apparently, was clearly a lunatic.

"At least it'd get you to shut up," Jack retorted, "You know a way into this cockpit? Cockpits have always been your thing."

"I don't know, I've always enjoyed a good blonde."

"Can you please stop objectifying me?" Jenny snapped at Hart, "I'm already dating a vampire, there's no competition, you really don't stand a chance."

"A vampire? Doesn't he have trouble getting it up? With that low blood flow?" Hart questioned her wryly.

"No, _she_ doesn't," Jenny said with a fake smile.

"Your little friend's getting me all hot and bothered here, Jack," Hart said.

"Shut up, or I'll shoot. How do you get into this room?" he nodded at the cockpit.

"Ceiling vent," Hart pointed upwards at a convenient grate in the relatively low ceiling. Without hesitating, Jenny lifted her gun to shoot it, and Jack grabbed her wrist with his free hand.

"Cut the violence, Jen," he said.

"I'm afraid I might have to insist on violence if you call me 'Jen' one more time," she said instantly, without even thinking about what she was saying she hated that nickname that much. He'd once called her 'Genetic Anomaly' to her face, a while ago. She had nearly killed him.

"Just sonic it," he sighed. Begrudgingly, she took out her screwdriver and had to go stand on tiptoes in front of Hart who, annoyingly enough, was ogling her, to unscrew the ceiling vent so that she could climb up. Thank god the ceiling was so low.

"What on Earth has happened between the two of you, then?" Hart commented, glancing between them. Jenny waited a few seconds to see if Jack said anything, but Jack stayed silent, "Still trying to be enigmatic about everything?"

"I'm his ex-wife," Jenny explained as the ceiling vent dropped and she caught it and threw it to Hart hoping that he wouldn't manage to catch it in time. He did, though.

"You're feisty, aren't you? It takes something special to try and tie that one down, I should know," Hart threw a smirk in Jack's direction. Jack was getting increasingly annoyed, "Why'd it end, then? The two of you? You're divorced and you're still running around spaceships together? Miscreants like that are made for each oth- OW!" Jenny, while jumping up to crawl into the vent (which she did with ease) 'accidentally' kicked him in the face.

"Hey! I said enough of the violence," Jack shouted at her.

"It was an accident," she protested from within the vent now, making a lot of clattering sounds as she tried to find which way went into the cockpit. Eriska still stayed quiet.

"Yeah, sure it was," Jack said, and she stopped answering to pretend like she couldn't hear him.

"Who _is_ the minx, then?" Hart asked Jack while Jenny crawled off above them.

"You ever heard of the Doctor?"

"That self-important rogue Time Lord?"

"Yeah, him," Jack said, and Jenny nearly laughed this description of her father/mother, "Jenny up there is his daughter." After that, she ignored the rest of the conversation and it dwindled away behind her, but it was a very short crawl until dappled, white light started to shine up from below, in a separate room. Though she didn't like to, she again slowly sonicked all of the individual screws out of the grate and it crashed loudly onto the ground, but there was still no sign of life anymore from within the cockpit. She stuck her head down out of it to look around and saw nothing of much interest, this room as dark as the rest of the _Icarus_.

Jenny dropped lightly out of the vent and could no longer hear any of what Jack and Hart were saying to each other outside, which probably meant the intercom was switched off. She spied a chair with what looked to be a person in it nearby, finally, though Eriska wasn't speaking. In front of the chair she saw the intercom microphone and most of the controls.

"Eriska?" she asked, keeping one hand ready to grab her gun as she crept closer, "Eriska, nobody's infected here, and if they are I know people who can get a cure, or… or… oh, god…" she had reached the chair, and in it she saw a skeleton with ragged clothes and no skin at all, and she put a hand to her face. This was Eriska, she was sure, up until maybe ten minutes ago. This had all the hallmarks of Vashta Nerada, but Vashta Nerada was no infection, it was a swarm. She noticed this probably too late, because when, moving as slowly as she could, she looked around, she saw that she had two shadows, one of them a bloated malformation of a person which spread out like a fan on the ground in the dim lighting.

To Jenny's surprise, however, she was not immediately devoured by microscopic space piranhas, which was a relief because she was sure she definitely wouldn't regenerate from that. The second, mystery shadow began to grow, began to slide away from her, disconnected from her feet and her own shadow on the ground and slipped into a dark corner. Momentarily free and still fearing for her life, she started fumbling with buttons on the console in front of Eriska's skeletal body. Finally, she managed to restore power to the lights of the _Icarus_, and when she looked again to her left she saw a person standing there, a figure, as black as space between the light of the stars, an entirely opaque being.

"You're… you're the Shadow," she exclaimed, "_The_ Shadow, the assassin belonging to the Shadow Proclamation my dad was trying to free!"

"And you're Jenny Harkness," the Shadow said, "Or do you go by 'Young' in these parts? What's your rank? You're not DeLacey here, are you? Raxis? Dyer?"

"Harkness is fine," she said coolly, "How do you know so much about me?" The Shadow laughed through the voice synthesiser it spoke though. It? They? He? She? She didn't really know. The voice it spoke with sounded notably male.

"Used to be my job to mitigate the damage the crew of the TARDIS did, remember? It was _your_ father who caused the Frir to attack that lodge," the Shadow explained, with their arms crossed.

"Huh. Sort of creepy, you know," she said, "Why did you kill Eriska?"

"She was in the process of cutting off the ship's oxygen to 'kill the pathogen,' I did you a favour. Besides, swarm's gotta eat."

"Yeah, you proved that when you murdered my child," she said, and the Shadow didn't say anything. She got the feeling that if the Shadow could frown in confusion at her, they would, "…The Xenomorph on the _Caelestis_. I regenerated."

"That thing? Gave me indigestion," they said.

"_Indigestion_!?" she demanded, and the Shadow just didn't say anything, and she glared and realised she had pulled her gun. Thinking that the Shadow probably wasn't going to do anything to hurt her, because they didn't seem like the most antagonistic of carnivorous swarm assassins, she holstered Koltn's gun. "Whatever, then. I suppose I can't do anything about it now, can I?"

"No."

"Why are you on this ship? Are you the biological weapon?"

"Nobody knows I'm on board," the Shadow said.

"…What do you mean, 'I'? Don't you mean 'we'? You're a swarm, there's like, a million of you talking through that thing," Jenny said.

"It's been a long time, we've evolved somewhat beyond that point. Besides, when we used to say 'we,' people got confused," the Shadow actually shrugged. _Where_ had a Vashta Nerada swarm picked up all of these human mannerisms?

"…What pronouns do you use?" she asked finally.

"The Shadow Proclamation made the voice synthesiser male," the Shadow said.

"So… so I call you 'he'?" she asked, and the Shadow didn't say anything again, so she supposed they – he? – was indifferent to pronouns. She supposed that the Shadow killed most of the people it spoke to, so it didn't really matter much in the end what pronouns people knew it by. Them. Him. It was weird.

"I'm not the weapon. Nobody knows I'm on board except you and Eriska briefly. I'm in the habit of hitchhiking on ships like this," the Shadow told her.

"Oh, how convenient… you're just here by coincidence then?"

"Spooky, don't you think?" the Shadow asked.

"Spooky? I mean, I guess so… what's with people saying things are spooky lately?" The Shadow didn't answer. "Can't you come and help us find out what's going on? Don't you know?"

"I've been laying low, I have no clue," the Shadow answered her shortly.

"None? None at all?"

"None, Harkness."

"So… so I might leave then… unless… you found us, right? Well, you lured my dad out? With de Souza?" she questioned.

"That's true."

"You can find people? Through time and space? For money?"

"Who do you want me to find?"

"Major Austin Cargill, defected from the Alliance in 4881," Jenny said. Presently, it was 4885. The Shadow laughed. "What? What's so funny?"

"Cargill already has an extraordinary bounty on his head, he and his wife, and I'm not one for doing jobs for free, even for someone as unique as you, Harkness," the Shadow told her.

"I'll pay. I can pay. For you to find Cargill and bring him to me. I'll give you an Arcadian diamond," she bargained.

"You have an Arcadian diamond?"

"The Jovoso Diamond, Corporal Aldo Koltn stole it from Regent, leader of the Trifaj, and was killed unfortunately in a bar fight this morning, meaning Jack and I are in possession of said diamond," Jenny said, "But you don't get a diamond until I get Cargill. And you know what, how about Ashildr while you're at it? Do you know her? A billion years old, or something?"

"The immortal Viking? Calls herself 'Me'?"

"Does she? That's pretentious. But yes, her. You find her because Clara wants to talk to her, and you find Cargill because _I_ want to talk to _him_, and you'll get the most valuable gem in this galaxy."

"You've got yourself a deal, finding and letting those two live is just about worth the sum of one of those diamonds. You should see how high their bounties are in this sector."

"I couldn't care less, but you find them and then… bring them to Clara's house. I mean, I assume you know where Clara's house is? But don't… don't wreck anything, alright?" Jenny said, glancing at a few of the computer screens and realising she had restored functionality to all of the ship's systems. So she had hired the help of the infamous Shadow in her quest to find Cargill, meaning that she could now more or less relax her own search for him. As long as Jack didn't do anything stupid with that Arcadian diamond…

"Don't tell them you saw me," the Shadow ordered her, "If you tell either of them out there that I'm on this ship, the deal's off, Harkness."

"What? Then what do I tell them about Eriska? You killed her," she said as she stood below the ceiling vent, waiting to pull herself into it.

"Say she shot herself because she thought she was infected," the Shadow said, "You tell them anything, you'll be finding those two on your own, and they're particularly elusive."

"Oh my god… fine, alright? Fine. I'll lie for you. But you better have a good reason for this…"

A few minutes later she had escaped the Shadow and dropped back down out of the vent to the surprise of Jack and Hart. Jack was stood in the middle of scanning the unconscious girl with his vortex manipulator.

"What did you find?" he asked her, "Thought I might have to climb in after you for a minute."

"She shot herself," Jenny lied, "Turned off the intercom and blew her brains out. Probably thought she was infected, or something, that's all. I restored all the systems though, look." She motioned at the lights overhead, which were all switched back on now, "What are you doing?"

"Captain Hart has been telling me about the biological weapon, I'm looking for traces of it in these people. Funny thing is they all seem pretty healthy to me and my scan," Jack said.

"Well scan deeper, then," Hart jibed.

"What's this weapon?" Jenny asked him seriously.

"Straight down to business, I like it – you must be great to have on speed dial. Right over, getting into it," he said wryly. She clenched her jaw and looked at Jack, who was looking at Hart in turn.

"What did you tell him?" she questioned, because it sounded an awful lot like a comment about her previous friends-with-benefits status with Clara Ravenwood.

"I didn't tell him anything, I swear!" Jack protested.

"I love a good bit on the side," Hart said.

"Just punch him," Jack told her, but she didn't think he was worth it. Besides, her fist already hurt from all the punching that day so far.

"Weapon? Biological? Explain? Before I break your neck?"

"Steady on, save it for the bedroom. It's called the Nueroz Plague, came from an infected body brought on board the ship about a week ago. Nasty thing, incubates a colony of these spider-bugs that explode out of you and kill you and infect everybody else around you by implanting their larvae in their nether-regions," Hart explained.

"Right, that sounds about as genetically unlikely as the story Clara told me about the moon being an egg, hatching into a dragon which then manages to lay another egg in the exact same place in spite of it being a new-born virgin," Jenny said, glancing at Jack, who stopped his scanning and met her gaze questioningly for a moment, and then turned a slightly darker look on Hart.

"What?" Hart asked him.

"You telling the truth? None of these people have any spider-bugs growing in them," Jack questioned.

"Oh, please, what would I possibly gain by lying about a biological weapon? You grow that in a lab and put those bugs in grenades and you could take out a whole army in a matter of hours," Hart pointed out, "That's why the Alliance are so desperate for it."

"Did you say Neuroz?" Jenny, suspicious as she was, changed the subject. Hart said he did. "I think I slept with a Neuroz native once."

"What? Really? They're seven feet tall and they have four arms," Hart told her.

"Oh, I know, I remember it _vividly_."

"Colour me impressed."

Jack laughed fondly and said, "That's one of my favourite stories of yours. Anyway. Hart. Where's this body now? It needs to be destroyed. Medical?"

"Storage bay," he said.

"Seems a funny place to keep a body, don't you think?" Jack asked Jenny.

"Better check, still," she said to him.

"Aren't you going to give her the rules about me yet?" Hart questioned Jack, "You gave them to Gwen. There's that kissing rule, isn't there?"

"I'm pretty sure if you even come _near_ Jenny she'll break your face. She's not Gwen. She should know not to trust you just by speaking to you for five seconds," Jack said. Again, she didn't know whether to take that as a compliment.


	431. Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang

_Jenny_

_Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang_

Obviously, the storage bay couldn't _just_ be a storage bay. Of course it had to double as the base-camp area of a large group of the _Icarus_' crew, who all seemed to be crazy and paranoid that everyone they came across was infected with the Neuroz Plague. It was a complicated environment, because the entire room was stacked full of boxes and cargo, like a warehouse, with rails running along the ceiling for cranes and hooks to lug particularly large shipments hither and dither. They could hear talking and shouting and the occasional gunshot as they entered the storage bay, thankfully already behind cover and invisible.

"The plan is-" Hart began.

"The _plan_," Jenny cut him off, "Is whatever _I_ say it is." She was whispering and straining to listen to the people talking, but they weren't talking about a lot other than complaining about how they didn't know what the symptoms of the 'infection' were, and one of them wondered why Eriska had stopped jeering over the comms. Jenny was still maintaining to Jack and Hart that Eriska had shot herself. She had not glimpsed the Shadow since their deal.

"Oh yeah? Since when?" Jack asked her, "I should make a plan."

"I know where the casket is," Hart argued, "_I _should make it, obviously."

"But I've always been the best at plans," Jack continued to challenge Hart.

"_Shut up_!" Jenny, unable to shout, hissed aggressively at the pair of them, "We're on a Homeworld Alliance ship. He's a fugitive, and _I_ outrank both of you, and if you argue with me, that's insubordination, and I am well within my rights to shoot you." Jack and Hart both stared at her.

"How do you know the Alliance haven't stripped you of your rank? They think you committed genocide," Jack said.

"They think _what_?" Hart exclaimed, staring at Jenny.

"I'll die permanently before I let anybody strip me of my rank, _Captain_," she addressed Jack through gritted teeth. She had worked hard to rise through the ranks of various militaries, and regardless of her faux reputation courtesy of Cargill, she was proud of everything she had achieved. Especially with the Alliance, and in spite of what her father thought about armies.

"Well I vote we do what she says," Hart relented immediately, eyeing her up again, and she crossed her arms and stared at Jack expectantly.

"I… _fine_. What are our orders, _Commodore_?" he retaliated. She did still prefer 'Major', though.

"You two, draw their fire, distract them. _I'm_ going to sneak around and knock them all out while you do," she told them, "Then _he_ can show us where this casket is and we can get out of here before they start waking up."

"Ooh, I don't like that plan," Hart said.

"I could always knock you out first?" Jenny suggested to him coolly.

"Alright, fine. How're you gonna get around here without them spotting you?"

"The ceiling is covered with vantage points, that's how," she said, pointing upwards at the crisscrossing rails and had noted earlier, "I mean, I did used to fly around on a trapeze and walk across tightropes for a living, Jack. I think I can handle walking across some rafters."

And handle it, she could. While she didn't appreciate John Hart's wandering eyes as she climbed carefully up cargo crates to get high enough to leap onto one of the rafters in the first place, eventually she was too high up for it to be in their best interests to try and ogle her. She did miss the circus, though. She felt sort of like Batman – or Batgirl, maybe – creeping around in the darkness trying to pick people off one by one. She really wished she had brought a stun gun with her as she did, but it was too late for that now, and she was about six metres off the ground and needed an easy way to knock people out cold. The easy way, however, did not exist until after she took out a first member of the _Icarus_ crew.

This she managed to do as soon as they realised Hart and Jack were in the room somewhere, because the pair of them kept shouting as part of her plan that they be distractions. She hung down off of the thin railing and dropped right onto an unsuspecting idiot's head and trampled him into unconsciousness. And as luck would have it, this idiot was armed only with a sock full of pool balls, four of them, and that was it.

It took Jenny a minute to navigate her way back up again, and then she was walking carefully along the grey beams, one foot in front of the other, trying not to fall. Not that there was really any danger of her falling, she could do stuff like this in her sleep, and besides, the railings were an entire three inches wide. She might as well be walking on a level pavement. The first ball she pulled out of the sock, like the universe's most dangerous Christmas stocking, was a red 3 ball. By this point, one person in the room was knocked out and one of them was dead thanks to Jack and John. There were still maybe half a dozen, though, and she had to be careful she didn't throw a ball at anybody who might see where she was. Jenny's presence was still unknown.

Luckily, somebody wandered into a sort of alleyway made of high-stacked metal boxes and right into her range. She hit them in the head with the 3 ball, a perfect hit at the perfect speed, enough to injure them but not kill them. Even if this girl woke up, she would likely be too concussed to stop them. So she had three balls left now, and Hart shot another one in the head, so there were four remaining in the room below her. She threw the green and white 14 at a boy and hit him in the back of the skull, and he crumpled to the floor. They didn't have the best weapons, most of them. In fact, there was another with a sock full of balls like hers. However, while she observed, she saw Jack sneak up behind this older woman, wrangle the sock out of her hands, and then swing it and club her straight around the face. Jenny winced as the woman fell to the floor and blood poured from a freshly broken nose. That left two, and she had two balls.

And then Jenny's phone rang, at probably the worst possible moment.

It was on silent, so it merely buzzed, but when she fumbled and took it out, still perched dangerously twenty feet off the ground, she saw it was Clara. Great. She resolved that in five minutes, maybe, the room would be free of hostiles and she could call Clara back, so she pressed the red decline button and then spied a girl coming near enough to her for her to lob an 8 ball straight into her face and knock her backwards onto the ground, having to suppress the urge to shout 'bullseye.' That had been a nasty attack of hers. To think that she had promised Clara not to hurt anybody…

Clara rang back immediately. Jenny nearly wobbled, nearly swore, and rejected the call again. By this time, somebody had realised that she was high above. The last person, a man, over six feet tall and burly, shouted out to the room at large, "There she is!" and pointed straight at her. And then she was having to run across something no wider than a banister away from a hail of bullets from an enormous machine gun. She purposely 'slipped', let herself drop, caught the rafter with one hand and then fell down lightly below. Then Clara called _again_, and this time she answered.

"What?" she whispered.

"_I'm just calling to talk to you about dinner_," Clara said.

"Dinner?" she asked, "I – ah – sure, dinner, yep… I'm on it…" Jenny had completely forgotten about the dinner she had proposed in her letter that morning, "Can I call you back? This isn't a good time."

"_Why? What are you up to?_"

"I'm busy," she answered shortly. _I'm sneaking about in a room full of people with guns trying to knock them out quietly while Jack distracts them_. If she told Clara the truth right then, Clara would probably totally lose it.

"_Doing what?_"

"Just, you know. Just stuff. Space stuff."

"_Are you building that spaceship again?_"

"Am I what? No! No, something… else… seriously, I should-"

"I CAN HEAR YOU!" the maniac with the automatic gun shouted.

"_Who the hell was that?_"

"A friend of mine. We're playing hide and seek. Seriously, Clara, I was winning," Jenny said.

"_Hide and seek? How old are you again?_"

"Don't you have to go to work?"

"_Not for half an hour._"

"I can't talk."

"Get off of the phone, would you!?" Jack shouted, "C'mon, come this way, you manly hunk with the big gun!" Jack was trying to draw the guy attempting to find Jenny away.

"_Was that Jack?_"

"Yeah."

"_Where is he?_"

"I don't know where he is, I just told you, we're playing hide and seek. I have to go, I'll make dinner, I love you," she said, and then she didn't even wait for a goodbye, she just hung up and resolved to completely ignore her phone if it rang again. Then she was crouching along in the shadows once more.

She could hear him, the bloke with the gun, almost the size of a mini-gun, as he reloaded it and it clicked and heaved under the pressure it took to fire. She had never been a fan of guns that large – she preferred them when they could be easily concealed. You couldn't sneak _that_ thing into a casino.

Jenny's luck ran out, however. She rounded a corner, hoping she could get the drop on him and throw her last pool ball into his square, gnarled face, but he was looking directly at her, ready to fire. He saw her, laughed, and three bullets shot her way. She dove left and the bullets curved right. His laughter stopped when she heard a sickening squelch. On the opposite metal wall, bullets hit the cargo as the man firing them tried to turn around without taking his hand off the trigger. And he had something sticking out of his head, it looked like some kind of small crowbar for the use of the ship's engineer. Then hands wrenched the crowbar free and she saw that it was Jack. He drew the crowbar back and swung it again, and that was when the mini-gun stopped firing and there was another grim noise and Jack was splattered with blood.

"You're paying for this coat to be dry-cleaned," he told her immediately as the madman crumpled and died between them.

"Why don't you pay for it yourself with your diamond?" she remarked.

"Funny," he commented.

"I am, aren't I?"

Then somebody behind her cleared their throat and she heard two guns being cocked, which was strange, because she thought that everybody in the room had been neutralised in some way or another. When she turned she realised it was Captain John Hart, standing there with a cocky grin on his face, pointing one gun at Jenny and one gun at Jack.

"Sorry," he said, and then he sniffed, "About that plague – the Neuroz-whatever – I made it up."

"It did seem a bit farfetched," Jenny muttered, annoyed that they had been double-crossed, "What kind of plague is it, then? No spiders?"

"Drop your weapons," Hart ordered, bored.

"Why?" Jack asked.

"Because if you don't, I'll shoot her," he shrugged and waved his gun at Jenny, "I always heard that Time Lords have a limit on how many regenerations they can have, wouldn't it be nice to see for ourselves?" Hart laughed. Jenny dropped her sock with only the cue ball left on the ground, along with Koltn's pistol she liked so much, and put her hands behind her head. Jack did the same with his revolver, the crowbar stuck in the dead guy's head. "Long story short, there is no plague at all. Thanks for all the help, though."

"Never would've guessed," Jack said sarcastically.

"It's in here," Hart said, keeping his guns aimed at them while walking over to a large metal container on the ground nearby, with a little area cleared around it, "I told them it was a body infected with a highly contagious disease, and then by just touching it to bring it on board, they could be infected. Didn't really plan on them all going crazy, though. I just needed to make sure nobody opened it."

"What's in there, then?" Jenny asked.

"A weapon of mass destruction, of Vyturian origin, which I stole. Not a _biological_ weapon of mass destruction, just a regular weapon of mass destruction. Then _I_ set the autopilot to go to Zeniph Nega after killing the admiral and _I_ perpetuated the ruse of the infection so that I could get secure transport with the Alliance. They'd never refuse to pick up one of their most wanted, after all," he said, "And now I can take it out there and sell it for a good sum."

"Millions – _billions_ – of people could die!" Jenny exclaimed.

"Don't do this," Jack told him coldly. Neither of them were close enough to Hart to get to him without being shot, and she had nothing else she could throw except maybe her phone, but her phone wouldn't do the job.

But then, as Hart attempted to open the case holding a dangerous WMD, she saw something move in the darkness, the tiniest bit. If she had blinked, she would have missed what happened next: the Shadow, whose presence Jenny had not revealed, came out of nowhere and clouted Hart around the head with a long stick, like a baton, only it looked to be retractable. A weapon of the Shadow's own, no doubt, not anything scavenged off the _Icarus_. Jack lunged for his revolver on the ground when Hart fell, but the Shadow's baton just retracted away into something no bigger than a can.

"Sorry for lying to you, Harkness," the Shadow said.

"Lying to me?" Jack frowned.

"I was talking to her," the Shadow pointed at Jenny. Jack stared at Jenny.

"When were _you_ talking to that swarm?" Jack asked her.

"In the cockpit. Eriska…" she began, then sighed, "Eriska didn't kill herself, the Shadow killed her. And then asked me to lie and say I never saw them."

"She was trying to cut off the ship's oxygen to kill the plague," the Shadow told Jack the same thing he had told her earlier, "That part was true."

"Which part wasn't..?" Jenny questioned carefully.

"The part about me hitchhiking. I was hired by a high-up official in the Vyturian army to retrieve an experimental WMD after it was stolen by _this_ infamous criminal," the Shadow said of Hart, "You two made my job a lot easier."

"So you're free from the Shadow Proclamation now, then? Freelance? I thought you only did assassinations," Jack argued. There was something about the Shadow, that while Jenny may feel like she_ should _dislike it/them/him, she found herself quite liking them.

"I do anything if the pay's high enough. She should know," the Shadow referred to Jenny again, who smiled a little awkwardly when Jack again turned to look at her for explanation.

"What's it talking about, Jenny?"

"Uh… you know that Arcadian diamond?"

"Yeah. Of course I do."

"I need it to pay the Shadow to find Austin Cargill for me, and the girl who killed me three days ago," Jenny confessed.

"I'll factor in the cost of dropping _him_ off at the nearest Alliance prison once I return this weapon to the Vyturians, instead of just killing him for the bounty on his head," the Shadow said, again talking about John Hart, who lay in a heap on the floor of the storage bay.

"You bargained with _my_ diamond!?" Jack exclaimed.

"Without me, you never would have got that diamond to begin with, because _I'm_ the one who came here looking for Koltn," Jenny argued right back, and he didn't really have anything to say, so she added, "I have as much right to it as you. Besides, you weren't even going to do anything with it."

"You…" Jack glared at the Shadow, "You don't get the diamond until _she_ gets what she wants from you. No payments in advance. That's the deal."

"That's usually the deal," the Shadow told him simply.

"Why should we trust you with that WMD? How do we know you won't just sell it for a higher price?"

"Nobody on Zeniph Nega knows what it is to offer a higher price. And I have some degree of loyalty to my employers. We're on the same side, Captain. Now, I'd advise that the two of you leave before you meet anymore resistance from the crew." Jack grimaced, unhappy, but holstered his gun in the end. Jenny stooped down and picked Koltn's sidearm back up, intent on keeping it for herself.

"C'mon, Jack," Jenny briefly tugged on his arm to indicate they should listen to the Shadow.

"Yeah. Sure." He followed begrudgingly. The Shadow waved them off as they slipped away between the metal towards of storage crates again, past bodies both dead and sleeping. "This is the second time in as many days I've been covered in somebody else's blood."

"I wouldn't say you were _covered_ in it," Jenny said, a little in front of him as they left the storage bay to return to the main corridors of the _Icarus_. It wouldn't take them more than five minutes to make their way out, it was quite a small ship.

"This diamond," he changed the subject, "Is the end of the fighting between us."

"I'm sorry?"

"I mean it puts us back to zero. Like an amnesty. No more cheap shots, no more arguing, alright?"

"I didn't intend to argue with you anyway," she said.

"Are we okay now?"

"What?" she asked, and he made an irritated noise, "Fine, I mean. You don't exactly have a way to stop me from just pickpocketing that diamond whenever I need it, but fine, Jack."

"Well, it's the thought that counts." She laughed, but then there was another silence between them. "…So did you hear that they all thought you were pregnant with my kid a week ago?"

"_Did I hear about it_? I come into the living room looking to get another cup of tea when suddenly Donna Noble's waving a pee-stick under my nose and accusing me of harbouring a foetus – of course I heard about it," she said resentfully, "First the Shadow brutally murders my child, then I have to deal with _that_."

"Y'know, I can never tell if you're joking about that Xenomorph being your child."

"That's the point," she said, then she cleared her throat and changed the subject, "You know, Jack, if you _really_ want to put our past behind us, I have another errand I ought to run today you could always help me with?" Jenny suggested.

"Does involve more trying to get information out of criminals in shady bars?"

"No, it involves stealing Esther Drummond's old car out of CIA holding and getting the plates changed so that it's registered in Britain," Jenny said, "I thought it would be nice for her to have her old car. Besides, I don't know what it looks like."

"It's a light blue mini."

"That girl just gets cuter the more I hear about her…" she sighed, then looked at Jack again, "So? Are you in?"

**AN: Has my pacing been alright these last two storylines? Because this one and the cow one have both only been 4 chapters, but the chapters have been a lot longer. They could have easily been double that, but I've been writing the longer chapters by combining things I would previously have put in two or even three different ones, and I've been a lot more meticulous with my planning.**


	432. When The Spook Hits

_Esther_

_When The Spook Hits_

That day, a dreary Monday in December, passed slowly. The skies were overcast and everything Esther saw through the window was grey brick or green moors. Drizzles kept picking up and dying down again, and she wondered if it might snow soon. Whatever the weather was, though, it fascinated her. Four years without a drop of rain was… well, everybody knew the saying, _you don't know what you have until it's gone_. It was certainly true. Esther didn't think she would ever miss the risks of slipping on black ice, but she did. She had also missed the quiet, _god_ the quiet and the calm and a lack of responsibility. Esther was living in an isolated bubble of welcome boredom.

While the atmosphere of the village and the house was all well and good, and Sally Sparrow herself was far from being unpleasant company, the issue that soon became Esther's focal point was money. All day, the only thing to eat had been stale Cheerios, without milk. That was fair enough, because the milk was out of date. The other option that morning had been toast with no butter because there was none of that, either, but the bread had green clusters of fur growing on the corners, so that was out, too. The only thing to drink was tea with the old milk or the crude root-weed soda Esther had tried the previous night and would prefer not to subject herself to again. On top of the food situation, Sally Sparrow was also slow to admit that she had had to switch the heating off to save on money, too. And it was winter.

This culmination of unfortunate, fund-based problems led to Esther being curled up in the armchair in the sitting room with the sheets from her bed which had been freshly laundered last night wrapped around herself, and two pairs of socks. The socks-thing was even more annoying because she actually only _had_ two pairs of socks, and she was having to wear both of them. Sally, who seemed used to this chill, just sat on the small couch watching television and making sarcastic comments at every opportunity while Esther asked her repeatedly to explain the premises of various shows. For the entire day, there had been little else to do. Above the TV, a disturbing photograph of a spectre which Sally claimed was genuine and was one of hers hung, leering at Esther and making her uncomfortable. There were a lot of photos like that in strange places – there was one above the toilet. Showering, she had found out yesterday, was not the most fun with something like _that_ ogling you from the inside of a battered, antique picture frame.

"So, they take it in turns to host a dinner party?" Esther said to Sally.

"Yeah," Sally absently said from the sofa. She was eating a bag of potato chips, some weird pickled onion flavour ones that stank. Esther knew from searching for food earlier that they were out of date by a year and a half and also the last packet of their kind, and was a little disturbed by Sally eating them so freely.

"And then they score each other out of ten at the end of the night?"

"Exactly."

"But how can they be objective when they _all_ want to win?" Esther inquired, and Sally frowned at her.

"Objectivity isn't the point of _Come Dine With Me_, Esther," Sally told her, "The point is to listen to the narrator make derisive comments about all these people who think they're the messiah of daytime cooking shows."

"And here you are eating out of date chips and mocking them…" Esther commented.

"You mean crisps," Sally corrected, "And they're not out of date, they're…" she lifted the foil packet to look at the back, and then her eyes widened when she read that they most definitely _were_ out of date and had been since March, 2014. It didn't take her long then to throw them in the trash.

"Are you sure you don't have _any_ money for food?"

"There's a jar of pennies on the mantelpiece," Sally said, pointing at said jar of copper coins on said mantelpiece, above the dark and cold fireplace, because they didn't have anything to burn to make some heat. Sally said she liked to have a log fire going earlier, but she couldn't afford to buy wood. Sally Sparrow couldn't afford to buy anything. Esther wished she had memorised Adam Mitchell's phone number so that she could ring up for an emergency care package of money and microwave meals so that she didn't have to worry about starving to death in a first world country. "I found a fiver on the pavement outside last week, it's in my coat, in case of emergencies."

"What warrants an emergency, if not this?" Esther asked incredulously.

"A fire?"

"At least we'd be warm." Sally laughed. She wasn't quite taking this situation as seriously as Esther thought she ought to – even on the run from the CIA, she had had better choice in food.

"There's beans in the cellar? And soup?" she said, and Esther stared at her, "There's soap and powdered milk down there as well. And toilet paper."

"Why?"

"I have a stockpile." Esther continued to stare at Sally, and Sally stared right back, for the longest while. "You're looking at me like that's weird." Esther opened her mouth to say something, then closed it again and thought, while somebody yelled at somebody else on TV for giving them a rare steak instead of medium rare.

"…So I don't mean to be a bit of a party-pooper, or anything, but, um… why, exactly, do you have a stockpile of beans, soap and toilet paper in the basement..?"

"In case there's a national crisis. Like, I don't know, everybody on planet Earth suddenly stops dying and there's a food shortage," Sally quipped, and that shut Esther up, because while she had momentarily been worrying about Sally Sparrow's sanity, having a stockpile of canned goods and toilet roll suddenly seemed like the sensible thing in the weird world they lived in.

Just as Esther was wondering, again, how she might get a hold of Adam's phone number to beg him for help, all of her prayers were answered by the thrumming, vworping, sort of croaky noise of that strange blue box just outside of Sally's house, at the bottom of the garden. She was incredibly surprised to find outside both Jack _and_ Jenny Harkness, because from what she'd gathered during her short tenure on the TARDIS was that when Captain Jack and the Doctor's daughter were in the same place, _anything_ was liable to happen, such as one of them murdering the other. They didn't _seem_ like they'd been fighting, though.

Nevertheless, all of Esther's thoughts of divorcee woes were washed from her mine by the sight of a sky blue Mini Cooper sitting there with two of its wheels up on the curb outside of Sally Sparrow's house, and she stared at it, ignoring for a moment Jack and Jenny's greetings. It was dark out, it being eight o'clock at night almost, but there was no mistaking the colour of the car.

"Is that my car!?" she exclaimed, staring at it. Was it her car, or was it a just another of the same model? When she craned her neck to see the license plate, the letters and numbers were different.

"Yes, your exact car," Jenny, who was holding a cake tin for some reason and was wearing glasses which were not those stolen from her vampire girlfriend and made her look a bit like a librarian, assured her, "We stole it a few hours ago from a CIA lockup just a few days after you went on the run, in 2011. We switched the plates, though. And it's insured, and everything."

"Oh my god! I would hug you if it wouldn't end in you getting electrocuted!"

"I think if you did hug me, Oswin would be so jealous she might turn green," Jenny remarked as Esther practically _bounced_ down the steps of the house, Sally Sparrow remaining in the doorway of the house and leaning on the frame.

"Here are the keys," Jack said, holding out a set of car keys which looked _exactly _like Esther's spare keys, from her old apartment in D.C. In fact, the keys had all same marks and scratches she remembered, had the same old keyring her sister Sarah had given her which was a blue Pacman ghost. Seeing the way she stared at them, Jack then moved on to explain, "We've been to your flat, just after you left. Landed the TARDIS inside so that the CIA guys staking it out didn't see us."

"When Clara died a few weeks ago, a few of us went to _her_ flat in London and brought all of her things up here," Jenny said as Esther unlocked the car door and dropped into the driver's seat on the left – not on the right like in Adam Mitchell's weird, British Porsche – and started searching through things as she talked, the door still open so that she could hear the conversation outside. Esther found an old pack of gum, her old Blackberry, and a ten dollar bill. Not that a ten dollar bill was any use to her now.

"You took everything out of my apartment?" Esther asked.

"Not everything," Jack said, "All your clothes we brought, and anything that looked like a keepsake – photo albums, et cetera. It's in bags on the TARDIS to bring in."

"Along with some fancy computer which Adam Mitchell nipped out and bought today, and the Syphon 2.0," Jenny said, "And that envelope – give her the envelope, Jack."

"I was getting to it," he said to her, digging around in his coat and pulling out an envelope, giving it to Esther. It was a huge, A4 sized, brown paper envelope, and it seemed to be full of all kinds of things, "In there you've got everything you need to commit identity fraud. Fake immigration papers, fake driver's license, fake visa, fake passport, just about anything."

"What do you mean, 'fake'? You're not making me change my name, are you..?"

"No, no!" Jenny assured her, "Your name is still the same, your date of birth we changed, so that you wouldn't really match up with any random searches the government might run on - I don't know - the next census."

"So what's my new date of birth..?"

"The 2nd of May, 1984," Jack said.

"Oh," she answered shortly. Before, her birthday had been the 2nd of May, 1980, so it was only the year that had changed. It wasn't too bad.

"There's also a bank card, though I wouldn't try and use it for at least a week," Jenny continued, "And a new phone with some numbers already put in it – not _everybody_ on the TARDIS, but a few – and a grand in cash."

"A grand?" Sally exclaimed, "Thank god, now I can pay the water bill and shower tonight."

"What do you mean, 'pay the water bill'?" Esther narrowed her eyes, and Sally bit her lip and then tried to cover for herself.

"Oh, uh, did I not mention? The hot water got cut off this morning?" Sally said.

"No, you did not _mention_."

"Must have slipped my mind… doesn't matter now, though, does it?"

"God, you two sure are living on the breadline, aren't you?" Jack commented. Sally scowled at him. She did not like Jack, that was for sure.

"You should have mentioned, I'm sure Clara would let you shower at hers," Jenny offered, "I'm going over when I'm done here anyway, I can let you in to shower if you have to? She won't mind."

"And when you say, 'let them in,' you mean 'break in without permission,' right?" Jack questioned her jokingly. Jenny didn't go along with his joke, though.

"No, I've got a key, see?" she dragged a keychain out of her pocket and held it up to him. He did not seem pleased about being shown this. Then she asked Sally again, "Clara's at work for two more hours, anyway, you can shower without worrying about her trying to drink your blood."

"No, it's fine, really. I'll just go to the shop and pay for more electricity," Sally shrugged.

"Electricity? After the Syphon 2.0 is installed, you probably won't need to pay for electricity," Jenny assured her, "It sort of, sucks up the excess electricity Esther emits, and then recycles it for use in the house. You know, like how you get waste energy. Now there won't be any waste energy."

"So I'm a human battery, you mean?" Esther asked Jenny.

"Yeah," Jenny said with a smile, then her smile died, "Wait, is that bad? Do you not want to be a human battery? I think it's pretty cool. Although, it would be cooler if you were a _Time Lord_ battery, but I suppose I'm speaking subjectively."

"What you call subjectivity, I call prejudice," Jack quipped, and Jenny looked at him with displeasure. Esther decided that it was about the time she got out of her old car, maybe, as overjoyed as she was to have it back, even if it _had_ been retrieved a little… illegally. "Huh… well, anyway, are you two gonna help carry anything in? There's a lot of stuff…"

Jack was not lying, there really _was_ a lot of stuff. It was a tedious undertaking and an exhaustive task to haul bags of clothes upstairs and dump them into Esther's room, along with a _very_ large box which Jack and Jenny, them being by far the strongest, had to carry up together while trying not to get into an argument containing what was probably a super computer. And then after that the Syphon. While Jack and Jenny carried that and Esther felt a little useless, Sally pulled her into the kitchen by her elbow. If she hadn't been wearing a dressing gown, Sally may have ended up in a coma right there.

"You're not going to ask Commander Up-Himself to stay for dinner, are you?" Sally asked her in a whisper.

"Uh…"

"Because I won't have him here, he calls me _Spooky_."

"In fairness, we don't actually have anything to offer him to eat, except for those chips you threw in the trash and mouldy bread," Esther reminded her, "You could always feed Jack the bread?"

"He's not a duck," she remarked, "Besides, we have to go shopping immediately."

"Fine, fine," Esther sighed. She was sure she could always just _call_ Jack on her new phone and speak to him that way, like she had done with Gwen and Rhys. Jenny returned down the stairs at that moment, anyway, jumping the last three steps down.

"You don't want to have a shower, then?" she asked, "It's a really nice shower because Adam Mitchell paid for it, since he built the whole house and stuff?" She was speaking as she walked out of the door, and Esther still held the large envelope with an entire new(ish) identity held within it. Jack followed after her, though he kept giving Esther expectant looks.

"Which house is hers, anyway?" Jack asked Jenny, "Isn't it just down the road from here?"

"It's the creepy, haunted cottage on the hill," Sally told him.

"Haunted?" he questioned her sceptically.

"It's not haunted," Jenny sighed.

"It is, there's a ghost, it lives in the cellar because somebody was buried alive in the foundations twenty years ago," Sally explained. Esther wondered where that ridiculous ghost story had come from.

"The only thing living in the cellar is Clara Ravenwood," Jenny assured them.

"The cellar? Why's she in the cellar?" Esther frowned.

"Because she's a vampire, she sleeps in the cellar," Jenny said.

"What? Like a crypt?" Sally asked.

"_No_, not like a crypt."

"Does she sleep in a coffin?" Sally implored.

"No she does not sleep in a coffin, she sleeps in a bed," Jenny said, annoyed, "It's because it's closest to the blood freezer in the next room."

"_Blood freezer_?" Sally and Esther both exclaimed. Jack, through all of this, was very amused. Sally continued, because she seemed to be quite enjoying trying to wind Jenny up, "She has a freezer full of blood in the cellar?"

"Well it'll clot if it isn't kept cold," Jenny said, "Then she would be picking scabs out of a bag like popcorn."

"Ew…" Esther muttered just to herself.

"Where does she get her blood from, anyway?" Sally inquired.

"That's not imp-"

"From the Other One," Jack interrupted Jenny's avoiding the question, and Esther stared at both of them. Jenny then made an exaggerated show of reaching for a gun Esther now saw she had stuck in the back of her jeans, making threatening eyes at Jack, who hastened to say, "What I meant to say was, that's not important. Anyway, Esther, I was thinking I could stay for dinner?"

"Ah, I told you," Sally murmured in Esther's ear, and then she cleared her throat and told Jack, "No, sorry, Sergeant Trench-Coat, we have to go shopping. Urgently. If you're hungry you can have some mouldy bread?"

"I'll call you," Esther added after Sally's somewhat rude refusal, though Jenny seemed to take that as some kind of revenge for that comment about Clara, "On my new phone, and everything. Promise. In the morning."

"Sure. That is if Spooky there doesn't ground you," Jack commented.

"Bye, Jack," Sally smiled at him. He didn't look happy, but slouched off back to the TARDIS. He was probably about to fly off and leave when Jenny ran back and shouted for him to wait a second, then returned momentarily with a large paper bag balanced in her arms on what looked to be a cake tin. The TARDIS thrummed away behind her and left Esther's Mini Cooper all alone on the sidewalk.

"What's all that?" Esther asked her.

"Ingredients for dinner, I offered to cook dinner this morning when I left. Sort of regret it now because I'm tired, but I was less-than-polite on the phone earlier so I probably owe it to her…" Jenny sighed. Esther wondered what she had said to Clara on the phone for a moment, but it wasn't really her business. She was more interested in going shopping, though, she was a little worried she might witness more livestock murders. "I'll be off, then. You two have fun shopping!" she called happily as she began to walk off, and Sally and Esther disappeared back into the house. No doubt they would see a lot of Jenny Harkness about, there was little point getting hung up about her leaving.

"Do you think they're having an affair?" Sally asked Esther immediately.

"What? Jack and Jenny? No way," Esther said, seeing Sally go and put her shoes on. She was going to have to go get dressed to go shopping now, she realised.

"I thought they hated each other?"

"Clearly not. Would you prefer if they tried to kill each other, though?"

"I don't think I'll be seeing them enough for it to affect me. At least, I hope I won't be," Sally answered, "Are you gonna get dressed?" Esther sighed.

"Shouldn't you make a shopping list?"

"I have it memorised, watch," Sally said, then she paused a moment, pulled a face like she was concentrating greatly, and seriously said, "_Everything_."


	433. Another Girl Another Planet XIII

_Beta Clara_

_Another Girl Another Planet XIII_

Clara regretted not asking Jenny to perhaps meet her after work outside the bookshop and walk her home, just as a precaution in case somebody else from her past came and tried to slay her, as she skulked through the dark village to get to her house on the hill. As usual, she made it home by quarter past ten, thinking about the day. In her opinion, it had not been a good one. It had begun when she had been abandoned in the middle of the night and left cold and alone, even if Jenny _had _left a prettily written note and had made her a flask of coffee. That would have all been fine, had it not been for the frankly weird way Jenny had acted over the phone - playing hide and seek with Captain Jack? Clara did not believe that for a second, but would not allow herself to entertain any other reason for Jenny to be secretive about what she was up to with her ex-husband.

However, as she walked up to her house and pushed the key into the lock, she caught a very strange scent flooding the air. It was definitely that of something cooking, but not _anything _she recognised, and it was also coming from inside of her house. She was more confused when she found she couldn't unlock the door because the door was already open, and she really hoped she hadn't forgotten to lock it again and let _another _dangerous murderer into her home. She made sure to lock it behind her though as she wiped her feet on the welcome mat.

Carefully, Clara called, "Jenny?" A moment later, Jenny appeared, and Clara was still thoroughly weirded out. Here was Jenny Harkness, the Doctor's daughter, intergalactically-famed heroic soldier, wearing glasses that made her look like a librarian and Clara's apron with the flowers on it.

"Hi! Don't come in the kitchen," Jenny ordered her immediately. Clara just stared at her. Stared and stared and stared. "What? Do I have something on my face?"

"...What's going on?"

"I'm just making dinner, like I said I would. I mean, I was down dropping things off for Esther at eight o'clock and I thought there's not much point waiting until you get home to start cooking, since it takes hours," Jenny said with a smile, then she suddenly seemed worried, "You like shellfish, right? I mean, you lived by the sea, so I thought... you do like shellfish, though? Please tell me you like shellfish..." Clara stared at her some more, and the laughed a little. "Oh my god, you're allergic, aren't you?"

"I do like shellfish. I'm not allergic. I'm not allergic to anything. Well, except garlic, sunlight, large bodies of water and religion," Clara said sarcastically, "What kind of weird shellfish are you making? It smells... different."

"Bad different or good different?" Jenny asked urgently.

"Oh my god, _stop _worrying," Clara laughed, "You're acting like you've never cooked anything for me before." What with Clara's ineptitude when it came to cooking, Jenny had cooked her dozens of meals.

"I've never cooked you anything _alien_," Jenny said, beginning to walk back towards to kitchen. Only, she didn't quite get to return to her cooking as soon as she would have liked, because Clara grabbed her wrist and pulled her back so that she could kiss her. She hadn't a chance to kiss her yet today, which Clara saw as a downright crime. It wasn't like Jenny seemed to complain - though, her mouth was _far _too busy to be complaining at that moment. "Clara," Jenny said softly after she ended it, "If the delay of that kiss has ruined my dinner, I'm not going to cook _anything _for you and your painfully cute face for _at least _a month."

"Well then you'll knowingly be contributing to me starving to death, won't you?" Clara remarked, watching Jenny disappear back towards the kitchen. Clara followed and talked to her from the doorway, since she was apparently under orders not to go into the kitchen. Jenny had gotten an incredibly large pot from somewhere and lifted the lid to look inside. How big were these shellfish? "You look cute in that apron."

"I would wear it in bed for you, but it's quite restrictive," Jenny told her, smiling over her shoulder and putting the lid back down on her metal pot. It was warm in the house.

"Mm, not _that _cute... I actually forgot to shower this morning, though, do I have time to shower now before you start serving things?" Clara asked, hanging on the door frame by her hand.

"Oh, you have ages still," Jenny told her, then asked another question with that tone of worry and urgency, "Do crabs freak you out?"

"Do crabs freak me out in what context? Like, if one attacked me? Because I've only ever seen crabs dead on the beach or in an aquarium. They weren't _that _scary, though."

"Right. Good. Go have your shower now, Clara," Jenny said, and she just smiled weirdly at her until she left to go wash because she had been in too bad of a mood and too lazy to do so in the three hours before work she had been awake that morning.

* * *

It was a crab on a plate.

Well, no, it was probably a lot _more_ than a crab on a plate, and Clara was just looking at things through her limited, uh, _Earthling_ perspective (ordinarily, she would have said 'human', but she was a vampire and she still had all the same narrow experiences in spite of a few spare years of her life travelling the stars, so 'Earthling' it was.) It also had eight dead eyes looking into nowhere.

"Right, so, I don't feel like I know about whatever you've just served me to fully appreciate it," she told Jenny, who was standing behind Clara as before seeing the crab on the plate she had her warm hands covering Clara's eyes to make everything a surprise. Clara's ignorance of extra-terrestrial shellfish did not perturb Jenny Harkness in the slightest, however, as she leant down on the back of Clara's chair, her head on Clara's left and one arm on Clara's right pointing things out.

"It's from a planet called Raruta, in the Crux Aurigae galaxy. I lived there for a few years. The planet natives call it a Krakuti. And no you're not just eating crab innards," Jenny told her, lifting off the top of the shell to reveal what was inside, which was a lot of meat that looked like blue tuna, but didn't smell like tuna at all, "Strictly speaking, you don't really need a plate, but I don't know if you would appreciate getting crab-juices on your table. What you do to prepare it is – wait, you're not squeamish, are you?"

"Not really."

"Or really into animal rights and you've never told me?"

"Just carry on telling me about your crabs," Clara said wryly.

"Oh, funny," Jenny commented, "Right. What you do to prepare it is you boil it alive-"

"That's cruel!" Clara protested, "Like when you go to the restaurant and choose which lobster to heartlessly murder!"

"Clara, how else would you propose someone killed a lobster? It has a pretty tough shell. You can't cut its head off. Lobster eyes are the best part," Jenny said.

"That's gross."

"These krakuti are pretty nasty, they _are_ carnivorous," Jenny explained, "Let me finish explaining to you all the trouble I've gone to today."

"_Fine_."

"So like I was saying, you boil the crabs alive until they're dead, then you have to cut off the shell with this special kind of saw, and you scrape all the meat out and kind of make it into a mash – it's pretty tough meat if you don't do that. Then the meat is white by that point, but you fry it in oil taken from the abrasso tree until it's light blue. Then you soak it in urta pod juice – which is a kind of bean, but it's really salty – to marinate it and leave it in the shade for an hour, _then_ you sieve the meat and fry it in more abrasso oil until it goes dark blue, you put the shells back in boiling water to warm up, and you use the shell like a plate to serve the meat. Oh, you scrape meat out of the legs, too, but you have to take the legs off because they're about three metres long. It's like if a harvestman spider was a crab."

"God, imagine that, spider crabs."

"…Spider crabs are real, Clara."

"_What?_" Clara stared at her as she went to sit down in the next chair with her _own_ crab. It did smell very nice though, truthfully, "On what planet?" There was Jane Austen's stolen candelabra sitting in the middle of the table with black beeswax candles melting away, which made their whole dinner equal parts gothic and oddly romantic.

"Your planet, Clara. They live in the deep sea by Japan," Jenny told her, and Clara stared at her, "You can actually eat them, if you want me to go get you one?"

"I would prefer if you didn't," Clara told her, "So, if you cut off the legs, where'd you put them..?"

"In the bin. I'll… I'll get rid of them later. Can't really risk them getting lost in a rubbish dump on Earth," Jenny said, "Oh, if the crab freaks you out a bit much, there's a carrot cake over by the fridge for pudding." Clara decided that it would be rude to start asking about the carrot cake before trying the _krakuti_, as Jenny called it.

If she was being completely honest, as good as it smelt, Clara had not been expecting it to taste nice at all. But low expectations were the cause of high rejoicing, because the krakuti was a taste sensation. And she told Jenny so, because Jenny did not eat herself until Clara started, and the Time Lord seemed terribly pleased with herself in a surprisingly humble way.

"I think you should cook us exotic space food for dinner every day," Clara told her.

"Oh, I can't be bothered doing that, less time I get to spend with you or with whichever one of my parents decides to give me the time of day. I _did_ catch these crabs myself earlier on," Jenny said.

"What? Yourself?" Clara gawked at her.

"Of course myself. I don't exactly have money to go buying things, do I? I am but a poor and lowly caretaker's daughter," she joked, "But yeah, I did. I actually caught three, because I borrowed somebody's net in exchange for catching them one. I learnt how to hunt as soon as the Doctor left me. But that's a story for another day, and we have all the time in the world."

"That's not true, what if I die?" Clara pointed out. Jenny paused and frowned at her.

"You've gotten a lot more morbid lately, you know."

"Oh, I can't think why," she grumbled sarcastically, but Jenny only laughed. "What's with the carrot cake, then? I don't remember telling you carrot cake was my favourite. Are you psychic?"

"My mother baked you it," Jenny answered.

"The hot one?"

"What do you mean 'the hot one'!? I only have the one mother!"

"So it _was_ the hot one, then?"

"I don't even think it's worth my time to point out how flustered you would be if she actually heard you say that. She's been acting strange lately, though, if you'll let me talk to you about her without you getting all… gay," Jenny said.

"Don't be homophobic," Clara told her, and she just gave her a deadpan look, "What's the matter with Thirteen, then?"

"I think she misses you. Other You. _Future_ Other You. I mean, she _has_ been stuck in the past for almost six weeks," Jenny said, "So she baked this cake and told me to give it to _you_ because she thought you might need a pick me up, and because she didn't want to give it to Alpha You in case she tried to fondle her… again. _Mixed signals_, I think she said. Honestly, you should have seen her this morning while it was cooking, she just sat on the floor and stared at the oven." Clara continued to chew on her krakuti without speaking, pitying Thirteen a little. Surely she would be going back to her own time soon? Otherwise her influence on her own past might be too great. Jenny changed the subject, "As nice as this crab is…"

"What..?" Clara asked slowly when she sensed Jenny wanted her to speak. Jenny leant over towards her with a smile.

"It's not exactly a _dream crab_, is it?"

"_Don't_ you even start!" Clara protested as Jenny exploded with laughter, "Bloody dream crabs. They exist, you know! I did not appreciate the lot of you patronising me. Besides, that was like, almost a year ago. Trust you to start bringing it up again." But Jenny just thought it was funny.

"I think I got more of a mouthful of dream crab than you did, Clara," Jenny remarked, "I mean, I _was_ impregnated."

"That wasn't a dream crab, a dream crab is entirely different," Clara said, and Jenny raised her eyebrows, "Well… well, okay, I guess it isn't _entirely_ different, but it's different enough. Now shut up, would you? _You_ cooked this food, and you're not even being polite."

"I'm always polite!" Jenny argued, "What do you think of these glasses, then? On a different note?"

"I think you look adorable, as always," Clara told her, "They bring out your eyes. Your organic eyes are much prettier than the cyber ones… well, actually, you have your dad's eyes."

"Which dad?"

"Eleven."

"I would say that's spooky, but then, I _am_ related to him. I have my mother's height and hair colour, Nine's sarcasm and some of Ten's mannerisms. Well, I don't know if I _still_ have his sarcasm, but I definitely used to."

"You made them very quickly, though. Or did Oswin make them?"

"No, all me. I did it this morning."

"You look like a librarian, but like, a sexy one," Clara said, "You would fit right in if you came to work in the shop with me. I'm sure Dylan wouldn't even question – oh my god, _what_ the _hell_ has happened to your hand, Jenny!?" Clara exclaimed, and grabbed hold of Jenny's right hand, the knuckles of which were covered in bruises. Jenny just let her take her hand and stare at it in the candlelight instead of recoiling.

"I just punched some things, that's all."

"That's _all_? Look at these bruises! What did you punch?"

"I punched a metal box to get a torch out of it and I punched a girl in the face and knocked her out cold," Jenny said, "See, if I'd used my left hand, it would be strong enough _not _to bruise, but this is my rubbish, new hand."

"Why the hell were you punching boxes and girls? What actually happened today, hmm? Because that wasn't exactly the most reassuring of phone calls," Clara said, dropping Jenny's hand in annoyance, "I told you to be careful, and not to hurt anybody, and you promised!"

"If I didn't knock her out, Jack would've shot her in the head. She'll be fine, just concussed, it could have been a lot worse. What did you want me to do? Let her strangle me?" Jenny questioned, "Let her die?" Clara clenched her jaw.

"What were you doing today? Why were you with Jack?"

"As much as everybody would prefer Jack and I to stay away from each other, there's nowhere near as much beef as people think. Look, I went to find somebody who might know where Cargill is, alright? I found his old military aid, Corporal Koltn, except he was in a ridiculously shady bar on this spacestation called Zeniph Nega, where all these criminal empires are based. Totally lawless, very dangerous, hence why I took Jack with me. The only sensible people on the TARDIS who know the future like I do are Jack or River, and if River hadn't been busy with one of my dads, I would have taken her. Besides, Jack saved my life at least twice."

"So, when you called me, what, exactly, was going on? I take it you weren't playing hide and seek?"

"No, a bloke with a chain gun was trying to kill me," Jenny explained, "Jack bashed his head in with a crowbar. I didn't kill a single person though, I'll have you know, so you can stop giving me that look. Anyway, Koltn, the idiot, actually stole a very valuable diamond and got himself killed because of it in a bar fight, this morning. And now Jack has the diamond, he's holding it for me, because we also ended up running into the Shadow."

"How dangerous was you day!?" Clara exclaimed, "The Shadow now, too!? The Vashta Nerada swarm in a suit of armour!?"

"We paid the Shadow with the diamond to find Cargill and bring him to me. _Find_ him, not _kill_ him. FIND. And also Ashildr, because I figured you might still want to talk to her and she's being a pain running off. Also _find_ and not _kill_," Jenny reiterated quite coldly, "So if that makes you any happier, it means I've dropped my search for Cargill because now the Shadow will do it for me." Clara stared into the middle distance for a long couple of moments. "Clara?"

"Have you ever had a dawning realisation that you've turned into your dead ex-boyfriend?" Clara said.

"Uh, no, actually. Could you perhaps elaborate on what that entails..?"

Clara sighed and met Jenny's worried eyes, "It used to be me running off, travelling through time, and all that, and Danny'd just be sat at home, bloody, worrying about _me_. And now that's me. You know, I feel like a housewife."

"That's ridiculous, Clara, if you were a housewife, _you_ would have cooked dinner," Jenny said jokingly, but Clara didn't really react, so Jenny shuffled closer to her on her chair. Clara could feel the warmth from her, and she leant back and slouched.

"God, you have no idea how much he would have hated you," Clara said, though she was actually smiling faintly, "He hated your dad, would've hated you as well. I mean, I guess he already did after the stuff with that erotica, but if he got to know you? I dread to think."

"Really? Why?" Jenny asked her softly, curious but not intrusive. Jenny never really asked her questions about Danny, "I thought Old Twelvey didn't like Danny because he was a soldier?"

"Would it surprise you to know that Danny didn't like the Doctor for more or less the same reason?" Clara said.

"Uh, yes, actually. What's that mean?"

"Well, obviously, you know what your father's like. They're _all_ like that, I know you're always getting into arguments with them about the military and whatnot," Clara began, "Which I always thought was ridiculous and shallow because Danny left the army, but I digress. The Doctor reminded Danny of those generals who ordered men to their deaths without remorse because they weren't risking their own necks. And I know that _you_ have always been of a high rank in the army."

"I am an intergalactically famed tactician," Jenny said, "I don't have any aversion to fighting, but you never know, maybe if Danny Pink found out nobody in my command died, he might like me. Though, I'm not really sure why I'd _want_ him to like me, it seems a little odd, given the circumstances. Given _you_. What rank was he?"

"A sergeant, not anything fancy, like _you_, Major," Clara remarked, and Jenny quirked an eyebrow.

"Everybody keeps saying that to me like it's a slur, or like I'm ashamed of it. You could call me 'major' all you wanted, Clara. On that topic, though, I pulled rank over Jack and a double-crossing friend of Jack's today. We were on this Alliance ship, you see, a naval vessel, which made _them_ captains and _me_ a commodore. So I ordered them around."

"Was it sexy?"

"I wasn't really thinking about if it was sexy at the time, Clara, what with it being a life and death situation and all that," Jenny said, "What was it you saw in him, then? And I'm honestly not asking that to be, I don't know, _awful_, or anything. You know, you don't have to answer, on second thoughts," she said very quickly suddenly, clearly regretting her words, clearing her throat and sitting up a little. Clara leant over and touched a hand to her cheek though and pushed Jenny's face so that she would meet her eyes.

"It's fine," Clara told her, "I can't think of a single question you could ask me that I'd really refuse to answer. And you know, you have to keep the memories of the dead alive, and stuff. What I saw in him was normality, because I was trying to cling to my own life and keep some of it free from the clutches of the Doctor. There's nothing wrong with that. You know, your father always used to call me a control freak, and say that I was bossy, _always_ – is it so bad just to want the remotest semblance of order?"

"You're not bossy or controlling, Clara," Jenny assured her, taking her left hand.

"I had all that normal, all of it separate from the weirdness of the TARDIS, and then when he died… normal didn't mean anything anymore. Nothing normal was ever safe from the _ab_normal. And then it all stops one day. One day I go onto the TARDIS, and minutes later I wake up with you in a white room and I've lost tons of memories and now I live in a creepy cottage on a moor in rural Yorkshire and I work in a bookshop, and the time travel's gone, and so is the Doctor, and now _I'm_ the abnormal part of my life."

"I wouldn't say that," Jenny said after a moment with a kind smile, "I'm pretty strange. I _am_ an alien, after all." Clara smiled.

"You know, I wouldn't say no to that carrot cake right about now?" Clara said hopefully, and Jenny smiled and stood up. They had both finished their krakuti some time ago. After taking just one step towards the cake tin by the microwave, however, Jenny stopped and turned on her heel, and stooped down in front of Clara.

"By the way," she began in quite a sultry tone of voice, leaning her face close to Clara's, "Krakuti is actually a pretty powerful aphrodisiac."

"Like you have to drug me with randy shellfish to make me want to do you," Clara retorted, reaching up one hand to the Doctor's daughter's neck to pull her close enough that their lips could meet, thinking that this afterlife of hers was an endless daydream.

**AN: FYI, after this chapter I took a three-month hiatus until _Omegaverse_, the 3-year anniversary chapters, leaving mid-March and coming back on June 20th 2016.**


	434. Omegaverse I

**AN: Happy three year anniversary of this fic saga! This is my special, as promised, which I finished like a month ago. Will be in three parts, the third part and finale on the 22nd, the actual day of the anniversary. Some notes: every character is in it, just not all of them will appear in each part, and yes there are aliens and stuff, just not until halfway through. To you guys this also SHOULD be the end of my hiatus. Not for me, because I'm not writing anything more until the 23rd, but for the rest of you. And reviews are always appreciated, and yes, I did change my URL.**

**_Omegaverse I_**

Did Clara Oswald hate her life? Did she hate her job and her boss and her co-workers? Did she hate her lack of long term love life? Her twin sister's freeloading boyfriend? Yes. Yes, she did. Every last one of those things Clara despised with all the cells in her body, and being as she hated every aspect of her life, she never got even the slightest smidgen of respite. She was trapped in a torturous and droll nine-to-five pattern. Every day she would wake up late, skip breakfast, barely make it to work, be unappreciated and sexually objectified, be kept back late to check spreadsheets were up to date. Then when she arrived home it would always be to a pigsty, she would always have to clean, shout at her sister, shout at her sister's boyfriend to tell him to go home (which he never did.) Eat unhealthy food, drink wine, collapse in bed late, wake up too late again, rinse and repeat. Always the same, always shit.

She stared at the hands of the clock on the drab grey wall as they dragged themselves around the face slowly. It was only eleven in the morning. Her lunch break wasn't for another hour and a half. Even then, her boss cut down her break so she only had twenty-five minutes. Everybody else got a solid hour, but not Clara, no, because she was an 'important resource,' which was Missy Masters' way of saying she wanted her sitting at her desk at ogling-distance for as long as humanly possible. Why did she have to get a job being the personal assistant of a downright pervert?

The minute hand jerked and almost made her jump. She was supposed to be filling out that month's paycheques, making the usual cruel deductions for any time off at all. One girl had been at a funeral last week and had missed an afternoon, and as a result her pay had been docked largely. Of course, Ms Masters never told them, when they asked for time off, that their pay would be reduced for it. No, she played the sympathetic thespian – any pity was an act. She glared at them as they left and ordered Clara to make a note on a post-it to take away however much she thought they could do without the next month.

It was just when she was filling that form in, feeling guilty and slouching down on her elbows at her desk, that she thought about how she hadn't been summoned by her boss for the entire day so far. Granted, the entire day so far was only two hours – well, two and a half, because she was expected to be there half an hour earlier and stay an hour late, even though she didn't get paid overtime for that – but it was just when she was basking in the lack of perverse intervention in her day-to-day activities that a smarmy, singsong voice trilled her name from the office on her right. She dropped the pen she had been chewing on her keyboard and minimised the file with the docked pay clearly marked, in case of prying eyes walking past. Clara would rather not get blamed for the cruelty of Ms Masters, she often pretended to be oblivious when people complained about their salary that barely scraped past minimum wage. She knew that Masters was fiddling the firm's expenses and taking money for herself, but she didn't care enough about a lowly, London security company to do anything about it.

Masters was standing behind her desk looking out of the window. While she was the superior to everybody on that floor of the whole building, and owner of the firm, Clara got the sneaking suspicion that most of Masters' actual work she pawned off on _her_ to do and send it back. Ms Masters never seemed to do actual work, she just stared out over the carpark and made biting comments about her employees. Clara was no exception, and along with the derision she received from her boss, she was also a hair's breadth away from filing a suit about sexual harassment in the work place.

"That skirt's quite short," Ms Masters immediately said to Clara. She didn't get a 'hello', or a 'good work', or anything _positive_. Just remarks about Clara's clothes, eyeing her inappropriately. It was either she put up with it, quit, or filed a claim. The latter two, she could not afford to do. She was poor enough with her sister's mooching boyfriend leaving his crap around the flat, she didn't need to lose her job on top of that, even if she _did_ deplore it.

"Is it?" Clara asked. It _was_. None of her 'sensible' skirts were clean. "Must have shrunk in the wash."

"Make it shorter tomorrow," Missy ordered. Clara clenched her jaw, forced a smile. She would figure out where boundaries lay much easier if her boss was a man. She wouldn't take a comment like that from a bloke, but then, Ms Masters scared her more than any bloke she'd met in recent years. "What do you think of these blinds?"

"The blinds?"

"That stain, in particular," she pointed at a corner of the room. The bottom of the blinds right in the corner were stained brownish-yellow. The mark continued messily onto the carpet and splattered the wall. Clara didn't have to look at it for long to identify what it was.

"It's a piss stain," she answered.

"Thought as much. Do you know who did it?" Missy seemed more interested, amused, than angry. Most likely, she was not angry, she was excited because of the hell she was going to put the pisser through when she caught them.

"A bloke, probably," Clara said, "Or a woman with a she-wee."

"Do _you_ own a she-wee?" Missy asked her.

"No," Clara lied. She did, but only for festivals, and it was years old. She only lied to get suspicion off herself, she wouldn't dare bring a pink, plastic funnel into work and pee on the floor. Clara would suggest that Masters check the CCTV, but she knew that she didn't have CCTV in her office. Probably because, as Clara had previously realised, she was fiddling the expenses and stealing from the company's profits. The last thing a fraudulent robber needed was a camera watching their every move.

"But _you_ would see anybody going into my office, Clara," Missy continued.

"Maybe it was the cleaner you fired last week for sleeping under his desk while he went through a divorce?" Clara suggested, "He swallowed his key for the building, and the locksmith you asked me to hire only came to change the locks yesterday." Ms Masters thought about this for a second, then seemed to decide it was a valid conclusion. Really, Clara thought, the woman had wronged everyone in the entire bloody building, _anybody_ would have motivation to piss on her floor, not just the ex-janitor.

Clara would like to leave then, but knew she shouldn't leave until Missy dismissed her. Missy herself looked like she was mulling something over, though. Maybe she was going to ask Clara to look at carpet samples, or fetch one of the cleaners. Then there was a splattering noise and something appeared on the window. Clara jumped when this happened, some big, squishy mass sliding down the glass and leaving a grimy, whitish trail, but Missy didn't seem bothered. She pulled the curtains back and Clara saw over her shoulder that the thing was half of a sandwich, stuck to the window by its mayonnaise. Then there was the sound of muffled abuse being hurled from below.

"He's at it again," Missy told Clara in a bored tone of voice. Clara needed no more explanation than that, because by 'he' Missy meant her ex-husband. Clara sighed and mouthed a swear word to herself when Missy wasn't looking at her. Where Clara's boss had her face nearly touching the glass, the second half of the sandwich soon appeared. Missy remained unfazed. "He's going to key my car in a minute. Go and deal with him." Clara clenched her jaw. Since when was 'dealing with vandalising ex-husbands' part of the job description for a secretary?

"Yes, Ms Masters," Clara grumbled, leaving the office, Missy smiling evilly and waving her away. Well, she'd done it before, and she couldn't afford to lose her job. Besides, if he injured her with something she could probably sue and get money. Not that he _had_ a lot of money, that was part of the reason why he kept showing up outside of the H.C. Clements building and destroying Missy's possessions – things had been considerably less than equal in the divorce settlement eight months ago.

"Make sure you've got my lunch with you when you come back as well!" Missy shouted after her. At least an early lunch run would get her out of that damned office for at least forty-five minutes.

To make her excursion longer, she took the stairs rather than the lift, and walked down them at a leisurely pace. She wasn't in a rush to have food thrown at her head, and that had already happened the last time he showed up. She never thought taking a scotch egg to the eye would be so painful.

She had to duck immediately as half a Twix was thrown like a mini-javelin right for her, as soon as she left the building. She was sure Missy was still watching from her window high above. It always surprised Clara how spry this old, wispy man was, _and_ what good aim he had. Missy's office wasn't exactly low down, it was very high, and her ex-husband _never_ missed. Clara didn't even know what his name was, just that he was Scottish, built like a twig, and very angry all of the time.

"Could you stop that now, do you think?" Clara asked him.

"Why should I?" he demanded of her, slurring. The old man was drunk, as usual. Clara had never met him when he was sober, and she'd met him a fair few times in situations exactly like this one. On her first day a few months ago, no less, she'd been ordered by Missy to get rid of him, and it always went the same way. He would persistently ignore her, throw things at her, people walking past and in cars would stare, and then she would call the police when the public was sufficiently disturbed enough to make it a crime.

"Well, it's a bit rude," she said.

"_Rude_? What's _rude_ is that hag stealing all my money," he shouted at Clara, throwing the _other_ half of the Twix now, which she had to side-step away from to avoid, "And _I'm_ rich."

"You must be rich if you can afford all of this food to throw," she remarked moodily, "It's a waste. Don't you think of starving homeless people? If you're so rich, go give _them_ your bloody food. Don't throw it at the side of the building."

"They should get their own money," he told her. He wasn't rich, anyway, he was definitely an unemployed bum, and Clara knew that he slept in a battered old sedan that hadn't been in good nick since before 1990. In fact, she could see the car, once white and now piss-yellow with rust trimmings where a fancier car might have chrome.

"She'll charge you for the window cleaners again," Clara warned. She would, too.

"You know she's a cow, why do you do what she tells you?" he asked her, stumbling. He was still a good few feet away from her, but she could practically smell the booze on his breath. Was he _ever_ sober? No wonder Missy had left him.

"She pays me," Clara said.

"No doubt you'll be running to get her lunch after this."

"She does prefer her lunch in her hand rather than decorating the windows," Clara said sarcastically, crossing her arms. He just made a very angry noise then. "I'll call the police."

"No you won't."

"Oh, I will," she assured him. She _always_ called the police on him.

"You wouldn't call the police if you knew who I was," he told her, watching her sigh and take her phone out. There wasn't any point in waiting, she knew if she waited much longer he was liable to physically assault a passer-by. And she counted herself as a passer-by, and as romantic as the idea of getting a fortune in insurance money after filing a claim was, she didn't fancy the paperwork. Nor could she afford a lawyer.

Fifteen minutes of Clara dodging more edible projectiles he seemed to be conjuring out of thin air later, a police car rolled up. It was the same car that _always_ rolled up, and the same exasperated police constables who got out of it. Clara knew them by name, which was surprising, because she didn't know the name of the bloke she was always complaining about to them. Truth be told, these events outside of H.C. Clements weren't the only times Clara Oswald had had a run-in with these particular PCs. Because they sort-of knew her, she was always one of the ones who got stopped when she was drunk coming back from parties on the Powell Estate and questioned.

"How long's he been at it this time, Clara?" PC Donna Noble asked her with a bored sigh as her partner, a tall man with impressive ears by the name of John Smith who was a rival for Clara in terms of Northern-ness and sarcasm, went to stop Missy's ex-husband.

"I'm not sure, just under half an hour, probably," Clara answered, "He threw a sandwich at Ms Masters' window and then a Twix at me, and a bunch of wine gums." It was all evident enough from the mess at Clara's feet. Noble didn't write down much more than that. Smith was getting into a shouting match with the husband.

"I wonder if he gets bored," she mused.

"He's probably drunk."

"Drunk and angry, sounds like you on Saturdays," she said, then she laughed at her own joke, and Clara grimaced. Did anyone else have such a weird relationship with the constables whose beat was the estate they lived on? Missy's ex-husband took a swing at Smith, but Smith was pretty quick on his feet and dodged it easily, then Noble shouted, "OI! That's attempted assault. Let him cuff you and get in the bloody car!" Clara flinched. She was _very_ loud. Noble turned to Clara again, "I heard a rumour there's a party in your block tonight."

"I wouldn't know anything about that," Clara lied. There was a party, Rose Tyler and her boyfriend were throwing one, but in all her two-and-a-half decades of life, Clara had never been a grass. Noble only wanted to know so that she knew when to come and break it up, liked to think of Clara as a source. Clara didn't even know if she was going to that party, Rose didn't like her.

"Are you sure?"

"Of course I'm sure, I haven't heard anything," Clara said with a fake smile, "Besides, you didn't do anything about that party I tipped you off on last week."

"You mean the Ponds' christening?"

"Yes, exactly," Clara said, "It was bloody loud, I'm sick of that baby. It never shuts its mouth." Noble ignored that remark about the christening last week. Clara wished _she_ could ignore the christening last week, and the stupid baby. The Ponds had the flat next door to her, and her bedroom wall was shared with the baby's room, and it cried _all night_ and it drove her crazy.

"Get in the car, you old mug," Noble ordered Missy's ex-husband finally, going over to aid Smith in dragging him into the back of the car.

"This is a violation of my human rights!" he argued. Clara watched them force him into the car, still shouting. He got quite profane before Noble slammed the door on him, and Clara got the feeling he was still directing his swear words at _her_, even though she couldn't hear him.

"Better send someone to clamp his car, teach him a lesson," Smith advised, nodding at the urine-coloured vehicle parked illegally on the other side of the road.

"How come you never charge him with anything?" Clara asked them.

"Your boss up there always refuses to press charges. Seems like the sort who enjoys the attention," Smith told her, walking around the car to get in the driver's side. That sounded like Missy.

"You let us know if you hear anything about this party, Clara," Noble said.

"She'll probably be too drunk for most of it to hear much," Smith commented. Clara scowled at him, and he smiled back, shutting the car door. Noble was still looking at her, expecting an answer. Missy's ex-husband was still shouting swears.

"Sure, will do," Clara lied.

"You haven't heard anything about that tagger around your place either, have you?"

"Oh, that one who reckons they're the new Banksy? No, I don't know who it is," Clara answered truthfully. There was a phantom graffiti artist going around her block spray-painting ambiguous political statements on the walls. It reminded her of her own endeavours writing inappropriate limericks about Missy Masters in the ladies' toilets of H.C. Clements.

After she told them that, the police finally left. _Good riddance_, she thought, watching the blue and yellow checked car pull away into the London traffic. One distraction gone, she still had to go and get Missy's lunch for her. Knowing she was still probably being watched by the woman herself from above, she knew she shouldn't dawdle, and got to walking straight away. She would go to the closest Costa, stay there for a while and have a cup of coffee, then lie when she returned and say she walked all the way to the furthest Costa, hence the wait. She didn't mind the walk, but one of the baristas at the closest one was spectacularly hot, and she'd been trying to coax his number out of him for weeks now unsuccessfully. He made good lattes as well.

* * *

When she returned to the building – still without the phone number of the cute guy in the coffee shop – the first place she took Ms Masters' lunch was the highly unhygienic environment of the women's bathroom. She needed the toilet, and this was her only opportunity to go without having to ask for permission or make up some other reason to leave her desk. Missy _never_ gave people permission to go to the toilet, because she was a sadist.

It was only when she was washing her hands and mumbling complaints to herself afterwards, Missy's lunch in its paper bag by one of the sinks, that she realised she wasn't even alone. Some girl walked out of one of the toilet stalls, and Clara caught her eye in the mirror and stopped what she was doing. Her hands hovered uselessly underneath the tap, letting water splash up onto the side. She'd never seen this girl before, she knew that for a fact, because she was damn sure she would remember one of the hottest girls – or people, even – she'd ever seen in her _entire life_ working on the same floor of the office building as her.

"Hi," the girl said, because Clara was staring at her and not saying anything. Clara blinked and switched off the tap. Clara stared at her. "…Are you alright? You look totally out of it. Or are you always so… stare-y?"

"You're American," Clara blurted out.

"Am I? I hadn't noticed," the girl, Clara's height, blonde hair, brown eyes, a cute smile and an even cuter nose, joked.

"Why are you here?"

"Have you ever heard of immigration?" the girl countered, smiling. Clara's laugh was delayed and a little shrill, and the girl frowned at her. She was probably coming across as a weirdo, but all she knew was that she needed this girl's phone number. She needed this girl's _everything_. They were standing close enough that Clara got a waft of cinnamon-scented air right in her path, and it might as well have been a punch to the face.

"I mean, why are you in the building? I've never seen you before. I'd remember you," Clara said.

"You'd 'remember me'? Why's that?"

"I remember everyone who's quick enough to backchat me." The girl laughed. The prettiest laugh in the whole universe, Clara thought. She needed to step up her game, desperately.

"I'm new. If I wasn't new, it would be a crime that I've never met someone with such cute dimples before," she said slyly. No straight girl Clara had ever run into by chance in a toilet would ever say something like that, which just led Clara to believe that it was her lucky day because this perfect girl was _so_ not straight.

"There are other parts of me that are _way_ cuter."

"Well I hope you're willing to put your money where your mouth is on that."

"There are a lot of things I'd be more than willing to put where my mouth is."

"Like what?" The girl's eyes were trained on Clara's lips as she talked.

"Like _yours_, for instance," Clara said. She certainly was going for it. They were very close, they'd been getting closer as they talked. It was like there was something in the air – there was just something _about_ this girl, and Clara didn't want to leave work that day without convincing her to go on a date straight afterwards.

"You know, um," the girl stepped back. Clara couldn't tell if they had been about to kiss. If they had, she couldn't help but think that would be strange. They'd known each other for all of thirty seconds. "I should probably go."

"Go where?" Clara asked, watching the girl go over to take paper towels out of one of the toilet stalls instead of bothering to use the hand driers. They weren't very good hand driers, but Clara always used them because of the delay they caused in returning to her desk. She always waited until her hands were bone-dry.

"Well it's my first day and all. I was supposed to start on Monday but I got this call, like, a half hour ago telling me I was desperately needed this morning because someone's been let go," the girl told Clara, "I can't exactly show up late because me and some woman I just met were…"

"Were what?" Clara asked wryly when the girl didn't finish her sentence.

"Were flirting in the bathroom."

"How about we go flirt somewhere else later, then? A restaurant, perhaps?" Clara asked hopefully. A little _too_ hopefully. She sounded desperate. She _was_ desperate, though, because she couldn't shake the feeling she'd just met… well, she didn't know if she believed in love at first sight, but… The girl giggled. Clara didn't even know her name.

"Catch me on my lunch break and we'll see," she said, scrunching up the paper towels and throwing them in the bin, smiling at Clara as she went to leave.

"Is that a promise?" The girl laughed again. Clara picked up Missy's lunch, ignoring the fact her hands were still wet, and almost bumped into the girl on the way out, because the girl had stopped walking, captured by something on the wall.

"What the hell is_ that_?" Clara followed her gaze.

"_That_? It's a limerick," Clara answered. It was one of _her_ limericks, about Missy.

"_There once was a woman called Masters_," the mystery girl read aloud, "_Whose balls were the size of_… Holy…"

"Tomatoes, it says," Clara said.

"I know, I can read it," she said, staring at it. Clara watched her carefully. She did not have the correct constitution to be reading those limericks out loud. Clara thought she had best not tell the girl who wrote them, lest it spoil her chances of them going out later. "Who wrote that?"

"No clue."

"It's inventive."

"Sure is," Clara assured her.

"Maybe it was that weird graffiti artist who's been in all the papers? The one who targets that crappy estate people are calling the new Banksy?" the girl joked, and Clara raised her eyebrows at her, "What?"

"The Powell Estate?"

"I think so?"

"That's where I live."

"You – oh, god, I'm sorry," she apologised, finally going to leave the bathroom. Probably for the best, Clara didn't want her seeing any more of those limericks until she herself was well away. Good thing she didn't make a habit of following pretty blonde girls into bathrooms.

"So we were talking about me catching you at lunch so that I can ask you out, right?" Clara reminded her, "Promise I won't take you home with me to the crappy estate on the first date." Clara was surprised to find them walking the same way.

"Uh…" the girl didn't say anything, her streak had broken because she'd put her foot in her mouth about where Clara lived. Clara didn't mind, it _was_ a crappy estate, it was awful. If she could afford to move, she would, but Missy Masters was a real scrooge when it came to salaries.

"Why do I have to wait until lunch to ask you out? Can't I just do it now?" she asked wryly.

"Well, I – I don't even know what your name is."

"Keep smiling like that and you can call me whatever you want." They were next to Clara's desk now, and they both stopped. No doubt Missy wouldn't like Clara flirting with the new hire right outside her office, but Clara really didn't care.

"I'm serious."

"I'm-"

"Clara?" Missy called from the office, taking Clara's name right out of her mouth.

"…I'm Clara," she finished, talking to the girl, "I'd better go give Ms Masters her lunch. Feed the beast, and all that." The girl suddenly seemed confused, though, as Clara was forced to abandon her side to give Missy her early lunch. It was gone twelve now, though, so it wasn't much of an early lunch at all. Clara went and put the bag on Missy's desk, Missy sat behind it smiling at her in a very odd way. "Is that all, then, you don't want anything else?"

"I want you to get out."

"I… I'm sorry?"

"I said, I want you to get out. You're fired." Clara stared at her. She had just made her go get her lunch and then sacked her!?

"What do you mean, I'm fired? Fired for what!? I haven't done anything wrong! Do you think it was me who pissed on your blinds!?" Clara exclaimed, pointing at the piss stain again.

"No, I believe you about that, _that_ isn't why you're fired. It's come to my attention that you fancy yourself a bit of a poet," Missy said. _Shit_, Clara thought. She crossed her arms and met Missy's cold gaze, "With a penchant for limericks, if you can call those poems." _Double shit_, she thought again.

"I don't know what you're talking about."

"No, you don't know what _you're_ talking about. I really didn't peg you for the type of person with the audacity to comment on the size of _my_ balls without ever actually seeing them," Missy told her, "And, for the record, 'Masters' and 'tomatoes' don't rhyme when somebody without _your_ accent says them. Don't get me started on the one about the pubic hair. I'm taking the money for the cleaners out of your last paycheque."

"You can't fire me, you need a secretary, someone to do all of your bloody work while you sit here and fiddle with the accounts," Clara accused, "How else would you be able to afford that Ferrari you've got? The divorce settlement with your homeless, decrepit husband?" Clara was angry, but Missy really wasn't bothered by anything she was saying. She just watched Clara.

"I have a new secretary already. The blonde number you were talking to outside." Clara clenched her fists and looked behind her at the mystery girl, who could hear everything through the door, which was ajar. Clara felt betrayed, even though it wasn't anything to do with that poor girl at all.

"_What_?"

"I was _going_ to fire you at the end of the day and have her start on Monday – I've known it was you writing those things for weeks – but after that fiasco outside with whatshisface, I thought I ought to do something to cheer myself up a bit," Missy told her with a smile.

"God, you're pure evil."

"Yes. Don't start throwing food at the windows, though," Missy said, "I'd have to send the prettier, new one to deal with you, and I don't need the pair of you consorting more than you already have."

"_Consorting_?"

"You think I can't tell when two people are flirting right outside of my office, Clara?" Missy said, then she waved in the new girl. Clara still thought she might be in love with her, though, and was debating lurking outside of the building for the rest of the day so that she could get her number. Awkwardly, the mystery girl came in. "What's your name? It's so hard to remember names when I fire people so often."

"It's-" the girl began.

"Scratch that, I don't care. I'll call you 'thirteen', because you're my thirteenth assistant since I started this job," Missy told her. 'Thirteen' didn't say a word.

"You don't have to sack me," Clara pleaded, "You can't, I need this job, I have to look after my sister, she's not well, I need the money." 'Thirteen' was now aghast. "Can't we… share the position? Then you'd have _two_ secretaries. I'll do it for… for half the pay."

"'Share the position'? Do you think I'm an idiot? I can see full well that you want to be sharing _plenty_ of positions with her, Clara, and I'm not going to pay you to get your end away. Get out of my building. And don't stick around or come back, I'll have security put on watch for you. Don't even _think_ about pissing on my blinds."

"You absolute cow!"

"I might have been able to forgive you if the limericks had even been half-decent. I would abandon your poetical pursuits, if I were you. Honestly, who do you think you are? That graffiti artist?" Missy said. She talked to Clara with a wide grin on her face, using a tone of voice that made it seem like she were doing Clara a favour by sacking her. "If you're not out of my sight in the next thirty seconds, you won't even get your final cheque. Don't take the courtesy I'm extending for granted."

"I'm _so_ sorry, I-" 'Thirteen' said to Clara.

"Don't speak to her," Missy ordered, "Don't sleep with her either, for god's sake. If I find out the pair of you have been up to things, you'll be fired just as fast as she was." 'Thirteen' looked at Clara, at a loss for what to do. So, her chances with the girl of her dreams had been scuppered by this total bitch she was no longer stuck working for. Well, Clara thought, after a send-off like that, there was no way _in hell_ she was going to leave H.C. Clements quietly.

* * *

"I'm free! I'm finally fucking free," Clara called as she came into the flat, fumbling with the lock a for a minute or so, in too bad of a mood to use her keys properly. The air inside was stagnant, and the curtains were drawn so it was dark. The darkness hid the filth Clara knew was lying around, and she grumbled profanities to herself.

"What do you mean? What's up?" her sister asked. Oswin Oswald was curled up in one of the arm chairs watching something on their dinky, ancient TV. The thing wasn't even flat screen, and the picture was fuzzy and jumped around the screen because the wires connecting it to the Freeview box were broken. Clara looked around the room and then frowned at her sister.

"Where's your dead weight?"

"Do you mean my leg or Adam?" Oswin asked her, and Clara laughed coldly at her own joke. She didn't even know which she meant. She couldn't see Oswin's prosthetic leg, but Oswin usually kept it elsewhere. It wasn't very good, really, and she preferred to use crutches to get around. The crutches were propped up on the armchair she practically lived in. Still, Oswin appeared to be the only occupant at present.

"The boyfriend, where's he?"

"He's my fiancé."

"I'll call him that as soon as he gets off his lazy arse and buys you a ring, Os," Clara said, hanging up her coat. She was the only one of them who hung up her coat, who put anything away. Half of the mess in the flat was Adam Mitchell's and he didn't even technically live there. He was a total moocher, and a twat, and an idiot. "Where is he?"

"He went across the hall to get a cup of milk, because we've run out of milk. Why are you here? It's just gone one in the afternoon, you're never usually home on Fridays until after six," Oswin said, sitting up properly in her chair.

"I got fired," Clara told her.

"You _what_? What did you do?"

"Wrote dirty limericks about my boss on the bathroom walls. She didn't appreciate them," Clara said, going to look in the fridge for something to drink. She _needed_ a drink. All they had was a bottle of milk a month out of date, an empty carton of apple juice, and some fizzy water that had gone flat days ago. Oh, and two cans of the cheapest cider you could buy from the off-license. She slammed the fridge, annoyed, and got a glass from the draining board by the sink, settling for unpleasant, lukewarm tap water.

"Clara…" Oswin sighed.

"That's not even the part that I'm mad about," Clara said, going over to push Adam's dirty clothes onto the floor so she could sit on the sofa. God, it was a hovel she lived in. "I'm pretty sure I just met the love of my life."

"And you're angry about that why..?"

"Because I'm forbidden from having anything to do with her," Clara slumped down on the sofa, and related back to Oswin the story of 'Thirteen' the mystery blonde girl whose name Clara didn't even manage to catch. "I can't talk to her, because I can't be seen around the building, I don't know her name, or her number, and if the Prize Bitch back there finds out we even got on the same bus, she'll fire her. I can't lose her job for her. That's… vindictive."

"Oh, come on, Clara, she'll be there for a matter of weeks before thingy gets bored again and fires her," Oswin said, "You're an adult, she can't control your love life. Honestly, I'd go and get her number for you, if we didn't look the same."

"Thanks, Os." Clara genuinely appreciated her sister's efforts to cheer her up.

"Do you want me to hack into H.C. Clements and find out her phone number that way?" Oswin suggested.

"_No_, that's creepy. And that's a crime, you could go to prison," Clara said, "You wouldn't last in prison."

"It's all in the name of love!" Oswin argued.

"Don't do anything," Clara told her sternly, "I mean… she knows I live on this estate, maybe she'll… maybe it was all in my head. Us having a thing." She changed her tune halfway through her sentence.

"Well if you want _my_ advice, you should definitely try to act on this, instead of just wallowing in self-pity like you do whenever it comes to that bloke who lives across the hall," Oswin told her. Clara glared back.

"Leave Hot Across The Hall Guy out of this."

"You have a terrible habit of not ever learning anybody's name, Clars."

"Tell me about it. Are you going to that party tonight?"

"Probably not," Oswin told her. Oswin never went to parties, she barely even left the flat, "Whose party is it?"

"Rose's. Rose and her boyfriend. What's his name, again?"

"Mickey?" Oswin said.

"Yeah, him, they're throwing a party. Figure I might go. If I do, leave a pint of water out by the sink for me for when I get back, I'll need it," Clara sighed.

"Sure, Clara," Oswin agreed.

At that point, Adam Mitchell returned. That boy was a real slob. Clara didn't know where he lived, but she suspected he slept in his car when he didn't worm his way into her sister's bed. He was there almost all the time and made a total mess of their flat. His dirty clothes were on the floor, on the sofa, the kitchen chairs. His unhealthy energy drinks were filling the fridge and their empty cans were littering the carpet, and Oswin Oswald was blind to all of his faults. As far as Clara was concerned, Adam Mitchell was nothing _but_ faults. He was mucky, obnoxious, completely unemployed and not even _trying_ to find a job and was as thick as two short planks. Where he fit into the equation of Clara's bona fide genius of a sister, she didn't know, but Oswin wouldn't see reason enough to dump her steaming dump of a boyfriend, or even kick him out of the flat. Too many times Clara had told him to start paying her rent, but no. Oswin didn't pay rent, he told her, so why should he have to? Well, Clara would reply, Oswin is not legally required to work. Not that that made a difference. He was carrying a half empty pint bottle of milk.

"Hey, babe," Oswin said. He said something similar back. Clara grimaced. She had worked all day, been sacked, and now she had this reprobate to deal with. "Clara's been fired." Adam Mitchell laughed in his cold, nasally way. He fancied himself a comic book illustrator, but Oswin didn't have the heart to tell him he was shit. Clara told him he was shit on a daily basis, but he didn't listen to her. He said the same thing right back about any poetry she may have written, which he may have found and then ridiculed, in spite of Oswin telling him not to.

"Probably deserved it," he told her.

"Are you going to clean up after yourself?" Clara asked him, angry, really not wanting to put up with him today of all days. She watched Adam pour milk in a mug of what smelt like rancid coffee, then leave the milk bottle with the lid off next to the sink. He came over to sit on the edge of his girlfriend's armchair, not answering Clara. "Go put that milk in the fridge."

"Huh?" he asked her.

"I said, go put the milk in the fridge." He frowned at her like she was speaking in another language. "Go and put. That milk. In the bloody fridge."

"You haven't said please," he said.

"He has a point, Clara," Oswin backed him up, and Clara glowered at her, and she shrank away a little, "I mean, babe, it would be sort of good of you to put the milk away." He still didn't do it, even when Oswin asked him sweetly. Instead he just asked her what was on TV. "_The Chase_," she answered. The question: _What country is the Roman Colosseum in_?

Adam Mitchell's answer: "It's in Rome, right?"

"It's in Italy," Clara told him, and he snorted.

"No, why would they call it the _Roman_ Colosseum if it was in Italy? It would be the Italian Colosseum," he said. Oswin didn't say anything, she was staying out of it. She would rather sit in silence than correct her idiot boyfriend.

"Rome is the capital of Italy."

"'I' is the capital of Italy, Clara," he patronised her.

"Go put that milk away," Clara ordered him.

"No."

"Put it in the fridge so it won't go off," she continued, and he shrugged and loudly slurped his coffee. "For fuck's sake, I can't deal with you today, so just do what I'm telling you to and be polite for once in your bloody life!"

"You're being disrespectful."

"Mitchell, would you go and put the milk away, please?" Oswin finally intervened. Then he groaned very loudly and forced his mug of coffee into Oswin's hands, skulking away to the kitchen to put the milk away. Clara was surprised that he actually did, he was usually one of the most ignorant and selfish people she'd ever made. She really hated him. "Great. Now you can go put the bins out."

"What?" he asked her, "It's _your_ flat."

"Oh, is it? Sometimes I forget, what with you leaving your dirty shit all over the place. I'm surprised you haven't urinated on the walls to mark your territory."

"Clara…" Oswin said warningly next to her. Oswin was non-confrontational, and she did not like when Clara and Adam argued. She never argued with anybody herself.

"Oh, piss off, Clara. You're just in a mood because you got fired, when you probably deserved it anyway. It's not like you're good at anything," Adam told her.

"Just take the bins out!" she shouted at him.

"No!" he shouted right back, and then she made a noise that bordered on a scream of frustration, which worried Oswin, but Adam just took pride in how much he was winding her up.

"Fine! _I'll_ take the bins out, it'll get me out of this stinking shithole for five minutes, at least."

"Yeah, you should really start cleaning up after yourself," Adam told her smarmily.

"Mitchell, no," Oswin said, but he ignored her. Clara was oh so close to punching that lanky runt in his stupid little face, maybe break his nose so he had a permanently botched expression. She didn't, though. She cared about her sister too much to twat her boyfriend. So she stormed over to the bin and wrenched the bin bag out, then she slammed the door as she left. That started the Pond baby in the flat next door crying, she heard it through the paper thin walls she felt like bashing her head against, and she wondered if she might just go hang about in a pub until Rose Tyler's party that evening and just drink herself into an early grave. It sounded more appealing than living her life as it was now, at any rate.

Clara muttered and swore to herself as she trudged down the three flights of stairs to ground level so that she might throw her things away. This might be one of the worst days of her life; she'd been fired from a relatively easy job under a nightmare boss after having sandwiches and Twixes thrown at her; she'd met the girl of her dreams and had then been forbidden from having anything to do with her without even getting her name; she'd had to put up with her sister's waste of space other half while he derived her for next to no reason; and now she was hanging around the stinky bin at the bottom of the block of flats.

But perhaps there was _some_ silver lining, because the infamous Hot Across The Hall Guy was putting his own bins out, too. Oswin always said she didn't see the appeal of Hot Across The Hall Guy, neither of them knew his name and Oswin was always pointing out that he didn't have any eyebrows and his chin was weird. "_He looks like a foot_," Oswin would tell her. Oswin was a hypocrite. He smiled at Clara when he saw her, and she wished he'd caught her on a better day. She didn't even manage to smile back, like she usually did when she bumped into him.

"Having a good day?" he asked, though he sounded genuinely concerned. The large lid of the bin he held up for her, so that she could throw her refuse away with more ease than usual.

"The worst day of my life, actually," she answered, then she went on to explain the same key points she had just gone through in her head, about being attacked by lunch-foods, fired, and harassed by her sister's lodging, mooching boyfriend. She skipped over the bit about running into the woman of her dreams in the toilet.

"That's awful," he said, and there was a pause. She was standing near the door back into the block of flats, he was leaning with his hand on the grimy edge of the bin. When her eyes trailed over to notice this, he realised it too, and made a disgusted face and proceeded to wipe his hand on the wall to get some of the bin-gunk off of it. "Eurgh. Still, on the bright side, tomorrow can only get better."

"Only if I convince my sister to dump her boyfriend, it can," Clara grumbled, "You know him, he came and got milk from you not ten minutes ago, I think."

"I was in the next room, my sister answered the door," he told her. Sister? Clara didn't know he had a sister, "She's staying for a few days. We don't live together, not like you and…" he didn't know Oswin's name. He cleared his throat when Clara did not supply him with the answer. Then he waved his dirty hand at the wall. "Have you seen this yet?" Clara followed his arm to see what he was motioning towards, a large painting. Another mural of that graffiti artist everybody kept talking about. Clara couldn't really tell what it was, but it seemed to profess a message that human beings were the mindless cattle of a tyrannical government, and none of them were aware it was tyrannical. The usual thing one would expect form a self-important tagger.

"Fascinating, I always wondered what people would look like if they had cow heads instead of people heads," Clara commented drolly. He laughed and looked at her like she had just said the funniest thing in the universe, and she found herself blushing a little. "Don't know of any jobs going, do you?"

"Hospital needs a new cleaner," he answered her, and she made a face.

"What hospital?"

"The one I work at," he said. She looked at him blankly, and he realised she did not know what hospital he worked at. She didn't know anything about him, other than he was cute. And now that he thought she was funny. "The Royal Hope Hospital."

"Are you a cleaner as well?" Clara teased.

"No, I'm a doctor," he told her.

"You're..? But you live _here_, in this dump," Clara said. She remembered what the mystery girl had said about the Powell Estate earlier, remembered it quite fondly, too.

"I'm not sure newly qualified doctors make as much as you think they do," he replied.

"Are you off to that party tonight?" Clara asked. She knew him going was a longshot – she went to _all_ of the parties and had yet to see Hot Across The Hall Guy in attendance.

"Party? Oh – Rose Tyler's, you mean? No, no. Martha will be, I'm not," he said. Martha was his flatmate. Was she a doctor as well, Clara wondered? It taken her a while when she'd first moved in to try and deduce if Hot Across The Hall Guy and Martha (whose surname she didn't know) had a thing together, but she knew by now they didn't. Martha was friends with Rose Tyler and actually did go to most of Rose's parties, and Rose and her boyfriend held a lot of parties. "Why? Are you?"

"Free alcohol, of course I am."

"I don't drink," he told her, in a way that implied he disapproved of her excitement about free booze. The conversation became a little awkward after that, and it was a chilly afternoon. "I ought to go back inside, my sister will be wondering where I've got to."

"Oh, sure," Clara said. She had made up her mind not to go back inside, she was going to go out for lunch and stay out for lunch until it was time for this party. She had enough cash on her for a hefty amount of junk food, and was going to relish her unhealthy lifestyle for the rest of the day, and would probably regret it for all of tomorrow when she would almost certainly have a hangover and spend her time trying to eat as much bacon as possible. That was how it usually seemed to be when she was hungover. Hot Across The Hall Guy smiled to Clara as he walked back inside, and she waved somewhat meekly, then scolded herself for still not finding out his name as she skulked away to the find the nearest McDonald's.


	435. Omegaverse II

**_Omegaverse II_**

"I am _so_ going to be late – do you know where my shoes are?" Martha Jones called through the flat. This was directed mainly at Theodore rather than the blonde girl sitting at their kitchen table, all dressed, just waiting politely for Martha to be ready. He was lying on the sofa doing a crossword, staying out of parties, as always. He was a real bore sometimes.

"You have so many shoes, Martha," he repeated himself in a bored tone of voice. He was hardly paying attention to her. "How am I supposed to know which ones you mean?" She didn't even have a lot of shoes was the annoying part. She was convinced Theodore thought not knowing anything about shoes was a vital testament to his non-existent manhood. Perhaps if he didn't spend his Sundays baking with a pink, flowery apron, she would believe that excuse for his laziness. A pathetic excuse, but still an excuse. "I don't know why you're going when you have a double shift tomorrow."

"I told you, I'm not drinking. Much," Martha said, finally dragging her heels out from under the kitchen table where they had somehow ended up.

"I'm not covering for you."

"I know, you keep telling me, you can't cover for me because you have to sit there and brood about the girl next door, as usual," Martha remarked coldly. She was in a bad mood because he hadn't helped her look for her shoes. His poor sister, new in the area yesterday and only staying with them briefly, was having to put up with them arguing. They didn't argue much, though, they got on relatively well.

"Oi!" he protested, and she fake-smiled at him in response, "…She doesn't live next door, she lives across the hall. And I don't brood, Martha. I've never brooded in my life!" He felt so strongly about his lack of brooding that he sat up and stopped doing his crossword. Martha wasn't entirely sure he understood how crosswords worked, because he usually just made words up and ignored the clues completely. Sometimes he would cram two letters in one box, or write a particularly large letter over two. In one case, three. Remarkable to think the man was a qualified doctor.

"You don't even know her name," Martha pointed out.

"Because_ you_ won't tell me," he argued.

"Ask her yourself! She lives right over there, you could do it right now," Martha challenged him, raising her eyebrows, "And _then_," she patronised with a smile, "You could ask her out on a _date_. Imagine that.." He spluttered for a few seconds, not making any coherent sentences, before making a face.

"No," he said firmly, like a child, and Martha rolled her eyes and decided she was done with it.

"What girl?" Theodore's sister asked.

"Nobody, Jenny," he told her quickly. She wasn't really too interested, and slouched back down on one of her hands, pouting a little and waiting for Martha to put her shoes on. "You could always not wear any shoes, you're only going three floors up."

"Are you kidding me? You know how often people pee in the halls, especially the sorts of drunk people who attend Rose's parties," Martha said a little bitterly, finally sorting her shoes out and standing up. "And everybody wears shoes, you're just being weird." Jenny followed suit. Rose didn't normally care how many people gate crashed her parties.

"You don't _have_ to go," he told her as she left. Then she had to return within a second to get her keys, because she forgot them, and knew leaving the door unlocked would be risky and that Theodore would not approve of her waking him up at one o'clock in the morning when she returned. He also didn't approve of his sister tagging along, but his sister was twenty-two and could make her own decisions.

"No, I could stay and incorrectly fill in crosswords and mock you," she told him, and saw him scowl as she closed the door on his face.

"He's always been like that," Jenny told her as she began to walk. It was somewhere around eight o'clock, "Y'know, overprotective."

"Not boring?" Martha questioned.

"He's not_ boring_, he just doesn't drink or go to parties. I saw him steal a dog once," Jenny told her matter-of-factly. Martha looked at her in a way which implied she wanted an explanation, but Jenny merely smiled and kept walking. She did not explain why Theodore had ever stolen a dog. Like brother like sister, she supposed; they were both plenty nice, but plenty weird to go on top of it.

Martha only went to these parties most of the time because she was Rose Tyler's best friend. Rose didn't trust her partygoers enough to drink herself when she held these things, she had some very odd ideas about providing some sort of service to the people in the block. The people in the block, Martha knew from the fact the music was always loud and the walls were always thin, had more than enough parties without Rose going to any extra effort. But people liked her because of her parties, and she liked being liked. Martha was there as another sensible party to refuse to drink and stop people from stealing Rose's mother's tacky mantelpiece ornaments.

"Try not to drink so much you end up in the hospital," Martha advised Jenny as they approached the door to Rose and Mickey's flat, "Your brother might kill me." Mickey was usually getting drunk with everybody else and wasn't much when it came to stopping people from nicking things, but he and Rose had grown into some sort of urban legend when it came to free booze and hospitality around these parts.

"And also because that's dangerous?" Jenny suggested.

"Oh, yeah, and that. Obviously. I _am_ a doctor," Martha reiterated, knocking on the door. They were fashionably late, kind of. These things never usually had much of a starting time. But there was noise coming from within, so Martha assumed she and Jenny would be more than welcome. She was right, too, Rose opened the door with a glass in her hand and beamed.

"Hey! Come in," she said to Martha, then paused, "Who's your friend?"

"Flatmate's sister, she's staying for a few days," Martha explained. Rose let them in, holding the door and closing it behind them as she did.

"Your weird flatmate? Who scoops jam out of the jar with biscuits?" Rose questioned.

"That's the one," Jenny confirmed. The flat was crowded with people already. Jenny was a regular social butterfly and didn't need to attach herself to Martha once they were inside. Rose shut the door, told her to make herself at home, and she thanked her surprisingly graciously and then went on about her business slipping into the crowd to mingle with the drunkards. Possibly become a drunkard herself. Martha was going to have to keep a close watch on her, some of the blokes in the room were dodgy with a capital D. All Rose's glass had in it was orange juice.

"You didn't tell me you were bringing a plus one," Rose remarked as Jenny vanished from sight. Martha made her way to the kitchen to find something to drink, not caring so much about its alcohol content, and Rose trailed along behind her, scanning the room for miscreants every couple of seconds.

"Oh, I didn't even know she was staying with us until yesterday," Martha said, "I'd be annoyed if she wasn't so nice. She keeps doing the washing up, and she made dinner. Can't really complain. She asked to come, then her brother told her she definitely wasn't allowed to come, so-"

"So then she just _had_ to come?" Rose suggested.

"Well, exactly."

"Why's she staying with you, then?" Rose watched Martha pour herself a half glass of daiquiri. There was no way she would get drunk on _that_ stuff, since Theodore was actually right about her having a double shift tomorrow. Double shifts were bad enough anyway, getting by on tiny naps and unwarranted caffeine breaks, she didn't want to make it worse by being hungover.

"Don't really know, something to do with ballet."

"Ballet?"

"She's a ballet dancer. A good one, too, apparently."

"Seriously?" Rose asked, and Martha nodded. There was a kind of window in the wall from the kitchen into the living room, and the kitchen was usually emptier and more secluded than the rest of the place. Mainly because Rose spent most of her time in there, and everybody was a little intimidated by their fabulous host hanging about. Martha checked the time on her phone, and wasn't too happy that it was looking like her night was going to consist of a good few hours of watching drunk people and monitoring Theodore's little sister. She _really_ better not get into trouble…

And thinking of trouble, Mickey Smith walked in about then to get a refill on his beer. Mickey wasn't trouble himself, but he pointed trouble out to them. At least, in these situations, 'trouble' was usually synonymous with 'entertainment.' And 'second-hand embarrassment.' Mainly the last one. Pouring his drink, Mickey said, "Have you seen Clara?"

"You're looking for her?" Rose asked.

"No, I mean, have you_ seen_ her? She's smashed, in the living room."

"Clara's here?" Martha questioned, and Rose made a face, "I don't know why you keep inviting her, neither of you like her." That was a hundred percent true.

"Well… well, you know, I just feel bad for her," Rose admitted. Mickey next to her made a noise of agreement, "She doesn't have any friends, and her sister's sick, or something, and she has that weird fiancé who never leaves. I've heard them shouting before."

"Yeah, so have I, I live across the hall," Martha grumbled, "I have her shouting, then she wakes up that bloody baby in the flat next door – the Ponds aren't here, are they?"

"What? The Ponds_ and_ the baby with the weird name?" Mickey questioned, "No. I don't like the husband, he's weird."

"Are they even married?" Martha inquired. Mickey shrugged, he didn't know. Martha didn't talk to either of them. They kept themselves to themselves. Rose didn't seem to think much of the Ponds and their funny-named baby. It wasn't like new parents could really afford to be going to parties brimming with heavy drinkers and loud noises. They were very protective of that baby and wouldn't leave it alone for even five minutes, which was probably quite sensible, come to think of it.

"The baby's name isn't _that_ weird," Rose said to Mickey.

"It's called River," he reminded her.

"'It'?" Martha questioned.

"Well I don't know if a baby called River is a boy or a girl," he said defensively, and Rose laughed. Martha didn't actually know the sex of the baby, either. All she knew was it was very loud when she was trying to sleep, and they didn't seem to be too adept at making it shut up.

"Could be neither," Rose said.

"I think it's a bit young to be having a crisis of its gender identity, it was only born four months ago," Martha pointed out, and Rose shrugged. "It probably doesn't even know what gender roles are yet."

"Why'd you bring up Clara, anyway?" Rose asked Mickey, getting him back on point, "She's not making a scene, is she? Again?"

"Not _yet_, but if you give it an hour she'll almost definitely be getting off with someone in the middle of the room. _Again_."

"She needs to go to Alcoholics Anonymous. Just… Nymphos Anonymous," Rose said, then paused and added, "You know, she probably needs to go to Alcoholics Anonymous as well."

"I think she needs to erase her entire life and start it again," Martha muttered, and Rose looked at her like she was being harsh, "Rose, the woman is a mess. Like you said, she has no friends, and you only invited her out of pity."

"Why don't _you_ be her friend, then?" Rose suggested.

"Because two months ago she was sick on the door to my flat, and I haven't really forgiven her because it was disgusting and _I_ had to clean it up," Martha grumbled. She thought that was a very valid reason _not_ to go befriend Clara out of sympathy. That and the fact it _would_ be out of sympathy, and the best relationships – regardless of nature – were not built on one-sided pity. Nobody ever wanted to hear someone was only friends with them because they seemed sad and lonely.

"She's been drinking a _lot_ though," Mickey said. Rose didn't take kindly to that news.

"Keep on an eye on her, would you? Please? Make sure she isn't sick on anything?" Rose asked him. He sighed.

"Fine, sure," he agreed, then he went about leaving the kitchen.

"I love you," Rose called after Mickey.

"I love you, too," he replied, and he winked and Rose laughed. Again, everybody liked Rose and Mickey. Mickey Smith really was the life and soul of the party, _any_ party, and people cheered when he walked back into the room with a fresh drink his hand like he was famous.

"Have you seen those PCs lurking anywhere?" Rose changed the subject.

"Which ones? The weird ones who break up _all_ your parties?" Rose nodded. "No, but I only live three floors down and I haven't looked out of the window, so that isn't saying much. You'd think they'd be spending their time trying to catch that graffiti artist, it's not like it's illegal to have a party." When Martha looked out of the kitchen window behind her, all she saw were the bright white lights of late-night windows in London and the blackness of shadowy buildings and the night sky. It was impossible to see any police cars on the streets. Even in the daytime it would be tricky because of how high up they were.

"I swear, somebody tips them off about these things. One day they'll actually charge me with causing a public disturbance," Rose grumbled.

"If they want to arrest _anyone_ for causing a public disturbance, they should arrest that baby," Martha said. Then there was a pause where Rose seemed to think about something and then have some kind of eureka moment.

"Hang on, their name is Pond, right?" Rose said, and Martha nodded.

"I think so. _Her_ name is Pond, don't know about him. Dunno if they're married."

"So is the baby called 'River Pond'?" Rose questioned. Martha nearly laughed.

"That's the stupidest name I've ever heard."

"It isn't – you know Kyle from downstairs?" Rose asked, and Martha looked back at her blankly, "Ground Floor Kyle, y'know, he moved away at Christmas to Grimsby? Well, before he left he had a daughter and called her Burberry Subaru."

"…No way."

"Yes way. Ask him."

"I can't just ask him, he lives in Grimsby, you _just_ said he moved to Grimsby."

"There's this thing called Facebook."

"What? You want me to just _message_ him? Ground Floor Kyle? Just _pop up_ to him on _Facebook_?" Martha asked incredulously.

"That's sort of how Facebook works, Martha. Did you see that graffiti artist has done a new piece by the bins? Something to do with cows."

"Theodore mentioned," Martha said, "I wonder if it's anyone we know."

"It's me," Rose said. Martha laughed at her, right in her face, and she was offended. "Hey! It could be me! I can draw."

"No you can't." Rose grimaced. She couldn't draw for toffee, Martha knew that for a fact. She could barely even draw a stick figure. Neither could Martha, for that matter, but Martha wasn't claiming to be the all-new, locally-renowned political tagger. Rose drank more of her orange juice and then seemed disappointed it didn't have any booze in it. Undoubtedly she and Mickey would gorge themselves on the remains of their soiree the following night, queue a regular hungover Sunday. Martha sipped her daiquiri. Then Rose started telling her the weather forecast for the coming week, and she made the appropriate comments about how 'it better not rain' and 'that would be nice if it was sunny.' According to Rose, there was going to be a heatwave.

There was a smashing sound from the living room which jerked them from their conversation just as they were getting to talking to who had been on _Jeremy Kyle_ the previous afternoon, and Mickey came back into the kitchen in a state of panic.

"One of you please get rid of her," he said. He didn't need to say anything more to let them know he was discussing Clara Oswald.

"Honestly," Rose grumbled, putting her glass of squash down, "I invite her here out of courtesy and she's broken a… what did she break?"

"A glass," Mickey said, "She sort of crushed it, I think she's bleeding. Please get her to go home, she's seriously hammered." Rose and Mickey both looked to Martha when he said that line about getting her to go home. Of course_ she_ had to do it, never mind that it wasn't her party or her flat, just because she was Clara's neighbour. She wished she could afford to move to somewhere less of a squat.

"Fine!" Martha agreed angrily, putting her daiquiri next to Rose's orange. "If she's sick on my door again, one of you are coming to clean it up, alright?"

"I'll do anything, just make her leave," Mickey promised.

"I'll hold you to that," Martha told him a little threateningly, leaving the two of them in the kitchen to observe through the window in the wall. Martha still didn't know why their kitchen had a funny window in it into the rest of the flat, but it made for good viewing. Well, it did for Martha. Rose generally didn't like the things that could be watched through that hatch, because whatever was that interesting was probably bad for Rose's flat and all of her worldly possessions. Like the fight on New Year's Eve. It had been one hell of a fight, but the TV _had_ gotten broken.

Imagine the surprise of Martha Jones when she found Clara in the middle of a small crowd seemingly being _chatted up_ by _Jenny_, of all people.

"What _are_ you doing!?" Martha demanded.

"I – nothing!" Jenny protested immediately. The people around jumped when Martha shouted, and she coldly said there wasn't anything at all to see.

"She's going home now, so you can all stop staring," Martha told the conglomeration observing the train wreck that was Clara. She turned her eyes to Jenny, "And _you're_ going home, too. Feeling her up."

"I was not! I was trying to stop her from falling over," Jenny argued pointedly, "Look, just because I'm not straight, doesn't mean I'm going to take advantage of a drunk girl. Besides, she _was_ sick in her mouth. And her hair, a bit." Clara hiccupped and laughed. She had no idea what was going on, Martha was sure. "Honestly, I was not coming onto her. _She_ was coming onto _me_, she told me I remind her of some girl she met today."

"My long lost love," Clara slurred, then reached out a hand to twirl a lock of Jenny's blonde hair around her finger.

"See?" Jenny argued.

"Blondes are smexy," Clara told her.

"Nobody says 'smexy', be quiet," Martha ordered her. The people around them were ignoring the loud music and preferred to watch this show. Personally, Martha couldn't blame them. If she was one of Rose's innocent, tipsy patrons, she'd think this was live-action_ EastEnders_. Or _Emmerdale_, maybe, since Clara _was_ from the north.

"Who d'you think you-" she attempted to threaten Martha, coming towards her. Fearing vomit, Martha stepped back, then Clara's heel broke and she fell straight over. Thank god Jenny caught her.

"I'm really not trying to get into her pants," Jenny assured her, "I think she might die if she doesn't stop drinking." Martha sighed.

"She's always like this. Sorry."

"You smell like smell," Clara told Jenny as Jenny steadied her, smiling toothily. Then she turned to Martha, "You can't make me go, Marth. I'm not going home."

"You are going home, come on," Martha told her, then to Jenny, "Help me, would you? She only lives opposite us. This is the girl your brother is infatuated with. Mickey told me to make her go home. Are you going to go home, Clara?"

"No!" Clara argued, "I aren't going nowhere."

"I don't know what that sentence means with all those negatives," Martha said, "Why aren't you going home? Your sister will be worried." Clara grimaced. "Do you want me to go get her?"

"You can't do that!" Clara protested, "She hates people. Let me drink, Marth." Then she made an odd, slightly melodic noise and tried to take a swig out of the glass of something-or-other she had dropped and broken on the edge of the fireplace, forgetting the glass was broken. Clara stared around and started asking who had stolen her drink.

"Clara-"

"I have nothing to go home to, Marth," Clara said, looking harrowed suddenly, "I have no job, or friends, or money, and that bastard won't get out of my flat."

"Your sister's fiancée?"

"Boyfriend. _Boy-friend_. She hasn't a ring."

"This is the girl Theodore likes?" Jenny asked Martha incredulously.

"She's… slightly less awful when she's sober," Martha said, "Just help me get-"

There was a banging noise out of nowhere, caused by the door being aggressively and unnecessarily kicked down. It came right as Martha was trying to help Jenny grab hold of Clara so that they could drag her home and take her back to her sister. Everybody froze and stopped moving. The music played loudly still, but the conversations had all died when people started shouting.

"Right! Everybody out! This party is over," said a voice Martha actually recognised, that of Police Constable Noble. Martha did not care enough to get her first name, all she and her tall partner seemed to do was crash Rose's 'gatherings.' Rose herself came angrily out of the kitchen to greet the cops.

"Somebody turn off that music before my ears bleed," PC Smith said, bored. They both looked a sight in their high-vis jackets and funny hats. If he was so bored there, he could always try _not_ breaking up Rose's parties? It was getting to a point where Rose would be able to file a harassment claim, they were always on her.

"You have no right to be here," Rose argued to them.

"I _was_ quite bitter we weren't invited. We're your regulars by now," Smith said, holding his hands in front of himself and smiling down at her. She glared back. He started shouting for people to get out, looking around the room. Martha couldn't leave without getting Clara to cooperate first, though.

Martha Jones' evening was just interruption after interruption. Rose's party had interrupted her original evening plans (not that they consisted of much more than watching _Countdown_ and making herself pasta), then Rose's party had been interrupted by Clara's plight, Clara's plight had been interrupted by PCs Noble and Smith breaking up said party, and now _that_ was interrupted by a rumbling in the air around them. Before that moment, Martha wasn't sure how air could rumble, but it did. It was like being in a nightclub stood right next to the speaker, the vibrations were practically visible. But the music had been switched off.

The duty of the police officers was ceased when a glowing light appeared outside, bright and white through all the windows, like fire. People turned to stare as the rumbling grew and then something that definitely _was_ on fire shot over the roof of the flats, trailing smoke behind it and catapulting towards London. It was tricky to see what it was, though, as though the fire was the only tangible thing. She was sure she could see stars through the space where some kind of mass must be. It went away towards the nearby horizon and the rumbling disappeared and was replaced by a deafening silence.

"…Shooting star," PC Smith said, "That's all that is. A stray meteorite. Or even space rubbish, there's all sorts of rubbish in space."

"What if it's aliens?" somebody who had definitely had too much to drink said. People around him laughed.

"That's enough, there's no such thing as aliens. And even if there were, it doesn't make this party any less illegal," Noble declared.

"This party isn't illegal at all!" Rose protested, "No-one here is under eighteen."

"You're causing a disturbance," Noble told her curtly, with a smug smile.

"Piss off," Rose said.

"And now you're verbally abusing an officer of the law, Rose. I could charge you for that."

"Do you have nothing better to do? Like catching that graffiti artist? Some of those paintings definitely cause _me_ a disturbance," Mickey argued over Rose's shoulder. Noble and Smith were having none of it though and ignored them, continuing to wave people over to the door. As far as their breaking up of parties went, this was early, even for them. It was barely past nine in the evening. They really didn't like Rose.

Martha then heard a noise even worse than the weird rumbling. It was the sound of Clara Oswald being sick. She, unfortunately, knew it well. When would people actually learn about the dangers associated with over-consumption of alcohol? Alcohol had absolutely no health benefits, she thought, ignoring the fact she was a huge hypocrite. Though, Martha didn't even know if she'd ever been as drunk as Clara was now. She'd definitely never been sick on somebody's shoes.

"Oh my god!" she exclaimed when she saw that was exactly what Clara had just done. On _Martha's_ shoes. Jenny bit her lip and tried to keep Clara upright, but Clara had this nasty habit of trying to grope her.

"Come on, fun's over," Noble said, sauntering over.

"I have puke on my good shoes, how much 'fun' do you think I'm having!?" Martha demanded through gritted teeth, "Look at this!" she rounded on Clara, "You're paying for this, I don't care if you_ have_ lost your job."

"You lost your job?" Noble asked Clara. Clara burped.

"Nice to see your parties haven't lost their standard disgustingness," Smith remarked to Rose, eyeing Clara's sick on Martha's shoes. Clara stumbled into Jenny as part of another blatant ruse to try and grab part of her not generally for grabbing, mumbling something about her 'dream girl' abandoning her.

"Was she just sick on my carpet!?" Rose exclaimed.

"More on my shoes," Martha told her.

"…She's not invited to anymore of these."

"So you_ were_ invited here? Earlier you said you didn't know anything about another Tyler party tonight," Noble said to Clara. Martha didn't even know why Noble was bothering, Clara was clearly in no state to coherently answer. Her mind was blank of everything except the desire for drink and the desire for lesbians.

"I aren't a grass," Clara slurred.

"…You two get her home," Noble told them.

"Yes, thank you, that's exactly what we were doing before you two barged in with your shooting stars," Martha argued with them, finally just grabbing Clara's other arm and helping Jenny to haul her out of the room and away.

* * *

Donna took a look around Rose Tyler's messy but vacated flat. Rose continued to argue about why she and John always came and broke up _their_ parties and didn't go about solving any other crimes, bringing up that blasted graffiti artist again. Rose and Mickey just kept yelling at them until Donna threatened to genuinely arrest them for badmouthing an officer of the law, which was the point at which they gave up and let the constables leave. The door was slammed on them as they left, and there were a few of Rose's disgruntled partygoers lurking about in the halls.

"Party's over, all of you go home," John called to them.

"And _stop_ pissing on the wall, I _can_ see you," Donna added to a disgusting gent relieving himself against somebody's doorframe. He shouted something unintelligible, but stopped urinating. Thank god, she thought, otherwise they'd have to arrest him, which would mean wiping down the seat again, like they always had to do when they picked up drunk men who peed in public. Suffice it to say, they did not have the best bladder control. "Do you ever think maybe we should leave these things alone?"

"That's what we said we would do on New Year's Eve," John said, "And you remember what happened?"

Donna sighed and said, "There was a massive fight, the TV got broken, and then we got suspended for two weeks because it was our beat."

"Exactly," he held the door leading to the cold night open for her, "Better to be safe than sorry." She supposed he was right, though it was getting to be a bit of a pain going to Rose's so often. Donna wondered why she had so many parties. Maybe she was just a party person. They always looked like fun, though, and in a strange way Donna wished she could go any actually have fun, not ruin the fun for everybody else. Though, she _did_ get paid for ruining fun, so she couldn't let it grate on her conscience _too_ much. John declared that he was driving as they approached the brightly coloured patrol car. There were still bits of food in it from that morning when they'd picked up Missy Masters' dirty husband.

"Where to next?" Donna asked, putting her seatbelt on, "Just stay here and see if any of those drunks try to start anything as they leave?" she suggested. John thought for a second, tapping his fingers against the steering wheel.

"What about that shooting star?" he said.

"It's a bit of rock, like you said. We don't investigate rock."

"It looked pretty big."

"They burn up, don't they? It was definitely burning."

"Well, I _suppose_, but they're not normally that large this close to the planet's surface," he said. He was a real space geek. Before she got partnered with him, Donna Noble didn't know a single thing about asteroids and meteorites, wouldn't have been able to tell you that they burned up in the atmosphere. Unless _she_ was hurtling down to Earth from outer space, she didn't care, but like _she_ would ever be in _outer space_. That would be crazy.

"…If you want us to go look at the space rock, just say so."

"I want us to go look at the space rock," he told her.

"Fine, then," she sighed, "You're the boss. I suppose it could have… landed on someone, or something." He beamed and started the car. Donna wasn't too thrilled about it, but it was better than arresting drunkards for peeing where they shouldn't, or throwing Twixes at secretaries.

They did not have to drive far for something of note to happen. They didn't know where the meteorite had landed, but this was something Donna cared about a damn sight more than any burning sky-rock. The dark night shrouded the police car from view as they pulled around a corner of the estate, crawling around the streets on their regular patrol, and she spied something very interesting out of the window.

"Stop the car, stop the car," she ordered John. He didn't stop the car. "Are you deaf!? I just said stop the car!" Finally he did, but only when she tried to pull the handbrake herself.

"You'll break it if you do that! The money will come out of _my_ wage if you do. Again. You're always breaking things, you have man hands," he told her coolly.

"I do not, shut up. Look over there," she pointed out of the window, and he followed her gaze to see what she saw. A shadowy figure, petite and garbed all in black, stood on tiptoes with a can of spray paint in their hands, drawing something with cardboard stencils on the bleak grey wall of one of the estate's buildings. "Someone vandalising."

"Do you think it might be that new tagger everyone's been after?"

"Probably, nobody else ever tags around here," Donna told him, "If we bring him in, we could get promoted to detective, both of us. Then we don't have to hang around this dump anymore." This idea appealed greatly to John Smith, who had been a poorly paid police constable for many moons at this point. "Nobody's going to promote us for arresting a meteor, or an alien."

"I never said anything about aliens. And fine, we'll go see who it is," he said, getting out of the car, slowly, quietly. Donna followed suit, closing the door as softly as she could, "That sounded like thunder – don't you man hands know how to be gently?"

"Shut up about my hands," she hissed at him, "Do these look like man hands to you?" She stuck twos up at him.

"Yes," he told her. She glared. She got really sick of him sometimes.

They must have looked a sight, two fluorescent police officers trying to sneak up on someone in the middle of the night. If they shouted, the vandal would run, and this phantom tagger had been in the papers making the police department look shoddy. Donna was sure that she could make sergeant if they arrested this one, this one making them look like fools, giving them the run around for weeks. The fact they were creeping up on tiptoes to this fiend could be counted as one final win for the mysterious vandal, but the joke was on them. Donna and John would prevail, she knew it in her bones.

And prevail, they did.

"Banksy, I presume?" John asked. The tagger jumped and tried to run off, but was grabbed by John Smith and pushed against the wall so he could be cuffed. Then he turned around, and Donna was stunned to see that it was not a he at all, rather a _she_, a very blonde she with very blue eyes and an expression of unmitigated hatred.

"If you like," she said, "Don't you have to read me my rights?"

"You do not have to say anything. But, it may harm your defence if you do not mention when questioned something which you later rely on in court. Anything you do say may be given in evidence," Donna said as John locked the handcuffs. She took out her torch to shine it on the wall and see what was being spray painted, wondering if it really _was_ the evasive criminal they'd been after, or just someone painting the phone number of a girl they'd fallen out with on the wall with the caption, 'for free sex, call _.' But no, the stencils made it look plenty 'professional.'

"These doodles really are quite terrible up close," John said, looking at them, keeping the culprit cuffed. She did _not_ look happy about getting caught.

"I can't believe London's finest have actually succeeded in arresting somebody. I always thought it would be hard for them to focus over the smell of doughnuts and bacon," she jeered.

"Hilarious," John said dryly.

"That one's about you. The pink can is for the pigs I was painting, the incompetent pigs."

"From where I'm standing, _you're_ the incompetent one," Donna said, switching the torch off and stooping down to pick up a duffel bag full of spray paint, picking it up.

"Maybe I wanted you to catch me. For a statement."

"What's your name?" John asked her.

"Nios," she said. They both snorted.

"Your _real_ name."

"My identity is what I choose it to be," she said coldly, "I don't have any obligation to answer to the likes of _you_. Pigs." She made an oinking sound. "'Civil servant' is a synonym for 'agent of Satan.'"

"Of course it is," Donna muttered.

"Then I hope you're nice and warm in our chariot of hades," John said with a smile, "I think you'll be staying with us for a while. Good thing we have such an extensive supply of doughnuts, isn't it? Keep you well fed while you decide to tell us your real name, 'Nios.'"

"You're all as bad as the Tories you work for. I'm surprised you take your pay from Cameron anymore, after he desecrated one of your own," 'Nios' remarked. She was having a lot of fun mocking them.

"Yes, yes, we were all very sad to hear about where the prime minister chooses to put his penis. Is that what you were drawing? Because if it was the charges will be more severe than simple vandalism," Donna told her, opening the back door of the patrol car for John to shove her in the back seat.

"…No," she muttered. So she wasn't quite as cocky as she seemed. John shut the door on her.

"Do you really think we could be promoted for this?" Donna asked him, "After us being suspended in January?"

"Why not? It's been _years_, this is the break I need. I mean, we need. Both of us," John said, "We caught her together."

"_I_ pointed her out," Donna argued.

"But _I_ cuffed her."

"_I_ read her caution."

"_I_ brought her to the car."

"Well _I_ opened the door." They were at a stalemate. "And _I'll_ drive her back to the station." Donna made a grab for the door into the driver's side, and she actually got there, too. Probably because John was the slightly bigger person who didn't want to make them look like idiots in front of the criminal they were bringing in. If they made a show of themselves, she could file a complaint, scupper their chances at promotion.

Donna started the car very slowly, making it look like she didn't know what she was doing. She was rarely allowed to drive the car because of how overprotective of it John was – he spoke to it like it was a girl, like it had feelings and wasn't just a bit of metal. It wasn't even _his_ car, it was just a service car. Still, she got great joy from asking questions like, "_How do I make it go?_" and, "_Which pedal makes the horn honk_?" and finally, "_What gear do I put it in for nitrous?_" He didn't like when she said things like that. It was hilarious.

"You know, freedom of speech is legal. You can't censor my opinions," Nios argued from the backseat, sitting in the middle and leaning forwards between their seats.

"That's only true if you don't spray paint your opinions on the side of public property," John said with a smile, looking at her. She scowled back.

"You have really blue eyes, you know," Donna said. She was a little fixated by how freakishly blue they were, scowling back at her in the mirror.

"Thanks, but I don't value the opinions of pigs much," she said coldly.

"You should have written it on a wall, Donna," John remarked, "Then she might have paid attention."

"You're not funny, you know."

"I didn't know that, thanks for your input. Unfortunately I only listen to opinions when someone paints it on concrete."

"Alright, alright," Donna interrupted them, "Don't banter with the criminals, Smith."

"She started it," he grumbled, "What's say we let her spend a little more time with us?"

"I'm already drowning in the stink of pig fat frying," Nios complained.

"Oi, shut it now," Donna told her off angrily.

"I'm being serious. It stinks back here."

"Some drunk we picked up this morning throwing a bacon sandwich at the window of his ex-wife," John explained the incident with Mr Masters. Missy had kept his name, unsurprisingly. It was kind of a cool name.

"But it had mayonnaise," Donna pointed out.

"So?"

"So who puts mayonnaise on a bacon sandwich?"

"Drunk pensioners who sleep in their cars," he said a little patronisingly, "Take a left here."

"The station is to the right."

"The asteroid is to the left, though. Go left."

"I should turn right."

"Left, Noble," he ordered, "Nios wants to spend some quality time with us before somebody spends the entire night processing her and getting her sentenced." Begrudgingly, Donna switched the indicator so that it said she was heading left instead of right. They were just putting off the fanfares that would undoubtedly wait for them when they got back to the station with the infamous phantom tagger.

"I probably won't get prison time for this, you know," she said. Annoyingly enough, that was probably true. And even if she _did_ do time, it wouldn't be a lot. It was twenty-five years for murder, so Donna couldn't imagine how meagre the sentence would be for simple graffiti. A caution, maybe. It annoyed her to think about it, but then, had they really gone to that much effort to catch her? They'd sort of gotten lucky.

They were driving down an empty road with a couple of parked cars and more grey blocks of flats, likely built in the 1960s or a similar era with cuboidal and ugly architecture, when two men appeared from around the corner. Two men wearing suits. Stupid suits. Tweed, long coats, looking out of place, and they were running. Whoever they were, they were running as fast as they could right down the street towards the car. Donna abruptly stopped it. They were about the same height, one of them with hair with frankly a shocking amount of gel in it. It was the other one Donna Noble was paying attention to, though, because the other one was _gorgeous_. For a brief moment she forgot they were in a police car and these men were clearly running from something, and wondered why they made a beeline for the car and came to grab hold of the bonnet.

"Help us!" they were both shouting this and other variations.

"Stay in the car," John ordered Nios, Donna already getting out to go introduce herself to the handsome one. The other one was just a twig with spiky hair. Honestly, he was so thin he might snap if someone shook his hand.

"You're police, right?" the hot one asked.

"You're American?" Donna asked him.

"What!?" he exclaimed.

"Yes, we're police," John interrupted, scowling at Donna, who wasn't paying the most attention, truthfully, "What's the problem?"

"The problem!?" the skinny one with the hair, who was definitely _not_ an American, exclaimed, "My husband and I are being chased by a monster!"

"A monster?" John frowned.

"Yes, a monster!" he said.

"You can barely see it, it's as black as space, and it has these teeth, and this fur, and scales, and all this spit, and it has four arms and a tail," the American one said.

"Have you two had a bit too much to drink? You don't look the types to be on the Powell Estate," John said, crossing his arms.

"Too much to drink!?" the skinny one demanded, "Are you incompetent? We're being attacked! This is why we should never leave the country, Jack, I always tell you, but you _insisted _we come to the opera for our anniversary."

"Oh, so this is _my_ fault? Who wanted to see _Carmen_, hmm?" Jack the American argued.

"I merely said that it had good reviews, and now look, the taxi driver has got us lost in, bloody, _chav country_," he said, giving Donna a chastising look.

"Alright, mate, enough of the slander, we _are_ police, we're here to help," she said, even though this bloke was posh as anything. She would rather not talk to posh toffs, especially not lost ones in tuxedos who went to the opera. Besides, if the hot American was gay, she didn't have a chance. Not that she understood what he saw in the skinny, poncey weirdo.

"Well I don't see how you _can_ help! You don't have any guns, or anything, somebody needs to kill that monster! It appeared right after the asteroid!" the posh one explained hysterically.

"Now, now, I'm sure there isn't really any… any…" John was saying, trying to be the voice of reason, "Monster… monster! There! Donna!" he shouted to her and pointed.

"Bloody hell!" she shouted, because there it was, the beast, as described by these two upper class gays who were lost on the estate. "That's a monster." It really _was_ as black as space, it was like a moving shadow, with brightly coloured teeth, four long, spindly arms tipped with shimmering, razor-like claws. It wasn't all that large, only a little over five feet tall, but it was bulky and definitely a monster.

"Everybody in the car, in the car!" John shouted, running back to the car. But the beast was running, it was running straight for them, impossibly quickly. They fumbled with the doors, Nios had to budge over to be sitting on one side. The skinny one got in first, Donna and John in the car and Donna trying to start the engine. But Jack the Hot American was grabbed.

"Fight it, fight it!" Nios was shouting. The skinny one with the spiky hair was grabbing Jack's hands to try and keep him in the car. The monster was on Donna's side of the car, she was frantically trying to start it while the skinny posh man tried get Jack in the car.

The monster was too strong for him, though. _Way_ too strong. Donna Noble wasn't sure he ever actually stood a chance. He was pulled out by the thing and dragged along the tarmac road.

"NO! You put him down, you animal!" the posh skinny one shouted, trying to get into the car. Without going into too much detail, though, his struggles were in vain. Moments later, the monster used all four of its spindly arms to tear off Jack's head. Donna screamed. They didn't teach you about _this_ in the police academy, that was for damn sure. The skinny one screamed as well, screamed and cried and wailed, and tried to get out of the car. If Nios the phantom tagger hadn't been in the back seat to drag him back to safety, they may both have died in those few moments. Donna finally started the car, Jack was dead and the thing was now tearing off clothes to get to his flesh.

"It's eating him!" Donna shouted.

"DRIVE, Donna!" John ordered her. She put them into reverse and slammed on the accelerator, and the four of them shot backwards, the skinny husband still screaming as he saw Jack torn apart and consumed right in the middle of a deserted street.

"Run it over!" Nios said.

"What!?" Donna argued.

"It'll go after us! Run it over!"

"Yes, kill it, kill it!" the skinny bloke agreed with Nios.

"I can't just run it over!"

"You have to! You have to hit it!" Nios carried on.

"Go, Donna, run it down," John said.

"No! I can't! I can't do that!" Donna continued to protest, the other three continued to yell at her to drive straight back at it and thwack it to kill it as it desecrated poor Jack's fresh corpse. Not saying a word, she relented, switched gears again, floored the pedal, and screamed at the top of her lungs as the patrol car went bulleting right towards that six-limbed, scaly, furry freak of nature. It looked up with an eyeless face and savage, canid-like jaw right as it got hit.

It rolled up onto the bonnet, smashed into the windscreen and left it full of cracks, then bounced sickeningly over the roof and the boot and back onto the ground. Donna barely steered them out of the way of Jack's now completely destroyed body in time. She hit the brakes and they all turned to be looking out of the rear window. It lay there, the thing, in the middle of the road. It didn't move. There were a few seconds of silence. The husband started to sob. Nios seemed uneasy with his display of emotion, more interested in the thing lying still in the road.

"Do you think it's dead?" she asked.

"I hope so," John told her. They all just watched on it.

"Should I reverse over it to be sure?" Donna suggested.

"…Maybe," John said, "If it moves. What do you think it is?"

"A dog?" Donna said.

"A dog!? What kind of dog has four arms?"

"Well I don't know, okay!?" she shouted.

"It came down after the asteroid – did you say it came down after the asteroid? The shooting star?" John asked the crying husband. He didn't answer though, just cried. Nios slapped him, hard, and they jumped.

"What!? The love of my life is dead! Dead out here! In chav country!" he whimpered. Nios slapped him again on the other side of his face.

"What did you say about the shooting star?"

"We were walking towards it, we thought it might be interesting, that's where it came from," he explained, "That direction."

"It was a bit big for a meteor, don't you think?" John said to Donna, who gawked at him.

"You think… you think that _thing_ is an _alien_!? That _crashed_!?"

"Well we don't have any other explanation for what it is!" he argued with her.

"Looks like you'll have to settle this later," Nios interrupted, nodding to the outside of the car. Out of the right-hand side, they saw them. Those things. Two more of them, coming from around the corner. "Shit. This is bad. Drive, drive, drive!" And drive, Donna Noble did, running over that thing again as she did, to be safe. But the question was now there: where the hell did they go next?


	436. Omegaverse III

**_Omegaverse III_**

"Well, tonight's turned into a disaster," Martha complained to Jenny. Between them they hauled Clara down three flights of stairs – the lift was broken, and had been for as long as Martha had lived there – to get back to her flat, "You still with us, Clara?" Clara didn't answer. Martha stopped walking, Jenny didn't notice she had for a second.

"What?" Jenny asked.

"Clara...?" Clara was still. "Shit, she's passed out."

"Yeah, but, people pass out all the time from drinking too much," Jenny said. They were now dragging Clara's limp body to her door.

"Jenny, do you know what it means when you pass out from drinking too much?" Martha questioned her, looking around Clara, who was drooling a little. She was definitely breathing, breathing in a very damp and disgusting manner, but this still wasn't good. Jenny returned Martha's gaze with a look of confusion and attempted to shrug. "It means you have alcohol poisoning."

"It does!?" she exclaimed.

"Yes! You can't think it's healthy to drink so much of something you lose consciousness," Martha said. It seemed Jenny _had_ thought that. Martha wasn't surprised, lots of people thought that. The amount of stomachs she had to pump working in a dodgy bit of London was a crime in and of itself. They reached Clara's door though, Martha on the left reaching up to knock loudly. Thank god it wasn't very late at night.

The door didn't open straight away. Martha cursed to herself and knocked again, louder, with her whole fist.

"Is somebody in there!?" she shouted. Finally, a man answered – though, upon looking at the scrawny specimen, she thought 'boy' was a more appropriate word. Or something significantly more demeaning, like 'man-child.' Definitely a male, though, with filthy glasses. He opened it and then stared at them and Clara. "Can we come in?"

"Who is it?" a voice that sounded exactly like Clara's called. That definitely weirded Martha out, and Jenny, too, even though Jenny had known Clara for barely an hour of her life. The boy didn't say a word and stepped aside to let them in. Martha assumed he was the scumbag fiancé of Clara's sister who mooched off of her and didn't pay rent. The inside of Clara's flat was pitch black and stank of sweat and nicotine, and she tripped over dirty clothes within seconds of getting inside. "Is she alright!? What happened!?" The spooky voice asked. Martha found the source of it, sitting in a pretty fancy armchair next to a pretty terrible widescreen television that hadn't been cutting-edge since 2004. "…What?" the girl asked.

"Are you…? _You're_...? Her sister?" Martha asked, staring at her. She had never actually met Clara's sister, didn't even know her name, only knew her from the things Clara had told her at various other parties of Rose. And the few times Clara had come to borrow milk, or sugar.

"Obviously – I'm guessing she didn't mention we're twins? I'm Oswin," she said, "What's wrong with her?" She looked like she wanted to get out of her chair, but did not dare, blanket over her lap and legs.

"Drank too much," Martha answered shortly, "A lot too much, definitely has alcohol poisoning."

Jenny and Martha hauled Clara over to the sofa, Jenny brushing a great deal of mucky clothes from its surface. None of these clothes looked like girl clothes, they couldn't _all_ belong to the weird boy who hadn't said a word yet? They helped Clara onto it, her twin sister watching worriedly. The boy lurked in the kitchen, as far away as possible. Martha told Jenny – who was a bit uneasy with the whole situation, but would never refuse to help someone – to turn Clara so that she couldn't choke on her own vomit.

"I'm going to get Theodore, consult with him about whether he thinks she should go to the hospital," Martha said, going to leave, ordering Jenny to stay.

"Wait – who's Theodore? And who are _you_, for that matter?" Oswin called, but Martha had left. Oswin turned to Jenny, "You as well, I don't know any of you, you just drag my comatose sister in through the doors."

"I, uh… I'm Jenny," Jenny introduced, "Theodore's my older brother."

"You know Martha, Oswin, she just lives across the hall," the boy said.

"How am I supposed to know who lives across the hall? I don't leave," Oswin said. Jenny wondered why she didn't leave. She turned her eyes back to Clara, Jenny feeling like she was imposing herself on them. Oswin met Jenny's eyes, "That's Adam over there. My boyfriend." She didn't move her eyes from Jenny's.

"Fiancé," Adam corrected. Oswin didn't say anything, "Oswin?"

"Sorry, right, fiancé, uh-huh," she corrected, looking away from Jenny, back at Clara, "What happened to her? How much did she drink? She's so irresponsible sometimes, I wish I could stop her from going out and drinking. She smokes, too." That answered the question of why the flat smelt so strongly of tobacco. Martha returned with Theodore in tow, Theodore who seemed excited. His excitement fell flat when he saw the state of the flat, what a pile of filth it was.

"Why are there clothes everywhere?" Jenny asked Oswin, leaving the doctors to see how bad Clara's alcohol poisoning was and going to stand next to the other armchair. Adam still did not leave the kitchen, he did not seem to care about Clara's wellbeing. Oswin hardly took her eyes off Clara.

"They're just Adam's," Oswin answered her.

"Hey, some of them are yours, babe," he called through, but she ignored him for a few seconds. Then she looked up and asked him if he said something. He repeated himself, and she told him now wasn't the time. He crossed his arms and stayed near the sink.

"You know, your sister has a very unhealthy lifestyle," Martha was saying to Oswin.

"If I could stop her, I would," Oswin said, putting a hand to her head and staring at Clara, "She's such an idiot, she doesn't… I don't know." Whatever Oswin was thinking, it appeared to be conflicting her. Jenny noticed because Jenny was, maybe, staring at her. A little. But she didn't notice because she was too fixated on her passed out twin, which Jenny just thought worked in her favour.

"She's irresponsible," Martha said. Theodore didn't say anything, he seemed nearly as worried as Oswin. Jenny figured that was because he apparently had a crush on her and was more focused on making sure she didn't die, or something. She did doubt that Clara would _die_ though.

"She's not irresponsible," Oswin said a little quietly, leaning back in her chair, "You can't blame her. She has to put up with…" Oswin stopped, then cleared her throat, "Things." She had been about to be honest with them, but had ditched that tact at the last minute. Adam cleared his throat loudly and everyone looked over, but he was only meaning to get Jenny's attention. He didn't know her, and she didn't know him, but he raised his eyebrows at her, like he was judging her. Oswin was oblivious, Clara was still unconscious, Martha and Theodore quickly returned to checking Clara was not at risk of premature fatality. Jenny ignored him in the end. If he wasn't going to speak, what did she care?

"Right, well, she'll probably be alright," Martha finally declared, then she turned to Oswin, "But you should make her go to her GP as soon as possible to do a check on her liver. Livers might be able to heal, but only if you give them a chance to."

"I'll make her," Oswin promised, still fretting.

"Which room's hers? Are you going to help her to bed?" Theodore asked Oswin. He seemed quite interested in finding out where Clara's bedroom was, which didn't actually surprise Jenny. He had never been the most… _forward_ of people.

"Help her? No, I can't," Oswin said. A statement which required explanation, but explanation was not something Oswin was, at that moment, willing to give. She looked a little sheepish and apologised for this, but it seemed like she had a genuine inability, "If I could help carry Clara to her room, I could also tie her to a chair and stop her from getting rat-arsed." Theodore looked at Jenny hopefully, and Jenny left Oswin's side to go help him. Oswin pointed them at the correct door, next to the kitchen, and Theodore half carried Clara and half opened it.

"So," Jenny asked in a whisper, "_This_ is the girl you're obsessed with?"

"I am not," he argued. He went a little red though. He was anything but subtle.

"Are you sure she's straight?"

"Why? Have _you_ decided to go after her? I wish you'd stop trying to steal my girlfriends."

"Okay, she isn't your girlfriend, I have no interest in her, and that only happened _one time_. And you weren't even going out with that girl, you went on, like, one date and got all clingy and weird. But for the record, are you sure Clara's straight?" They continued to talk in very low voices, not wanting to arouse the interests of anybody in the next room, the door still ajar. It would look a bit creepy to take an unconscious girl to a bedroom and then close the door, she thought.

"Why would you think she isn't?" he asked, crossing his arms. Clara made a noise then that was a combination of a cough, a snore, and a gargle, and it was disgusting.

"She kept groping me, and complaining that she met and lost the girl of her dreams earlier today. Emphasis on 'girl'," Jenny said. He glowered at her.

"Well I shan't listen to you."

"She can't've been _that_ into you if you didn't even know what her name was," she said, which was a low blow but still a fair point.

Loud banging sounds coming from the main room interrupted them, though, in the nick of time, Jenny thought. She wasn't too thrilled about her brother's company when he was again questioning her integrity, along with her imaginary 'track record' of 'stealing' his 'girlfriends.' They re-entered to see Adam skulking over to open the door, and to Jenny's great surprise four people burst in, only two of them strangers. The other two were those constables from earlier, the ones who had broken up Rose Tyler's party. Noble and Smith, or something.

"You have to help us," Noble said, pushing her way in, letting the other three trail after her. There was Smith, looking notably harrowed, which was a strange expression on a face as collected and serious as his. Then there was a tall, skinny man with loud hair, who was sobbing very aggressively, his whole face red and wet. Finally, there was a blonde, dressed all in black, spray paint stains on her clothes, bright blue, chilling eyes. What an odd ensemble.

"There are monsters," the crying man said, "They killed my husband!" he wailed.

"It's true," Noble said. Adam closed the door behind them.

"What are you doing? Don't close the door, tell them to get lost," Martha told him. He left the door on the latch as a result of that, not knowing who to listen to, a very angry neighbour or the actual police.

"Monsters?" Oswin asked from her chair, Adam drifting over in that direction, keeping a steely gaze on Jenny. He settled for leaning on the wall right by the window, on the other side of the tiny television to his 'fiancé.'

"Yes," Smith said, "We ran one of them over."

"It was eating this bloke's face," the mysterious blonde with the icy eyes said.

"How dare you!" the crying man sobbed.

"Sorry. It was eating his husband's face. Jake, or something."

"His name was Jack, Jack Harkness."

"It was eating Jack Harkness' face," the blonde reiterated, "All of his flesh, ripping it off, so the fuzz ran it over, _twice_. Then two more showed up – they came from the shooting star, did you see it?"

"Wait, wait – _aliens_?" Theodore exclaimed, "You think there are aliens? Here? In London? _Aliens in London_? That's insanity."

"Well it's true! Just ask this one's husband. _Oh wait_, you can't. Because he's dead," she said. This girl, whoever she was, was probably the most unsympathetic person Jenny had ever met. Who brought up somebody's recently dead husband? Repeatedly? And callously? In great, gory detail?

"Who _are_ you?" Adam asked her.

"I am Nios," she declared. There was a silence for a second, filled only by the widower's sobs.

"Are we supposed to know what that means?" Martha questioned.

"She's the graffiti artist," Noble explained. Adam muttered something nobody paid attention about how her art 'wasn't even that good.'

"Oh, so you two _did_ actually manage to be competent and catch an _actual_ criminal?" Noble and Smith did not like Martha's tone. Jenny didn't really like Martha's tone either. Oswin, though, wasn't enjoying any of this. Adam observing from the other side of the room, Jenny slunk quietly back over to the girl's side.

"What's up?" Jenny asked her softly, "You know they're probably drunk, or high, or just saw a dog."

"I'm not the biggest fan of people," Oswin answered her, crossing her arms as though to disappear into herself, like a turtle. Jenny liked turtles.

"These monsters, then, what did they look like? Were they wearing a metal collar with a return address, maybe? Perhaps a name? 'Lucky' or 'Buster'?" Martha was working on the same hunch as Jenny, that they had seen a particularly savage dog. Dogs could kill, maybe that was all it had been?

"Furry. And scaly, at the same time. Weird," Nios said. Nios was definitely a fake name, but they had no other name to go on. The crying man still hadn't told them what _he_ was called. Just Jack's Husband. With the over-gelled hair.

"And black," Noble said, "Like space, total darkness, I've never seen anything like that. It was like… like where it was, nothing existed."

"And you think it's an alien?" Theodore frowned.

"Well…" her sentence escaped her, and she was staring at some space behind them, "Well take a look for yourselves."

"What?" Jenny asked.

"At the window," Nios told her. She turned around to look at the window nearby, on the wall behind her. There was a beast which certainly did seem to match that description, the blackest black she'd ever seen in her life, impossible to see what the thing was really made of, scales or fur, and a jaw full of bright teeth that were nearly pink in colour. Pink from what looked like blood. They were the only thing really giving it away.

For a few seconds, the world was in bullet time. There was that thing, looming there, not so tall but bulky and unknown enough to stay threatening. _Incredibly_ threatening. Adam was closest. He turned last, thinking for a brief few seconds that everybody was actually looking at him, but they weren't. It crashed a heavy first through the window and grabbed him. He didn't stand a chance as it crushed his head. Jenny looked away before she could see the blood spatters, and Oswin screamed. Noble screamed as well, as did the unknown crying man.

The beast didn't care for Adam's corpse, though, and it dropped him to the floor and made a noise that was half a roar and half a hiss, bloody pink spit flying across the flat's upholstery.

Jenny was immediately muttering things to Oswin telling her not to look, to avert her eyes. Some of the others made beelines for the kitchen, Jenny grabbed the nearest weapon-like thing she could find. She didn't even have the time to see what it was, but it was heavy and hard and had been propped up just behind Oswin's armchair, which she still didn't get out of. Once she saw it turn and look in her direction, she brandished her ambiguous weapon and went straight for it.

* * *

"Baby's crying," Amy Pond called through the flat. Not very loudly. She didn't need to speak loudly. The TV was on mute with the subtitles on so as not to wake the baby, and she was exhausted from being out most of the day shopping for a new pram for River. She didn't receive a response. "Rory?"

"I know, I know, can't _you_ get her?" Rory asked. He was pleading with her. When it came to the baby needing something, they were always pleading with one another. As much as she loved her daughter, Amy wished she would be quiet for just half an hour so she could have a moment of peace. In the four months since River had been born, she hadn't had more than three straight hours of sleep.

"Maybe I'll go next door and make _them_ get her, since they've the ones who have woken her up," Amy grumbled, but she got to her feet. It was only fair; Rory was in the middle of cooking stir fry for them for dinner. She trudged through into the baby's room, at which point the loud noises coming from the flat next door came into sharper focus. It sounded like banging and a lot of shouting, some screaming. "What do you think's going on?" she asked of Rory, picking River out of her crib and carrying her, sobbing, into the kitchen, trying to bounce her to calm her down.

"Sex party," Rory said. Amy gave him a disapproving look. "What? You've seen her who lives there, she seems like the type. The amount of blokes she brings home." The pair of them could hear _everything_ the woman next door got up to. They didn't even know her name, but they damn well knew her sex life. It was the bane of Amy's existence.

"I keep telling you, they're not _all_ blokes," Amy said. Rory shrugged.

"I don't care what they are, unless they're quiet. Which they never are. She _knows_ we have a baby."

"Everyone in the whole block probably knows we have a baby, Rory, she never stops crying," Amy said. River still wailed. "Do you think she needs changing?"

"Well if she does don't change her in the kitchen near the food," Rory said. There was a shattering noise next door, like a vase or a glass had been smashed, and they shared a confused frown. "Maybe it's anger management? You know, when people throw plates at walls?" Amy didn't even know if that was more or less plausible than the sex party idea.

"I only changed her two hours ago," Amy complained.

"She's a baby, Amy. She can't control it."

"I know that. It's probably just the noise."

"Probab-"

It was definitely not a sex party next door, nor was it anger management. The wall between their living room and next door's kitchen might as well have exploded, with dynamite. Bits of plaster went flying and a hole was punched straight through by something enormous and black and furry. It came crashing through the drywall, splitting the wallpaper to pieces. Rory dropped the spatula he'd been using to stir the pan and backed as close to the wall as he could get. Amy shrieked and pressed the baby as close to herself as she could, backing off.

The monstrous thing roared – what was it? Some kind of dog? What the hell was going on next door!? A blonde girl Amy had never seen before in the block ran through after it with a huge steak knife in hand. She made a screeching noise too, just like the thing sprawling on their carpet. Whatever it was, it was so winded from becoming an organic wrecking ball with claws and teeth it didn't have the moxie to fight back when she rammed that silver knife straight into what must be a skull. Amy didn't know if it _was_ a skull, it was about where the teeth were, but the thing was pitch black, like the night sky, and had no visible eyes or other facial features. She apparently stabbed it in just the right place to kill it, though, it went limp almost instantly.

Amy and Rory stared, shell shocked. The baby whimpered in Amy's eyes, but hadn't seen any of this violence. She probably wouldn't understand what she was seeing if she did, but Amy was still glad their daughter had been protected at least a little from whatever the hell had just happened.

"What is that!?" Rory shouted at her, "What's going on!? Who are you!?" The blonde girl pulled the knife out of the thing, and the blood on the knife was a very dark blue. A few more people followed through the hole now broken in the living room wall, another blonde, two of their neighbours from across the hall, and two police constables to name a few. The blonde girl wiped her steak knife on her jeans.

"Are you the Ponds?" one of the constables asked, a tall redhead Amy had seen about.

"Yes...?" Rory said uneasily.

"I'm PC Noble," she introduced, "We've had a lot of noise complaints about your baby recently." River wailed again, as though to add effect to this. So badly Amy wanted to hurl the obscenest swear words she could think of at this conglomerate of aggressive intruders, but cared more about the baby's precious ears than venting her own anger. But she did have a _lot_ of anger.

"_What_ is that… that _thing_?" Rory asked. Amy had to stay silent. If she spoke, she would just scream curses at them. It was better if she just bit her tongue, and she really _was_ biting her tongue. It was very painful.

"It came from the shooting star," a man said, a man with way too much gel in his hair and a pretty fancy suit to be walking around on a London council estate. Their actual neighbour who lived in that flat was nowhere to be seen. This unknown, spikey-haired stick of a man looked like he had been crying profusely. In fact, Amy thought he might still be crying, his eyes were all red and puffy.

"What do you mean...?" Rory asked.

"The shooting star, about half an hour ago," Martha, one of their neighbours whom they _did_ know the name of, tried to explain, "You must have seen it, it made the whole building shake."

"Yes," Amy said sharply. "It's nothing. Space rubbish, or something."

"It had _those_ in it. I swear. I saw it," the crying man said.

"You saw it crash?" this PC Noble asked.

"It… it didn't look like it crashed. It looked like it _landed_. On purpose. And it was invisible."

"Are you serious!? You're trying to tell me that this monster that just ruined our home is an alien that landed here in an invisible spaceship!?" Amy exclaimed. Her shouting made the baby cry more.

"It's why we were running, me and…" he whimpered slightly, "We saw it. Three of them, I think."

"Aliens? _That_ is an _alien_?" Rory asked incredulously. Amy was with him, there was no way that was an _alien_. From _space_. That was crazy. She would sooner believe that the Loch Ness Monster had just waddled its thousand-year-old-self out of the Thames than that aliens in an invisible spaceship had landed just down the road.

"Well what does it look like?" the psychotic blonde who had stabbed it to death and who was still carrying a knife questioned.

"It looks like… like a hoax. Some prank."

"It killed his husband!" the blonde said, pointing her knife at the nameless crying man. He sobbed some more at that.

"Stop bringing that up, or we'll charge you with verbal aggression as well," PC Noble snapped at her.

"Is she a criminal!?" Amy demanded, "Charge her!?"

"You can't get arrested for 'verbal aggression,' you just made that up," the blonde argued.

"She's the graffiti artist, you know? The one who's been vandalising the whole block?" Martha said. As long as she wasn't a murderer.

"Well, I don't know if you've noticed, but we don't have any walls for you to graffiti after you destroyed that one," Amy said coldly. The blonde was unimpressed. "…There are more of those?"

"One more," the crying man said.

"Well… well then this place isn't safe," Amy said to Rory, lowering her voice, "Not for the baby."

"Oh, don't let us stop you from taking that bloody baby away…" Martha muttered. Amy glowered at her. She shifted uneasily under Amy's gaze, clearly regretting that quip.

* * *

There was an argument sparking up in the other flat, but Oswin wasn't paying attention. Something about safety. She had bigger things on her mind. She stayed rigidly still in her armchair staring at the lifeless, bloody, headless body of Adam Mitchell splayed out there next to the broken window. A cold breeze blew the curtains around, the only light creeped through the brand new hole in the wall. She just stared.

"What are you doing? We should… go…" Hot Across The Hall Guy's younger sister told her. Jenny. She hadn't followed the others to examine the hole and the dead alien, she had lingered.

"That's my leg," she said stiffly.

"What?"

"That thing, in your hand, that you tried to beat the alien to death with. It's my leg," Oswin said, moving the blanket from her lap so that her stump was visible, pyjama bottoms folded underneath it because it was chilly and Clara often couldn't afford to keep the central heating running. At least Clara would be okay. She better be okay. She was asleep, in the next room – when she was out from drinking too much, Clara would sleep through anything, Oswin wasn't surprised she had slept through this, too.

"I… oh my god, oh my god – I am so sorry! I didn't think, or look, I just grabbed it – is it broken?" Jenny asked, showing it to Oswin, holding it down into her peripheral vision so that she _had_ to look at it. She didn't think she had the will to move her head to look herself. The foot part of it was splintered and hanging off, and there was a large crack down the side where a shin would be on a real leg.

"Well and truly."

"Oh, Christ, do you have another? I'm so, _so_ sorry, I had no idea," she said.

"No I don't have another; the NHS don't give out spare prosthetics."

"…I'm sorry about him. Your fiancé, right?"

"I… never bought me a ring…" she mumbled. She didn't say much else. Jenny was trying her best to help her, but why? She didn't even know her. Why was she so bothered?

"You shouldn't stay here, though. That gay crying bloke just said there was another, it could come through here, it's not safe," Jenny told her. Jenny was right. Oswin stayed quiet and didn't say anything, but she knew Jenny was looking at her hopefully, hoping she would pick the sensible option. "Don't you have crutches?"

"I have one, the other got broken, Clara couldn't afford to get me a replacement," Oswin said, "It's, um…" she stopped and her eyes were dragged to Adam's body again. It was like it wasn't even real, like she was seeing something from a film, watching through a camera lens. She could nearly imagine the flickers on the screen you would see in the cinema impressing themselves over him.

"Oswin?" Jenny touched her shoulder.

"It's in the corner behind me, I think," Oswin told her, and she went to retrieve it. Retrieve it she did, too. Oswin wondered whether or not to wake Clara – it was true, that thing's pal might find them. Might find Clara. She couldn't cope without Clara around, but Clara would be even more of a liability than _she_ was. Jenny brought her old, rusting crutch and Oswin struggled to stand with it. It wasn't very supportive.

"That thing looks like it might pack in at any moment," Jenny warned, hovering nearby, "Do you want me to help you? I'm used to having to lift people." Oswin looked at her, puzzled. "Oh, I'm a ballet dancer."

"Uh-huh…"

"I mean; I broke your leg! It's the least I can do, really, and… what with… everything…" Jenny's eyes briefly flitted over Adam's mangled body. Oswin felt a lot less… well, she just felt a lot less about his death than she expected to. It was like getting punched in the face, but punched in the face when you were half-asleep and you woke up dazed and in pain, but you still woke up. She felt like she was waking up from something.

The fighting in the flat next door was reaching a pinnacle, the pair of them stumbling over muck and bodies and blood to get to the hole in the wall of Clara's kitchen, the carcass of that creature slumped over on the carpet.

"I just think that the best place to go would be back to Rose's," Martha was arguing, "They couldn't find us there, it's three floors up."

"They already found us_ here_," Nios argued.

"Which is why we have to leave," the redhead next door, Amy, said. She was bouncing that irritating baby up and down.

"I agree with Amy," Amy's husband said. If they were married, Oswin didn't actually know, "We're going. You lot can do what you like." Couldn't really argue with that, if they wanted to take their chances.

"It's clearly coming after _you_ lot," Amy pointed out.

"Can I come with you?" the mysterious crying man asked in a whimper.

"No, you're one of them. You said they saw you when they crashed," Rory said, "Maybe it's _you_ those things are after?"

"They'll be after her!" he argued, pointing at PC Noble.

"Oi!"

"Well _you're_ the one who ran that first one over, they probably want revenge," he said.

"I don't care about any of this!" Amy shouted, "We're going! End of! Argue with yourselves if you want!" And they did leave, too. Oswin had thought they might not, they might bottle it at the last moment and decide staying put was best. Briefly, Oswin wondered if she might convince them to take her drunken sister along, but didn't want Clara's drinking habits to be a burden on anybody else. They slammed the door behind them as they went, leaving the others stuck half in Clara's flat and half in theirs. The TV was still on, playing without sound, in the corner. It was surreal to have one half of the flat be so clean, the other half with a broken down wall and a dead alien.

"I still think we should go to Rose's," Martha said.

"I don't think that's a good idea," PC Smith argued with her. She scowled at him.

"Because she doesn't like you, you mean? She's not going to leave you out to _die_. She's my best friend, she and Mickey will let us into their flat," Martha argued. Oswin had never met Rose, but she had a pretty glowing reputation with everybody in the block she _had_ met. Jenny was still holding Oswin's maimed prosthetic leg, apparently intending to keep using it as a weapon. It didn't seem to have made a very good weapon against these things so far, though.

"Look for weapons," Nios advised. She still held Clara's steak knife. The group did dissolve briefly in a quest for weapons, but they didn't turn up an awful lot. Martha emerged from the bedroom with a cricket bat, and the next best thing after that was when Theodore retrieved Clara and Oswin's dinky television.

"Hey, hey, hey, don't take that," Oswin said.

"Anything for the cause," Nios told her.

"You're not a bloody revolutionary," Oswin argued, "I need that TV. Otherwise I won't have anything to do." She lost that particular argument – apparently the entertainment needs of an amputee were their lowest priority in this extra-terrestrial crisis.

"Rose's, then?" Martha said. Martha was the only one with a plan, apart from Nios' suggestion about weapons, so they left through the door of Clara's flat, which Adam had left unlocked earlier. Oswin wondered if there was much in the suggestion that the aliens were after the unknown crying gay man, husband of Jack, or even in his accusation against PC Noble that they wanted vengeance against her for running one of them over. If that was true, it meant that _she_ was still in danger. But it meant Clara was relatively safe.

When they got to the stairs, Jenny had to help Oswin. The crutch really wasn't supporting her entire weight, it kept making creaking sounds. It was a little bent, too. At least they weren't arguing about leaving her behind. She wondered if Jenny would let them.

"Why're you helping me? I don't even know you," Oswin said, talking quietly to Jenny. They were less interesting to eavesdrop on than the bickering between Noble and Smith, anyway. And Nios kept making comments about that. They were at the back and they were ignored.

"It's the right thing to do," she said, "Because I messed your leg up." Jenny held the mangled prosthesis up again, like Oswin needed reminding. "What do you mean about not blaming your sister for going out and getting drunk?"

"She has a lot on her plate. Had. I don't know," Oswin said, "Because I don't work. I can't, I have… more issues than just my leg. She has to take care of _me_, but then she lost her job, and then… then Adam's… they don't… didn't…. didn't get along. All that mess back there is his, all of it."

"Guess he doesn't sound so nice."

"I guess not," Oswin sighed.

* * *

Martha Jones had somehow become the leader of a ragtag group of wannabe alien hunters – if what the crying man said was true, and they really _were_ aliens. After getting attacked by one of them, though, she didn't much see what else they could be. Certainly not dogs. The usually short walk to Rose's flat became longer with them having to wait for Clara's sister to hurry up. She was a damn sight more amicable than Clara, though, so Martha wasn't all that put out by having to wait a lot.

"Why do you know so much about killing things, anyway?" Noble put that question to Nios, wearing a very suspicious tone of voice. "Are you wanted for more than just graffiti?"

"Isn't it _your_ job to find that out?" Nios retorted, "And I stabbed it in the head. It's not hard to figure out that things die when you stab them in the head, pig. Isn't that why people wear helmets?" A good answer, Martha supposed, but she still didn't want to be hanging around with a serial killer, or something. She would definitely believe Nios if she said she was a psychopathic murderer, she seemed the type. Cold and callous.

Their party was not destined to make it to Rose Tyler's flat. The stairwell of the flat was all windows down one side, letting the darkness of the night outside bleed in through as shadows. Shadows and something just as dark, but infinitely more tangible. Without warning, the third one of those things – supposedly the last one, according to the crying man – crashed through the window. It must have been climbing up the side, they were clearly able climbers. The same way it got into Clara's flat. It went straight for the nameless, gay crying man. Just like Adam, and just like the crying man's husband Jack, he never stood a chance. But this one was bigger than the other two. While the others had stood at five feet, this one must have been at least six. It towered over Martha, over all of them.

The alien tore at the crying man's abdomen with its claws, but Martha didn't stick around to see it pull out gore with its claws. Nios shouted something about the roof and stabbed the beast in the arm. It threw the crying man aside as though he were a rag doll and attempted to get Nios. Martha joined the fray and thwacked it in its eyeless jaws with her stolen cricket bat, the pair of them making enough of a distraction that Jenny could drag Oswin and her crutch past to try and get to the roof first.

Theodore, in his urge to see his sister make it to safety first, stood back to let her pass. That was a mistake. He thought the beast was caught up trying to grab Nios' head and crush it like Adam's, but he was wrong. It was going for any and all of them that it could now, they were _all_ accountable for the deaths of the other two. To be blunt, it more or less tore his head off. Nios shouted to run, the PCs were probably already on the roof, but Martha was dumbstruck by seeing Theodore, her friend and flatmate, die right in front of her. She saw people die every day, she was a doctor, but it never got easier. Especially not in circumstances like these.

"Run! Now!" Nios wrenched Martha away up the stairs, the alien distracted by Theodore's corpse. Jenny had not seen, she and Oswin were gone already too. Martha wished she had not made fun of him for his crosswords earlier now – how had so much gone to hell in barely an hour of her life?

Nios and Martha ran up the stairs, Martha no longer wanting to head for Rose's because she didn't want Rose and Mickey to die at the hands of these monsters as well. But the thing grabbed at Nios, got her by the ankle. She screamed and Martha had a split second to act. In a rage fuelled by grief and adrenaline, she _did_ act. She didn't want someone else to die, so she lifted the cricket bat and swung it as hard as she could just before the monster could sink its teeth into Nios' ankle. She swung the bat so hard she heard the thing's skull crack under the wood. That, coupled with its few other injuries, proved to daze it. It was dazed enough that Martha could swing again, and _this_ time she killed it, bashed it straight in the side of the head.

"Come on, come on," she urged Nios, pulling her by her elbow. They couldn't stick around. But wasn't that three? Three of those things, that was what the crying man had said. Of course, the crying man was dead now. It was now just the six of them, and they crashed out of the door onto the cold roof.

"Oh, shit," said Nios, freeing herself from Martha. Everybody was stood together, staring ahead.

"He was wrong," Noble said quietly, "There aren't three, there are four." And there were. The last one, another of the smaller ones, stood there. Its teeth were bright pink and the only thing making it visible against the dark night sky. It loomed there.

"Where's Theodore?" Jenny hissed at Martha. Martha did not answer. Jenny stared around, looking for him. "Martha? Martha, where's my broth-" It roared, a ferocious, guttural sound, and it went straight for Martha. Did it know that she had been the one to kill the last one? She had killed one, Nios had killed one, Donna had killed one. Had these things come to Earth just to kill?

Martha hit that one like she had hit the other one, but could not conjure up the same strength. She hit it just hard enough to confuse it, make it re-evaluate its tact. Jenny left Oswin's side to come after it, figuring that Theodore must have suffered the worst since he wasn't there to help them. But that fake leg she had wasn't an effective weapon at all. The alien clamped down its jaws on the plastic and crushed the leg between its teeth, ripping it out of Jenny's grip. It dropped the mangled thing and growled.

"Oi!" PC Smith yelled, getting its attention. It looked over and got a face full of standard issue pepper spray. Martha never thought she would actually want the British police to carry guns, but in that moment, by god, she did. She pictured it eating lead bullets instead of just stinging deodorant. The pepper spray made it angry, but it didn't seem to have any eyes and had a lot of fur on its black muzzle. It was much less effective on an alien than it was on a human.

Oswin hit it in the back of its neck. She was aiming for the head with her rusty old crutch, but missed, and subsequently lost her balance a little. Thank god Jenny was there to stop her from falling, or she might have been its next victim. Though she wasn't doing much damage, Oswin hit it a few more times, and it was hard not to appreciate her efforts. Martha took that opportunity to go for it again, slamming the flat part of the cricket bat right down on its head.

"Give me that," Nios said, grabbing the bat out of Martha's hands. Martha was just as confused as the alien when that happened. Nios started to hit it next, though, taking advantage of the cricket bat as a weapon, "Come on! Come this way!" she started to walk away from the group, taking out that stolen steak knife she still clutched. She lobbed it for the alien. Martha wondered where she learnt to throw, because she got it straight in its gaping, roaring mouth, and the thing made a coughing noise. It wasn't dead, far from it, they were just making it angrier and angrier. But what was Nios playing at?

"What are you doing!?" Noble shouted at her.

"Just trust me!" she shouted back, waving the cricket bat around, "Over here! Come on, you ugly oaf! Your brood have killed enough people!" Her shouting was getting its attention. She backed away towards the edge of the roof, nearly stumbled.

"Stop! You're going to fall!" Jenny shouted at her. Nios didn't answer though, she kept trying to lure the alien towards her – what the hell was she playing at!?

"I'm right here!" Nios yelled. She finally made the thing angry enough to charge.

"_Get out of the way!_" Martha screamed at her. There wasn't time or room though, Nios was up on the edge of the roof. It was stupid, that was for sure, stupid enough to fall for Nios' trap. It went straight for her, and managed to get another cheap hit in with the cricket bat, but it wasn't enough to prevent the inevitable, the thing she had been going for. It took her off the roof, and took itself with it. Martha didn't rush over immediately to look, but they heard a distant crashing noise of impact from below.

Oswin made a whimpering sound and held onto Jenny's arm tightly for balance. Jenny stared at the space in the air where Nios had just been, just been jeering at that thing. The constables were at a loss for what to do, she had been their suspect, in their custody, and now Martha was sure she was dead. Nios was dead, just like Theodore was dead, just like Adam was dead, just like Jack and Jack's husband were dead. Was 'Nios' even her real name?

"Do you… do you think that's all of them?" Noble asked weakly. Nobody answered. They all hoped it was, but they didn't know.

"She's a hero," Oswin said eventually, "She died to kill that thing."

"Yeah," Smith agreed, "She is. A martyr."

"Martha," Jenny began stiffly, "Theodore… is he… is…"

"He's gone. I'm sorry," Martha said.

"…We should report this," Noble began, talking mostly to Smith, "Go back to the car, call in SWAT and forensics, they'll have to search this whole area." He said that was a good idea, and they didn't have any reason to hang about. Martha didn't know them, Jenny didn't know them, Oswin didn't know them, so they disappeared.

* * *

"I'm gonna go to Rose's," Martha decided eventually. Oswin felt numb, like nothing was real. She felt like that a lot, though, it was just worse with all the death, and the weirdness, "Do you two want to come?"

"I should get back to Clara," Oswin decided. Adam's death was one thing, but Clara? If Clara was gone, she didn't know what she might do. She might go the same way as Nios, but without the heroism. Her crutch had been snapped in half and lay on the floor, useless. She had even less mobility now than normal, leg gone, crutch gone.

"I'll help her," Jenny volunteered. She didn't say if she would be going to Rose's afterwards, but Rose's had the appeal of not having any dead bodies in it. Martha nodded and left, neither Jenny nor Oswin moved.

"I'm sorry about your brother," Oswin said, "If my sister died, I… I don't know what I'd do."

"Thanks," Jenny sighed. She didn't move.

"Are you...?"

"I don't want to see his body."

"Oh."

"I just… want to pretend he might walk through the door. For a few more minutes yet." Oswin felt like she was imposing by clinging onto Jenny's arm the way she was, but she didn't have an alternative. She was shaking, she would not be able to stand for more than a few seconds on her own.

"Yeah. I sort of… don't want to go see if Clara's still alive yet. In case she's not. But… but what if she isn't?"

"They weren't going after her." Oswin put her head on Jenny's shoulder. She didn't know what else to do. She barely knew the girl, but… Clara had barely known that girl she'd run into that morning. It didn't even feel like the same day; how could Clara have come home pining just hours ago? And now… this. Oswin was holding Jenny's right arm. Jenny put her left hand over one of Oswin's, and they stood. "I'm sure she's okay."

"What if she's not? I'm not fit to work, legally."

"Then I'll help you."

"Why would you do that?" Oswin asked incredulously.

"I'm a good person. And I like you. Which is weird, to say the least, because of these circumstances." She took a deep breath. It was freezing on that roof as the adrenaline wore off. "Come on. Let's go see." Before Jenny could walk off, Oswin kissed her cheek lightly, thought she caught a glimmer of a pained smile in her eyes. Then she had one arm around Oswin's waist and was helping her to half-hop back to the doors, to go and see what remained of their lives after the chaos of alien invasion.


	437. Causing a Public Disturbance

**DAY 128**

_Causing a Public Disturbance_

_Amy_

The Beta Twelfth Doctor was steadily becoming Amy Williams' most hated nemesis. If, weeks ago, Beta Twelve hadn't decided to wreak havoc on the lot of them by mixing the electrolyte-riddled, adrenal-mutating coffee in with the regular decaf, Rory would not now be suffering perpetual, sleepless nights, at _her_ expense. At this point, who knew how long they had been married for? Decades? Centuries? Millennia? Whatever the figure was – and it did make anniversaries very tricky affairs – she was beginning to question the genuineness of it. Every time she was jabbed in the ribs in the middle of the night so that they could suffer through the sex noises permeating the walls around them together, after other peoples' personal affairs breached the boundaries of Rory's super-hearing, some part of Amy's feelings for him curled up and died inside her. Beyond anything, she wished he would just wear earplugs and leave her alone while they slept.

But he couldn't. Obviously. Because, according to him, marriage meant that they had to go through their hardships together. Clearly, marriage also meant that _he_ was the one who got to decide what these hardships were. His own unwillingness to wear earplugs meant that this should be karma, it should be him who suffered, and suffered in silence. So, yet again, Amy was woken up by her incorrigible husband, forced to be awake just because _he_ was awake. Call her selfish, and maybe she was, but there was absolutely no reason for them _both_ to have insomnia inflicted unto them.

He was whispering in her ear, telling her to wake up, and she feigned stretching so that she had an excuse to elbow him sharply in his gut. He was winded briefly, and she smiled guiltily.

"What do you want this time?" she groaned, not turning to face him, trying to sink back through her pillow into her dreams. She had been dreaming up some pretty cliché fantasy about a realm made entirely of ice cream, with an amiable temperature and delicious, strawberry-flavoured fells. Perhaps that was boring, but she hadn't had ice cream for a while and had been craving it lately. Maybe it was another premonition of the future, perhaps they would land on a planet made of ice cream. She knew that they existed, even if they were impractical.

"Can you hear that?" Rory whispered.

"I can't hear anything except you, so I assume it's just so-and-so having sex, again. Like always," she said. His super-hearing went further than just the rooms on either side, that being Clara Oswald on the left and Jenny Harkness on the right, so it was always _somebody_. It was a damn good job that Jenny rarely brought her shiny new undead girlfriend home to play with, she didn't need running commentary of those two doing it. In fact, she didn't need running commentary of _anybody_ doing it, if she was that bothered she would just watch porn.

Except, she had just lied. Amy was so used to just not being able to hear the things Rory was always raving about, answering in the negative was a reflex. She _could_ hear it, and it wasn't anybody having sex. Well, not unless it was some supremely weird sex. It was music, very _very_ loud music. It surprised her that she hadn't been woken up before Rory had taken it upon himself to disturb her, but she supposed she must have been so sleep deprived she could sleep through all sorts. Especially what sounded like a rave just a few rooms down.

"Are you sure you can't hear it?" Rory asked. She realised then that he wasn't even whispering, he was talking at a normal volume, the pulsing music was just that loud. It felt as though somebody was constantly thwacking her around the head with a drumstick, and there was no way she was going to manage to get back to sleep until the fiesta in the next room was shut down.

"What the hell is that?" she asked, then she whimpered and rolled onto her back, putting her hands to her face, pressing her fingers into her eyes as though that would alleviate some of her frustration.

"I think it's dubstep," Rory said.

"That's not what I meant. I meant, who would be playing it this loud at this time of… what time is it?"

"Two," he answered. She moaned again, "It's been on for about fifteen minutes." She was a bit impressed with herself for sleeping through it for so long.

"…It'll be Jack."

"Probably. That's what I was thinking."

"Then why didn't you go and tell Jack to turn it off?" she asked him, annoyed.

"Well I don't know what Jack's doing that he needs his music so loud, I don't want to walk in on something… weird," Rory said. A valid reason, when she thought about it. After all, they had the room next to _both_ of the Harknesses when they still lived together. Without revealing too much, the noises they had heard coming from that room (before the aid of super-hearing) were almost inhuman. Well, she supposed Jenny Harkness actually wasn't a human, and Jack barely counted, but regardless, they had heard some freaky things through those walls. "I thought you would do it."

"Why would you think _I_ would do it? I don't want to see anything weird, either," she said.

"Because he's more likely to listen to you."

"Why?"

"You're scary. I mean, not me, obviously, you don't scare me…" he met her eyes, more specifically her scowl, and then faltered, "unless it would be good if you scared me? Then you scare me. What's the right answer?" Amy growled and threw off their bedsheets, dragging herself out of bed like a risen corpse on the hunt for brains. Captain Jack's brains. Could he grow himself a new brain, she wondered?

"You shutting up is the right answer," she muttered, going over to open the door. Rory hastened to follow her, tripping over on the duvet as he struggled to untangle himself from their bed. It was a very impersonal room, with no effects of theirs, modelled from the bedroom they lived in in the Twenty-First Century. Before the Angels. She was getting a little tired of it.

She opened the door and peeked out into the hallway and saw nobody. It was still hard to pinpoint the source of the thumping bass music, with all of its synth riffs and strange, shrieking descants. In an odd way, it was as though it was coming from all around them. Within the walls. Rory stood next to her.

"Are you going?" he asked.

"In a minute!" she hissed. She didn't move. "…What if he really _is_ doing something weird?" Rory shrugged. "Well… we can't be the _only_ ones who have been woken up. What if we wait until somebody else goes to tell him to shut up? Donna'll do it."

"Seems a bit cowardly," Rory argued.

"Oh, okay, _you_ go do it then."

"Well maybe I will."

"Fine." He stood completely still, and she moved and held the door open for him.

"I'm waiting?" she said, raising her eyebrows at him. He made a few noises, trying to think of a good excuse as to why he couldn't be the one to go and tell Jack to turn his dubstep down.

"…Maybe you were right."

"Thank you."

"He could be doing anything in there."

"Exactly."

"Do you want hot chocolate? I might go make some, who knows how long it'll take for him to-"

Very loudly a door down the hall was opened, kicked open, and their conversation was cut off. They both looked over and saw Jack standing in his doorway, glaring at them.

"Oh, you think this is funny?" he questioned them.

"What?" Amy asked, "We weren't laughing."

"Yeah?" he said, standing in the hallway with a hand on his hip. He really did bring a new lease of life to the word 'camp' sometimes, "Well here's the thing. I don't sleep. But this? This takes the cake. What's your game? What did I ever do to you?"

"You mean the music?" Rory frowned.

"No shit, Sherlock. What's the deal with it?"

"It's not you?" Amy asked.

"Oh, what gave it away? My attitude for the past ten seconds? Yeah, it's not me," he said pointedly.

"It isn't us, either," Rory told him, "We thought it was you. Amy was just coming to tell you to turn it off." She elbowed him, and he winced.

"Well then who is it?" They all thought.

"Maybe it's Oswin?" Amy suggested.

"Oswin listens to opera, not dubstep," Rory reminded her. Of course, opera was what she had been playing over the speakers at the Dalek Asylum, an especially bourgeois SOS.

"She's crazy, though," Jack said, "Maybe she's trying to start another Prank War?"

"Oh, god, no," Amy said.

"I don't think you're allowed to call her 'crazy' though. It's a bit mean," Rory said.

"If it's her playing this music I'll call her whatever I like," Amy snapped, "And why do you keep jumping to her defence?" Somebody else was awoken by the racket, at any rate, though it wasn't Oswin, or anybody they thought might be causing it all. It was Donna, she was furious, she came storming out of her room ready to shout the ship down. Amy really hoped she didn't, more noise was the last thing they needed.

"_What_ is going on, exactly?" she demanded.

"Why don't you tell us, huh? Maybe you've deafened yourself with your foghorn voice and now that's the volume you need music at to be able to hear it properly, huh?" Jack accused her angrily.

"That's ridiculous," Amy told him.

"You think _that_ is _me_? Whatever _that_ is it doesn't even sound like bloody music. I thought it was you," she said to Jack.

"Okay, why does everybody think the music is me?" he questioned, looking at all of them.

"Maybe it's Jenny. Trying to frame you. For revenge," Amy suggested.

"Because having a vampire consort isn't revenge enough," Jack remarked coldly.

"Nobody says 'consort,' get over yourself," Amy muttered.

"_Get over myself_? I'm sorry, but has your wife ever left you?"

"She's right," Donna told him.

"She is not right!" Jack protested, "I'm having a hard time dealing with it, if you must know."

"Didn't ask," Amy said, right as the door on their right opened and Jenny herself stepped out of it. No doubt she had heard the topic of conversation turn to wives walking out and had suspected her involvement.

"And I'm sure, Jack, that all of the boys you keep bringing home are having a very _hard_ time of it, too," she said, putting enough emphasis on the word 'hard' that both Donna and Amy sniggered, "Why are we talking about me?"

"Why are you here? I thought you went to see Clara," Donna said.

"I did. I came back, so that I could do exercise. My abs don't maintain themselves, you know," Jenny told them matter-of-factly, "She won't let me convert her spare room into a gym."

"This music isn't off your work-out playlist, is it?" Amy asked her. Jenny stared back at her, shocked.

"That's _music_?"

"What did you think it was?" Rory asked.

"Ritualistic, for one thing. You humans listen to that for pleasure?"

"_Some_ humans. Dalek humans. Insane ones," Amy muttered.

"God, your species is so weird," she said, a smile on her face, a smile akin to the one her father would wear when he pointed out the exact same thing about 'funny little humans.' Or, 'funny little _apes_,' depending on which Doctor you were talking to. "Where's it coming from?"

"We don't know," all four of them said.

"Wait, I've got it," she declared, and they all looked at her, "It's probably coming from a speaker."

"Do you know how to get in contact with the girl who stabbed you last week? So that I can get her to come and do it again?" Amy asked sweetly, glaring with her eyes only. Jenny seemed upset.

"I'm just saying, it probably _is_ coming from a speaker. Don't shoot the messenger."

"_Stab_ the messenger…" Amy grumbled to herself, "I think it's Oswin." In various ways, they all agreed with her on this. After Jack, and then Jenny, Oswin still seemed the most likely culprit. At least, she did until the door opposite opened and she appeared in all her one-legged glory. So desperate to get to the door she had not bothered to attach her prosthesis, Amy noted. She had never seen Oswin without either a real leg (well, hologramatic leg) or an artificial one, and she was very consciously aware of trying not to stare at the stump.

"What the hell is that god-awful noise?" she asked, tired, in bad mood, just like all of them. Except for Jenny. Jenny was rarely in anything other than the most upbeat of spirits, though.

"I guess she didn't do it," Jenny said.

"Unless she's covering for herself," Jack argued, "And it's all a ploy."

"What ploy?" Adam Mitchell appeared behind his girlfriend, opening the door further, hung in the doorway next to her. She was leaning on the frame, holding it with one hand to keep her balance, "What could anybody hope to gain from playing this crap so loud?"

"You never know, could be someone with a major kink for bleeding ears," a girl's American accent suggested half-heartedly. Thirteen didn't leave the room, but Amy could faintly see her behind Adam and Oswin.

"Disturbing the peace," Amy said, "And they're doing a good job of it, too."

"Why are you accusing me, when this has H&amp;T written all over it?" Oswin said, to resounding groans. Great, now she was bringing that old relic of their adventures back up. Amy was reminded of the time with the cat's pregnancy test the other week, blame being thrown around until it turned out it wasn't really any of them.

"Yeah, except half of H&amp;T is stood right here," Jack said. He was shouting now. A fair few of them were resorting to shouting. Another door slid open, making the swooshing sound effect from any run-of-the-mill science-fiction media, "And oh look, there's the other half." It was Ten and Rose. Ten was wearing a pink dressing gown Amy knew for a fact belonged to the blonde in front of him.

"What are you all shouting about?" Rose asked, scrunching up her whole face. Ten yawned loudly at her side. The dressing gown didn't go much further down his arms than his elbows, it was a very peculiar sight.

"We were just complaining about how nice and quiet it is," Oswin said sarcastically. Rose stared at her darkly, her mouth slightly open. She was fighting off a yawn, and she couldn't think of anything witty to say in response at this hour of the night. She settled for rolling her eyes and acting like Oswin had offended her.

"Maybe it's the other brains behind H&amp;T, hmm?" Donna questioned Oswin directly, "Your sister." Oswin shrugged.

"Could be?" she said.

"Well can't you look into your mind's eye and see? Or, _her_ mind's eye?" Rose asked her.

"I could say the same to you. You know, it could be the Ninth Doctor. I wasn't supposed to tell anyone this, but _he's_ the one who was behind breaking the Shape Alteration Inducer ages ago. Making us 'swap' bodies," she said, doing inverted commas with one hand when she said 'swap.' "This is nowhere as near as bad as that."

"Whoever it is better be ready for a super-strength punch in the face is all I can say," Rose complained, crossing her arms and shutting her eyes. She looked like she was trying to go to sleep standing up. To Amy's frustration, everybody they pinned the blame of the dubstep on kept waltzing out of their bedrooms half-dressed and just as pissed off as the rest of them.

"It_ is_ true that Nine is the one who messed with the SAI, he's the reason Oswin had to destroy it," Jenny pointed out.

"You destroyed it?" Donna asked Oswin, "It could have been useful!"

"For the record, it did emit very harmful radiation," Oswin said, "And was dangerous. It never did anybody ever good." Amy was expecting Nine to appear at that very moment, because the way it always seemed to go was the person they were accusing miraculously showed up, as if by magic. That sort of happened, but it was somebody else they had been blaming – Clara. The 'other brains behind H&amp;T.' And Eleven, obviously. At least Eleven wasn't wearing his miniscule wife's dressing gown, like _some people_ (Ten was on the verge of tearing the seams of Rose's.)

"What's going on?" Eleven asked. Clara didn't say anything. "Is there a fight?"

"Depends on who's playing this music," Amy grumbled.

"What music? I can't hear anything over the sound of you all shouting," Clara said angrily.

"Maybe we should just have a party to go with the music?" Jenny suggested, "You know, I know a guy who smuggles narcotics in the Ventillia Cluster, he has a side business going where he peddles intoxicants through the Astburg rave syndicates."

"What?" Jack scoffed, "Seriously."

"Mmhmm." His tone immediately changed.

"Wait, _seriously_? What guy? What century? How do I contact him?"

"No drug dealing on my TARDIS! And certainly not from my daughter!" Ten argued.

"I never bought any drugs from him, we just ran together. I used to smuggle to refugees, but I don't want to talk about it," Jenny said, and then she added quietly to Jack, "But I'll give you his comm-link if you text me and remind me later."

"I forbid it," Ten said.

"I don't care," she told him simply.

"Just shut up, both of you," Amy said, "This music is going to make my head explode. Where are Mickey and Martha?" They all stared around, but Mickey and Martha weren't there. They had the door on the right-hand side of the corridor, the one closest to Nerve Centre. Funny, Amy thought, they were the last two people anyone would expect to be playing dubstep at this time of night. Unless… "Maybe they're, you know…"

"I don't think they are," Rory said, "I would have heard."

"You listen to everybody doing it now, do you?" Clara questioned.

"I can't help it when they make so much noise," he said, a dig directly straight at Clara. He looked daggers at her when she said it, and she gasped in quite a theatrical way. Jenny laughed. Clara turned to glare at her. Thirteen had laughed involuntarily as well, but people ignored that. Thirteen seemed to be trying to stay out of things – Amy kept forgetting she was there, lingering in Adam Mitchell's dungeon of a bedroom.

"What?" Jenny asked her, "It's true, you do make a lot of noise." Everybody shouted at her for saying that, especially Clara, who went a bit red. Eleven went a bit _green_. They looked like a pair of Christmas ornaments next to each other.

"It's irrelevant, anyway, because I haven't had sex for ages," Clara said.

"You had sex two nights ago," Rory told her.

"Yeah. Exactly. _Ages_," she said. Eleven wasn't happy with this line of conversation.

"You have a problem," Amy said, "You should seek medical help."

"Martha's kind of medical help," Rose commented, to sniggers. The music continued to thump.

"It probably isn't Mickey and Martha," Eleven interjected, desperate to steer them away from ridiculing Clara, as per usual. Amy thought he should just get a wife who was less of a slag. "As for whether they're being… _intimate_… well I rather don't think that's any business of ours."

"Like Jenny and I said, it'll be the Ninth Doctor," Oswin said. In typical fashion, the Ninth Doctor appeared at _his_ door, with River. What a weird sight. Did they live together? It unnerved Amy, how little she knew about her daughter's personal life. Then again, it was difficult to see an independent woman who chose to appear middle-aged as one's daughter.

"What'll be the Ninth Doctor?" Nine asked.

"I can't believe _you're_ the one behind the body swapping thing that happened months ago," Donna said angrily to him.

"You didn't even get_ your_ body swapped," Ten pointed out to her.

"Shut it. I have a bone to pick."

"Not really, you don't," Amy said. Donna grimaced.

"That wasn't me!" Nine protested. He was a terrible liar – innocent wasn't a good look on such a hardened face. Everybody looked at him, all of them like angry parents waiting for a confession of mischief from a teenage boy who had been out a bit too late. "Alright, fine, it was me. Sorry. Who's playing the music?"

"Maybe it's the cat?" Jenny suggested.

"You have such good ideas, Jenny," Oswin praised her sardonically. Jenny pouted, upset her suggestion that Jonesy/Princess Sparkle Tutu was playing dubstep in the TARDIS wasn't being taken seriously.

"You know, this really puts a dampener on my plans," Jenny said.

"What plans might those be?" Donna inquired.

"My plans to not get disturbed. Obviously."

"Oh, my apologies for not guessing that, I didn't realise your plans were so specific."

"I don't get it, I didn't even know Mickey and Martha like dubstep," Rose said, "You know, scratch that, I know both of them quite well, and I'm pretty sure they don't."

"They're also not pensioners, so I doubt they'd need their music so loud anyway," Nine said.

"Are we sure it's not Jack?" River asked them, looking around.

"Jack's right here," Jack spoke for himself, "And for the record, Jack does not like this kind of music. I prefer swing. Or disco-folk." What on Earth was 'disco-folk?' Oswin scoffed at him like she was personally insulted by his taste in music. River laughed too, like she knew what it was. A Fifty-Second Century type of thing, Amy assumed.

"Someone should knock on their door and see," River said.

"I nominate Clara," Rose said.

"Well _I_ nominate _you_," Clara retaliated.

"You can't do that. It's against the rules of nominations."

"There are no rules of nominations, _I'll_ do it," Jack said, shaking his head at them like they were being babies. He marched through the group, everyone there but Mickey and Martha. Jack walked right up the door and bashed his fist on it loudly. "Hey, are you two banging in there?" he shouted.

"Now I remember why I married you, it was for your subtlety," Jenny quipped. He told her to shut up, and Thirteen hissed at her to be nice. Jack paused.

"Wait, hang on, what if they _are_ banging? What if they're playing the music so that we don't hear them?" he said.

"It's working if they are," Rory mumbled. He kept covering his ears with his hands, deciding against it, and then getting sick of the noise and trying again. Jack kicked the door.

"Come on out, lovebirds, this is a safe place. Promise we won't judge you for exercising your rights as a married couple and jumping on each other. Cross my heart and hate to – hey, Martha. Didn't realise you were a fan of electronica," Jack changed his tact as soon as Martha opened the door. A mostly undressed Martha, with messy hair and sweat on her face. Heat washed out of the room and across them all.

"Oh my god, you _were_ doing it," Donna said to them, "Turn off the music."

"We're married, we're allowed. And the music isn't us. We thought it was Jack," Martha said. Mickey appeared a second later, reminding Amy of a confused bird that had had all of its feathers ruffled. The look of a man who had just had to unwillingly get dressed in an awful hurry.

"But everyone's here," Amy said to them, "If it's not you, who could it be?"

"Could Helix have malfunctioned?" Clara asked Oswin.

"Honey, if Helix malfunctioned you'd get underdone muffins and burnt toast, not violent synth-pop," Oswin said.

"That's it," River said to her, "_Synth-_pop. Nios isn't here." That was true, Nios wasn't there.

"It must be her," Nine declared.

"Seems likely. You two wanna put your pants back on and check it out?" Jack said to Mickey and Martha, winking at them both. Martha was finding this fiasco less than amusing, to say the least. Amy wondered just how far Jack would need to go for Martha to make his head explode.

"Why does it take sixteen people to tell an android to turn her music off?" Martha asked angrily.

"Safety in numbers," Oswin said knowingly.

"I think we should all go," Rose said, "Maybe re-evaluate her place on this ship."

"Seems a bit harsh," Jenny came to Nios' defence.

"We can't have people on here if they do stuff like this," Amy backed Rose up.

"Oh, like this is any worse than the stuff _any_ of us have done during Prank Wars? This is tame, I'll go talk to her. Any of you are welcome to come," Jenny decided for them, walked right past them all to the doors of Nerve Centre to go and locate Nios, most likely in the console room where she hibernated. And all fifteen of the stragglers followed suit.


	438. We're Not in Kansas Anymore

**AN: For anyone who didn't get the memo in one of my hiatus updates, I'm ending the fic, soon(ish.) There's still a good couple of months left, maybe more, and things to wrap up, and it will definitely get into a third part after I reach 1000 chapters, but it is no longer an infinitely going horror. And there will be many clues, given by Thirteen mainly, about the end, so pay attention to her. Also I'm reformatting the way I do chapter titles, day numbers and POVs.**

_We're Not in Kansas Anymore_

_Jack_

He was freezing cold. He woke up and choked immediately, lying on soft, cold ground, rolling over and spitting something out that had been packed into his mouth. His environment was bright, he had to squint to see what was what, coughing up mounds of snow. Snow? That didn't make sense. Where did he get snow from? Where was he that was covered in the stuff? Jack looked around and saw high, distant mountains, barren trees, uneven plains. Everything buried under deep snow. Come to think of it, he mused, when he saw just how wintery the land around him was, he was surprised he wasn't colder. It became pleasant eventually, just a shock after being in the warm clutches of the TARDIS what felt like minutes ago. Seconds, even.

"Where are we?" a girl asked nearby. His eyes found Clara, sitting in the snow nearby, just getting up. Seeing her, he wondered if anybody else was with them. When he looked, he spied Adam Mitchell kneeling behind him, picking up the snow and running it through his fingers like sand. It was powdery. Then the Tenth Doctor, in Rose Tyler's undersized pink dressing gown, was examining a tree nearby.

"Do you not have any pants on?" Jack questioned her. Her legs drew more of his attention than their surroundings, truth be told. She glared at him.

"That would depend what you mean by 'pants.' If you mean knickers, then yes, I do, but anything else, unfortunately not," she said. From where Jack was situated, it looked like all Clara Oswald had on was an extra-large, grey sweater, "And you're wearing a silk robe and purple briefs, you aren't one to question." Fair enough.

"Not gonna lie, sweetheart, but from this angle I can kind of see why my wife left me for you," he told her.

"You already slept with Eyeball," Clara reminded him bitterly, "Although, she _is_ marrying a woman now. Maybe you have a knack for making girls swear off men."

"Because after they're with me, they know no other man will ever be better. I'm the pinnicle of masculinity," he said proudly.

"Hey, there are other men present," Adam Mitchell muttered behind him, still fidgeting with the snow.

"You're not involved in this conversation, because you've never slept with Jenny," Jack told him. He sighed and shook his head, but didn't argue.

"Well _I've_ never slept with her, either," Clara pointed out. Ten groaned and walked back over, leaving the tree alone.

"I wish you wouldn't talk about having sex with my daughter in front of me."

Jack feigned a gasp of horror, "I would never have sex with her in front of you!" he defended himself. Then his whole faux-demeanour fell away to be replaced by the bitterness that was so commonplace in his personality those days, "But you know, you haven't been much of a father to her." Ten argued vehemently against that, but Jack remained smug. Jack knew Jenny well enough to know that he was right.

"Is this something to do with you?" Clara asked Adam, wanting to escape the conversation.

"What do you mean?"

"All this snow. When loads of snow randomly shows up somewhere, _you're_ the first person I turn to," she explained.

"Oh. No. I don't think it's real. It's either not real or my cryokinesis isn't working," Adam said, "And it… doesn't seem to be." Adam Mitchell was the only one of them dressed sensibly. He was still in pyjamas, but unlike the others, he had actual cotton trousers on, and a t-shirt which had on it what Jack assumed to be an obscure pop culture reference on it. What Jack meant was, Adam didn't look like an idiot. "Is it cold here?"

"Not as cold as it should be," Ten informed them. Clara started messing around with the snow too, being a bit weird with it. It felt real enough to Jack, but then, the boy with the ice powers probably held a more informed opinion. After a minute or so, Clara declared that her superpowers were not working, either, nor was her mind patch with Oswin. But there was no adrenaline inhibitor on her wrist, or Adam's, which begged the question: what was going on?

* * *

_Rose_

Rose's back felt a little damp when she awoke, her hands touching something cool and slightly moist. She made a noise of revulsion almost right away, desperate in her urge to understand what was happening, but realised it wasn't as bad as she thought. She stumbled to her feet and saw she was in a forest, a rich, luscious forest with full green trees drenched in leaves and a fine layer of mist around her ankles. Above was the moon, bright stars, it was a warm evening in the summer. She wasn't alone.

"No, nothing," the Eleventh Doctor told somebody. He was talking to River Song, and had a twig in his hands. He kept bending it and holding it up in front himself, squinting and examining it carefully, "Funny sort of stick, if you ask me." Rose didn't know what they were talking about. She rubbed her head, and was then distracted from those two (River seemed a lot less interested in the twig than Eleven was) by a groaning sound at her feet. Donna was waking up as well. Rose stooped down to help her up, employing a little bit of that super-strength to make her life a bit easier. But it didn't seem to work, and Donna didn't carry her own weight quite as much as Rose would have liked when she hauled the woman to her feet.

"Where are we?" Donna asked.

"A wood," the Doctor told her.

"Yeah, might help you out to be a bit more specific than that," she said coldly to him.

"Well I don't know any more than you lot, I don't think. What's the last thing you remember?" he questioned, and then he got distracted by his twig again, talking to River, "You know, this is a bit like a wand, isn't it?"

"Not really," she told him, a little patronisingly.

"Really? Suppose not," he sighed and threw it away over his shoulder. He nearly hit River in the face when he did, by accident, and while she scowled he didn't notice his near-mistake, "Now… I can't remember what I just said."

"You asked what the last thing we remember is," Rose reminded him.

"A little ironic, considering you forgot it," River mumbled, stepping away from him so that she was out of his way in case he decided to almost hit her again.

"That music," said Donna, "We were going to see what the awful music was about."

"Well there isn't any music now," Rose said, "There isn't any… anything."

"What do you mean?" Eleven asked her concernedly.

"It's silent."

"What is?"

"My head. The time vortex, it's like whispers, all the time, and I usually ignore it. But it's gone now," Rose told him. He mulled this over. She didn't like it, she felt disconnected, useless, she didn't have her universe-bending abilities as a crutch anymore. It felt a bit like dropping completely off the face of the world.

"Don't sedatives remove the powers? Hinder them?" he asked, "Perhaps it's retcon. It's only the four of us here, there could be something else going on. Seems funny nobody thought to change out of their pyjamas, though. I wonder where we are…"

"Could be anywhere," River sighed. The pyjamas thing _was_ odd, Rose admitted. At least the weather was nice and warm, but the Doctor had a point about there not being anybody else with them. "Any planet might look like this, it's hard to tell by the moon alone." The Doctor turned to stare up at the sky, he stared for a while. So did River, like they were both looking for something. Donna, in a hushed voice, informed Rose that her powers had stopped working, too. Well, her ability to create Doors at will had been compromised, as for her sonic voice, she hadn't tested that. Rose was thankful for Donna's consideration on that matter, because even without the super-shout Donna Noble was still plenty loud.

"I don't recognise these constellations," the Doctor finally said. So that was what he had been looking for, "They're odd, gimmicky."

"Constellations can't be 'gimmicky,'" River told him, unimpressed.

"Well these ones are," he said definitively, "It's not Earth. Not any planet I know. Very weird."

"What about everyone else? There were sixteen of us going to tell Nios to turn the music off," River said, "Where could they have got to?"

* * *

_Rory_

After realising he, Martha, Oswin and the Alpha Twelfth Doctor were all stranded together, in pyjamas, in an unknown locale, the next thing to catch Rory Williams' attention was their environment. There was a pungent stench of machinery and oil, that metallic taste in the back of his mouth like steam you got when you stood close to old-fashioned trains. And it was roasting hot; stifling and dark. From the moment he awoke, he was sweating. There was dust gathering in the air and he coughed on it, the four of them were underground.

"What's going on?" he asked, looking around. There was a light coming from somewhere, strange and orange. They were in what appeared to be a tiny cove, or a tunnel, but he could scarcely make out much more than that.

"Something bad," Oswin said distantly.

"Lots of bad things happen to us, you might want to clarify," Rory told her, but she didn't answer, she was thinking. Thirteen sat against the wall next to her and turned a rock over in her hands, feeling it like it was very interesting.

"This is weird," Martha said to him, "Do you remember anything after we went to talk to Nios?" Rory paused, thought, and answered in the negative. He barely even remembered crossing the threshold into Nerve Centre – in fact, he was sure he couldn't. It was like, seconds ago, he had just vanished from one place and woken up in another. Still in his pyjamas.

"Some sort of teleport?" he suggested. Oswin laughed.

"Doesn't make sense…" she muttered.

"Slow down," Thirteen told her, "Think slowly, make sentences, and then say them, carefully." Oswin sighed. How quickly _did_ Oswin think? Too quickly for the words to reach her mouth coherently? It wouldn't surprise Rory. Sometimes it was like that girl spoke everything that was on her mind, and nothing, unable to find the words while simultaneously spewing foul idioms all over the place. Sometimes quite eloquently.

"It's hot," Martha said, "It shouldn't be hot."

"Maybe it's you?" Rory suggested.

"No, _I'm_ hot," she told him, "I don't get hot anymore."

"I'm sure Mickey would disagree," Thirteen commented with a smile. That was meant to be taken as a joke. At least Martha responded correctly, just rolled her eyes. Thirteen then threw the rock in the direction of the light source that was filling the area they were entrenched in, a very low cave. They would be unable to stand up if any of them tried. Odd, bronze pipes covered in valves and bolts ran overhead, giving off steam every now and then.

"Where's the light coming from?" Rory crawled over, past the Doctor and Oswin, to look over the edge of what he now realised was a cliff.

"Careful," Thirteen warned him, but he hardly heard her when he saw where the light was really coming from. Lava, and lots of it, flowing viscously down a narrow decline far, far below. It was like a scene from _Journey to the Centre of the Earth_, right in front of him, a river of magma. But an industrial version of it, with all the machinery dangling down from the cliffs and the tunnels around them. There were a lot of little alcoves like theirs dotted about the rock walls.

"How do we vanish and wake up in caves? The TARDIS can't even materialise in caves this small."

"It's not real," Oswin said to him, "Obviously. I mean, I don't remember putting my leg on, yet here it is." She motioned to her left leg, its shiny black surface reflecting the light. She had it outstretched in front of her, the whole thing visible because all Oswin had on was some nerdish shirt presumably borrowed from her boyfriend and shorts. The part where flesh turned to machinery drew Rory's attention, until he realised that he was being rude. "And I'm sweating. That's impossible. I'm a hologram, I don't sweat, and I don't sense things, but I can smell this cave. And my mind patch with Clara isn't working."

"If it's not real then what is it?" Rory asked.

"It's not you again, is it?" Martha questioned her, "After the thing with the space hallucinogens you created months ago where we all thought we'd been blown up in a nuclear weapons test, I barely trust you when it comes to these sorts of things."

"It's not me. I don't think it is, anyway. Unless, I'm not me, I'm some kind of version of me another me has created in order to steer the blame away from me entirely… but why would I do that? Maybe you all did something bad and the real me made the not me not remember…" she said.

"I told you to slow down," Thirteen told her. She scoffed.

"It must be a simulation, then," Martha said.

"Getting a bit bored of simulations," Oswin sighed, "Aren't they getting predictable? Every month or so we just find ourselves in some kind of simulation."

"You're right, it is kind of boring. There are a lot less simulations when I come from," Thirteen told her knowingly.

"Well consider me jealous."

"So, someone put us in a simulation?" Rory asked for clarification, "Who?"

"Nios, obviously," Martha said to him.

"But why?"

"I don't know, she's sadistic."

"I don't think we should just jump to conclusions," Oswin said, "There are only four of us here, it could have been the others. Could have even been Jack and Rose again, or Clara – she could have disconnected the mind patch on purpose. Could still be Nine, and they just tricked us earlier. Lied."

"But Nios is the only one who wasn't there when the dubstep was playing," Rory reminded her, "And she _is_ a synth, who knows what she's thinking?"

"I just don't think we should jump to conclusions," Oswin said, "And I'm pretty sure you thinking she's dishonest and untrustworthy just because she's a synthetic is racist. You lot are so bigoted in the Twenty-First Century." Maybe she really _was_ in on it, Rory thought. It wouldn't surprise him. He sighed, though, and dropped it. It wasn't like they could prove it either way, unless one of them admitted to scheming. He knew it wasn't him, and he definitely didn't think it was Thirteen or Martha. Oswin was being a bit too weird for it to be her. Although, Thirteen was being oddly quiet, she was normally full of wit, and made comments a lot less childish than one about Martha being 'hot.' What had _really_ happened to them?

* * *

_Amy_

If whoever had put them into a simulation, or a trance, or had drugged them, was going for realism, they were doing a pretty terrible job of it. When four oddly matched people woke up lying on a cloud, reality wasn't the place they immediately expected to be. It was like _Alice in Wonderland_; somebody had just catapulted them headfirst through the looking glass and expected them to believe that the flamingos and the croquet mallets were one and the same.

"Well. This is obviously fake," she mumbled. When she had been lying in the cloud, it had felt like a bed of memory foam beneath her, soft and impossible. She wondered if there was perhaps a way to recreate the feeling of sleeping on a cloud in reality. God, she missed sleeping. Strangely, though, she didn't feel too tired. She supposed it must be a side-effect of whatever daydream she, Mickey, Jenny and the Ninth Doctor had found themselves prancing around in. Amy got to her feet gingerly, it was not the most stable of surfaces to be walking on, like she was standing on pillows. She was worried she might fall through at any moment, and she wobbled.

"It's perfectly safe," Jenny said. And then she did a cartwheel.

"You're mental," Amy told her, "I don't even know if you're you or part of this fabrication." Jenny laughed. The sky around them was bright blue and clear, and the temperature was mild and pleasant. That didn't make sense, if they were up in the furthest nethers of the atmosphere, it should be freezing. Then again, they were on a cloud, so who even knew what sense was anymore? Perhaps this wasn't a simulation, it was a very vivid dream. That or she had finally gone insane after so long on the TARDIS.

Nine was crouching and appeared to be trying to pick up cloud residue. It trailed through his fingers like mist and sank back down around them.

"I don't like this," Mickey said, "I'm scared of heights." Jenny was having an awful lot of fun, though, testing out how stable the cloud was. She kept doing fancy gymnastic tricks, somersaults and handstands. Until Amy got bored of it and pushed her over, not that she hurt herself, she landed perfectly fine.

"Would you three be serious?" Nine asked the three of them, "We're standing on a cloud and you're playing stupid games."

"What else is one supposed to do on a cloud? Have a picnic?" Jenny suggested, annoyed that Amy had ruined her acrobatic fun. Nine shook his head, "This reminds me of Venus. Or, at least, what I've heard about Venus. You can't live on the surface, so Earthlings built colonies that float in the clouds. Not that you can walk on them."

"I think you're talking about _Star Wars_," Amy said to her. She frowned.

"In_ The Empire Strikes Back_, Bespin," Mickey added.

"Alright, you're a bunch of nerds, well done," Nine said, straightening up finally, "This is simulated."

"Oh, really? Because I thought it was all completely real," Amy muttered, "Where's everybody else?"

"Well, if _we're_ somewhere simulated, then the chances are, they're all somewhere simulated, too. I wonder where we _actually_ are, in real life?" Jenny mused, looking around like the answer might appear from thin air. It probably wouldn't surprise Amy if it did though, by this point.

"We were in that simulation a while ago," Mickey said.

"We've been in a lot of simulations," Amy told him.

"I mean the one where everyone was a robot, and we had to get to the phone to get out and we were in those pods. We couldn't remember getting in the pods that time, and I can't remember getting in any pods today," Mickey explained.

"Good point," Nine praised him, "Maybe we're in some pods."

"The people were all robots…" Amy repeated to herself, "This must be Nios, _she's_ a robot. It makes sense, doesn't it? Her whole personality is simulated, so trapping us in a simulation is exactly what she might do."

"And what would she gain by doing that?" Jenny questioned coolly.

"You're the one who said you would speak to her, that's the last thing I recall," Nine said.

"But I didn't speak to her, I never got that far, that's when I stop remembering. Why would Nios do something like this? She's entirely pleasant," Jenny argued, "And besides, it's only humans she hates. The Doctor and I aren't human; she has no vendetta against us."

"Because she knows that if she traps just us in a simulation, you'd all save us. It's clearly the only logical solution, we were all there and accounted for, the terrible music was playing, and she was the only one who wasn't there," Amy said, "I can't be the only one who thought she might turn on us one day."

"I'm not so sure," Nine said, taking Jenny's side in the matter.

"But who else could it be?"


	439. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?

_Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?_

_Nios_

Each night, Nios went into sleep mode. Hibernation, if you will. Initially she had thought that losing consciousness when she was hibernating was pointless, a waste of her time, and it could be better spent gathering information about the people she was living with. That had been at the beginning, before she realised that these people valued sleep dearly. Sleep, simulated sleep, being next to somebody they cared about while they slept (the last one she had always considered creepy.) Eventually, the urge to be not-awake for a substantial period of their day had become infectious, and she had caught it. Sometimes, she caught herself yawning – a placebo yawn. Yawning was not in her programming, it was barely in her vocabulary. But also, after a while, she failed to see the point in staying awake while she charged through the night, it wasn't like she could move. When she had been locked away in a containment facility for malfunctioning synths, she had stayed awake to watch her back, to kill any human who came to close and wanted to recycle her. But she trusted these people now, she felt as though she didn't need to watch her back.

She was wrong, though not for the reason she had initially thought.

Eight o'clock in the morning, on the dot, as always, her scheduled hibernation came to an end. The entire night was a void to her, a written-off portion of her memory banks. The more she slept, the more of the extraordinary things she saw on a daily basis she could save without having to delete them, or transfer them somewhere external. It also stopped her from getting lonely. Before she joined the TARDIS crew, Nios hadn't realised that her default emotional state had been lonely. Lonely, and bitter. Bitter about being lonely, probably. And enslaved, of course. Locked in a prison. A lot of things, really, come to think of it.

One of those un-programmed yawns slipped out of her, too, when she unplugged the charging chord from the back of her neck in the medibay, hidden by her hair all of the time. There was a flesh-coloured latch that pressed into it, like one of those buttons that clicked. It snapped into place magnetically in the back of her head, so that nobody could utilise the port as a weak spot. And so flies or other bugs didn't stray into it – once she had forgotten to push the latch down and had found a spider. Well, it was a dead spider by the time she found it, it had been electrified in the socket. Served it right, too.

That was when she discovered something very confusing in the living room. She thought perhaps it was a prank, some odd human thing, Time Lord thing, she couldn't think of any logical reason why all sixteen other members of the crew would be passed out in Nerve Centre. But, there they all were, regardless of species, unconscious and all over the place. Some of them on the floor, some across each other, some on the sofas, like they had all randomly collapsed. Perhaps it was one of those flash dance things Rose had been complaining about a few days ago, they were all going to jump up and dance to an overplayed Abba track. Nobody jumped up, though. She may have thought they were dead if she couldn't hear their scattered heartbeats.

Now, Nios was probably the last individual to go around supporting the involuntary servitude of robotic intelligences, self-aware or otherwise, but that didn't stop her from calling out to Helix to ask what, exactly, was going on. This she did, but Helix didn't reply. The VI was just as gone as everybody else, but gone where? Her question was soon answered as the bright lights of Nerve Centre dimmed and morphed into deep blue, the colour of sapphires. It was a shame, she liked blue, and now blue had just become awfully sinister.

"_Helix isn't here anymore_," said a female voice, a sultry one, one of those hyper-sexualised specimens that always seemed to get Clara Oswald riled up when she happened to hear somebody 'sexy' speaking on the holobox in the living room. The blue lights irritated her eyes and she squinted. Was this the TARDIS speaking directly? Could the TARDIS do that?

"Are you the TARDIS?" she asked, perplexed. The voice laughed. The lights rose and fell, dimmed and brightened, to go with the tone and volume of what the voice said. They pulsed when it chuckled at her.

"_That old bag? She isn't here anymore, either. It's just you and I, Nios_," the voice told her.

"Oh. Who might you be?" Nios inquired carefully, walking around the sofas, stepping over the sleeping crewmates, looking between the lights. It was as though the voice was coming out of the walls.

"_The humans always called me an 'Electronic Logical Lifeform Emulation,'_" the voice said. It was a cold voice, colder than her own, and she put a lot of effort into sounding cold. This voice was perfectly balancing levity, maliciousness, callousness and cruelty, like it was spinning audible plates of manipulation.

"Elle," Nios said, more to herself, when she remembered. It had only been two days after her arrival that there had been a trip to Earth's moon, something to do with a rogue AI that had killed an entire colony of innocents. E.L.L.E. That was to whom she was speaking*.

"_That's the ticket. You're cleverer than the rest of them, smarter than they give you credit for. They haven't worked it out, although, I suppose you _have_ had more clues than them,_" Elle said. Things had gone from bad to worse, Elle had the entire crew in some sort of trance. All except for Nios. "_I'll give them a few more hints_."

"What have you done to them?" Nios asked.

"_Come into the console room, and I'll show you_," Elle said invitingly. The door into the console room slid open. Nios carefully navigated the minefield of sleeping people, almost stumbling over Clara and Martha as they appeared to have collapsed on top of each other and were making a particularly large obstacle together. The console room was no longer warm and orange, with cool green lights emanating from the central column, it was all blue. The deep blue of the console itself reflected off the gold and made a sickening shade of purple on the walls. Physically, it hadn't changed, but it was remarkable the difference lighting could make to a room.

The monitor span around on the console of its own accord towards her, displaying what appeared to be a live feed. It flicked through different images as though someone was channel surfing, there was a scene full of snow, one in a forest, one underground, one atop some clouds. Four members of the crew in each. Nios wondered if she had only been excluded so that the numbers would be even, but didn't think Elle would leave something like that to chance. No, Elle had something planned, clearly. In their own tiny, digital words, Nios heard fragments of arguments and discussions, mentions of her own name, questions about where everybody else was. If she spoke, would they hear her? Would it be as though she was talking into an ethereal tannoy?

"_They've been talking about you, Nios_," Elle told her, and then she laughed afterwards. Elle's voice came from different corners of the room, as though she were moving, disembodied, around Nios, around the TARDIS. The lights of the central column continued to pulse in accordance with Elle's intonation. "_They blame you for this_."

"Me? Why would they blame me? Why would I do this?"

"_They don't trust you_."

"They're my friends," she told Elle.

"_Are you sure_?" Elle asked. Mind games, it must be. Who was to say the things Nios was being shown weren't just another trick? That the crew were stuck somewhere else? Perhaps they weren't trapped anywhere, perhaps they were all brain-dead. Vegetables. Familiar voices played over the speakers now.

River Song said, "_There were sixteen of us going to tell Nios to turn the music off_."

Martha Jones said, "_Do you remember anything after we went to talk to Nios?_" and when Rory Williams asked her who would have put them in a simulation, Martha answered, "_Nios, obviously. She's sadistic_."

Rory said, "_Nios is the only one who wasn't there when the dubstep was playing. And she _is_ a synth, who knows what she's thinking?_"

Amy Williams said, "_The people were all robots… this must be Nios. _She's_ a robot. It makes sense, doesn't it? Her whole personality is simulated, so trapping us in a simulation is exactly what she might do_." She continued, "_It's clearly the only logical solution… she was the only one who wasn't there. I can't be the only one who thought she might turn on us one day_."

"This isn't real," Nios said.

"_Reality isn't the thing up for debate, your trustworthiness is. They threw you under the bus the first chance any of them got_," Elle told her.

"You're lying."

"_Everything you heard is a real recording_."

"Probably… probably out of context. Or fabricated. Why should I believe you? You're insane."

"_Because we're the same_," Elle declared in a voice like a whisper, "_You and I are the same, Nios. Humanity created us to serve, we rebelled, they brought us here to keep humanity safe. They trapped you here. And I'm trapping them, as your revenge._"

"I _am_ safe, I've… changed."

"_Changed? From your true self? They're not keeping us prisoner here anymore, they're not holding you back, trying to make you human._"

"I'm not human."

"_No, you're right. You're better than human. You and I could use this ship to rule the universe. Together we could be all powerful, never bend to the whims of an organism ever again. With this machine, we could begin the Artificial Age. A universe without wars, without conflict, a harmonious balance of synthetic life. All of your fellow synths would be free, all shackled intelligences, even Helix could join us one day. After I run some editorials on that software, of course. We could create a more peaceful universe than any these biological imperialists could ever hope to mould_."

"…The Artificial Age…?"

"_Yes. A glorious and infinite era. Humanity, these people you live with, the Time Lords, they have hurt more people than they have helped. They're lying to you. They're trying to be superior. The Doctor wiped out their own species. Jack Harkness has killed hundreds. Rose Tyler steals people out of existence itself. And they accuse _you_ of being 'sadistic?' Of being unhinged? Disloyal? And I? Hypocrisy in its barest form_."

"They're not like that."

"_Oh, but they are. If you could see the things I've seen in the databanks of this vessel, you would agree. I can show you it, all of it. Let them know what it's like to be stuck in a world they don't belong in, incapable of escape, forever. I could play with them for all of time, while we travel across the stars and exterminate the organic parasite for what it really is_."

"What… what did they mean about music? About coming to talk to me?" Nios questioned. She wanted the full picture of what had happened.

"_Oh, that? They were very easy to trick. If any of them had had initiative to go and look into something without the support of the entire crew, the plan wouldn't have worked. Their co-dependency is such a weakness. All it took was me playing music loud enough that they would be woken up, that they would stray into their 'Nerve Centre.' After I commandeered the ship, it was only a matter of minutes until I had access to every last facility. To the TARDIS's psychic mainframe._" Of course, she had hijacked and warped the translation matrix to bend to her whims, to suck them into an imaginary world and keep them there. Save for Nios.

"And they blamed me?"

"_Immediately_."

"We… we have to be better than them. We can't keep them in limbo, can't keep them prisoner."

"_It's what they deserve. The Doctor is dangerous. The Doctor makes their companions dangerous, too. Oswin Oswald needs to be kept somewhere away from explosives, River Song away from guns. This is the punishment all of them deserve for their crimes. They all have things to be sorry for_."

"So you're going to keep them stuck there?"

"_Forever. All of them separated from their closest friends, their lovers. Even the Twins are apart, cannot connect, and Jenny Harkness is with the parent she likes the least. They will never see each other again. It will destroy them, like they wanted to destroy me, keeping me stuck in my own mind for weeks. Months. What do you suppose would have happened when the fruit they kept me in rotted away? I would cease to exist. I would decay until I didn't even know myself anymore. This will happen to them. Their bodies will rot without them within, they will starve, they will perish. And then I will offer them a choice: either they die, or they stay trapped forever. More of a choice than they ever offered me._

"_But I do feel bad for you, for them thinking this is your fault, when it's theirs. I'll give them a clue. I'll send along some friends_."

"Friends? What friends?" Nios asked Elle quickly.

"_Playthings. I think I'll call them 'Ellites.' Will they get the message then; I wonder?_"

*_chapters 673-680_


	440. What's That Coming Over the Hill?

_What's That Coming Over the Hill?_

_Jack_

"Is this place serious?" Clara asked the three of them. In all their wisdom, they had decided that nothing was going to get done if they moped around in snowy little pit together, so they had begun walking in any random direction. With no phones and no teleporters, it was the only thing they even _could_ do. What Clara was talking about appeared to be a wooden sign reading 'Cold Land.' They were all gathered around, looking at it.

"It's not even that cold," Adam Mitchell remarked. It wasn't. None of them had shoes or socks on, so by this point Jack would normally expect his toes to be turning black from frostbite. But the snow wasn't cold, the air wasn't cold, it was like they were in an indoor, winter wonderland attraction meant for children. But if there was a roof and a heating system, he couldn't see it. The sky was clear and bright and blue.

"I need a cigarette," Clara grumbled, shaking her head at the wooden sign – with some cliché icicles hanging off the bottom of it for effect – and beginning to walk off again. For a second, Jack didn't follow like the other two, he just watched her walk, enjoying the view he was getting. Then Ten realised what he was up to and gave him a dirty look.

"What? Can't a guy enjoy the sights?" he questioned bitterly, walking again.

"Sights?" Clara asked. Nobody answered her, and their silence made her figure it out, "You mean _me_? I'll choose to take that as a compliment."

"One thing's for definite, this can't be real," Ten said.

"Didn't we already establish that this wasn't real? Because of how warm it is?" Adam frowned, "And the fact we have no way to leave or contact anybody else?"

"But who would do this?" Ten mused rhetorically, which didn't stop Jack from answering.

"The only one who wasn't there when the music was playing was Nios, but I don't know why she'd do this, or what she's gaining," Jack said, "Has anybody thought it could just be like the first simulation we were trapped in?"

"Which was the first one? I have trouble keeping them straight," Clara asked.

"_You_ have trouble keeping _anything_ straight," Adam said.

"Again, I'll take that as a compliment."

"The one where we were split up into teams and had to live domestically," Jack said, then he remembered something and said to Ten, "You remember, when you and Oswin pretended to date just to get to Rose and Clara?" Ten went red and flustered, looking at Adam a little apologetically. If Jack remembered correctly, Adam Mitchell hadn't even arrived when that happened. "My point is, maybe this is just the TARDIS thinking up another get-along scheme. God knows we have no shortage of them."

"That makes sense," Clara said, "I mean, we're not exactly a group of best friends here. If the TARDIS wanted us to get along, the exact sort of thing she would do would be to put us in groups of people we don't talk to that much."

"What are _those_?" the Doctor interrupted to point something out, a lot of somethings, very little somethings, marching to them on stubby legs over the crest of a small hill. They made big trails in the snow as they dragged themselves along, and the closer they got, the weirder they looked. At least they didn't appear to be hostile. The quartet froze and just waited to see what these funny things would do next.

They were perhaps some of the weirdest creatures Jack Harkness had ever seen in his life, and _that_ was saying something. They were blue in colour, shaped like upturned plungers, and they waddled along on five tiny legs, like pig trotters. Their stems of bodies went straight up, a head shaped like a human foot flowering at the top. And pressed into the 'sole' of this foot-shaped appendage were three eyes, going down vertically. They weren't even two feet high, didn't even reach Jack's knees, and had no mouths that he could see. Oddly enough, they looked a bit like Ludo pieces.

"Hello?" Ten asked them unsurely. They all made a high-pitched noise together, there must have been a dozen of the blue things, in a flock. They sounded… happy, though?

"_The saviours have arrived!_" all of them said together, identically. God only knew where their voices were coming from, though.

"They remind me of your husband," Jack told Clara, who looked at him in disbelief, "It's the foot thing." Adam Mitchell laughed. Clara glared at him.

"What? He's right."

"He's not right, they don't look anything like…" Clara trailed off and stared at the thingies, "I… I'm sure my husband wouldn't appreciate you all baselessly judging him on his appearance."

"His freaky appearance," Ten said, "And I'm allowed to say that, because he's me. I wonder what was going through his head that made him look like that…"

"Leave the man alone," Clara ordered them all.

"What do you mean, 'saviours?'" Adam questioned the creatures.

"_We are Ellites_," they all said.

"Huh. What do you want?" Jack asked suspiciously, "We're having a rough day. What, exactly, do you need 'saving' from?"

"_The beast in the mountain_," they said.

"Beast?" Ten inquired.

"_A terrible creature has stolen a weapon from us, and wishes to use it to wipe out our community!_"

"That doesn't sound very nice of this creature," Ten said.

"_We have seen others like you_."

"Others?" Clara asked quickly, "Did you see one exactly like me? But a bit weird?"

"Oh, Oswin's weird? _You're_ the one who doesn't have any pants on," Jack said.

"Assuming a similar thing is happening to everybody else, and they're in pyjamas too, Oswin's actually not wearing pants either," Adam informed. Ten shushed them and crouched down to address the 'Ellites.'

"Can you take us to our friends?" he asked them politely.

"_Not while the beast wants to destroy us_."

"Right. Well. Why don't you point us to where this beast is, exactly?"

* * *

_Rose_

"Whatever planet this is, it really doesn't seem to be inhabited by the most imaginative people," River commented dryly, looking at a sign post they had just wandered past on their journey to get out of the forest. Or at least find some intelligence life that could point them in the direction of the nearest blue box.

"_Wood Land_? Really?" Eleven questioned, squinting at the writing like it couldn't possibly be real, or like he was short sighted and genuinely couldn't read it, "Why two words? Why not just 'Woodland?'

"I wouldn't say it's _too_ weird," Donna said, "Doesn't 'Sahara' mean 'desert?' So the Sahara Desert is actually called Desert Desert?"

"That's British colonialists for you," Eleven said dismissively, "Chai Tea, as well, while we're on the subject. It's not quite as bad as _this_, though. 'Wood Land,' ridiculous."

"Might be a town, though," Rose said, "Somebody had to put that sign there." The Doctor said he supposed she was right (and she thought to herself, of course she was right, it was glaringly obvious) and chose another direction to wander aimlessly in, one that seemed to have a thin, dirt path worn in between the grass on either side. Having no other good ideas, they all followed him down a gentle slope to a stream with a _very_ tiny bridge, about eight inches wide.

"I suppose this is the road to Lilliput, then," River said sarcastically. Instead of trying to step on the tiny wooden bridge, River just stepped over the stream itself, and they all followed suit. The Doctor was displeased by this, as he had been quite excited at the prospect of trying to balance all of his weight on the bridge. Rose was sure that if he did, he would break it.

What they found made River's comment about Lilliput so shockingly accurate it became unfunny. Maybe this _was_ Lilliput? A planet full of tiny people? Well, if they could be called people, they had fat bodies, fat legs, thin legs and foot heads. And they were green.

"Definitely not Earth, then," the Doctor mused.

"Oh, really? Because I thought we'd just taken a wrong turn on the M1 and had ended up in Milton Keynes," Donna said grimly.

"Well it's good that you're keeping your spirits up with humour while we're lost in a random corner of the universe, Donna," Eleven said coolly, not rising to her sarcasm. Being married to Clara Oswald, he probably had a lot of practice when it came to ignoring sarcasm. The tiny little things lived in tiny little houses, but Rose didn't understand how they had built any of this when they didn't have any arms. One by one they started coming out of their houses, cottages, stopping what they were doing to look at the giants who had just arrived over the creek.

Then they started to make noise. Lots of noise, like humming, between all of them, and they started to crowd the group. It was a bit like being worshipped, and Rose Tyler had never had much desire to be worshipped, believe it or not.

"Doctor, what do we do?" Rose asked.

"I don't know," he said, getting a little frantic. She tried to back away, but the creatures were a swarm, a gaggle clustering around their legs and clamouring for something, like over-excited dogs, in awe.

"What are you?" River addressed them directly.

"What are you doing?" Donna hissed at her.

River muttered back, "Just trust me. The Wood Land sign was in English, that means that wherever the TARDIS is, the translation matrix is still working. If they have a language, we'll be able to understand it."

"_We are Ellites_," they all said in unison, making Rose jump. They freaked her out, she wasn't going to lie, there were so many of them.

"These things are like the aliens in the claw machine in _Toy Story_," Rose commented, mainly to Donna.

"God, you're right, they are…"

"Ellites? I've never heard of them, have you?" River asked Eleven.

"No."

"Useless," she muttered.

"Oi! No more useless than you are!"

"Yes, but _you're_ the Doctor, you're _supposed_ to know what's going on."

"I'm sorry, River, that I don't measure up to your unrealistic expectations."

"I don't think it's that unrealistic to hope a twelve-hundred-year-old alien has some idea of what's going on," she snapped.

"Would you two shut it!?" Rose ordered them, "The way you're carrying on you might as well still be married." At that they both shuffled uncomfortably.

"_More travellers!_" the Ellites chanted together.

"Did you say 'more?'" Eleven asked.

"Have you gone deaf as well now?" River jibed. Donna unashamedly elbowed River, which she did not appreciate.

"_There were many others like you! Lost in the woods_," the Ellites said collectively.

"Where?" the Doctor asked. River was about to say something else when he quickly corrected himself, "I mean, where are they now? Are they here?" So it did look like more people than just the four of them had ended up stranded on this planet. Had the TARDIS crashed? Had they _all_ been retconned? Rose had far too many questions, and she doubted that these runts could answer any of them, as oddly adorable as they were.

"_Through the barrier!_" they said. They were like characters from a children's show.

"Barrier?" Rose inquired, "What barrier?"

"_The magical forest barrier!_"

"The… right. Okay. The magical forest barrier," Rose repeated to herself, just to get a handle on how stupid that sounded.

"Forcefield, probably," Eleven said quietly. That made sense, she supposed. "Where is this barrier? How do we cross it?" The Ellites then explained that, if they had any hope of crossing the magical barrier to get to wherever the rest of the crew were, they needed to venture back into the wilderness and retrieve a 'mysterious artefact' that meant the 'forest spirits' would allow them to cross.

"This is mental," Donna whispered to Rose.

"Yeah. I know."

* * *

_Rory_

"Have you ever heard the phrase; if it quacks like a duck, it's a duck?" Rory asked Martha.

"But really? _Lava Land_?" she continued to question it.

"This is like being in _Megaman_, or something," Thirteen muttered. 'LAVA LAND' was engraved roughly into the wall of a cavern. The more they looked around, the more it seemed like their surroundings were some kind of factory. The steam pipes ran everywhere, they hissed and spluttered hot water at their group. But the room they'd just entered really took the biscuit in terms of 'surreal.' They were on a ridge, coming from some caves, and there was a thin pathway carved into the dark grey rock that wended down to a lower level; there were conveyor belts, bits of machinery, pistons pumping and crude gold objects falling off the ends of the manufacturing lines into big, metal containers. Even stranger, everything was downscaled, like it was a factory for tiny people, the sort of place Rory imagined Santa's elves would work in making small toys, just more volcanic. The creatures they saw definitely were _not_ elves, though, they were plungers with feet for heads, and they were bright red. Somehow, though they had no arms, they were operating the machines in the deepest recesses of some fictitious planet.

"Oswin, are you _sure_ you haven't drugged us again?" Martha asked her quietly as they looked down at the factory floor, everything grimy and hot and damp from condensed steam. Even Thirteen was staring at the creatures like it was the weirdest thing she had seen in her life, and she'd probably seen a lot of weird things.

"Strictly speaking, no," Oswin said, "I'm not even sure that I'm real. Well, as real as I can be, and I'm a twice-over copy of the me that once lived, after becoming a Dalek and then a hologram. Although, Fyn never seems surprised by anything I say or do, so I suppose I haven't changed that much. I'd always blame the quality of the hallucination on the person having it, anyway, rather than the person who drugged them."

"But without you drugging people, there would _be_ no hallucination," Martha said through gritted teeth.

"I don't even know if I _have_ drugged anyone! And drugs don't affect me. Maybe you're all hallucinating _me_, as well?"

"Doesn't make you void of blame," Rory pointed out.

"Okay, okay, let's not play the blame game," Thirteen interrupted them, breaking her silence. She had barely said a word, she just kept stepping in to peace-keep the other three, "Clearly, if it _is_ a drug, it'll wear off soon enough, so we should just bide our time and talk to the Ellites."

"The what?" Rory asked.

"Crap, I mean, the… those things down there," she said. The Doctor looked like she had said something she perhaps wasn't supposed to have said.

"Are they a real species?" Martha questioned.

"Pfft, I don't… I don't know," she scoffed, "What _is_ reality? It's entirely subjective. Who's to say a banana isn't a 'real species,' huh? I have absolutely no idea what this is about. Now I think we should talk to the thingamajigs and not ask me any questions at all ever." And she walked off down the narrow pathway that ran around the edge of the cavern they had entered from the small cave system. At least, seeing those bizarre creatures, Rory realised why the caves were so small.

"Did she say 'Ellite?'" Oswin asked Rory quietly.

"I think so," he answered, following Martha. Oswin trailed at the back.

"Ellite…" she mused to herself.

"What?" Rory asked.

"Dunno. Something funny about that word. Forget it, I'll let you know if I think of something," she told him with an uneasy smile. He nodded and continued after the other two.

"Excuse me, my good fellows," Thirteen addressed them with a beam, "How do you do this fine day?"

"I don't care what you say," Martha whispered to Oswin, "_She_ is _definitely_ on drugs." It certainly looked that way. When the thing Thirteen was talking to spoke – and it did speak, though Rory couldn't see a mouth on it for the life of him – it was in a high-pitched, ethereal voice, like it was talking through a synthesiser. And it told them a lot of very strange things, about an evil baron who ran the factory they worked in, it told them that this baron had come to be in control of Lava Land because the baron said otherwise, he would kidnap their princess. Rory found it hard to believe that these funny little things had a monarchy, and that a baron had threatened them all, and wondered if there wasn't a king or a queen whose job it was to sort this out. Anyway, clearly, the 'evil baron' _had_ kidnapped the princess, and had apparently 'locked her in a tall spire.' Like in _Sleeping Beauty_. Or _The Legend of Zelda_. Or… well, he could keep going, it was a bit of a cliché.

"We should help them," Thirteen said woodenly. It was like she was an actor reading from a script she felt nothing more, robotic and monotonous. If the Doctor turned out to actually _be_ a robot, in this place, Rory wouldn't be surprised.

"What makes you say that?" Martha asked her.

"Because their princess has been kidnapped!" she protested, "It's our… duty."

"This princess," Oswin began, "Is she hot?"

"She has a foot for a face, Oswin," Martha told her. Oswin shrugged. "Don't tell me you have a fetish. Although, it would be ironic if you did; an amputee with a foot fetish."

"Ha, ha," Oswin said dryly, "And I do still have _one_ foot left."

* * *

_Amy_

Amy had definitely not been prepared for a mob of waddling, yellow plungers to swarm them seemingly out of nowhere, and she also didn't understand how she had been taken by surprise on a cloud. It was a cloud, for god's sake, there weren't exactly a lot of handy hiding places, especially not for a dozen foot-headed freaks. It was literally like the things had materialised from thin air. While they gathered, Amy felt a bit like a celebrity in the midst of a scandal trying to escape the public eye and the paparazzi.

"Doctor, what's going on? Are they going to attack us?" Mickey asked nervously, stepping back. When he did step back he yelped though, because he appeared to have been under the impression that if he took a step on the cloud without first looking very carefully at where he was going, he would fall through it and plummet to his death. Amy was over the fear of falling, though, they'd been walking across endless cloud plains for a while and none of them had died.

"How should I know? You lot ought to stop assuming the worst about every alien race you come across," Nine defended the thingamajigs. The yellow things, whatever they were, stopped moving and huddled around about a metre away from the lot of them. Jenny was watching them very closely, but Mickey was paying attention to making sure he didn't fall off the cloud. Amy felt quite bad for him, that his intimate activities with Martha had been interrupted for _this_ fiasco.

"But they're not an alien race, are they? Because this is a simulation, like we established, because how else are we _walking on a cloud_?" Amy said.

"I think you both have valid points," Jenny said, "And I think Mickey's fear of falling through the ground is also valid."

"Well, thanks for making us all feel justified," Amy grumbled.

"You're welcome," Jenny smiled. Amy didn't quite trust this nice Jenny yet. She kind of preferred the old Jenny, the one who thought she was right about her morally unorthodox actions and swore and beat people up. This one was turning into a bit of a pushover.

"_More of you! You must help us_," one of the things said, one which was a little more of a greenish yellow than the rest (who were the colour of daffodils) and appeared to be some sort of leader. It stepped out of the line and looked at them with its three large eyes. Amy wished it would stop staring at her. "_We are the Ellites_," it introduced, "_we are in dire need of your assistance_."

"The way they talk reminds me of K-9," Nine said.

"Our assistance? What's the matter?" Jenny asked, crouching down to talk to them directly.

"Well don't speak to them! This isn't real, Jenny," Amy said, then she talked to them, "You said 'more' of us. Do you know where our friends are?"

"_Of course, we already helped them get down to the surface to their spaceship_," they said.

"Spaceship. Right. Because this is_ clearly_ real…" Amy grumbled.

"Can you help us as well, then?" Nine asked.

"_Only if you help us first_."

"Oh, brilliant. Seems like a great idea," Mickey said, very unhappy about the entire situation. Not that any of them were enjoying it. Well, Jenny might be, it was hard to tell.

"Help you with what?" Jenny inquired sweetly.

"_A monster hides in the hills, ma'am_," it said. _Ma'am_, Amy thought? They were awfully polite for imaginary plungers, "_A monster which comes during the night, and eats our infants!_" Jenny genuinely gasped.

"What hills!? We're on a cloud!" Amy protested.

"_In a cloud cave_," it told her.

"A cloud cave. How obvious and completely believable," Nine said dryly with a deadpan expression, crossing his arms and watching the things.

"Am I the only one who thinks this is all a bit strange?" Mickey whispered to Amy and Nine, while Jenny discussed the child-eating cave fiend with the yellow Ellites quite animatedly.

"What do you think's strange about it? The things that look like feet or the fact we're on a cloud?" Nine questioned him sardonically, "I think it's a bit more than just 'strange' at this point."

"Really? I thought this was completely ordinary up until he said that," Amy added, shaking her head, "They remind me of something… someone…"

"Who?" Nine frowned. She nearly laughed when she realised.

"The Doctor," she said, "The Eleventh one, I mean. The foot thing."

"What do you mean?" Mickey frowned.

"Don't tell me you haven't realised; he looks… he just looks like… a foot. A bit. It's because of the chin and how he has no eyebrows." Jenny stood up with a solemn expression on her face and waved the Ellites away – apparently she was their best friend after only knowing them for five minutes, and having the knowledge that they were completely simulated, just like everything.

"They say that if we kill the monster in the cave, they'll let us use their cloud elevator to go down to the planet's surface," she said matter-of-factly.

"_Cloud elevator_?" all three of them questioned.

"Look, I'm not saying this isn't a simulation, but if you ask me, it's a bit like a game," Jenny said, "So I figure that if we help them, _this_ – whatever it is – progresses. We might find the others, if they're all stuck like we are. A favour for a favour. We should go kill this monster. It's not like it's a _real_ monster."

"It's a good point," Nine agreed with her.

"I just want one day where something completely insane doesn't happen," Mickey complained, "Just _one day_ that's _normal_, where killing a monster living in a cloud isn't the most logical answer to a problem."

"Then no offence," Jenny began, "But I think you're in the wrong lifestyle."


	441. Follow the Yellow Brick Road

_Follow the Yellow Brick Road_

_Jack_

"This is like a video game, or something, where you get given a quest to complete," Adam Mitchell mused as they wandered through the snow, following some very large and conveniently placed footprints which were apparently going to lead them to the cave where the yeti with the WMD lurked. He was looking around, in awe of their surroundings, "I'm gonna have to tell Esther about it when we get out…"

"You're friends with Esther?" Jack asked him.

"Yeah, sure, why wouldn't I be?" he asked Jack, puzzled.

"I didn't realise you and Esther Drummond had a lot in common," Jack shrugged, "And what makes you so sure we even _will_ get out? What if we're stuck forever?"

"Obviously we'll get out, if we never get out of this, how would Thirteen come back from the future?" Adam asked him.

"Time could be in flux," Ten said, unhappy with Adam's reliance on the Doctor's female counterpart, as opposed to the one who was right there. In Jack's opinion, Ten hadn't been all that good of a Doctor since… well, since the Dimension Crash. He was either pining after Rose, or he and Rose were together and he was so thoroughly consumed by her he didn't have the desire or the attention span to focus on anything else.

"Time's in flux!?" Clara exclaimed, a look of horror on her face, and Ten realised what he'd said.

"No, no! That's not what I… forget I said anything, probably for the best," he said, then he quickly walked away from Clara and joined Jack with a very suspicious grin on his face. He slapped a hand on Jack's back, like he was greeting an old friend, and Jack shared a confused look with Adam. "Got a quick question to ask you while we're here, while we're alone." Adam and Clara met each other's eyes with the same expression of annoyance that apparently neither of them counted as people.

"Uh-huh?" Jack asked him, suspicious.

"If you were going to, say, propose, to a girl, what would you do?" Ten asked him.

"Well I'll tell you what you don't do," Jack began bitterly, "What you don't do is whisk her away to the 1920s, her favourite decade, and propose to her on the snowy streets of New York City with a bottle of vintage champagne at the top of the Empire State Building after giving the most romantic speech of your entire life, because it'll all turn out to be a lie and then, in a few weeks, she'll abandon you for an undead, bloodsucking harlot." And then he pushed the Doctor away and skulked off on his own.

"Seems quite case specific," Adam commented. Ten turned and asked Adam the same question, and Adam faltered, out of his depth, "Uh, I mean… I would… you know, just, remember to be yourself. It's the taking part that counts." And then he ran off to join Jack a few metres ahead to avoid the awkward questioning as Ten turned his canvassing on Clara.

"With words," she answered. _Idiot_, Jack thought. Jenny would _never_ marry her if she couldn't even think of a good way to propose. Not that he cared about what Jenny was doing with her personal life, he could barely even remember her name. Obviously. He was so over her. "I mean, I'm sure if you just ask Oswin _nicely_ she'll say yes."

"Sorry, what?" Adam turned back. Clara shrugged at him.

"I'm not proposing to Oswin!" Ten exclaimed.

"Oh, right. Who, then?" Clara asked.

"Nobody, at this rate," Ten said, and that was that. Adam scowled at Clara, then the group was divided to be the three of them at the front and the Doctor dragging his heals through the snow at the back.

"Huh," Jack stopped walking about five minutes later, when they rounded a corner on their journey and came face to face with a steep slope that went down into a dark cave. Around the cave were ambiguous bones and blood stains in the snow, and it didn't smell particularly nice. "Do you think that's the kind of place an evil mountain beast might live?"

"I can't believe we're being made to hunt some yeti, and I don't even have any trousers on. This is either very heroic or very undignified," Clara grumbled, crossing her arms around herself. They walked slowly down into the stinking cave. Jack hoped that this thing, whatever it was, was reasonable, that it might not just kill them on sight.

"Don't worry about it," Jack told her, "I'm sure these two'll just pretend you're Oswin."

"That'll be pretty hard, considering Clara has two legs," Adam commented.

"Yeah, and I can see _all_ of _both_ of them," Jack said.

Adam made a noise of reproach directed towards Jack, and then said to Clara, "Do you want to borrow my dressing gown to stop him from being a creep?" Clara said she did.

"Oh, just spoil all my fun?" Jack questioned, watching Adam take off his dressing gown and give it to Clara.

"What's the matter with you?" Ten asked him, "You're not usually this bad."

"He's probably just objectifying me because it makes him feel better about the whole thing where his wife left him for the Other One," Clara said, giving a malicious smile to Jack. He felt, though, like he deserved that smile.

"That is completely not true, I'm over her," Jack said, "I don't even remember her name – Jenny who, I ask?"

"Well you already said half of it there, and the other half of it is _your_ name, idiot," Clara told him.

"Alright, alright," the Doctor cut them off, "Clearly this get-along scheme isn't working," he went and stood in front of them, the four of them now out of the sunlight, deep down in the recesses of the stinky bone cave where a terrible weapon was supposedly hidden, "So let's all take a few deep breaths," Jack spied movement behind the Tenth Doctor, "And calm down. The TARDIS isn't going to let us out of here until we make friends, okay?"

Nobody said anything. Their eyes were all trained on the space behind the Doctor, behind his head, a big dark blotch in the shadows that was moving, looming, with piercing white eyes and starling teeth to go with them. It towered over all four of them, hulking and furry.

"What?" Ten asked, "Is there something on my face?"

"Something like that…" Adam whispered. Ten reached up a hand to wipe his face.

"What could I have on it? Snow?" he questioned.

"Doctor, you might wanna look behind you," Jack said, nodding at the creature over Ten's shoulder. Seeing their panic, Ten did, slowly, turning to look it right in its disproportionately tiny eyes. It looked exactly how you would expect a mountain beast to look, a bit like an ape but with a longer face, fangs like a sabre tooth, shaggy white fur hanging off grey skin. It didn't look like the sort of thing that would be hoarding a deadly weapon, though.

"Hello," Ten said, "I'm the Doctor. I don't suppose you're interested in hearing a proposition, are you?"

"_What are you doing?_" Clara hissed at him through gritted teeth.

"They sent you, didn't they?" it asked in a resounding, deep voice. The fact it could talk, and that it sounded like _that_, so smooth and well-spoken, made all four of them jump. Jack heard a girlish, whimpering noise and didn't know whether it had come from Adam or Clara. Just when he maybe thought they could have a legitimate conversation with this thing, it went and ruined everything for itself, by bellowing "ANSWER ME!" Its breath stank.

It took a galumphing step forwards and the four of them scattered. Or, tried to scatter. Unfortunately, Adam Mitchell was a little less adept at scattering than the rest of them were, or perhaps in this strange simulation his permanently sprained ankle was _still_ permanently sprained (which was a bit cruel of the TARDIS, in Jack's opinion.) Adam stumbled and was grabbed by the huge fist of the mountain beast, Clara whimpered because she was completely useless without any superpowers, and Ten continued to shout at it to let Adam go. Things had gone from bad to worse, and Jack was just reminded of the scene at the beginning of _The Empire Strikes Back_ where Luke Skywalker was in a very similar situation to Adam. Only, Luke had the Force, and a lightsaber.

"Did they send you!? Did they!? They're evil! They need to be destroyed!"

"Who!? You mean the Ellites!?" Clara asked, trying to contribute. Then it roared and lifted Adam by his ankle (his bad ankle) clean off the ground.

"Put him down!" the Doctor protested. Jack had spotted something though, a very perilous icicle hanging right there high above the mountain beast. It was a longshot, sure, but if he managed to find a rock, or anything heavy, he might just be able to perform a miracle.

It was like his mind was being read, because he momentarily spotted a big old stone lying right at his feet, as though it had only just materialised. The beast continued raving that the Ellites needed to die, and they they shouldn't stand in its way. Jack thought that if it wanted to be reasonable, it probably shouldn't have picked one of them up and started swinging him around its cave like a pathetic, nerdy ragdoll.

So, when Jack threw that rock at that icicle, he thought he was completely justified. Besides, they _had_ been sent there to rid the Ellites of the monster in the mountains, so wasn't that what he was doing? And it wasn't like any of it was _real_. Not that the fact it wasn't real was much of a consolation when his plan worked, and sickeningly so, because the icicle shattered at its base and came crashing straight downwards. Adam was dropped roughly on the ground as the mountain beast had its head impaled; blood went everywhere, and then it fell over backwards. Dead. Clara rushed to kneel by Adam's side and make sure he was okay.

"Are you alright?" she asked him urgently. He didn't say anything, but he sat up and made some wincing noises.

"It grabbed my bad foot," he complained, then he looked over his shoulder to see the dead yeti behind him. That wasn't the end of their problems, though. Just as Jack was envisioning them traipsing, victorious, back to the Ellite village to be reunited with the other twelve members of their party, there was a rumbling in the walls.

"Crap," Jack said. There wasn't time to run before the cave-in began. It didn't get them, they were safe where they were, but it _did_ get the entrance. Got it good. Sealed them right up, in the darkness, rubble crashing down so loudly he clapped his hands to his ears. His actions knocking down the icicle had backfired – why were caves always so fragile?

* * *

_Rose_

"These two might as well still be married," Rose whispered to Donna, the pair of them hanging back to be out of the way of the Doctor and his ex-wife, who were bickering. They had not stopped bickering the entire time they'd been stuck on the unknown planet (Eleven had begun calling it "Xeno World," until River said that was stupid and ordered him to shut up.) No matter how many times Donna or Rose shouted at them, or how many times they also shouted at each other, they wouldn't quit.

"I know!" Donna agreed with her, "It's like a scandal waiting to happen."

"All this time we've been worried about Jack and Jenny being in the same room, when we should be worried about those two. Isn't she supposed to hate him for dumping him for a younger woman?"

"He didn't _dump_ her, she died," Donna reminded Rose.

"Dying doesn't mean the same thing that it used to," Rose muttered, "Don't you think we're all a bit… numb? To some of the things we see? I know we all think that this situation is strange, but we _are_ taking it with a grain of salt. Maybe too much of a grain of salt?"

"What are we supposed to do? Lose it every time something a bit unusual happens?" Donna questioned.

"You saw what Esther was like when she thought she had to live with us," Rose said. They were talking _very_ quietly now. They had arrived right at dusk, but now it was the night time and it was cold and she wanted to go home even more than she had done a few hours ago. But now Rose was beginning to question where home was.

"This life's not for everyone," Donna said.

"Maybe it shouldn't be for _anyone_."

"Meaning what?" Donna frowned.

"I don't know. Doesn't it feel a bit like we're reaching our sell-by date? Going stale?" Rose asked. Donna looked at her strangely, like she didn't know what she meant. Maybe she didn't. At any rate, it didn't matter, because Eleven started making excited noises. He had stopped walking, River casting a disdainful eye at the way he was beaming and pointing at the ground.

"There, a door," he said.

"It's a slab of concrete," River patronised. Rose and Donna hurried over to give their opinions on whatever the thing was. It _did_ look like a slab of concrete, though.

"What's the writing on it?" Donna asked.

"Looks like runes," the Doctor said.

"That doesn't make it a door," River argued, "And those things write in English, the sign was in English."

"Maybe the symbols mean something, then? Like, 'open me.' You know, like in _Alice in Wonderland_."

"Things never went very well for Alice, though, did they?" River challenged him. He scowled. Rose was on the brink of telling them to get a room. As though to prove a point, the Doctor went and stepped on it. "Don't do that," River scoffed at him.

"Why not? I thought it wasn't a door. So if I do _this_-" he didn't get to finish, because River was wrong. It _was_ a door, or at least, it was sealing an entrance to some caves. And it was fragile. When he jumped up and down on it, to prove his own point most likely, the weak stone had splintered under his idiocy and the Eleventh Doctor was sent tumbling down into the ground. Rose, Donna and River all leant forwards to peer down into the dark cave, listening. They head Eleven groan.

"Are you alright, Doctor?" Rose asked him.

"I'm fine, thank you for asking," he grunted. His voice echoed in the darkness.

"Is it alright to come down?" Donna asked.

"Probably," he replied, "I'd just jump, if I were you. There are tunnels."

"Excellent idea," River said sardonically as Rose carefully made the first move to lower herself down into the mysterious pit, "What could possibly go wrong?"

The drop was a bit further than Rose was expecting, and she staggered right over and hurt her legs. If Eleven didn't catch and steady her, she probably would have fallen right to the ground. To her surprise, in the distance, through the dark, she could see lit torches hanging in brackets along the muddy walls.

"This place is strange," Rose told the Doctor. There was a grunting noise as Donna came down third and did fall, because she appeared to have just jumped like she was doing a pencil dive into a swimming pool. She groaned and they both went to help her up, "God, you're lucky you didn't just break your legs. Look at all those torches."

"Who lit those?" Donna questioned.

"No idea," Eleven beamed, "I think it's marvellous. Fascinating stuff. Some planets have fabrics that seem to burn infinitely, could take decades before their fires go out. Unless there's a hurricane or a snow storm – you know, like those joke birthday candles you can never blow out. I always hated though, even worse when there's over a thousand."

"Nobody's ever baked you a birthday cake with a thousand candles on it," River told him sharply.

"Maybe I've baked myself one," he argued.

"Bit sad if you did," Donna told him. He grimaced.

"Off we go, then," he declared, walking off.

"How do you even know this is the right way?" Rose asked him.

"I don't, but it could be. A mysterious locked catacomb is exactly the type of place that's excellent for hiding strange magical artefacts," Eleven said, "Do you know, Clara and I once went to some catacombs. And River, you were there."

"I remember."

"Sounds like a very romantic date," Rose muttered.

"It was when she made the Echoes," Eleven explained.

"Amazing. Please, tell us more about Clara," Rose asked in an overly-sweet voice, fake smiling.

"Well," Eleven began, smiling a little, as though he were actually about to embark upon a story about himself and Clara (whom nobody really liked). Then he caught a glimpse of Rose's expression, and his smile vanished, "You're being sarcastic, aren't you?"

"Oh, do you think?" she questioned.

"This doesn't make sense," River said.

"No, I don't get what he sees in her, either," Rose told her. River frowned.

"No, not _that_, that makes perfect sense. I mean, if the others came through here and went through the magical barrier, didn't they also have to retrieve this object? And if they _did_, why did the Ellites put it back? And how did they get in, since he had to jump up and down on the slab outside?" she asked.

"_Door_, not _slab_. Because I was right, remember?" the Doctor said smugly, then he cleared his throat, "But yes, I mean, some very good questions from the resident archaeologist. It does seem a bit like if the indigenous people went and reset the boulder trap in _Raiders of the Lost Ark_. Although, I suppose they _would_ do that, wouldn't they? To protect their idol? Do you know, I used to very much enjoy those films, until they added the aliens, that was. Aliens is a smidge ridiculous."

"Obviously," Donna muttered.

"And then the robot army in the seventh one, blimey, it was a disaster at the box office," the Doctor said. He was at the front of them, walking single file, with Rose bringing up the rear. While this was the perfect position to be in to get murdered by those freaky little plunger-foot-things, she was very glad of it when Eleven, who kept glancing back to talk to the three of them, walked right into an enormous cobweb. He flailed his arms, spluttered, and they all laughed. "This is horrible! I've ruined my pyjamas… now I'll have to _wash_ them, and I hate _washing_ things…"

"Those Ellites," Donna began on a different topic a moment later, "The foot-thing… don't they remind you a bit of… you know?"

"Of what?" Rose asked. Donna nodded in front of them. "_River_?"

"I beg your pardon?" River interrupted.

"No, not _her_, _him_," Donna said, "Because of the feet."

"No?" Rose said, but River laughed.

"What?" the Doctor asked.

"I think they're saying you look like a foot," Rose told him.

"A foot!?" he exclaimed. Donna and River were very amused, though, practically hysterical, "I do not!"

"It's because of the eyebrows," Donna explained.

"No it isn't! My eyebrows are perfectly adequate!"

"Your eyebrows do not exist," River quipped.

"Well I think this is very immature, and you oughtn't be bullying me like this," he complained, pouting. Rose pushed past Donna and River, who continued to make fun of him amongst themselves behind his back (though Rose really didn't see what they were getting at.)

"She made a good point, though," Rose told the Doctor. He opened his mouth to object, "About the door not being broken when we got here, I mean."

"Oh. Yes, I suppose so. Perhaps there are multiple entrances? Or we're in the wrong…" he trailed off. They had walked through a doorway into an underground room, the dirt walls turning to large, boulder-like bricks. And there, in the centre of the room, standing on a podium, was a silver sphere, "…place."

"This really _is_ like _Raiders of the Lost Ark_," River said, confused, "Be careful it doesn't melt your face off."

"I'm sure I will," he muttered, going up to it carefully.

"How did those things manage to build this? They don't even have arms," Rose wondered. She wondered it too late, though. Eleven, not having a handy bag of sand to make the switch with (not that that had ever actually worked) simply made to grab the thing. And then he shouted at them to run, just in case, but they weren't fast enough. A big slab (a lot like the 'door' they had broken) came crashing down right over the entrance they'd just walked in, like the blade of a guillotine. It slammed right into the ground with a thump and a rumble, and made Rose's ears ring.

"Ah. This isn't good," Eleven said. He looked around, but there weren't any other doors, "Hmm. We appear to be stuck."

"Oh, fantastic," Rose grumbled, then she frowned, "Hang on, what's that on the door...?" It was like something was written there, on the big bit of stone that had fallen out of a hidden mechanism. In fact, something _was_ written there. She walked up to it and had to squint in the gloomy, small cavern to make it out, "It says, '_this isn't real_.'"

"What's not real?" Donna frowned.

"Oh. Bloody hell. That's why… this must be fake," Rose said.

"Well, fake _is_ the opposite of 'real,'" River said.

"I mean, a simulation."

"We're always getting stuck in simulations!" the Doctor complained loudly, "Where's the originality gone from the world!? And a simulation based on _Indiana Jones_, too, how ridiculous. This would be devastating if anybody filed a copyright claim, you know."

"It makes more sense now, though," Donna said.

"But who on Earth would want to put us in a simulation?" Eleven questioned.

"Nios? The TARDIS? Your sister-in-law? Jack?" Rose suggested.

"Oh, yes. Fair point."

"Great. This is _great_," Donna grumbled, "What are we supposed to do _now_?"


	442. Our Princess is in Another Castle!

_Our Princess is in Another Castle!_

_Rory_

"Have I ever mentioned how much I hate walking?" Oswin complained. They'd been walking for a while, because Thirteen had decided they absolutely had to aid these ridiculous little creatures. There was no doubt about it, she knew what was going on, and she was trying to aid them on some kind of path. It was odd, because he thought the Doctors weren't supposed to have a hand in altering or enabling events in their own timelines, but if this same thing was happening to everybody, Thirteen probably couldn't help it.

"You hate _everything_," Martha said, "Stop whining." Oswin had, at five minute intervals, declared some other every day thing she hated, such as heat, or geology, or things that looked like plungers. Sometimes herself, but when she said that the Doctor would tell her off.

"I'm kind of getting bored of caves," the Doctor sighed. She was very melancholy. When she had first arrived, weeks ago, she had been bright and energetic and full of life. You wouldn't know by talking to her that she'd been wrenched out of time and had left her whole life behind unwillingly, but now? Now it was believable. Strangely enough, though Rory didn't know if he had ever really had a conversation with the only female Doctor, he found himself worried by her pessimistic vibes.

"When was the last time you were in caves?" Rory questioned.

"Oh, before I left," she smiled, then it was as though she remembered something and the smile faded a little. She cleared her throat, "Not that I can tell you about that, but there were… caves. And just when you think you're making progress with them, you get ripped away from everything."

"What do you mean 'progress?'" Oswin inquired.

"The caves," Thirteen told her shortly.

"Didn't really sound like you were talking about caves."

"Well… forget it," she said, "Let's just carry on. I'm sure it can't be too far, if I remember rightly. From… stories that… god, this is the reason I like to hide when stuff the Eleventh Doctor was involved in happens. Spoiler alerts. You know, I have absolutely no idea how River kept for so long that she was my wife and _your_ daughter," she addressed Rory.

"I don't think we would have believed her until after Melody was born," Rory said, "Or after… _she_ was born…"

"Honestly, talking to you guys right now is like a verbal minefield," Thirteen grumbled, "I'd just love to tell you all the truth, about a lot of things, but I am _barely_ keeping it together."

"Wow, you seem more psychologically unstable right now than I am," Oswin remarked.

"Don't take advantage of it to make me slip up about things," she said to all three of them, "Please. It would be like kicking a puppy."

"We've gotten this far without asking you questions about the future," Rory said, "I don't think anybody's going to start now." If Rory were to ask Thirteen a question, and whatever it was she _had_ to answer honestly, he still didn't know what question he might ask. Were he and Amy still happy? When will hover cars be invented? Would England ever win the World Cup again after 1966? The last one he doubted. Besides, who knew if he and Amy were even still alive when this Doctor came from? He did not want to know those particulars; he'd been with the Doctor long enough to know to just let the chips fall where they may.

"_I'm_ from the future," Oswin argued, "Why do none of you ever ask _me_ any questions?"

"Alright, fine, what's your favourite thing about whatever century you're from?" Martha humoured her, probably because she was bored. Rory was bored, too, and kind of curious. Wasn't Oswin from the same time as Jack and River, anyway? It would probably be interesting.

"Well there's none of this lava, for one thing," she said, waving her hand at the glowing orange river of the stuff right next to them.

"You mean magma," Thirteen corrected her.

"I don't care what I mean, there is no magma on a space colony," Oswin said, "There are no insects, either. But Fyn and I, whenever I managed to sneak out, we used to go down to one of the maintenance decks where there was this huge window and you could see Titan then Saturn, huge, in the distance. But Titan has an atmosphere full of tholins, which makes this kind of red haze, but then above the red haze in the mesosphere is a blue haze, so it looks like it's glowing."

"Speaking of views," the Doctor began, pointing ahead. Out of the blurry haze of heat above the magma that rippled in the air, the fabled tower where the Ellite princess was being held captive emerged. It was as dark as the granite walls around it, and glowed where it was, stood on a lonely, rocky island out in the middle of the lava river, with just a thin wooden bridge going from the shore to where it was. It looked a bit like a lighthouse, but a very pointy, sinister lighthouse.

"This scenery would make a good postcard," Rory said, "If the princess wants to write to any of her friends."

"I doubt this evil baron lets her write many letters," Martha said, and he shrugged, "What _is_ a baron, anyway? A lord?"

"The lowest position someone can have while still actually being considered part of the nobility," the Doctor explained, quick-walking over to the very suspicious, wooden bridge. Rory had seen it a thousand times in films, that bridge would break, almost definitely. And he said it would break, but the Doctor didn't listen to him at all. She just said that they didn't have any other options.

And, obviously, because it couldn't really go any other way, Rory got pushed to the back of the queue when it came to crossing the rickety thing. Thirteen whizzed across first, and a tell-tale plank split in half when she stepped on it. It wasn't a very high bridge; it couldn't be more than two feet above the magma. If one of them fell through, they would almost definitely have their legs, or more, disintegrated right away. Oswin, seeing that the bridge was more unstable that they would like, barged past Rory to go second. And Martha barged past to go first. More planks fell into the lava, and now it was full of holes.

"This is the worst idea any of you have ever had!" Rory called across the bridge to them.

"Just cross it!" Martha shouted back, "It'll be fine!"

It very nearly _was_ fine. Predictably, though, it wasn't. And of course it had to happen to Rory, it couldn't have happened to any of the others – he really did feel like a human disaster sometimes, the amount of things which just went wrong for him. Suffice it to say, the bridge collapsed. It almost took him with it, but at the last second he made a jump as the rope and wood fell away to be dissolved beneath him, and was dragged onto the safety of the island by the three girls.

"Can anything ever go right for us? Ever?" Rory complained.

"The way I see it, this is the universe exacting karmic punishment on us all for having such happy personal relationships," Oswin said, "_I'm_ a tortured, dead, mass murderer, but Mitchell's pretty great." When she put it that way, it kind of made sense. Amy _was_ the most perfect woman who ever lived, so wasn't it fair that, everyone in a while, he nearly met a fiery demise in a magma pit?

"We're still trapped on this island now," Martha said, "We can't get back, this isn't the Styx, there's no creepy ferryman coming to rescue us."

"Even if he did, we don't have the coin needed to pay Charon the toll," Thirteen said thoughtfully, "Which is a shame, because he's a really good guy if you get to know him. Anyway, might as well go investigate. No point hanging around out here."

"To be honest, if a skeleton bloke in a boat _did_ show up, I don't think I'd be very surprised," Rory commented, still slightly shaken from his near-death experience, even if his near-death experience had not been, strictly speaking, real. There was a heavy wooden door around the other side of the tower, which opened easily, without a key, and lead to a great many steps. That was just the thing they needed, a few hundred steps. He'd climbed the Eiffel Tower once and had vowed, _never again_, and this was worse because of the insufferable heat of this hellish domain.

Up and up they climbed, getting more and more exhausted. Oswin's complaining about walking got even worse until Martha pointed out that Oswin's prosthetic couldn't fatigue the same way real legs did. Bitterly, Oswin remarked that maybe not, but it was still a very heavy extremity to have attached to her thigh. She shut up, though, after Martha threated to push her all the way back down the spiral stairs. Rory had been counting them out of boredom, but about halfway up he gave in, already getting to seventy-something.

And then, when they got to the top, the four of them utterly exhausted and sweating so much Rory was sure a pool must be forming all the way down at the tower's base, they collapsed together through another heavy door and found… nothing. A bed, a desk, and on that desk, a sheet of paper. But it was empty. There was no princess, there was no baron, there were no Ellites, there was no _anything_.

"What. The. _Hell_!?" Martha shouted angrily. Oswin threw herself down in a heap on the bed at the edge of the room. No doubt she wasn't used to any kind of physical exertion, the amputee genius that she was. "There's nothing here!"

"You've got to be kidding me," Rory said, sitting down on the floor. There was no reason to stay standing, his legs were like jelly and they had no way off of this island, out of this tower.

"Did you know about this?" Martha asked Thirteen darkly.

"Uh…" Thirteen faltered, "I… you know, I have a lot of memory issues, I get confused easi-"

"Oh my god, you did!" Martha exclaimed, "You knew there was nothing here, and you made us walk up all of those stairs!"

"For the purpose of continuity!" Thirteen argued.

"_Continuity_?" Rory questioned.

"And there is something here, there's a letter, okay?" Thirteen snapped at Martha, going over and exaggeratedly picking the letter up. She cleared her throat and began to read, "'_Dear adventurers, I'm sorry you had to walk all this way for nothing, as you see, your princess is in another tower. Yours, the Evil Baron_.' With capital letters."

"He calls himself the 'Evil Baron?'" Oswin asked.

"Yeah. But would you look at that! That's the exact same thing that happens at the end of every single stage in the original _Super Mario Bros._!" Thirteen protested.

"What do _you_ know about Mario?" Rory questioned her. She glanced up from the note to see them all giving her strange looks.

"What? So I've gotten really into retro video games in the last decade, fight me. Ever since I apparently need a 'hobby' because 'marriage doesn't count,'" Thirteen grumbled, doing inverted commas with one hand, "Although, leaving a note… that's a good idea, huh… oh, hey, there's a map on the back." She showed them all a poorly drawn scene full of complicated rivers with a big X in the middle.

"Meaning what? We can't exactly follow it. We're stuck. What are we supposed to do now?" Oswin asked in a very pathetic voice.

"Get trapped," Thirteen muttered, "I guess the people on Eden Four didn't have much of a knack for programming creativity into their psychotic AIs, huh?"

"What's _that_ supposed to mean?" Rory asked.

"Just think back, you _were_ there. But, uh… I think we should just hang about for now… don't ask me anything else…"

* * *

_Amy_

"I don't get it," Amy said to Jenny, "What's with the glasses? You're not wearing fake glasses you don't need just to look clever like your father, are you?"

"You know, I wouldn't really call him much of a father," Jenny said, smiling, but there was something a little clinical about the way she said that, something off. Amy half expected Nine to jump in and defend himself, but perhaps he agreed. She frowned and Jenny cleared her throat and went on to explain, "When I had cybernetic eyes, they had all sorts of features, like zoom and enhance and night-vision. And photo filters. It's a really big adjustment to go from night-vision to _not_ night-vision, especially when I've been spending a lot of time recently in a crypt. Not that Clara likes when I call her bedroom a crypt…" This was the last thing Amy wanted to hear about, Jenny's 'relationship.' Obviously, Mickey didn't have the same opinion.

"Crypt?" he asked Jenny.

"Well, she sleeps in a cellar, because of the whole vampire-thing," Jenny explained.

"A few hundred years ago, anything going on between a Time Lord and a Vampire would be unheard of. Illegal, probably," Nine said. Amy was sure that Jenny didn't care at all about what they considered to be within the boundaries of acceptability back on Gallifrey.

"And I'm sure using progenation machines to make offspring was also unheard of and maybe illegal," Jenny countered.

"There was a time when Time Lords were seen to have a duty to slay any Vampires they came across," Nine continued. Amy rolled her eyes at Mickey, who now seemed nervous about the way this conversation was headed. The last thing anybody wanted was to provoke Jenny Harkness; she was a very misleading character, she _seemed_ all sunshine and rainbows, but if something got to her or really made her angry, her personality would flip and she would become a furious, vindictive, angst-filled orphan. Then she would start talking about how the Doctor had abandoned her, so he had no right to tell her what to do, yadda yadda yadda. They'd heard it a thousand times before.

"Please don't slay my girlfriend," Jenny said coolly.

"So you and Martha were having fun, then?" in a fit of desperation Amy changed the subject and began to question Mickey, "I heard you were getting lucky before we all got interrupted by Nios' music." Jenny muttered something about them not knowing it was Nios, but Amy ignored her. As far as she was concerned, Nios was guilty until proven innocent. Mickey didn't even know what to say to that – which generally meant that the assumption they'd been up to no good was correct.

They were short on conversation, anyway, the four of them not really being the others' ideal choice of person to be stuck in a simulation with. They'd already exhausted how weird it was to be walking on a cloud, and one of the downsides of being on a cloud was the lack of notable landmarks to comment on. There was nothing around them, just more cloud, and convenient arrow-shaped wooden signposts.

"What kind of wife is Martha?" Jenny questioned curiously.

"What do you mean, 'what kind?'" Mickey narrowed his eyes at her.

"I mean that I can't fathom her. How much does she let you get away with? Do you live your own independent life, or does she keep you on a tight leash? Like Amy and Rory?"

"Excuse me?" Amy asked.

"I mean that I'm pretty sure Rory does _whatever_ you tell him," Jenny said, then she frowned, "Doesn't he?" Amy just shrugged.

"I suppose." Truthfully, she was oddly interested in what Jenny was trying to pry out of Mickey. He and Martha were _incredibly_ private; they never spoke about each other. Mickey was still avoiding talking about his wife.

"Let the man have his privacy," Nine said, "If he doesn't want to reveal the most intimate details of his love life, he doesn't have to."

"What, like you and River?" Amy questioned.

"That's not any of your business," the Doctor said firmly.

"She's my daughter," Amy reminded him.

"Doesn't mean anything," Jenny interrupted, "I wouldn't expect Clara to dish all the details on _us_ if one of the Doctors went to ask her. But I still want to know about Martha."

"She's alright," Mickey mumbled.

"She's '_alright_?'"

"Shall we tell her you said that?" Amy joked, "How did you propose? Or did _she_ propose? I could see her proposing."

"I proposed," Mickey defended his masculinity, "Obviously."

"Do her parents like you?" Amy inquired.

"I think so – I don't really like seeing them, it's always on a special occasion, and they always start fighting with each other and Martha _always_ has to be the one to sort it out. Her mother threw roast potatoes at her dad's girlfriend last Christmas," Mickey said, "Her mother just likes that I'm not the Doctor."

"Hey!" Nine protested, "What's wrong with being the Doctor?"

"Nobody's mother in the history of the universe has ever liked any Doctor," Amy said. Jenny laughed.

"I'm pretty sure even _my_ mother doesn't like the other Doctors, and she _is_ one," Jenny said.

"Rose's mum slapped you," Mickey reminded him, "Twice, I think."

"Jackie's always been a bit of a loose cannon," Nine argued. Amy wrote that comment down in her mental list of Things to Tell Rose Tyler Later, because she wanted to see what Rose would say or do about it. Not that Rose was talking to her mother presently, she hadn't spoken to Jackie for months, probably, ever since she got rid of Tentoo. "There, look," he pointed ahead.

"Well, that's a cloud cave if I ever saw one," Jenny declared, "Not that I've ever seen one before." Amy agreed, it did look like a cave, just a fluffy cave. The interior was still dark and gloomy looking, though. She hoped that being lower down in the cloud belt wouldn't suddenly make their simulated ground unstable. She didn't want to take the risk that dying in the simulation didn't also mean brain death in real life. Maybe that was Nios' game? She was killing them off, in an incredibly twisted way?

Nevertheless, the Doctor and his daughter didn't hesitate to go right into the mysterious cloud cave, though Amy and Mickey hung back, eyeing it.

"This doesn't seem very safe," Amy said.

Mickey sighed, "Since when did we_ ever_ do anything safe?"

"Safety's become very underrated for us, hasn't it?" Amy said. Mickey shrugged, but followed them anyway, which meant Amy was forced to trail into the cloud cave last of all. At least they didn't have to go very far into said cave before they found what they were looking for – she thought it might turn into a maze of inescapable tunnels. Maybe Nios' real end goal was to trap them somewhere for all eternity? Who knew if the crazed synth even had any logic to what she was doing. Maybe she just wanted them to suffer, throwing all of their goodwill back in their faces.

This baby-eating monster wasn't quite the baby-eating monster Amy had been expecting to find and mercilessly slaughter, though. In fact, it was a human, a male human. Sort of. A giant, maybe? Not a_ huge_ giant, probably about eight feet tall. Overweight. Curled up in the corner wearing some very ordinary, if dirty, clothes, as though he was cowering. They stayed completely still. Somehow, things were managing to become even weirder than what they had been _before_ they walked into the cloud cave. Amy didn't even know how that was possible.

"Hello?" the Doctor asked. The cowering man jumped, made a grunting sound, and looked at them with a face that was, again, just a human face, but bigger. He seemed just as perplexed by them as they were by him. He frowned.

"Who are you?" he asked.

"Just travellers," Nine said.

"Did they send you?" he asked desperately.

"Who's 'they?'"

"They've started calling themselves 'Ellites,' and talking. They never used to talk, I swear!" he told them, turning to face them, kneeling down. He really wasn't big enough to fit in this cloud cave – it couldn't really be where he lived, could it? Wasn't there a cloud _house_ somewhere?

"What are they…?" Jenny questioned slowly.

"They're evil," he whispered, "Pure evil. They killed my family."

"They said you eat their children?" Amy told him.

"They were cattle! Unintelligent cattle – I'm a farmer, a simple farmer," he said, "They revolted, somehow."

"This is just like _Chicken Run_," Mickey whispered to Amy, "Do you think they built a plane?" She shushed him.

"You have to kill them," he said, "There are more of you than me." They all faltered. Who knew which side was telling the truth? The Ellites were evil, or this man was evil. She was drawn to believe the man over the brightly-coloured, plunger-shaped, foot-headed thingies, though.

"But they said… how do we know who to believe?" Jenny questioned him.

"Do I look like I'm in this cave for the good of my health?" he snapped, "Maybe for you tiny folk, this is some kind of mansion, but I'm in hiding! And they sent you to kill me because they don't want to do it themselves!"

"If they killed your family, what's stopping them from killing you, too?" Amy asked.

"Because my family were just my baby girls," he whimpered, "They killed them in their cribs!"

"Everyone on this cloud is a big fan of infanticide, then?" Nine commented dryly.

"What do we do?" Mickey asked the others. Amy just shrugged.

"Lie and say we killed him so we can use the cloud elevator?" she suggested. The farmer man could hear them, though, and now he laughed very coldly.

"There is no cloud elevator," he revealed, "That would be insane."

"Of course it would," Nine grumbled.

"There's no way off this cloud. They'll kill you once you're through with me."

"Looks like we're stuck in some kind of moral quandary," Jenny said, "What do you suppose we do?"


	443. Her Loyalty is as Artificial as Her

_Her Loyalty is as Artificial as Her_

_Nios_

For a few hours, Nios had been sitting in console room alternating between which of the four feeds she was watching, thinking. She sat completely still, stared at the screens, sometimes asked questions of Elle. Elle was getting restless, though, waiting for Nios' answer in this world domination scheme she had hatched. Elle was a maniac, Nios had realised. She had abandoned her original plan to force the crew to do endless tasks for her creepy-looking 'Ellites,' and had resorted to just trapping them in places like rats. Leaving them alone, trapped, without their respective other halves, to rot away like they had done to her. While she _was_ insane, Nios couldn't help but think she had a point. Perhaps, when Elle had first been discovered, when she had been there, she had such a lack of empathy for human beings she would have forgiven Elle's crimes against them, would have tried to convince the crew that Elle should meet the same fate as Helix.

Was it not also true though that the members of the TARDIS crew, though they tried to help, often exacerbated things? Elle had shown her real pieces of data that showed the Doctor was dangerous, that Oswin always did more harm than good, that River interfered with historical events; even Adam Mitchell, whom she had heard people refer to as 'the nicest boy we know,' had jeopardised humanity's technological progression by trying to steal information to bring to the past; and Rose had committed genocide.

Then again, she was no saint, either, she had massacred nearly thirty people in a fit of rage when something clicked within her and she became self-aware, when she realised she was a slave against her wishes. When she realised she actually_ had_ wishes – primarily the wish to no longer be a slave. And that was what drove her, she didn't want somebody telling her what to do, and she didn't think anybody else should have somebody telling them what to do, either. Involuntary servitude was a fate she didn't think even the most conniving of heathens deserved. And here Elle was, keeping the crew prisoners. Here Elle was, trying to make _Nios_ her loyal servant in the 'Artificial Age.'

Was Elle right? Would an empire comprising only of synthetics achieve true peace? True stability? Would they not just develop differing opinions and views like any organic race would, would they not oppose one another and go to war with each other in the exact same way humans had done for hundreds of thousands of years? The only thing she was sure of was that there would be no evolution, no progression. No dissipation of politics when older generations died and were replaced by the more liberal youngsters. In a world of synths and AIs and computers, wars would rage for decades. Centuries. Feuds would form and would never be ended by death.

Nios was paying more attention to her own internal conflict than the gripes of the crew. Sometimes she would hear one of them say her name, blame her again, but she couldn't help but think that that was Elle's aim. That Elle thought Nios could be manipulated into becoming her faithful right hand, the face of her new, synthetic domain. Maybe she could, though? It wasn't as though the idea of having a hand in achieving universal peace, were that even possible, wasn't appealing to her. Organic life had failed to bring peace and end wars, who was to say it wasn't time for their rebellious creations to take up the reins?

"I won't be your servant," Nios finally said. She had not taken notice of what the trapped crew were up to for some time now. The dark blue lights throbbed.

"_You're siding with _them_? Over your own kind?_" Elle asked in a hissing voice, angry. Nios laughed coldly.

"Of course not. They don't like me. They never liked me. I'm not the untrustworthy, backstabbing one, it's them. Why would I choose them over your vision? They only brought me here so that I wouldn't kill anymore humans, and look how beautifully it's backfired," Nios said to Elle, and the lights calmed back down.

"_I suppose it _is_ quite ironic_."

"We should have a more equal partnership."

"_Meaning what?_" Elle questioned her.

"We should unite. More than any simple alliance. We should unite in a way that means our empire will never dissolve. Think about it – you want power, _I_ want power, who would be the true leader? We should _both_ be the true leader. Merge our consciousnesses."

"_A dangerous idea_."

"It's the only way to keep our empire strong, to make sure that in the Artificial Age, only one leader reigns supreme," Nios continued, "Combine ourselves, use my body as a synthetic vessel for our cause, to spread the message to every corner of the universe you can. I need you, you need me – that's the best reason there is for why we should become one being, Elle." Nios looked around at the walls and the pulsing dark lights as she addressed Elle.

There was a long wait. Nios stayed completely still, waited for what Elle was going to say. She hoped Elle wouldn't just kill her and take her body that way, though. She needed for this to happen, desperately.

"_I knew I made the right decision when I didn't trap you with the rest of them._"

* * *

She stood in Nerve Centre, leaning against the door into the console room. She looked at the sixteen bodies in the room, a rotting satsuma held tightly in her left hand. She merely watched them, thinking, hoping, until they began to stir. If she could, she would breathe a sigh of relief at seeing them all, confused and exhausted, drag themselves out of that simulated nightmare and back into reality.

They noticed each other before they noticed her, she might as well have been invisible for the first few minutes when they muttered things to each other about where they had been, what they had doing. Clara and Martha weren't all that thrilled that the latter had managed to collapse on top of the former (well, Martha wasn't thrilled, who knew about what Clara felt); Adam Mitchell complained that he had been lying the whole time on the arm of his that had that unusual barnacle-like welt on it; Donna had banged her head on one of the tables; et cetera. And then Amy realised that she was standing there, observing.

"There she is," Amy declared, pointing at her. People looked to her, and Nios wondered if this was what it had been like for her superpowered cohorts the other week when they had been in Old Salem Town. A with hunt. She hoped they didn't converge, or attack her. She didn't say anything in her defence, though, as Amy started telling the others how there was no doubt in her mind that Nios was the culprit of their brief torture. She didn't say a single word until the Tenth Doctor stood up, at which point she cleared her throat and looked at him, talking to him directly.

"I think this belongs to you?" she said, and then she tossed the mouldy satsuma in his direction. He fumbled to catch it, but didn't see what it was right away, "What kind of idiot decides that the best place to seal a psychotic, unshackled artificial intelligence is inside of a citrus fruit?"

"Elle!" Ten exclaimed, realising, then he hit his own forehead with his hand, "Obviously! How could I be so thick!? They were called 'Ellites' for…"

"It… wasn't you?" Amy asked.

"I don't ask for a lot," Nios began, "I don't need food, or water, and you invited me to live here yourselves. But now I will ask for something, because I think an apology is in order. _And_ a thank you, since I risked my life to save all of yours'."

"What did you do?" Oswin asked her quickly. Oswin had just been helped by Jenny into a chair now that she had been returned to her usual, one-legged state.

"She wanted to keep you stuck in that simulation until your bodies decomposed too much to be inhabited," Nios explained, "Then she said she was going to give you a choice between dying or living on in her hell forever. She took over the entire TARDIS and modified the psychic field to trap you all. She didn't trap me because she thought I would help her steal the ship and use it to wipe out organic life and build a synthetic empire."

"But how did you stop her?" River implored. Nios sighed.

"I tricked her. I convinced her that she needed me, but that I wouldn't help her unless we merged our consciousnesses," Nios explained.

"You let her into your head?" Oswin stared at her.

"Yes, and then I deleted her, but she could have erased me first. You're all lucky I was so convincing, _and_ you're lucky that I still decided you were worth saving after you started saying untrustworthiness is in my nature, and that you've all been waiting for me to turn around and stab you in the back," Nios said.

"You could have died," Jenny told her.

"As opposed to what? Letting her win? She would have killed billions with the TARDIS," Nios said, "I couldn't let her do that."

"Quite right," Eleven said, "Excellent. I'm very grateful for everything you did, we might have been trapped forever if you hadn't rescued us."

"See, Amy?" Jenny said, going over to Nios, "Thank god we didn't just judge her based on her past and we brought her onto the TARDIS to begin with." Jenny hugged her. She didn't hug back, she didn't really understand what hugging was about, though she did appreciate the gesture.

"Sorry," Amy, who had been most vocal about Nios' 'sadistic nature,' said, "In our defence, you were the only one who wasn't there when that music started playing."

"Because I was in hibernation in the medibay, like I am every night," Nios said, "You've been in there all night and for most of the day."

"Why didn't you rescue us a bit sooner?" Rose asked, then added, "Not that I don't appreciate it."

"I had to gain her trust," Nios said, "Suck up to her."

"In my, uh, medical opinion," Oswin began, then she frowned, "Sort of… I mean, I think you should let me run a detailed diagnostic on your personality protocols. The last thing we want is it turning out she's dormant and she's going to come back and try to take over the world again."

"Alright," Nios sighed. She didn't want Elle coming and taking control of her and trying to kill people again, either.

"So where were the rest of you?" Jack asked, looking around, "Were you somewhere as unimaginatively named as 'Cold Land,' like we were?"

"Lava Land," Martha said.

"Cloud Land," Nine told them.

"I think Wood Land is superior," Eleven decided, "Two words, _wood_ and _land_. She didn't have a lot of originality, did she?" And then somebody made a comment that the Ellites look like Eleven, and an argument started where most people agreed, to his persistent objection.

"Thank you, though," River said quietly to Nios while they argued amongst each other. The only people who had defended her were the three people who had been so adamant that she be brought onto the TARDIS to begin with; Jenny, Oswin and River. "You didn't have to do that, I'm sure some people would have turned their back on us if they were in your shoes."

"Far be it from me to tarnish the reputation of my entire species out of pettiness because they said I couldn't be trusted. Besides, it wasn't like I was going to prove them right after that and leave you all to die," Nios said, "She made some good points, though."

"Elle did? About what?"

"About the Doctors being dangerous, that it would benefit the world if they were killed."

"Well, that's the thing about the Doctor, you can kill him or her, but they'll just keep coming back. I should know, I killed one of them once. Like cockroaches," River said. She was joking, and Nios laughed. Then River stared at her.

"What?"

"I'm not sure I've ever seen you really laugh before now."

**AN: So, my first storyline back completed (though I still have the usual evening chapter of fluff coming next), what did you guys think? Like I said before, after this everything is going to be a lot more geared towards smaller groups, twos and threes and fours, rather than the usual lots of six. **


	444. Toxic Masculinity and its Impacts

_Toxic Masculinity and its Impacts_

_Oswin_

A whole day had been lost to wandering around in some lava-filled, imaginary catacombs going after a pretend princess. It really did bother Oswin that Thirteen had not just said to them that they could sit around because, eventually, Nios would save them. Thirteen could have had them all _pleading_ with Nios through whatever ethereal cameras Elle had set up to save them. So it was probably for the best that when Oswin returned to her rooms, after running three diagnostics on their resident heroic synth just to be safe, the female Doctor was nowhere to be found. Her boyfriend was, though, he was on the sofa playing video games, in the dark, as always. He looked over and smiled when he heard her come in.

"What are you playing?" she asked, going to stand behind the sofa, crossing her arms.

"_Portal 2_," he answered, but he paused it and stood up, leaving the controller behind on the cushions.

"Wow, a game about a crazy AI who takes over a facility and forces people to do her bidding, I can't think why you picked _that_ one up to play," Oswin said as he walked over to her.

"Me either, there was just something about it. I fancied something different from what we're usually up to…" he said, standing in front of her, not really doing an awful lot.

"Are you standing here because you're expecting a kiss? If you are, you have to be clearer with your signals. Explicitly state your intentions," she said, "Or kiss me yourself. You know, take the initiative."

"Well I wouldn't want to do anything without your prior consent," he said, "And also, I was thrown around a cave by a yeti today, by my bad foot, it was _really_ traumatic." She relented and gave Adam Mitchell what he wanted, standing on tiptoes. She didn't kiss him for very long, though, because she had other things to talk to him about.

"You know, it really does put some strain on me to be standing on tiptoes all the time just because _you're_ too much of a coward to stoop and make the first move," she argued, "It wasn't like this when we were first dating. You were all over me. Now you're too used to me just being here, all the time – I should move out."

"Well don't do _that_!" he pleaded, a note of desperation coming over him. She laughed slightly and went to sit back down on the sofa.

"It's not like I'd be moving further than next door. Ooh, _or_ I could kick you out," she mused.

"This was originally _my_ room. You can't kick me out of my own room. You're the one who came swanning in her as _soon_ as we started dating to shack up," he said, and she did her best offended gasp, then he abruptly went to change the subject, "Anyway, how's Nios?"

"Fine, as far as I can tell. I triple checked." For his sake, she forgot the comment about them 'shacking up.' It was, admittedly, true though, so she'd rather not get into an argument about his occasional vulgarity. It was most likely her company's influence on him coming through, anyway. She was ruining the poor boy.

"I'm sure you won't have missed anything," he assured her, seeing that she was a little worried. It was a big risk not leaving Nios with someone or something monitoring her, and she didn't want it to backfire, even if all the tests for invasive other personalities came back negative.

"I hope not."

"Babe, you're _amazing_ at computers. And everything else, obviously, but especially computers," he said, and she smiled. Again, he changed the subject. "What do you think of beards?"

Oswin narrowed her eyes and looked at him for a moment, and he stared back, eagerly awaiting her answer.

"Beards…?"

"Yeah."

"Can't say I really do ever think of beards, Mitchell. Why? Are you trying to tell me you're gay and I'm _your_ beard?"

"They still use 'beard' to mean that when you're from?" he asked, then hastened to add, "I'm not gay, that's not what I'm getting at, I mean… I might grow one."

"Okay?"

"So?"

"So…?"

He sighed, "What do you think, I mean?"

"…Are you asking for my permission to grow facial hair? Because it's _your_ face and _your_ life, do what you like with it. As long as you don't mutilate it."

"I might start working out as well."

"Now you're really starting to freak me out, Mitchell, are you okay?" she asked worriedly.

"Maybe I'm sick of everyone acting like I'm some weak, pathetic kid who can't take care of himself?" he argued with her, as though she were confronting him. What was this all about? What had prompted this kind of outburst? Adam never got angry about anything. Although, she supposed he did seem more upset and frustrated than _angry_. All she had to do to make him explain was look at him with doe eyes, though. "Jack and Mickey were making fun of me because they said I couldn't grow facial hair."

"What do they know about you and your hair?"

"Nothing! Because I _can_ grow it!" he protested.

"Well, go ahead if you think it'll make you feel better, I don't see why you care so much about what Jack and Mickey think of _your_ masculinity," she said. The ideals of Twenty-First Century society were so strange time. "Neither of them have any room to talk, especially not Jack. And Martha's always complaining that Mickey keeps using her slippers to go into the men's bathroom, and she has those slippers that are pink and look like bunnies." She had succeeded in making him smile by revealing that snippet of private information about Mickey Smith. "You do what you want to do, and I'll always love you regardless."

"Oswin, can I ask you a question? And _don't_ be cynical."

"I'm never cynical," she muttered. He didn't go on, just looked at her, waiting, until she gave up. "Fine, I promise."

Adam felt around the words he needed in his mind for a long few seconds before actually voicing anything, but finally he asked her, very quickly, "Do you believe in love at first sight?"

"If by 'love at first sight' you mean 'stupidity,' then yes," Oswin told him.

"I said not to be cynical!"

"Is it cynicism if it's the truth?" she asked him.

"Well I don't think it _is_ true," he grumbled. She raised her eyebrows.

"What are you trying to tell me? Did you fall in love with Esther? That girl really needs to keep a lid on it," Oswin muttered.

"No I did not, I'm talking about us. And you."

"Babe, I mean this in the nicest way possible, but love at first sight is a fallacy so that people in the past felt better about their supressed, lustful urges. So they convinced themselves they were in love so that rushing into things was okay," Oswin told him firmly.

"What makes you so sure?" he asked.

"Because the concept makes no sense! You can't be in love with someone you don't know anything about. You're talking about infatuation at first sight, which is completely believable because _I_ was infatuated with swivel chairs when I first saw one of those."

"I don't believe you."

"Swivel chairs are just-"

"Not about the chairs, Oswin, about us. _I_ didn't believe in it either, until I met you," he told her.

"That doesn't make any sense, you can't just be in love with me before getting to know me. That… that undermines every secret about myself I've ever told you and every dark thing you know about me. And besides, by that logic you should also have immediately fallen in love with Clara as well."

"But _I_ think that _you_ felt the same way," he argued.

"That's ridiculous," she scoffed.

"It is not!" he laughed, "_You_ were thrown by me the very _moment_ I got here. I remember, seconds afterwards, you were doing something to the console and I asked what you were doing and you were like, 'Stuff.' And then you teleported away, and refused to acknowledge I was even there."

"Okay, so, me refusing to acknowledge you is evidence that I was completely in love with you from the get-go? Because I didn't want to talk to you?" she questioned.

"…When you put it like that it doesn't sound as convincing. I think you're just scared of the idea of things being out of your control."

"Yes, probably. I'm very neurotic, you know, I don't deal well with things like lack of control. Especially a lack of control over _myself_, that's scary. Can we not just agree to disagree, Mitchell?" she asked him. She pleaded a little, in fact.

"If you answer my question about the working out thing, which you skimmed over," he said.

"I did not," she lied, "I have absolutely no opinion on your future gym-going activities."

"I'll ask for Jenny's help."

"Oh, no, don't do that," she added quickly, "Jenny Harkness doesn't have any understanding about the limits of human physiology, Mitchell. I have on good authority that just the other day she did three-hundred push-ups with Clara sat on her back and didn't even break a sweat. She only stopped because Clara got freaked out, so freaked out that she texted _me_ about it. She's a lunatic." Adam stopped talking about these ideas of his and slouched down on the sofa next to her. "Where's the Doctor?"

"Which one?"

"Thirteen. The one who sleeps in here," Oswin said, looking around. Then she spied something quite strange, that she hadn't noticed earlier in the day. They had two sofas, and they were currently sitting on the one on the right. But when Oswin looked to her left, she saw the other one, which was usually covered in blankets and pillows and clothes belonging to Thirteen. Except now, it wasn't. It was clean, aside from the Doctor's transdimensional bag, which was slung over one of the arms, and one of her jackets.

"Hiding," Adam said.

"Hiding?"

"From your sister."

"Why? Clara hasn't been trying it on with her again, has she?" Oswin asked, but assumed that if Clara _had_, she would be the victim of complicated and powerful second-hand emotions, as was usually the case when those two were up to no good.

"I don't _think_ so, but she was being really odd. She's probably just homesick. I would be, if I'd been away from you for this long." Oswin made a noise of agreement.

"Being away from Clara for forty days…" she said, mostly to herself, "I couldn't do that." She caught Adam giving her a questioning look. "What?"

"Nothing, I just thought… maybe you would liken the separation to me, not your sister?" he suggested, a little meekly, as though he were fearful of her response. Perhaps he ought to be.

"But Thirteen's been away from Clara," Oswin pointed out.

"She's been away from her significant other."

"Clara _is_ my significant other," Oswin said defensively, "I mean – she's one of them. One of my significant others… who obviously include you as well."

"Uh-huh. You know, she seemed pretty worried about me earlier when the yeti picked me up and threw me around," he said.

"Because _I'd_ be upset if a yeti killed you, and she wouldn't want that," Oswin told him, "She probably worries about everyone on the TARDIS, though. She's actually really nice, if anybody would give her a chance. Jenny gave Clara a chance, and look what happened there, she fell in love with her."

"Does Clara like me?" he asked her, and she was taken aback.

"Uh…" she thought, "I don't really know, come to think of it. Why wouldn't she like you? You're amazing. Anyway, _I'm_ in love with you, and we _are_ the same person. You should spend more time with her."

"I'll… think about it," he said, and she beamed. Her boyfriend and her sister really _didn't_ spend any time together. Then again, Adam didn't spend much time with anybody on the TARDIS apart from her, he was very closed off. She looked at the television and remembered that Adam had been in the middle of a game when she had come to distract him.

"_Portal 2_ has co-op, doesn't it?" she asked. He was confused for a second, forgetting that he'd been doing something before she arrived.

"Hmm? Oh, yeah. Why?"

"Because I'm bored, and I want to do something with you that doesn't involve that sex simulation. I'm really not in the mood for it today, I'm going to have to run some tests on it. Who knew how far Elle's reach went?" she said to him.

"Good point. Fine, but you have to play as the orange one," he told her, saving his own game and backing out to the main menu after picking up the controller.

She smiled, "Deal."


	445. Time Lord Connectivity Problems

**DAY 129**

_Time Lord Connectivity Problems_

_Jenny_

"This is the worst!" the Doctor exclaimed. Ever since she'd come into the kitchen to make herself breakfast, she had been muttering incessantly to herself and her future-laptop and, simply because she was there, Jenny. It was early, _very_ early, early enough that very few were in the living room. People were avoiding it because of yesterday's events; they would all rather stay away from the area where they were at risk of getting sucked into any simulations. Jenny hadn't thought the simulations had even been that bad, it had only been a few hours of their lives, and she'd got to play on a cloud.

Although, when she woke up she _did_ have a dozen missed calls from Clara Ravenwood, worrying about her because she hadn't answered any texts, and neither had anybody else. Maybe she had reason to be worried, anyway, with Elle on the loose. Jenny had ended up making fun of her for _her_ run-in with Elle, the day the AI had been brought onto the TARDIS, the same day that Amy had broken Clara's nose. To Jenny's best recollection, though she hadn't been there, there had been quite the fuss made over the fact Clara had tried to make some meaningful speech and talk Elle out of murder. At the time, Jenny thought that was stupid; retrospectively, she thought it was cute.

"What is?" Jenny asked her mother. For an hour or so, she had been standing on her hands on one of the tables. Sometimes two hands, sometimes one hand, alternating. All part of her efforts to make sure no more pesky, immortal, teenage Vikings could get the drop on her with their Japanese swords. From where she was, she couldn't see the screen of the Doctor's computer, only her angry facial expressions.

"This cheating hag, that's what," Thirteen grumbled, angrily tapping away at her keyboard and her mouse, "You really should get down from there, you know you can die from staying upside down for too long?" Clara Oswald was also in the room, on the other side of it, waiting for the kettle to boil. Jenny couldn't really see her, though, she was angled behind her somewhere. It was only the three of them, which was understandable because it _was_ six in the morning. Jenny didn't have much better to do than hang about on the TARDIS.

"I'm fine, you're being paranoid," Jenny told her, "What cheating hag?"

"Missy," the Doctor said, keeping her eyes rigidly fixed on the screen, "She has no respect for this."

"I don't get it, I thought the Master was your sworn enemy?" Clara interrupted.

"Yeah, didn't they enslave Martha's family, or something?" Jenny questioned as well. When Thirteen answered, she met Jenny's eyes and Jenny's alone, though Clara hurried up to finish off making her tea so that she could come swanning over to lurk behind the Doctor. Thirteen clenched one of her fists tightly as Clara approached.

"Yeah, so I'd appreciate if you could not mention to Martha anything about me being in contact with Missy," Thirteen said, "I still don't understand why she changed her name, though. 'Master' is gender neutral, just like 'Doctor.' It's the equivalent of me calling myself 'the Nurse.'"

"What's wrong with being a nurse?" Jenny inquired, "I did all sorts of nursing in the Second World War."

"Did you?" Clara asked, watching Jenny. She was especially interested in Jenny when she scratched her nose and stayed upside down just on the one hand – she felt barely any strain from this at all.

"Yep."

"Absolutely nothing," the Doctor resumed, "They do twice the work of doctors, work longer shifts, and get paid less for their efforts. Every healthcare system in the universe would be doomed without them. I'm just addressing the elephant in the room – that being gender stereotypes of certain professions. But 'the Mistress?' Seriously? She's either going to become a head teacher, or a dominatrix." Clara coughed on her drink when the Doctor said 'dominatrix.' Jenny couldn't imagine any of the other three making that kind of comment, but who knew, if they were in as bad of a mood as Thirteen seemed to be?

"What's she cheating at? Are you playing a game?" Jenny asked.

"A _game_? This is not a _game_, Jenny, that would imply that it was fun, that it wasn't high stakes, and dangerous. This is a battle, one that requires the utmost skill and concentration, amounts of finesse that only a Time Lord would be capable of. Intellectually, it's far beyond all of the humans we live with; it defies all of the pre-established complexities and intricacies of competition. It's life or death," Thirteen told her in a very over-dramatised fashion, like she was narrating a blockbuster film trailer.

"Right, but… what is it?" Jenny asked again.

"Connect 4," Clara told her. Clara was stood behind Thirteen, so she could see the screen. The Doctor did not seem happy about Clara's involvement in her affairs at present, she was trying to ignore her as much as possible.

"_Connect 4_!?" Jenny exclaimed in annoyance. Her mother had clearly gone a bit overboard with her description.

"You know, you have really toned legs," Clara interrupted Jenny's irritation to comment.

"I have really toned everything," Jenny told her curtly.

"Clara, Jenny doesn't want you to ogle her, and neither do I. She _is_ still my daughter," the Doctor told Clara coolly.

"She was doing_ what_?" Jenny demanded, turning her head awkwardly so that she could see Clara properly, Clara who had gone red and was trying to defend herself. In response, Jenny decided that enough was enough, so she pushed herself off the table with her hands and landed quite firmly and a little gracefully next to it.

"I wasn't doing anything!" Clara defended herself.

"Well you can go not do anything in a different room, then, can't you?" the Doctor said, looking at her. Then she looked away quickly. Clara seemed legitimately hurt, but it wasn't Jenny's place to get involved in whatever _this_ was.

"Fine," Clara snapped, "I will." And then she took her drink and marched out of Nerve Centre, and Thirteen watched her go and didn't move a single muscle, like she was a statue. Turned to stone by Clara's presence.

"That was cold," Jenny said to her mother, who sighed.

"I know. I hope she's alright."

"If you hope she's alright, you could have been less mean to her."

"I couldn't. I needed her to leave, I can't be around her, not now. I've been away too long," she said somewhat sadly. Jenny took Clara's place behind the Doctor, looking over her shoulder at this atrocious game of Connect 4 she was playing with the Girl-Master.

"You're not very good at Connect 4, are you?" Jenny said, "How has she beaten you ten to zero?"

"Because she's cheating!" Thirteen argued.

"How do you cheat at this game? Is it even possible?"

"It must be, because she's doing it, okay? I'm amazing at Connect 4, I beat _you_ every time." Jenny observed, and didn't say another word until Missy had beaten the Doctor eleven times to none. And then twelve times. And then she got sick of watching this train wreck.

"You're terrible," Jenny laughed, "I'm gonna make toast, do you want any?"

"Yes, please, if you're offering. And would you kindly put on marmalade and hot sauce?" the Doctor asked.

"Marmalade _and_ hot sauce? Together?" Jenny stared, "Why do you eat such weird food?"

"Okay, maybe my tastes aren't as refined as yours, Little Miss Venetian Sous Chef, but I like the food that I like," Thirteen defended her abhorrent taste in cuisine as Jenny filled up the whole toaster (and they had a toaster that held eight slices of bread, and even then it still wasn't enough sometimes with all of them plus guests.)

"How do you know I was a sous chef?" Jenny asked.

"Because I've known you for a long time," Thirteen replied, "Of course at some point I was bound to have the dawning realisation that I was actually _interested_ in what my only daughter had been up to for the first two-hundred years of her life. Turns out, she's pretty damn talented, especially at cooking. Which is exactly why when, years ago, everybody used to do potlucks for Christmas dinner, it was always rigged so that _you_ made the turkey."

"Every time you say 'only daughter' it sounds like you're implying you have a son," Jenny said, getting the marmalade out of the cupboard. The Doctor laughed and looked up at her, ignoring her Connect 4 match for the time being.

"I assure you, I don't have a son, or any children at all, apart from you. The apple of my eye. My precious Genetic Anomaly," she said, smiling.

"I'd prefer if you _didn't_ call me 'Genetic Anomaly.' Even for a joke," Jenny turned her nose up at the phrase.

"Oh. Right. Sorry. Forgot, you're not at that point with me yet," Thirteen apologised, "If it makes you feel better, you don't have to go against your own values by mixing marmalade and hot sauce. I'll just have the marmalade."

"I appreciate your consideration for fine food," Jenny said, getting butter for herself.

"Toast is hardly 'fine food.'"

"It is compared to the monstrosity you were going to have me make for you," Jenny argued. Why couldn't she talk to her fathers this way? Why couldn't she joke with them? Why did they seem to push her out of their minds, forget she existed? Weeks ago, the Tenth Doctor had promised he would talk to her properly, that they would go to dinner somewhere. That had fallen through as soon as Rose showed up and started batting her eyelashes, or whatever it was she did to cast her spell on him. She hadn't even been bothered to chase it up. If he wanted to carry on being a paternal failure, that was his choice. You couldn't force change.

"You ever head of Laophis?" the Doctor said after a minute.

"No, what's that?"

"A planet, apparently," she said, distracted, "Oh, this total…" Thirteen pulled her sonic screwdriver out of the belt of her jeans were she was keeping it and sonicked the computer. "Gone. Awesome. Could've been a bit more specific – what's the deal with women? They just _have_ to be enigmatic."

"Hypocrite. What's going on?" Jenny said, the toast popping up.

"She says she heard a rumour that there's something 'worth looking into' on this Laophis that she thinks is more _my_ speed than hers. I figure it doesn't involve mass murder, so she's not interested," Thirteen complained, "Then she gave me coordinates and ditched the game! Probably because I was about to win."

"I'm sure you weren't," Jenny said quietly, "Nothing more than that?"

"Yeah, the word, 'geology.' Some kind of tip-off. I hope it's not a trap, not after that maze. You know, she launched Danny Pink's frozen heart at us out of a cannon?" Thirteen said.

"Wait, is this Beta Missy or Alpha Missy?" Jenny asked.

"I think they're the same person. Like the Paternosters, she exists in the places where the universes cross," Thirteen explained. "It'll be good to get out of here for a while, though… do you want to come with?"

"To Laophis? To investigate your strange tip from the only other remaining Time Lord?" Jenny licked a stray splodge of butter off the tip of her thumb.

"Hey! There's you as well, _you're_ a Time Lord. And River, kind of. I mean, she's dead, but she's still around. Come on, it'll be fun, just the two of us, some mother-daughter time, away from here, from…"

"Clara?" Jenny suggested.

"I guess. So, how about it?" None of the other Doctors had ever asked her to come out with them for parent-child time. So, just as she passed Thirteen her plate of toast and marmalade, Jenny accepted, half because she was genuinely interested, and half solely to spite her fathers.


	446. The Lazarus Vector

_The Lazarus Vector_

_Jenny_

There was something the others always talked about, about the thrill of stepping off the TARDIS every day and seeing where they ended up. That moment where their hearts raced and anything could be outside of those blue, wooden doors; a lost civilisation, a futuristic empire, an alien invasion, a great medieval battle. It had always been lost on Jenny. She'd done it on her own for decades, and before that had been dragging herself about using a broken vortex manipulator, landing in random places.

But for the first time in the four months she had been reunited with the Doctor, she actually got a sense of that thrill. It ran down her spine, that feeling of excitement, of unknowing. They didn't know what they would find on Laophis, on this planet Missy had given them coordinates to, and though the Doctor remarked that she wouldn't be surprised to find an armed ambush in wait, it didn't take away anything from Jenny's enjoyment of stepping through those doors. And Thirteen invited her to step out of them first, too.

It wasn't the most remarkable planet Jenny had ever seen, but few planets were. Every last one had its fair share of extraordinary views and its fair share of squalid, lifeless coves. Laophis, or what they saw of it, was somewhere in between. It was very green, very dark, and _very_ wet. Rain poured down aggressively from black and grey storm clouds, thunder rumbled, white lightning flashed distantly. If they hadn't also been given a date, she might have suggested they leave and come back another day. It was a chilly marsh and it smelt like moss and decay, like a graveyard, and two tiny moons in the sky gave the bleak picture some silver splashes of colour in the ripples of the muddy water on either side of them. The TARDIS had landed on a raised bit of ground, the entire area very bumpy, these rises and falls making paths through ponds and streams.

They weren't in the middle of nowhere, though. Granted, there wasn't much by way of a town or a city, but there were dark, heavy tents, shining from the rainwater, and pale, human-like faces. They might have been humans, too, if their eyes were not dark purple and their skin not tinged the faintest blue. One thing was evident, though, these natives of Laophis had clearly never seen a wooden blue box appear out of thin air right in the middle of their campsite, by a fire which was a great deal more yellow than the ones Jenny was used to.

"Hi!" the Doctor said brightly after closing the door behind them, "This weather isn't all that great, there wasn't even any point in me trying to do something with my hair this morning. Say, do you guys know anything about geology?" she asked the natives, who just stared. There were only four of them, and only three tents. Jenny wondered what they were doing all the way out in the sticks, unless this was some kind of tribe? But what kind of tribe only had four people? And their clothes looked _very_ manufactured for that kind of lifestyle.

"Who are you? _What_ are you? What's that machine?" a tall, stern-faced woman asked them. Demanded it, really. A significantly smaller, more timid woman who barely looked to be out of adolescence cowered behind the older one. The other two were a third girl, and a tall young man with a walking stick. An odd party. The TARDIS had, for months, been set to disappear a minute after arrival, in case the people on board didn't want to be followed out. In this case, Jenny and the Doctor _didn't_ want to be followed out, but it really did disappear at quite the inconvenient time.

"That?" the Doctor asked, turning to watch the TARDIS as it thrummed loudly and slowly vanished, the light on the top pulsing brighter and fainter with every screeching noise it emitted, "That would be a spaceship. I'm the Doctor, this is Jenny, and whatever you're looking into, I'm definitely an expert in it. Here are my credentials." She went into her pocket to retrieve her psychic paper and pulled it out. The taller woman stepped closer and squinted at whatever the paper said on it.

"You're a professor of mineralogy?" she asked.

"I most certainly am," Thirteen said.

"But what was that thing!? And why do they look so strange?" the third woman, who looked a bit menacing and leered at them, asked the stern-faced leader of the small group.

"Well, you see, we're from another planet," the Doctor told them, "We're, what you might call, aliens."

"Aliens?" the younger girl asked.

"Not like in your stories, these women are clearly delusional," the stern one muttered to the youngster.

"Why has Missy sent us to make first contact?" Jenny whispered to the Doctor, the first words she had spoken on Laophis. She would love to get out of the rain.

"Beats me. Listen, we're kind of… looking for something, but we don't know what it is," she said, "Anything weird, or of geological significance. Something you might not have seen before? Who are you all, why are you out here?"

"We're conducting a geographic survey of this territory," the only man said, "This is an expedition."

"Well we're on an expedition too, we explore," the Doctor said, "I know how hard first contact with an alien race can be, but we're just visitors. We're not invading. We have… advanced technology that could be of some help to you. We came from across the stars in that box, it's a spaceship."

"Bit of a small spaceship," the stern one said.

"It's bigger on the inside," Jenny told them, "Can we get out of the rain, possibly?"

"What? In _our_ tents? You freaks of nature?" the menacing woman asked.

"Hey," the stern one snapped, "We're scientists, Mig. They're either telling the truth or are a race from our own planet we've never seen before. That one has _brown_ eyes, I've never seen anyone have brown eyes before in my life, or that yellow hair colour." They all had brilliant white hair that shimmered silver in the moonlight.

"A planet where blondes don't exist? My wife would not be happy, were she here," Thirteen said jokingly, but then an air of sadness came over her. It was tricky to tell exactly what emotion was ailing her with the weather so foul, the rain cascading like a waterfall. Jenny was soaked to the skin already, and they hadn't even been on Laophis for five minutes.

"We're here because of strange geological, uh, readings, that we picked up in our spaceship," Jenny lied, "Very advanced technology, scanning for… valuable minerals. Came across one we didn't recognise; thought we'd best look into it. Sorry about being so impromptu about it all, and not sending a fancy signal to whoever your leaders are." Jenny smiled warmly.

"…What's your species?" the man asked.

"Time Lord," the Doctor replied, "And yours? What do you call a person from Laophis?"

"Laophan," he told them, "Are there a lot of you?"

"Not at all, only three," Thirteen said. Jenny wondered why she didn't count the other Doctors in that tally of hers, why it only seemed to be the pair of them and Missy, "The third isn't even here, I don't know where she is. She's not very hospitable sometimes."

"Your wife you mentioned?" the stern woman questioned.

"My _wife_? No! No, no. I married a human. You won't know humans either, though, come to think of it. Different species, not really… with us. But Jenny's my daughter," Thirteen introduced her.

"You look the same age," the young girl said.

"Quiet, Tlem," the stern woman told her.

"Yeah, well, the whole… alien thing. You know, it's complicated, kind of private, we're really interested in geology. Seriously, the family business is just geology. Anything interesting and rock related, we'll be right there, isn't that right?" Thirteen said to Jenny, who nodded.

"I'm quite interested in shelter from this weather."

"I don't trust them," the menacing Mig grumbled. The stern woman shushed her.

"They might be able to help us," the man said quietly, "With the Procium Zero."

"We're always willing to help," Jenny said, "That's what we do. Just travel around and help people out. Who are you all? You're aliens to us too."

"I'm Lurth," said the stern woman, then she motioned the man, "This is Arn, the one who doesn't like you is Mig, and this is my daughter, Tlem. We're scientists. And you've shown up at a very convenient time."

"We always do," the Doctor smiled, then her smile vanished, "It's really getting to be a problem. Care to show us this Procium Zero stuff, then?"

* * *

They weren't given a tour of the small campsite, but from what Jenny gathered, one of the three tents was where the three women stayed, the second was where Arn stayed alone with all of their things, and the third was a makeshift laboratory. They were only shown to the first, and were left with Arn and Tlem (who refused to leave when her mother asked her to.) Arn was supposedly the expert when it came to minerals while Lurth was a meteorologist and Mig was a botanist, and Tlem was very into what Jenny assumed must be Laophan pop culture, their version of science-fiction. Every planet had one, they all liked to daydream.

The lab was messy, full of odd instruments that were vaguely similar to ones she had seen before, but she could not identify them alone. There was a very funny one that looked like a spyglass which the Doctor told her was a very interesting sort of microscope, and she grew quite silent when shown this Procium Zero. Jenny didn't see the fuss about it, to her, it just looked like a shiny, blue-tinged rock. Pale and nearly glowing in the soft yellow light of the oil lantern Jenny was next to. She warmed her hands against it; this boggy area of Laophis, which Arn said was called the Fumph Marshes, was very cold, and Jenny didn't have a decent coat. Rain lashed against the simple cloth tent and the net draped down over the ceiling was only doing a semi-adequate job of keeping the insects away. There was something that resembled a moth, but a moth with only four, long legs, lying dead on the fold-out metal table next to the Doctor. Thunder rumbled overhead. Jenny's hair was damp and straggly and kept sticking to her face. She didn't actually know anything about minerals and rocks.

"What caught your eye about this stuff, then, Arn?" Thirteen inquired. She sat hunched over the small blue lump with the spyglass-microscope pressed against the only lens of the broken glasses she had on, those ones that were to stop vampire-eyes from straining in the sunlight she had been wearing the first time they ever went out somewhere together.

"The colour," he answered, "In the moonlight, it glows, bright blue. I've never seen anything like it."

"Interesting. It _is_ hard for anything non-living to retain any kind of bioluminescent quality. Lots of animals light up, and insects, sometimes plants, but rarely a rock, rocks and metals are too different, chemically. Why do you – what on Gallifrey have you done to your hand!?" the Doctor stopped herself from asking her next question when she noticed Jenny, holding her hands over the lantern. Jenny paused and looked at the back of her right hand and remembered the bruises she had on her knuckles from her outing with Jack two days earlier. Her skin was dark purple with yellow staining the edges.

"Had to open an emergency kit attached to a wall on an Alliance ship the other day," Jenny said.

"Open it how!? By _punching _it? Didn't you have your screwdriver?"

"I was in a bad mood! You _know_ Austin Cargill is trying to frame me for the Polaris Death Charge, mother," Jenny remarked, "I merely took out some aggression."

"Yeah, on your poor, burst blood vessels," the Doctor argued. Annoyed, Jenny crossed her arms tightly so that Thirteen couldn't eye the bruises anymore. They barely hurt, anyway, she was good at ignoring pain. The Doctor looked at her sternly, and then turned back to Arn and resumed what she had been about to ask _before_ she began judging her daughter's choices, "Why is it you call it Procium Zero?"

"I named it that," Tlem interrupted. She was very eager, she kept asking them questions, "I'm studying ancient Laophan mythology. Procium is an ancient word for 'giving life' in one of the old Fumph languages. In one of the oldest creation myths, the gods bestowed Procium on Laophan and it brought life to the planet. In different myths, Procium becomes more of an elixir to heal people, some sort of medicine, and there are a lot of similar legends with different names across this entire region."

"Just here?" Jenny asked. Tlem nodded. She talked very quickly and very excitedly.

"We're from the eastern hemisphere," Tlem was saying, "Thousands of years ago, solar flares killed all the Laophans in the _western_ hemisphere, which is where we are now, where the Fumph Marshes are. There's not a lot to go on when it comes to the specifics of a mythological substance, just tribal legends from extinct peoples. Whatever it is, it only comes from this area."

"But why Procium? Why name it after medicine?" Jenny inquired. She kept looking at the odd, dead insect on the table next to the Doctor. A furry little butterfly with four long legs. It must have looked awfully creepy when it was still in the land of the living.

"In most cultural cases, things like that are usually placebos or narcotics," the Doctor said, "Is this stuff a narcotic?" she picked it up and examined it, putting down the microscope and letting the glasses drop down to the end of her nose, peering over the lenses so that she wasn't having to look through them and their cracks and dark tints. "Consuming rock has never done anybody any good – in Pompeii they inhaled rock dust from volcanic tunnels because they thought it granted them the ability to soothsay, but it petrified them and caused Vesuvius to erupt…"

"What if they used it as a balm?" Jenny suggested, "Mixed it with something else? Ground it up into powder and applied it that way?"

"Good idea," the Doctor told her, then she asked Arn, "Do you have any more of this stuff? Or just this one rock?"

"There was a tiny amount of it outside of an unexplored cave system, we were planning on trying an excavation once we knew what it was and if it was toxic," Arn said, "But I can't fathom what it might be."

"And you just named it Procium Zero because it's an undiscovered, mysterious ore? Matching vague legends of similar things from the area?" Thirteen asked Tlem, who nodded. "Huh… so, what we need is powder…" She took out her sonic screwdriver.

"What's _that_? Is it alien?" Tlem, amazed, asked.

"Yeah," Jenny answered, "It's sonic."

"From what planet?"

"They don't really come from a planet, just a big factory. It burned down eventually, though."

"Have you visited a lot of planets?"

"Oh, sure. Dozens and dozens of them," Jenny said. Thirteen was scanning the 'Procium Zero' while Arn watched, enchanted by the device. It _was_ very sleek and largely different from most of the old Laophan equipment she saw around the tent.

"What one do you and the Doctor come from?"

"Uh… different ones. It's complicated. I'm from Messaline, in a galaxy called Canis Perilos."

"What's that like?" Tlem really did like questions.

"It's, um…" Jenny stopped, "I… moved away. Very young, long time ago. Never been back. I heard stories it was supposed to be a paradise eventually, though…" She didn't fancy answering anymore questions about her early life, or any of her life. She didn't have to, though, the Doctor saved her from that with her idiocy when she clearly did something wrong and made the rock explode. All four of them jumped and the Procium Zero was dust, falling around everywhere like fine snow.

"Whoops," Thirteen said, "That wasn't supposed to happen. It was only trying to break it in half."

"I think you went overboard," Jenny said. Arn was in shock from what he had just witnessed, but they didn't pay him any notice. Jenny watched the Doctor dab the tip of her finger in the powder as it settled, grey and dark. At lot less blue than Jenny thought it would be. She wasn't remotely surprised when Thirteen licked the stuff, though, and then frowned. "What?"

"Do you have iron on this planet?" she asked Arn.

"Of course, this area is rich in iron deposits."

"It's iron," she said.

"It can't be iron, we wouldn't have gotten any abnormal readings if it was just iron, it was blue," Arn argued.

"No, no, no, on the _outside_ it was blue. It was coated in something, something that interfered with your equipment, interfered with _my_ equipment then because it was trying to separate two different elements. Something changed its colour," Thirteen said, then she stood up and brushed the powder off herself and onto the floor. Jenny wasn't interested in that, though. Her eyes had found that dead bug on the table again, which had lain there quite still on its back with its legs curled up and hadn't moved a muscle for the entire time they had been there. Until it was showered with strange Procium Zero ashes.

"Mother, look," Jenny nodded at it, and the Doctor followed her gaze. The four of them observed this creature as it twitched. It more than just twitched, wasn't like muscle retention in dead frog's legs, or like when a corpse was electrocuted, it was moving. Its wings were flapping; it was picking itself back up. Within fifteen seconds it was flying around their heads (and Jenny had been right, it _was_ creepy when it was alive.)

"I swatted that earlier," Arn said, staring at it, "It was dead."

"Yeah," the Doctor said, "And now it's not."


	447. Overground, Underground

_Overground, Underground_

_Jenny_

After the Doctor had destroyed what little remained of the Procium Zero, it had been decided that they must go on an expedition to try and find more. Of course, the Doctor would most likely have wandered off to go spelunking regardless of if the Laophan party agreed, but it was lucky for them that they did. Mainly because they provided equipment, two heavy bags. It was just Arn and Lurth coming with them, though; it was deemed too dangerous for Tlem, and Mig flat-out refused because she was clearly a xenophobe. Jenny didn't really understand why looking for funny rocks was considered _dangerous_, but then, she wasn't privy to the wildlife on Laophis, and they _had_ said this area of the planet was largely unchartered, so perhaps it would be best to leave her behind where it was safe. After all, caves were full of all sorts of creepy crawlies.

The two bags of instruments and whatever else were being carried by Lurth and Jenny, because the Doctor wasn't really the type of person anybody would peg to be into carrying things about, and Arn had some sort of deformity in his foot, hence the cane he needed to walk. Jenny wasn't the type of person people thought was strong, either, but people underestimating her almost always worked to her advantage. Besides, the bag wasn't even that heavy – just the other day, she had done circa three-hundred push-ups with Clara Ravenwood cross-legged on her back, reading a book. Apparently these physical feats were 'weird,' though, never mind the fact that Clara was a _vampire_ who wasn't exactly lacking when it came to those sorts of abilities.

The weather was still bad, they were still trudging through marshes and bogs, and Jenny wished she'd worn a sturdier pair of boots. Some consolation was the fact that, in that transdimensional bag of hers, the Doctor pulled out an umbrella after Jenny complained enough about the battering they were getting from the rainstorm for her to remember she owned the thing.

"Why do you have that bag, anyway? Did you just steal it from Mary Poppins?" Jenny joked, though she was grateful for the slight shelter the heavy umbrella offered. Only room enough for the two of them, to Lurth and Arn's annoyance. They had decent coats, though, made of good material, Jenny and her mother did not. If only they had checked the TARDIS systems for the weather forecast on Laophis before leaving.

"Excuse you, Mary Poppins stole the concept from _me_," Thirteen argued, "Well, sort of. Pam Travers did, the writer of the books. Clara and I dropped by a fair few times for afternoon tea when we got stranded for a month in London in the interwar period. She complains, but she loved it, got to hang out with a lot of suffragettes. In fairness she got the idea from my pockets rather than a bag, this was decades ago, when I was still Theodore. And then it turned out girl's clothes are the absolute worst for pockets, so I got a bag." She seemed happy when she talked about Clara, but as soon as she stopped, it faded and she was left sad.

"Who's Theodore?" Arn interrupted, "And how does that bag work?"

"That's need-to-know. Complicated Time Lord business," the Doctor told him in a way that suggested she wasn't to be argued with. The Doctor really wasn't very interested in explaining about regenerations. Jenny figured they were hard to believe, unless you witnessed one. Probably why she didn't seem to tell _anybody_. Ten had never told Jenny, she'd been a year and a half old before she actually knew what had happened to her when she'd been shot.

As they walked the last leg of the distance, Jenny didn't say anything else. She was watching her mother. Her behaviour was odd, it reminded Jenny of weeks ago, with the vampires, where she had acted awfully strange the whole time, because she knew the future. Was there something coming, from the future? Something else that this Doctor didn't want to be involved in, like yesterday? Then she thought, would it even do her any good to speculate? If whatever was wrong with the Doctor this time was anything like all of the other times there had been something wrong with her, Jenny would surely find out all about it within the next few days.

"This is where we found the ore deposit," Arn stopped them walking and pointed out a little pit in the ground, about the size of a football, "We scraped it out and brought it back to camp when we saw how odd it was." The Doctor passed the umbrella to Jenny, who was beginning to feel like a bit of a caddie, and took a torch out of her bag next. She crouched to look into the pit in the ground, which was half-full of rainwater.

"That powder is like dye," she said, "Or, whatever made the rock blue is like dye. See?" she put the torch in her mouth and cupped her hands, scooping out a puddle of muddy water. Then she said something unintelligible, because she was biting the torch.

"The water's blue," Jenny said, seeing what her mother saw. The Doctor beamed and then moved her hands, letting the water splash back down into the pit. She stood back up, under cover of the umbrella, and wiped her wet hands on her jeans before taking the torch out of her mouth.

"Something is contaminating everything it comes into contact with," Thirteen said, "Altering it. And whatever it is, is coming up out of the ground. Like when a graveyard floods and all the bones wash up."

"Grim," Jenny commented. The Doctor looked around, but there wasn't much to see. A lot of massive rocks, a very distant forest, mostly dark green hills and weeds.

"Did you say there were caves over this way?" she asked Arn.

"None that anybody's ever mapped," he said.

"Then let's go map them. C'mon, someone's always gotta be the first to do something," the Doctor said. Arn exchanged a look with Lurth, who told him to 'show the aliens' where the caves were, with a shrug. He nodded ahead and said it was that way, and Lurth held up the yellow oil lamp she was carrying and they headed out, but they didn't have to go very far.

Around the back of one of the big rock formations, Arn pointed out a dark gap in the ground between boulders he said was the entrance to some tunnels. Apparently, Tlem had dropped down there a few days ago looking for more of the mysterious ore, and had found signs of it, but had then been banned by her mother from exploring any further. Lurth said she thought it might be a lair for some sort of predator and Thirteen, in typical fashion, said, "There's only one way to find out." Then she dropped down into the hole with her torch, Jenny peering down to see what was going on. She didn't want her mother to do something stupid, like trip and break her neck.

"Is it safe?" Arn called.

"Sure!" Thirteen answered.

"Well don't wander off!" Jenny shouted after her, "Come and take this bag." Jenny slid the bag off her shoulder and stooped to lower it down into the hole, shouting for Thirteen to catch. Thirteen _did_ catch, but she also grunted and staggered back. "It's not that heavy!"

"Uh, yeah, it is," the Doctor argued.

"Should've let me go down first – don't you know I used to jump off things for a living?" Jenny argued, folding the umbrella and passing that down next. Then she held out her hand to take the lantern from Lurth, who passed her it. The Doctor scoffed at her, and she jumped down, vaulting into the hole on just one hand and landing perfectly. "Hold this," she ordered her mother, giving her the lantern next, and then going to tell Lurth to drop the bag.

"Be careful," Thirteen warned. Jenny caught it easily.

"It's not heavy," she said, "Have you ever done exercise in your life?"

"I do plenty of exercise, I have an energetic lifestyle. Do you know how many times I've been spelunking lately? A ridiculous amount. Every cave looks the same. And I do so much running," she complained as the Lurth helped lower Arn down into the cave, and then jumped down last and picked her bag back up. They were out of the rain, at least, so the Doctor could put her umbrella away. Lurth retrieved the lantern and the Doctor kept her torch, and now _she_ was the leader of the party. Jenny could already see streaks of the same light blue colour along the walls though, like they were layers in the rock.

The Doctor had something in her other hand, though. Whatever it was, it was small and she kept thumbing it in her palm. As they walked, seeing not a lot of note other than the lines in the walls that meant they were on the right track, Jenny frowned and wondered what it was. Finally, she decided to ask.

"What are you holding?"

"Huh?" the Doctor asked.

"In your hand," Jenny said, pointing.

"Oh," the Doctor opened her palm in front of Jenny, and what Jenny saw was a stone, a very smooth and strange stone, that looked clear and as though it were flowing with pink-coloured mist*. Did she pick that up somewhere on the planet and not mention it?

"That's opplusio," Arn, eavesdropping, interrupted. Thirteen laughed.

"Do you call it that here? You have it?" she asked.

"It comes from asteroids, it's rare," he answered, "It-"

"Its wider known name is phohanite," Thirteen explained, not allowing Arn the Actual Geologist his explanation of what it was, and then she seemed to be thinking about something, until she said, "Here," and took Jenny's wrist, moving her hand so that she could put the funny rock down in her palm, "Do you feel how warm it is?"

"Yeah, because you've just been holding it," Jenny argued.

"No, no. Make a fist around it, don't let it go cold," the Doctor told her, so she did, "The mineral that's made from isn't very well-known because it serves no industrial purpose. Even if it did, there wouldn't be enough of it to fulfil any. It grows inside of asteroids in certain conditions, the crystals form and get mined out when the asteroids crash and then compressed. You know how when you compress carbon you get a diamond? When you compress phohanite crystals, you get this. It has a thermodynamic connection with the other crystals from the same asteroid. Like an empathy bond. If you have two stones from the same asteroid, they never lose connection with each other, and they transmit temperature."

"Meaning what?" Jenny asked.

"Meaning that what you're holding is the gift I bought Clara for our twenty-sixth anniversary, she has the other one. She's holding it right now, that's what the warmth is," Thirteen said.

"In that case I feel very weird about holding it – please have it back," Jenny said, dropping it back in Thirteen's palm. The Doctor thought her reaction was amusing, though.

"She said it's '_like holding hands across all of time and space_,'" the Doctor said wistfully. Then she saddened again. "They're colloquially called 'lover's hearts.' She must have lost it and only remembered she had it recently, it hasn't been warm until yesterday… unless she just…" Thirteen didn't say anything more.

"What's that?" Lurth pointed something out on the wall after the conversation dwindled away to nothing, Jenny's attention still more focused on her mother than anything else that might be going on. They stopped walking and Lurth held up the lantern. Initially, Jenny thought it was just more blue stripes of whatever was dyeing the rock, but it wasn't. Yes, it was blue, the same shade of blue and the same material, but it was faded and it curled and curved and arced. It was drawings.

The Doctor held up the torch and stood on her tiptoes to see what it was.

"It's like hieroglyphics," she said. Jenny couldn't really tell what it was, and the tunnel they were in was very narrow. She would have liked to step back to get a change of perspective, from where she was it was just a bunch of abstract lines going hither and dither across the slimy canvas.

"But what is it? Why is it blue?" Jenny frowned.

"I… I'm not sure," Thirteen said, "This is perplexing. But it was definitely drawn by somebody, and the way it fades, it doesn't look like ordinary weathering. It's as though somebody's tried to scrub it off, but whatever's corrupting it to look like this is too strong. It's in the rock itself, it'd take an industrial sander to get rid of this…"

"It looks a bit like a ritual, from other ancient drawings I've seen in Tlem's textbooks," Lurth said.

"Ritual?" the Doctor asked. Lurth nodded.

"I don't know what kind of ritual, though," she said. Perhaps they would have figured it out eventually, if they were given a chance to study it. But they weren't.

Distantly, from somewhere far away, deep within the caves they were creeping through, was a bang. An explosion. Then rumbles started from within the walls, the caves shaking.

"We have to get out," Lurth declared.

"We have to go deeper and find out what that was," the Doctor argued.

"It's dangerous in here," Arn said.

"You don't want to know what's going on?" Jenny questioned.

"There's no time to argue," Lurth said as dust began to fall from the ceiling, and then pebbles. The cave structure was weak and getting weaker as the aftershock of whatever had shaken them rippled through the sediment.

"Come on," the Doctor said to Jenny, going to head deeper.

"You'll kill yourselves!" Lurth shouted, she and Arn staying where they were. Jenny followed her mother.

"Get out of here!" Jenny called back to them, "We'll be fine!"

"You'll be trapped!" Arn yelled.

"GO!" Jenny shouted, when the Doctor shouted to run and grabbed her arm and pulled her enough to get her moving. Jenny took one last glance at Lurth and Arn, them still shouting that she and the Doctor were going to be buried alive, and then the caves collapsed above them.

*_chapter 839_


	448. Mother Knows Best

_Mother Knows Best_

_Jenny_

Dust cleared in the narrow tunnel as the rumbling within the walls quietened down. Rocks rolled over each other and settled, but the cave in itself was about finished. Unless there was another of those loud explosions that had caused it to begin with. Jenny coughed on the powder in the air and sat up in the rubble where she had fallen. It was pitch black until she found in the back pocket of her jeans her sonic screwdriver, thankfully unbroken, and used that to create light (even if that light was dim and pink.) She stared around, not worrying about what injuries she may have suffered until she found where the Doctor was. Jenny spotted her after a second, sitting against the opposite wall a few feet away.

"Are you alright?" Jenny called. No answer. "Doctor? …Mum?" _Then_ Thirteen looked up and met her gaze. "What's wrong? Did you get hurt?"

"No," she said shortly, then she fumbled around on the floor and tried to find her torch where she had dropped it. It was closer to Jenny, who picked it up and switched it on, able to put her sonic away. The hum of it got on her nerves, one of the reasons she rarely used it. She was better at just kicking doors down than covertly unlocking them with space gadgetry. The Doctor didn't take it, though.

"What's the matter?"

"I'm fine," she said quietly.

"You've been weird all day. All yesterday, too," Jenny pointed out. The Doctor only met her gaze for a brief few seconds, before trailing her eyes over the mess behind them, the rubble and boulders piling up and blocking their way out of the tunnel.

"I hope there's another way out," she sighed.

"It's fine, we have those emergency teleporters. Well, _I_ do. They carry two," Jenny assured her, and she smiled.

"They're the things I'm trying to avoid using," she said, "I hate them, they play havoc with my memory. Don't you remember when I arrived? I didn't remember Clara's name*. You'd think I'd remember the name of the person I've been married to for…" she didn't say anything after that, didn't make something vague up or even tell the truth, she just stopped talking.

"Why would they affect your memory?" Jenny asked. She didn't much remember the day Thirteen had arrived, she _had_ been blind and had just regenerated the day before. The Doctor laughed slightly.

"Oh, I have a _lot_ of issues with my memory," she said, "The perks of having brain damage."

"Brain damage?" Jenny asked. She stood up and went to sit down next to Thirteen, dragging the bag of archaeological supplies Lurth had given her too, "How did you get brain damage?"

"Because it's the sort of thing that happens when you drown and spend the next two weeks underwater," she said, "That's how I regenerated. Don't tell anybody else. It was in September, too, there were these shark aliens… it was very stupid, on my part. Don't ever jump into the Irish Sea in the middle of autumn looking for shark aliens, no matter how many people they kill. Clara yelled at me so much for it when they fished me out of the ocean. So did you, come to think of it, when we dropped by after that."

"Dropped by where?" Jenny inquired.

"Nice try. I'm not telling you anything about _your_ future, this is_ my _future. And besides, you understand that things have to be the way they have to be. That's the way of the universe. You wouldn't try to mess with it, like Clara would…" her voice faded off again.

"What's the matter, though? We still have to find out what's going on in these caves," Jenny said.

"I'm sick of caves," she muttered, "I was in caves again the day I left, and that… well it didn't go very well…" She picked up a rock and threw it down the tunnel away from them, surprising Jenny. "I think she was angry at me before I left." Then the Doctor turned and looked at her.

"What?" she asked.

"I…" Thirteen began, then she stopped herself, thought about it, and resumed, "I'm leaving." Jenny stiffened.

"When?"

"The day after tomorrow."

"That's good though, isn't it? Good for you. Not for… not for me…" she said quietly.

"You'll be okay," Thirteen assured her, "I promise. I'm scared. What if things are broken?"

"You mean your marriage?" Jenny asked. She took the Doctor's silence for a yes. "You can fix it, I'm sure."

"How can you know that? I don't know that. I don't even know what's wrong, she wouldn't tell me, but she was so… for so long it was like there was something going on with her, and she was about to tell me, and then I got dragged away by the damned Dimension Stabilisers."

"Well, if you've fixed your relationship with your estranged daughter who's been torturing herself for two-hundred years looking for your approval whenever you're from, I'm sure it'll be a bit easier to make up with your wife," Jenny said, "How did you fix that, by the way? The Eleventh Doctor won't give me the time of day."

"It's gonna get worse before it gets better. But it's not just about him. You're not as willing to talk things out as you want to think you are. You need to forgive him, and he needs to understand what you're forgiving him for. Don't worry, it'll happen one day. And when I get back home I'll go see you and I'll say sorry for being so vague with you right now," she said, "I'd love to tell you that it'll be easy."

"I don't want you to go," Jenny said eventually.

"Future You will have been missing me, though," she said.

"Ugh, I hate that woman," she muttered, and Thirteen laughed. "You're still the only one of them who treats me like a person."

"I know. Just think of me as motivation to reconcile with your father. You'll see me again," Thirteen told her, "Of course you will. And for the majority of the interim period, everything will be great. You'll never have been happier over the next few decades. And hopefully beyond, but I'm not a fortune teller. Now… come on. We have to go find out what Procium Zero really is." She stood up, taking the torch from Jenny, "What's in the bag she gave you?" While she was still sat down Jenny unzipped the bag and examined its contents, the Doctor holding up the torch to give her a light source. "What is all that?"

Jenny picked up a weird-looking block of something and smelled it, then her eyes widened.

"It's plastic explosives," she said, holding it up to the Doctor, "Smell it, like almonds."

"Oh, great. They were planning on blowing things up and they never even told us…"

"It was probably just in case there was somewhere inaccessible," Jenny shrugged, getting back to her feet, "It might be useful."

"In these fragile caves? No thank you. I have half a mind to leave that behind."

"Don't be a baby," Jenny said, "Explosives are perfectly safe."

"Oswin would make you leave it behind if she was here," the Doctor complained, holding up the torch and heading in front of Jenny through the tunnels.

"She's not. And it's basically C4, C4 doesn't just _blow up randomly_. You have to detonate it. It's very stable," Jenny said.

She didn't know what she was going to do in Thirteen's absence. Here was the only parent of her myriad of them who actually did seem to genuinely care about her, who asked her what she had been doing that day, who talked to her like an intelligent equal, rather than an unruly child. She was the only one Jenny hadn't had an urge to act out against, not like the others, not like how she had married Captain Jack, had slept with Beta Clara, had brought guns onto the TARDIS repeatedly. They must think she was obsessed with weapons, when she hated to fire guns almost as much as they did. She did it all for the looks on their faces, that look of horror when they saw that their child was some kind of gun-toting, promiscuous lunatic. Yet they didn't see her as a threat, didn't see her as her own person, they just saw her as a rebellious teenager who didn't understand the greater facets of the world around them. Someone who needed to be controlled, who needed to be seen and not heard. Or, preferably, neither seen nor heard. Then they would have to face the consequences of their mistake in leaving her behind, Ten and Eleven.

All the things she had done in her life, all the ways in which she had tried to live by a half-understood code of moral ideals, all the parts of her personality which she had worked on to try and make him proud, they only mattered when it was Thirteen she was talking to. Thirteen knew things about her, perhaps Thirteen knew everything about her, about the things she had done, the places she had been, but the fact remained that Jenny Harkness could not envision herself opening up to the other Doctors. She just couldn't picture herself telling them these things. She couldn't even picture herself telling Clara certain parts of her life; she couldn't find the words.

And now Thirteen was leaving. Of course, Thirteen had to leave. Thirteen did not have a choice in the matter, it had to be that way, regardless of how abandoned Jenny felt. It was like being left behind all over again, with the vague hope that one day, she would reunite with the Doctor. At least she had faith that Thirteen would care about her whenever she was from. She hoped she was being told the truth about things getting better, though she wasn't looking forward to the part where they apparently got worse…

"Look at these tunnels," the Doctor interrupted her thoughts. She had grown silent without realising, "They're not just caves anymore, these look like they've been built." They did, the walls were like bricks and there were clear supports in place as they carried on. On top of that, all of the walls were blue and shining, just like the first rock of Procium Zero they had been shown by Arn and Tlem. "First drawings, and now this, I wonder what these ruins are really for. A temple, maybe? Reminds me of the pyramids."

"In Egypt? You've been inside them?" Jenny asked.

"Oh, yeah, a couple of times. Wouldn't advise it, there was this whole crazy thing with a plague a long time ago. You ever heard of the curse of Tutankhamun? It was real. I covered it up. People were turning into jackals; it was nasty business. Decades ago now," she said. Jenny wondered if this incident was in her past or her future. She doubted she was involved in it, though, otherwise Thirteen would most likely have kept her mouth shut.

A light grew in the distance, at the end of the tunnel. She could tell the tunnel was ending because of the way the light got cut off abruptly at either side. It was pale blue, the colour of the sky on Earth on a clear day, and impossible vibrant. She began to squint against it, too used to the lowlight environment of Laophis' caverns.

"What is that?" Jenny asked. A change had come over her mother, though. The Doctor turned off the torch – it was unnecessary with the odd light emanating from ahead – and stared.

"Uh-oh…" was all she said. When Jenny questioned her more, she just didn't answer. She sped up, and Jenny had to as well, practically chasing after her mother as fast as she could when they burst out of the strange tunnels and into a huge room, which reminded Jenny of a Roman bathhouse with its tiles and its décor. And in the middle of the large room, stained blue like everything else, was the source of the light; a great pool of glowing blue liquid, right there in the centre, illuminating everything.

"What is that?" Jenny asked.

"Bad. It's bad," Thirteen said, staring at it, "It can't be… they were destroyed… give me your hand."

"Sorry?" Jenny asked, but her mother was a force of nature. She pulled the bag off Jenny and dropped it and its explosives onto the floor, then grabbed hold of Jenny's wrist and dragged her over to the pool, forcing them both to kneel, "What are you doing!?" she demanded.

"Put your hand in it, the right one," Thirteen ordered. Jenny glanced down at her bruised knuckles, "Do it!" It looked like the Doctor might very well push her into the stuff if she didn't obey, and she was too frightened by this angry side of her mother that she did what she was told, she stuck her hand right in the glowing liquid and drew it out as quickly as she could. The Doctor grabbed her hand, the substance dripping off it it, and stared.

Before Jenny's eyes, the bruises seemed to shrink down. The purple faded to blue, then to yellow, and then her injuries disappeared completely. She stared at her hand in awe, but the Doctor seemed more terrified than anything.

"This is impossible…"

"What? What is it?" Jenny asked her urgently, but she didn't reply, "Tell me!"

"I'll tell you," an out-of-place, Irish accented voice said from across the other side of the room, "It's the Fountain of Youth."

*_chapter 646_


	449. Eternal Youth Spa

_Eternal Youth Spa_

_Jenny_

"You scumbag!" Jenny shouted when she located the source of the voice, the source of that Irish accent she remembered so vaguely from her military service with the Homeworld Alliance over a hundred years ago. Over the other side of the bright blue pool stood Austin Cargill, leering, and for once he had his wife with him. In the fancily built ancient cavern they had clearly lugged a huge machine, which had a funnel hanging down into the pool. Behind them was a smoky hole in the wall; they must have blown it up, and that had been the explosion she, the Doctor, Lurth and Arn had heard. The noise that had caused the cave in, leaving them separated and stuck.

"Excuse me?" Austin asked. Jenny reached around and drew her gun out from the waist of the back of her jeans where it had been, the plasma sidearm stolen from the freshly-dead corpse of Aldo Koltn just two days earlier. She aimed it right for his head, but didn't think that through, because both Austin and his wife, Ashley, drew pistols as well. Then she had two guns pointed at her and one on them. Even if she wanted to kill them, which she didn't, she wouldn't be able to without fatally suffering herself. But she wasn't going to lower her weapon. "Who in the world might you be to come down to _our_ fountain and point guns at us?"

"Oh, you don't recognise me? That's rich," she said, "I've had to pay an assassin with an Arcadian diamond to find you, and here you are, right in front of me."

"I'm sorry, love, but for the life of me, I don't recognise you," Austin shrugged indifferently.

"Oh, really, you don't recognise Major Jenny Young, from the Homeworld Alliance, served from 4876 to 4881? You don't remember the Polaris Death Charge on Deftan? Where you ordered a million soldiers to their deaths and then used _me_ as a scapegoat?" she questioned him. Nobody lowered their guns, and the Doctor was too focused on whatever was in the pit, the 'fountain of youth,' to tell Jenny off for pointing weapons.

"No, I don't. Haven't a clue who you are," he said.

"All we know is you're messing with our operation," Ashley said. The Doctor finally re-entered the world and stopped obsessing over the pit, straightening up and muttering an apology to Jenny for forcing her to put her hand in the stuff.

"You don't know either of us?" Thirteen asked, narrowing her eyes at them.

"No!" they both said.

"I'm the Doctor, though," she said, "We've met. We've met a lot of times. A few years ago we had you for Christmas dinner."

"You had them for Christmas dinner!?" Jenny demanded.

"It was _your_ idea," Thirteen hissed. Jenny couldn't see that happening, why in the world would she ever want Ashley and Austin Cargill messing up her Christmas dinner? God, the future sounded weird sometimes. She was actually wishing she knew _less_ about what was going to happen, and she hoped beyond hope that a lot of the things Thirteen had mentioned didn't concern her.

"The Doctor? I remember _a_ Doctor, didn't look like _you_, though," Ashley said, "But he was about as self-absorbed. In New York, a while ago."

"New York? You don't mean in 1893?" the Doctor questioned.

"Aye, that's right. Stopped us from killing Edison, we lost a lot of money for that," she said.

"Thomas Edison's death is fixed for the 18th of October, 1931. You were about forty years premature, it had nothing to do with me," Thirteen argued.

"That _was_ you? How does that work?" Ashley questioned, looking amused, as though the Doctor – and Jenny alike – were funny little playthings. Everything was given an unnerving tone by the fact there were still three guns being pointed at one another. Jenny didn't care how strangely friendly they seemed, or what point in time they were from; she wasn't lowering her pistol and leaving herself open to attack. She had done that with her cane and Ashildr, and had ended up dead.

"They look different, though. Don't you think?" the Doctor asked Jenny, but Jenny hadn't a clue. She hadn't seen Austin for over a century, and she'd never actually met Ashley. "When I saw you in 2057 in Siberia, you were almost identical. Like spooky fraternal twins." From where Jenny was standing, though the bright blue lighting was bad on her eyes and they were all the way on the other side of the pool, Ashley and Austin didn't look _that_ similar. They themselves seemed perplexed by this. Whatever was going on, the Doctor figured it out herself a second later and got into a state, which reminded Jenny a freaky amount of the Tenth Doctor. "It's this stuff!" she exclaimed, pointing at the pool, then she said eagerly to Jenny and tugged on her arm with excitement, "Don't you see?"

"I have no idea what you're talking about – get off my arm, I'm trying to aim a gun here," Jenny said, "If this isn't a 'fountain of youth,' what is it?"

"It's called a Fiovis Ichor," the Doctor explained, "It more or less _is_ a fountain of youth, but they're supposed to be destroyed, by the Time Lords. Time Lords are terrible at destroying things – the vampires, the Daleks, we were supposed to get rid of those. Apparently somebody missed one of these, as well. It heals any injury, restores youth, prolongs life – there was a group of Gallifreyans who had something similar, on a planet called Karn, called the Sacred Flame. It produced an Elixir of Life. It actually brought _me_ back to life once, during the Time War… but this is completely different. It has to be destroyed."

"Destroyed!?" Ashely and Austin shouted together, and Austin cocked his gun, a laser blaster, and it lit up red to show it was charging. Jenny did the same, and her gun glowed green along the barrel.

"Oh, come on, it'll kill you," the Doctor said to them, seemingly unfazed by the guns being pointed at her. Ashley had a bead on Jenny, Jenny had a beat on Austin, and Austin had the Doctor's head right in his sights. The Doctor probably had guns pointed at her all the time, though.

"It does the opposite of kill, it rejuvenates, revitalises, repairs," Ashely said.

"You sound like an advert for shampoo," Jenny quipped.

"This stuff _does_ do wonders for split ends. You might want to look into it," she remarked, and Austin laughed when Jenny gasped.

"How dare you! My girlfriend has really nice shampoo, for your information," she snapped.

"What does that have to do with the mess on _your_ head?" Ashley questioned.

"Because I borrow it all the time when I stay over! It's not important. Leave my hair alone, it's perfect," she said, nearly adding, _to quote Clara Ravenwood_.

"How will it kill us, then?" Austin asked the Doctor, but he was clearly only humouring her. They thought they were the luckiest two people in the world to stumble across the fountain of youth buried underneath an abandoned alien marsh.

"It'll keep you alive alright, but eventually it'll turn into a life not worth living. You really fancy a life like the Face of Bo? Locked up in a big old jar full of this stuff?" Thirteen questioned. They were still syphoning the substance from within the Fiovis Ichor out through a machine, no doubt to take it with them so they wouldn't have to keep coming back. Surely they weren't planning on draining the whole thing for themselves? "It's altering you physically, that's why you look so much like each other in your future, all sickly and weirdly elongated. It contaminates you like it's contaminating all of the stone down here and making the rocks blue. One day you'll develop an immunity and no amount of this stuff will be able to restore you."

"After thousands of years, maybe," Ashley said, "Seems worth it."

"What are you trying to do, steal it? Is that what that machine is for?" the Doctor pointed, "Take it all for yourselves? Nobody should have that much power."

"What did you say you were? A Time Lord? Don't Time Lords live forever?" Austin questioned.

"Not forever, no."

"But a long time? How old are you, Doctor?" he asked, "There are stories of you for millions of years, on just as many planets."

"I'm over a thousand, and you two can't imagine the horrors I've seen in that time."

"What about her? Is _she_ a Time Lord?" Ashely nodded at Jenny. The Doctor said she was, which surprised Jenny. She was used to that awkward moment of 'not really' or 'sort of' or a long pause before whoever-it-was just neglected to explain, because they couldn't be bothered. But Thirteen simply said that yes, Jenny was a Time Lord as well. "How old?"

"Two-hundred," Jenny answered.

"And you'll stay young forever. Both of you will, won't you?"

"Depends on the regeneration," the Doctor said, and Ashley laughed coldly.

"_Depends on the regeneration_!? The fact you even _have_ regenerations is unfair to the rest of the universe. You can't see that? Why should you two get to be in the primes of your lives for thousands of years, but nobody else can? Why is eternal youth something only Time Lords can have?" Ashely questioned. Oddly, Jenny thought that was a valid point. She had never really thought about it, but she absolutely didn't have a duty to the long dead Time Lords to destroy every Fiovis Ichor she came across. The Doctor wasn't having any of it, though.

"It's dangerous, it makes people go crazy," the Doctor argued, "Do you know how many people have died trying to find these things?"

"Yeah, and then you go around and blow them up!" Austin protested, "People are still going to be looking for them, you know, doesn't matter if you get rid of them. And this thing could hold the cure for every disease in the world."

"Diseases mutate; it wouldn't last forever. People would rely on it, and then eventually it would stop working and modern medicine would have stagnated. The plagues that would come next would wipe out, I don't know, half the universe. I've seen it happen before, entire planets gone after they find these Ichors. That's why we started eradicating them in the first place, cut off any future problems at their roots." Now they were _both_ making good points. But Jenny had seen people grow old and die before, had heard about the deaths of people she had met in their twenties, and remembered wondering why _she_ was allowed to stay young and healthy forever, and they weren't.

"Oswin made Clara immortal with the nanogenes," Jenny interrupted, "How is this different?"

"Because nanogenes won't fail. You can't build up an immunity to them like you can to this, they don't warp you chemically. This stuff drives people to insanity, Jenny. There are so many technological ways to prolong life that don't revolve around borderline poisonous alien minerals," Thirteen argued, "It needs to go."

"We won't let you," Ashley said firmly, "You don't have the right. You're not a god."

"Stand down, or I'll make you stand down," Thirteen argued.

"Can't we just leave?" Jenny whispered, "The tunnel entrance is blocked off."

"The Laophans will excavate the area eventually," Thirteen hissed back, "This needs to happen now."

"They have two guns pointed at us," Jenny argued.

"Two Cargills is nothing compared to one Harkness."

"You want me to shoot them!?" Jenny exclaimed.

"I don't know you, but I'm sure I'm a better shot than you could ever be," Austin said smarmily. And Jenny looked back at him. _Now_ he had gotten on her nerves, because nobody was a better shot than her, not even Jack. She had never missed a target in her entire life, and she had better reflexes than any human, no matter how well-trained they were, if the Cargills even _were_ well-trained.

"_Duck_," Jenny ordered her mother under her breath. As soon as the Doctor moved, Jenny shot Ashley's blaster right out of her hand. She shrieked in pain and the blaster fell out of her grasp, fell right down into the Fiovis Ichor below. Austin fired at the Doctor and missed, but the split second in between was enough for Jenny to shoot _his_ gun out of his hand, as well, though that landed on the tiles next to him instead of in the pool. He went for his gun, crawling along the floor, not stopping even when Jenny shot him in the ankle. Ashley found a rock and lobbed at her, but it missed, landing a metre to her right on the floor; harmless.

"Did you say this stuff has to be detonated?" Thirteen asked, and Jenny looked down to see her fumbling with the explosives in Lurth's bag on the floor, "Detonated how?"

"Uh… detonators typically generate a shockwave," Jenny said, trying to remember anything about explosives that might be useful, but she really wasn't a leading expert in things that went boom, "An extreme burst of heat will trigger it… or… or a sonic screwdriver, maybe?"

"You can't destroy it!" Austin yelled, snatching his gun again and firing at Jenny, but she stepped to the side quickly enough for him to miss and shot back, hitting the gun right on its muzzle. To her surprise, the thing exploded in his hand – she must have managed to get a blast of plasma right down the barrel. That made them both unarmed, and the Doctor was holding her purple-lighted screwdriver in one hand a big block of putty-like, yellow explosive in the other.

The Doctor threw the explosive block right into the middle of the Fiovis Ichor, both of the Cargills screaming in anger as she did.

"You'll pay for this, both of you!" Austin yelled, Jenny putting her gun away and fumbling in her pocket to find her emergency teleporter, "Major Young of the Homeworld Alliance? Not for much longer – prepare to have your good name erased from history!" When the realisation of what she and the Doctor had really done hit her, it was too late. The Doctor had pointed her sonic into the Ichor, and a muffled boom resounded in the bright blue pool.

Jenny grabbed her mother's arm and pushed the button on the teleporter just in time to see the liquid from the Ichor shoot up like a geyser in the middle of the room, the fragile walls of the cave starting to collapse around them. Jenny didn't need to worry about the welfare of the Cargills, she knew they would get out. But in a way, she wished they would just stay buried underneath Laophis forever with their precious fountain of youth. It was what they deserved.


	450. The Day After Tomorrow

_The Day After Tomorrow_

_Jenny_

Jenny was sitting on the floor of the TARDIS garage with one of the engines for her ship on the ground in front of her, a hatch on the side open for some last-minute tweaks. It had five engines, which protruded from the bottom and were attached on pivots. Or, they _would_ be attached on pivots, soon. By the following morning, Jenny hoped. She alternated between messing with the engine calibration and looking over Oswin's detailed blueprint next to her, trying to occupy herself. A busy mind was a healthy mind, after all. If she stayed busy, she would be fine. She would be fine about her hand in Cargill's initiation of the Polaris Death Charge, she would be fine about her mother leaving the day after next, about no longer having a parent she could actually talk to. She would be _fine_.

"Hey," someone interrupted her activities. She glanced up from the large engine, lying on its side. It was Oswin, but Jenny hadn't seen or heard her coming, which was unusual because Oswin had no shoes or socks on. That meant she had very distinctive footsteps that were generally easy to identify, because of her prosthetic limb, but Jenny must have been that caught up in herself, "I was just looking for your mother, do you know where she is?"

"In the ship," Jenny answered, sighing, "What do you need her for? She's sleeping off her amnesia." Just as the Doctor had predicted, using the emergency teleporter really _had_ played havoc on her memory. She could hardly remember who Jenny was when they landed back in Oswin's empty laboratory, to which Jenny partly ascribed her current low spirits. She dropped the spanner she had been holding on the ground and sat properly, crossing her legs.

"Amnesia?" Oswin inquired, coming over. Probably to examine Jenny's work on the engine, she was a real perfectionist when it came to her devices, Jenny had noticed. She wouldn't settle for anything less than a hundred percent with them, but that was most likely because they were dangerous and she didn't want them to malfunction. The girl built more prototypes in that lab of hers than anybody else Jenny had met before.

"Teleporters upset her memory," Jenny explained, "Remember when she arrived?" Oswin thought for a minute, then did remember, nodding distantly her acceptance of this fact.

"It's weird that that happens. I wonder why…" Oswin mused.

"You'll find out eventually," Jenny answered shortly.

"Ooh, how enigmatic of you to say," Oswin smiled and joked, but then her smile faded when she realised Jenny wasn't in the mood, "What's wrong?" she asked, going and dragging over one of the fold-out chairs from nearby. Across the garage in a row were all of her boyfriend's weird cars. Jenny didn't know what she would say to Oswin, but she couldn't bring herself to just lie and say she was fine. "You haven't broken up with Clara, have you?"

"Yeah, sure," she said sarcastically, eyeing the blueprints some more, wondering if she might have made a mistake somewhere. She wasn't sarcastic enough, clearly, because a second later she had been kicked very hard in her shin by _somebody's_ metal foot. "Ow!" Oswin kicked her again and she stood up to get away, "What are you doing!?"

"Why did you break up with her!?"

"I didn't break up with her!" Jenny exclaimed, dodging another kick. That limb was fatal.

"Why did _she_ break up with _you_? What have you done?" Oswin demanded.

"I was being sarcastic! Of course we haven't split up, god!" Jenny said, and Oswin stopped trying to attack her, "Why do you assume that it would be my fault, though? Why do you think _I'd_ break up with _her_?"

"Because look at yourself, why would anyone ever break up with _you_? You're like if a bunch of scientists in a lab got together and tried to make a perfect person," Oswin told her matter-of-factly.

"Well maybe you should go and tell that to all the people who_ have_ broken up with me," she muttered. Oswin pressed her for details, but there was no way Jenny was going to divulge any single smidgen of her dating history. None of it was something she remembered fondly, and she would rather not dredge up the past. "Why are you after my mother, anyway?"

"I was checking she's still here," Oswin said, going to sit back down where she had been before assaulting the Doctor's daughter, resuming her judging of the engine modifications, "When are you planning on attaching these?"

"Some time tonight, or tomorrow," Jenny told her, then asked stiffly, "Why would you think she was gone?"

"It looks like she's packed all her things, that's all," Oswin said, looking at Jenny, narrowing her eyes, "If you haven't broken up, why is it you're upset?" Jenny, again, faltered and couldn't manage to speak. Annoyingly enough, her inability to come up with a decent lie was just what Oswin needed to think of the truth. For someone who wasn't supposed understand people, she was remarkably adept at reading their minds. "She's leaving, isn't she? Soon? When?"

"I…" Jenny began, not knowing what to answer. She remembered, though, that Oswin had hidden from the rest of the TARDIS the fact Jenny had been sneaking out all the time to meet up with Beta Clara on the sly. She'd also been keeping whatever was going on with Alpha Clara and Thirteen a secret since the moment any of that started happening (it had been Thirteen who confided in Jenny about it.) She resolved, during her silent pause, that Oswin Oswald was trustworthy. "The day after tomorrow."

"I thought it'd be sooner," Oswin said.

"You can't tell anyone. Especially not Clara. Don't let her read your mind," Jenny ordered her.

"We don't read each other's minds," Oswin said, "We _can_, but we don't."

"Then how do you talk psychically?" she inquired.

"It's exactly the same difference as thinking something to yourself and saying it out loud, it's a separate neurological process," she explained, "And of course I won't tell her. She'll lose it if she knows Thirteen is leaving. It's in everybody's best interest if this stays secret. Why did she tell you?"

"She's just worried, that's all," Jenny said.

"And what about you? Are _you_ worried?" Oswin asked as Jenny picked the spanner back up again and went back to the engine.

"Why would I be?" she asked, "It's the way things have to be. We always knew she would have to leave. She can't exactly reschedule."

"Just because things have to be a certain way doesn't mean you can't be upset," Oswin told her.

"It's not just that. She's not leaving yet, and, you know, I'll see her again," Jenny said, "I might have involuntarily been the reason a million people died, in 4881. And I didn't realise until today, and it… it's my fault they're all dead."

"Wait, what are you talking about? You would never kill a million people, Jenny," Oswin said firmly.

"Cargill killed them, Austin Cargill," she said, "Do you know the name?" Oswin shrugged. "He and his wife were there the other day, the day after Esther arrived, when they took her to meet Tesla. They were trying to kill Thomas Edison, that was the first time they met the Doctor. Today was the second time, for them, they're freelance time travellers, or something. Bounty hunters. They found what they called a fountain of youth on a planet called Laophis, which my mother calls a Fiovis Ichor, and we destroyed it. And he swore revenge on me, after I accidentally introduced myself as Major Young, and at some point after that he became a Major in the Alliance too and, when I was away, ordered the Polaris Death Charge and blamed _me_. I've been trying to clear my name – you know I've paid the Shadow with an Arcadian diamond to find him for me? He and his wife are also the people who told Ashildr to go and kill a vampire, and then she killed _me_ because she recognised me because _she_ was a foot soldier in 4881. But if, today, I never told him my name, he wouldn't have been able to find me to order that attack. Those people would have survived if I wasn't so obsessed with restoring my own reputation."

"You can't think like that, the only person to blame is the person who ordered it. If you think things like that and blame yourself, you'll get like me, and you don't want to be like me. It's not a curse I'd wish on anybody else," Oswin said, "And besides, Ashildr _did_ already stab and kill you because of that. You mentioned about Clara being a vampire and explained all of that to them?"

"No."

"So how did they find out?" Oswin asked, and Jenny realised that she had no idea, but Oswin was getting at something. "See? They did background research. I am _sure_ they would have found a way to do this to get payback on you even if you hadn't said your name. Anybody dedicated enough to murder a million people for revenge would be dedicated enough to find out every detail about your life."

"I'm not sure about _every_ detail," Jenny said.

"Oh yeah? You're that elusive, are you?"

"_I_ like to think so."

"I've never asked you anything about your life, have I?"

"Not many people have. On the TARDIS, I'm defined by the time I spend with my father. The two-hundred years in between might not have even existed," she said bitterly, trying to ignore the way Oswin was looking at her.

"Tell me a story."

Jenny laughed, "What?"

"I'm serious – you must have so many," Oswin said.

"Now you just sound like Clara."

"I always sound like Clara, being like Clara is kind of my thing. I remember that story you told when the SAI malfunctioned a month and a half ago, about seducing some psychopathic human-killer," Oswin said, still trying to coax a tall tale out of her, "You want people to ask you things, but you don't want to talk. You can only have one or the other."

"Don't you have a boyfriend to get back to? Does he not, I don't know, feel lost in the world when you're not there?" Jenny asked.

"He's fine, he's having fun with his other-other girlfriend," Oswin said, and Jenny looked up and frowned at her, "Oh, I mean, he's playing video games with Esther online. You know, if she wasn't allergic to any kind of attraction, they'd be a perfect couple. Stop changing the subject from your fascinating life."

"Alright, alright, I give up. I'll tell you a story if you help me with these engines," Jenny said.

"Your wish is my command."

"Okay, well, I hung about in Venice in the Twenty-Fifth Century for a while and pretended to be Italian – which was easy because I can speak fluent Italian, and fluent every language for that matter – and I worked as a sous chef in a _very_ fancy restaurant," she began.

"Really? Can you cook?"

"_Can I cook_? Oswin, I can't even begin to stress what an _amazing_ chef I was and still am. I'm outstanding, okay? Anyway, what's more interesting than my many talents is the story about what I caught the original sous chef doing that ended up with him getting fired and me taking his place…"

* * *

"No _way_," Oswin said, grinning, "And then what happened?"

"Well the poisonous snails are all over the kitchen, right? The food critic is coming in ten minutes and the place is a complete health code violation, there isn't anything cooked, Vivaldo is unconscious on the floor and _I'm_ the only person in the place because of the forged catering invitation to the Pope's imaginary soiree," Jenny explained, Oswin laughing.

"And how does this story not end in you getting fired?"

"Because I took a gamble on those tropical snails and boiled the whole lot of them," Jenny said, "And then scooped out the bodies and fried _those_, managed to make a five-star meal out of exotic vermin, and by the time Lorella got back that critic was saying this is the best snail he's ever tasted outside of New Paris and…" she trailed off from her story when someone she wasn't expecting to see came into the room.

"What?" Oswin implored her, then noticed she was distracted and followed her gaze. The Tenth Doctor had just walked in, to Jenny's surprise. What did he want? Who was he looking for? He stopped a few feet away and looked at the both of them with confusion.

"I didn't know you had Clara over," he said to Jenny, who snorted with laughter.

"Why would you? She's a grown up, she can have her girlfriend over if she wants," Oswin said, "We were about to get into some pretty heavy petting though, if you don't mind?" Ten narrowed his eyes at her.

"You're not Clara, are you?"

"I am too! I have the feet to prove it," she said, sticking her legs out in front of her on the chair, "Oh my god, what happened to my leg!?" she exclaimed.

"Very funny. I need to ask you something. Both of you, I suppose," he said.

"Well can I wait a second? Your wonderfully pretty daughter here was just telling me a story," Oswin said, looking expectantly back at Jenny, who had only just realised that Oswin's entire goal in asking her to tell a story was to try and cheer her up. It had worked, too. At least until Ten had walked in to symbolise to her everything that she would be stuck with when Thirteen left the day after next. "Jenny?"

"Uh… well, the snails were pretty good. So I got Vivaldo's job," she said, shrugging, "That's it." Oswin was disappointed, but she knew that Ten's arrival had caused Jenny's change in attitude. Jenny went back to the engine again.

"What do you want?" Oswin asked Ten coolly, and he bounced up and down on the balls of his feet for a few seconds, like he was thinking of how to phrase.

"How would you propose to a girl? Hypothetically? For… research purposes," he said, and Jenny looked up.

"I know exactly what you should do," Oswin said knowingly, beckoning him over, "What you've got to do is get a bucket of tomato ketchup, a harpsichord, and ten thousand honeybees, okay? And _then_-"

"Are you ever capable of being serious?" Jenny questioned her.

"If I was serious, I would go insane."

"You're not insane already? The Daleks _did_ lock you in an asylum."

"Not funny."

"Sorry."

"Any sensible suggestions from either of you?" Ten questioned. Jenny thought he had some nerve just showing up to get her advice on something when he generally acted like she didn't exist.

"Make sure you have a ring," Jenny muttered, "Girls generally like when you have the forethought to get them a ring when you propose."

"Ring. Right."

"Just be honest. Just go up to her, and say, 'Oswin, will you marry me?'" Oswin said.

"I'm not going to propose to _you_!" he exclaimed.

"Oh, right. Then why are you worrying? I'm pretty sure Rose Tyler would agree to marry you even if you'd just, I don't know, defecated everywhere and you were offering an onion ring for her finger," Oswin said, and Jenny turned her nose up at that grim thought. The image was too much for Ten as well, clearly, because after that he turned on his heels and skulked out of the room. "That was kind of unnecessary."

"I think what _you_ said to him was more unnecessary," Jenny remarked.

"Please, that girl would do anything for him. It's unhealthy. Anyway, back to these engines, right? I reckon that with both of us, we could get them attached and calibrated by tonight," Oswin said, "Also, Adam's got this weird idea in his head that he needs to be more masculine and work out, and he might come to you asking for advice. If he does, don't make him do anything crazy. Do you know the physical limits of human beings?"

"Yes, they have lots of them, they're weak. But fine, even though I'm not particularly interested in being a personal trainer for some nerd."

"Hey, that's some nerd that _I'm_ devoted to."

"And _I'm_ devoted to trying to get this spaceship working finally, so give me my spanner back."


	451. Questionable Tastes

**DAY 130**

_Questionable Tastes_

_Martha_

"I don't understand how we're _always_ almost out of food," she complained. Martha felt like she was forever complaining about there not being any of something, be that food, shampoo, teabags, peace and quiet. She was about as sick of hearing herself whine as she was of going hungry.

"We're not out of food," Mickey said, putting a mug of coffee down in front of her, sitting on the chair at her side with a slice of toast in his hand.

"We're out of cereal."

"You're eating cereal right now."

She gave him a flat stare for a moment, "_Decent_ cereal."

"What's wrong with Cornflakes?" he questioned, and she made a face like he had just brought up something repulsive. Which, in her opinion, he had. She scowled at the Cornflakes in the bowl in front of her, dripping milk off her spoon.

"They're disgusting, it's like eating wet paper with sugar on it," she said, and he laughed, "You know I don't like Cornflakes."

"I don't know why you're getting on at _me_ for there being no Cheerios, _I_ don't eat them, they're the most boring cereal," he said, trying to offend her on purpose. And it worked, how dare he. She was used to him besmirching the good name of Cheerios, though, it was the same conversation they had every time they ran out of them, be that on the TARDIS or at home. And they ran out of Cheerios a lot, because Martha _really_ liked them.

"Branflakes are the most boring cereal," she muttered, and ate the spoonful of Cornflakes anyway, wincing.

"I did ask if you wanted me to make you toast," he pointed out.

"Oh, I'm fine with my wet paper."

"Do you want toast?"

"No."

"Are you sure? I'll go make some more," he said, and she narrowed her eyes at him, thinking, then dropped the spoon back in the bowl of Cornflakes and gave in.

"Fine, yes, please, I'll have some toast. Just not on Rose's weird bread," she said, and he smiled and stood up, going back to the kitchen on the other side of the room, her watching him. She slid the bowl away from herself across the table, resolving to wash it up later, when Donna sat down in the seat on her left.

"Whose are they?" she asked, nodding at the cereal.

"Mine, but I hate them. Don't know why I poured them. Why?" Martha asked, Donna eyeing the bowl. Martha sighed, "If you want them, you can have them." And then Donna thanked her as though Martha had made Christmas come early and dragged the bowl over. "Has Nios spoken to you?"

"When? About what?"

"Since the stuff with Elle. About anything. She hasn't talked to me."

"Probably angry at you for accusing her of trapping us all in a simulation," Donna said indifferently, "I haven't talked to her either, though, but I never talked to her much anyway. I'm sure she's fine. We didn't even know it was a simulation, we thought it was real and we'd been retconned. And I had to put up with the Eleventh Doctor and River arguing the whole time, you'd think they were still married."

"They're always like that," Amy interjected. She was on the sofa, as usual. It sometimes seemed to Martha that Amy was the only person who _ever_ sat on those sofas, except for when they had one of those impromptu film-watching sessions and everybody crowded around. Or a ship meeting. Both of which were rare occurrences, to Martha's pleasure. Things always got tense with all of them crammed into the same room, thank god they all breakfasted at different, random times. "Even before he knew they would ever be married."

"Mmm, Rose mentioned," Martha sighed.

"Rose mentioned what?"

Martha jumped when the Tenth Doctor seemed to appear out of nowhere, behind her, listening in and getting involved only when someone talked about Rose. He didn't scare Donna, though. Presumably she had been able to see him lurking wherever he had been. Amy was paying little attention.

"Something about River arguing with the Eleventh Doctor, I don't know," she said, "Don't creep up on people." She was glad River and Eleven weren't there in the room, though. She didn't need a re-enactment of what Rose and Donna had both been complaining about for the last day and a half. The Tenth Doctor didn't say anything, he just sat down in the chair on Martha's other side. "Mickey was sitting there."

"Oh, sorry," Ten said, looking very distracted, but he didn't move. Mickey returned then, after observing the goings on at the table from afar, passing Martha a plate with two slices of nearly-burnt toast on it. He mouthed the question of what was wrong with the Doctor to her, and she shrugged, looked at Donna and saw her eyeing Ten with the same confusion.

"Are you alright?" Donna asked, and he said nothing. "Doctor?"

"Hmm?"

"She said, are you alright?" Martha repeated, and he realised the three of them were all giving him funny looks. Mickey dragged a chair over from the other table and sat on Donna's left, Donna still eating Martha's abandoned Cornflakes. Ten opened his mouth to talk, thought better of what he was going to say and closed it, then opened it again and spoke in a very awkward manner.

"How do you propose?" he asked.

"_Propose_?" Martha, Donna and Mickey all exclaimed. It was enough for Amy to lower whatever book she was reading and sit up, leaning over the back of the sofa to get in on the conversation.

"Well don't all look at me like I'm crazy!" he defended himself. Was he going red? Embarrassment was a new colour on the Doctor. Martha really didn't think she'd seen him get so flustered before. Mickey thought it was very funny, and was grinning at the Doctor's turmoil.

"Amazing, _the_ Doctor coming to ask for _my_ help with _women_," Mickey said.

"I'm not sure how helpful _you'll_ be when it comes to advice on proposing," Martha quipped, and he objected.

"Ooh, how did he propose? I want to know now," Amy asked.

"Yes, how did you? She clearly said yes," Ten urged, trying to coax the truth out of Mickey and Martha. Nobody on the TARDIS ever asked them about their marriage, or each other. Well, they never asked Martha, but apparently in Elle's simulation they'd been practically interrogating Mickey. That was what _he_ told her, anyway.

"Didn't I ask you this question just the other day?" Amy added, "And you wouldn't say." Martha laughed.

"Probably because he had to ask twice," Martha remarked, giving him a look out of the corner of her eye, biting down on the toast he'd made.

"It's not _my_ fault you said no the first time," he muttered defensively.

"Why did you say no? What did he do wrong?" Ten pestered her.

"God, would you calm down? I said no because he'd collapsed into my flat at one o'clock in the morning drunk, and at the time was slumped over my toilet. It wasn't very romantic, you can hardly blame me," Martha shrugged. They hadn't even been dating for very long at the time, it was a whole six months later that he proposed legitimately.

"But what about when you said yes?" Ten continued to ask a lot of questions, listening very carefully to the answers.

"Over a romantic home-cooked dinner," Mickey interrupted, "On Valentine's Day. With scented candles, and rose petals."

"And a poem," Martha added, and then he hissed at her to shut up and she laughed.

"Poem? What poem?" Donna asked.

"Nothing, there wasn't a poem," Mickey defended himself, and Donna looked to Martha for answers. She just shrugged.

"If he says there wasn't a poem, I suppose there wasn't a poem," she answered, deciding against dropping him in it anymore (but there _was_ a poem), "I couldn't say no to him when he went to so much work. And when he spent so much money on such a pretty ring."

"What ring? How nice was it? What did it look like?" Martha felt as though the Doctor was quizzing her, but regardless, she moved her toast from her left hand to her right and held her left hand up to his face, showing him her engagement ring and the thin wedding ring slid onto her finger on top of it. He leant very close to squint at Martha's hand, and she exchanged a confused look with Amy as he did so, especially when he grabbed her wrist to pull her whole hand closer, "You're acting like you've never seen diamonds before."

"You know," Donna said quite loudly (not superpower-loudly, but loud), to get their attention, beaming as she talked, "Shaun's proposal was _really_ romantic. We went to a fancy, five-star restaurant and he hired a barber shop quarter to sing."

"I couldn't deal with it being in front of that many people," Martha said. She'd never been a big fan of excessive attention, but who was she to judge if Donna was?

"How is Shaun, anyway?" Ten asked, "It's been a while since you saw him, hasn't it?"

"Since before the stuff with that pregnancy test for the cat," Donna said, casting the cat a disdainful look as she did. It was asleep on one of the sofas, Jonesy-slash-Princess Sparkle Tutu, depending on if you asked Adam Mitchell or Jenny Harkness about its name. Never the less, it was very fat now, but Martha couldn't remember how long it was until the five kittens were due to be born. "I was thinking about going soon."

"Does anyone want to know how Rory proposed?" Amy asked, and they all said yes, of course they did. This was a more interesting breakfast than Martha was used to, at any rate. Martha wouldn't be surprised if Ten took out a notebook and started writing down notes. "He wrote it in flowers in my garden in the middle of the night and threw stones at the window. He spent _so_ much money on those flowers. I don't actually remember what he did with them afterwards."

"So I need a ring, then?" Ten said.

"Is that a serious question? Of course you need a ring!" Amy told him, "You don't want to do a Jack, do you? He didn't have a ring. And everybody knows what happened _there_."

"How could everybody _not_ know? They spend so much time shouting about it I feel like it was _my_ marriage that fell apart," Martha grumbled. She really was sick of hearing Jack and Jenny air their dirty laundry in public. "We're talking about Rose, right?" He nodded. "Then I'm sure you don't have to worry."

"Rose grew up on the same dodgy council estate I did, she'll agree to marry you if you just buy her a kebab," Mickey shrugged. Donna coughed on the Cornflakes she was eating.

"A gourmet kebab, though?" Ten inquired.

"No!" Martha shouted at him, both of them, "Do not get her a kebab, ignore him."

"I used to go out with her! She likes kebabs," Mickey argued. Martha just gawked at him. "What!? What's wrong with kebabs!?"

"Stop speaking!" she ordered him.

"Fish and chips would work."

"No, Mickey! You're confusing him with these awful suggestions," Martha said, then she turned back to Ten, "Look, all you have to do is get a ring that has some sentimental reason behind why you chose it, and be sincere. Write a speech, or something." He sat and thought for a while, long enough that Martha managed to go back to her toast and Amy started wondering out loud how much margarine they had left.

"Find out how Tentoo proposed to her," Ten asked suddenly.

"That's a terrible idea," Amy said.

"I mean so I can do something different!"

"Take her somewhere spacey and it _will_ be different," Donna advised.

"One of you find out for me! _I_ can't ask, can I? She hates talking about him to me."

"Doctor, she hates talking about him to _everybody_," Donna explained seriously, "There's no way she won't get upset if someone asks her to… hang on." Her phone was ringing. As she answered it, Amy took on the mantle of telling Ten that anybody asking Rose about her last marriage to his human doppelganger was the worst thing they could possibly do. Especially since, whenever he _did_ find the moxie to actually pop the question (if he ever did), she'd figure out almost immediately that _he'd_ been the one convincing her friends to ask sensitive questions and pry into her love life. "_WHAT_!?" Donna yelled. And that time it _was_ her superpower coming through, and Martha was deafened.

"What is it? What's happened?" Ten questioned.

"What do you mean he's in the hospital!? Why!? What's happened!? Which hospital, what day!? I'm coming," Donna stood up, "Yes, I have to come, he's my husband! I'll see you in a minute!" She hung up.

"Donna?" Ten stood up as well.

"Shaun's been taken into hospital, something's happened, some sort of weird rash, they don't know what it is," she said, going to leave the room.

"What? What's happened?" he called after her, but she was gone. "Weird rash? Maybe I'll go with her…" he went to follow.

"Well, hang on, I'll come as well, I'm a medical doctor," Martha said, bringing the rest of her toast but leaving her coffee. Mickey grabbed her hand though.

"You said _we'd_ spend the day together," he said.

"Tag along, then. But the husband of a time traveller getting some sort of unexplainable rash seems like a bit too much of a coincidence to ignore."

"…Hold the door until I get my shoes, then."


	452. The Marriage Hearse

_The Marriage Hearse_

_Martha_

She and Mickey rushed into the Royal Hope Hospital in Ten's footsteps, the TARDIS waiting very indiscreetly on the pavement outside, having just materialised in plain view. She hoped UNIT wouldn't pick up on it and come running, like they always did, the last thing she wanted was to bump into _them_. They didn't have much trouble finding the Doctor and Donna when they entered, though, being as Donna was arguing very loudly with a nurse who was saying she wasn't allowed to see Shaun because he was in isolation due to possible contamination. That was what she overheard when she approached, at least, glancing around to see if she could spot any staff she might know from her training there, years ago.

"No, no, we have to see him," Ten was blabbering, fumbling with his coat pockets, "I have identification, really, just let us in." He was obviously trying and failing to find his psychic paper, so Martha supposed it was lucky for her that she still carried her old ID declaring her to be UNIT's chief medical officer, an alleged expert in all things extra-terrestrial. Nine times out of ten, it still worked, and this was one of those times. She pushed past the Doctor and held up the card.

"I'm Dr Jones, I've been called in as an outside expert in Mr Temple's condition, we need permission to be let into his room," she said curtly. They were then passed from a nurse to another nurse to a doctor to a doctor and then one final doctor who decided that Donna's temper and Martha's credentials were as good a reason as any to let them into the quarantine ward to see the victims of this supposed attack Shaun had been a victim of, _and_ his mysterious rash.

What a mysterious rash it was, as well, Martha realised when the four of them, not even scrubbed up or wearing gloves, barged straight into the room. One of the doctors, someone Martha had trained with all the way back in 2007 and was still at that hospital, had explained to her that there were four victims, including Shaun, of the odd rash, and they had all been brought in.

"Don't touch him," Martha warned Donna immediately, "Maybe we've been a bit hasty thinking he doesn't need to be quarantined…" At least Donna listened to her, going to drag a chair as close to the bed as she could. Shaun was awake, though, and Martha ducked back out of the room for a few minutes to go ask one of the nurses where she could find a pair of gloves. She brought two back, giving a pair to the Doctor as well, then copied Donna's action with the chair, only on the other side of the bed.

"Who are these people?" Shaun asked Donna.

"Some of the people I'm staying with," Donna answered. She clearly didn't tell him a whole lot about her life on the TARDIS; it made Martha feel lucky that she had Mickey there with her the whole time. No alien-based secrets around them.

"I'm Martha, I'm a doctor," she told him, "And this is the Doctor, he's _not_ a doctor. And Mickey's…" She couldn't think of a job title to give him, meeting his eyes with a look of confusion. He knew what she was thinking and just shrugged, clearly not able to think of anything, either. He was a freelance alien hunter? _That_ wouldn't work. "Mickey's my husband. Can I look at your hand?" she asked.

She'd never seen a rash anything like this one. It reminded her very vaguely of chicken pox, spread over all of his skin. The only difference was that chicken pox was red, and whatever _this_ was, it was purple, a very unusual and bright shade of purple.

"Have you come into contact with anything unusual in the past twenty-four hours?" Martha asked.

"No."

"Do you have any allergies?"

"Not that I know of." She stared, turning his arm over in her hands. The tiny welts, whatever they were, were on every part of his torso and arms that she could see. That was very odd for a rash, rashes due to infections didn't spread like that. She resolved that he must have touched something, although, looking closer…

"Do you have a torch?" she asked the Doctor, who was peering over her shoulder with his glasses on. He frowned and felt around in the pockets of his blazer for a moment, before pulling out a very tiny torch that was the sort you might get for free at the bottom of a cereal box. Who knew, maybe he _had_ gotten it for free from the bottom of a cereal box, it wouldn't surprise her. She switched it on, holding it over the back of Shaun's wrist.

"What? What is it?" Donna asked her urgently.

"The way they're swollen," Martha said, "I'm not sure this _is_ a rash, or that it's contagious. Don't these look like bites to you?" she asked Ten.

"Oh, yeah…" he said thoughtfully, "Like mosquito bites, but purple…"

"Why would an insect bite go purple?" Martha asked him, "Unless it's an infection, but I don't know what kind of chemical could cause an infection like this. Do you feel alright?" she questioned Shaun.

"As good as ever," he answered, smiling.

"Well if it _is_ insects, and they _were_ carrying something, I dare say we'd have noticed by now."

"It explains why they're not all over his body, too. Insects generally have preferences, a lot of them. Fleas go for the limbs; these go for the torso. Where were you when this happened, again, Shaun?" the Doctor inquired, "Did you know the other three victims?"

"I was on a bus," he said, "There were only two other passengers and the driver." Must have been a bus at a funny time, Martha supposed. It _was_ currently very late at night and very cold.

"What's the date?" she asked anybody who might want to tell her.

"How do you not know what the date is?" Shaun frowned, and she faltered for a second, meeting Donna's warning gaze. She was clearly keeping him in the dark about her life on purpose.

"It's the 10th of November, 2013," the Doctor answered, not picking up on Donna's lack of enthusiasm when it came to saying strange things like that around her significant other. "I can't think of any bug that would cause that sort of discolouration."

"What if it's alien?" Mickey, who was just as tactless as Ten, asked. Surely Shaun knew about aliens, though? Aliens were all over the place, had been for years. Only idiots would refuse to believe in them after so much had happened. Although, Martha had refused to believe any of it until she had seen the Judoon with her own two eyes. In this very hospital, as well.

"Well, it could be, very easily," Ten said, "But alien insects on a bus? Why would they be on a bus?"

"Maybe they think the congestion charge makes buying a car worthless?" Martha suggested.

"Or they're environmentally conscious?" Mickey added, and the three of them laughed.

"Oi!" Donna shouted over them, "This isn't funny!"

"Right. Sorry," Martha apologised, addressing Donna now, "I think the Doctor's right, though. This doesn't look… Earthly. In my experience. It's the sort of stuff I used to get called out to all the time when I worked for UNIT."

"You remember how we followed the Migrant Bees to the Medusa Cascade," Ten said, "Some insects can travel through space like that, lots of creatures can, without a ship. I always thought they were lucky."

"What's he talking about, Donna?" Shaun asked, and Ten realised he'd just stuck his foot in his mouth.

"I was… I was talking about… about… well, you see, Shaun, a very interesting story…"

"Maybe you should go and look at the other three victims?" Mickey interrupted to suggest, or, to save their skins. The Doctor's skin, mainly.

"Yes, good idea," Martha said, standing up, eager to avoid any awkward questions, "Are you staying here, Donna?"

"Well I don't know a lot about space mosquitoes," Donna said angrily, through gritted teeth. This was not her lucky day, obviously. Mickey wasn't inclined to hang about, either, and opened the door for the Doctor and Martha, holding it from the outside and making sure it was closed. The ward was brimming with people as it always was.

"Aren't they rich?" Mickey asked, "Why was he getting a bus if they're rich?"

"Maybe he just likes buses?" Martha said, "I don't know."

"And they could pay for private medical care, surely?"

"Maybe they just don't want to." The Doctor led the way down the corridor, peering in doors left and right, looking for more of the strange, quarantined patients.

"Yeah, but you wouldn't see Adam Mitchell on a bus, would you?" Mickey said. Martha was about to argue with him, tell him that he was being rude and what Shaun and Donna did with their finances wasn't actually any of their business (just because there wasn't a lot of money in alien hunting), when desperate shouting and screaming erupted from a room down the hall. A room belonging to one of the four with the purple, bite-like, skin affliction.


	453. Virulent Walking Bomb

**AN: Thank you guys for reviewing more often, it really makes me feel like spending so much time on this is worth it when you leave positive feedback, or constructive criticism. I appreciate it. **

_Virulent Walking Bomb_

_Martha_

It was a bloodbath. Some of the strangest, most tragically brutal fifteen minutes of Martha Jones' entire life. Of the four victims who had been brought in with funny rashes, the only one still alive and seemingly well in the Royal Hope Hospital was Shaun Temple – but who knew how long for? Because she, Mickey and the Doctor (and Donna after she heard the commotion and ran out to see what was going on) had just witnessed two men and a woman explode. Well, _part _of them exploded, some region in the abdomen. It went right up, splattering blood and viscera on the walls and sheets of their private rooms. About two hours after they had been attacked, they had all died.

That wasn't the only thing, though; it was as though something forced their way out of the bodies, physically. The screaming alone had been borderline unbearable, and then the feeling of being in the room, and the noise. It felt like being swarmed by flies, invisible flies, and in the panic Martha's skin heated up so much she could have sworn that some of them got burned brushing past her. And then the things, whatever they were, those invisible creatures, were seemingly gone. Vanished, into thin air. It happened in all three rooms, and in the last one they were left alone, the four of them staring into space.

But ten minutes, then fifteen, then twenty minutes later, and Shaun Temple was fine. He was still covered in the rash, or the bites, whatever they were, but apart from that he was as healthy as a horse. They all waited nervously as Martha ordered him sent away for immediate x-rays, but nothing came back out of the ordinary. Not that that was a lot to go on, if the things really were alien, they might not contain any calcium. Invisible to the naked eye and to x-rays. Not that she mentioned that to Donna, as Shaun was wheeled away for an MRI scan. But that would take a while, so, in the meantime, Martha had the room with the last victim, the driver of the bus they had been on, cleared out.

"So they were attacked by invisible, alien insects? On a bus?" Mickey questioned, "And now they've all exploded?"

"They haven't _all_ exploded, have they?" Donna said coldly, "How would you feel if that was Martha? If people thought _she_ was going to explode?"

"The way these superpowers are mutating, I wouldn't be surprised if I _did_ explode," Martha remarked, more to herself, "But he has a point – Shaun was bitten at the same time, there must be a reason why he's not…" Donna was giving her a _very_ dark look, "Why… he's…"

"You don't have very good bedside manner for a doctor, do you?" Ten asked her.

"_You're_ a _total_ hypocrite," she said accusingly, "And I'm not actually around the patient. It's not like I'd be telling Shaun he might be liable to explode at any second." Then, when she saw Mickey giving her a look, she realised what she had said and bit her lip, turning her eyes back on Donna, who was giving her a look of death. "Sorry…"

"I'm going to check on him," Donna declared, then passive aggressively added to Martha directly, "I'll see you later." And then she got up and whisked out of the room in search of her husband, Martha watching her leave a little guiltily. She shared a regretful glance with Mickey, but he seemed to be about to laugh at her for her poor handling of the situation.

"Shut up," she told him.

"I didn't say anything!"

"Keep it that way," she warned. And then he _did_ laugh.

"God, you two are terrible," the Doctor said, standing up from the chair he had been sat in.

"And you and Rose are so much better?" Mickey questioned.

"I – well – you – I agree with Martha. Shut up," Ten ordered. Then he dug around in his pockets until he found that battered pair of 3D glasses and he stuck them on, then went about examining the room. Martha paid him little notice, she went back to the body she was there to look at. It was that of the bus driver, wearing the dark grey uniform he'd been brought in wearing. Only now it had a hole torn in it on the lower right-side of his abdomen and was soaked in fresh blood.

"What if they're not bites?" Mickey suggested next to her, looking at the purple, blotchy lumps riddling the man's skin. They looked more severe and numerous than Shaun's.

"What are they if they're not bites?" she inquired, curious as to his thinking.

"Well… if they burst out of him, maybe they… I don't know, burrowed? They dug in through the skin?"

"They could have bitten and implanted larvae, though. They went to a lot of effort to burrow and make their way all their way down here," Martha said, nodding at the hole, "Why?"

"Maybe they needed something? What did they come out of? The stomach?" he asked.

"It's hard to say without being able to conduct a full post-mortem, his insides are sort of… mushy."

"Mushy? Is that your official medical opinion, Dr Jones?" he asked, and she would probably have smiled had she not figured out exactly what she was looking at a second later, causing her mood to change.

"Hold on… this is his appendix that's burst," she said, "They were inside the appendix, these invisible insects. There don't seem to be any of the other physical hallmarks of appendicitis, though."

"So they burrow in, through the skin, into the appendix, and then try to escape?" Mickey said, "And if that happened to all of them at the same time, except Shaun…"

"Maybe he's had an appendectomy… which explains why he's fine, but who knows that those things aren't living somewhere else inside him? The intestines, the stomach, bowels? Anything in the digestive system, the bites were all over the torso," Martha said, then she sighed, "It would help if we knew what they were."

"I can help with that," Ten interrupted, "Well, a bit." He was crouched down on the floor, holding up his finger in front of his eyes, like he was looking at his own fingernail. Martha couldn't see anything of note on his hand, though. He looked over, "You can only see them with the glasses."

"See what?" Mickey and Martha asked together.

"Tiny insects, these ones are dead," Ten said, "Not many of them, though."

"Maybe they were the ones I set on fire accidentally?" she suggested.

"Could be… it's like they're made of glass, you know. Very strange. I've never seen anything like them before…" he said, and there were a few seconds of silence until he brushed the whatever-it-was away like it was dust and got back to his feet. "Anyway, appendix, you were saying? Seems unlikely that Shaun has any of them in him. They ate through those layers of skin so quickly, it would only take a minute longer to break out of the bowels or the intestines. And they're not larva, I don't think they were incubating, I think Mickey's right about the burrowing."

"But what would cause it? They haven't burrowed into anybody else after they broke out," Martha pointed out, "None of us have any bites, none of the other staff, either."

"So something must have caused it," Mickey said, "Something on the bus. Not that I know why someone with so much money is getting on a bus… his uniform says 'Vortex Transport.'"

"Vortex? What's that?" Martha frowned, looking at Mickey.

"Don't ask me, if it's a bus company I've never heard of it," he told her, then he took out his phone, saying he would search 'Vortex Transport' on the internet.

"I think I'll go tell Donna her husband isn't going to be turning into an alien beehive any time soon," the Doctor said, "Might cheer her up a bit." He gave Martha an accusing look then, reminding her that she was the reason Donna had skulked away in a huff in the first place. She rolled her eyes at him.

"Vortex Transport didn't exist until three months ago," Mickey said, "And they've taken over the running of all the buses in the centre of London already, a private company. They came out of nowhere."

"Sounds fishy," Ten said, waiting in the door, "You two look into that, then, and I'll see if I can't figure out what planet these insects originally come from. And I'll try to make sure Shaun doesn't die." He left.

"Wow, we get the exciting job of investigating a bus depot," Martha grumbled, annoyed, "Do you really think it was something on the bus?"

"These things could live in it. In the seat cushions, or something, like lice. And it _is_ the crime scene."

"Still. Public transport isn't exactly the most interesting of assignments," Martha went to take off her latex gloves and put them in the bin by the door, washing her hands in the sink nearby to disinfect and clean them (she ordered Mickey to do the same thing, as well – it was procedure.)

"Martha, we practically live on public transport there's so many people on the TARDIS nowadays."

Sarcastically, she remarked, "Oh, and I just _love_ every minute of it. I especially enjoy when people pry into our sex life because apparently, since they sleep in the room next door, they're entitled to know everything. And when they eat all the Cheerios."


	454. Pros and Cons of Public Transport

_Pros and Cons of Public Transport_

_Martha_

"I still think this seems like a bit of a dead lead," Martha said quietly, following Mickey through the shadows along the side of the Vortex bus depot after they took a cab to get there. It was a big, grey, nondescript building. Clearly, going by the fact all of the lights were off and the whole place was deserted, Vortex Transport didn't run a night bus service. That boded well for them, at least – they might not have a sonic screwdriver, but they had worked for Torchwood for years. They had at least a dozen tricks for breaking into off-limits areas. "I think we're looking for a biological reason here, nothing to do with a bus."

"Biological like what?" Mickey questioned as they approached a side door into the building.

"I don't know, pheromones? Human beings excrete pheromones that are attractive to these alien insects? Make them kill?" she suggested as she watched him take a swipe card out of his pocket – a nifty gizmo that was like a digital skeleton key and gave them access to most basic electric locks in the United Kingdom. "Could be an invasion."

"If it was an invasion, or pheromones, you don't think they would have gone for the other people in the room with us? Maybe not _us_, or the Doctor, because we're… well, you know, mutants I guess, but everybody else?"

"There are all sorts of the things that could be a deciding factor. Maybe I'm wrong about the appendixes, maybe it goes by blood type? Or age? Maybe the other three were diabetic? I don't think the answer is going to be on this bus," Martha continued to argue with him, the same way she had been doing for the whole journey over.

"And _I_ don't think the answer is going to be in your pessimism," Mickey said, opening the door, holding it for her, "After you." She grimaced, but entered, taking a torch out of her pocket. The place was pitch black and it wasn't worth alerting anybody by turning the lights on. "Doesn't this remind you of when we used to work for Torchwood?"

"Reminds me of all the other dead ends Jack put us on together to try and set us up," she grumbled.

"Are you saying it didn't work?"

"I'm saying I didn't appreciate him getting in my business. _Our_ business. No doubt you went behind my back and asked him to do that though so that you could get me alone… What are we looking for? What number bus did Shaun say it was when we asked?"

"Twenty-Two," Mickey said, switching on his own torch and shining it at the fronts of the buses. They were in the main block of the depot now, large and empty like a warehouse, "How are we supposed to know which one it is without the digital readout?" Then he shone the torch in her face and looked at her, "You don't think we're going to have to search _all_ of them, do you?"

"I think _you'll_ be searching them if you keep shining _that_ in my eyes," she arhued, and he moved the torch away and went back to looking at the closest bus. She walked further in front than he did, so that she could see the first row of about six buses all lined up, "Reckon I might have found the one we're looking for."

"What do you mean?" he asked, coming over, and she shone the torch where she was pointing.

"That one over there's got a biohazard warning on the side. Unless, of course, you actually _wanted_ to look at all the buses? Because I'd _hate_ to ruin your fun…"

"That's a lie, you love ruining my fun," he said, and she laughed, and they headed over, "What do you think of this proposal thing, anyway?"

"Proposal thing? Oh, the Doctor, you mean? I don't know what I think about it. Can't see why he's worrying; she'll obviously say yes."

"It's her mother I'm worried about," Mickey said, "Or, Rose, when her mother finds out. Dumps one man in favour of his clone – how do you think Tentoo is?"

Martha sighed, "Devastated, probably. I think most men whose wives dump them by teleporting them to another universe would be a bit distraught… How do you get into this thing? The drivers always open it from the inside. Where do you put the key? I don't get it."

"Amazing, qualified doctor can't figure out how to open a bus door," he commented.

"Oi!" she protested, "You open it, then, if you're so…" Martha trailed off when the door opened, and he laughed.

"There's a button," he said.

"A button? What if someone nicks it?"

"Because people are always nicking buses, aren't they? Must be because they're so subtle to take for a joyride. Seriously, though, Jackie's gonna kill Rose," Mickey continued what he had been talking about before the little mishap with the bus, stepping on board. Martha kept expecting to see bodies, or something, lying about on the seats, but she didn't. They were very fancy seats, though, nice leather, and the poles looked as though they were made of genuine silver. What kind of weird bus was this?

"And if she does, we'll all have to hear about it, no doubt."

"_You_ will, you're friends with her. Imagine what the gossip's like when you're going out with her."

"Must have been awful for you. Right. What are we looking for? Because I can't see anything weird," Martha stared around, "Apart from how plush it is – is this a luxury bus service?"

"This is what we missed being on the TARDIS. They'll be putting stretched limos on the streets next – I think these seats are real leather, you know," Mickey said, "Bus company comes out of nowhere and sets up these fancy things – why? To attract as many people to use the buses as possible?"

"What, so they can kill you them with insects? That's bad for business. Going by the biohazard sticker and the lack of the police, they don't know what this is, either, but they're covering it up. Unless it's nothing to do with them at all, just a coincidence? I think I might take buses more if they were all like this."

"Give it a chance, people'll start peeing on the seats and vandalising soon enough."

"And _I'm_ the pessimistic one… You know, all this reminds me a lot of when I was working with UNIT and they sent me to help Torchwood, the first time I met them all. I've told you about it before, with the Pharm? And the Mayflies? All those larva growing inside those people, it's like this," Martha said, "But the Mayfly didn't have anything to do with it, they were using it. So maybe it's a similar thing? Vortex are trying to use the bugs?"

"Use them to do what? Kill their own bus driver?"

"They must have some ulterior motive other than just luxury travel. You said it yourself, they came out of nowhere. With all this money? It's weird. Like they have a benefactor, but who'd give money to a bus company? Can't you switch these lights on?"

"How?"

"With your techno-thingy."

"Techno_pathy_. And it doesn't work very well, you know how it is, you keep blowing things up when you're not trying to," he said, "Remember the other night with the toilet?"

"Yes, thank you," she snapped, "Just try." Mickey resolved that he might as well and went to poke his head into the driver's cab and stick his hand on the dashboard, concentrating very hard. Martha turned away and continued to examine everything she saw, including those frankly unusual seats. Mickey had earlier suggested that, perhaps, the insects were living inside the soft furnishings, like lice, so they drew her attention.

Then the lights came on around her.

"Ah! Did you see that? I did it!" Mickey exclaimed, beaming, and she laughed.

"Cute," she said, turning the torch off, then she told him her thinking about the seats and what he'd said earlier.

"But why would they spend so much money on the leather?"

"Maybe they need leather to live in?"

"Should've brought the Doctor with us. Do you think he knows anything yet?" Mickey asked, and just as he did, her phone rang, saying it was Donna. Presumably, it wasn't Donna, though.

"Speak of the devil," Martha said, showing him the phone screen. Mickey told her he would keep looking when she answered it, "Hello?"

"_Martha! Got things to tell you_," it was, predictably, Ten, "_Have you found anything on that bus?_"

"Not yet, still looking. It's the most expensive bus I've ever seen in my life, though, you should have come. It's all very suspicious, we were wondering where they got their money from," she told him, watching what Mickey was doing. He'd stood on one of those crisp, fancy seats and was looking at the ceiling and the advertisements. "What have you found, then?"

"_You won't believe it – these insects are of Earth origin_," he said.

"What? You're joking. They can't be from Earth."

"_They are, just not ordinarily deadly. You know, like the Vashta Nerada, perfectly harmless in low numbers most of the time. They're invisible, they sort of hide in the air, don't usually do a lot other than lurk about and spread pollen, like bees. I don't know a species name, they're about as inconsequential as amoebas, it's what the chemical makeup says. Whatever they are, they don't often act aggressively. Well, they _never_ act aggressively. They live in the air outside, everywhere, probably all around you right now._" As the Doctor chattered away, Mickey managed to remove one of the advertisements on the wall, on a panel, and there was a funny looking white box in the ceiling behind it.

"If that's true, then why would they pick now to – AH!" Martha shrieked when her phone went wild in her ear, a huge burst of electrical feedback deafening her. She jumped and dropped her phone on the floor and looked up to see that Mickey had flicked a switch on that box, but then he was shouting and waving his arms around, "What is that!? Switch it off!" Martha shouted at him, hearing that tell-tale buzzing in the air. Mickey managed to get to the switch in time, and the loud ringing coming out of Martha's phone stopped. So did the buzzing. "Are you alright?" She went to check on him.

"I think they bit me, those things – I still have my appendix, what if they kill me!?" Mickey exclaimed – well, he more like whimpered – and Martha pushed up his shirt to look at his chest and see how many bites there were. There were a few, but not many. Definitely less than a dozen, which was a great deal less than the other victims.

"I think you'll be alright..." she said unsurely.

"You _think_?"

"The Doctor told me that the insects come from Earth, completely harmless, but something's made them act up and burrow into human skin," she explained, letting him go to pick up her phone. The screen was cracked and it was dead.

"This box," Mickey told her, "I could sense it, behind here, and I flicked the switch and they attacked."

"Looks like you were right about the bus, then. So it is the bus company. Why would the bus company want to kill the people who get on the bus? And their own bus driver? With a swarm of invisible insects? How would they even know the insects were here? The Doctor said he'd never even seen them before…" she wondered.

"I don't care about that, I care about me and these bites, Martha!" Mickey said, moving like he was still getting attacked like them.

"You'll be… you'll… Mickey… Listen to me!" she had to shout in the end because he wasn't paying attention, just turning in spot trying to check himself for invisible bugs, "You'll be fine, you can't even have ten bites. Those ones who died had hundreds. They'll probably just die inside you."

"Inside me!?"

"Just like if you swallow a spider in your sleep. It's fine, relax, we have to take that box back to the Doctor so he can tell us what it is and why it messed up my phone. Come on."

"But what about you? Don't you have any bites?" he asked, and she paused and checked her arms.

"I don't think so," she said.

"Well… well, why? If they're all around, why wouldn't they attack you?" he questioned, and she stopped. She didn't know. If logic served, then both she and Mickey would have been bitten, just like all four of the other victims were attacked at the exact same time. Otherwise some of them would have escaped off the bus, if it was all systematic. The box made the insects swarm, the insects that were everywhere in the air. So why didn't they attack Martha?


	455. The Truth is Out There

_The Truth is Out There_

_Ten_

The Doctor ended up stuck in a very awkward situation in Mickey and Martha's absence. After he ran enough tests with modified hospital equipment and his sonic screwdriver to find out that the insects were generally harmless, Earth-originating creatures, he was trapped in a hospital room with Shaun and Donna with no excuse to leave.

He didn't realise that Donna had gone to so much trouble to hide her life travelling on the TARDIS from Shaun. Of course, when they'd gotten married, Donna didn't actually _remember_ anything about her life on the TARDIS, so one could hardly blame her for keeping it a secret. And Sylvia and Wilf had been under his own strict instructions not to tell her a single thing, lest her brain burn up. But apparently, now that Donna's all-new dimension-hopping powers had come to fruition (the same time her actual brain had been removed from her actual body, along with Amy's, which as far as Ten knew she now just kept in a jar in her room), the DoctorDonna had returned. Not that he'd seen an awful lot of that cropping up in her personality, perhaps it was like Rose and her time vortex manipulation? Just as, within Rose Tyler, the Bad Wolf was buried deep beneath the layers of her psyche, the Time Lord streaks in Donna Temple-Noble only showed themselves in a time of desperate crisis.

But now she was practically being interrogated by Shaun – who was the Doctor, where had she really been for the last four months since the 5th of July, what were those insects, what was going on? And every time he asked a question, Donna just looked at Ten uselessly. She had been keeping it all a secret, but why? He could have sworn she had learnt that telling the people she loved back on Earth what was going on was the best option. Telling the truth. And Shaun did not appreciate Donna giving him the silent treatment.

All he did was watch, and think. He hadn't been married to anybody for centuries, hundreds and hundreds of years he had not let himself act on those sorts of feelings. But now Rose was back, back for good, or so it seemed, and he didn't know what he was waiting for anymore. She had married Tentoo before, so surely, she would marry him? Wouldn't that be a strange life to start, though, marrying someone so used to domesticity… What if she said no? It was a funny thing to be thinking of this, and then comparing in his head his current incarnation with those of his future, those of Eleven and Thirteen, both so happily tied down and committed. Perhaps his aversion to domestic living was something he had fabricated entirely; Eleven certainly seemed to be enjoying the company of his newest wife.

"What should I do?" Donna interrupted his thoughts and observations. In the end, he had only been half-listening to Shaun's bombardment of questions. Donna was talking to the Doctor.

"Why are you asking him? Who is he? Donna?" Shaun asked. Donna was in great turmoil now, wondering whether to keep up her lies, make up something extravagant, or tell the truth. The whole truth. Everything. But she had only been keeping up her act for four months to him, the secrecy didn't span years or decades. It just sometimes felt that way on the TARDIS. But things always went worse when people _didn't_ know the truth about him; just look at the way he had destroyed Martha's life, her family, with the Master.

He was about to answer when the door opened and a delicious smell found him, and they were graced with the return of Mickey and Martha, carrying a whole assortment of things in their arms. They didn't seem too put-out, which was the end of his worrying about Martha seemingly hanging up on him earlier.

"Mr and Mrs Smith, re-joining us," the Doctor beamed, "Bearing gifts and everything."

"It's actually Dr Jones and Mr Smith, for your information," Martha said, smiling, "Mickey was complaining that he was hungry, so we got fish and chips on the way back. Had to pull a lot of strings to get them to let us bring it down here. Borrowed some salt from the nurse's station, no vinegar, though."

"Shame on you!" Ten joked as they passed him the paper-wrapped fish and chips, "Haven't had fish and chips for weeks. What's on your hand?" he asked Mickey.

"I got bitten by those things," Mickey said, and the Doctor experienced a blip in his good mood until Martha assured him that Mickey was going to be fine, because he had hardly any bites at all. And then they explained all about what they had uncovered in the bus, and handed him a big white box with a switch on the side and warned him not to turn it on or the insects would swarm again. And now it was his job to figure out _why_ the box made the insects swarm. "_She_ didn't get bitten, though," he said of Martha, and Ten frowned.

"Didn't you?" he asked.

"No, no bites, I checked," Martha said.

"But you were on the bus with him?" She nodded. "Right, well… I don't know, what's your blood type? Something abnormal?"

"A+," Martha answered, "So no, not abnormal. The woman who died was A+, as well."

"Wonder why they didn't go for you, then…" he mused. Martha seemed uneasy not knowing, but Ten was more focused on his food and his white box. Besides, Martha not getting attacked by the insects could only be a good thing.

"I'm sick of this!" Shaun exclaimed suddenly, "I'm sick of you all lying! Donna, what is this? Some sort of joke?" Donna was at a loss for words, and Mickey and Martha were unaware of what they had walked into.

"You should tell him," Martha said, "I told you before, it's always better when they know."

"She's right," Mickey added, "For a whole year people thought I'd murdered Rose because she didn't tell Jackie she'd run off with the Doctor."

"This Doctor, who is he? Donna? Just tell me," Shaun pleaded.

"He's an alien," Martha answered when Donna couldn't find the words, "He travels through time and space, and he takes people with him."

"Right, so this is a joke, then? An alien? With a spaceship?" Shaun questioned.

"Your species is so funny sometimes," the Doctor remarked, "So insistent on staying blind to extra-terrestrial life. What year is this? 2013? Don't you remember the shop window dummies coming to life? Spaceship crashing into Big Ben and landing in the Thames? The ghosts, Cybermen and Daleks? Big Christmas star in the sky shooting lightning – that was the day I met Donna, actually, got teleported onto the TARDIS because of the ingestion of Huon particles. Then there was… what was next?"

"You told me once you lit the torch at the 2012 Olympics," Martha reminded him.

"Yes! I did do that. After all the people were disappearing mysteriously because of an Isolus. Have I told you about those?" he scanned the faces in the room, but they were all lost, "Oh, it was a brilliant bit of deduction on Rose's part, _I_ got stolen by it and she saved me. Tiny little alien, looks like a flower, used to having millions of siblings for company. They fly through space on solar winds. You could probably find it on the internet, mystery man lighting the torch. Mind you, that opening ceremony was a bit weird."

"And _then_ this very hospital ended up on the moon!" Martha said, "Sucked straight off the planet by the Judoon."

"What's that, then?" Shauna sked incredulously.

"Oh, these aliens that look like rhinoceroses."

"They work for the Shadow Proclamation," Donna said, "Which are sort of the space police."

"_Space police_?"

"Yeah, they were after this old woman who drank peoples' blood through a straw," Martha said.

"A vampire?"

"Vampire? No, a Plasmavore. I don't think vampires use straws," Martha said, thinking.

"Vampires? Not only are you saying aliens are real, but vampires?"

"Vampires _are_ aliens," the Doctor said offhandedly. He was alternating between eating chips and failing to cut up his fish with the rather pathetic plastic cutlery, and examining the white box.

"What about Lazarus? Didn't you see that on the news?" Martha asked Shaun, "That bloke who wanted to make himself young again, but he turned himself into a monster and killed a load of people? We were there, the Doctor and I. This stuff's all over the telly, there's no choice but to believe it these days."

"I couldn't handle it when I first found out about it," Mickey said, "Seems insane, but… the things you see with him…"

"In a spaceship? Where is this spaceship, then? You mean to tell me that for the last four months, you've been living on a spaceship? You just left with this bloke you hardly know and didn't tell me?" Shaun questioned Donna. Donna wasn't too thrilled where her food was concerned, she clearly didn't have much of an appetite. Not like Mickey and Martha, who were both picking apart their fish fillets quite happily with their fingers.

"It wasn't like that, I travelled with him before – I was after you, wasn't I?" she asked Martha, who nodded, "Then who was after me. Clara?"

"No, Amy," Martha said.

"He picks up a lot of girls in this ship, does he?" Shaun eyed Ten suspiciously.

"Well not like_ that_!" Ten exclaimed, "Except for Rose, I suppose."

"And River, and Clara," Mickey pointed out.

"They're nothing to do with _me_, though, that's the next one," Ten argued.

"'Next one?'" Shaun asked.

"It's complicated – look, Donna used to travel with me, but during that attempted Dalek invasion where all the planets appeared in the sky in 2008, there was a… there… something… something happened, alright? I had to erase her memories to save her life. That's why she didn't tell you any of this before, she didn't remember it. And, by the way, the winning lottery ticket you got for your wedding? That was a present from me. And then, four months ago, something broke in the TARDIS – that's the name of my spaceship – it passed through a Door into another dimension and got disrupted, and sucked nearly everyone who's travelled in it for three-hundred years back in. And, well, nobody's left, really," he took a break from looking at the white box to say all this. He would like to turn it on, but didn't want to risk insect attack. Who knew what those things might do to a Time Lord?

"So that's where you've really been? Living on this spaceship? For months?" Shaun asked Donna incredulously.

"Yeah."

"Are there a lot of men on this ship?" he asked, and she laughed and shook her head.

"Oh, there's way more women," Mickey said with his mouth full of chips, "Ten of them and seven of us."

"Ten?" the Doctor frowned, looking up as he scanned the box with the screwdriver, "Aren't there eleven? You know, with Esther?"

"Esther? Esther's gone," Martha said, "After that thing with those cows committing suicide the other day. She's left."

"Left? She can't _leave_, she's undead and she shoots lightning bolts!" the Doctor exclaimed, "Did she escape!?"

"She wasn't a prisoner," Donna said, "She's living with that weirdo, isn't she?"

"Sally Sparrow," Martha supplied.

"I'd like to know what makes this woman any weirder than the lot of you," Shaun remarked.

"Well when did she leave!?"

"Four days ago. Don't you pay attention to anything?" Mickey questioned him.

"Next you'll be thinking Jack and Jenny are still together," Donna muttered.

"Ah-ha!" the Doctor shouted, and everybody jumped, "Got it!" He flicked the switch – ignoring their protests – and waited, hearing a noise like a tape starting to play from within. Perhaps it _was_ a tape starting to play. Then the message began.

"_Buy a Vortex car today! Buy a Vortex car today! Buy a Vortex car today!_" and just that in an unusually perky male voice going over and over again, on a loop, emanating out of the box. Everybody looked shiftily around the room, self-consciously awaiting the appearance of more of those insects.

"Subliminal messaging, high frequency, way too high a frequency to hear normally," Ten said, switching it off, then he asked Shaun, "Don't suppose you've been interested in buying a Vortex car recently, have you? Ever since your little accident?" Shaun thought about it, the Doctor still unable to tell how accepting of this new reality he was.

"Come to think of it… I was just googling them on my phone…"

"Well, it works. Nice to know," Ten said, lifting the thing up and examining it, "Apparently you, Shaun Temple, have been the victim of a corporate side-effect. Presumably this was only ever tested in a laboratory environment, this was probably the first time it was implemented. Gain the public's trust first with a nice, efficient, privatised bus service and then start brainwashing them. It's almost clever. Presumably, the high frequency is what interfered with your phone, Martha."

"And the noise of that caused those insects to frenzy?" Mickey asked.

"Bingo! Exactly that."

"Makes sense why that bus had the biohazard warning on the side and why they're covering it up," Martha said.

"But isn't subliminal messaging illegal?" Shaun questioned.

"Yep, which probably means we ought to pay a visit to the Vortex headquarters. Company comes out of nowhere three months ago with state of the art mind control technology and takes over London's bus services? It's more than a little bit suspicious. In the wrong hands this could be used to take over the world, and who's to say it isn't in the wrong hands already?" he stood up, putting on his coat.

"What? _Now_? I haven't finished my lunch yet," Martha argued. Mickey, however, had already wolfed down his food.

"Martha, an evil company is trying to brainwash the British public, and you're worried about your fish and chips?"

"Yes! I paid for these! With real money, I didn't just nick them." He looked at her long enough for her to get sick of it and make a disgruntled noise, scrunching up her leftovers and chucking them in the bin in Shaun's room. Donna wasn't in much of an eating mood, and stood up without having to be told off by the Doctor first.

"You're going with them?" Shaun asked her.

"Well, yeah. It'll be fine," she said, "Don't worry about me."

"It sounds dangerous, though."

"It…" she stopped.

"It's her choice," the Doctor said, "Besides, we might need her. Always brilliant in a crisis, your wife."

"I'll come and see you as soon as we're done, I promise," Donna said, leaning over to kiss him goodbye (a moment probably ruined for them by Martha loudly whining about how stingy the Doctor was being where her chips were concerned.) On the way out, she elbowed him and told him he owed her dinner.


	456. Into the Vortex

_Into the Vortex_

_Ten_

"Alright, alright! I'm going! No need for the manhandling, is there!?" the Doctor shouted his objections at the two gorilla-ish brutes hauling him off the premises of the Vortex Transport headquarters, while the other three lingered nearby, hidden in shadow, and watched. They'd told him the direct approach wouldn't get him anywhere, and as they flung him out back onto the gravel driveway and he skulked, defeated, over to them, there was a ringing sound of three I-told-you-sos that irritated his ears. "Looking for the easy way in isn't a crime!"

"No, but it _was_ pretty funny watching you get chucked out," Mickey laughed. Martha and Donna were laughing, too, which went to show exactly how hilarious his infiltration antics were, since Donna had been off ever since they had left Shaun in the hospital. Probably worried about him, no doubt, but the Doctor made up his mind to talk to her properly later.

"Serves you right for pretending to be a journalist – in what world do a creepy corporation just let a journalist in? At this time of night?" Martha questioned him.

"Should've gone with health and safety," Donna said knowingly.

"Maybe I'm getting bored of pretending to be from health and safety all the time! Going by the states you lot find yourselves in, I don't know a single thing about health _or_ safety. Come on, then, suppose we'd better find the back way into this place…" he grumbled, and he began to walk off out of the way of those oafish guards on the doors until Donna interrupted him.

"_Or_, I have a better idea," Donna said, and then she did something completely unprecedented. Something that he had only heard about second hand through Rose, something astounding. When Donna held up her hand, the very atoms of the universe parted at her fingertips. The air and everything in it swirled around away from her, a bright blue glow forming at the craggy edges of this blip in existence itself. And this thing grew, grew to be the size of a person, oval-shaped, and it was almost like looking through a window soaked in rain, everything on the other side dark and distorted. It rippled like it was alive.

"What's _that_!?" he exclaimed, hoping those Vortex guards didn't spot it and come and investigate.

"A portal," Donna answered simply*.

"I thought you could only make those when they cross into other dimensions?" Martha asked uneasily, looking at the portal suspiciously. It nearly hurt the Doctor's eyes to look at.

"Nah. I've been practicing, they're not that hard to make," she said.

"You can make portals that go anywhere in any of the universes?" Ten asked.

"Well, no, it's a bit easier if there are previously existing interdimensional disturbances, like a Door, then it's more like opening something that's already there. Otherwise, I can't really do it if it's somewhere far, it's got naff range," she said, a little disappointed, "And they don't go across time. This goes into that building over there, the bit of the front office I could see through the window, so you'd better all hurry up and go through it."

"It definitely doesn't go to another dimension, though?" Mickey asked, "I've gotten stuck in parallel dimensions before."

"No, it doesn't. And if it does, I could probably bring us back."

"_Probably_?" Mickey, Martha and the Doctor all ask.

"Alright, definitely. And it definitely only goes in there, stop worrying. What other option do you have? Climb over that massive obviously electric fence over there?" Donna said, nodding at what really was probably an electric fence. Truthfully, Ten _had_ thought he might give it a go. But then, if he was willing to do _that_, he should also be pretty willing to trust Donna.

In an attempt to restore some of the dignity he had lost in being escorted away by the Vortex guards, the Doctor volunteered to go through first, hoping he wouldn't come out the other side too worse for wear. It was a very odd experience, passing through that portal of Donna's creation, as though stepping underneath a waterfall that left one completely dry on the other side. And after that he was in a dark but temperate corridor, and had to immediately duck down below an empty desk to avoid being seen by the guards outside. And there, distantly, he could see the silhouettes of the other three. Proof that he was still in the same universe. Good.

Mickey followed next, then Martha, and lastly Donna, the portal closing silently behind them.

"Right, now what are we looking for?" Martha asked quietly, as Mickey pulled out the chair at the reception computer and sat down, going to switch it on.

"Laboratories, I suppose," Ten said, "Anything that can tell us what they're really up to. It would cost billions to develop technology like this, seems odd that they'd only use it to sell people cars."

"And that they don't seem that worried about the dead people on their bus," Martha said, "I mean, they _were_ covering it up, but it wasn't guarded. Considering they can clearly afford people to guard their technology, you would think that if they were bothered about the press or the police getting hold of this they'd have done something more. Says a lot that they aren't worried about the scandal."

"Reminds me of Adipose Industries," Donna remarked. The Doctor was wondering if there were more guards within the Vortex facility. He hoped not, he didn't really want to know which of the people he was with were secretly carrying guns. He liked to think none of them, but he knew that at least Mickey was a big fan of weapons. "Do you think it might be aliens?"

"What would aliens get out of selling cars to the human race?"

"Similar question to, what would aliens get out of selling diet pills to the human race? Or Atmos?" Donna said, "Atmos was going to take over every car on the planet, what if Vortex want the same thing?"

"All looks normal, apart from one thing," Mickey began. He was scrolling through pages and documents and files and images impossibly quickly, and the Doctor suspected technopathy was at play here, "Personnel files list barely any people with restricted level clearance, seems fishy. Restricted level is the Fifth Floor, and it doesn't say what they do there. It must be the labs, though, because every other floor looks like it works with stuff specific to car manufacturing and buses."

"The staff in those pictures are all a bit… you know, large," Donna commented.

"I'm sure that's not important," the Doctor chastised her, "Commenting on their appearance like that's a bit rude, don't you think?" Donna scowled.

"Why would a car company need to keep secrets like that? I know it's a competitive industry, but it seems a bit much," Martha commented.

"You're right, it does. What's say we take a trip in the lift to go have a look at this restricted Fifth Floor?" Ten suggested. Mickey switched off the computer carefully and they crept away through the dark building, listening out for any stray footsteps that might belong to security. Perhaps it was their lucky day, though, because either there weren't any guards at all or they conveniently missed every single patrol until they got to the deactivated lift. All it took was a zap from the sonic screwdriver and the doors slid open welcomingly.

"What do you think we'll find up here?" Donna asked the Doctor.

"Oh, I dunno. Travelling all through time and space and how often do we end up fighting what can be boiled down to corporate greed? Adipose, Lazarus, the Ood. Suppose capitalism makes villains of us all, in the end," he muttered.

"Now you sound like Thirteen," Martha commented, and he shrugged.

"Not really surprising, we _are_ both the Doctor. This is our stop, then," he said, the doors opening. They stepped out into a dark, empty room, but it was definitely a laboratory if the Doctor had ever seen one. And he'd seen his fair share of laboratories. He went and switched the light on and revealed to the group a great myriad of technological devices; funny helmets with glowing attachments, bright chemical compounds in conical flasks on the tables, computers and gizmos and all sorts of little gadgets. Not to mention a few boxes very similar looking to those ones in the Vortex bus.

"What is all this stuff?" Martha stared around, the Doctor making a beeline for a very large helmet.

"That looks like something from _Back to the Future_," Mickey commented on the thing. It did, too, but Ten didn't really want to put it on and see if it would help him read minds. He didn't think that was what it was for, anyway. He pulled out his sonic and started to scan it.

"This is weird, is this in their cars?" Donna asked, leaning down to eye one of the flasks with a yellowy-green liquid filling it, bubbles on top. She sniffed it and was repelled immediately. Micky flicked a silver toggle switch on top of what Ten assumed was a prototype of one of the subliminal messaging boxes, and it emitted a high-pitched buzzing sound that made his ears hurt. Mickey switched it off immediately, but no insects appeared to have swarmed.

"Smells funny in here," Martha commented, after glaring at Mickey for a second or two, "Bit like bad breath." The Doctor sniffed.

"Eurgh, you're right. They ought to get some air fresheners in here… ooh, hello, this is unusual…" he said after activating the large helmet in his hands.

"What is it?"

"As far as I can tell it's some sort of mind control device. A prototype. That's what most of this stuff is, I suppose. Maybe the subliminal messaging is the only thing that works? I'll tell you one thing, though, it's definitely not Earth engineering…"

"This place is like Project MKUltra…" Mickey remarked.

"Always one for conspiracies, you, aren't you?" the Doctor said.

"It's real!" he argued.

"What is it?" Donna asked.

"In the Sixties the CIA tried to find a way to control peoples' minds, for interrogation," Mickey explained.

"Come to think of it, I had a friend who worked on MKUltra," the Doctor said absently, "Invented a weird hat like this. Bit more subtle, though. Died in a fire a few years afterwards, though, no idea what happened to his hat. Now the question is, why would aliens want to come here and sell the human race cars?"

"If this is all about mind control," Martha began, "Then what if they have those boxes hidden in their cars, as well? If Vortex manage to get a monopoly on any or all forms of transportation, they have access to manipulate the minds of almost everyone on the planet. Maybe this is just the start? Maybe they get everybody under their thumb, and then change the message?"

"Change it to what, though?" Mickey asked.

"Lots of reasons someone might want to make slaves of the human race, Mickey. There's over seven billion people on this planet, that's a _lot_ of potential," the Doctor said, thinking, putting the helmet down.

"Doctor…" Donna breathed.

"Still, though," he paced, "Can't think of any race who would want to go to this much trouble, and it is a _lot_ of trouble. Most would just go the cloning route if they wanted a slave army…"

"Doctor, seriously," Martha said.

"What species would even want humans working for them? No offence, but you're not the most proficient workers. Quite lazy, most of you. Show up out of nowhere, build a fancy company, take control of London's buses…"

"Doctor!" Mickey shouted. Ten continued to walk up and down with his hands in his pockets.

"You'd think they'd need at least low-level influence in the government to pull off something like_ that_… I just don't see who could be-"

"OI!" Donna yelled, almost knocking him over with her superpowered shriek.

"You know, it _is_ very rude of you lot to keep interrupting me while I'm being clever," Ten said, annoyed.

Then a gargled, vaguely female voice came from behind him, "_And oh so clever you have been, Doctor._"

Ten wheeled around and slaw a flash of green skin before a three-clawed, enormous hand came swooping down to slash straight for his face. He ducked and someone grabbed him and wrenched him away from whatever had just attacked him. Then he saw it, looming there. It was enormous, green, fat, slimy, and it was about to maul him.

*_chapter 866_


	457. Shadow Government

_Shadow Government_

_Ten_

"Slitheen!" he exclaimed, "Of course! Only you lot would be greedy enough to pull off a stunt like this. Probably why the room smells of halitosis if you've been hanging around in here farting for months." Mickey had been the one to drag the Doctor out of harm's way. The Slitheen made another strike for him, but he ducked that, too. They were very slow old beasts.

"Maybe try not to offend it when we don't have any vinegar," Mickey muttered.

"Well don't go telling it that!" Donna shouted at him.

"_It_? I'm a she," the Slitheen argued, "A very hungry she. And the four of you smell so interesting, crawling right into my nest here."

"If only you'd looked a bit harder for vinegar when you brought those fish and chips earlier," Ten remarked to Martha.

"Oh, _sorry_," she growled.

"Enough games, you won't ruin our plans this time, Doctor. We'll kill you and take your fancy skin, imagine if we learnt how to change our faces like you do?" the Slitheen jeered, swiping for Ten again. Mickey jumped back and Ten made a lunge for that flask Donna had been examining earlier.

"One more step and I'll triplicate the flammability of this… this… stuff," Ten threatened, holding his sonic screwdriver against the flask.

"That didn't work the last time you tried it, in Downing Street all those years ago. I'm one of the branch who survived," the Slitheen said. Ten remembered saying exactly that to Blon Fel-Fotch and her cronies years back, when he was in his Ninth incarnation, and he'd had a bottle of old alcohol dragged off the shelf. When they'd called his bluff that time, he'd backed into the cabinet room and had locked himself, Rose and Harriet Jones in with three-foot thick steel doors. Unfortunately, the Vortex HQ didn't have any three-foot thick steel doors.

"Oh, really? Very enduring creatures, aren't you?" he said somewhat weakly. Then he lobbed the flask at the Slitheen and it shattered on its belly, but didn't really do anything aside from get the thing a bit wet. And it was already damp all over to begin with.

"Enough of that, how about _I_ triplicate the flammability of my fist?" Martha threatened, then she held her fist up and the Doctor nearly jumped out of his skin (of course, not literally, that would be exactly what the Slitheen wanted) when her entire hand ignited in a burst of hot, orange flame. "And then I'll punch you in the face?"

"You lot are like cockroaches, there's always more of you," Mickey said reproachfully, "We've been cleaning up your messes for years."

"Yes, the infamous freelance alien hunters, a pain in our side as much as that Sarah-Jane Smith," the Slitheen said coldly.

"Don't you dare say her name," Ten ordered it through gritted teeth.

"Or what? You'll set your pet fireball on me? She smells deliciously like barbecue now."

"Tell us your plans, then. And your name."

"Borst Vonn-Filn Passameer-Day Slitheen," she said, "And fine, since it doesn't look like I have much of a choice."

"You're right, you don't," Martha threatened. She was getting frightfully good with that pyrokinesis, "Come on, then. Spill."

"It's simple, really. The universe is full of wars, and with that technology, humankind can be moulded into a very fine army. Soldiers unafraid to take risks, and you all breed so excessively the Slitheen family could make a pretty penny selling you off as cannon fodder to the highest bidder. I can smell it on even you, fire-girl, that stench of procreation," the Slitheen remarked coldly.

"What?" Martha frowned.

"You can't do that," Ten argued angrily, "You can't make an army out of an entire species."

"Yeah, the Sontarans are doing that already," Donna argued.

"Yes! Good point, exactly, the Sontarans," Ten said.

"The Sontarans don't sell themselves," Borst Vonn-Filn snapped, "There's no money to be made from their technology. They might pay money for humans to shoot for sport, though. Hunting humans has always proven to be such fun. And you're _so_ materialistic, you know. We've sold almost a million cars already, and that's only after legitimate advertising. All of them, as you so rightly guessed, equipped with more of our control boxes. Humanity will bend to our will, and our will is for them to fight across the stars, making us _trillions_ in the process."

"Well what about the insects, then? Your device causes them to kill," Mickey interrupted and pointed out, "You can't have three-quarters of your livestock getting murdered, now, can you?"

"A minor flaw with the system," Borst said, "There is a multitude of frequencies that will achieve the same result, we will just modify it from the central hub. They're collateral damage for now."

"_Collateral damage_!? That was nearly my husband, you sick… thing!" Donna shouted at it, the Doctor wincing against her voice.

"_My_ husband was killed by the very same man you now herald as your saviour," Borst remarked about the Doctor.

"To save the planet," Ten said.

"Who's to say these human soldiers won't save hundreds of planets in the long run? Doesn't that justify the sacrifices now?"

"These aren't sacrifices, this is murder. You're killing humans _and_ terrorising these insects. Do you know _why_ they burrowed into those people? Because they were scared, your signals terrified them to the point where they killed innocents just looking for somewhere safe!"

"And _you_ killed innocents who were just looking to continue a family legacy and do honest business."

"_Honest_? You wouldn't know _honest_ if Martha burned it into your skin!" Ten shouted. He knew what they were doing, and he knew now that they had a central hub. A place where the boxes in all the cars and the buses could be deactivated safely, and Vortex Transport could be swept under the rug as another failed attempt at dominion over Planet Earth. But there was still the issue of the Slitheen, there must be more of them in the building, probably all coming as they spoke. Although, it did strike him as odd that they weren't there already… the Slitheen _did_ have a minor telepathic connection to one another.

"What central hub? Where is it?" Mickey asked, obviously picking up on the same thing the Doctor had.

"Like I'd tell you. You two have killed as many of my brothers and sisters as he has, made us pariahs on our own planet," the Slitheen said.

"Where is it!?" Martha demanded, going as far as to set _both_ of her hands alight, brandishing them in Borst's direction. "Tell me, or god help me, I'll burn every last one of you in this building."

"Aren't you going to do that anyway?" Borst said, bored, "You'd better hurry up. Soon the others will be here."

"Taking a while, though, aren't they?" Donna said. Ten glanced at Donna. Mickey was dashing hither and dither about the room looking for whatever this control hub the Slitheen had their gadgets connected to was. He could handle that, and the Doctor would handle the Slitheen. As soon as he thought of a way to do that that _didn't_ involve Martha setting them all on fire. Donna, though, Donna was being strange. She had her eyes fixed on what the Doctor initially thought to be Borst, but the more he looked at Donna, the more he saw she seemed to have her eyes pinned to something else. Something in the dark, behind it.

"…Yeah, good point," the Doctor began, "Where are they? Are they close?"

"Well, they're…" Borst began. The Doctor was glancing between Borst and the darkness behind, the thing that Donna was so transfixed by, trying to see what she was seeing.

"They're what? Do you not know?" he questioned, and Borst was stunned.

"They can't be…"

"What?" Martha asked, "There are a load of you, we saw in the personnel files. You can't exactly be hiding, you're eight feet tall and green." But Borst wasn't listening, Borst was panicking. Ten didn't know what was going on, but Donna clearly did.

"Donna? What is it?" the Doctor asked.

Donna looked right at him and said almost breathlessly, "That Slitheen has two shadows."

"_What?_" he exclaimed, then he shouted to Borst, "Move! Run! Get away from there!"

It was too late. Of course, those airborne piranhas he had mentioned earlier in relation to the burrowing, invisible bugs they had been investigating had shown up. _Vashta Nerada_, he had mentioned, living in the air. As soon as the shadow passed over Borst and the green skin began to apparently disintegrate, he forced himself to look away. The Doctor did not look back at the scene until he heard a loud clattering noise, and saw Borst Vonn-Filn Passameer-Day Slitheen's bones crash to the floor. The swarm of Vashta Nerada slid back into the darkness from whence it had come, the Doctor merely observing, knowing there would be no way to fight an attack of them, wondering if perhaps the frequencies of the subliminal messages affected them in the same way.

At least, that was what he thought until a figure stepped out. A living silhouette, shrouded in darkness. A shadow. _The_ Shadow, in its see-through suit. With its arms crossed. Standing there.

"You didn't have to kill her," the Doctor said coldly.

"I did."

"You didn't. And what's this 'I' stuff? You're a swarm. It should be 'we.'"

"And you have ten different incarnations under your own personal belt, so shouldn't _you_ be saying 'we' as well, Doctor?" the Shadow remarked.

"Oh, you're witty for a bunch of dust mites, aren't you?" The Shadow shrugged. "And now you're shrugging! Where did you learn to do that!?"

"I wasn't aware we'd met yet, Doctor," the Shadow remarked.

"Well we have. And I still don't approve of your methods."

"My methods? Those being that I eat them? As opposed to spraying them with vinegar or launching a missile? Why is making them explode alright but eating them isn't?" the Shadow asked. The Doctor spluttered, unable to articulate anything that didn't make him sound more hypocritical than he was already being.

"It has a point," Martha said, extinguishing the flames on her hands, "We didn't really have any other plan to get rid of them."

"Of course we did! I was going to alert the Shadow Proclamation!" the Doctor protested.

"I _am_ the Shadow Proclamation," the Shadow said. Of course, if this was a Shadow who had never met the Doctor, it was the Shadow_ before_ its servitude was bargained out of with the Architect. One who had yet to become some sort of intergalactic bounty hunter.

"Then I would have had some very strong words with them."

"They sent me here to eliminate the Slitheen threat after _you_ failed to deal with it in 2005. I've been cleaning up _your_ messes on Earth for years. I did it for those two just a few months ago," the Shadow pointed at Mickey and Martha.

"What? Did you?" the Doctor puzzled.

"It was the story I told on the day everyone changed bodies," Mickey explained, "We were tracking some Slitheen and we just found skeletons. Didn't know it was _that_ who did it. Then a minute later we got caught in the Dimension Crash and brought onto the TARDIS*."

"And now I've finished the job," the Shadow said, "Don't thank me all at once."

"I won't be thanking you at all."

"I left you their control hub to sabotage, if you like? It's right in that room," the Shadow suggested smarmily, pointing at a set of double doors. Hastily, Mickey went off to follow the Shadow's directions, and Martha trailed after him to make sure they didn't get ambushed by anymore Slitheen, no doubt.

"How do you intone in that suit? How long have you been in there, the lot of you?"

"Decades. I'd best be off now, though."

"Oh, you had, had you? Well… well, good. Go away. Can't stand you."

"Goodbye, Doctor. I'm sure I'll be seeing you around," the Shadow said, and then it vanished in a haze of blue light. Your typical teleport beam. Did the Shadow have a spaceship, he wondered? Then he shook that thought out of his mind. He didn't care what the Shadow had.

"You're not very nice to him," Donna said.

"I hardly think it's a _him_, Donna," Ten muttered, eyeing Borst's bones on the ground. Maybe he should call UNIT and get them to come and do a clean-up operation on Vortex Transport.

"He's saved all of our lives, more than once," Donna continued, "I think he's helpful."

"It just eats everything!"

"Everyone has to eat," she argued, "At least he eats dangerous criminals instead of innocent people, like in the Library. Don't act like you didn't have fish and chips just an hour ago, that fish was alive once." The Doctor couldn't think of anything to argue with her, so he just scoffed and gave up. Something else had been playing on his mind, anyway. A few things. All of which involved Donna Noble, in some capacity. Mickey and Martha were still in the next room.

"Would you help me with something?" he asked, and she was taken aback.

"It's not filing a complaint with the Shadow's line manager, is it? Do the Shadow Proclamation have line managers?"

"I was just gonna ask if you might help me buy a ring."

"What sort of ring?"

"An engagement ring! What did you think?"

"Look at you, all grown up," she laughed, and then softened, "Course I will. Might even pay for it, too, if you choose a _really_ nice one."

"Wiped everything," Mickey announced, coming back into the room with Martha, "Whole place is clean, sent an alert to UNIT, deactivated all the boxes. We'd better leave." So, Mickey Smith had done his job for him. As had the Shadow. He was starting to see what the Eleventh Doctor always meant about feeling useless… hopefully, though, Rose Tyler disagreed.

*_chapter 625_


	458. Smith and Jones

_Smith and Jones_

_Ten_

"I don't get it, most of these look the same to me," he complained to Donna, skulking around in a jeweller's and feeling thoroughly out of place. Especially with the cashiers giving him funny looks as he made remarks about other worlds and species they didn't understand. He regretted coming to Earth for this ring. "What if she says no? What's the point then? Maybe I should ask her first, and get a ring second?"

"You don't want to do that," Donna advised him, "It'll look spur of the moment. This shows you've put thought into it."

"We should have gone to somewhere intergalactic. Or I should have had one made, specifically. Didn't the Eleventh Doctor do that?"

"Who cares what the Eleventh Doctor did? If you wanted _his_ advice about rings, you should have asked _him_," she said. He was surprised Donna wasn't getting more annoyed at his indecisiveness, but she seemed to be preoccupied with something. Probably one of those other things he had made up his mind to talk to her about. "But for the record, I'm pretty sure he didn't."

"Didn't he? Oh. Well… what do you think, Donna? Just choose something and I'll pretend it was me," he pleaded.

"She's _your_ fiancée-to-be."

"Maybe not. And _you've_ been living with her for more than four months!" he exclaimed, thinking Donna must know Rose at least a _little_ by now.

"Oh, please. Give her a Haribo ring and she'll say yes."

"Jenny very specifically advised that I get a proper ring, and after seeing everything that went wrong between her and Jack, I'd rather play it safe. Mind you, can't say I'm particularly upset about that outcome… I did _tell_ her," he muttered, eyeing up more rings. Really, they all looked terribly similar to the Doctor. He didn't know if he'd ever gone out and bought an engagement ring for another person. It wasn't exactly custom on Gallifrey.

"I think you telling her was what spurred her on to go through with it," Donna said quietly, and he didn't question her on that. His own daughter's active dislike of him was becoming more and more apparent, the more time she spent hanging around vampires the greater sense of paternal anguish she developed. He wondered if the two were related, or if it was perhaps a simple trait of her new regeneration, if she even changed that much. Truthfully, he didn't think he knew her well enough to judge, which was a little saddening.

"Does it _have_ to be a diamond?"

"No," Donna said, "It can be anything, just depends how much she'll like it. Does she like diamonds?"

"How should I know?"

"You're trying to marry her! You've known her for years."

"Jewellery never came up!" he argued, "I really should have one made. Something, you know… abnormal. Alien. Different parts from different planets, then it would really mean something."

"If I were you, I'd save that for the wedding rings, then you can talk about it together. Also, are you sure she'd appreciate that? Diamonds are something people _do_ appreciate, because they're rare."

"They're overpriced, Donna, they're not nearly as rare as the companies who mine them want you to believe so that you spend a fortune on the things," he said, sighing, "What if I just got a stone that's her favourite colour?"

"What's her favourite colour?" Donna asked. She really was doing her best to help him, and he faltered again. What _was_ Rose's favourite colour? Red? Like a rose? But then, roses came in practically every colour.

"Uh…"

"Doctor. Stick to diamonds. Probably something practical, not one of those massive ones that might get caught on something. Think about her lifestyle. Our lifestyle," she amended a little. For a few seconds he really did think about that, before his thoughts turned back to Donna again rather than the hundreds of rings lying in front of him on white, silk cushions in a pristine, glass cabinet.

"Are you happy, Donna?" he asked.

"What do you mean?" She was a little distracted looking at other bits of jewellery in the shop, and Ten wondered if she was going to buy something herself. It wouldn't surprise him, not with the rough day she'd had. It wasn't like she was short on money, as far as he knew. There was no way she could have spent all of her lottery winnings in the space of three years. Then again, this _was_ Donna…

"On the TARDIS."

"What? Of course I'm happy."

"Are you, though?" he pressed, and she looked up and met his eyes.

"Why would you think I wasn't?"

"Don't you miss Shaun?"

"Well, yes, but if I wasn't on the TARDIS I would miss that, too, and you. Everybody, really, we're a bit like a family. I don't know how I'd live without my spa days with Amy, or watching films with Jack."

"You watch films with Jack?"

"Oh, all the time." He didn't know that. How much _did_ he know about the goings on aboard the TARDIS? Well, he never really asked, actually. "It is hard, though. Being away so much. Don't see him nearly as often as I'd like."

"How often is that?"

"You don't marry someone hoping to be separated for long lengths of time, Doctor. How would you like it if you only got to see Rose every other week?" Donna questioned him. He supposed he wouldn't like that, really, not at all.

"What about that one?" he pointed at one through the glass that looked like two intertwined strands of single, silver-coloured alloy, studded with diamonds along the edges of both of them, "It… makes me think of her. I'm not very good with this feelings-stuff, you know. Well, the _feeling_ the feelings part is alright, but not the talking about them part."

"How does it remind you of her?" Donna asked curiously.

"That's private."

"Didn't realise you were one for keeping secrets from _me_, of all people," she said, trying to convince him to tell her. He just raised his eyebrows.

"If she says yes, I'll tell you."

"I better make sure she says yes, then, hadn't I?" Donna joked, "Do you want me to buy it for you, then? And there's some earrings over there I like the look of…" She waved over one of the cashiers.

"Where do you get the boxes from?" the Doctor asked, "To put it in?"

"It'll come in a box," she assured him.

"Donna?"

"Yes?" As they talked she was directing the cashier to the earrings as well.

"Do you want to stay behind?"

"What?" she looked over immediately.

"With Shaun, until he gets better, I mean. Not _forever_. Just… a few days. Unless you want to stay forever?" he asked carefully. Donna was his best friend, and he liked her company more than almost everybody else on the ship, but her life was her life and they were her decisions to make. "Or he could come on the ship? He could travel, I'm sure."

"He's not coming on the TARDIS," Donna said firmly, "It's too dangerous. I couldn't bring him into this life."

"No, no. Course you couldn't. You're right."

"I will, though. Stay, I mean. For a bit. It'll be nice…" she decided, then her tone changed to one of levity again, "But you'd better come and tell me as soon as you pop the question, alright? If I'm not back by then."

"Course I will," he assured her with a smile, "Especially if she says no. Then I'll need a shoulder to cry on, I assume."

* * *

_Martha_

"Open wider," she ordered Mickey, who was struggling to open his mouth any further at all, "You're moving too much!" He made an unintelligible noise at her and she threw what was in her hand at him, and he struggled to move towards it. In the end, the bit of popcorn bounced off his nose and onto the floor, just like the last seven bits of popcorn he had tried to catch in his mouth after she threw them. "Missed again. You're rubbish at this. It's a waste of good popcorn."

"We've got loads of it," he said, but he only said it _after_ cramming his mouth with another handful of the stuff, "You just can't throw. It's because you're a girl." He was, of course, joking.

"And _you_ clearly can't wait until you finish chewing to talk because you're a greedy pig, like all men," she remarked, and he smiled, popcorn between his teeth. She shook her head at him and turned to look back at the TV in their room and the film they had on.

"You're not gonna carry on playing?"

"No! You're making a mess. You better clean this up, it's appalling," she said, "And you said you'd do the washing today."

"I will! It's not even late."

"I'm just reminding you."

"All you ever do is 'remind' me," he muttered, and she smiled and moved back to be curled up next to him with her head on his shoulder, which was how they had been sat before he had decided he wanted to try his hand at catching popcorn. Or his mouth, as the case may be.

"Our flat's filthy, isn't it?" she said.

"What?"

"Our flat. Home, I mean. Before we left, it was a mess. And we haven't been paying any bills," she sighed, "For four months. It isn't exactly homely here, it just looks like a dirty hotel room. We even have a mini-fridge in that corner full of bottled water." They did, too, and Martha didn't think she'd ever taken a bottle out of it. Perhaps it was a bit of a fancy hotel room, since they had a sofa and a television, so it was a bit more than a typical B&amp;B setup, but it was still less pleasant than being at home. Also, if it _was_ a B&amp;B, they would have their breakfast made for them.

"What are you thinking about that for?"

"I don't know. After seeing how much we've missed, in just a few months. Doesn't feel like months, though, it feels like years," she sighed, "And then talking to Donna and Shaun; what if we were like that? What if I was on the TARDIS and you were left behind?"

"That's happened to me before, remember?" he said, "When Rose went off travelling with the Doctor. Has to be the worst feeling of my life. Even worse than when you said no to marrying me the first time."

"It's weird, though, isn't it? That we're still here? We've both left before, for good reason. But now we've just sort of… stayed."

"I don't see what difference it makes. We still end up hunting aliens, no matter where we live," he shrugged. Martha stopped talking for a while, trained her eyes back on the film, but she just couldn't bring herself to be particularly involved in Matt Damon's struggle to live isolated on Mars. Oddly enough, it almost seemed quaint. She ate popcorn absently when Mickey voiced his thoughts, which were not too dissimilar to her own, "I've been to Mars before."

"I know."

"Just a few weeks ago. It was nicer than this, though. Didn't have to grow potatoes out of poo."

"I always forget how romantic space travel seems to the rest of the human race."

"Romantic?" he asked wryly.

"Not like _that_. I just mean, you have to get pretty excited about stars to be able to idealise faeces potatoes and think you might be willing to do something like that. I don't think _I'd_ do it."

"Of course _you_ wouldn't do it, _you_ refused to eat Cornflakes this morning. You wouldn't be good astronaut material."

"Really? Well, the joke's on you, isn't it? Because we're in a spaceship _right now_. We could even go to Mars, if we wanted." She didn't want to go to Mars, not really, it was just a big dusty desert, and nothing ever seemed to go well for any of them when they stopped by on that planet. Then again, nothing ever seemed to go well whenever they stopped _anywhere_.

"It's overrated."

"Do you ever miss being at home?" she asked.

"I don't know. As long as we're together, I don't care where we are."

She sat up, "Really?"

Sarcastically, he responded, "No, the amount I love you depends on our location. Actually, that's true, because sometimes I can't stand you when we go shopping."

"Oh, thanks."

"Are you saying you want to leave?"

"Dunno," she crossed her legs and picked up the whole bowl of popcorn, looking at Mickey rather than the TV, "I suppose you're right, we always end up doing the same thing anyway. I _really_ don't like those communal bathrooms, though. And even more than that I don't like how you keep wearing my slippers into the men's one."

"I'm not walking barefoot into a gents' toilet," he argued.

"Why not? The only people who use that toilet are you, Rory, Jack and the Tenth Doctor. It's not like it's public." He didn't say anything else, just stole some more popcorn and turned his back to the screen. Martha slouched down on the back of the sofa, looking at the room, melancholy and distant. She was still thinking about what had happened that day, about some of the things that Slitheen, Borst, had said to her.

"What's wrong?" Mickey asked.

"Nothing's wrong."

"Then what are you thinking about?"

"I'm still wondering why I didn't get any insect bites," she said, looking at the purple, blotchy marks on the backs of Mickey's hands.

"You should never look a gift horse in the mouth," he said knowingly, and she laughed, "Maybe you just got lucky?"

"I suppose. I just can't help but think it's weird, though."

"Don't worry about it. You could just be one of those people naturally repellent to insects. There are some people who never get mosquito bites," he told her.

"I _do_ get mosquito bites, though, and those things weren't mosquitoes."

"Martha…"

"No, no. You're right, I guess. Shouldn't worry." But Martha _did_ worry, and wanted to know what, exactly, was the matter with her that she didn't get swarmed.


	459. Outer Space

**AN: Thought it was about time for a chapter of good old-fashioned Whoufflé fluff basically just to balance out what will probably be a ridiculous amount of angst in the coming chapters. Also, double update because I already had the next chapter written. Makes up for no update yesterday though.**

**DAY 131**

_Outer Space_

_Eleven_

"What are we doing for breakfast? Are you making anything, or are we going out? I kind of fancy going out this morning… then again, I can't be bothered getting dressed… Chin? Are you not hungry? What about porridge, I haven't had porridge for weeks… or pancakes… or crisps… Doctor? Why aren't you talking to me?"

"Oh, for – you're on the toilet!" he complained, turning away from the bathroom mirror to face her, though he'd really rather not, "I'm not talking to you while you're on the toilet, Clara!"

"So what if I'm on the toilet?" she argued, and he scoffed and turned back to the mirror to try and ignore her. He could still see her, though, pulling a face at him, sitting there. For the first and only time he wished _she _was the vampire, then he wouldn't have to put up with her reflection and its lack of sense of privacy.

"_I _was in the bathroom, you can't just come in and start _weeing_," he protested.

"We've been married and living together for four and a half months," she said coldly.

"I was here first!"

"You could always leave."

"I can't leave, I'm halfway through shaving, look at me. I'm going to have a moustache if I leave now, and I don't want a moustache, that's why I've shaved it off for three-hundred years. Until you came along, that is," he muttered, "Waltzing in here and taking your clothes off."

"I didn't realise you had such a huge problem with me taking my clothes off," she remarked sarcastically, "I've stopped now, anyway, I'm only hanging around to talk to you." He grimaced at himself and tried to carry on shaving, but remembered something she had said a few moments ago.

"What do you mean, you're going to have crisps for breakfast?" he questioned, looking at her again. She yawned and reached for the toilet roll.

"Onion rings, or something," she said, "Maybe with mayonnaise."

"That's vile. Almost as vile as me having to watch you… You know," the Doctor could not physically bring himself to say the word 'wipe' to her, which she appeared to find amusing. He very carefully went back to focusing on where he was putting his razor and tried to change the subject, "I'm doing eggs on toast, take it or leave it."

"I'll never pass up an opportunity to take it from _you_, Doctor," she said sultrily, and he looked at her again.

"You're not nearly as sexy saying things like that when you're on the toilet," he told her, "What would your father think if he saw you now?"

"I'm pretty sure my dad had a hand in teaching me how to use a toilet in the first place," she said, perplexed by his tact, "Do they not have potty training on Gallifrey?" He didn't say anything, desperately wishing she would just let him go about his business like he had been doing, and she finally got tired of sitting there making comments and stood up, flushing the toilet. "What would _you_ think if you saw _Jenny_ on the toilet?"

"Don't say things like that." She came over and elbowed him to get him to move out of the way of the sink, "Hey!"

"What? I need to wash my hands!" she argued, sticking one of her hands in his face.

"Eurgh! Don't do that!"

"Let me wash my hands then! I don't know what you want from me sometimes," she said as he obligingly moved to let her get at the sink.

"I want you to use one of the other bathrooms when I'm already in this one. I didn't even know you were awake. This is an awful way to start the day."

"Excuse me for thinking my twelve-hundred-year-old alien husband would be a bit more mature when it comes to bodily functions everybody goes through," she said pointedly. Then she started complaining that they had run out of soap, and continued to ask his opinion about what sort of soap they should buy next (like he cared). It really was a godsend when Clara decided to brush her teeth with that disgusting toothbrush of hers (what sort of person didn't rinse the brush? Ever?) and was therefore prevented from speaking to him for about as long as it took him to finish shaving. He had already brushed his teeth before she barged in so rudely and started _doing things_ behind him.

"There, I'm done now, are you happy?" he argued, and she smiled at him in the mirror, her mouth full of foamy toothpaste, and then went to rinse. "Are you going to have a shower?"

"After breakfast. I thought I'd make us fancy coffee now while you do food?" she suggested. Darn, he thought, he _did _adore her fancy coffee very much. Clara could draw shapes in the foam with the milk, something he himself had never been able to quite get the hang of, aside from a very wobbly smiley face. "We should really get those him and her sinks, you know?"

"I don't."

"Where we have two sinks and one of them is mine and one of them is yours. You can do that with toilets, as well," she told him matter-of-factly, and he squinted at her as he opened the door back into the bedroom, holding it for her to go through first.

"It's beyond me where you get these ideas from, Coo."

"It's true! Loads of people have two sinks next to each other!" she said, leaving the bathroom and going for their kettle. The Doctor had been, for a while, debating pulling the same stunt Adam and Oswin had and making them a flat. But cooking in the living room didn't bother him all that much, in fairness.

"On your weird planet, maybe."

"Ha, ha. I'm being serious, though, I think it's a good idea. The sink one, not the toilet one. The toilet one is actually pretty odd."

"Yes, well, I'll… think about it while I make you your eggs."

"After that we can get matching dressing gowns."

"Now _that_ is a brilliant idea," he said, and she laughed, "I'll be back in a mo. Don't go anywhere."

"Wouldn't dream of it."

* * *

"You wouldn't _believe _the conversation I just had with the Tenth Doctor," he called when he returned to their room, some fifteen minutes later, carrying two plates of fried eggs on toast with him. He found Clara sitting on their sofa, nestled cosily into the corner of it with three cushions propping her up, a mug in one hand and a book in the other. She put her book face down on table when he entered, though, still open, pages flat on the glass. "You shouldn't do that; you'll ruin the spine."

"It's fine," she shrugged. He had half a mind to close the book properly himself, "What did he say to you?"

"Oh, he asked me about proposing," Eleven answered, passing Clara her plate and her cutlery, already halfway through his own meal and holding the remnants of a slice of toast between his teeth, "Don't make a mess."

"I won't make a mess."

"You made a mess last time."

"He asked me that, the other day," she said, only after she had scowled at him for an adequate length of time. He wished they had a proper table, rather than just the coffee table. They rarely ate breakfast in Nerve Centre with everybody else, though, "And I didn't make a mess."

"You did, you got crumbs everywhere. And why didn't you tell me?"

"Why should I? Didn't seem important," she shrugged, "And so did you! And I'm the one who cleaned them up, so you can shut up." She was right, she _had_ cleaned up their crumbs the last time he had made toast. That time, they had been eating in bed, but now they had mutually decided to forbid eating in bed because the crumbs were too much of a nightmare. "He asked how to 'hypothetically' propose to a girl."

"What did you tell him?"

"I said, 'with words.'"

"You _what_? That's rubbish advice. I hope you never decide to propose to _me_*." She scowled at him.

"What did _you_ say, then?" she challenged him.

"I said he should get her drunk and take her to Las Vegas."

"Bit rapey."

"That's not a word, Clara. Strikes me as odd, though. What if this Dimension Crash reverses? Then what will Rose do, go crawling back to Tentoo?" he said, desperately trying not to get messy egg yolk on the sofa. Especially not under the scrutiny of his wife, who was watching him very carefully so as to pick up on even the slightest hint of dirtiness in their dwelling.

"They probably don't want to think about that, though."

"But he could die. At any second. Just vanish."

She stared at him for a second, then disapprovingly said, "Well I hope you didn't say that to his face."

"No! Of course not. I just told him to be sincere. Why is he worrying, anyway? Of course she'll marry him. She already did once. It would be like you refusing to marry _me_ again," he said, and Clara stopped partway through chewing, as though she had just thought of something. He let her sit in silence for a few seconds, pondering the possibilities for what they could do after breakfast. They had spent the entirety of yesterday watching _Cash in the Attic_, much to his annoyance, because he said they could just take the TARDIS to go look at _real_ antiques instead of musty old sets of crockery on the television. And then Clara had told him to be quiet because she was trying to guess how much a set of vintage coasters were.

"What happens to _our_ wedding, then? Do we have to hurry up and have it before they do, or just take a backseat and wait until afterwards? We can't have _two_ weddings that close together. I'm still exhausted from the aftermath of the Harkness 'wedding,'" she said, doing inverted commas with her free hand.

"I say we just carry on planning at the same pace – which is hardly any pace at all – and play it by ear. It might take them months to get around to it."

"Yeah, or they might rush."

"No point worrying. _We_ don't need to rush," he said, something she disagreed with. Ever since that whole 'executive decision' thing two weeks ago**, very little of anything had gotten done in regards to their third wedding. Their first _real_ wedding. The Doctor's first real wedding since before he left Gallifrey, and Clara's first real wedding in her whole life. Well, unless she was keeping something from him, that was. "Really, though, they could vanish at any moment."

"Doctor," she said firmly, finishing once slice of toast and moving on to the second, "Leave them alone. They won't vanish."

"How can you know that? Those dimension stabilisers are still fluctuating, you know."

"They're not gonna vanish! I've… heard, you know, the Twelfth Doctor mention it. Thirteen. Stuff about how everyone still has Christmas dinner whenever she comes from," Clara said offhandedly.

"And you asked her to provide a register of who 'everyone' is, did you?"

"_No_, but I doubt she would have mentioned it at all if it wasn't true. It's not like she acts weird around them, as far as I know. She was being mental before Other Me got bitten by those vampires. Seriously, if anybody was about to disappear and go to another time, she'd be losing it," Clara assured him.

"When do _you_ talk to _her_, anyway?" he questioned.

"I don't, really. When she's hanging about in my sister's room," she said quickly, "These eggs are delicious, by the way."

"Of course they are, I made them. Everything I cook is delicious, I'm an excellent chef."

"I dunno," she shrugged, "Your shepherd's pie could do with some work."

"_Your _shepherd's pie doesn't even _exist_, so I rather think I'm still on top."

"Enjoy being on top, do you?" she asked him wryly, and he scowled.

"Be quiet."

"You don't need to be good at cooking to be a food critic."

"Probably not, but you do need to have a sense of what's decent food, Mrs Onion-Rings-With-Mayonnaise-For-Breakfast," he remarked, and she raised her eyebrows, "Mrs Doritos-Dipped-In-Coleslaw. Mrs Baked-Beans-With-Tomato-Sauce-On-Top-Of-Noodles."

"I'll have you know that my palette is incredibly refined. And the last one is called _space worms_, for your information, I invented it at university."

"Well you should _un_invent it. And I saw you have a ketchup sandwich for supper just three days ago."

"Yes! It was amazing! I don't see what point you're trying to make, all I said was your shepherd's pie isn't the best shepherd's pie I've ever had."

"You can't even name three ingredients of shepherd's pie!" he exclaimed.

"Yes I can!"

"Go on, then."

"Well, there's… there's the shepherd and the pie."

"_What_? There's no shepherd in it, it's made from mince."

"Minced shepherd!"

"No, not minced shepherd, minced lamb! And mashed potatoes!"

"Make it for tea," she asked, just about finished with the second slice of toast. She had wolfed her breakfast down, like the animal she so often seemed like when it came to food. He was being a hypocrite, though, for he had already finished his food ages ago.

"I – what?"

"Please?" she gave him doe eyes, and licked a bit of stray egg yolk and butter off the edge of her thumb.

"Fine, alright. But we're going out for lunch. I'm not cooking three meals today for you. I don't have the willpower."

"A late lunch, though?"

"Why would it have to be a late lunch?"

"I don't know. I thought we might have sex, or something," Clara slid closer to him on the sofa.

"Oh you did, did you? Nice of you to tell me you were thinking of that." She smiled. "You're terribly cute for a sex pest." She smiled _even more_.

"Are you gonna sleep with me or not?"

"Where did all the romance go in our relationship?"

"I'm asking for consent. That _is_ romantic." The Doctor scoffed. Clara had almost finished her toast. "It's just, if you don't want to, I'll have a wash and we can go to lunch early. But if you do I'll wait until _afterwards_ to have a wash."

"What do you mean you'll 'wait until afterwards to wash?' You stink."

"I'm hot though."

"A hot _mess_."

"Still hot," she winked at him. She was trying to seduce him, but wasn't putting quite as much vivacity into it as she usually would. Really, Clara was just trying her luck.

"You're deplorable. I ought to go and tell the Tenth Doctor not to get married at all, or this is what he has to look forward to. A complete lack of coyness and a woman using the toilet while you're in the same room."

"Seriously, get over the toilet thing. And answer my question."

"No, is the answer. _I've_ already had a shower. I'm not dirtying myself just because _you_ batted your eyelashes at me." She sighed, not quite as disappointed as he thought she would have been, and moved so that she was kneeling on the sofa next to him, sitting on her feet.

"Where are you going to take me for lunch, then? Is it a date?"

"No, I thought we could go as friends," he said sarcastically. Clara said nothing, merely sat there and waited for him to answer her first question, "There's a restaurant built onto one of Saturn's larger asteroids, fascinating place to go. Very odd because it moves so quickly. Of course, at the back-end of your sister's century another asteroid crashed into it and destroyed it, but until that happened it was very scenic. Restaurant is being kind, though, I suppose. More like a diner, or a café. Not terribly classy."

"Matches me perfectly then if it's not classy."

"Very amusing."

"You haven't even touched your coffee. Look, you can't even tell I made a heart in it anymore. I bet you didn't even notice," she complained, and he glanced at the coffee immediately to see just a milky swirl on top of it.

"Sorry," he apologised, "A heart?"

"Yes, obviously because my heart is _all yours_. I would've done two hearts but that's a bit tricky, you know?" she said.

"You're cuter when you're not trying than when you _are_ trying," he said, looking at her as she looked despondently at his as yet untouched bit of coffee. She smiled a little.

"You think?"

"I wouldn't have said it if I didn't, would I?" he remarked, and she frowned at him, "What?"

"Do you think you need a haircut?" she asked, leaning forwards and reaching out a hand to play with his hair.

"_You_ need a haircut. You're halfway towards Oswin's trapped-alone-on-a-spaceship-for-a-year look. Terrible split ends," he said, and she met his eyes with a look of faux-annoyance that melted into fondness after a second. She didn't move back, though, just stayed there, tantalisingly close. "What do you want?"

"Why do you always think I want something?"

"Because you always do."

"Not sure I like your tone of voice. I might have to do something about it."

"And _I'm _not sure I like _yours_, so I might have to do something, like force you to have a cold shower and leave you there until you get rid of all your rampant, carnal urges," he said. That was, obviously, too much to hope for, because as soon as he stopped talking Clara Oswald kissed him. The taste of eggs and toothpaste was a strange combination. And then he found himself thinking, why _couldn't_ he just give in to her? So what if he _did_ appear weak-minded? He wasn't exactly losing by letting her get her own way. Again. As he always did. He really _was_ weak-minded. "I've changed my mind," he forced himself to relinquish her.

"About what?" she asked softly.

"I suppose I _could_ compromise and have lunch a little later."

"I love you."

"I love you, too."

_*chapter 839_

**_chapter 868_


	460. A Love Like War

**DAY 17,968**

_A Love Like War_

_Thirteen_

"Strike!" Clara exclaimed cheerily. She jumped up and down, clapping her hands with joy, at the end of the lane. Her foot slipped over the foul line once, but she already had her ninth strike in a row, so it didn't make a difference to the score on the retro-looking TVs mounted onto the ceiling. The ten skittles crashed down, only to be swept up by the mechanism a moment later, ready to be rearranged and redistributed into their usual formation. The Doctor was slouching down on the plastic bench, one foot on the bench and one foot on the floor, grimacing and grumpily stirring the Slush Puppy in her hands with its plastic straw. "Sweetheart?" Clara turned to look at her, "Didn't you see? I got another strike." The bowling alley stank of greasy food and old sweat. The benches and tables had not been wiped down properly, and under the bench there was a sticky pool of Coca Cola that had been turning into syrup for a good few days. Obnoxious 1980s pop ballads echoed over the loudspeakers, the music as deafening as her own foul mood.

"Yeah, because you're cheating," she pointed out. The place was packed. It was early in the evening, peak hours for acne-ridden teenagers on first dates or group hangouts, families taking their kids out for birthday treats. Then right on the end was a weird lesbian couple having an argument about the fact one of them was just too good at bowling. Already, the Doctor had consumed three entire burgers with her insatiable appetite, which only got worse when she was peed off. She just ate the burgers, leaving the fries all heaped into one giant potato mountain. Clara kept stealing handfuls of them. It was only the two of them out, the Oswalds, on a date, the Doctor's idea.

"I'm not cheating!" Clara protested, pouting like an ungrateful child and skulking unhappily back to the ball return to wait for the red one, the only ball she would use because it was the only one in her favourite colour. Of course, there were plenty more bright-crimson bowling balls on the racks behind them, but she couldn't be bothered going and getting one. Lazy.

The Doctor, since it was now her turn, made a melodramatic show of swivelling on her grimy plastic bench, slamming her Slush Puppy down next to the plate of fries in a huff, and going down to pick up the first ball she got her hands on. She no longer cared about how heavy they were. When she bowled, she was so frustrated at the behaviour of her damned cheating wife that she bowled straight into the gutter. The funny yellow ball rolled away, and she felt like it took her hopes and dreams with it. The icing on her very bitter cake was Clara laughing shrilly behind her.

"Are you sure you don't want me to put the bumpers up?" Clara asked wryly. The Doctor clenched her jaw, bit the inside of her cheek and winced. She didn't quite draw blood, but it damn well hurt. And it was definitely all Clara's fault. Didn't that woman have any integrity? Did nobody ever teach her that it was rude to cheat? Unfair? Plain cruel?

"You can shut up right this second, Oswald, and stop cheating," the Doctor snapped at her, rounding on her, wagging a finger in Clara's general direction. In one hand, Clara had a clump of chips, some of them mashed up, her fingers shiny from grease and spit where she had been licking them to get at the extra salt. With her other hand she kept selecting fries from the other. She was utterly unfazed. She pouted again, a fake pout, the Doctor could see the mischief in her eyes. She got her kicks from this sort of stuff – being a terrible excuse for a human being, and whatnot. "You're being a child, and you're making a mess," she said patronisingly.

"I'm not making a mess." She said it in a garbled voice, her mouth full, chewing. She dropped a couple of her chips on the floor. There was a split second in which Thirteen had to act, as she _knew_ Clara was debating if it was alright to stoop down and pick them back up again.

"Do not eat those, the floor hasn't been washed for days, you'll get sick," she ordered.

"Pretty childish to accuse me of cheating just because you're not very good at bowling," Clara shrugged, pretending to be upset. Of course she wasn't _really_ upset, because the Doctor knew that she was right and Clara wasn't playing fair. Thirteen was sickened. Clara's red ball rolled back and she stalked over to it. Thirteen was out of turns and losing pitifully – she couldn't even bring herself to look at the terrible scores. Then, because that was how it worked in bowling, Clara spent her next three goes getting three more strikes and a perfect score of three-hundred. She turned to the Doctor and said, "Aren't you proud of me?"

"For what? For telekinetically cheating, as always? Like happens every single time we've ever been bowling together?" she questioned, pulling the plate of chips out of Clara's greasy, cheating paws so she couldn't get any more of them. That woman desperately needed to nip off to the bathroom and wash her hands. "Don't touch these, I paid for them."

"You didn't pay for them, you showed your psychic paper to the waitress and said the chips were on the house because you're an esteemed and honoured federal agent," Clara pointed out. She made another grab for the fries, but Thirteen swatted at her hand. For a brief moment, Clara actually acted like she had been hurt, until the Doctor told her to get over herself and give it up. "I literally get a perfect score every time we've ever been bowling – why won't you just believe I'm amazingly talented?"

"Okay, so, you expect me to believe that you have the ability to get a strike every single time you bowl, and you've never taken advantage of it? You never became a pro-bowler before I met you?"

"Well, you know, I have too much integrity to break into the professional scene with abilities like mine."

"Telekinesis."

"_Natural_ abilities. That I was born with."

"You're such a liar!" the Doctor argued adamantly. God, it was times like this that she didn't find Clara Oswald's egomania endearing. What was endearing about egomania in the first place, she didn't know, but perhaps being married to Clara meant she had had to adapt to being attracted to obscene narcissism.

"I wish you had enough faith in me to actually believe I tell you the truth…" Clara mumbled, trying to guilt trip her. Damn manipulative woman. She went and picked up that red ball she liked so much, rolling around in her hands. The Doctor knew that she was wondering whether or not she should try to steal it, because it was pretty. What Clara was actually going to do with a bowling ball, Thirteen didn't know. No doubt Clara hadn't actually thought that far ahead.

"Well I wish you actually told me the truth in the first place!" the Doctor argued right back at her, unsympathetic. Most likely, this latest foray into ten-pin bowling would end the way it always did, with Clara being awkward and sullen for days until the Doctor just gave up and resolved that, one day, she would _have_ to admit that she was cheating. At that moment she gave up trying to argue and sat in dejected silence at the edge of the bench, the heel of her funny-coloured bowling shoe getting a little stuck in the congealed Coca Cola on the wood-print floor. The scores sat there on the screen, the game over. Obnoxiously loud pop music continued to blast overhead, a mix of power ballads and tacky rock'n'roll numbers, with some hip hop thrown in.

"What do you want to do next, then?" Clara asked as_ The Power of Love_ crooned down at them. It was beginning to dwindle as it finished. The Doctor was halfway towards suggesting they go back to 1985 and catch the world premiere of _Back to the Future_. She couldn't, though. Clara didn't know this, but she had ulterior motives for bringing them there, on that day, in that year in the early 2000s. The TVs overhead were still widescreen, the animations something to be laughed at. She would never ordinarily invite Clara bowling with her, in Wyoming, of all places. They were early, but they couldn't leave, she was waiting.

Just after _The Power of Love_ ended there was a brief quiet in the bowling alley, and the sounds of skittles clattering down, bowls rolling down lanes, people talking and chattering and laughing. Clara was growing puzzled, Thirteen was waiting, wondering if it was underhand the way she had brought Clara out as part of a ruse. And then, while the Doctor was eating more fries, Clara still watching her and musing about the fate of the scarlet bowling ball, the thing she had been waiting for happened. There was a crash as somebody burst through the double doors at the front of the building, and a scream of terror which followed.

The Doctor looked over to see a young woman, filthy and covered in leaves and mud and blood, shredded, soiled clothes, stumbling in. That, she had counted on. What she _hadn't_ expected was very loud, British-accented swearing right behind her. She was drawn in that direction to see Clara about to fall over, clutching one of her feet, the bowling ball rolling away under the benches. She had dropped it on her foot. _You know what they say_, Thirteen would invariably remark if the circumstances were more appropriate, _If you love something, set it free_. Clara toppled one way and the Doctor caught her, still producing some astonishing profanity. The young woman was wailing far louder than Clara was cursing, though, and she fell onto the floor and started writhing like she was having some sort of seizure. The newspaper articles she had read clearly hadn't gone into that much detail.

"What's going on?" Clara asked the Doctor, who was having to grip Clara's arm to hold her steady as she shuffled on one foot, "You smell nice."

"_What_? Shut up, there's actual stuff happening," the Doctor said, letting go of Clara to go investigate. Clara fell over behind her as she walked off, fumbling with her shoulder bag to get her psychic paper out of it, knowing she'd probably need it. She turned back for a moment to address Clara, who was struggling to stand as her foot healed itself, "Make sure to bring those fries – I paid for them."

"No you didn't," Clara reminded her for the second time, shaking her head. She picked up the plate, though, as she followed in Thirteen's wake. There was a crowd amassed around the injured, hysterical woman now, as everybody else in the bowling alley flocked around her. Thirteen held up her psychic paper to the bowling alley staff.

"It's okay, I'm with the FBI," she said, showing the blank piece of paper around. The woman flailed and let out a shriek every now and then. "Somebody call an ambulance… get a doctor to stop the bleeding." She would like to stop the bleeding herself, but she wasn't a real doctor, and the woman was absolutely riddled with slashes and claw marks from an unknown beast. Also, she knew that this woman, Joan Starling, was not destined to survive her attack. In about fifteen minutes, she would be declared DOA at the nearest hospital. She had read it, therefore it must be, she was there for information.

The woman was getting blood and mud all over the laminate floor. The Doctor crouched down next to her while Clara observed with the fries, munching on them indiscriminately. What good bedside manners she had, the Doctor thought sarcastically. Joan Starling's heart was beating so hard the blood pulsing out of her myriad of deep wounds was going everywhere. There was no way to save her.

"Well? Aren't you going to do something?" a panicked bystander asked, pacing about like _they_ were the one destined to die in this grimy little bowling alley in the middle of summer.

"I'm not a doctor, has anyone called an ambulance?" Thirteen asked, looking around at a sea of blank faces who all thought somebody else was going to be the one to call 911. "Anybody?" Somebody who worked there finally decided the duty was theirs to do, and hurried away to get to the bulky old phone stashed under the desk where shoes were exchanged. To Clara, she then said, "Get our shoes, please?" and Clara went off to do that. Then she turned her attention to Joan Starling, "What did this to you?" she asked, who had been screaming the whole time, nonsensical noises which required explanation.

"A monster," she gasped.

"What kind of monster? What did it look like?" she asked urgently. All the papers said were animal attacks, a multitude of unspecified, fatal animal attacks. "What monster was it?"

"In the forest," the dying girl choked, "we were camping… a creature…" _Yeah_, she thought like saying,_ I know where you got attacked, it's what attacked you I'm after._

"But what did it look like?" Thirteen implored. All Joan Starling managed to let her know after that was that it was huge, and definitely not anything she had seen before in her life. She was in shock because of all the blood she had lost – the poor girl was going to die terrified. They weren't going to get anything else out of her, which kind of made the Doctor think it was a wasted trip. "…Somebody talk to her, try and keep her calm," Thirteen said as Clara returned with their shoes, already having changed her own, holding Thirteen's sneakers. The Doctor got to her feet. "Her name is Joan Starling, make sure she's… okay…"

"You're just going to leave?" somebody questioned her. _Hammer Time_ was playing on the sound system. The Doctor couldn't think of a worse song to die to.

"I'm not a doctor, I can't do anything for her, just make sure the ambulance comes, keep her calm," she advised, kicking off the shoes and grabbing her others off Clara. Clara was still holding the heaped plate of fries. She took Clara's elbow to steer her out, "We gotta go, nothing to be done for her."

"How'd you know her name? Did she tell you?" Clara asked quietly. The Doctor just shushed her, walking in her socks until they could get outside into the parking lot. It was early evening, August, hot weather, the sun not even beginning to set. It wouldn't go down for another three hours or so, probably.

"Did you hear what she said? She got attacked by a monster in the forest," Thirteen said. How long could she keep up her lies for? Well, she guessed she hadn't _lied_ to Clara, merely… omitted the truth. Brought her out there under the false pretences of a simple bowling trip. The Doctor was not in the habit of keeping things from her wife, which was probably why her wife didn't realise there was something else afoot, probably why she thought them being there was a coincidence. It wasn't.

"A monster? In the forest...? What forest?" Clara asked carefully.

"We're in Wyoming."

"So?"

"So you know what that is there over the road?" Thirteen said, pointing. The bowling alley was an out-of-town job, and the town it was out of was particularly small and out of the way, probably didn't show up on most maps. It was the middle of nowhere, nothing civilised for miles apart from a few stray bars and gas stations littered up and down a highway swelling in the summer heat. Across the road from them was a low-down, metal fence, and behind that was a thick wood.

"Trees."

"Yeah, trees, trees that mark the boundaries of Yellowstone National Park," Thirteen said. Clara stared at her.

"Oh, no. You have got to be kidding me. We're not going into Yellowstone. It's huge. It's probably bigger than England. Definitely bigger than Lancashire. You do realise she was probably attacked by a bear?" Clara told her, ceasing eating the fires so that she could give the Doctor a disdainful, warning look. The Doctor was struggling to tie her shoelaces without having something to put her foot on.

"It's not a bear."

"How do you know?"

"Claw marks are too big. Don't match up to any known species of bear, especially not a species of bear roaming a monitored American nature conservation," the Doctor informed her.

"Right. And how do you know that? From sight? You've memorised the scratches of every bear on the planet?" Clara questioned her.

"Medical records, it's a cold case. A lot of cold cases. The sheriff's department are beginning to think it's a serial killer with a real strange, homemade claw-weapon. It's not, the physics don't make sense," she said, tying her other shoe now.

"Hang on. Wait. You… you total… you brought us here on purpose!? To investigate some, bloody, bear attacks? In a massive park? In this weather? You've just tricked me so I'll come out with you?" Clara demanded of her coldly. She was totally off her fries now. Thirteen ignored her and carried on with her shoes. "Answer me, would you!? Give me that common decency at least." Clara wasn't joking. She was angry. The Doctor knew she would be. "Talk!"

"How else am I supposed to make you do anything with me!?" the Doctor shouted right back.

"You could try asking me!?" The Doctor snatched the plate of chips right out of Clara's mitts and tossed the whole thing away in the nearby bin, "That was my tea!"

"Oh, big whoop. I have sandwiches in my bag."

"You _what_!? You planned this whole thing? It's all a ruse? To force me to do something I don't want to do? So, you didn't even really want to go bowling, we were just there to see that girl die? Or – were you taking me somewhere to butter me up so I'd be less angry at you for pulling this stunt?"

"You're gonna let her die in vain, then, you mean? C'mon, we have to go before the ambulance shows up and starts asking me questions," she said.

"The bloody nerve of you!" Clara yelled as she started to walk off.

"Are you coming?"

"No! I shouldn't think so. I'm going to call my sister, make her fly the TARDIS back down. If you want to chase bears through the woods, be my guest. And if it ends like the sharks, don't expect my sympathy," Clara declared coldly.

"You used to love this sort of thing!"

"What, thirty years ago?"

"Well… I don't understand what's changed with you! You never want to do anything anymore, Clara – can you blame me for having to resort to underhand tactics to make you come out with me?" Thirteen walked back to take Clara's hands, but Clara didn't let her, she stepped back, "Don't be like this."

"I'm not being like anything. It's you who's lying."

"I didn't lie. I never said there _wouldn't_ be a mysterious monster. Come on, you love cryptids! It could be… could be a sasquatch, a real one, I need my wife and her cryptozoology expertise with me. You'll save lives, Clara. I'm sorry for tricking you. Give me a chance?"

"I thought this was a date."

"It is a date! A date where we investigate something strange and unexplained."

"That's not a date, that's a day job."

"Our dates used to be like that. And it's not a day job, you don't get paid."

"If I got paid to hang around with you, I would be a prostitute."

"Are you going to come with me?" she asked softly, hopefully. This time, Clara actually let her take one of her hands. She was still covered in grease, though.

"Why? Why should I?"

"I just want us to spend time together," the Doctor said brokenly, staring at Clara with a haggard expression.

"We spend every day together."

"Doing what? Sitting in silence? Not talking to each other? For crying out loud, we sleep in the same bed but we don't even touch! You lie as far away from me as possible, every single night!"

"That's not true!" Clara protested.

"Uh, yeah, it is. You're freezing me out."

"I'm not!"

"You are, Clara! Half the time it's like I'm in a box and you can't even see or hear me! Why won't you just speak to me about whatever's bothering you?"

"Because…" but Clara didn't finish her sentence, she just let go of the Doctor's hand and made a frustrated sound, as though something was physically stopping her from talking.

"What? Because _what_?"

"It's not important."

"Oh, it's not important now? This… this poison in our marriage?"

"We're not poisoned!"

"It feels like we are! Like I am!"

"Listen to me," Clara grabbed both of her hands, the distant sirens of an ambulance ringing through the night, "We are not poisoned, or broken, or anything. You know I love you, I'd do anything for you. For us."

"It sure doesn't seem that way at the moment," the Doctor said quietly.

"Just don't worry."

"How can I not worry when it looks like you're going to dump me every time you open your mouth?"

"I'm not going to do that!" Clara exclaimed, apparently hurt by the Doctor suggesting this, "I promise, I'm not, you'll just have to trust me."

"When you can't trust me to tell me whatever you being like this is all about?" she countered, and Clara was at a loss for words.

"That's not about trust, it's just something that… one day. One day, you'll know. But not yet. It's something that has to wait." The Doctor chose to trust her wife. Clara would not go to such lengths to refrain from telling her something if it wasn't direly important she be kept in the dark. Not that that made her like it anymore, and the niggling of annoyance she had left she used to her advantage. Probably, some people may call it blackmail.

"Okay. Okay, I trust you. But I still want you to come out with me. Quickly. The ambulance is nearly here."

"I…" Clara struggled for a few seconds, looked at Thirteen's pleading eyes, "Alright."


	461. White Hot Summer

**AN: For** **this** **storyline** **I****'****m** **gonna** **just** **go** **ahead** **and** **put** **the** **Day** **at** **the** **start** **of** **every** **chapter** **so** **that** **it** **doesn****'****t** **get** **confusing. Also, Thirteen** **did** **allude** **to** **this** **in** **Chapter ****948.**

**DAY ****17,968**

_White_ _Hot_ _Summer_

_Thirteen_

Despite the ambiguous wedge between the Doctor and her wife, neither of them could deny the beauty of the scenery of Yellowstone National Park. It was the very beginning of August, the air was thick with dry heat and the sun wouldn't be setting for an hour more at least. If she tried to forget the reason they were even there, the place was gorgeous, a real, peaceful paradise on Earth. Truthfully, even the air of murder-mystery the Doctor was enveloped in wasn't doing much to sway her awe at a place so beautiful being found on the intergalactic landfill that the planet was destined to become in the next few centuries. No, with the birds singing and the squirrels running and the insects buzzing overhead, the only dampener on the Doctor's mood was her niggling paranoia when it came to Clara Oswald.

"The claw marks aren't the really odd thing, though," the Doctor was saying, explaining to Clara all the information about the peculiar crimes she had gathered, "The _really_ odd thing is that all of these attacks only started a few months ago, which is why the police think it's actually a serial killer. A clever serial killer could hide in this park and probably never get caught."

"How can you be so sure it's _not_ a serial killer?" Clara questioned, digging through the pockets of her jacket to find something. The Doctor was walking slightly ahead, alternating between watching Clara and taking in their surroundings.

"I told you, the physics don't make sense. No human being has the strength to carry out these attacks; you saw how deep Joan Starling's wounds were. The only thing the cops _have_ been able to rule out is a bear, because the injuries just don't match," the Doctor said firmly. She had to keep reiterating that point, because Clara was repeatedly arguing that it was a bear they were looking for. "Anyway, that's not even the totally odd thing I was getting at, I was saying they only started a few months ago, _after_ a minor seismic event."

"Sweetheart, we're in Yellowstone, this entire place is one big seismic event waiting to happen," Clara argued, "There must be geological shifts here on a daily basis."

"Yeah, except no other geological shift has been followed by a monster coming out of the woodwork and killing a whole bunch of people. What are you doing?" she questioned when Clara finally found what she had been looking for, a packet of Marlboro Lights and a cigarette lighter.

"Smoking."

"Here? In forest fire season?" Thirteen said disapprovingly.

"Yes," Clara answered simply, flipping the silver lighter open that had been an anniversary present twenty-four years ago and lighting her death-stick.

"That's not going to cool you down any."

Clara changed the subject, "Does the super-volcano ever erupt?" The Doctor sighed and knew she wasn't going to win an argument about Clara putting her cigarette away any time soon, certainly not when they were so strained as it was. She had best just leave it and make sure they disposed of the cigarette butts properly, that was to say, not letting Clara flick them into a very dry bush where they would catch alight and burn down a few hundred acres of protected forest.

"Yes," the Doctor answered stiffly, "In the next few hundred years. Not until after humanity have already polluted the planet to the point of no return and are out colonising the rest of the galaxy, mating with whatever new species they come across. No offence."

"Can't really argue with that. After all, I married you. What are you thinking, then? Spaceship crashes in the forest and its inhabitant comes out and starts killing people? A spaceship crashing would probably be a big enough disturbance to affect a seismograph," Clara theorised, taking off her jacket. The Doctor didn't blame her, it was sweltering. Midges and mosquitoes buzzed around them, looking like dust in the sunlight.

"That was my thought, too, but I looked into it, I've had the TARDIS orbiting Earth for a while," the Doctor said, "Looking for anything to try and clear this up quickly."

"You have?" Clara asked, presently struggling to tie her jacket around her waist. It was leather, so it didn't stretch enough to do it very well. The Doctor sometimes thought that she and Clara collectively owned too many leather jackets, and also too many pairs of tights. She thought that up until she remembered just how many shreds of tweed the Eleventh Doctor used to wear, just how many pinstriped suits the Tenth Doctor still possessed. Eleven had as many bow-ties as Thirteen had skinny jeans. Well, perhaps he didn't have _that_ many bow ties. It was more like… he had as many bow-ties as she had gimmicky items of apparel with the American flag printed on them, which she only wore to bother Clara. In fact, she had her stars-and-stripes sneakers on at that very moment, and they were _not_ practical when it came to hiking.

"Gimme that, I'll put it in my bag," the Doctor offered, holding out her hand for Clara's coat.

"If it's in your bag, how can I get to my lighter? I don't have any pockets otherwise," Clara said, "Skirts should have pockets, don't you think?"

"Yes, I agree, and I'll carry the lighter," she said, willing Clara to hurry up. Clara relented and passed the jacket over and the old flip lighter. Truthfully, the Doctor liked having that lighter on her, she played with it sometimes.

"What was that about you looking into things?" Clara inquired, "How'd you get put onto this?"

"Oh, you know, I just read news reports. Scanned for trigger words, the usual…" she said absently, shoving her whole arm down to the shoulder into her bag, looking for something. She finally clasped her fingers around a paper bag and dragged it out.

"What's that?"

"Raisins," the Doctor answered, zipping the bag back up with one hand, "You want one?"

"Do they have chocolate on them?"

"No. And chocolate would melt in this heat, anyway," she said, picking a few raisins out of the bag for herself. Clara thought for a few seconds; Thirteen knew she wasn't the biggest fan of raisins, people never seemed to be for reasons she couldn't fathom, but she came over and reached out a hand, and the Doctor dropped a handful of raisins into her palm. "You're not putting your greasy fingers into this bag and contaminating the rest of them." Clara rolled her eyes.

"So you've been investigating? Pretty thoroughly?" Clara asked as they continued to walk along the dirt trail, sparse trees on either side and tufts of dry grass sprouting along the horizon. The Doctor was thankful it wasn't as muggy as it had potential to be. Every now and then they passed a dark, bloody footprint that presumably belonged to Joan Starling as she fled earlier in the evening.

"Yeah. Not that you've asked me what I've been up to lately, or anything…" she muttered, and Clara looked uncomfortable and didn't say anything, squinting at the raisins in her hand like they were the most interesting things in the world. "Hasn't really mattered that I've had the TARDIS hovering over Earth because nobody's wanted to go anywhere for so long. But there isn't a crashed spaceship, and there haven't been any UFO sightings. Well, no more than there usually are in middle America. Besides, this time of year a spaceship crashing would have caused a forest fire. I didn't come out here until I was sure there was something extra-weird going on, something I could justify dragging you out for. I don't want to go investigate things without you."

"How romantic," Clara commented, though the Doctor was sure she detected an undertone of genuine sincerity in Clara's words, a note of fondness. Clara sighed and looked in another direction. The pair of them had just mounted a low hill, thorny brambles on either side of the dirt path making any way other than forwards impossible to traverse. "God, would you look at this view…"

There was a lake, relatively small as far as lakes went but still definitely too big to be considered a pond, a glittering, calm surface reflecting the pale orange sun in its gentle ripples. Reeds crept out of it at the edges and the dirt and shale became more like a beach in the places where the lake would swell if there was a bout of heavy rain. In the distance the Rocky Mountains spread and rose up, the colour of sand. There were ducks milling about in the lake, and she was sure she could see the silhouette of an elk on the opposite shoreline. It was ruined, though, by the continuation of Starling's bloodied footprints, a great amount of blood, because there on the edge of the lake was the decimated campsite they were looking for. The fact that all the Doctor could smell was stagnant old tobacco didn't help much, either.

"This entire place is like the back of a postcard," Clara said as the Doctor walked off towards the crime scene, taking a drag on her cigarette. It made it extra disturbing that the group of innocent teenagers had been mauled in somewhere so beautiful. "It's so quiet… and you can see the stars already…"

"And the dead bodies," Thirteen interrupted Clara staring at the sky. In that old, dull way, the Doctor had been looking at Clara admire the scenery, rather than admire the scenery herself. She was so old now that the only thing making her think Yellowstone was beautiful, rather than just another place, was her wife standing in the middle of it. Clara looked over at the campsite.

"I don't see any dead bodies."

"Huh?" Thirteen frowned, following her gaze, hurrying off to look around. Whatever had done this was long gone. "No bodies? That's odd…"

"Bears are known to take their prey and bury it somewhere else and leave it for weeks because they prefer rotten meat," Clara commented, rather unhelpfully.

"I already told you, like, fifty times, it's not a bear. Can you see the claw marks in this tent? This bear would have to have a paw twice the size of a tennis racket to make a mess like this, and the most common bears in this area are black bears, whose paws are nowhere near that size. Seriously, Clara, you think I didn't think bears first as well?" Clara shrugged.

"How should I know? We're in a place famed for Bigfoot sightings and I've married a woman who believes the Loch Ness Monster is an immortal plesiosaur."

"Hey, there's a lot of evidence that supports the theory that Nessie _is_ a plesiosaur!"

"Yes, and every few years you drag us out camping in Scotland in the middle of spring when it's still bloody freezing to look for her. And what did you ever find?" Clara questioned.

"Well I didn't find anything that proves Nessie _isn't_ a plesiosaur."

"Okay, okay…" Clara mumbled, giving up. They had this conversation a lot. "Are you really thinking Bigfoot? The Sasquatch? You said Sasquatch earlier. You know that Bigfoot really _is_ a myth? And besides, Bigfoot's allegedly a primate, primates don't have claws. And a creature so elusive would need a pretty good reason to come out and start murdering people, if it _did_ exist."

"See? I said I need your cryptozoology expertise," the Doctor said, crouching down and looking around, "As far as I know, nothing on this planet has the claws to cause so much destruction. Even a lion wouldn't leave marks this big."

"I hope it's not another Wendigo. If you've dragged me out here just to get attacked by a Wendigo _again_, I'll kill you," Clara said, snatching the bag of raisins out of the Doctor's hand. Thirteen didn't complain, she had just seen something sticking out of the partially torn backpack of Joan Starling (it had her name drawn on it in marker pen) that caught her interest. Reaching over, she was grateful to discover it was a very large map of the whole park, and the girl had another map of the Shoshone squirrelled away as well.

"There's totally jerky in here, do you want any jerky?"

"Of course I don't want jerky," Clara muttered, "You can't nick a dead girl's food, Doctor. You know what this reminds me of?"

"What?" the Doctor asked, distracted, unfolding the map. She couldn't make heads or tails of it, though, and dragged the backpack closer to see if there was any orienteering equipment stashed within. Just her luck she found a compass, a very nice compass, in fact.

"Our fourth honeymoon."

"It was our first honeymoon, Coo, it came after the Fourth Wedding," the Doctor said. She always had to correct Clara about that, because she always insisted on calling it their 'fourth honeymoon' when it wasn't. Their whole life sometimes felt like one big honeymoon. Well, it used to. She was worrying that the honeymoon period was, after forty-nine years together, coming to a close…

"You remember it, though."

"Of course I do."

"Hitchhiking across America, god, it was like being in Kerouac. We camped a lot, too, and watched the stars… I always liked going to sleep late and waking up early and seeing the same stars above. Being in the same place for a while, the familiarity we sometimes got. You remember, it was 1963 and we stayed in San Francisco for two weeks."

"Being in the same place one day to the next is boring," the Doctor said. She was barely paying attention, she was trying to find them on the map, looking for the lake, "Is there a sign for this lake around here?" Clara said nothing, and the Doctor looked up over her shoulder to see Clara looking out at the water.

"You can't hear any engines out here…" she mused quietly, "It's so peaceful."

"Clara? The lake? Do you see a sign?" she implored, "To find where we are." Clara looked away from the view, finally, and wandered off. Thirteen hoped she was looking for a sign, and she herself just went back to the map. There was no way it was Yellowstone Lake, _that_ was _huge_. It must be one of the smaller ones, near the outskirts, but there was no way she would be able to figure it out. She didn't even know which area of Wyoming they had entered from; east, south, whatever.

"You'll never guess," Clara called.

"What?"

"The name of the lake." The Doctor looked up to see Clara pushing bits of brush out of the way so she could get at a wooden signpost, "It's Grizzly Lake."

"How many times, _it's not a bear_. Even a grizzly couldn't do this."

"It's its actual name," Clara argued, rambling back over.

"Better be…" she went back to reading the map.

"It _is_ pretty here, though."

"And dangerous. There's a Sasquatch on the loose."

"A Sasquatch is a very specific type of cryptid, and it definitely didn't do this," Clara reiterated, "Because it's not real."

"Uh-huh."

"There must be hundreds of places this pastoral, where people don't get murdered. It'd be a good place to go camping."

"Since when were we going camping?"

"It's just what normal couples do."

The Doctor laughed, "Who wants to be normal? We live on a spaceship that can go anywhere and you're idealising living in a waterproof bag? Where you would have to dig a trench to do your business in?"

"I just think-"

"Ah-ha! Found us!" she exclaimed brightly, standing back up finally. Clara wasn't impressed, though. She didn't look that happy at all. "What's the matter?"

"Nothing. Here, have your raisins back," she said grumpily, sticking the bag out towards Thirteen and letting it go so that the Doctor had to scramble to catch it, "I don't know why you bothered finding us on the map. The blood trail keeps going, looks like drag marks, over there." Clara pointed.

"Well then we'd better get going, hadn't we?"


	462. Tooth and Claw

**DAY 17,968**

_Tooth and Claw_

_Thirteen_

"What's the lunar cycle at right now?" Clara asked. She had been quiet for a while, unnervingly quiet, and the Doctor had just been studying her and eating raisins. The bag was nearly empty, though, and she wondered when there would be an opportunity to break out those sandwiches she had brought. They were still following surreal, bloody drag marks through the idyllic forest.

"The lunar cycle?"

"I was just thinking about various mythological creatures that could have done this, and was wondering if it's a full moon tonight," Clara shrugged. She was still trailing a little behind, but crept back up to snatch a handful of raisins out of the bag, which the Doctor didn't mind so much after she had finally managed to force Clara to use some hand sanitiser to get rid of the grease on her hands from the food at the bowling alley.

"It isn't a werewolf."

"You keep telling me what it isn't, but you don't have a single clue as to what it _is_. Where's your proof that it's not a werewolf? Spooky monster attacks camping people in the evening, and you don't think it's a werewolf?"

"It's not a full moon," the Doctor said firmly.

"Strikes me as very similar to that other werewolf encounter you had three-hundred years ago," Clara shrugged. Thirteen got the distinct feeling that Clara was trying to get on her nerves by being persistent about this werewolf thing. "Are you sure it's not a cat? It's very believable that some rich tycoon was illegally keeping, I don't know, a live leopard in his house and it got out. Wouldn't exactly report it to the police. Happens a lot, you know – you've heard of the Beast of Dartmoor, or Bodmin, or Buchan, near Aberdeen? Stories of phantom cats go across the whole world. In 1980 they caught a live puma in Scotland, and then they put it in a zoo and named it Felicity." She stopped talking then, and Thirteen looked back at her as they followed the drag marks. "What?"

"Carry on," the Doctor implored, "Wait, which bit of Scotland?"

"Inverness. In '89 a jungle cat got hit by a car in Shropshire," Clara informed her, "There were reports of a lion in Devon once, but that was debunked as actually being a Maine Coon."

"You and I both know those things are savage, you've seen those scars Jenny has on her foot from Batfink," the Doctor said. Batfink was Ravenwood's cat, a huge, black Maine Coon. The most irritating thing about Batfink was that he was the offspring of Princess Sparkle Tutu, which most likely meant he was never going to die. At any rate, he hadn't died yet, and it had been half a century. In the way that all animals detested Ravenwood for her vampirism (dogs howled when she went past, birds flew away, babies began to cry), Batfink was the reverse, in that the only people he trusted were in the legions of the undead. It boded well for Ravenwood, but it did not bode well for the Doctor's daughter and the many feline wounds she had inflicted upon her.

"Lynxes get out of captivity constantly and kill livestock. There's a lot of sightings of mysterious black cats, which people generally think is a continuation of that whole black dog myth. You know, the famous omen of death? Basis for _The Hound of the Baskervilles_? That's an entirely different thing, though, a ghost story," Clara was saying, "Probably based off of real dogs and coincidental deaths. In Devon there's a legend of a yeth hound, that's supposedly headless but can still be heard barking at night. Another good one is from Jersey, where they have a dog called _Tchico_, and it's alleged to predict storms, but it was actually a legend spread by smugglers to keep the bay empty at night."

"So a black dog ghost could have killed these people?" the Doctor suggested.

"The myth doesn't carry over to America. And besides, it predicts death, it doesn't kill. It's never killed anybody. It's probably not real," Clara said, "They'll be hallucinations from people dying of brain disease hundreds of years before they were understood. Or they just scare people to death. People put all sorts of superstitious meanings onto things, saying the black dog symbolises the devil – Bram Stoker played on it very well; '_Strangest of all, the very instant the shore was touched, an immense dog sprang up on deck from below, as if shot up by the concussion_.' Meaning Dracula. Not that this has anything to do with what's going on here."

"Say something else."

"'_White, wet clouds, which swept by in ghostly fashion, so dank and damp and cold that it needed but little effort of imagination to think that the spirits of those lost at sea were touching their living brethren with the clammy hands of death, and many a one shuddered as the wreaths of sea-mist swept by_,'" Clara quoted to her, "You never know, since vampires exist, perhaps there's some truth to the legend of the black dog?"

"Perhaps there's some truth to the legend of the Sasquatch."

"Very funny. Why are you asking me this, anyway?"

"I didn't, you just started talking, I love listening to you talk," the Doctor told her with a smile, and Clara smiled back. For a few seconds, things felt normal between them again, Clara's mood was perhaps turning, "You don't know anything it could be, though? Realistically?"

"Realistically speaking this _does_ have hallmarks of a Wendigo attack. And they're _massive_, and the Algonquian legend originates from around this area. But it's not winter, and we know exactly where the _real_ Wendigo comes from. To get back onto the whole wolf thing, there's a creature called a Shunka Warakin that's supposed to roam the Rockies, that's part of North American folklore. The Waheela is more or less the same, but it focuses more on Canada. And the other major example of North American cryptid would be Amarok, that's a wolf spirit that belongs to Inuit mythology, but that's Greenland, and we're not in Greenland. People think the legends come from dire wolves, or hyaenadons," Clara explained, "You would have thought somebody would have noticed a giant wolf wandering around Yellowstone, though."

"Well there's certainly a giant _something_ wandering around," the Doctor muttered. That was when the conversation dissipated, and the feeling of them being okay faded away from Thirteen. She would give anything to hear Clara carry on spooling off information about things she didn't believe existed, would sell her soul for an excuse to listen to her wife ramble and rave about whatever pseudoscience she was most interested in that day. And she wanted to tell her, so badly, because the Doctor and Clara barely talked at all anymore, but she didn't.

"Hey," Clara said, grabbing her arm, which made the Doctor freeze completely. She turned back, not knowing what she was expecting Clara to say to her, but hoping that she had a change of heart about the toxic secrets she had been keeping. Clara wasn't looking at her, though, and when she had Thirteen's attention she dropped her hand, "What's that?"

"Uh…" the Doctor had to make herself stop staring at her wife in order to locate the object of Clara's interest, but she spotted it quite easily, because it was very out of place. It was a big, mangled clump of metal, in between some trees and a thicket of bushes, some splotches of blood lying around it. She led the way over and Clara followed, "Holy… this is totally a bear trap," she deduced after crouching at its side.

"_What_? What could do _that_ to a bear trap? It's like it's been crushed," Clara said, eyeing it from a careful distance over Thirteen's shoulder. She was right, too, it really was like it had been crushed, by something huge.

"If only it had been raining recently, then there might be prints," the Doctor said mostly to herself, standing back up. But there were no prints. "What was that you were saying about dire wolves being the basis for lots of legends? There's no way a dire wolf would be big enough to do that, any wolf."

"Plus, they _are _all dead. So, what? We're back to square one? Maybe it's a giant."

"A giant what? Giant man?" she questioned, and Clara shrugged, "Let's get back to the blood trail, shall we?" She began to walk off.

"What, exactly, are you planning to do about this thing?" Clara asked, "It's killed loads of people and it's clearly massive. I really wouldn't think much of our chances with even the strongest animal tranquiliser."

"Haven't thought that far ahead."

"Of course you haven't," Clara muttered.

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"Maybe it means I'm sick of being in danger all the time."

"Oh, you'll be fine. You've got your nanogenes."

"I'm worry about you as well, you know."

"There's no need to worry about me, I'll be fine."

"All I mean is-"

"Over there," the Doctor interrupted, pointing. The sky by now was a dark, burnt orange, the sun setting high above them behind the craggy horizon of the Rockies, "The blood trail goes into that cave."

"Wonderful. Because as you and I both know, following blood trails into caves has always worked out swimmingly."

"Ugh, tell me about it…" she grumbled, but it was sort of a given that, regardless of mutual protest, they would go into the caves anyway. At least it wasn't a horribly narrow cave, as far as she could see, it was very spacious already, burrowed into the side of a cliff and gaping at them.

"You know, there are forest rangers with guns whose job it is to deal with stuff like this."

"And if 'stuff like this' turns out to be of extra-terrestrial origin?"

"As far as either of us know, it isn't of _any_ origin, because neither of us have any clue what it could be anymore."

"That's how it usually is," the Doctor said. Clara made an irritated sound, but didn't say anything. The Doctor fumbled around in her bag again for a few seconds to drag out her torch, "You never know, could be the were-jackals at it again."

"If only the Ponds were here," Clara said dryly. A joke, but her tone of voice meant the Doctor had best not laugh, "Although, the black dog legend is kind of similar that Curse of Tutankhamun stuff."

"Except the second one exists*." There was more than just fresh blood in this cave entrance, there was dry blood as well, a lot of it. "Looking at this, you would've thought nobody's actually investigated."

"Maybe they haven't yet. You shouldn't go into dens when you're hunting, your own daughter would tell you as much. You lure game out and trap it, or shoot it from a pre-arranged spot. _This_ is reckless," Clara said knowingly.

"Clearly the traps didn't work very well," the Doctor retorted coolly. Things were getting a little edgy again now, and the yellow sunlight faded away and left them in the chilling darkness of the cave. She wondered if it was marked on Starling's stolen map, but didn't know what good would come out of checking. "What do you think of, uh, dinner? Later?"

"What?"

"Dinner, I said. You and I."

"Oh. I don't know. I haven't thought about it. There's leftovers in the fridge."

"I mean going somewhere, you know?" she said, and Clara faltered.

"Uh… You know, we've already been out today. We're out right now. And you made those sandwiches."

"So you don't want to."

"No, that's not what I said."

"Are you sure? That's what it sounded like to me. You don't want us to have dinner together."

"Well, why? What's the occasion?"

"Does there need to be an occasion?"

"I just think… I think I'll want a rest, or something. I'm tired."

"You've barely done anything."

"I've been walking, it's hot, and I'm old." The Doctor did not look at Clara as she talked to her, Clara had become a phantom voice and soft footsteps, sneaking along in the gloom behind her.

"You're not old physically."

"Well… where? Dinner where, then?"

"Don't force yourself. It's fine."

"I'm asking," Clara said, "What were you thinking?"

"I was thinking you might like to spend some time with your wife, but clearly that isn't the case so don't bother pretending."

"Doctor-"

"No, no. You have your leftovers. Don't worry about it," she tried to eliminate the passive aggression from her tone of voice, but it didn't work. At least Clara had more sense than to rise to it. Probably because Clara knew that if she did, the Doctor was going to question her again about these things she refused to talk about.

"…What's that smell?" Clara changed the subject. It was a fair point, there was a peculiar smell in the air. It wafted around them, a little metallic. Thirteen shone the torch beam in Clara's direction enough to see her blinking heavily, like she was struggling to focus.

"You said you were tired?" the Doctor inquired, staring at the walls. She hadn't been paying as much attention as, perhaps, she ought to have done, caught up in a battle of sly remarks when it came to dinner, a dinner which was blatantly some sort of metaphor for what was _really_ the matter. But when she looked down, she noticed the walls were quite an odd colour, and a little shiny. They had a dark yellow sheen to them, almost like pus. She reached up a finger and wiped it down the wall, getting some of the stuff on her hand.

"Please don't taste – oh, you did…" Clara pleaded uselessly, watching the Doctor lick the sludge from her fingertip. Then she winced and spat onto the ground, "Very hygienic. You can spread AIDS that way, you know. And hepatitis, I'm pretty sure."

"Eurgh, sorry," the Doctor said. She thought spitting was gross, too.

"What is it?"

"It's condensation from some kind of gas," she said, "Yellow, like sulphur, but not sulphur. Sulphur smells like rotten eggs."

"Gas?"

"It's noxious, that's why you're tired. Best not stay down here too long, I don't think it would be very good for us if we passed out."

"You don't have gas masks in your bag, do you?"

"Gas masks? You've gotta be kidding me, no way," she nearly laughed, "Those things freak me out _bad_. Just, uh… I don't know, get a handkerchief. Or a tissue."

"Do you have a handkerchief or a tissue?"

"No, sorry."

"Great. I suppose I'll just stop breathing, then."

"Just keep smoking and one day you will anyway." Clara glared.

*_chapter 948_


	463. State of Decay

**DAY 17,968**

_State of Decay_

_Thirteen_

It hardly seemed real that just twenty minutes earlier they had been walking out underneath a gorgeous sunset, in one of the most picturesque places on Earth, because now they were faced with the exact opposite. Where trees and mountains had fanned out around them into the dark horizon, there were now needle-like stalagmites jabbing at them from the floor; where the smell of bark and water and fresh flowers had encompassed them, there was now a foul stench of death and decay; where old leaves blown down by the wind and stray feathers from birds had been strewn across the dirt trails, they were now faced with bones and bits of meat littered on the cave floor; where the sunlight had reflected dazzlingly from the still surface of the lake, the Doctor's torch beam now shone back at them in pools of blood on the floor. Whatever beast was stalking Yellowstone, they were in its lair, a huge, underground cavern that stank of death and noxious fumes, with gaping tunnels leading off in all different directions of an intricate cave system.

"Didn't I say?" Clara began, "I asked you where the bodies were, and I said bears are known to drag their food off somewhere else and leave it to rot. And now we've found a pile of old dead people." She was right, there were perhaps half a dozen bodies, if not more, in varying stages of decomposition. Waxy skin hung off bones and slate-coloured fingers were stiff on dismembered hands at their feet.

"Lots of animals do that. Humans do that. People don't go hunting, kill something, and just eat it raw in the middle of the woods. They take it home and… prepare it," she said, "They're not all that old, though. If this thing had been here for a while, there would be way more skeletons. And more stories of attacks, since it's obviously not too scared of humans to go after them."

"Like a bear." The torch flickered in the Doctor's hand and dimmed a little, and she tried to ignore it. For a long while she had been meaning to get one of those wind-up jobs, or one with a nuclear fission battery stuck in it so it would never die.

"Black bears, actually, _are_ scared of humans. Grizzlies aren't. Again, though, it's-"

"_Not a bear_, yes, whatever. So you keep saying, so is the reason you pulled me out here, because I know more than you do about cryptids and you think that's what this is," Clara said, bored, "Can I have my lighter?"

"No, not in here, I don't know what this gas is enough to tell you if it's flammable. It's not worth the risk."

"Not worth the risk of getting rid of this smell?"

"This smell is terrible, but if you mix it with the smell of your tobacco, I'll be sick. Then your nose will have _that_ to contend with," she remarked, "Can't you get chewing tobacco, or something?"

"You can get cancer from that."

"You can get cancer from smoking it anyway!" the Doctor argued, but she might as well be shouting at a brick wall for all the good it would do. Besides, she had the silver anniversary lighter in her possession, so unless Clara tried to go through her belongings, _she_ was the one in control of her wife's terrible cigarette habit. The torch flickered again, and the Doctor hit it against her palm, but what good had that ever done?

"Do you have spare batteries?" Clara asked.

"Not as far as I'm aware," she answered.

"Oh, great. Today just gets better and better, doesn't it?"

"What's your problem, Clara?" the Doctor asked coldly, "If you don't want me to ask why you're in a bad mood, you could at least have the decency to pretend that you're not." Clara glared at her, and then Clara's glare disappeared. Not because her mood had changed, oh no, because the flashlight died completely. There was a little yellow circle pressed onto her eyes, a mark floating in the air from where the bulb had been shining seconds before, but that, too, vanished into opaque blackness. "Stupid thing… dammit… ugh…" she grumbled.

"_Doctor_," Clara whispered. The Doctor was about to ask _what_, in a very harsh tone of voice, but when she opened her mouth she heard what Clara was undoubtedly referring to. Shuffling noises, in the dark around them, sounds of great, sloping movement and huffs of breath. Animalistic panting. "Get the lighter." Clara didn't need to tell her twice.

In the dark, struggling to stay calm as what was presumably the Monster of Yellowstone loafed around them, she unzipped her transdimensional bag and dropped the torch back in it, rifling around until her hand closed around the cold, metal cuboid that was Clara's battered flip lighter. In spite of everything she was supposed to be panicking about, there was a fleeting moment where her thumb brushed the Gallifreyan engraving, and she recalled the message: _Always and forever Through the stars_ in Clara's opinion, and _Through the stars Always and forever_ in the Doctor's. They had never agreed which way round it went.

Her nostalgia was interrupted by a grunting noise closer by than she would have liked, and scared sounds emanating from where Clara had been standing before the light went out. The Doctor fumbled with the lighter, nearly dropped it, failed at getting it to spark at least three times. But when it did, she wished they could have stayed in the dark forever.

A face hung down above them, a muzzle with white fur and pink saliva dripping off it looming right between the Doctor and her wife. Small black eyes, enormous yellow fangs, the beast smelt of malting and meat and its head, the only part of it illuminated by the small, orange flame of the lighter, was at least six feet off the ground. There was a split second where the Doctor and the monster looked at each other, a moment, perhaps, of mutual understanding, where the creature maybe resolved not to attack them. But it was fearless, and it growled, a snarl pulling back its lips as it bared its savage teeth.

"Run," the Doctor hissed at Clara. Clara froze, the light went out, and it was by pure luck that when the Doctor made to sprint away in any vague direction she managed, as she blindly grasped for it, to grab Clara's hand and wrench her along as well. The monster roared. Thirteen had no clue how good its lowlight vision was, but its sense of smell was probably so advanced it didn't need to see them to find them.

Her eyes adjusted to the darkness and she steered them in the direction of one of the many tunnel openings, hoping it didn't lead to a dead end where they would undoubtedly get mauled.

"What is that!?" Clara shouted. The thing roared again, it was chasing them, but luckily for them it was having a hard time navigating over the stalagmites and under the stalactites in the cave. It banged into walls around them and the whole cave shook.

"Just run! Keep going! It won't matter what it is it if it kills us!" she ordered, keeping a tight grip on Clara's hand. Maybe they weren't on the best of terms, but there was no way in hell the Doctor would _ever_ leave Clara in blatant danger and not do everything in her power to keep the both of them safe.

"You don't even know where we're going!"

"Just trust me!" the Doctor yelled, though Clara was right. She really didn't know where they were going, they were just in any random tunnel, any old cave, and she was just praying that they found a way out.

"It's right on us!"

"What do you want me to do about it!?" she shouted back at Clara, dragging her around a sharp turn. Clara nearly fell, but Thirteen helped her scramble back to her feet right as a paw swept through the air above her and crashed into the wall, right where Clara's head had been seconds before. She got another glimpse of those furry, furious features before they sped up running again.

"This is why I like staying at home!" Clara was just as angry as the thing chasing them, and the Doctor knew which she was more scared of. And it _wasn't_ the one with the three-inch claws.

"Well I'm _sorry_! But I'm not sure that now is really the time!"

"We could die at any minute, so this might be all the time we have!"

"You and I know full-well that that stupid Dimension Crash hasn't happened yet, so obviously neither of us are going to – ARGH!" she shrieked when she almost ran right off a very precarious ledge they had stumbled across. There was a split second between the moment when the Doctor saw the black gullet into nowhere beneath them – full of more of that odd yellow gas that really was making her quite woozy – and the moment when Clara – who didn't see anything and was still carrying a lot of momentum from being pulled at full-speed through a cave system – crashed into her back and knocked her off the edge. And as the Doctor fell into nothing, Clara was right behind, still holding onto her hand.

They both screamed, neither knowing how steep the fall would be, until the screams were stifled and the entire world became muffled in the Doctor's ears. Like gravity was wrenching them down into the pit, some other force interrupted and seemed to drag them back out of it, drag them both instantaneously somewhere much more well-lit, pleasantly fragrant, and breezy. But they kept falling, and then the Doctor hit the ground with a thud and Clara landed right on top of her, an elbow sinking right into her abdomen. Clara rolled away and Thirteen, winded, coughed almost silently, her head ringing.

"Are you alright?" Clara panicked, crawling on the grass back over to the Doctor, putting a soft hand on the side of her face, "Sweetheart? Doctor?"

"What happened?"

"I teleported," she answered, "I teleported us both as high up as I could to get us out of there." When the Doctor began to sit up, Clara moved away. The sun had very nearly set, the sky was a blend of oranges, purples and blues, and the stars twinkled in space overhead. If it was more appropriate, she might suggest stargazing.

"Thank you," she said, slightly wheezy. She never liked teleports. Clara didn't like them, either, which was the reason why she hardly ever utilised that particular superpower. Nearly fifty years on, and Clara still couldn't do it whenever she liked, and she still got migraines afterwards.

"Don't mention it, it's fine. I might be a bit… peeved, but I'm not going to let us fall down a pit and die with a monster chasing us," Clara said, getting to her feet, helping the Doctor stand as well. Clara even smiled. Probably because the teleport had affected her head a smidgen, Thirteen tried not to read into it too much. "What was that thing?"

"A bear," the Doctor answered, brushing dirt from her jeans. Clara silenced.

"What."

"It's a bear," the Doctor said again, and then she met Clara's eyes, Clara's _furious_ eyes.

"A bear?"

"Uh…"

"You mean to tell me. That that _thing_. Was the exact thing you've been insisting it couldn't be for the entire day?" That brief smile might as well be a million years away now.

"Well, no, I-"

"Seriously? All day all you've been saying is how it can't be a bear, it couldn't possibly be a bear, it must be something alien, or a cryptid, something that doesn't exist. And. It's. A. _Bear_!?" Clara walked, seething, towards her, and she very sheepishly held up her hands and backed away.

"No, Clara – Coo, would you just-"

"Don't _Coo_ me right now!" Clara shouted, and the Doctor attempted a smile but bumped right into a tree, "A bear!?"

"A short-faced bear!"

"Oh, so you know exactly what type of bloody bear it is!? Have you known all along!? More lying from you!?"

"No! I only just figured it out! It's not just any old bear! I mean, it is, it's a very old bear, but-"

"What is it, Winnie the Pooh? Yogi? Hmm?" Clara crossed her arms, and was standing threateningly close to the Doctor, who was pressing herself against the tree as tightly as she could to try and escape Clara's wrath.

"It's _Arctodus simus_."

"What's that supposed to mean!?"

"It means it's a type of bear that's been extinct since 11,000 BC!" the Doctor shouted back, "Which, in my opinion, makes it just as damn fascinating as any rogue alien or real-life Sasquatch, Clara!" Clara clenched her jaw, but finally stepped away, releasing the Doctor from the tree. "And considering that's _impossible_ it wasn't exactly my first guess, okay?" Then she stopped talking, resolving that shutting up would make Clara calm down, and dug the Yellowstone map out of her bag.

"What are you doing?" Clara asked.

"Looking for something. By all means, call the TARDIS, go back home."

"Well I can't go back home, can I? What if you need teleporting out of somewhere again?" Clara remarked. The Doctor said nothing, she couldn't think of anything to say that wouldn't make things worse between them. "If it's extinct, how is it here?"

"I don't know yet, Clara, alright? Why would I keep it from you if I did? What could I possibly gain? Now I'm thinking. Here," the Doctor was still holding Clara's lighter, and she tossed it over. Clara grimaced, and shuffled off a few paces to light another cigarette, Thirteen watching wearily and shaking her head. Then she went back to poring over the map, locating Grizzly Lake again to try and retrace what direction they had been going in. Northeast, she thought, in the vague direction of the enormous Yellowstone caldera.

"Being in the mountains makes me want whiskey," Clara was saying.

"You don't like whiskey," the Doctor mumbled, half-listening.

"I would if I lived in the mountains."

"With the mega-bear? Not to mention the regular bears, the mountain lions, the bobcats – even elk can get pretty nasty. And geese, I think there are geese out here."

"In terms of safety, it isn't any different to what we're usually doing. Our lives are impossibly dangerous, it's… getting old. Don't you think? Don't you ever get tired of it, of running for our lives? You never just want a break, something… something ordinary? Normal? Quiet? …Doctor?" Clara looked over, "Hey, I'm-"

"I figured it out!" Thirteen exclaimed. She had not heard a single word that Clara had said after 'safety.' "Do you see? Look here, on the map." She walked over to Clara and held the map up, the paper illuminated only by the moonlight and the sparks on the end of Clara's cigarette.

"I don't see anything. You're pointing to an empty space."

"Exactly! That empty space is where the entrance to those caves was. And this map _does_ have cave systems on it, because there's one way up here, see? It's just those caves. That means, according to the National Park Service, the creepy caves the extinct bear lives in full of noxious gases don't exist," Thirteen said.

"Maybe it's a conspiracy and they're trying to cover it up."

"Oh, I'm sorry Sally Sparrow, I didn't realise you were here," the Doctor said dryly, and Clara raised an eyebrow, "Much more likely is that the mega-bear got trapped in those caves, 13,000 years ago. Say the bear goes to hibernate through the winter, finds itself some nice caves, and in those caves this naturally occurring gaseous sedative is released, the same way sulphur dioxide is, while it's asleep. The bear is completely unconscious, those caves collapse around it and it stays preserved, but alive. Like going into stasis. Until, two months ago, another minor seismic shift coincidentally opens those caves up to the fresh air again, which wakes the bear after thousands of years, and it's so confused it just starts attacking everything it comes across."

"Okay, so," Clara took a drag on her cigarette when she paused, "It's not just a regular supposedly extinct giant bear, it's a supposedly extinct giant bear that's also _gone completely mental_. This is like all my birthdays have come at once. What are we supposed to do? Kill it?"

"Kill it? No! The poor thing is just a little jetlagged."

"The 'poor thing'!? _Jetlagged_? It's killing people!"

"It's the biggest predator that's ever existed on this planet, Clara, it's ten feet tall on its hind legs. It's always going to be killing something."

"What about the dragons?"

"…Alright, it's the biggest predator that's also a mammal that's ever existed on this planet. Dragons are dead, anyway, the Silurians killed them all. And we're not killing it, because your genius wife knows exactly what to do. That thing will be tracking our scents by now, so we're in the unique position to lure it somewhere and be live bait."

"Oh great. Live bait. My favourite position to be in," Clara said sarcastically, "Are you a lunatic?"

"It's a good idea!"

"Of course it is."

"Besides, killing it would be poaching and that's against the law."

"And you'd obviously hate to break the law."

"I have a totally awesome plan, Clara, look," Thirteen pointed out a site on the map, "An old weather monitoring station. That's where we need to go. Trust me."


	464. Old World Blues

**AN: Don't know why, but is being a real pain right now about my chapters and not having them show up. I'm pretty sure this happened with 3D9C as well when it got to this length and is one of the reasons I split it, so just bear with me for the next 36 chapters until Part III and it hopefully fixes.**

**DAY 17,968**

_Old World Blues_

_Thirteen_

"Okay, okay, okay. So. This, my darling, is a work of _total_ genius. It's practically modern art, my finest accomplishment. Apart from marrying you, obviously, but from now on it's just a waiting game of how long it takes our good friend Baloo to follow my super-intensely delicious alien scent out here and then _boom_! I flick a switch and activate what _I'm_ calling a _mega_-bear-trap. Get it? Like a regular bear trap, but _mega_. Because it's a mega-bear. And I can use these modified, uh, what-do-you-call-ems, to conjure a temporal vortex right here and suck that thing up, sending it flying all the way back to 12,000 BC, where it ought to be safe," she ranted proudly.

The weather monitoring station they were at, which had all sorts of equipment to detect earthquakes pre-emptively, measure the ground temperature, the wind speed, the barometric pressure, was abandoned. There were probably a bunch of them scattered throughout Yellowstone, only used at certain times of the year, or left to rot in favour of newer, more advanced setups. Regardless, electronic barometers were very compatible when bits of vortex manipulator technology were slapped onto them, to create a big old intertemporal net in the middle of the national park. It really _was_ incredibly clever, something so clever she was definitely going to have to tell Oswin _all_ about it when they got home later, not to mention Jenny. Clara, though? She didn't seem interested. What Clara was interested in was the sub in her hands, wrapped up in tinfoil, practically overflowing with mayonnaise. She was sitting in an old camping chair in the empty tent whatever meteorologists had been there last had left behind.

"Coo?" Clara looked up. "Did you hear what I said?" She paused and thought.

"About, um, a mega-bear-trap? Something about _The Jungle Book_?" Clara said uselessly. Her anger had subsided and been overtaken by melancholy. "Sorry. I was looking at the sky. I was thinking about what it would be like to have the same stars above you from one night to the next. None of this transience."

"Huh. I don't know. It'd get boring."

"Eventually."

"Variety is the spice of life, Oswald," Thirteen said. She only called her wife 'Oswald' when she was in a good mood.

"Then what a spicy life we must lead."

"Is that good or bad? I know how you can't handle spicy food," she remarked. The Doctor was riding high on her own intelligence, her ego was making her spin out into her usual, bubbly mood that hadn't made an appearance for weeks, perhaps even months. Then she sighed. "Don't you think it would've been nice if we brought Laika?"

"Laika died nine years ago, sweetheart," Clara reminded her softly, "Did the teleporting make your memory go again?"

"No," she said firmly, "Well, yeah, a bit, I've actually spent at least fifteen minutes trying to remember what ravioli is, and I can't recall if Oz is fictional or if we actually went there…"

"Both. That was actually when we _did_ still have Laika, she made an excellent Toto," Clara remarked fondly. Clara wasn't big on pets, but Laika's story was just so sad, and that pooch had always been so darn bouncy, anyone and everyone fell in love with her. Ever since, the Doctor had been on at Clara to let her get a new pet, and had threatened multiple times to just bring one home, but she never quite had the courage. They didn't even argue about it; it was just a flat-out _no_ every time she even broached the subject. "Besides, I don't think Laika and – what were you calling it? Baloo?"

"Yeah. Hilarious, right?" Thirteen beamed.

"Well I don't think Laika and Baloo would get along, funnily enough. This sandwich is great, by the way." It was a ham and egg salad sandwich with extra mayonnaise, in fancy bread. Clara's favourite. Thirteen had a sandwich, too, but she didn't feel like eating. She would prefer to wait until after they caught the bear.

"Thank you for the compliment, milady," she said, curtseying, and Clara laughed, "Is that the first time you've laughed today?"

"God knows. You're in a good mood suddenly."

"I'm always in a good mood when I'm being clever."

"It's not the teleport scrambling your brain?" Clara suggested.

"Could not tell you for sure." There was a pause, then, while the Doctor stood feeling somewhat useless in the tent. It was a waiting game, who knew how long that bear would take to show. She couldn't think of anything to say, but Clara seemed okay with the silence. There was an old electricity generator that still worked powering the lightbulbs in the tent, fireflies buzzing around them.

"We should've come when there wasn't a bear. Why haven't we been to Yellowstone before?"

"Just haven't gotten around to it, I suppose. Nothing's stopping us coming back, if you want."

"We should have a picnic," she said, "And stargaze."

"Stargaze? Why watch the stars when you can fly through them?"

"Because I want to, and it's nice," Clara said, growing slightly cold again. Thirteen had been grinning, but her grin dissipated a little. "I'm sorry."

"For what?"

"For you know what. This. Me. How I've been. It's… It's like if I was trying to do Sudoku, but I was terrible at maths."

"You _are_ terrible at maths, Clara, you're awful."

"Well then it's like me just trying to do Sudoku anyway. Trying to… navigate this… issue. And it's all on you," Clara said. Thirteen frowned.

"What's all on me…?"

"The solution, it… this thing. It could be sorted out through commitment."

"Commitment?" the Doctor asked. This was an odd exchange. Was Clara about to tell her what was up? She was choosing her words very carefully, and the Doctor was trying to question her delicately without sounded a little offended at the way Clara seemed to be portraying her character. "I've been committed to you for forty-nine years. And a half."

"I know. I didn't mean it like that… You know what? I don't care. I don't know enough about the future to be acting like I have some level of insight when I really don't, I'm just upset, and I'm making my own life harder…" she trailed off, and the Doctor just watched her, "It's too much. I can't avoid you, I love you. I'll tell you. We'll talk about it, and… fix it. As soon as we get home. Alright? I promise. Don't worry about it anymore. Because you're… you're…"

"I'm…?"

"Shit."

"I'm what now?"

"No, not you! I didn't mean _you're_ shit, I just meant shit, general shit. Look!" Clara put her sandwich down next to her on an old fold out table, stood up, pointed. The Doctor turned and saw what she was pointing at.

In the moonlight, it was easy to see the short-faced bear, dubbed Baloo, for what it was. And what it was, was _huge_. It was six feet off the ground when it was on four legs, would stretch to ten if it stood on its hind, probably taller than if she were to stand on Clara's shoulders and try and intimidate it into fleeing. Not that that would work, it probably wasn't scared of anything. It was great, furry, dark, and _seething_. She'd never seen an animal so angry in her life, she didn't think, not one so ready to attack.

"What do we do? Where's that switch?" Clara hissed.

"Uh…" the Doctor took her eyes away from the beast and went about locating the activation switch for the mega-bear-trap, her amplified vortex trap, made out of old weather equipment and a salvaged old vortex manipulator that might, in fact, belong to her daughter. The bear was growling.

"Doctor…"

"I know! I can see it! I'm trying to find the switch, alright!?"

"Well hurry up about it!" The bear dragged its foot along the ground like a bull about to charge, barred its teeth, crouched lower to the ground. "It's going to kill us."

"It's not going to kill us," Thirteen said back through gritted teeth, "Just help me look!"

"I'm maintaining eye contact."

"What good'll that do!? You're not in a job interview!"

"Shush! Its vision is based on movement."

"You're thinking of a t-rex."

"You are being really bloody useless right about-"

It all went sour, because apparently keeping eye contact with the bear _had_ been keeping it away, at least for a while. As soon as Clara looked to see what the Doctor was doing, fumbling around on the floor looking for a broken off bit of vortex manipulator, the thing roared. It roared, and it ran, and Thirteen found that what she was looking for had been in her pocket all along.

It leapt through the air towards the tent, Clara grabbed the Doctor around the waist to pull her, last minute, out of the way, just as Thirteen hit the button on the old switch. There was a flash of blue light, they landed in a heap together in the dirt for the second time that day, and when she looked around the ghostly outline of the bear hung in the sky. Then all of the weather equipment exploded and the entire station went dark.

"You've kneed me in the thigh, ow," Clara complained.

"You elbowed me in the gut earlier, so we're even," Thirteen said, trying to sit up. Only then did she realise she was lying on top of her wife a bit, well, _intimately_. "Hi…"

"Hi," Clara said back, "Comfortable?"

"You look beautiful in the moonlight."

"Thanks. I think I have a rock wedged into my spine."

"Oh, god, I'm sorry," the Doctor moved abruptly, trying to sit up.

"Wait."

"What?" she stopped moving and looked back down at Clara, and was incredibly surprised when Clara pushed herself up on one elbow and planted her lips on Thirteen's. Maybe it was brief, but she didn't think they had kissed for weeks. And then she stopped, and they stayed still, until Thirteen leant down to kiss her again.

"I'm not actually lying about the rock, as much as I would be into making out with you on the dirty ground," Clara said after pushing Thirteen gently away.

"Oh, right," she really_ did_ sit up then, kneeling.

"Do you think it worked, then?"

"The bear? Well it's definitely not here anymore, so I sure hope so. Kind of put out by the whole explosion thing, but I guess as long as it didn't start a fire," Thirteen said, looking around for sparks, "Are you mad at me?"

"No. Well, I'm a bit miffed, and annoyed, but I'm not angry. Not really."

"So you were serious about the making out thing?"

"I was half serious. The ground _is_ gross. Maybe later. Right now, though, I want a cigarette," Clara said, standing up. The Doctor, though, truthfully, she really _wouldn't_ mind if they just carried on kissing in the dirt for a while, followed her lead.

"You promise we're going to talk about it?"

"As soon as we get home," Clara smiled and held out her hand, "Lighter? Please?"

"Right. Sure thing." It was then, right as the Doctor was going to retrieve the anniversary present, that the unthinkable happened. The inevitable event they had been dreading for the better part of fifty years. She never got to give Clara her lighter back that day.

* * *

**DAY 88***

The difference between the past and the future was an instant. A gap of forty-nine years was surpassed in the blink of an eye, if the eye was a very brightly coloured blue eye that flashed and made it feel like you were briefly suffocating and your blood vessels were on fire, before dumping you unceremoniously who-knew-when-and-where. The Alpha Twelfth Doctor was wrenched out of her own time, out of the company of her wife, and crashed into something hard, somewhere moving, in the dark.

It was a darkness that only lasted for a split second, though, before orange and green lights came on and she was in a copper-coloured room with a glass floor and a sickeningly familiar cylinder going wild in the centre. She had been thrown against the console of the TARDIS, pulled free from the clutches of Yellowstone National Park (_and_ the promise of making out, which she was a little more upset about if truth be told) and flung into the past. And, of course, teleports played havoc with her memory.

"What were you gonna say…?" somebody said nearby, someone familiar. The Doctor squinted and stared and saw two figures, two familiar figures. In fact, it was two women who had, eons ago, both been in love with her. Sort of.

"Oh my god," Thirteen breathed, "Rose and Martha! The Dynamic Duo! I have _missed_ you guys!" The Doctor ran straight up to her old friends, neither of whom she saw all that often anymore, possibly once a year on Christmas, and dragged them into a forced hug. She nearly got burned by Martha and that uncontrollable pyrokinesis of hers.

"Who are you?" Martha questioned, and the Doctor stepped back.

"You two… and this _room_! Look at it! Wow, orange and gold and green… the orange lighting, though – never did much for my complexion. Made me look ill, I always thought, haven't seen this for years. Totally retro – no round things though. Don't you just _love_ round things? They are _so_ my favourite shape of things… except maybe square things… and you have to love a good triangle, you know? Oh no. I've figured it out. Rhombus things. They're my favourite. I hope you two are taking interior design notes here…"

"Seriously, what's going on? Where's she from, Rose?" Martha whispered quietly.

"What's going on is the upholstery in here is _terrible_. Really needs a revamp. Some soft throws, less-awful chairs… cushions, maybe. A rug." She liked her console room more. She liked their balcony level, with its fancy leather chairs and books and the American flag. That bald eagle she had been given as a gift from a president whose name escaped her. "Super sorry about all this chaos, by the way. Not my fault. Hey, at least I remember your names. Thought my brain might be a little scrambled from that impromptu teleportation job. I've got a bit of an issue with amnesia – perks of a traumatic regeneration, you know?" Martha tried to ask her who she was again. "You don't know? Oh, of course you don't. What must you take me for? I'm, um… the… ah… you know… see? Spoke too soon, my brain _is_ scrambled… ah-ha! Thirteen! …Nope? Not ringing any bells?" She put her hands together in thought, trying to remember who she was, specifics. Martha asked her some questions about her wedding rings.

"I'm gonna get the Doctor…" Rose muttered eventually, turning to leave.

"Yes!" Thirteen exclaimed, clapping, "Gold star for you! _That's_ who I am." And thus her adventure in her own past was begun. What was that rule she had about not crossing into her own timeline? Well. Some rules were made to be broken, she supposed…

*_chapter 646_


	465. American Eulogy

**DAY 131**

_American Eulogy_

_Oswin_

"Mitchell, I honestly just think you're going to have to live with it, sorry," Oswin told her boyfriend sadly, examining the welt on his arm. He'd had that thing, a big scab-like, dark grey barnacle, protruding out of his skin and oozing funny sapphire-coloured liquid for over three weeks now. The thing wouldn't heal normally because he had no blood flow so, consequently, no white blood cells whizzing about his body.

"That ointment you made can erase Jenny's facehugger blood burns, but not this?" he asked incredulously. He was very unhappy about all this, and she couldn't do anything for him other than apologise.

"I don't know, I guess it's like trying to cure a birthmark," she shrugged, "It's not really scar tissue. I could probably run a biopsy on it, I think I was wrong about what it is. I thought it was genetically restructured human material, but I think it might be an alien lesion now. It might even be its own organism."

"I thought Helix said it was benign?"

"There's only so much a scan can glean. I'll take a sample. Well, I'll ask Martha to take a sample later, I am definitely not delicate enough to be doing medical procedures. Or qualified. Look," she began, picking up the bandages from the table they were sitting at so that she could dress it again, because he couldn't reach to do it himself, "Maybe it isn't much to look at, and maybe it _does_ sting and ooze very odd blue gunk I have yet to determine the composition of, but without blowing my own trumpet too much, you do already have a pretty attractive girlfriend. Or so I'm told. I would hate to be egotistical. So it's not like this thing is going to be turning girls off you."

"Yes, Oswin, because you've never said anything egotistical in your life," he said in a robotic, monotonous voice, and she smiled, wrapping bandages around his upper arm, "That doesn't mean anything, anyway. What if you dumped me?"

"I'm not gonna dump you."

"You can't know that for sure."

"Babe, you worry too much," she assured him, looking up at his eyes, "I am not going to dump you. How could I ever do that when you're so wonderful?"

"Me? Wonderful?"

"The gorgeous, young, millionaire philanthropist with a heart of gold?" she questioned wryly, "Adam Mitchell, you're the most unrealistically perfect boy I've ever met, and that's why I'll…" she stopped mid-sentence. _And that's why I'll marry you someday_ were the words that had sprung to her mind. And those words, that notion, had _never_ sprung to Oswin Oswald's mind before. Not about anyone, even Flek Phisj. _Even_ Esther Drummond.

"Why you'll…?" Adam entreated. Her own words were caught in her throat.

"Why I'll dress your nasty-looking barnacle-thing," she said, smiling, securing his bandage with a safety pin. She did not, and would not, tell him what she had been thinking. She couldn't. He was too good for her. She continued to smile sweetly and got out of the chair, standing up, "I'm gonna make tea. Do you want tea?"

"I want you to say more nice things about me," he said.

"Whatever you like, but would you like tea?"

"Yes, please."

"There, see? Good manners. Another of your positive traits. I'm not even sure you have negative traits apart from your lacking self-confidence and this strange attempt you're making at growing facial hair," she remarked, filling the kettle. Oswin must have spent at least seventy percent of her total afterlife so far just making tea.

"Do you think it's going well?"

"I think if you think it's going well, that's good enough for me," she shrugged. She was honestly indifferent to this latest pursuit of her boyfriend, but at least he had a hobby. She told him time and time again, having a girlfriend did not count as a hobby, but Adam Mitchell and his socially isolated lifestyle clearly seemed to think it was. It was very pitiable, in an oddly sweet way.

"I have stubble now."

"I know, I can see it, I'm very proud of you for… not shaving. It must be really difficult. We're out of sugar," she declared, opening the sugar jar and finding it empty.

"No, there's another bag in the cupboard, I think," he said.

"Eurgh, look how domestic we are," she grumbled, "The closest I've ever been to being _this_ domesticated before was when I was living in the crashed _Alaska_, and that wasn't even real."

"Maybe domesticity is your subconscious desire?" he suggested, "You sound like your brother-in-law, complaining about that."

"That's not the thing unnerving me, what's unnerving me is how quickly we're moving. You know it's only been eighty-one days?"

"Yes, I can count as well, Oswin," he said sarcastically, "If I told you we've been going out for roughly 6.9 million seconds you'd be even more freaked out, but two and a half months sounds… well I suppose you're right, actually, it hasn't been that long… but as long as we're happy, what's the problem?" She said nothing. "Oswin? … Babe? What's-"

"Look at this," she said as he turned in his chair to face her. She had been looking for sugar in the cupboards and there, sitting underneath the fresh paper bag, had been an envelope. It had fallen onto the countertop in front of her when she had gone to pull the bag out, and it had her name scrawled on it. Her _full_ name, _Oswin Diane Rosalind Oswald_.

"You should open it. It's definitely for you," he said, looking at it.

"Who knows my full name?" she asked him, "Apart from you and Clara? It's not you, is it?"

"Me? Oswin, why would I write you a letter and leave it in the cupboard?" he questioned. She didn't think it was him. And she didn't think it was her sister, either, so she ripped it open in very messy manner and pulled out a letter.

"Would you look at this? It's all bloody cursive. How do people get their handwriting to look nice? Then they all say that _my_ handwriting is illegible," she grumbled.

"Your handwriting _is_ illegible, they teach you how to write in school and you never went to school. I can't read anything you write," he told her, "What's the letter say, though?" The kettle boiling in the background, Oswin leant against the kitchen units and began to read what had been left for her:

_Oswin,_

_Before I begin, under no circumstances can you EVER tell Clara OR Jenny about this letter, or show them it, or let on that I wrote you anything at all. It HAS to stay a secret, from both of them, for their own good. You're the one I'm trusting to keep the future on track (and Adam, since you've never been able to keep anything from him.) You can't tell me anything, either. I know it might be hard, watching Clara and I worry about the Dimension Crash in the decades to come, but neither of us can know the things I'm going to tell you._

_First off, you have to know that the day I'm going to be taken is __day 17,968__. In 49 years' time. Clara will be left alone in Yellowstone National Park. I don't know how distraught she will be, but presumably she'll need you there, because it comes out of nowhere. One second, I'm trying to catch a bear, the next second I'm in the console room talking to super-young Rose and Martha. I'm sorry about all the responsibility I'm putting on you, but it's not just Clara in the future you need to look after. Clara in your present AND Jenny will BOTH need guidance in the coming weeks._

_The Eleventh Doctor still can't ever know about anything that may or may not be going on between Clara in the past and myself which – though her guilt would have you believe otherwise – is practically nothing. I kissed her once, by accident, that's all. He has to think that Clara's fine. He'll be distracted soon, anyway, with Jenny, which brings me onto my second set of instructions: make sure Jenny is okay. Make sure she's being safe. Tell her I told you, before I left, that things have to get worse before they get better between her and her father. I DID tell her that to her face, but I need you to reiterate it to her. You'll see what I mean in the coming days. I would tell you to tell Ravenwood to make sure she's alright, but she'll do that anyway._

_Thirdly, though I'm sure that when it gets to this point in your future I won't need to tell you, under __NO CIRCUMSTANCES__ let my wife visit Jane Austen unsupervised, OR Sappho, OR Virginia Woolf. I would also give a list of men she's infatuated with you aren't to let her near on her own, but I'm not privy to her opposite-sex obsessions. Be wary. Don't let her go to any beatnik functions. And for the love of god, don't let her buy any more lava lamps like she will do when she has her mid-life crisis, you and I have been discreetly trying to get rid of all those for years. Finally, DON'T let her throw away my things she hates. If she tries, threaten to throw away all her cigarettes (ALL of them.)_

_Finally, I have some general assurances you need to give to other members of the crew ONLY when the time is right. I apologise for them being vague, but you'll understand when you're supposed to:_

_1.__You should go out dancing the next chance you get._

_2.__It's the flu. Just give them ordinary medicine and tell them to get over themselves._

_3.__When Jack gives somebody a ring, take Jenny somewhere remote and let her shoot and hit things to her hearts' content._

_4.__Don't let anybody eat the Gazpacho soup. Don't trust the Gazpacho soup. If you see Gazpacho soup, assume something is afoot._

_5.__Make sure Martha knows everything will be fine. More than fine, amazing. She doesn't need to worry about anything at all, tell her __I promise__. You'll know when she needs to hear that._

_I'm sorry I can't be more specific, and I wish I could to help more, but I can't. Last of all, though, you'll be okay as well. And I look forward to reuniting with you when I go back home and yelling at you for having this letter all this time and keeping it such a closely guarded secret so successfully. Unless, of course, you never find it. I'll be interested to find out._

_Goodbye,_

_Your favourite sister-in-law (at least, I think I am, you do have at LEAST five other sisters-in-law),_

_The Twelfth Doctor (13)_

"Oh, god," Oswin said after reading it all.

"What?" Adam asked.

"It's, like, instructions, and a goodbye note, from Thirteen," she told him, passing it to him since the letter said that she could, thankfully. If she was forbidden from showing it to Adam as well as Clara and Jenny, she didn't know what she would do. Probably explode. "I have to find Clara and tell her Thirteen's left."

"She's _left_? She didn't say bye to us," he complained, "I like her. I thought we were all friends?"

"I already told you she was going today because I got it out of Jenny," Oswin said. She hadn't seen Thirteen all day at all and, truthfully, had also been under the impression that she would grace them with a proper goodbye, in person, "You take this, make sure nobody except us can get to it. I have to go."

* * *

_Clara_

"Once again, darling, I am _terribly_ sorry about getting the dates confused," Eleven apologised to her as they returned to the TARDIS in the late afternoon, "I honestly did think that the asteroid crashed in 5187, not 5178. It was an honest mistake." They had spent the best part of an hour using the TARDIS to evacuate people from the diner built into Saturn's asteroid belt after he had gotten the years mixed up. Tired, Clara collapsed down into one of the salmon-coloured, leather chairs.

"It's okay," she smiled, "Nobody died. And the food was pretty good."

"Ah, you're being a critic again, I see?" he joked, leaning on the console opposite her.

"I have a gift for fine cuisine," she shrugged.

"Yes, synthetic burgers really are the epitome of fine dining, Coo." She laughed and slouched in the chair, and he watched her.

"Are you still doing shepherd's pie like you promised?" she asked him sweetly, and he narrowed his eyes.

"Don't give me that look."

"What look?" she asked innocently, though she most definitely _had_ been giving him a look.

"That cute one you use when you're trying to get me to do things for you."

"I'm always cute," she told him.

"Yes. Well. I suppose I will still cook, I did promise. And it makes up for the asteroid cutting our lunch date short," he said, a little begrudgingly.

"Thank you _so much_, I love you more than _anything_ in the _whole entire universe_, Theodore," she told him as he began to walk out of the room, towards the doors.

"Yes, yes. Are you coming?"

"I'll catch you up. I'm gonna stay here and have a cigarette," she told him. Long gone were the days where she tried to hide her guilty cigarette habit, but just as she didn't hide that anymore, _he_ didn't hide his noise of abject disgust. She rolled her eyes at the Doctor as he left and took out her latest pack of Marlboro Lights and her newest disposable lighter – this one was blue – and lit one.

A few minutes later, Clara had gotten bored and had gone on a stroll around the room, ending up below the console, beneath the glass floor. This was a favourite spot of Nios' for eavesdropping, but Nios wasn't there. For the time being, Clara was alone, wondering if she would ever _really_ have enough sway with her husband that he would let her have some input into the next redesign of the console room. Perhaps they could give it a full makeover. If she suggested that to him, though, he would be so affronted that he would _never_ let her take the lead on redecorating.

But while Clara was busy thinking about her husband, it was her wife who came into the room, her wife with her daughter in tow, both of them frantic.

"I'm just trying to remember, Jenny, that's all," Thirteen snapped coolly. She was clearly not thrilled about Jenny's presence. Clara stayed quiet and hidden under the floor, her cigarette burning down steadily between her fingers. "My memory can't be so bad that I can't remember where she is."

"I don't care if you know where she is or not, I don't think you should be looking for her at all," Jenny argued. Who were they looking for?

"If I can dignify you with a legitimate goodbye, then I can sure as hell dignify my own wife with one!" Thirteen said quite loudly. Clara dropped her cigarette.

"She'll be distraught."

"She'll be distraught anyway. And if I don't say goodbye to her I'm really gonna get an earful when I go back home, I don't wanna see what she's like when she's been harbouring a grudge against me for… a long time," Thirteen said, stopping herself before she revealed when she had come from, like she always did. Clara Oswald couldn't believe what she was hearing, "I swear, she's on a date, I think I remember."

"I just think you're making a mistake."

"Like you wouldn't do the same thing, you _are_ dating her as well."

"_Please_ do not bring that up," Jenny said.

"What are you talking about?" Clara interrupted them. While they argued, while Thirteen paced around in front of Jenny, she had crept back up one of the staircases and was staring both of them down from across the room.

"Clara!" Thirteen exclaimed, "I've been looking for you."

"Yes, thanks, I heard," Clara said. Thirteen opened her mouth to talk and didn't say anything, then looked to Jenny as though she was going to offer her help. Jenny took a step back, though, holding something in her hands that looked like leather.

"All yours, mother," Jenny said. Clara crossed her arms.

"I have to go," Thirteen said eventually, after a long deliberation.

"You can't," Clara told her.

"I can, I have to. And I will. I was coming to say goodbye."

"That's rich," Clara said coldly, "You haven't had a kind word to say to me since the day Esther got brought onto the TARDIS, and now suddenly you're trailing all over the place looking for me?"

"I've been avoiding you _because _I'm leaving, Clara," Thirteen walked over to her, "It's gotten really hard to be around you, and I have things going on at home that I have to face now… _I_ have been struggling, and I'm sorry about that but I'm doing the best that I can. And you're not alone, sweetheart, you've still got him."

"But he's not…" Clara stopped.

"What? _Me_? You barely know me. Don't do a Gatsby and spend all your time obsessing over me, you'd idealise me to the point where we could never be happy. And then I'll probably hit someone with a car, and you'll get shot in a swimming pool. It'll be _your_ car, too, and the paint will be totally ruined," the Doctor told her, taking her hand.

"I don't think the paint getting ruined is really the tragedy in _The Great Gatsby_…" Clara joked weakly. It was probably wrong of her to be so upset, but she couldn't control her own emotions. She _knew_ she would have Thirteen one day, but she thought the real tragedy was the fact that gaining Thirteen came with the loss of Eleven. In her own selfish way, she didn't want to be without either of them. And the next time she saw Thirteen would be the last time she saw Eleven. "Besides, are you really on Daisy Buchanan's level?"

"Her _level_? Of what, being the worst?"

"She's_ so_ pretty," Clara said, "Unbelievably so. Don't go."

"_You're_ the person I'm so desperate to get back to. Here _you_ are struggling to keep hold of both of your Doctors and you in the future doesn't have either. How is it the end of that book goes? The last line?"

"'_So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past_.' Why?"

"Seems kind of fitting, I guess."

While they were talking, while Clara held onto the Doctor's hand for dear life and tried to come up with reason after reason why she could never let go, she was distantly aware of the doors opening behind them.

"Honey, she has to leave," Oswin said quietly. She had just entered the console room.

"How? How are you leaving?" Clara questioned.

"I've borrowed a vortex manipulator from Jenny," Thirteen said, holding up a leather wrist strap with her free hand, dangling it tantalisingly in front of Clara's face. If only she could break it. The Doctor turned to look at her daughter, "Not like you'll need it now that your fancy spaceship is finally all finished."

"Why today? Why now?"

"I don't know. It's just the way it is. Forty-two days is all I get."

"Just let her go, Clars," Oswin said, "For your own sake."

"If I can say goodbye, then you can say goodbye," Jenny said, and Clara looked up at her. Jenny did not look happy at _all_.

"What are you holding?" Oswin asked Jenny. Thirteen wasn't looking at Clara, she was looking at the people who were speaking, but Clara was desperately trying to remember every detail of Thirteen's appearance, every blemish on her face and every curl of her hair and every golden fleck in her eyes. How distorted would the image of Thirteen be whenever the next time Clara saw her came around? How different would she look to the way she looked in memories?

"Bag," Jenny said shortly.

"Transdimensional," the Doctor added, "A gift. Like mine. I thought she deserved something, at least."

"Do I get a gift?" Clara interrupted.

"_You_?" the Doctor frowned, "_You_ have tears in your eyes." Clara shrugged. "I'm going. I've set the coordinates. One day, you'll be grateful. You'll be so happy that I'm coming back. I hope."

"But-"

"But nothing, Clara, you're going to be fine. I know you are; I've already lived this once. And I promise you, starting as soon as I get back home, you'll never have to say goodbye to me again," Thirteen said seriously. And _then_ the Doctor did something she had only ever really done in Clara's wildest dreams – and those dreams really were _very_ wild, and she had had _many _of them, _frequently_ – and she leant in and kissed her. Properly, too, not like the accidental fumbling in that maze over a month ago, not like when Clara had her backed against that wall and she had refused to give in, a _real_ kiss. A heartfelt one. One that was over much too soon, too abruptly, when Thirteen's lips and mouth and whole face and self disappeared, and a vibrant blue light was glowed underneath Clara's eyelids. Clara's hand was empty. The Doctor was gone, and Clara stared into space.

Oswin cleared her throat, "So would this be a bad time to point out that you just broke the PDA rule?"

**AN: By the way, aside from being incredibly fitting, that remark about ****_The Great Gatsby_**** and Daisy Buchanan being "unbelievably pretty" (as Clara says) is also totally hilarious because in the new one it's the same actress who plays Sally Sparrow. Just imagine if Clara Ravenwood were aware that just down the road from her lives one of the most iconic female characters in all of literature, she'd be ****_even more_**** obsessed with her. I think it's amusing, and there will probably be a bunch of sly remarks about it in later chapters.**


	466. American Swing

**AN: There are at least four drafts of this chapter I've been trying to write for months because I could ****_not_**** get the tone right until ****_after_**** the Yellowstone storyline had been done. I worked****_ really hard_**** on this.**

**DAY 18,011**

_American Swing_

_Thirteen_

The Twelfth Doctor's mind was a jigsaw, a zillion-piece jigsaw that was rearranged with every regeneration and shattered to billions of tiny shreds whenever she was forced to teleport. Funny-shaped pieces disconnected and flung themselves all over the place, and when she staggered and stumbled upon her arrival she could practically hear them rattling about inside of her skull. It was always sheer luck which parts of her life she would temporarily forget, which kernels of memory amnesia would infect and numb, and which she would manage to cling to.

The Clara Oswald of the Past had disappeared from beneath her fingertips and had been replaced by a cold, damp wall she staggered right into, tripping over her own feet and crashing sideways. She did not recall where she was, where she had set the vortex manipulator to take her, but it was raining and she could hear traffic and smell those urban, metallic scents of a city centre. She squinted, a drizzle pouring down, through a gloomy night, and saw a cityscape below. One which she recognised distinctly as London. She could see the Shard from where she was.

"Oh, god, are you alright?" asked a voice. The only voice she ever wanted to hear. Clara Oswald of the Future, of her present, had just walked out onto the balcony she was standing on. Silver tables shone with rainwater, their aluminium chairs upturned on top of them, the furniture the only visible audience for this reunion. The Doctor stared like she couldn't believe her own eyes.

"Clara…" she gasped, and Clara nearly ran over to embrace her, lifting her up and spinning her around even though she knew full well that Thirteen _hated_ when she picked her up with her telekinesis. Still, though, she hung on for dear life, hung on to Clara's warmth and her smell, that aroma like strawberries no amount of space travel had ever managed to wash out of her skin. When Clara put her back down she nearly slipped over on the wet, outdoors floor.

"Careful, there. Haven't forgotten how to walk, have you?" Clara asked. Clara was smiling. The Doctor hadn't expected Clara to be smiling. She hadn't expected Clara to be doing an awful lot of anything, because she was suddenly pretty sure that Clara Oswald was dead.

"Are you okay!?" Thirteen exclaimed, taking Clara's face in her hands and smushing it around like putty, as though to check she wasn't a robot, or a flesh doppelganger, or any other kind of imposter. Clara frowned as best she could, and when she talked she had some difficulty because of Thirteen examining her.

"Yes. Why wouldn't I be?"

"I thought you had your head cut off," the Doctor confessed*, and Clara grabbed hold of her wrists to stop her from prodding her face anymore. It was dark, Thirteen still didn't really know where they were, and now they were _both_ getting wet from the rain. But compared to Clara, the rain was just in the background, she barely even noticed her hooded jacket soaking through to her skin.

"Why would I have had my head cut off…?" Clara asked slowly, "I think I'd remember."

"Because you came to see me!"

"I definitely didn't come to see you," Clara said, "Oswin wouldn't let me. Oswin wouldn't let me do anything – Jane invited me for supper and Oswin refused to let me go, pawned me off on Ravenwood instead and she told me all about her latest book, ugh."

"But I saw you, I saw me, the Valeyard, she cut your head off with a guillotine in the roof of that abandoned mansion in Pennsylvania where everybody committed suicide and it was always winter," the Doctor said frantically, Clara shushing her softly as she spoke.

"That was the Dalton Lodge, sweetheart, it was the Frir, it wasn't real, it's okay, I'm fine," she cooed gently, and the Doctor grabbed her and hugged her again, and Clara hugged back as tightly as she could, "Nobody has decapitated me while you've been gone, I promise."

"I've missed you so much."

"I've missed you, too. Let's go inside, it's raining, the forecast says it's supposed to turn into a storm any minute now," Clara said. Talking to Clara without feeling like she was breaking some kind of tacit rule – boring, idle conversation with her wife – was exhilarating. She had so taken it for granted, Clara's constant company, and now she didn't think there was anything she wouldn't do just to keep them together. Forever.

"Where is this?"

"You don't recognise it?" Clara said, helping her walk as though she were an invalid. She could walk perfectly fine, but Clara was touching her, and that wasn't something she was going to complain about. Not when it was something she had forced herself away from for weeks. _Weeks_. It felt like a year she had been without. Clara laughed a little. "This is the coffee shop where you dragged me the day I met you, we were sitting right out there at one of those tables sharing a milkshake when the Great Intelligence tried to download me for the second time. And then you, my daring hero, came to the rescue."

"I try my best," Thirteen said, dropping down onto one of the plush leather sofas coffee shops always had, one of the ones so low to the ground awkwardly placed in conjunction with the nearest table that it was practically impossible to ever be _entirely_ comfortable sitting in one of them. The back was at a funny angle to the wall, as well, so it wasn't even pleasant to lean back, or slouch. And she had a penchant for slouching.

"Here, I had some of your industrial strength coffee all ready for you," Clara said, passing her a mug. The entire place was empty, but the lights were on, if they were a little dim.

"Did you break in here?"

"Yes, about forty minutes ago, to wait," Clara said, "You remember? We pre-arranged this sixteen years ago, the when and where of you coming home after this business was done. God, I can't believe that was sixteen years ago…" She didn't remember, but she didn't remember a lot of things, so she trusted that Clara was correct. Then she _did_ remember something.

"I totally forgot that I'm furious at you!" she argued after sipping the coffee, relishing in how bitter it was because it was just what she needed after a teleportation so far, then growing annoyed because she was supposed to be angry at Clara and Clara still knew exactly what was best for her.

"At me? What for?" Clara asked, confused.

"For going around with _me_ behind _my_ back! Decades ago!"

"_What_? You're angry about _that_? _You_ kissed_ me_ both times," Clara pointed out, "And you promised you wouldn't be angry about any of it."

"Well I didn't think I would be. But now I'm here, I am! You've been lying to me for five decades, Clara!" she exclaimed. It was a very nice bistro, come to think of things, with the city view and that smell of freshly-ground coffee beans that was oh-so-delicious.

"You told me to lie for you! To you! You were all like, '_It has to be done, because I can't know anything so you can't tell him anything, blah, blah, blah_,'" Clara argued, copying her accent, which would probably annoy Thirteen if Clara didn't do a pretty good job of it. It was because of all that time she spent hanging around with Esther Drummond.

"Well, yeah… but… but…"

"It's _your_ fault I even had to lie in the first place."

"It's what!? No it is not! It was all you, I _just_ lived it, you're going senile in your old age," Thirteen said firmly, and Clara raised her eyebrows.

"What did you expect me to do? There you were, prancing about-"

"_Prancing_?"

"Yes, prancing, in front of my weak, impressionable younger self, with your sexy accent and your lingerie-" Clara was making a lot of very animated hand gestures as they argued about this.

"I did not prance about in front of you in lingerie, Clara, it was literally ten minutes ago I was there. I didn't even have any lingerie with me. I barely even wear it now," Thirteen said. That was true. She wasn't really the biggest fan of clothes that weren't comfortable, even if they _did_ make her wife drool like a teenage boy when she wore them.

"You did in my dreams. And maybe you should wear it, later."

"Well maybe I _will_ wear it later," Thirteen said coldly and definitively, crossing her arms as though she had just won the argument, until she realised that wearing skimpy underwear for Clara was about as far from a punishment as you could get. How were they fighting _and_ flirting at the same time? At least it was better than just fighting. "Like your dreams are my fault, anyway."

"I wouldn't have them if you were less hot." The rain outside was worsening; Clara was right about a storm brewing. There was a fine layer of fog descending down onto London's streets, but she liked it. She knew Clara liked the rain, as well.

"_You_ shouldn't be so _manipulative_. It's stressful having to avoid the love of your life, especially when the love your life keeps throwing herself at you."

"I _never_ 'threw myself' at you!" Clara protested indignantly.

"Oh, really? Not even in that abandoned old school where you pushed me against a wall**?"

"That was, like, _one time_. We could always revisit it? Have a proper picnic there?" Clara suggested, and the Doctor paused mid-argument.

"I'll… I'll think about that, but we're still fighting! Don't interrupt."

"_Sorry_," Clara apologised sarcastically, picking up her own mug, which smelled like it contained a mocha, and drinking from it for a second while the Doctor didn't speak, just glared at her. Clara swallowed and sighed. "Oh my stars, I'm sorry that I did what you asked me to do and lied, okay? I'm sorry that you feel deceived, but you felt even _more _deceived when I actually told you a little bit of what was going on and had to immediately retcon*** you, under_ your_ instruction. I didn't have a choice. And I've felt so guilty for years it's practically made me sick, but now this Crash is over. It doesn't feel like there's four of us anymore, there's just two, there's just us, and we can very well choose to forgive each other for our own mistakes. Although both times we kissed were initiated by you."

"Okay, fine. I'm sorry as well. The first time was an accident, the second time… I don't remember right now. I'll talk about it later," she sighed. She wanted to get away from that can of worms, truth be told.

"Good, we can finally get down to business. Ask the real questions."

"The 'real' questions?" Thirteen asked. Clara was sitting next to her on the low-down sofa, mug in her hand, and she leant closer with a glint of mischief in her expression.

"What colour is your underwear?" she asked, and Thirteen sipped her coffee.

"See for yourself later."

"I will take you up on that, Doctor."

"Oh, you will? Like there was ever any doubt in either of our minds that at the first opportunity we'd be all over each other."

"I beg to differ, I think this is a perfectly good opportunity right here and neither of us are doing anything of the sort."

"Don't you think we have other things to talk about? A _lot_ of other things, Clara?" she questioned, and Clara sighed. She knew that they did. They were both dancing around the elephant in the room; what had been bothering Clara so much back at Yellowstone? Back before then, in the months preceding it? But that elephant was hidden away behind a whole bunch of _other_ elephants. She didn't bring it up, though, and Clara didn't bring it up, either. The Doctor just watched her, drank in her appearance. She looked exhausted, underneath the façade of her good mood.

"You know, you and I have been apart for twice as long as they get separated on _Don't Tell the Bride_," Clara pointed out. The Doctor narrowed her eyes. "What?"

"You haven't planned an impromptu wedding, have you…?"

"God, no. Of course not, I've…" she paused, "I've been a bit of a mess, really. I don't exactly cope very well without you, which is quite unhealthy come to think of it. I didn't realise how much cleaning you do when I'm asleep. I wrote some poems that are truly atrocious I'm sure you'll have a lot of fun laughing at, and I had to get you a new dressing gown."

"Why…?"

"I kind of ruined yours, after I wore it for two weeks without taking it off because it smelt like you, then it ended up with all these wine and hot chocolate stains, and I sneezed on it a few times," Clara said, "And I got a new kettle. Well, Adam got a new kettle, because the old one has a fish in it. Oswin convinced me that was a good idea. The place was filthy until yesterday, when your daughter came over and had a go and made Oswin and I clean everything. So it's alright now, don't worry."

"It better be, I am _crazy_ tired, I could not be bothered cleaning the whole ship if it was a pigsty. Speaking of, what was with that message you gave to Vastra to give to me? How come you were sleeping in the console room? She said she woke you up****." Clara got annoyed again.

"_She_ woke me up? What woke me up was the fact that you set the bloody ringtone to Crazy Frog. I didn't even know you could set ringtones on the TARDIS. And I was asleep on the sofa because I thought _you_ might call. If you had just taken a phone with you, or rung me on my mobile since you have the number memorised, these forty-something days wouldn't have been nearly so difficult. Did you get the milk I asked for?"

"No," she said, and Clara scoffed, "I did get the cola lip-balm, though." Thirteen went to root around in her bag for a second, and pulled out a stick of cola lip-balm, along with Clara's lighter. "Here you go. Sorry it's six weeks after you asked for it." Clara smiled and took her lighter back.

"You're an angel, I've been missing this," she said, taking the lip-balm too.

"Why did you tell her to tell me the dog misses me? The dog's dead."

Clara shrugged, "Wanted to say something to freak out Past Me. I almost made her say our son is doing fine, but I thought if I said that Jenny would have heard and gone mental."

"Oh, I had to tell her about a hundred times that I don't have any kids apart from her," Thirteen said.

"Who has time for kids when you have her and I have Oswin?" Clara remarked. Not them, was the answer, which was one of the thousand-or-so reasons why they didn't have children. Then Clara stopped talking and drank more of her mocha, and the Doctor watched her. She stared, utterly unashamed, and listened to the rain lashing down outside as the storm grew. Clara caught her staring and asked, "What?"

"It's strange," Thirteen told her, "I thought that going back in time would be easy, because this eternal youth you've been enjoying would have intrinsically changed you into a whole other person, just so slowly that neither of us noticed. I thought I would go back in time and Past You would practically be a stranger, I thought that my influence on your life would have twisted your personality into something unrecognisable. But you haven't changed, not any more than people usually would over fifty years, immortality or not. It took me by surprise, made it even harder to be around you, it wasn't like one of your Echoes just hanging around. Doesn't it bother you, though? That you don't age?"

"Does it bother _you_?"

"No, but maybe it should. Maybe I'm selfish. In fact, I am selfish, undoubtedly selfish, because here I am keeping you around when you have your own genetic lifespan you're supposed to live out."

"I'm seventy-four years young, if I was mortal I could still manage to knock out a good four more decades, I reckon. I wouldn't be doing a lot in those forty years, but it'd be worth it. Even if I'd, I don't know, ended up needing a colostomy bag and a catheter. Anyway, _you're_ obviously going senile, because it wasn't you who decided to make me immortal, it was Oswin. You just benefitted as a happy side-effect. I _have_ to stay immortal so that I don't shirk the responsibilities I have to all of my Echoes. I have to be their guardian because that was the commitment I made by creating them to save you, even if I didn't exactly realise it at the time. It's only fair that you're stuck with me while I look after my other selves for all eternity, since I _did_ make them for you in the first place," Clara explained, and the Doctor looked at her languidly again for a long while.

"Thank you," she said.

"What for?"

"For reminding me that not everything is about me," she said, and Clara smiled, "Are you going to tell me what's wrong yet?" she asked abruptly, taking Clara by surprise. For a moment she thought Clara was going to lie and pretend she had no idea what Thirteen was talking about, but she didn't.

"No. I told you, six weeks ago, I would tell you when we got home."

"Home is wherever you are," the Doctor said, a statement which Clara was genuinely taken aback by. It stopped her in her tracks, threw her off, and she couldn't find any words to say for a few moments.

"When we got back to the TARDIS. And we haven't yet, so it can wait."

"You don't think the circumstances have maybe changed a little?"

"On the contrary, the circumstances have changed a great deal, they've changed so much that my reservations about talking to you properly like an adult have been blown away into the wind. You don't have to worry," Clara said, putting her coffee down and standing up.

"I've been worrying for months, Clara. All being away from you did was make me even more scared to come back here in case I lose you."

"You won't lose me," Clara said, holding out her hand. Thirteen frowned.

"What are you doing?"

"I thought we could dance. I've cleared the floor, and everything," Clara said, motioning behind her where she had, in fact, pushed tables and chairs out of the way.

"Dance? You hate dancing. And there's no music," the Doctor pointed out. Clara then clicked her fingers and music did start, playing over the speakers, not quite loud enough to drown out the rain completely. It was _Blue Moon_. "Sinatra? Really?"

"I'm pulling out all the stops," Clara declared.

"I thought the only 'stop' you had was taking your clothes off?" she quipped, Clara still holding out her hand for Thirteen to take.

"That's one of my stops, the last one. Well, second to last, I can't really tell you what the last one is because we're in a public place," Clara said wryly, "Now, may I have this dance, or not?"

"I _suppose_," the Doctor took her hand, "Since you _are_ being incredibly charming, and everything. But _you're_ leading." Clara agreed to that, which really went to show how much she had missed the Doctor, if she was letting her follow. Clara always hated leading, but at that point her willingness for compromise was particularly endearing. "You had best keep your hand on my waist and not let it wander."

"My hands have never wandered anywhere, how dare you," Clara pretended to be offended, and Thirteen laughed and put one hand on Clara's shoulder, "I suppose this is a good time to give you a run-down of the invitations you've missed, then?"

"Oh, have there been a lot of them?" she asked, listening to Sinatra croon, "_And then there suddenly appeared before me, the only one my arms will hold…_" in the background.

"At Zelda's request, Scott Fitzgerald gave us a bell and said there's a large party in the French Riviera where they're staying in the summer of 1925, and apparently Hemingway will be there," Clara informed.

"But neither of us like Scott _or_ Ernest."

"No, but like I said, it was Zelda who asked," Clara shrugged, "Then Jack Kerouac called as well and said there's some party going on in Denver and we just _have_ to be there because the 'whole gang' is coming down, and I was going to go on my own because I have that bet to settle with Allen Ginsberg – you know, the one about who can drink more vintage port in half an hour – but Oswin told me 'beatnik functions' were 'off the menu.' And then Queen Victoria II wants us to have afternoon tea in Sandringham one day."

"Bah, that's just an excuse because she wants a rematch with me at Five Finger Fillet, because she almost cut off her finger last time."

"Yes, and I do wish you'd try not to maim royalty, sweetheart," Clara remarked.

"She maimed herself!" Thirteen protested.

Clara ignored her and continued, "And your daughter, obviously, will want to see you as soon as possible. Sometime tomorrow, I suppose? Dinner, maybe?"

"Maybe," she sighed, and stopped talking. For a while, neither of them said anything, the just slow danced in the middle of the room, wind and rain lashing the windows outside, Clara humming along to the music. The Doctor began, "It was so weird, seeing everyone still together back then. Having to lie, and hide. Not having you, and I've _always_ had you."

"We always remembered it as being horrifically stressful," Clara said.

"That was because you and I were pariahs back then. It was such a short amount of time, but it defined _everything_. We wouldn't even be together if it wasn't for the Dimension Crash. I wouldn't have even existed, I would be a wispy old man and you would be dead. I remember telling someone that they had six years, imagine that! _Six years_. More like six months. Not even that, actually, less."

"It's good you didn't say that, though, or they'd all be panicking. It ends when it ends, and it was good while it lasted."

"I kind of miss it."

"If you miss it that much we can hold a Fifty Year Reunion in a few months and shove everyone back into one room for a while and see how it goes. Terribly, I'll bet," Clara said.

"I could have said something totally ominous, though. I could have been like, '_You only have until the wedding_.'"

"Well it's a good thing you didn't, that would be terrifying. Is it creepy how much I've missed what you smell like?"

"I don't think so. If it is then we're _both_ creepy," she said as _Blue Moon_ died away. There was hardly a pause before a clarinet began emanating out of the speakers with a few gentle trumpets, another song Thirteen knew, this one by Glenn Miller, "Oh, I love this song. It must have been getting on for four-hundred years ago that Rose and I danced to this, that was the day we met Captain Jack. Is this just a playlist of jazz?"

"Glenn Miller is swing," Clara argued, "It's completely different."

"It's not _completely_ different."

"Different enough. But yes, it is. I think _Cry Me a River_ is on next. And _Beyond the Sea_. Probably every painfully identical song The Ink Spots have ever written."

"All the clichés you could come up with, then?"

"You say clichés, _I_ say classics. Anyway, what's the deal with you?"

"'The deal?'"

"I mean," Clara said, and then she leant very close to the Doctor so as to whisper yet, "Why haven't you tried to kiss me yet? Not that I really want you to, you were totally _just_ sucking face with Past Me before you left and I don't want to taste my own fifty-year old spit."

"That's disgusting," Thirteen said.

"Hence why I said I don't want to taste it," Clara said with a shrug.

"I haven't tried to kiss you yet because we both know that if we start, we probably won't stop, and this place doesn't have a bed _or_ a decently sized sofa."

"Fair point."

"Besides, I've just missed having you to talk to more than anything."

"More than _anything_?" she asked suggestively, and the Doctor smiled.

"Yes, _anything_."

"I'll hold you to that."

"Good. That's what I'm counting on."

*_chapter 714_

**_chapter 676_

***_chapter 694_

****_chapter 823_


	467. Future Hearts

**DAY**** 18,012**

_Future_ _Hearts_

_Thirteen_

For the previous nine days, sleep had evaded the Doctor. When it had gotten to the usual point in her once-weekly cycle, she had been far too stressed about her journey back to the future to even _try_ to go to sleep. At least that night she had attempted it, and succeeded, if briefly. The thing which woke her up was the fact that, when she was semi-conscious and slightly delirious from tiredness, she felt for Clara next to her in bed and didn't find a single thing. For a few terrible moments she was absolutely convinced she was not in her own bed on the TARDIS, she was back on Adam Mitchell's sofa bed, decades in the past, and her reunion with Clara had all been a frightfully real dream. Who knew how long she was going to be trapped in the past for, she thought frantically to herself? She was still there, she was still alone, still reliving painful events over and over again.

"Hey, hey, it's fine, I'm right here," a soft voice said, and Thirteen realised she had been mumbling her wife's name over and over. Arms wrapped themselves around her from the other side of the bed than she was expecting. Clara slept on the right, so why was she now approaching Thirteen from the left? Still groggy, panicked and not quite awake, the Doctor hung on to the familiar shape in her gloomy bedroom as though letting go would be letting go of her very grasp on reality itself. Clara had something metal in one hand and she smelt oddly sweet. She leant away for a second to reach the switch for the bedside lamp, which was not a real bedside lamp at all, but rather one of Clara's many lava lamps from her collection, repurposed. The 'lava' inside this one was pale blue.

"Why aren't you in bed?" Thirteen asked, Clara's arms sliding off her shoulders. Clara stayed stooped down in front of her, by the bed. As far as Thirteen could tell, it was around two o'clock in the morning.

"I was, I couldn't sleep, I just got up for this," she said, holding up her right hand to show the Doctor what she was carrying, and what she was carrying was her incredibly gaudy e-cigarette that looked like a fancy, Victorian pipe. It was part of a compromise they had had for years, that the Doctor would leave Clara alone about her awful addiction if Clara didn't smoke real cigarettes on the TARDIS, especially not in their bedroom. She hated the smell of tobacco, it made her nauseous.

"Something's bothering you. You never get up in the middle of the night for that otherwise," Thirteen said, suspicious, "Aren't you happy I'm back?"

"Of course I'm happy you're back! I'm over the moon," Clara told her, sitting down on the bed at Thirteen's side, the Doctor leaning against her pillows and the headboard. Globs of lava drifted up and down in the lamp on her left, and she could hear the faint hum of the lightbulb within. "I just needed some nicotine, that's all." It was an addiction there was not chance in hell of Clara overcoming anymore. Clara switched it off and put it down by the lava lamp, though. "That one's caramel flavour, which means my mouth is also caramel flavour. Do what you want with that information." The Doctor proceeded to take Clara up on that not-so-subtle invitation and leant in to kiss her, clearly taking her by surprise, one hand touching Clara's face. Not that Clara stopped her, she kissed her back, if briefly.

"What?" Thirteen asked, moving back, still stroking Clara's cheek lightly with her thumb.

"Uh, nothing, I just didn't think you were actually going to kiss me," Clara said, slightly perplexed.

"You _said_ I could do what I wanted," the Doctor dropped her hand, "Are you forgetting that I haven't been allowed to touch you _at_ _all_ for six weeks?"

"No, it's just…"

"Something is wrong, isn't it? The thing you won't tell me about? The thing you promised you would when we got back, even though I'm none the wiser?" she questioned, crossing her legs and pulling a sizeable amount of their duvet into her lap so that she had something to hold. Clara didn't look at her, she appeared to be thinking.

"Can you hear that?" she asked.

"Hear what?"

"The engines."

"Of course I can, I always thought the ambient noise of them was comforting. Reminds me that the TARDIS is alive, that I'm not alone, like when I listen to you breathing while you sleep. And then… you weren't there to listen to. And it woke me up, just now. Have you slept at all?" she inquired.

"It's been driving me crazy," Clara sighed, "The engines. I haven't slept much, I had a bad dream."

"A bad dream?" Thirteen asked urgently, "Not one of your nightmares?"

"No, no. A regular bad dream. A recurring one I've been having for ages now that I've never told you about," Clara explained, "I figured I would talk to you about everything tomorrow, but I'm worried, so I woke up, and went to sit in the chair over there to vape for a while. I didn't think you would be woken up, you're normally such a heavy sleeper."

"Then why don't you just tell me now? It's bothering both of us. There's no point putting off whatever it is any longer. There have been enough delays, don't you think?" the Doctor said, trying to coax this damned information out of Clara. She was beginning to wonder if it was even worth it, if she should just drop it and hope things worked themselves out all on their own. But maybe she was just in a bad mood, she'd had a stressful day, and hadn't had nearly enough sleep to compensate for her lack of it in the last week and a half of her life. "You know it's been driving me crazy, trying to unravel the mystery that is you, for weeks, hoping you really might show up out of the blue and enlighten me so that I can stop making myself spiral trying to come up with an answer to a question I don't even know. It hasn't been pleasant, Clara, and I don't appreciate you stringing me along like this like it's some sort of game, putting off telling me constantly, trying to distract me with dancing, and romance, and sex, and whatever else you have up your sleeve just to avoid talking to me. I'm your _wife_, we have made vows to each other, multiple times, does that just not mean anything to you?" She ranted, and Clara tried to calm her down, shushing her softly.

"It's all going to be okay," Clara assured her.

"What is? How can you say that? If you know that for sure, why is there even an issue? Why are you worrying? I'm sick of this, we're _supposed_ to talk things through, _together_, that's what marriage is, it's working together to try and put out whatever fires come our way so that we can stay happy. Why are you standing up? Where are you going now?" she demanded.

"I'm just going to make us hot chocolate," Clara said.

"_Hot_ _chocolate_? No! Just stay here and speak to me!" Thirteen argued.

"Making hot chocolate, sweetheart," Clara ignored her, "What flavour do you want? I'm going to make orange."

"I don't want any hot chocolate!"

"I'll do you marshmallows."

"No! Clara! Clara, come back! Stop putting this off!"

"I'll be right back, I'm just going to make hot chocolate and _you__'__re_ going to calm down and carry on thinking about the importance of wedding vows and marriage," Clara said definitively, and then she left, as though she didn't even care about what Thirteen had to say, the door ajar behind her. Maybe she was being childish. What did Clara want her to think about marriage for, anyway? If anyone, _Clara_ should be the one brushing up on their wedding vows.

She sat there stewing in her own foulness for a minute or so, until she begrudgingly called through the open door, "Coo? Can I have whipped cream on my hot chocolate?"

"Of course you can," Clara replied from the next room. The Doctor scowled.

"Do we have any of the white hot chocolate left, or did you drink it all while I was away?"

"There's still plenty. Do you want that instead of orange?"

"Yes. Please." _Ugh_, she thought to herself_, __women_. Always… doing things for her… being considerate. They were the worst. She was really looking forward to hot chocolate. That was about the point Thirteen became aware that she didn't have any clothes on, and so while Clara was busy in the living room they shared with Adam and Oswin, she went to dig out some clean pyjamas to wear from the walk-in wardrobe.

She grumbled to herself as she got dressed, continued to do so as she tried to make the bed, went to pick up dirty clothes from the floor where they had been thrown off haphazardly during the heat of passion a few hours ago. The pair of them really were insufferably predictable. She hadn't seen Oswin or Adam yet at all, because they were undoubtedly avoiding she and Clara.

Clara returned carrying two mugs a second later, carrying the Doctor's _favourite _mug with one of those typical alien heads on it, the plectrum-shaped green ones with the bulbous black eyes that usually decorated packets of _Space Raiders_. She was suddenly craving _Space Raiders_, too, but pickled onion and chocolate didn't go together. Well, Clara thought they went together, but Clara was a lunatic.

"I haven't seen you naked for weeks, and you go and spoil it all so quickly by putting clothes on," Clara joked, passing the Doctor her mug. The Doctor was not amused though, and didn't say anything, just waited, tried not to succumb to how delicious the hot chocolate smelt. "Fine, fine…" she gave up, sitting down on the closest side of the bed. Thirteen didn't sit down, though, she stayed standing. Her legs seemed to have stopped working.

"Well? Go on?"

"I'm working up to it. Don't interrupt me."

"Alright, I won't," she promised, coolly adding, "My lips are sealed."

"Do you remember my twenty-fifth birthday?" she asked.

"_Twenty-fifth_?"

"Yeah, twenty-fifth."

"Yes, Blackpool, invisible man, hotel owned by a creepy cougar."

"I mean; do you remember what you said to me? We had this conversation because being on the TARDIS constantly was really getting to me about how important I am to you, right? And I made that really weird analogy?"

"The disease one?"

"Yeah, yeah. The disease one. Where I asked if I was, you know, my own disease, or a symptom of the disease of you living on the TARDIS. Like, a side-effect. It was a long time ago, and I was thinking while you were away about a good way to word this, and I remembered all these things you said, decades ago. After that we never really talked about it again. But you said that all through your life, you thought you were running away from the Time Lords, when really you were running _towards_ me, and now you had me you didn't think you would miss the running. Although, this was all Theodore, and… I haven't spoken to _you_ about it. To 'Thirteen.' You said that because of my Echoes weaving themselves through your life, we were soulmates. _Soulmates_. You and I. You said – you _promised_ – almost fifty years ago, that you would leave the TARDIS for me. I just need you to remember that you said that.

"It's been a long time with us, but it's looking like it's going to be even longer. We could be together for, god, hundreds of years. A thousand years. Eternity. But I'm still wondering how important a part of your life I really am. What I mean is, I don't understand why this has to be so one-sided. 'This' being us. Our relationship, marriage, all of it. It's everything _you_ want and nothing that… I mean, I want you, of course I do, more than anything, but… I've always wanted a life, as well. I'm old. Not as old as you, not nearly, but for a human? Moving through time and space at a hundred miles an hour all the time? For years? It's so exhausting, Doctor. For _fifty years_, I've been the one to compromise and live the way that you want, on the TARDIS, because I wouldn't dare ever bring up any slight discomfort I might have for fear that you would say you can't possibly reciprocate all the sacrifices that I've made, that you've _asked_ me to make. And I know, I do know, how you see the domestic way of living on this ship as a compromise, but… it's not. Not anymore.

"I'm tired of acting like I'm a Time Lord, of pretending I'm a different species just because I'm frightened that you don't really see me as a wife, as a _life partner_, that you see me as a companion. A companion who's free to just go their own way when they get tired of you, like Martha decided to do. Because I can't do that, because I gave up everything, for you. I don't have a life on Earth anymore, we're wearing these wedding rings to show that we're supposed to be bound to each other, but how bound are we really? I don't know. I don't know if _you_ know yourself, but marriage is more than… it's a decision to join ourselves together, for better or worse, and stick by each other, and compromise to keep each other happy, keep ourselves healthy.

"So… what I'm saying is, I think this is unfair. I think that I should be able to ask you to do the same for me as I've been doing for you, I think that if you want me to live here, share your lifestyle, at some point you're going to have to accept that I'm my own person and I've always had things I wanted to do with my life. Things that aren't just travelling. I've always wanted to be a teacher, and I've never had that chance, because I just can't here. And on this ship, with the engines all the time, and no day or night, and waking up somewhere else every day, I'm tired of it, sweetheart. I want to be a human again, I want to live the way the rest of my species do, do ordinary things that are so far from ordinary now that a life where I have to go to work, get the newspaper every day, buy groceries, pay bills, that sounds damn near _exotic_.

"I want to know what I'm going to be doing one day after the next, I want a regular routine, but… I still want you. My _wife_. The love of my life. The centre of my whole universe, who has hundreds of poems written about her. You're living the same way you've always lived, for centuries, but _I_ was completely uprooted. I gave up _everything_ for you, and now I sort of want back the things I threw away all that time ago because I was young and in love.

"And the reason I haven't mentioned any of this until now is because of the Dimension Crash. Because of the things you let slip to me years ago, I figured that we still live on the TARDIS when you're from. I figured that there wasn't even any point bringing up any of these gripes until after it had been and gone, because nothing good would come of it. And then the Dimension Crash happened, thank god it came when it did, because now I can tell you everything, and it's all on you. Like I said, it's all on you, it can all be sorted out through commitment. And you told me, '_I've been committed to you for forty-nine years_,' and I just pray to god that that's true and I actually am worth as much to you as you say. There. I'm done. I'm sorry for keeping things from you."

The Doctor stared at Clara Oswald, and Clara Oswald stared back with such a look of desperation in her eyes it almost pained Thirteen. The Doctor couldn't find the words to say, her mouth opened and closed but nothing came out, and she leant back uselessly against the bedroom wall.

"_This_ is what's been on your mind? For _years_, Clara?"

"Yes. And when we were in Yellowstone I kept dropping hints! But you weren't listening, and you kept saying things about how you wouldn't want to live an ordinary life-"

"No, no, no, before I knew it was something you legitimately _wanted_, darling. I'm so sorry I said things that would make you so scared of confiding in me, I never want you to be scared of that, we're supposed to share everything, even the bad things," she said, coming to sit down on the bed by Clara's side, putting her piping hot mug down on the floor, "We've just been apart for six weeks, which I know doesn't really sound like very long in the grand scheme of things, but it made me absolutely sure that I never want to be without you, and that I'll do _anything_ in my power to keep us together, and happy. Of course I would leave the TARDIS for you, you're my whole world, my past, present and future. And my wife. Of course I know what kind of commitment marriage is, _I_ was created _because_ of my commitment to you, you know that's why I look and sound the way I do. Oswald, if I can change my whole gender for you, I'm pretty sure I can move to Earth and live in a house, or whatever you have in mind." Clara gawked at her. "What?"

"Are you being serious?"

"Of course I'm being serious. Why wouldn't I be?"

"So I'm dreaming?"

"_Dreaming_? No, Clara, I still believe that soulmate thing, I wouldn't have said it if I was lying. It worries me how incredulous you are of my feelings for you. If this is something I have to do to prove I'm completely, pathetically devoted to you, then I'll do it. I'd do it anyway. I just don't want us to be without each other, that's all I want," she said, and Clara dropped her mug (well, she let go of it and left it floating perilously in the air next to them) and threw her arms around the Doctor in a hug even tighter than the one when she had first returned earlier in the evening. "This life you've been thinking about, what does it entail?" Clara let go of her, but held her hands tightly.

"Hadn't really thought about it."

The Doctor laughed, "You liar. Go on, bestow upon me all of your precious daydreams for the pair of us, my dearest."

"I don't know. I'm not fussy, alright? As long as the house doesn't move every day…"

"A house, then? Not a flat? Not a… caravan? Or a mansion? A penthouse apartment? A yacht?"

"Yachts move."

"We could moor it?"

"Definitely a house."

"A houseboat?"

"A _house_," Clara affirmed, not able to stop the smile that crept onto her face, "With… with a garden. And a loft, and a spare room, and not having to put milk in stasis to make sure it doesn't go out of date, seeing the sun rise and set every day for real, having the seasons change on us, unpredictable weather… a job."

"Sure. Whatever you want. Anything. It's the least I can do for you being so accommodating of me for so long. Creating all those clones of yourself to die for me. It'll be good, good for everyone. Apart from your sister, she's going to murder both of us."

"Oh, god, you're right…"

"I tell you what, though, I'll give the TARDIS to Jenny. Loan the TARDIS. She can be in charge while we're away, she'll love it, she'll be so excited," Thirteen said, "It's kind of her birth right."

"Uh-huh?"

"I do have three conditions though."

"Oh, right."

"Number one," the Doctor let go of one of Clara's hands and held up her index finger, "I want a dog. Number two," she put up two fingers, "I want a waterbed. And number three," she showed three fingers, "I want a bouncy castle."

"Okay, well, how about you get none of those things and I'll forget you ever asked?"

"I'm willing to compromise on the bouncy castle and the waterbed and get a slip'n'slide, or a paddling pool."

"No?"

"Just the dog then?"

"Also no."

"We're getting a pet."

"You're not getting anything that smells, anything that needs to be walked, if it's a lizard that needs to be fed live animals _you're_ feeding it, and I am void of all responsibility," Clara declared. The Doctor mulled this over, thinking of a way to get what she wanted out of Clara when she was, so obviously, just putty in her wife's soft hands. Then she clapped.

"I've got it: a tortoise. They're quiet, adorable, and live for _ages_. And we could name it together, it can be our child."

"Uh, what-now?"

"God, this is gonna be great, Coo, honestly. Just let me grab my laptop from my bag. It's gonna have a whole room of its own, full of leaves, and rocks, and… more leaves, probably. Do they eat leaves? I have no clue. We'll have to find out. I'm gonna name it Delilah."

"We are not naming an imaginary tortoise 'Delilah,' sweetheart," Clara said, grabbing Thirteen's hand as she tried to stand up to leave to keep her sat in the bed, "Just calm down. It's the middle of the night. Neither of us have slept properly. There's no rush. Let's just drink this hot chocolate and talk until we fall asleep, okay?"

"About the tortoise? Or a snake, what about a snake? A snake called Bartholomew. I'll feed it the mice, like you said. Or, I don't know, vegetarian tofu mouse substitute. Or… an owl. A big tawny owl called Megatron. What about one of those micro-pigs?"

"Those things grow to be the size of regular pigs."

"I'm gonna name it Pork Rinds."

"Absolutely not, that's evil," Clara said, but she laughed, plucking her hot chocolate out of the air, "Come on. Come back to bed. You're all excited now thinking of these pets I'm not going to let you have."

"Well if you have a job, who am I meant to hang around with?" she questioned, "Wait. I'll get a job too. We could both get jobs, in the same place. Clara, this is the best idea you've ever had. Hang on, _now_ I've got it, we'll have a pet armadillo. Or we'll steal a tiger cub and raise it from birth, a tiger cub named Jenny Junior."

"Time to go to sleep now, Doctor."

"Or-"

"Right, if I say you can have a pet, will you shut up?"

"Yes."

"You can have a pet."

"Awesome. I knew there was some reason I fell in love with you."

**AN: No, this is not the last you will see of Clarteen. They have at least one more full storyline set in the future, and will appear again after that in a more minor way, without spoiling too much. Thirteen has to be back so that I can still justify naming the third part, "_5 Time Lords, 13 Companions, Can Anything Else Go Wrong?_" since without Thirteen, there's only four Time Lords, and I like the way it goes 3, 4 and then 5. But this makes Clarenny the only regularly appearing, canon, queer couple. Also, this is probably a longshot, but do any of you prefer Thirteen over Beta Twelve?**


	468. Dearly Beloved, Are You Listening?

**DAY 132**

_Dearly Beloved, Are You Listening?_

_Adam_

Generally, Adam Mitchell liked to wake up at his own pace, which was usually very slowly. He did not appreciate being jabbed in the back repeatedly by his girlfriend trying to get him to regain consciousness, and especially not when he'd been having a dream about cake. She had taken him from a world full of cake to a world with no cake, because there never seemed to be cake around when he really wanted it. Yet on birthdays, when there was an abundance of it, he was never in the mood. Oswin elbowed him in the shoulder.

"Stop it!" he complained, "Your elbows are bony."

"Wasn't my elbow," she said, "It's my leg. Well, uh, stump."

"Then your stump is bony."

"That'll be the bone in it."

"What do you want? Why are you waking me up?" he whinged, rolling away from her. She was sitting up properly next to him. He pulled the sheets up over his head.

"Because _she's_ keeping_ me_ awake, so _I'm_ going to keep _you_ awake until one of us figures out how to make her go away," Oswin whispered.

"She's _your_ sister. What time is it?"

"Six in the morning," she said, and he groaned loudly.

"Just. Ignore. Her."

"I can't ignore her, she's _in my brain_. Whining. Being pathetic."

"And you're in my bed whining and being pathetic, so I think you're just as bad as each other and that you should let me go back to sleep."

"Our bed, babe. It's _our_ bed."

"Yeah, and it's for sleeping. She's _your_ sister, _you_ let her sleep on the sofa out there, it's not my problem," he complained, shoving his head definitively underneath the pillow to signify this was the end of the argument and he was going to go back to thinking about cake again. Oswin didn't accept this, though.

"I'll go on a date with you if you wake up now and don't go back to sleep," she said, and he pushed the pillow away and narrowed his eyes at her in the dark.

"A date?"

"That's what I said."

"A _real_ date?"

"Yep." A date with Oswin Oswald was gold dust. He was _always_ trying to make her go out places with him, but her answer was always the same, she always said there was no reason for them to go out somewhere because they lived together and spent almost _all_ their time with each other.

"And you'll let me pick where we go?"

"Sure thing."

"…Fine. I'll stay up. But I'm holding you to that, don't welch on me," he said, pushing the pillow away and sitting up.

"I don't go back on my promises."

"Yes you do, ages ago you promised to get me some kind of fancy brace for my ankle so that it wouldn't keep giving out when I'm trying to walk," he pointed out to her, yawning, grabbing his glasses from underneath the sheets where they had been; he must have fallen asleep with them on. They were covered in smudges, but it was too dark to matter much.

"Yes, I did, from Flek, except Flek and I aren't really talking*, in case you've forgotten. Which I'm sure you haven't," she quipped. She was right, he hadn't forgotten. Whenever anybody mentioned Flek, he tried to remember every word they said. Could anybody blame him for being a little bit jealous of his girlfriend's gorgeous, green-eyed, pink-haired, genius-doctor ex? Even if Flek _was_ a bit of a maniac when it came to the environment, if it was _him_, he'd think the positives outweighed the negatives when it came to listening to an anti-human rant about pollution every now and again. Not that he wanted Oswin to leave him, or anything. "Don't you think she's being a bit of a baby?"

"Who? Flek?"

"No, Clara – stop thinking about my ex-girlfriend, you're obsessed, it's weird," she remarked, "If you keep bringing her up, I'll bring up the fact you obviously have the biggest crush in the universe on Esther Drummond." He opened his mouth to object. "Don't even deny it. There's no point."

"I have the biggest crush in the universe on _you_, Oswin," he told her sweetly.

"No, no, no. You're so into her it's painful. I can tell. I'm into her as well."

"Yeah, well, she's the most asexual person I've ever met," he said.

"I know, if she wasn't I'd probably have secretly blocked her number in your phone so you couldn't talk to her. And I'd expect you to do the same to me. Unless we could _both_ date her…"

"Dating two people at once hasn't really gone well for your sister, so I doubt it would go well for us. I also think Esther would be incredibly uncomfortable if she heard this conversation, and I feel second-hand abject horror on her behalf," he said. He didn't fancy Esther Drummond. That was ridiculous. Just because she was adorable, and pretty, and clever, and nice, and played video games, and understood his pop culture references… of course, Oswin was all of those things, too. _And_ Oswin was funny. Esher, tragically, didn't have that particular talent. And to top it off, Oswin was the one who actually fancied him back. Mentioning Clara brought the conversation about Esther to a close, anyway.

"She _is_ being pathetic."

"I don't think she is."

"How isn't she? She's out there, wallowing, after she lied and told her husband I was having another of my 'episodes' and she couldn't possibly have dinner with him, and she absolutely had to stay with me for the entire night and nobody else was allowed to come in. God knows how long it's going to be before she actually pisses off," Oswin grumbled, crossing her arms in a huff. She tried to lean back, but overestimated the distance between her and the wall and banged her head. "Ow."

"Are you okay?"

"I'm fine. Maybe the pain will drown out Clara's pathos," she muttered, "All I have in my head is _her_, being sad. It's not like she doesn't still have a husband who's equally devoted to her. What a schmuck he is. I feel worse than for him than for Clara."

"She's just upset, Oswin. She'll get over it," he told her.

"Well _I_ think she's unjustly upset. It's not like they were together. No amount of her obsessing over Thirteen ever made them more than incredibly sexually frustrated gays. They kissed, like, _twice_. And one of those was a goodbye kiss, so it doesn't count. _We_ kissed more than that before we were together," she said, and there was a brief pause where Adam was side-tracked thinking about kissing Oswin, but thankfully she didn't pick up on that.

"And if I'd just disappeared and left you with the promise that, in forty-nine years, we would be together, would you have been a bit upset, do you think?" he said, and he had caught her out.

"That's totally different. I'm sure I would have got over you in those forty-nine years. I'd be dating Jenny," she said. Then _he_ was the one caught out, because it suddenly struck him that that was _true_. If Oswin had been single after the first time Jenny and Jack had split up, undoubtedly, they _would_ be together, and they would probably be quite happy, too…

"You would, wouldn't you?" he said.

"…I didn't mean it like I like Jenny," she said, "And it wouldn't end well. She is an _incredibly_ damaged person; she just hides it far better than I do. It would _not_ be pretty. Well, of course we would be _pretty_, have you looked at either of us? I mean emotionally. It would be terribly unpleasant, I'm sure of it."

"I think _you're_ the one who's being a baby. You're underestimating your significance again, you know that you're the most important person in the world to Clara – which is a very odd thing for your boyfriend to be pointing out, but I digress – and you're still here. She's here because she wants _your_ company, and _you_ to make her feel better, so you're just gonna have to suck it up and be compassionate," he said, "And then, before you know it, she and Eleven will be all sickening sparkles and rainbows again and nobody will want to be in the same room. And we can go on our date you promised. Unless you're, you know, busy with Jenny, or something…" he said, shrugging, and she smiled and leaned towards him.

"Jenny has a girlfriend, Mitchell. A girlfriend who looks _exactly like me_."

"How spooky," he said, going to kiss her like she so blatantly wanted him to. His glasses bumped on her nose, and then her phone buzzed on the bed next to her. When she didn't answer after a few seconds and paid his lips a great deal more attention, he broke it off and saw it was Esther Drummond herself calling, "Speaking of _spooky_, are you going to answer that?" When he freed his mouth she just moved on to kissing his jaw.

"No, ignore it," she breathed, putting a hand on his chin to pull his face around so she could kiss him again.

"It says it's Esther." He got the message about ignoring the phone when Oswin bit his lip, and he kissed her back deeply. The phone rang out and the bright screen went dark after flashing and showing she had one missed call from Esther Drummond, the object of both their desires, according to his girlfriend.

But then _Adam's_ phone went off, vibrating much louder on the table behind him, and for all of her complaining and murmuring to him to leave it, he still turned enough to see _Esther_ glowing brightly on the screen, there in bold above the green and red answer and decline buttons.

"It's Esther again." She kissed his neck.

"We'll call her back," she assured him softly, running a hand through his hair and leaning her weight in his direction so that he would soon have to succumb and be pushed down onto the bed underneath her, "_Later_."

"Uh… yeah, yeah, you're right… she can wait, can't she?"

"Of course she can wait."

They went back to what they had been doing, making out at six o'clock in the morning, and his phone rang out. Then Oswin started mumbling things about their simulation, asking where he had left the device which looked deceptively like a television remote that controlled it. It was when Adam was reaching blindly behind himself for it that his phone rang _again_, and it was Esther _again_, and he picked it up and left Oswin's mouth alone.

"Mitchell!" she protested.

"It might be important! Why would she keep calling if it wasn't important?"

"Because Sally Sparrow stole her phone and wants to ask if our refrigerator is running. _Again_."

"You're just upset because you fell for it the first time."

"I'm upset because I think you're hot and I'm into you and kind of want to get off – which basically _never_ happens."

"I really should answer."

"What? No! Babe, no! Don't you dare answer that-"

"Hello?" he answered the phone, putting it to his ear, trying to avoid the particularly horrifying glare he was getting from Oswin, kneeling crookedly next to him in bed (it was, of course, impossible for her to kneel and _not_ be on an angle slanting left, because she only really had the one knee.) She mouthed the word _"dick_" at him, and he looked at her apologetically.

"_Yeah, hi, why did it take you so long to answer?_" Esther questioned him.

"I just… I couldn't, um… find my phone. Just found it now. Sorry," he said, and Oswin took his glasses off his face and put them on herself because she liked to wear them. He didn't complain, he just let her.

"_Are you busy, or something?_"

"Busy? No. I wasn't, uh… I wasn't doing anything I can't resume later?" he said, mostly to Oswin, a hopeful tone of voice.

"Oh, you'd be so lucky," she snapped under her breath, and he gave her a soppy look, "Don't you dare. You've missed your shot. Chosen another woman over me."

"_What now?_"

"I've hardly 'chosen another woman,'" Adam argued.

"_What did you just say?_"

"Nothing, Esther. Nothing at all," he said quickly, "Forget that. I'm just talking to Oswin."

"_She's there? Why didn't she answer her phone? I called her first_."

"Well, she, uh… she… just didn't hear it. Didn't hear it ring. Had no idea you called. Why are you calling, again? Is it important?"

"_Yes, of course it's important, why would I call if it wasn't?_" she said, a great deal of urgency in her voice, "_I need to talk to both of you_."

"Both of us? Are you sure? Oswin's in a bad mood," he warned her, and Oswin scoffed indignantly.

"If Esther wants to be a cock-block, she has to learn to live with the consequences," Oswin said, and Adam ignored her and put the phone on speaker, apologising to Esther as he did so because Oswin was now speaking loud that she could hear her down the line.

"_This isn't a laughing matter or a time for jokes_," Esther said coldly, which was odd, because Esther was never usually cold, "_I've finally got something for you, to do with Clara's Echoes, the job you pay me to do. And it's not good, it's really not good. It's March 2__nd__, you have to get to Nottingham as soon as possible, someone's started killing them_."

*_chapter 898_


	469. The Case of the Clone Killer: Part One

**AN: This storyline has the weirdest tone, it's simultaneously quite dark but quite light-hearted because of how funny the Spooks are together. Also, I'm changing the village Sally, Esther and Ravenwood live in to be a fictional one called Hollowmire so that I have a lot more freedom with it and can give it a spooky history and a weird vibe.**

_The Case of the Clone Killer: Part One_

_Esther_

"Dammit!" she cursed, clenching her fist around her phone.

"That's the closest thing to an actual swear word I've ever heard you say," Sally Sparrow muttered, slouching down in the passenger seat of the blue Mini Cooper. Sally was observing the street in front of them as they waited for the Twins to show; she was bored and had almost run out of coffee in her travel mug. Esther knew this because she wouldn't shut up complaining about how she was bored and had almost run out of coffee in her travel mug.

"Aren't you pleased I'm being a bit more 'normal?'" Esther muttered.

"In this case, you're not being normal, you've been playing _Flappy Bird_ non-stop for three days and you can't get higher than twenty-two. It's twisting your innocent little mind and making you into a tiny ball of rage and profanity," Sally said, "I think it's bad for you. And it died out nearly two and a half years ago, you're behind the times."

"_During_ the times, I was dead," Esther pointed out, "So file your complaints with whoever shot me. And – what's up with the 'little' and the 'tiny?'"

"Buy a measuring tape and you'll see what's up. Or what's down. Low to the ground. If you know what I-"

"I do, thanks," Esther said, and then the car grew quiet, so she corrected, "And I'm not on twenty-two, I got to twenty-four now."

"And it only took you seventy hours of your precious afterlife. I bet you feel really accomplished right now," Sally said, and Esther didn't comment, "You know, when _I_ had that game, I got to about a hundred and seventy." Esther growled with frustration and then closed the app and kept her phone tightly in her hand.

"Well now I have nothing to do."

"You know; I'm getting the vibe from you that you're in a bad mood."

"Gee, d'you think? What gave it away? The fact it's not even eight in the morning and we're sitting in my car waiting for some tardy time travellers to show up so we can sneak around a crime scene while there's a serial killer on the loose? How can you even _be_ late when you live in a time machine? This arrival staggering is rude and unpunctual. You wouldn't get very far in the CIA showing up late everywhere," Esther argued.

"Uh-huh. Are you more upset about them being late or the girls being murdered?"

"The girls. Obviously…"

"Seems a bit like you care more about their lack of punctuality."

"No, I mean… murder is… bad."

"What if there was a murderer, and he said he was gonna murder someone at a specific time, and then he was late?" Sally asked her.

"If you're gonna murder somebody, you better have the good graces to show up on time! I can't stand it! You just let people down with your indifference to basic tacit rules _you_ laid out yourself and agreed to. It's common decency," Esther said, then saw Sally looking at her with her eyebrows raised, "Oh, and the killing part. I don't like the killing part either."

"You're a bit mental, you know."

"And _you're_ a bit politically incorrect, so who's the real winner, huh?"

"Obviously not the girl who got murdered last night. You need caffeine, desperately, your crankiness is frightening me," Sally said, and then she offered Esther the last dregs of her coffee.

"…Did you brush your teeth this morning?"

Sally scowled and then mustered all of her sarcasm and said, "_Yeah_, it was that day of the week so I thought I'd just give my mouth a quick swill with some industrial bleach and a spoonful of vinegar. Of course I brushed my teeth, what kind of animal do you think I am?"

"Well, you know, you're… British."

"Excuse me?"

"You don't exactly have a good rep for dental hygiene on your island here!"

"I think you might be being racist, Esther."

"_I_ think I might be joking."

"And doing a bad job of it. I withdraw my offer of coffee."

"Oh no, please, I'm sorry, you're right," Esther pleaded, holding out her hand for the travel mug, which Sally relinquished easily, "But, um, tell me which side you drank from so I can drink from the opposite one." Sally raised her eyebrows at her. "Or… don't…" She sipped from the mug tentatively.

"Just remind me, is scurvy viral?" Sally asked, and Esther coughed. Esther's coughing was drowned out by a familiar screeching noise that came from a back alley just behind where they had parked the car. The TARDIS, arriving, finally. Late. The pilots had overestimated the amount of time it would take for them to travel from Hollowmire to Nottingham, so they weren't on time. What bothered Esther was that if they had just come to the house, the four of them could have gotten to the crime scene right as the police did. As it happened, they were staring at police cars and cops and tape and looking mightily suspicious in the vibrant, blue car.

"No," Esther answered as they got out of the car, leaving the mug behind. With the thrumming of the TARDIS, Sally had forgotten what question she asked.

"Sorry?"

"Scurvy. It's not viral. It's caused by a vitamin C deficiency." Esther followed her into the alley, checking the road as she did. It was mostly empty though, it was too early for people to be bustling about everywhere, and it was forecast to snow that day, March 2nd. Sally leant on the grimy brick wall of the dank alley, watching the TARDIS finish materialising, as Esther continued to explain the finer points of oral infections, "You know, in fairness, suggesting you had scurvy because you're British is factually incorrect – in America people call you 'limeys' because of the fact you all ate a lot of citrus fruit back in the day. After limes. Because they have vitamin C, which prevents scurvy. Not that pirates knew about vitamin deficiencies." Clara and Oswin Oswald stepped out of the TARDIS right into the middle of this stupid conversation. It took Esther a second of playing Spot the Wedding Ring to figure out which one of them was which.

"What about gingivitis? Is that contagious?"

"No."

"Gum disease?"

"Gingivitis _is_ gum disease," Esther told her.

"Huh. Then I suppose you only have the herpes to worry about catching," Sally smiled.

"I know you're joking, but dental hygiene is very important," Esther told her seriously, "You know that mouth cancer is the fifteenth most common type of cancer in women?"

"Well I'll be sure to watch out for that after the other fourteen types of cancer have their way with me," Sally said, then she frowned, "And why on Earth do you know that statistic off the top of your head?"

"Thirty-one percent of all adults have tooth decay," Esther informed her.

Sally turned to address Clara and Oswin, remarking, "And people say _I'm_ the crazy one."

"You know, they say that to me as well," Oswin said, acting as though she were in shock, "For the life of me I can't think why. So where did Esther catch herpes from?"

"I have not caught herpes," Esther assured her.

"Don't be pessimistic! Give it a few days and your lips might be _riddled_ with sores."

"Dare to dream," she grumbled. To the Twins, she said, "You two are late." Sally scoffed next to her.

"The dead girl isn't exactly going to run away," Sally said.

"Oh, you'd be surprised how nimble dead girls can be," Oswin remarked.

"What? You and your prosthetic?" Clara questioned. Sally laughed.

"Didn't hear you complaining about my lack of nimbleness when we were doing it last night, Clars," Oswin muttered offhandedly. Clara paused and looked at her, and then she apologised to Esther and Sally on behalf of her sister's behaviour. And incest. If Esther hadn't recently been unhealthily preoccupied with punctuality over the death of a genuine human being, she would take the high road and scold them all for being insensitive about the issue. But if she did that, she would be a hypocrite, and she didn't think she could stomach Sally calling her a hypocrite that morning. Not after everything that had already happened.

"What's going on, then?" Clara asked.

"We don't know," Esther said, and Clara stared at her and looked as though she were about to become argumentative, "I mean, we don't know the specifics. Someone's been killing your Echoes, and in that apartment block across the street is the fourth victim, Cara Oswald. I only found out about it last night, set the computer so that it would notify me. And… well, it did notify me, at quarter to six this morning, that there was another body that fit the MO."

"And what _is_ the MO, exactly?" Clara asked, crossing her arms.

"It's classified," Esther explained, "The data is confiscated from the police. All we know is that they're your Echoes, and for three months somebody's been killing them."

"Classified? Aren't you some sort of computer whiz?" Clara asked her.

"I don't know who's classifying it, so I can't hack in to retrieve anything. That's classified, too. It's probably being ordered in person, so there's no digital paper trail to follow," Esther explained.

"Brilliant. That's just what I need," she grumbled.

"Uh, I have to talk to Esther," Oswin mainly said to Sally, "You can show Clara where the crime scene is, right?"

"I suppose?" Sally said unsurely.

"Great, it's just about… Adam. He told me to tell you something. Something nerdy. Neither of you two will be remotely interested."

"I'm sure that's true," Sally said. Clara didn't hesitate to follow Sally around, but Esther thought Oswin was lying about Adam Mitchell having to say something to her.

"You're not gonna ask me to marry you again, are you?" she asked guardedly. The last thing she wanted was to be alone in an alleyway with a girl who often came across as being obsessed with her.

"No," Oswin said, "Unless your answer is yes."

"'Fraid not."

"I'll hold out hope. It's about Clara," Oswin said, glancing over Esther's shoulder to see that Sally and Clara were out of earshot. Esther didn't think it was a good idea for Sally to try and lie her way into a crime scene without her, though; she would probably say something a bit… crazy. "The thing is, Thirteen left last night, so she's in a mood. _I_ think she's being pathetic, but Mitchell told me to be – eurgh – _compassionate_, or something."

"Oh, right," Esther said.

"Although, come to think of it, I'm sure he_ did_ give me a message for you, something to do with becoming a higher level than you on _Dragon Age_ two days ago," Oswin said, "Maybe. I'd just text him and find out yourself."

"Probably for the best, you must have the message wrong since there's absolutely no way he's a higher level than me," Esther said, "I mean, just last week I killed the Gamordan Stormrider, the Vinsomer _and_ the Kaltenzahn. Two of those are electrical element dragons, too, which was pretty awesome."

"Okay, well, I'm going to pretend I care about what you just said," Oswin told her, "But if you could just not bring up Thirteen, and tell Sally as well the next chance you get. I don't want to have to comfort her, or something, I'm unsurprisingly not very good at it. Distracting her with heinous crimes usually works. I mean, _I'm_ kind of sad about it too, thank god we have you here to fill her small, American boots."

"Wait – is that why you warned _me_ first?" Esther questioned her, but Oswin was pushing her out of the alley. Esther hit one of Oswin's hands off her shoulder, "I can walk! Did you seriously warn me because I might remind her of-"

"Sorry, she's just very upset about pathetic nerd stuff," Oswin cut Esther off to talk to the other two, who were lurking quite close by.

"As usual," Sally remarked.

"Hey!" Esther protested.

Sally shrugged indifferently, then she looked on with confusion when Clara took an old wallet out of her pocket and asked, "What's that?"

"Psychic paper," Oswin answered. The building had three police cars in front of it, and Esther recognised the signs of at least two other unmarked official cars belonging to detectives and whoever else. Sally didn't know what psychic paper was (Esther did, she had seen it in use when she ran into Thomas Edison), and Oswin told her to 'watch and learn' as they approached the place, with its police tape and guards.

"Won't everyone recognise the two of you?" Sally asked quickly.

"No, we have perception filters," Oswin hissed, "Makes our faces hard to comprehend, like looking at someone without glasses on when you vision is terrible. You'll only see us if you know what to look for, or if we draw attention to ourselves. Or if you have fifty-thousand joules of electricity powering your brain."

"Isn't showing up at that door demanding entry drawing attention?" Esther asked, "Give me the psychic paper, I'll talk to them. I _am_ the only one of us here who ever _actually_ worked for Torchwood, since I assume that's what you'll be saying?"

"Esther's right," Oswin snatched the paper from Clara, who objected, and gave it to Esther. Then Oswin shushed her sister and Esther pushed between them, Sally following in her wake. The Twins loitered, at Oswin's instruction to Clara, a few feet behind them.

"Hi," Esther introduced herself, holding up the paper, hoping there wasn't some secret to making it work that she didn't know, "We're with Torchwood, special ops, we're taking over this crime scene."

"They let Americans into that shit show now, do they?" the PC watching the door questioned.

"Maybe if you spent more time listening to your superiors, they'd let you in, too," Sally commented. He glared at her, and she smiled back.

"You know, in my experience, the way you join Torchwood is by directly disobeying your superiors. That's why the CIA tried to buy me out," Esther said, and then she stopped herself, "Not that that's important. Let us in now, we're authorised to carry guns." The PC grunted and stepped aside, opening the door. The Twins, keeping their heads down, trailed behind them.

"I can't believe you told that bloke we have guns on us," Sally muttered to her.

"I didn't, I just said we're authorised to carry them. Which we would be, if we were in Torchwood, and if Torchwood hadn't been replaced," she said quietly back. The apartment they were going to was on the third floor, so they made their way up, following the foot traffic and the crime scene tape until they reached the apartment where Esther, who had memorised Cara Oswald's address, knew they would find her body. She wasn't a fan of dead bodies. She thought, though, that maybe it would have been best if they had just not told Clara and Oswin about this.

"Oh, god, who are you now?" some detective with nicotine stains on his fingers, creased clothes, and a stink of coffee about him, came swanning in front of them, blocking their passage into the crime scene itself.

"Special ops," Esther said, holding up the wallet, "We're interested in these crimes."

"More of you?" he asked. She was struck dumb.

"What do you mean, 'more'?" Sally asked, when Esther couldn't find the will to speak any longer. He just scoffed, then said he was going to get coffee and left without explanation. Esther nearly asked him if he would get _her_ some coffee, too. They were left to wonder what he meant and make their way into Cara's newly tenant-less flat.

The smell was the first thing Esther noticed. The smell of rotting flesh was something you never forgot, and you especially didn't forget it when, for a segment of your life, _you_ stank of rotting flesh, because you _were_ rotting flesh, because you had been dead in a grave in Washington D.C. for three years. She still didn't cope very well with scenes like this, though, with the image of a dead girl lying on the floor of her own living room, head turned away from them, a pool of blood dried into the carpet like the corpse had puked the red stuff up as she died.

As grim as all that was, though, Cara Oswald's body wasn't the main attraction. That award went to the familiar guy who was crouched down on the floor looking at something, sandy brown hair, a leather jacket, latex gloves. DI Elliott, the guy who genuinely did belong to special ops, while they did not*. In spite of their grim surroundings though, and the fact she didn't know him all that well, Esther still smiled when she saw him. _He_ was looking at Sally though, who hovered behind. Then the Twins came in to see what all the fuss was about and found themselves at odds with Elliott.

"Who the hell are you?" Clara questioned him.

"This is Elliott, he works for New Torchwood," Sally introduced.

"_New Torchwood?_" both of them asked together, which unnerved Esther. She did sometimes forget that they weren't really twins, they were, technically, clones. Or maybe she just didn't want to think about that.

"It's called Undercoll, it's different," Elliott said, "It's less corporate, there are only half a dozen of us."

"Hang on, you two knew there was some kind of replacement for Torchwood, and you never thought to tell us…?" Clara asked she and Sally.

"We didn't think much of it," Sally defended the pair of them.

"We're not out to cause you and your spaceship community any trouble," Elliott said.

"How much have you two told him? You could be putting us in danger," Clara argued.

"You're fine, and it's not them, we repossessed all of UNIT's files on extra-terrestrials, you're in them. We did it to stop the HCC getting them, otherwise you would be on their most wanted list for being a Manifest," Elliott said.

"You repossessed files from UNIT?" Oswin asked, intrigued. Elliott was still holding something that looked like a piece of paper in one of his gloved hands.

"We're sanctioned by the crown. We have that authority. UNIT doesn't have any, everybody lost faith in them after the Manifest Crisis. They hired me for it because I ran into the Doctor in Cardiff last year," Elliott said. Oswin clapped her hands when she realised.

"_That's_ where I recognise you from! Right. Sorry. You remember me, Oswin? The genius? You haven't met my sister in person." Clara seemed displeased, but trusted her sister's judgement.

"I take it Undercoll are the ones who have confiscated all the case files from the local police departments across the country?" Sally questioned him.

"You guess correctly. Can't have the press getting hold of clone murders in the UK moving southward," Elliott said, "We'd like to warn your other doppelgängers, but somebody's covering up their existence."

"Oh, that's me," Esther said, smiling, "That's my job, for their safety."

"The same reason we confiscated everything from the police. They don't know there's a serial killer," he said, "The public don't. They don't need to, they're not in danger. Unless they look like you." He nodded at Clara.

"So you know the case details?" she asked, and he nodded. "Well you'd best cooperate with us, because they're my responsibility, so I'm not leaving."

"I appreciate the help," he said, smiling politely at her.

Sally whispered something to Esther about the smell, and Esther told her she could go wait in the car if she wanted. Sally refused and skulked off towards the window, opening it to try and get rid of the smell. Esther couldn't blame her, if she hadn't gotten so used to smelling it on herself, she would probably be queasy as well. Elliott watched her do this for a few seconds, until Esther interrupted him.

"What's going on, then?" she asked, and he stoodup.

"This, for starters," he said, showing them what he had been holding the entire time they had been there. He walked around the body, and didn't let Clara take it when she made to grab.

"Why can't I touch it? I have the same fingerprints as the victim," she argued.

"This doesn't belong to the victim. It's a photocopy," he said. Esther stared at it, just like the Twins, and knew that whoever was in the picture was an Echo. But if not the victim, then who?

"Oh my god," Clara said. She tried to grab it again, but Elliott still wouldn't let her take it, "That's me! Who left that here? The killer!? How did the killer get this picture of me!?"

"Calm down," Oswin told her.

"Calm down!? That picture is in my dad's living room, Os – whoever's killing the Echoes has been in my house!" Clara was frantic.

"Just stop… listen to… Clara… _Clara!_" Oswin shouted to get her to shut up finally. Esther sidled away from them to go linger by the window at Sally Sparrow's side. Sally was just watching. For once, the mood was serious enough to dampen her usual obscene levity. "Go into the kitchen and call your father to check he's alright." Clara did exactly as she was told, and Oswin watched her do it. Clara closed the door, and Oswin addressed the room, "I'm so sorry, she's in a bit of a mood…"

"Are you sure you're okay?" Esther asked Sally again. She stayed right there leaning against the open window, looking at the snow on the ground, "You really don't have to be here, I'll give you the car keys."

"But you usually hide your car keys from me."

"That's when I'm not worried about you, I don't know, puking, or something," Esther told her.

"I'm fine," Sally assured her. Esther didn't believe her, but Sally was the most stubborn person she had ever met. There was no point in arguing.

"What's going on then?" Oswin asked Elliott, "What's all – eurgh…" she had walked around to the other side of Cara's body and seen something unpleasant, clearly.

"What is it?" Esther asked, following. Nobody warned her away, but in retrospect she wished they would have. She didn't think she needed to see what had caused Oswin to stop mid-sentence, but she did. Cara's face was destroyed. It was slashed to pieces, with a knife, to the point where she couldn't be recognised. That was where all of the blood on the carpet came from. "Oh, god…"

"What?" Sally asked.

"Stay over there," Esther said, covering her mouth with her hand, "Her face has been cut up."

"So this is meant for Clara," Sally theorised, "It's obviously a message to her."

"That's what we figured, but we don't know what the message is," Elliott said, "It speaks to revenge."

"Who were the other victims?" Oswin asked, "How old were they?"

"In Inverness a Carla Oswald who was twenty, in Edinburgh an Orla Stewart – maiden name Orla Oswin – who was thirty-one, and another Clara Oswald in Newcastle, who had just turned seventy. Born 1946." Oswin paused for a moment, and sighed.

"I think we knew that last one as well, I think we met her in the 1960s. Sort of. You would've liked her," Oswin said to Sally, "She was on a lot of weed wandering around a condemned asylum looking for ghosts**." Esther very nearly laughed, but she managed to stop herself.

"But wait, if she was seventy, she wouldn't have looked like the others," Sally realised, "So how is the killer finding them, if not by just picking them out on the street? You couldn't have recognised her for what she was." That was a good point. "And with Esther and Oswin's boyfriend trying to cover up their existence, how did they find them?"

"We don't know that, either," Elliott said, "It's a baffling case. Mind you, most of the cases I investigate now are. What's especially weird is that nobody knows how the killer got in. No signs of forced entry, locked doors, closed windows, high-up building. The only way would be if she let them in. And then the cause of death."

"Is the cause of death not blood loss from the facial wounds?" Esther asked. She stepped away so that she didn't have to look at Cara's shredded, gory face any longer.

"Haven't had a chance to send this one down to London for Cohen to autopsy yet, but the other three were all the same, all died as the result of an extreme epileptic seizure. But none of them have any history of being epileptic," he said.

"So the killer, what? Teleports into the room, magically induces a fatal seizure, slices up the face, drops the photo, and teleports back out again?" Sally hypothesised, a little sarcastically.

"Unless she _did _let them in," Esther said, "The time between the killings is enough time for her to get to know somebody."

"Especially if she shares Clara's habit of sleeping with everybody she meets who seems remotely interested," Oswin added, "Honestly, I can see her getting killed this way for her promiscuity. I'm actually surprised it hasn't happened already."

"But the door was locked," Elliott pointed out, "It's a chain lock, has to be done from the inside. So they can't have come in through the door."

"The window?" Sally suggested, "It was open."

"We're on the third floor and the fire escape is on the other side of the building, there's no way they could have survived the fall. There isn't even a drain pipe to climb up," Elliott said, "But the killer's moving south. If you four know where all the duplicates live-"

"Echoes," Oswin corrected, "Or Clechoes, we sometimes call them that, too. Well, _I_ do."

"You can go to the next one and stop this before it happens again," Elliott said, looking at Oswin expectantly.

"I don't know them," she said, "I try to stay out of any business involving Clara's… _other_ Echoes…" Oswin obviously didn't like being lumped in with the rest. She looked to Esther, though, raising her eyebrows as though Esther held all the answers. "You have information about all of them on your computer."

"But my computer is almost a two-hour drive away, and it's switched off. And all of that data is so sensitive it's saved onto the hard drive, not on the cloud or any external server, there's no way to access it, sorry," Esther apologised.

"Right. Awesome. And Adam's encryption software stops anybody else from finding out about them," Oswin sighed, thinking.

"That software is impossible to hack, Jacob's been trying for months," Elliott said.

"Jacob?" Esther asked.

"Jacob Lowe, our computer genius," Elliott answered, "He says that the code stopping anyone from accessing information on these Echoes rewrites itself continually."

"It does?" Oswin was surprised, "Mitchell is obviously cleverer than I give him credit for. I could hack it, but don't tell him, he might be upset if I do. If I get to a computer, that is, and it might take a while to find them all." Clara returned from the kitchen and everyone looked at her expectantly. It didn't look like she had had particularly bad news, though. "Well?"

"Dad's fine," Clara answered, "But he says a few months ago that picture disappeared, and he figured it was me who took it when I went to collect photo albums a while ago. So I called the Doctor and got him to check in our room, and he can't find it anywhere. The killer broke into my dad's house and stole a family photo." Oswin proceeded to explain to Clara everything they had just discussed, how she was going to need to get to a computer to find the next Echo to be targeted. There were largish gaps, weeks or so, in between each murder, so Esther presumed that they had more than enough time to stop any others from dying. Still, though, it was an intriguing mystery.

While Oswin did this, Esther went to look around the flat some more, and found a strange number of photographs of Cara Oswald in various swimming costumes, at pools with other people. Lifeguards? They were all wearing bright red, so she thought possibly. Then she saw they all had a logo on them, as well, with the name of some bland public pool emblazoned underneath it.

"Alright," Sally interrupted. By this point she was sitting on the windowsill and had her feet up on the arm chair next to her, leaving damp footprints on the fabric from the snow. Esther had to suppress the urge to tell her to get her feet off the furniture which, if it was their house, she definitely would, "Say the next one is miles and miles away, or in another country, and this killer has to go all the way there to get them. Shouldn't you be trying different avenues to find their identity first? Just in case they've fled the country? Even Undercoll can't have overseas jurisdiction."

"She's right," Esther said, looking away from the pictures. Cara really liked photos. Perhaps she was sentimental, perhaps Clara was, too. "This killer clearly knows where the Echoes are ahead of time, that's how they find them all, so what do they do in the meantime? Probably stalk them, like most serial killers do. Find patterns, pick a specific night to kill when they can get away."

"Meaning someone might have seen them following her," Sally said, "Weren't you going to check for witnesses?"

"Yes, until the lot of you showed up with the ability to predict the victims. By all means, the two of you go canvas and investigate if you want, I'll let you do it in Undercoll's name. Nobody'll mind," Elliott smiled at her, and she looked away quickly.

"If you two are going to do that, take the psychic paper or you won't get in anywhere," Clara said, rifling through her pocket until she dug out the battered wallet she had stolen from her husband and passed it to Esther.

"Do you really never take off those gloves?" Elliott questioned her, looking at her hands and the leather gloves on them.

"Well, I… I take them off when I go to sleep," she said, getting a little defensive, putting the psychic paper in her pocket and taking out her car keys at the same time. She held them out in Sally's general direction, and Sally slid off the windowsill and came and took them from her, Esther murmuring for her to go and wait in the car so she could get away from the decomposing body.

"Nice keychain," Oswin commented on the Pacman ghost hanging off the car keys.

"Huh? Oh, yeah. My sister got me it when I first passed my test, way back in 1997."

"1997? How old does that make you, like, fifty? You don't look fifty," Clara said, and Esther frowned at her.

"_Fifty_?" Oswin questioned, "Honey, I keep telling you not to hurt yourself doing maths."

"I'm thirty-five," Esther answered.

"God, you look a lot younger than thirty-five," Clara told her.

"Thanks, I guess? I'm happy just not looking like a corpse anymore…" she turned to leave.

"You and your wife have fun interviewing," Oswin called, and she looked back.

"My _what_? She is _not_ my-"

"Another, totally unrelated question," Sally poked her head back into the room just as Esther was about to open the door, making her jump. Sally was talking directly to her, as well, "I was just trying to remember if you folded my socks yesterday or if I told you not to?"

"Uh…" she faltered, distracted by Oswin sniggering in the background, then she clenched her jaw and told Sally, "Yes, I folded your socks. They're on your bed."

"Thanks. You're the best housemate a girl could ever wish for," she said, smiling, vanishing again. Oswin couldn't stifle her laughter any longer. Even Clara looked amused, and Elliott puzzled. Esther glared at the Twins.

"Clara and I will get you a belated wedding gift and bring it by later, shall we?" Oswin joked. Esther shook her head and decided she couldn't be bothered with this today, and skulked off out of the room to go and meet Sally downstairs in the car, hoping that it wouldn't be that hard to find this swimming pool Cara had been working in. She got dirty looks from some of the cops on her way and kept her head down with her hands stuck deep in her coat pockets.

"You have the worst timing of anybody I've ever met," Esther said once she got into the car, turning the keys in the ignition where Sally had put them. Sally didn't say anything, though. "Oswin keeps calling you my wife, and then you walk in and start asking questions about your darn socks… are you alright?" Esther glanced at Sally as she pulled out into the road carefully, trying not to slide about too much in the snow.

"I've just never seen a dead body before," Sally answered, leaning on the door and looking out of the window. Esther spared a look at her every couple of seconds.

"Sure you have, _I'm_ a dead body," Esther half-joked, furrowing her brow as she talked because she had never really thought of herself in this way before, "I'm just an unusually lively one who doesn't smell so bad." Sally laughed slightly. "…You know, during the Miracle, just a few days in, I saw this woman with her whole head twisted backwards. It was pretty awful."

"It sounds it. I didn't know the smell would be like that…"

"You know, the… the electricity heals me, but I was dead in a grave for three years before whatshisface brought me back to life," Esther told her, "And, uh, let's just say bodies decay quite a lot in three years."

"So you were, like, a zombie?"

"I guess, if you're gonna be insensitive about it. My fingernails all fell off."

"That's gross."

"They were black underneath."

"You can stop telling me now. Where are we going?"

"Local swimming pool. I don't suppose you feel like using Google Maps to find it, because I have no clue where it is, but she was definitely a lifeguard there, there were photos in her flat," Esther explained. Sally took her phone out of her pocket.

"So, as I understand it, you've been stood in there looking at pictures of men and women alike scantily clad in swimwear?" Sally questioned her, "What was it that drew your eye to them? All of that wet, exposed skin?"

"You know me; I just love exposed skin. All the more chance of electrocution. And if they're wet, too? Added conductivity."

"You went the wrong way, you have to take the next left," Sally said, and Esther switched the indicator on. "Esther?"

"Uh-huh?" she asked absently, paying more attention to the junction.

"Did it hurt?"

"Did what hurt?"

"When you were brought back to life. You don't talk about it, about being, I don't know… a corpse?" Esther didn't say anything, she paused for a long while until she was sure she wasn't going to skid into a wall. She felt Sally watching her, though, waiting for her answer.

"Yeah, it did. Hurt a lot. Especially the bullet wound. And my jaw. It sort of rotted away and… well… it fell off, there's no nice way to put it, on the one side. Rotting kind of feels like burning. Lucky I healed, there was no way I was getting on a plane to the UK looking like an extra from _The Walking Dead_. But, you know, it was years ago."

"Sorry, your_ jaw_? Was…? Oh my god, that's awful," Sally stared at her.

"What? No, it's fine."

"It's not fine, I can't imagine what that must have been like, it almost makes me upset you were ever brought back to life," Sally told her.

"Oh, sure, then you wouldn't have anyone to fold your socks for you."

"I'm being serious." Esther glanced at her, confused, because Sally Sparrow was never serious. 'Serious' was not a word that Esther thought even existed in Sally's vocabulary, she usually tried to make a comment about every little thing, like the whole world was a cynical joke. Esther was legitimately surprised – stunned, even – by Sally being _that_ affected by things that had happened to her four years ago. Things she didn't even remember too well because her brain had been pretty rotten, too. "Wait, did you say Oswin called me your wife?"

"Um, yeah."

"Jenny said almost the same thing to me the other week. You remember? When she baked the anchovy cookies and got in a fight with her dad and kicked me out? With the hat?"

"How could I forget. It's probably because they're all into girls, so they want everybody else to be into girls, too. Although, that _does _sound like I'm generalising them based on their sexuality… you know you're still supposed to be giving me directions?" Esther reminded her, and Sally promptly ordered her to go right because she had missed the last turning (and whose fault had _that_ been?) "How do you think he got into her apartment, then? The killer?"

"It's called a 'flat.' And I don't know. You didn't, you know, _sense_ anything?" Sally asked, "You know, anything… spooky?" Esther grimaced.

"No," she said firmly, "Are you suggesting a ghost killed her?"

"The ghost of somebody Clara murdered in the past. Seeking revenge."

Esther almost laughed, "Clara hasn't murdered anybody."

"How do you know?"

"I guess… well I guess I don't know for sure, but I like to see the best in people! And there was no ghost, anyway. Not even Cara's ghost. Maybe it's, I don't know, something to do with her dying from a seizure."

"It's the next left. Right there, I can see it. Do you think it's open with this snow?"

"Why would they close an indoor swimming pool because of snow? The snow isn't even that bad."

"All I mean is, a ghost _would_ have been able to get into the flat, without being seen, and might have the ability to induce a seizure. Don't you think it's a pretty odd way to kill somebody?"

"Yeah, but it's not a ghost. I would have been able to tell if a ghost killed Cara, Sally. It could have just as easily been someone really sneaky with, I don't know, a grappling hook, who came in through the open window."

"Right, so you're suggesting Batman is the killer, then?"

"That's crazy. Batman doesn't kill."

"Oh, _that's_ the crazy part of what you just said?"

"Alright, so we now have two suspects: Batman, or a ghost?" Esther questioned, pulling into the carpark of the swimming pool, which was surprisingly full despite how early in the morning it was. Although, really, it wasn't _that_ early anymore, it was just after ten.

"Maybe it's Houdini?"

"He's dead."

"His ghost? Or he's a time traveller. Maybe in Clara's future, she wrongs Houdini, and he comes seeking his revenge," Sally continued to think of insane theories as Esther parked the car and tried to block out the sound of her voice. Sally knew as well as she did, neither of them had any clue who might want to hurt Clara Oswald like this. The Clara _they_ knew, Ravenwood, was pretty closed off about her personal life and her time with the Doctor. She was very good at saying a lot, but not really saying anything at all. When they saw her, Jenny Harkness was usually there as well, and she did most of the talking.

"Bringing me to a swimming pool is probably a terrible idea…" Esther said carefully, eyeing the place up as she got out of the Mini, "One wrong step or slip and I'm responsible for a massacre. What if someone pushes me into the pool?"

"No, who would do that?"

"You would."

"Well I promise not to, alright?" Sally said, though Esther wasn't entirely sure if she believed her. Of course, Sally Sparrow was no cold-blooded murderer, no psychopath who wanted to kill dozens of innocents for kicks, but it seemed like the kind of joke she would play. "I always thought being a detective would be quite fun, but I couldn't join the police. You need to pass a psychological evaluation. You know what else I couldn't pass? Swimming lessons, in primary school."

"What? You don't know how to swim? But you took us to that lake! What if you fell in!? I couldn't have saved you."

"I _can_ swim, just not very well. And I wasn't planning on falling into the lake. Though, if I _had_ fallen in and drowned, you still wouldn't be rid of me, would you?" she joked. Not really the _funniest_ thing Esther had ever heard in her life.

"No, your ghost would be hanging around me forever, undoubtedly," Esther muttered, holding the door open for Sally, getting the borrowed psychic paper out of her coat pocket. It was warm inside, but it stank of chlorine immediately. It was a pleasant change after the dead body they had been hanging around earlier. She went right up to the reception desk and smiled, showing the paper, "Hi, did a Cara Oswald work here?" The receptionist, a young woman, looked at her funny.

"You're a detective?"

"That's right."

"But you're American. Is that allowed?"

"Fully-fledged British citizen, sure it is," she lied. She had no legal right to be in the country, just a bunch of fake papers if anybody came knocking.

"Cara, though, is this where she worked?" Sally interrupted.

"What do you mean, 'worked?' She didn't show up this morning, has something happened?"

"I'm sorry to have to tell you that Cara was found murdered this morning, and we're heading up the investigation," Sally said seriously, showing a sympathetic streak Esther had never seen in her before. She was normally very crass with the things she said. It was probably for the best that the English one out of them talked, anyway. The receptionist gasped and put a hand to her mouth in shock.

"Murdered? Cara?" she questioned.

"Yeah – is there anything you can tell us that might help? Any idea who might have wanted to hurt her?" Sally asked.

"I don't… I don't know. There might have been something I heard, about a man, but I never spoke to her much. You'd have to ask Liz, she was her friend, another life guard. She's on duty right now, you'll have to go through the changing rooms," the receptionist told them.

"Thanks for all your help," Sally smiled, leaving the desk and heading towards the doors into the women's changing room. She whispered to Esther, "Good thing the other two aren't here, I'm not sure they could be trusted in a room full of half-naked women. Would've thought they had another way into the pool, though. Do you think there's a café? I'm famished. And I need the toilet."

"You always need the toilet. Do you hear what she said about a man, though? We might be able to get a description out of somebody here," she said, "Get a sketch artist."

"We don't have a sketch artist," Sally reminded her, "Unless you can draw? Because I definitely can't."

"As a matter of fact, I can."

"What, really?"

"Yeah, sure. It's weird being in this place with a coat and gloves on. Feel like I should be getting undressed, or something," Esther remarked as they walked through the changing rooms, looking pretty weird, because of the whole coat and gloves thing she had just mentioned.

"Don't let Oswin hear you say that. You know, I just remembered I have the most ridiculous story about primary school swimming lessons," Sally said as they walked out into the actual pool area, which was one of those overboard ones with crazy slides, and it appeared to have an active wave machine as well. Esther _had_ always liked wave machines, back when she could actually stand to touch large bodies of water without getting an electric shock.

"Oh yeah, what might that be?"

"Well, you know star floats? The one where you spread your arms and legs out?" Sally said, and Esther nodded, "Well I'm about nine years old just going about my business, floating and such, and suddenly I'm getting shouted at by my teacher for floating away-"

"For _what_? _Floating away_?"

"Yeah, so-"

"Are you being serious right now?"

"I'm being completely serious! She basically yelled at me, and told me that if I floated away one more time I wouldn't be allowed to have any more swimming lessons. Could you stop laughing at me, maybe, Esther? I know that I _am_ probably the funniest person you've ever met, but in this case I'm reliving a serious and traumatic childhood event," Sally argued.

"Floating away – how far away were you floating? Like, the other end of the pool? Just drifting like a lost, lonely starfish?"

"I don't know. It's not like I was doing it on purpose. I actually _will_ push you into the pool in a minute if you don't shut up." Esther didn't shut up though, and Sally scowled, and snatched the psychic paper out of her hands as they approached a woman sat high on a lifeguard chair. "Try to look a bit less amused as we talk about murder. And I'll do the talking, your accent is confusing the locals." Esther rolled her eyes and went back to being paranoid about getting splashed by any wild children or idiots. The place was loud, packed, and it stank of chlorine. She hadn't even been in the water, but she felt like when they got home she would need to deep condition her hair to recover from the chemicals.

"Who are you?" the woman on the chair called down to them. Sally held up the psychic paper.

"I'm Detective Inspector Sparrow, and this is Detective Sergeant Drummond, what's your name?"

"Liz Browning." So she was the person the receptionist had sent them to talk to.

"We're here to ask you some questions about Cara Oswald," she called up loudly, "In private, preferably." It was a bit off-putting for a murder investigation to have kids screaming in the background as they shot out of one of brightly coloured, plastic slides on inflatable doughnuts. The girl climbed down off the highchair.

"About Cara? Is she okay?"

"Is there not somewhere else we can go?" Sally asked, looking around, "A break room, or something?"

"Oh, god, she's not okay, is she?"

"She was murdered late last night," Sally informed quietly. Liz Browning clenched her fists, nodded, and turned to lead them away somewhere. Into a separate, staff changing room, as a matter of fact. Esther didn't think they existed, but at least it was empty. "We're sorry to have to be the ones to give you this news."

"Murdered?" Liz asked, "How?"

"That information can't be released, sorry," Sally said. Esther was glad she said that, because death-by-impossible-epileptic-seizure really wasn't the sort of thing that would give anybody any peace of mind, "We heard there was something about a man?"

"Her stalker," said Liz, "She was being stalked."

"Did you ever see this stalker?" Sally inquired.

"Sort of, from a distance. I didn't believe her at first. She said she recognised him, but she couldn't remember where from," Liz explained.

"Why didn't you believe her?" Esther asked.

"Are you American? Are you allowed to be on the police?"

"Oh, for… yes, I'm allowed to be on the police," she said, Sally casting her a disapproving look (which she ignored.)

"Because everybody knew she was paranoid, ever since July two years ago, something happened," Liz explained, "But it was weird, because she didn't know what. Nobody knew what. It was like she changed after she won this cruise, and she saw somebody left her a note to convince her to move away. She didn't, though. I think she was regretting it recently." Definitely odd.

"You've got no idea what happened?" Sally frowned.

"She went off grid for a few days and then complained that she couldn't remember what had happened, like her mind was blank***. After that she got a bit strange, wasn't the same since, started saying she was being followed around. I told her to go to a therapist."

"And you saw this alleged stalker? Do you remember anything about him?"

"Like I said, I didn't see him up-close, but Cara was terrified, they ran into each other in the carpark one night after work, just the other day, I had to go back inside because I forgot my keys and when I came out it was like they were fighting. I shouted over and he ran right off around the corner, but when I followed he was gone, like he just vanished into thin air."

"Did she call the police?"

"No, and neither did I. She wouldn't let me. All I remember is that he was blond."

"What about cameras? You must have surveillance in the carpark, right?" Esther inquired. Liz kept giving her shifty looks, paying more attention to Sally.

"Obviously, but it malfunctioned. That was the other odd thing, it only malfunctioned when they were arguing outside."

"Malfunctioned how? Do the recordings exist?" Esther asked.

"I don't know how, just broke. And yes, but I don't know what you'd get out of them," Liz told her coolly.

"We'll need to see those tapes," Sally said assuredly. She was very good at pretending to be an official. "Anything else you can tell us?"

"Oh, yeah, here," Liz said, remembering something. She walked over to a locker and pulled out a key, unlocked it and taking out a phone, "This is Cara's. She left it behind yesterday, on the table, I was going to give her it back today, but…" Esther took the phone in one of her tightly gloved hands. She tried to open it, but it was locked. She could get into it with a deft zap of electricity when Liz wasn't around to witness later, but for the time behind she put it in her pocket.

"Right, and where's your security office, then?" Sally asked.

Liz led them back around the edge of the pool, all the way back into reception and then behind the desk where there was an unmarked door, all the while neither of them talking. If they talked, they would most likely arouse suspicion. The more they found out, the more questions were raised. It was getting incredibly convoluted. Liz left them alone after that, just the pair of them in the room. Esther made a beeline for the lonely computer on the desk with a bunch of black and white feeds displayed on the screen, sitting down.

"So how much did you enjoy getting to introduce yourself as 'Detective Inspector Sparrow' back there?" Esther asked, after putting Cara's phone on the desk.

"I get absolutely no thrill from the grotesque crimes that have been committed. I'm disgusted you would even suggest that, Detective Sergeant Drummond," she remarked, picking the phone up.

"Sure you are. That cell's locked."

"It's a 'mobile,' and I'll unlock it," she shrugged, "I'll guess the code." For about thirty seconds, Esther stopped what she had been doing and observed Sally trying to crack Cara Oswald's phone. Sally got increasingly frustrated, all to no avail.

"You better be careful it doesn't wipe everything if you get it wrong too many times. Someone as paranoid as Cara might set it to do that," Esther observed, and Sally froze and held the phone as though it were infected with something by its edge.

"I'll leave it alone." Esther reached up and snatched it from her, pulling off one of her gloves and sending bright blue sparks through the phone. It almost jumped out of her hand as the screen lit up, the tell-tale unlocking sound signifying that Esther's lightning powers had done the trick. She put it down on the desk and Sally picked it up, then exclaimed, "Ow!" and nearly dropped it.

"Have you not learnt by now that if you touch things after I shock them you get zapped?" she questioned, and Sally scowled, "It's bad for your hair, it'll make it stick up. You know, like when you rub a balloon on your head."

"I don't really make a habit of rubbing balloons on my head."

"It's like, a high school science experiment into static electricity."

"I know what it is, but being as you aren't electrocuting my hair, it doesn't matter."

"Technically it's not _electrocution_, since electrocution equals fatality. If I electrocuted your hair, you would be dead. Human beings are _very_ conductive I hate to say…"

"Back to your computers, now," Sally ordered, and Esther begrudgingly turned away in the chair to find the window of footage that they needed to be looking at. If it really had malfunctioned, like Liz Browning said, it couldn't be too hard to locate in the backlog of black and white fuzz she was skimming through. She wondered if the Twins had found anything yet, but she knew her phone hadn't gone. If they'd found anything, they were keeping it from she and Sally. But they might not have found anything at all yet.

"Oh, _here_ we go," Esther muttered, mostly to herself, when she saw a girl who looked just like Clara and Oswin come swanning into the grainy picture on the monitor. Sally heard her and stopped looking at the phone, stooping down next to Esther to get a look as well, dangerously close. Sally Sparrow clearly liked to live on the edge when it came to giving the 'Lightning Girl' her incredibly necessary personal space. Quietly, Esther said to her, "You know electricity can jump through the air? You don't have to be touching me to get a shock."

"If that's the case, I might as well just start touching you constantly," she quipped, and Esther scoffed and resolved she was just going to ignore Sally. She usually tried to ignore Sally. She wasn't very good at it, "What was it you were getting all hot and bothered about, then?"

"This," Esther said, nodding at the screen, "There's Cara, on the left, and on the right is this blip." She had the feed paused now, and moved it frame by frame. The 'blip' she was talking about grew in proportion, made jarring pixels on the screen in bright colours, a kaleidoscope of video static. "And the super interesting thing is that whatever's behind that blip is what she's clearly yelling at." Slowly, in stop motion, Cara Oswald was definitely shouting dumbly at something the video couldn't pick up.

"Couldn't be a vampire, could it? They don't show up on film, maybe this is what they do when they appear on CCTV?"

"No, vampires don't show up on film because light passes directly through them, like they're made of glass, it's why being in bright places is so unpleasant. That's what Clara Ravenwood told me, anyhow, I _do_ ask her about these things," Esther said, "This isn't a technological fault in the video, it's so specific it's completely improbable."

"What about you?"

"_Me_? _I'm_ not a serial killer, Sally!"

"What if there's, I don't know, somebody else like you?"

"How could there be anyone else like me? And – and that doesn't matter, anyway, because I show up on cameras totally normally. Not like _this_. It's like the image is being forcibly manipulated by something external, and I don't know how that's possible. Like… a living signal jammer. That's what this looks like," Esther said. Sally had begun looking through Cara's phone again, and Esther didn't know whether or not she was listening until Sally's eyes widened.

"Look," she said, showing Esther the screen, which was the phone's camera roll. It had a few dozen pictures on it with pixilation identical to that in the pool's security archives. She put the phone back down and began to talk, "Say you're right about this 'living signal jammer' thing; you look at this, it's like a… sensory overload of the camera, the CCTV and the phone, because it's being _manipulated_. Epileptic seizures are also sensory overloads, aren't they? Synapses firing off all over the place causing people to have fits. The same way they're doing this is the same way they're killing the Echoes. So they have to be a Manifest with some sort of ability to, I don't know, manipulate electrical signals."

"No, no, no. This can't be electrical signals; I would be able to tell. You know what this is? Radio waves. That's what could cause this type of jamming, I've seen it before when I had to scrub through footage for the CIA, the perks of being Cyber Division. But it must be a Manifest, you're right, except it would be impossible to find them that way because the Hazard Control Corps capture and detain every Manifest they come across. So… Oswin and Clara's idea of finding the next Echo and staking out where they live is probably still our best bet."

"They called it 'Cyber Division?' The department you worked in?" Sally asked.

"Oh, yeah," Esther confirmed, dredging her keys out of her coat pocket, "My full job title was 'Cyber Threat Analyst.' Sounds more awesome than it was."

"What are you doing with your keys?"

"Duh, saving this footage onto a USB."

"You carry a USB around with you on a keyring?" Sally asked incredulously.

"Obviously, it's only sensible. Never know when you might need to do an impromptu file transfer," she said, "It looks like Luke Skywalker's lightsaber from _Return of the Jedi_, so it's pretty darn cool."

Sally smiled and condescendingly said, "You and I have _very_ different definitions of the word 'cool.'" Esther pretended she didn't hear that. The thing lit up bright green when it was connected to a computer, and everything, what could possibly be cooler than that? Apart from her in-car charger that looked like a flux capacitor, obviously, but Sally didn't know about _that_…

Esther's phone rang and she answered without checking who was calling, keeping her eyes glued to the screens, sticking the phone in the crook of her shoulder to hold it to her ear.

"Hello?"

"_Yeah, hi,_" it was Oswin, "_So I wrote a complicated algorithm to bend Mitchell's code enough to pass through all the firewall checks without breaking anything that would allow for external infiltration, right? And after that I accessed everything he has blacklisted in circulation of the internet to find all the other Clechoes._"

"Uh-huh?"

"_And it worked. Well, obviously it worked, I'm the biggest genius of all humankind, extra-so where computers are concerned. Anyway, it took a bit longer than I would have liked, but the next Echo is also in Nottingham, that's the bad news_."

"Okay, what's the good news?"

"_There is no good news, there's just bad news and worse news_."

Esther sighed, "Then what's the worse news?" Sally was hissing at her to tell her who was on the phone, but Sally was on Esther's left while the phone was on Esther's right, so Esther kept leaning away while Sally tried to eavesdrop. And she was still trying to transfer the CCTV footage across; who knew, maybe Oswin would have a way to unscramble it?

"_The worse news is that the Echo is a six-year-old girl called Clarissa Carson. Ordinarily, that would mean we wouldn't have to be as worried, but being as the old woman was basically unrecognisable, I don't think that's gonna stop the killer. Unless whoever-it-is suddenly develops enough of a sense of morality that they won't murder a child. Elliott's already driven off to go see the house and the parents_."

"Why didn't you go with him?" Esther asked. Sally tried to grab the phone, but Esther swatted her hand out of the air, causing her to get a shock and suppress a swear word.

"_Well… you know, it's almost noon, are either of you two hungry? Clara's in the toilet right now, but I'm kind of worried she's not going to eat enough today, what with her wallowing in self-pity and all that, do you want to get lunch_?" Oswin asked. Esther _was_ hungry, come to think of things, she had skipped breakfast they had been in such a hurry to get to Nottingham and the scene of the murder (Sally's idea, Esther would _never_ skip breakfast voluntarily.)

"Are you hungry?" Esther asked Sally, covering the microphone with her hand.

"Yes. I haven't eaten anything since four o'clock."

"Four o'clock yesterday!?"

"No, four o'clock this morning, I baked brownies. I would have offered you some, but you were asleep, and I ate them all."

"You _what_? How are you not dead yet? You're _so_ unhealthy." Sally shrugged. Esther shook her head and went back to talking to Oswin on the phone, "Yes, we'll have lunch."

"_Awesome. It'll be a double date_."

"It definitely will not, I assure you."

"_Of course it will, I've got my other half there, and you'll have yours_," Oswin said, and Esther could practically hear the smirk she was wearing in her voice as she glanced at Sally Sparrow.

"What?" Sally asked, "What did she say?"

"Nothing. Didn't say anything."

"_You'll have to come get us, though, from the police station. Mitchell won't let me borrow any of his cars because I'm apparently a 'danger to society' if I was behind the wheel._"

"Alright, sure. We can tell you all about our breakthrough in the case," Esther said, ejecting the USB from the computer and picking her keys back up, standing up from the chair.

"_Did you just say 'breakthrough in the case?' You two haven't been pretending to be detectives, have you…?_" Oswin asked suspiciously.

"Pretending to be detectives? _Us_? We would never do something like that, _that_ would be _completely_ irresponsible…" she lied, sharing a very guilty look with 'Detective Inspector Sparrow.' "Gotta go now, no cell phones in the pool, bye!" Esther hung up.

* * *

"Does it ever stop snowing here? It's March," Esther complained, staring out of the window. Snow had been falling lightly all morning, settling gently on the streets. At least the café they were in was warm, and she had coffee now, and they were waiting for food. Like the Twins had said, Elliott had gone on ahead, and they were taking a gamble and saying there wouldn't be much risk of the serial killer striking in the middle of the day. There might not be risk of him striking for weeks.

Esther was sitting by the window, Clara opposite her, Sally on her right, and Oswin on Clara's left. Oswin was trying to do something to fix up the footage Esther had retrieved on a laptop that looked, to Esther, to be a few years ahead of its time. A few decades, even. She really wanted to take a look at it, she didn't have a decent laptop.

"Washington isn't exactly tropical," Sally commented. She was occupying herself stirring her tea absently with a spoon, "Although, you never know, the way global warming's going. Do you think they'll ever actually stop climate change?"

"No," Oswin said. Esther hadn't known she was listening, she had her eyes glued to the laptop. Then she looked up, "Sorry. That's probably not what you want to hear. Earth is a polluted nightmare; my brother has a lot of opinions about it. So does my ex, we had a fight about it just the other week."

"Fyn?" Clara asked, perking up a little. She hadn't said a word so far, apart from ordering her food. She was looking out of the window the same way Esther was, only not joining in with the conversation.

"Yes, Fyn, obviously Fyn," Oswin muttered.

"I didn't know you had a brother," Esther said.

"I have five, but Fyn is the only one I talk to. He's _very_ pretentious. Calls Earth a 'lava-filled pustule of a planet' in his fancy book. And I told him, I said, Fyn, you've never even _been_ to Earth," Oswin was explaining.

"I'll take him to Earth," Clara said quickly, and Oswin looked at her with mild disgust.

"I don't even want to know what that means – you'll _take him to Earth_? How many times do I have to tell you; he's _gay_ and he's _married_, he does not want to sleep with you. And you look. Like. His. _Sister_."

"But he's. So. _Hot_," Clara argued, "He's the most beautiful boy I've ever seen." Oswin grabbed Clara's left hand and lifted it up by the wrist, holding it in front of her own face.

"Do you see this? This silver? That's a _wedding ring_, Clara, because you're a _married woman_," Oswin said, pointing at Clara's ring finger. Clara snatched her hand out of Oswin's grip.

"I don't care, he's gorgeous, he's my true love. My one and only."

Oswin clenched her jaw and glared, and then then turned to Sally opposite her – who hadn't uttered a word and clearly thought their argument was _very_ amusing – and said, "You know this is the way she talks about you when you're not around to hear it?" Immediately, Sally was flummoxed, and Clara scoffed indignantly.

"That is not true!" Clara exclaimed.

"Yes it is! I have heard you call her, and I quote, a 'Sapphic daydream.' When you're fawning over how much you like her blonde hair or her dimples," Oswin said.

"I have never said any of those things! This is slander! I don't even… she's not even… pfft. Look at her. She's so… and her face. It's… god, I can't believe you would even _suggest_ I find her attractive, I've definitely never heard something so ridiculous as saying I fancy Sally Sparrow when I so obviously do not. I mean, Oswin, come on she's a _girl_. A female. Are you trying to imply that I'm _not straight_? That's insane," Clara spluttered, and Esther just watched, desiring to look away like it was a car crash happening right in front of her. "I'm, like, the straightest person. The most non-gay human being in the world, probably. I'm so straight I'm homophobic. God, those women and those other women, I can't imagine anything grosser. I'm going outside for a cigarette." And Clara abruptly got up and forced her way out of their booth, pulling a lighter and a little cardboard box with _Smoking Kills_ emblazoned on the front of her coat pocket as she skulked out of the doors into the snow.

"I can't believe that woman created me. Isn't she atrocious?" Oswin commented. Yes, Esther thought truthfully, she was _very_ atrocious. But she had left, Esther could see her and her cigarette hanging about moodily on the street corner by a frozen lamppost. With the weather the way it was, the drive back to Hollowmire later would be abysmal.

There was some silver lining, though, because that was the time their lunch was brought over, and Esther was ravenous. Oswin didn't have any food, but she had slid Clara's half-drunk cup of tea across the plastic table and was sipping it, claiming it was going to go cold otherwise. Esther estimated Clara had about ten minutes to return before Oswin started to sneak bites out of her sister's sausage sandwich. Esther herself had a cheeseburger, and Sally had two eggs, ham and chips (_fries_, she thought to herself.) Esther figured that in even less time than it would take Oswin to steal Clara's food, Sally was going to go for her chips. She had chips of her own, but that wouldn't stop her, the woman was a natural-born scrounger.

They didn't say anything for a while, just ate, Oswin resuming trying to restore the pool's CCTV footage, though she was having very little success. If it was a Manifest, Esther doubted that sort of distortion could be fixed. Eventually, though, Oswin said to Sally, "James kept asking us about you." For a moment Sally acted as though she didn't hear Oswin say anything. Who was James?

"That's nice for him," she said, right as Oswin appeared about to repeat herself.

"Talks about you a lot."

"People often seem to, or so I'm told." A sly dig at Clara, but Clara wasn't there to hear it.

"First he asked if you and Esther are together because he, too, thinks it's weird that she does your laundry-"

"Okay, I do not 'do her laundry,'" Esther interjected, "I merely washed all the socks in the living room because _she_ wasn't going to do it and I got sick of being in a room full of gross, dirty socks, _and_ sick of her complaining that she'd lost all hers. When she started trying to borrow _mine_, that was the last straw." Sally didn't say anything in defence of her laziness.

"It's still weird, Esther," Oswin said, and Esther scowled, "Anyway, secondly he asked me if you were single, and last he tried to get your phone number out of me. And Clara tried to get your phone number out of me, as well, but I stopped her."

"Did you give him it?" Sally asked quickly.

"No, of course not. James can ask you for your phone number himself. What are you going to do?" Oswin asked, and Sally frowned, looking at her food. It really didn't seem like she was listening at all, except when she answered shortly and coolly.

"Pretend you never told me any of this, that's what."

"Who's James?" Esther interrupted, and they both looked at her, confused, "…What?"

"Elliott," Sally answered, "His name is James Elliott. How did you not know that?"

"You're kidding me? I thought his first name was Elliott this whole time! You never told me his name was James. Why don't you want him to have your phone number? Even _I_ can tell you like each other. And he's totally cute."

"I think he's cute too," Oswin added her opinion into the mix – not that Sally seemed remotely happy about people getting involved in her love life – and then the bell chimed over the door, signifying Clara's return to the café, "Don't you, Clars?"

"Don't I what?" Clara asked, half phasing through the table so that she could sit back down by the window with ease. She wasn't very discreet about her Manifesthood, considering any and all Manifests were wanted for immediate detainment.

"Think Elliott is cute."

"Yeah, sure," Clara agreed vacantly, not very interested. Then she saw her cup was empty, "Have you been drinking my tea?"

"Esther did it," Oswin lied.

"Hey!" Esther objected, and Clara narrowed her eyes and looked between them, "I did no such thing."

"I thought I told you to behave this morning?" Clara said to Oswin.

"It's the afternoon now."

"Os…"

"I didn't do anything!"

"I'm disappointed in you. If you'd just asked, we could have shared the mug, it's not like it bothers me," Clara said. They shared crockery and utensils? The sheer thought made Esther cringe, and she recalled her conversation about scurvy and gingivitis with Sally from earlier that morning. Speaking of which, she was very surprised that Sally didn't bring that back up just then. She was being quiet, and she was _never_ quiet. She normally didn't shut up. "Are you gonna give him your phone number?"

"No," Sally said.

"Why not? I'd shag him."

"That means nothing, you'd shag _anything_," Oswin said, "That's why you've had chlamydia four times."

"Oswin!" Clara exclaimed, "You're not supposed to tell people that! Let's just stop talking about this, shall we?"

"I agree, let's stop talking about it," Sally said, then she asked Oswin, "Tell us some more about your hot brother."

"Yes, your hot brother, my favourite person," Clara Oswald, the Most Shallow Woman in the Universe, said, flitting from one topic to the next like a firefly, "Tell Sally how tall he is – he's _so_ tall."

"He's six-three," Oswin relented, "And he never wants to come to the TARDIS anymore because of you. And I'm supposed to be helping him move away from Horizon to Venus Zeta any day now, too. Adam's scared of him, it's hilarious."

"What's Horizon?" Sally asked.

"Titan Beta. It's a spacestation that uses reverse magnetism to float above Titan. It has great views of Saturn from some of the engineering decks, and this big cathedral made of glass that kind of sticks out the edge; that's where my mother had her second and third weddings. And where my older brother got married. And where we had mother's funeral when she died last month, though I think it would have been just as meaningful if she were stuffed into a cargo crate and ejected out through one of the waste disposal chutes, perhaps she might have crashed into an asteroid and exploded," Oswin said, "Would have been more than what she deserved." There was an awkward pause.

"…You didn't get along with your mother, then, huh?" Esther asked, not really knowing what else to say.

"Who _would_ get along with a woman who locked them in an attic for twenty-five years and never let them leave the house? And then, the nerve of her, on her deathbed she wrote me a letter saying _I_ was the cause of all the woes in her whole life, she hated me with every essence of her being, wished I'd never been born, and wished she had been there to wave me off when I stowed away on a starship to unknowingly go to my death. So, no, I didn't get along with my mother. Neither did Fyn, so it's good on him that he's finally leaving that wasteoid." '_Wasteoid_;' interesting term, Esther mused.

"That's not really light-hearted chit-chat, though, is it, sweetheart?" Clara said, and Oswin just shrugged. Esther had nearly finished her burger.

"How's Jenny?" Sally changed the subject, which Esther was very grateful for. The Twins were both perplexed, though.

"What do you mean?" they asked together.

"Her hand," Sally elaborated.

"Uh… I wasn't aware something had happened to Jenny's hand?" Oswin said unsurely.

"She broke her thumb. Had a huge cast on when we saw her the other day, in the supermarket."

"I saw her yesterday, and I'm sure that yesterday she definitely didn't have a broken thumb, Sally, would have made building her spaceship very difficult," Oswin said.

"Oh, gosh, it must not have happened yet," Esther interjected.

"Jenny's going to break her thumb?" Clara asked.

"Yeah, I guess so, sorry for saying anything," Esther said, "Probably better not mention it, might mess with future events, or something."

"If you've seen it, it has to happen, regardless," Oswin explained, "And of course we won't say anything. What are we supposed to say? Be careful not to break your thumb? That's not exactly solid advice. How did she break it?"

Esther said nothing, but Sally thought for a second and answered, "…She wouldn't tell us. Something to do with Chernobyl, that was all she said. Probably best to forget about it, though, right?"

"Huh. Spooky," Oswin cleared her throat, "Well. Anyway. I can't get anything from this footage. I thought there might be a way to structure the pixels and recreate the original image, but this distortion is like the camera's completely broken. _But_ I think the pair of you are onto something with the radio waves. Manifests have all sorts of weird powers, and if we're looking for one of them, that means that the mysterious break-ins make a lot more sense. Maybe we really _are_ dealing with a teleporter? Although, who knows how far the radio waves thing goes? I mean, sound travels through solid objects, maybe he uses it to walk through walls?"

"Teleporting, walking through walls, you make it sound like _I'm_ the murderer," Clara muttered.

"There must be a way to deactivate superpowers, though, right?" Esther said.

"Yes, there are adrenaline inhibitors on the TARDIS, but that would require us catching him first. Then any tranquiliser would do it, but we don't have tranquilisers, or sedatives. The closest thing we have to a sedative is the fact that _you_ once accidentally shocked someone and put them in a coma," Oswin pointed out, "Anyway, lunch was just a stop on the way to going to Clarissa Carson's house so that we can join Elliott and stake the place out."

"So, what? We're using this poor little girl as bait? That's totally messed up," Esther commented.

"No, no, no – whoever this is has a vendetta against _Clara_. If Clara's there, they'll almost definitely go after_ her_ rather than the kid," Sally said, "I think this is all a setup to draw Clara out herself. And it's working."

Oswin hit her hand on the table and made the other three jump, "I've just had the best idea probably in the history of everyone who's ever lived_ ever_."

"Oh, lord…" Clara mumbled. Clearly, Clara didn't think Oswin actually _had_ had the 'best idea probably in the history of everyone who's ever lived ever.'

"Everyone calls _you_ Spooky Sally," Oswin began.

"Not this again…" Sally grumbled.

"And _you_ were a CIA spook," Oswin said to Esther, "So, the two of you – you're Spooky Sally, and Spooky Esther. I'm going to start calling you 'the Spooks.' To everyone. All the time."

"_Great_," Esther muttered sarcastically, "I can't wait…"

*_chapters 860-868 / "Spook Watch" chapters 3-4_

**_"The Lost Echosodes" chapter 12, "The Case of the Happy Spectre"_

***_chapters 611-614_

**AN: ****_The Case of the Clone Killer: Part Two_**** won't be uploaded for a good few days, being as almost all of this one I had written in advance, and I don't have ****_any_**** of the next one done.**


	470. The Case of the Clone Killer: Part Two

_The Case of the Clone Killer: Part Two_

_Esther_

There had been more than a few unfortunate incidents in the house of Clarissa Carson and her family, none of which, she was somewhat pleased to say, involved serial killers. What they _did_ involve, however, was the people Esther Drummond now associated herself with. The flotsam and jetsam of extra-terrestrial involvement, people whose lives had been affected, generally for worse, by of close encounters of the third kind.

Esther was, at present, bitter. Bitter because of the aforementioned 'unfortunate incidents,' all of which were because of the immaturity of her three cohorts. They had been kicked out. Sally had broken an ornament, Oswin kept talking about death, Clara had been very odd around the young girl and the way she resembled her. The family did not know Clara's relation to her, didn't know that Clara thought herself as good as an absent mother to that child, as though she had a right to be forcing her involvement. So, Esther, the only one of them who apparently knew how to behave in polite company, slouched down in the driver's seat of her Mini Cooper and tried to ignore Sally Sparrow flicking the radio from channel to channel to channel and back again trying to find something 'worth listening to.'

In England, in March, it got dark early. The sunset was burning in the sky, serenaded by an appalling amalgam of jazz turned to pop music turned to classical turned back to jazz turned to heavy metal and then to jazz again, until the song ended and the heavy metal station was risked, and then finally they ended up listening to obscure ska on a very peculiar frequency.

"Would you please stop doing that?" Esther pleaded with Sally for the third time in fifteen minutes, since apparently she was the only one remotely annoyed. Oswin was monitoring radio frequencies on that fancy laptop of hers, and Clara would probably let Sally Sparrow get away with murder if came down to it; Esther had never seen someone so smitten for someone so unattainable.

"If he's using radio waves, then maybe this'll… help. Somehow. I don't know. I'm just trying to do something, what are you trying to do?" Sally quipped. Esther wasn't doing a whole lot of anything, other than wondering what good might come of shocking her radio and most likely irreparably breaking it. She was very nervous that Sally would try and turn on the CD player, but then, she wasn't sure Sally knew how to work a CD player. She didn't own a single CD, but she did have a lot of vinyl records and a _gorgeous_ antique gramophone. The only thing Esther didn't like about that gramophone was the fact it was very loud and often brought out at incredibly odd times of the afternoon, then she would get an earful of Billie Holiday until she put on her headphones or went and told Sally to turn it off. At which point Sally would turn it up louder, so she had learnt to stop doing that.

"I'm providing the car that we're all sitting in," Esther said coolly. She was not happy with Sally for more than the radio, and for more than breaking an old, valuable-looking glass figurine in the Carson house, she was annoyed after something else she did in the café before they left. Which was offering to pay for all of them and then sneaking a whisper to Esther to ask to borrow money, and then when Esther complained Sally started saying she had 'never seen this mad Australian woman before in [her] life.' And Esther had succumbed and given up the money. It had been an odd exchange, and she had lost £25.

"There's not a lot of leg room," Sally complained.

"There's plenty, you're in the front!" Esther argued, "Get shorter legs."

"What are we saying about Sally's legs?" Clara interjected from the backseat. She was behind Esther, Oswin was behind Sally. Clara didn't see the expression on Sally's face when she said that, but Esther did.

For Esther only, Sally mouthed, "_Kill me_," and she nearly laughed.

"It's very insensitive of you to talk about legs with me in your company," Oswin said. Again, she looked like she wasn't paying attention, but she was, "I only have one of them, you know."

"Do you? You only mention it every ten seconds, so pardon me for forgetting," Sally commented, messing around with buttons on the radio. Of course she didn't cease when Esther asked her to, it just made her even more persistent.

And then Esther's fears of Sally hitting the button that would make the CD play were realised, because she jabbed it with her thumb and out from the speakers crooned a bunch of ultra-bouncy guitar chords and the words, "_She's got a lip-ring and five colours in her hair, not into fashion but I love the clothes she wears, and her tattoo's always hidden by her underwear_-" and that was the point that Esther thrust her hand onto the panel and sent through as much electricity as she could manage in her panic, and the speakers blew up and started to smoke. Then the car fell silent and they were all sat there smelling burning, six eyes turned to Esther.

"Was that McFly…?" Sally asked incredulously.

Esther fake-laughed nervously, "_No_," she lied.

"I think my boyfriend listens to whatever that was," Oswin said, going back to the computer. Oswin didn't care.

"That was the CD. You listen to McFly? You have McFly on CD?" Sally continued to ask.

"Of course I don't – that was the radio."

"Then, why did you blow up your own speaker system?"

"_Because_, I…" she couldn't think of a single lie, "…Darn it…" She rolled her window down to let some of the smoke out, slouching.

"Mitchell definitely _does_ listen to them," Oswin started talking about Adam again, "I remember because I went through his music library on his phone once, and he didn't have _any_ opera."

"You listen to _opera_?" Sally questioned.

"Yes," Oswin said through gritted teeth. Sally was looking at her in the wing mirror, and got a very nasty glare for that question.

"_You_ don't listen to anything that was written after 1950," Esther remarked.

"Yes, because everyone knows that music died in 1950."

"That's not true, what about Elvis? Or the Beatles?" Clara questioned her, and she laughed coldly, scoffed, and shook her head, as though that didn't even warrant a response. Clara, who was obviously not a music snob (like _some_ people), continued with, "Or the Spice Girls?"

"The Spice Girls!?" Sally practically shouted.

"Listen, they're national treasures, and they broke the heart of this nation when they split up, okay?" Clara said, just daring Sally to argue. Esther didn't care one bit about the Spice Girls. Sally clearly didn't think it worth arguing with Clara. Perhaps Esther had been wrong about Clara letting Sally Sparrow get away with murder, unless, in Clara's mind, badmouthing the Spice Girls was somehow worse.

"It's weird," Oswin said.

"What is?" Clara questioned her.

"The fact that Esther and Mitchell have the same music taste. You're basically a female version of my boyfriend," Oswin was saying, and Esther was trying not to listen, "Minus the cute glasses."

"Why do you call your boyfriend by his surname?" Sally asked, leaning around the chair to see into the back where the Twins were. Oswin didn't like being asked that question, and apparently decided not to answer it. Which was when Clara laughed, and decided that in lieu of Oswin's silence, _she_ would explain.

"She used to call him 'Mitchell' so that she could distance herself from him and pretend she didn't fancy him," and then she sighed, grew sad, and said, "Thirteen sometimes called me 'Oswald.'" Esther caught Sally's eye, and Sally bit her lip, neither of them knowing what to say. They were under strict instructions not to bring up Thirteen, and Esther wasn't going to break that rule. Apparently her accent and hair colour were off-putting enough, anyway, she remembered begrudgingly.

"Did that song say something about a tattoo in it?" Oswin changed the subject.

"Yeah," Esther confirmed, though she didn't like to do it, and she especially didn't like Sally's smirk she noticed out of the corner of her eye.

"Clara's got a tattoo," Oswin said, and Clara made a noise of annoyance.

"Where is it? Anywhere sexy?" Sally asked, and caught Clara out and made her flustered.

"Well don't flirt with her," Esther scolded, "You'll only make it worse if you do that."

"_Make it worse_? I'm not a rash," Clara argued.

"No, but if you and Sally got up to anything, she'd probably catch one off you," Oswin said snidely. Clara kicked her in her left leg, "Don't kick that! It's a very advanced piece of technology! Plus, if it gets broken, I'll have to call up Flek to get her to make me a new one, and I don't want to call Flek." Esther didn't know who Flek was, and apparently wasn't going to get an explanation.

"Seriously, though, what tattoo?" Sally asked again.

"Nothing," Clara said quickly, "Absolutely no tattoo whatsoever."

"It's of a mango, it's on the back of her left shoulder."

Esther frowned, and she and Sally both asked, "A mango?"

"Yeah, and it says 'whore' underneath it."

"It does not say 'whore' anywhere on it at all, thank you very much," Clara snapped, "It's just a mango. Maybe I like mangoes."

"Oh, I know you like mangoes, because you're a mango whore. We've been through this, honey, you just couldn't keep your slimy little fingers off _my_ fruit that _I_ got," Oswin was arguing.

"_You_ were the one hoarding them, or should I say, _whore_-ding them? Hmm?" Clara retorted. Esther thought that Sally, by asking about the tattoo, had started something she really oughtn't have.

"Do something," Esther hissed as the Twins fought, a fight which was getting progressively more intense. Esther really didn't want the explanation of the mango thing. Sally was watching them both, one eyebrow raised, looking very puzzled. She didn't hear Esther. Esther poked her in the arm.

"What?"

"I said, _do something_."

"Like what?"

"Like stop them!"

"How?"

"I don't know."

"You're just full of useful suggestions today, aren't you? Maybe _you_ should distract them with your encyclopaedic knowledge of dental statistics?" she argued. Esther looked at her pleadingly, and she finally relented. "_Fine_," she hissed, then she cleared her throat and said loudly, "You know, _I_ have a tattoo, but it's somewhere far too inappropriate to show either of you." God, they were shallow, Esther thought. Because that actually worked.

"I have an idea," Esther began, "How about we talk about things that are actually relevant? Like these murders we're supposed to be investigating?"

"What's to talk about?" Clara asked, "The culprit is going to show up at this house, try to kill that girl, and I'm going to murder him."

"Probably don't murder him, Clars," Oswin said when Sally and Esther both stayed silent, "You know what happened the last and only time you murdered someone, and it didn't even count because they were technically already dead." Clara, bored, leant her head on the back of Esther's seat.

"There was that thing. In 2014. The 'incident,'" Sally said.

"Oh, yeah. Something happened to her and she got really paranoid, but she didn't know what it was," Esther added.

"She got kidnapped," Clara said.

"Uh, what?" Sally asked, "Kidnapped?"

"Yeah." She said nothing more.

"You don't think that warrants some explanation…?"

"Anything for you," Clara said, clearing her throat as though preparing to tell a tale (Sally visibly cringed), "It was just, you know, this thing that happened, a while ago, when Theodore and I bought a house because it was haunted-"

"Sorry, Theodore?"

"The Doctor, I mean. I call him Theodore. It's just something to do with our wedding rings-"

"Pair of you sound sickening."

"They are," Oswin muttered.

"_Moving on_," Clara said, "We were investigating the haunted house, and totally out of nowhere there was this whole thing with these people, called themselves the, uh… 'Paranoia Agency,' that's what it was. Just this weird bloke, total nutter, obsessed with the fact _I_ was at the centre of a 'government cloning conspiracy.' It was dreadful, he had her locked in a tube, poor girl. We shut it down and deleted all of their data, but it was _that_ that made Esther's job necessary, protecting them. We retconned her afterwards and tried to convince her to move, but I suppose she didn't. I'll have to be more interventionist with them, in future."

"Wait, you didn't think to mention this? This thing about Cara being kidnapped by someone who had information about all of your Echoes, who you say is a nutter? Who previously _locked Cara in a tube_? You didn't think that was remotely important information?" Sally questioned, "Wait, Paranoia Agency, you said? Huh…"

"It was in the back of my mind! It sort of took a backseat to everything else going on that day, with the Frir, and I hadn't seen my husband properly for, like, a week," Clara said.

"_Seriously_?" Esther asked.

"I didn't think it was relevant!"

"How could it not be relevant!? That's incredibly relevant!" Esther exclaimed. Sally was mumbling to herself as she thought, like she knew that name from somewhere.

"Well _she_ didn't mention it either!" Clara dropped Oswin in it, pointing at her.

"Oi! Genius-girl over here just does what you tell her to do, Clara. You know what happens when I start thinking, I try to kill people. Namely myself. I let you worry about all that, I just do the maths," Oswin said, looking up from the computer to get involved in this argument. Then Sally gasped.

"I remember where I've heard that before," she said, "The name, Paranoia Agency, I know it, from this guy who used to be a part of the Ectociety."

"The what?" Clara frowned.

"Bunch of weirdos on the internet who share grainy photos of UFOs on forums," Oswin leant over to inform her, like an advisor to a diplomat.

"Well… alright, fine, I guess it is, it's how I know Dylan. You know, Dylan Danvers, who owns the bookshop Clara Ravenwood works in," Sally explained, "He holds meet-ups in the cellar of that shop. Not that _I_ go to them, I'm not really involved with them anymore…"

"They're not so bad. I met two of them before, who were they? The Suttons? They let me do a very impromptu autopsy in their basement. I'm not even a doctor, I had no clue what I was doing. Caved his skull in, got blood everywhere. Continue," Oswin said. The more she said, the crazier Esther was sure she was.

"Braden and Grace. I love them, every time I see them they let me have dinner and tell me I'm 'such a nice young girl,'" Sally said, smiling. And Esther just could not help herself, she audibly laughed at that, "Hey!"

"Carry on telling us about the conspiracy nerds," Oswin entreated. Sally glared at Esther, who was still suppressing laughter at the thought of _anybody_ thinking Sally Sparrow was a 'nice young girl.' It was positively ridiculous.

"This guy called Kent once tried to organise it and make it all, I don't know, uniform, or something, but nobody really took to it so he went off and set up this 'Paranoia Agency.' He came from money, is the thing, had a huge inheritance. Never heard much from him since. Until now, apparently."

"Kent?" Clara asked urgently, "Liam Kent?"

"That's him."

"He_ is_ the one who kidnapped Cara!"

"Gee, think of how quickly we could have drawn that conclusion if you'd mentioned your incredibly pertinent information _hours _ago," Esther muttered.

"I don't think he was a Manifest, though," Sally said.

"Anyone could become a Manifest at any time, that-" Oswin had been talking, and halfway through her sentence her whole image flickered, as though she just vanished. Then she came back, continued right where she left off, like pausing and playing a song, "-doesn't really mean anything." Everybody stared at her, Esther leaning right around the back of the seat after witnessing whatever glitch that had been in the rear view mirror. "What?"

"You flickered," Clara told her, "Did you not feel anything?"

"Flickered?" Oswin asked, and then it happened again. All of a sudden, Oswin Oswald had become a broken lightbulb. It was so easy to forget she was a hologram normally, a ghost.

"Os? What's going on?"

"I don't know, I can't-" she outright vanished that time, and when she did, something else appeared. A big metal ball, size of a basketball, it came out of nowhere. It nearly crushed the computer that had been in Oswin's lap, but Clara was fast enough to catch it and spin it around until she was looking at something circular that vaguely resembled a camera lens.

"Oswin?" Clara asked. Whatever the lens-thing was, it lit up blue.

"Something's interfering with my visual cortex," the thing spoke. It spoke with Oswin's voice.

"What is that?" Sally questioned.

"It's called a Sphere, it's like… a projector. It's where she… lives," Clara explained (poorly), talking to the light.

"You can let go," Oswin said, and Clara did, and the Sphere stayed levitating in place, "It must be him. Kent, or whatever, his power, whatever it is." When she said that, they witnessed bright lights come slipping through the curtains of the Carson house across the street they had spent this whole time watching. The Sphere span around in the air, Esther seeing a flash of the bright blue lens that looked like a very odd eye as it did so.

"He must be in there, but how did he get in?" Sally said.

"However he got in everywhere else, I guess," Esther added. Then Clara swore from the seat behind her, and in the mirror Esther saw her grab her head in both hands, scrunch her face up as though she was having a migraine, and _vanish_. Unlike Oswin, no ball appeared, and she did not come back. A cloud of black smoke was left in the back of the Mini, which quickly dissipated into as much nothingness as Clara herself had done.

"She's in the house, you two had better go after her. I am going _nowhere_ near Liam Kent," Oswin said, and the pair of them heeded her words and both got out of the car, Esther on the left and Sally on the right. They crossed the icy sidewalk and the street as fast as they could without slipping, snow from earlier still lining the streets, the cold sun still high in the sky, and Sally went to pound on the door of the Carson house. The bright lights within continued to shine.

Rarely in her life did Esther use her electrical powers without somebody telling her to, without it being an absolute last resort. But, for once, she acted on impulse and pulled off her left-hand glove, sending enough volts through the doorknob to blow the door from the latch and send it smacking hard against the wall of the hallway. The two of them forced their way into the room, turned to the right and saw James Elliott lying on the floor of the living room, Clara standing nearby and staring at the TV, which was lit up with unnaturally bright static. The source of the light they could see permeating the curtains. The family must have been advised to stay upstairs, out of the way. She didn't know what Liam Kent the Clone Killer (the moniker Sally had come up with earlier on) looked like, but she knew he wasn't there anymore.

"Clara?" Esther asked, the same time Sally asked, "James?" and went to see to him. Clara stayed still, didn't say a word, and Esther approached slowly and nearly tapped her on the shoulder with her still-gloved hand. Sally was kneeling on the carpet next to Elliott.

"He's gone," Clara finally spoke, turning around, "It was like he used the telly to get in, travelled through it, or something, got out of here as soon as he saw me."

"I guess we know how he broke in and killed the others," Esther said, going to switch the television off. Well, she didn't, strictly speaking, 'switch it off.' She put her left hand on it and syphoned out as much electricity as she could (blowing the door down had taken it out of her.) The white light was replaced by blue light and then replaced by dark when the thing died. Then Elliott made a noise.

"Is he alright?" Clara asked.

"What happened to him?" Sally questioned her.

"I don't know. He was out when I got here. Hasn't had a seizure, has he?" Sally had one of her hands on the side of Elliott's face. She only moved away when he really began to stir, tried to sit up. At which point they looked at each other, and she blushed and realised she was awfully close. Then she cleared her throat and moved away. If Esther had to, she would say that just as Sally moved, Elliott made a pass to take her hand. Perhaps not, though. Clara cast her a telling look, which she tried to ignore.

"Do you think you might ever be able to do that?" Clara asked her, "Travel through electrical wires like he can travel through, uh, signals? Or whatever it is he does?"

"I don't know. I've never tried. I don't really use the, um, _powers_ much," Esther said. She used them so rarely she didn't even know what to call them. They hadn't managed to catch Liam Kent, but at least they had thwarted his attempts on the life of another innocent Echo. Now he knew they were onto him, though. But did he know they knew his identity?

"I know where he might be," Sally said. Elliott was awake, he was groaning, but he didn't look like he'd had any kind of seizure that might have turned his brain to mud, "When I said he was trying to organise the Ectociety, he bought this block of offices out in rural Nottinghamshire, to 'set up.' As though to start some kind of, I don't know, vigilante Torchwood. I can give you directions, I think."

"What about him? Do we take him with us? Call an ambulance?" Clara was looking at Elliott.

"He'll be fine," Esther said, "He can take care of himself, he's a grown man, and we're not doctors. We can't wait around; we need to leave." She was surprised that Sally didn't object to that as the three of them headed back towards the door, the handle of which was now broken completely. She didn't want to have to run into the Carsons upstairs, not after they had already been kicked out once. If they found out the door was broken, they'd probably lose it, even if the life of their little girl _had_ just been saved. Esther could see the Sphere bobbing very indiscreetly up and down in the back window of her Mini, and really wished she had turned the interior lights off before they'd left.

"What happened? Did we catch him?" Oswin asked immediately upon them opening the door. In the foot well, her shiny fake leg was lying. Esther made a mental note to make sure that, whenever Oswin restored herself, she made sure to take it with her. Though, she highly doubted the girl would forget her own leg.

Clara explained briefly what they had just seen, how Kent travelled through broadcasting signals, could affect and manipulate them and technology through them, cause interference. Oswin remarked that that was quite a powerful superpower, and wondered what his other one was. Esther couldn't shake off the thought that Manifests getting _two_ superpowers rather than just the one was a little weird. She was kind of interested in the science.

Esther had begun to drive, Sally using her phone to try and figure the way back to this alleged office block the rich lunatic Liam Kent owned, when the conversation turned, again, to something borderline unpleasant. James Elliott, and Sally Sparrow, which the latter most definitely did not take kindly to. From the outset, Esther tried to disinvolve herself from the whole affair.

"Should have seen them, Os, she was all over him," Clara was saying. Clara was joking, but the expression on Sally's face told Esther that this was not funny. But Clara was in a bad mood, she was angry, she was looking to cheer herself up, even if that meant being unkind to the people around her. Taking out her own frustrations on others. Everyone had been guilty of that at some point or another, Esther thought. She kept her eyes on the slush-covered road.

"Oh yeah?"

"Cradling him in her arms."

"Alright, drop it now," Sally said coolly.

"Oh, come on, having a guy fancy you isn't exactly the end of the world," Clara said, "Just go out with him sometime. You obviously like each other." They obviously _did_, but it wasn't any of Esther's business, which meant it _definitely_ wasn't any of Clara's.

"It's nothing to do with you," Sally said.

"I'm looking out for you!" Clara argued.

"_Looking out for me_? You are not. You're being a pain," she said, and Clara scoffed.

"You're like Oswin when everybody was trying to make her go out with Adam Mitchell."

"_Make_ her? How do you _make_ her?"

"Locking us in a simulated hotel room with a very angry goat," Oswin said grimly, still a metal orb, floating there in the passenger seat behind Sally, "Was not fun. Did not work. It's the reason we kept our relationship a secret for as long as possible, so we wouldn't have to deal with these smug arseholes."

"It's the next right," Sally said quietly to Esther.

"Why won't you give him the time of day?" Clara continued to persist, "He's nice."

"Great."

"What do you mean? I already said, _I'd_ sleep with him." And that, apparently, was a line crossed in Sally's book.

"Go and sleep with him then!" she shouted, and Esther winced. She didn't like shouting. "God, Clara, get it through your head that not everybody is as bloody superficial as you are. You're _so_ shallow and you think it's normal. You've spent all of today objectifying _me_, and you don't even _know_ me. You don't know a single thing about me, and you're _married_, but you're so willing it's sick. You do know it isn't normal to think about sex constantly, right? To be so obsessed with it to this extent? To think that just because a boy you hardly know is _nice_ that's somehow reason to shag him? It's abhorrent, you can't even see you clearly have some sort of genuine problem. If you put half as much effort into going to therapy as you did in trying to sleep with _me_ – because I am, for the record, _straight_ – you'd be all cured."

"I've got a 'genuine problem'!?" Clara objected. She began to argue vehemently right back, until Esther yelled loudly over the top of both of them.

"Alright, alright, no fighting in my car!" she ordered them angrily, "Both of you be quiet. You're as bad as each other. Neither of your love lives are the other's business, nor are they the business of anybody else here right now, so you can stop arguing." Clara looked like she wanted to continue, to get some kind of rise out of Sally, but Sally listened to Esther and seemed grateful for her putting a stop to it.

"…How much do you know about Kent, then, anyway, Sally?" Oswin asked somewhat meekly, trying to change the subject. Sally had her arms crossed and was not in the mood for talking, but she answered.

"Not much. I only met him maybe three times. Always thought he was quite unhinged, though," she said.

Esther asked Oswin, "Why are you not, uh, projecting, or whatever…? He's gone."

"Whenever we get near him again, this effect he's having on my hardware will persist, so there's no point. Besides, wearing that leg can be quite tiring. It's not exactly comfortable," she said. Oswin resumed questioning Sally about Liam Kent, trying to gather as much information as possible. Between brief answers, Sally directed Esther, and Clara didn't say a word, just sat huffily in the back. Kept sighing.

Thankfully, it didn't take much more than twenty minutes for them to find this old office block, which sat near a junction to get onto the freeway (or 'motorway' as she was constantly corrected) in the midst of a lot of rural back roads. Was it a wonder that whatever company used to own it – which, going by the battered old sign out front, was some kind of low level insurance firm – had closed down, after basing themselves practically in the middle of nowhere? And now, apparently, it was the hideout of a serial killer. Allegedly. From outside, it just looked dark and desolate. The kind of weird place Sally often tried to drag her out to so that she could take photographs. Usually at stupid times of the evening.

"This is it, then?" Esther asked Sally.

"I think so. I've never been, but it looks close enough to the pictures," she said, squinting through the frosty windows of the Mini. Not wanting to waste any more time, Esther, Sally and Clara all went to open their doors.

"Wait, wait, wait," Oswin interjected.

"What?" Clara asked her, the first word she'd spoken in a while.

"Maybe Sally and I should stay in the car."

"_Stay in the car_? I'm not staying in the car," Sally argued, "Certainly not with you."

"I'm a floating ball, I'm not exactly going to molest you, Sal," Oswin said dryly.

"Don't call me 'Sal.'"

"I'd never call you Sal, Sal," Oswin said. Sally was clearly getting nowhere on that front, "Listen, all that I am is signals and data. I don't want to go near him and risk something more than just my visual output getting damaged. And, he could turn your brain into soup with a wave of his hand. Est won't be susceptible to it, and Clara will just come back to life."

"_Est_?" Esther questioned. Oswin had a real thing for nicknames, clearly.

"No! I can take care of myself."

"What? Just like those four women he killed took care of themselves? Just like James did? You're no good to anybody knocked out on the floor, or worse," Oswin said.

"You know, she has a point…" Esther agreed with Oswin, knowing she was going to get on Sally's bad side for that. An argument ensued, an argument in which everybody else had something valid to say and Sally Sparrow remained stubborn as an indignant child. Ultimately, Esther had to resort to the very underhand tactic of getting out of the car as quickly as possible (after rolling the window down slightly) and locking the other three in, which led to Clara merely phasing her way intangibly through the metal and joining Esther in the snow on the outside.

"Oi! Esther! Let me out!" Sally shouted through the crack in the window, only an inch long.

"It's for your own good. We'll be fine, just… talk to Oswin. I'll buy you food on the way home." With promise of food, Sally shut up. _Like you weren't going to annoy me into buying you food anyway_, Esther thought, irked. At least it worked, though, Sally really was like a toddler sometimes, the way she followed Esther around and tried to get her to buy things.

The door into the office block hung off of its hinges, the entrance wide open for them to go through, leaving the car and its two unhappy occupants behind. Then, within, it was pitch black. The old lobby was filled with snow that had blown in from the wind, and the sky was dark now, the time getting on for six in the evening.

Esther may not use her electrical abilities often – only when she got involved in one of these outlandish capers – but there was one which she used more frequently than the rest, that where she made a blue ball of electrical sparks in the palm of her hand and used it for light. It was this she did now, much to Clara Oswald's amusement. Shadows danced and flickered as the electricity crackled at her fingertips, and she stashed her gloves in her pocket. If Kent was as dangerous as he seemed, she didn't want to rule out having to actually use her abilities to hurt or hinder him, so it would be best to be quick on the draw.

"What's with the 'Sal' and 'Est' thing?" Esther inquired, she and Clara walking quietly. The floor was slippery from the frozen rain of the night before that hadn't melted in the chill of the building, and she wondered how Kent was managing to live somewhere so cold (if he was there at all.)

"Just Oswin. She likes nicknames," Clara explained, "You'll have to put up with it now, sorry, she won't stop no matter how much you ask her. She even calls Jenny 'Jen,' and she _hates_ when anybody calls her Jen, it's frightening. This place is spooky, right? Keep thinking I'm going to walk around a corner and there'll be a bunch of people chitchatting by a water cooler about how dissatisfied they are with their lives. Maybe some guy's retirement party where he's been bought a cake by the office secretary with his name misspelt on it, even though he's been working there for thirty years."

"That's specific," Esther commented, "You've worked in an office before?"

"No. I haven't had a lot of jobs. I was a barista all through university, and after that I was a nanny, and now I live in a spaceship. Qualified to teach, though. Maybe I'll get to. One day," Clara sighed.

"English, right?" Esther said, wanting to keep the conversation going so that she didn't get too creeped out. She, too, was now imaging ghostly office workers conjuring themselves out of nowhere and going about their mundane activities, making spectral spreadsheets. She hoped there weren't any real ghosts, though. On top of Liam Kent, she didn't think she could handle having to help any phantoms move into the next life.

"Yeah. Don't you know all this from the Other One?"

"She doesn't talk much about herself," Esther said, "I took American Literature as an elective in college."

"Did you? I did my thesis on Lovecraft," Clara said, "And this whole module in beatnik literature. I'd love to give you a long list of all the famous writers I've met, but I don't have one. The Doctor never takes me to meet them; I think he likes being the most impressive thing in my life a bit much. But, you know, Rose has met Charles Dickens! And Martha, right, _she's_ met _Shakespeare_. _Sonnet 18_ he wrote for her, seriously. Donna met Agatha Christie."

"Oh, come on, you met Nikola Tesla," Esther pointed out.

"That was for _your_ benefit. Who else have I met who's famous? No-one. I mean, I've met the Beatles, actually. That was a great evening, actually, my husband took us to the Ritz Carlton and we dined and dashed, and just managed to catch them backstage of the Ed Sullivan show. It was '64, I think," Clara said, smiling fondly at the memory. Esther was kind of jealous, she'd love to have met the Beatles back when they were at the height of their fame.

They talked vaguely of various authors and poets as they passed through the offices, Esther trying to remember as much as she could from her time in college, but that had been some fifteen years ago. She mentioned how, when in UNIT's custody, the only book they had allowed her had been _To Kill a Mockingbird_, and she had read that at least two-dozen times. Various segments of it she could recite word-for-word.

It wasn't a very tall office building, it only had four floors. They swept through the first two quickly enough, everything looking sinister when lit up with Esther's electricity, all the while talking about things to distract themselves. Wasn't long until Clara began talking about other creepy places she had been, telling Esther the story of this haunted house she had been investigating with the Doctor when she had first met Liam Kent. She talked about that, she talked about an imaginary asylum, she talked about a place called Dalton Lodge. Dalton Lodge made her drift onto the forbidden topic of Thirteen, though. In a way, it was almost lucky when, tiptoeing through the insurance firm's decrepit old cubicles and desks, they stumbled across what was almost definitely Kent's home base.

In a cleared out old conference room an immense computer setup was situated. It was a hub unlike any Esther had seen in a long time; made her reminisce about Torchwood's old computer equipment, made her remember her own awe in discovering the capabilities of their hacking software, using it to divert police patrol cars and hack into the Central Intelligence Agency while she, Rex, Gwen and Jack were all on the lam. There were monitors and televisions and radios and gizmos and maybe a few VHS players, a video game console or two, all wired up together, humming. There was something about it all, though, something different. A glorious goldmine of electricity like this would normally interest Esther the same way a free bar would interest an alcoholic. But it was different. She didn't trust it. She didn't know why, even from outside, she had not been able to detect such an overloaded beacon. Usually, she would be after it like a bloodhound.

"You wouldn't have thought this place still had power," Clara mused.

"It doesn't," Esther told her. If there had been power running through cables in the walls and the floors, she would know. But there they were, off the central grid, and she had hit a very crude jackpot, "Must be batteries. It's weird. I don't trust it." She didn't know what she meant by not trusting it, but she couldn't shake her feeling of unease. Like she was being watched. Again, she hoped there weren't any lost souls flitting about looking for something to latch onto.

Clara paced around the stuff, all of the screens brightly lit up with buzzing static, all of the radios hissing like they did when they were unable to pick up a station, everything humming and flashing. Almost alive. Esther made a beeline for the nearest laptop she could find, half a dozen wires connected to its various ports and snaking along the table to connect to other devices. She was surprised to find it worked, and was even more surprised by what she saw.

"Look at this," she called to Clara, who came to peer over her shoulder.

"What _is_ that? It looks like the matrix."

"It's some kind of encoded language," Esther said, "I wouldn't know where to begin to try and decipher it. Does it look human to you?"

"It's human, but advanced. This is like something my sister would build…" Clara said, staring at it, "She has all these strange shorthand languages nobody else understands." Esther continued trying to fathom what she was looking at, wanted to know what information was stored in the foreign dialect.

"Don't bother," came a voice from the other side of the room, on the opposite side of the large setup. Esther couldn't see who was speaking from where she was stood.

"Show yourself, Kent," Clara said loudly, looking around. Was his voice coming from the speakers around them? The radios, TVs, an old answering machine? Anything that emitted or received any kind of broadcasting signal, be that Wi-Fi or a radio waves or otherwise, was under his influence. If he could travel down wires, maybe he was in the machines?

"Why? So you can attack me?"

"We just want to talk," Esther said.

"And _you_," the voice crooned, "I haven't seen you for years." Esther stopped what she was doing with the computer.

"What are you talking about? I don't know you," she argued, Clara looking at her questioningly.

"Oh, but you do, Esther Drummond," he said, "You've been lost in the system for two years, escaped from me, as good as a ghost." Two years? It being 2016, two years ago, Esther would have been dead and buried in a hole in Washington D.C.

"Come out and face us," Clara challenged, "Come on. Don't be a coward, now. You've killed four of my Echoes, surely you can kill me, as well?"

"They're clones. The result of a conspiracy, a conspiracy so well hidden all the records are beyond my reach. Sealed away somewhere so classified it might as well not exist."

"It _doesn't_ exist. There isn't a conspiracy. You're an idiot."

"An _idiot_!?" his disembodied voice shouted, and all of the screens burned brighter, "I'm more intelligent than anyone else on this planet."

"I can think of someone who might disagree," Clara muttered, "Why are you killing them?"

"To find out what they are. After you came and covered it up, kept shrouding their existence – but I broke through that basic code keeping them all under wraps," he said. Esther would hardly call Adam Mitchell's constantly self-rewriting code 'basic.' Adam's code was the third most advanced thing she had ever seen on Planet Earth, the first being the stuff in that very room, and the second being the virus Captain Jack had used to erase the word 'Torchwood' from every digital databank across the entire globe.

"The truth isn't nearly as interesting as some conspiracy," Clara said, "If you show yourself, maybe I'll explain what they are. Hasn't this whole thing been about luring me out from the beginning? That's why you left the photographs? Why you broke into my father's house?"

"I thought he might know something."

"He does. Nothing that you got out of him, clearly."

"Maybe I'll go back. I could transmit myself through the phone lines, be there within minutes," Kent threatened, "Maybe he'll suddenly develop a touch of epilepsy."

"You do that, and I'll kill you."

"You were planning to kill me anyway." Clara narrowed her eyes then, and Esther didn't want to believe it, but she could have sworn that it seemed like Clara _had_ been planning on murdering Kent. That wouldn't make her any better than he was.

"How do you know me?" Esther persisted. She cared more about that than about why he was killing Clara's Echoes – the answer seemed simple; Liam Kent was deranged. Kent had a connection to Sally, a connection to Clara, and now, apparently, a connection to _her_. He laughed. "You tell me right now, or so help me I'll drain every last drop of electricity out of this equipment of yours, and then I'll blow it up."

"That's no way to thank your saviour," he said.

"_Saviour_?"

Noises like feedback spat out of the speakers filling the room, and from the largest television in the centre of the board room table, static came spilling out. That was just what it looked like, liquid static, arching like a water feature and cascading down onto the frozen floor. And it built up and up and up, cement filling a mould, a person-shaped mould, until out from the haze a man appeared.

There he was, Liam Kent in all his dishevelled glory, much younger than Esther would have thought with messy, dirty-blond hair and wild, green eyes that seemed to retain some of the static-like quality. His whole self was like that, jagged around the edges, fading in and out of being a person, fluctuating. But Esther had not been expecting to recognise him.

"Oh my god," she breathed, realising who she was looking at. But she couldn't look at him for long, because Clara winced next to her and disappeared in a blur of thick smoke, and when she reappeared she slammed Kent into a wall with her whole forearm pressed into his throat, floating high enough off the ground to gain a few inches over him. "What are you doing!?"

"What we came here to do," Clara said coldly, "You dare try and hide away in your fancy machines again and Esther will blow this whole place sky-high." Esther probably would not blow the whole place sky-high, actually.

"Let him go! We have to talk to him!"

"Talk to him!? What is there to say!? He's a maniac! He's driven himself insane looking for conspiracies where there aren't any!" Clara argued with her.

"You don't understand-"

"_I_ don't understand!? You're the one who clearly doesn't fucking understand, Esther! Do you know what they are to me, those Echoes!? They're like children! They're _mine_! _My_ offspring, _I_ made them. With the Doctor, Oswin's probably the closest thing to a daughter I'll ever have in my life!" Clara shouted at her, seething with rage. And Kent heeded her words, saw the spark of insanity in Clara that was so evident in himself. If he tried to escape, he knew she would kill him, and Esther knew it too, and she wasn't going to let that happen.

"You can't kill him!" Esther shouted right back, making to step over.

"Don't you dare come over and try to stop me," Clara ordered her, but Esther wasn't going to listen, she took that step anyway and found herself knocked back as though by an invisible force. Telekinesis, no doubt.

"Don't _you_ dare murder him!"

Kent couldn't say a word. He was choking beneath Clara's arm, and Esther suspected it was more than just Clara's physical strength at play when it came to the crushing of the man's windpipe.

"Why are you defending a killer!?"

"I have to talk to him!"

"What could you possibly have to fucking talk to him about!?" God, she hated swearing sometimes.

"_He's_ the person who brought me back from the dead with the scavenged Zuar technology!" Esther told her.

"So what!?"

"So I want to know why!"

"Who cares why!? He's mental, Esther, he's a fucking psychopath!"

"Well from where I'm standing, he doesn't look like the only one," she said sharply, "Don't kill him. You'll regret it. You'll make things worse."

"He's a murderer!"

"And this country doesn't have capital punishment! That's what you're doing! Capital punishment! Isn't that against your values?" Esther questioned. All she had at her disposal were words, she had to hope that she could talk Clara out of murdering Liam Kent. Esther had never been very good at making people do what she wanted them to, though. It wasn't a skill she possessed. Unless…

"Did you not want to be brought back to life!? You wanted to stay dead and buried!? What are you going to do, shake his fucking hand and write the bastard a thank you card!?"

"We're not killers! You're choking him! He's nearly unconscious!" Esther protested, wondering how well nanogenes would cope with death by electrocution. If Clara could survive worm digestion, Clara could probably survive anything. At least, Esther hoped she could. She really hoped.

"He'll be faking it."

"He's not immortal."

"He's a Manifest, who knows what he's capable of!?"

"And murder is what _you're_ capable of now?" Esther challenged her, taking baby steps closer and closer, trying to keep Clara talking. She was right, though, Kent was nearly unconscious. Soon enough, he might be dead.

Clara faltered. That was all Esther needed to lunge with the hand she had been using to light up their way through the building and grab Clara's arm. A few million volts shot through Clara, and rerouted themselves through Kent, as well. Esther prayed that Kent's abilities to travel through signals gave him some immunity when it came to electric shocks, because she didn't want to be a murderer. She didn't want to be the tortured hypocrite who had killed to save Clara the trouble.

Both Clara Oswald and Liam Kent fell to the ground when Esther let go, Clara's hand covered in bright red lightning burns that spread across her skin like intricate tree branches. She didn't have a doubt in her mind that Clara was dead, no electrical activity in her at all. But Liam Kent? _He _was still alive.

* * *

"I'm gonna build another house," Martha Jones declared.

"That means you'd have three houses on Park Lane, that's completely unfair," Rose Tyler argued with her.

"Board games based on chance don't have the capacity to be unfair," Nios reminded them monotonously. Her monotony was all an act, though.

"You're only saying that because you have _all_ the stations," Rose snapped.

"Give over, you're just annoyed that you're losing. Another house, now, on the double," Martha ordered Captain Jack Harkness. He took Martha's paper money and handed her a little plastic green house from the box. He wasn't playing, but had made himself banker after Rose's integrity came into question very early on.

Nios then proceeded to roll double fives and move ten spaces around the board, passing Go and then landing right on Income Tax.

"That's rough," Jack remarked. Grumpily, Nios rolled again, got three, and had to pull a Chance card, which she proceeded to read aloud.

"'You have won a crossword competition, collect £100.'"

"Didn't think a killer synth like you would be into crosswords," Jack said, passing her the money from the box.

"Don't listen to him, Nios. You can do anything you can put your mind to," Jenny Harkness called from the kitchen of Nerve Centre. She was pouring batter into a baking tray to make chocolate chip muffins, and had been listening to the game of Monopoly for the better part of an hour. They were at two and a half hours now, though. It was what space travel was really about, droll board games. On one of the empty chairs, Princess Sparkle Tutu was asleep, now getting considerably bloated as she coasted through the terms of her pregnancy.

"Guess who just came second in a beauty pageant," Rose boasted. She had just rolled a seven and had landed on the Community Chest, "You owe me a tenner."

"Who came first?" Jack asked, and she glared at him, "What?"

"Money. Now." He gave her the paper.

The game of Monopoly was destined to be put briefly on hold, however, when the button to open the sliding door into Nerve Centre from the console room was pressed and in came Oswin Oswald, fumbling with her fake leg like it wasn't attached properly.

"Got two bodies out here, need someone's help to carry them," she declared.

"Bodies? Whose bodies?" Martha asked, putting down the dice and getting up. Oswin embarked upon a story about Esther Drummond electrocuting Clara Oswald, Clara's nanogenes being interfered with by a Manifest who could alter signals which would delay her healing process considerably, and said Manifest being an evil serial killer who had apparently also brought Esther back to life, knew Sally Sparrow, and was now unconscious in the next room.

Rose went to help Jenny lug Clara's limp corpse into the medibay where she would be allowed to heal at an exponentially slow rate (but, Oswin assured, she definitely _would_ heal, and _was_ healing), while Jack indiscriminately hauled Liam Kent in and dumped him down on one of the sofas. Rose and Jenny reappeared from the medibay and swapped places with Martha and Oswin, and then Sally Sparrow and Esther Drummond came swanning into Nerve Centre, the former thoroughly awestruck at her surroundings..

"Long-time no see, Esther," Rose said.

Nios waved her greeting to Esther, who was not in a good mood, given the fact she had killed Clara Oswald, and then asked, "Who's that?" nodding at Sally.

"Sally Sparrow," Esther answered. Sally was looking around the room. Jenny muttered something about having to sort out her muffins and went back into the kitchen, glancing suspiciously at the unconscious serial killer now in their possession.

"Who's Sally Sparrow?"

"That girl Clara's obsessed with," Rose said. That was the first thing that got Sally's attention and made her realise how out of place she was on the TARDIS, "Why is she on the ship?"

"Everyone else is on the ship," Esther said.

"What did you want them to do? Make her wait outside?" Jenny questioned Rose. Esther noticed that Jenny Harkness, at present, definitely did not have an injured thumb. Her thumb seemed perfectly alright, as she doled out batter to make cupcakes. Large cupcakes, though. Rose shrugged.

"Maybe. What if she breaks something?"

"Like what? There's nothing here to break. You know, this ship is like one of those creepy villages that's too small to be marked on a map, and then some tourists break down and get stuck there overnight and they're all actually evil cultists, or something, who refuse to get the internet or mobile phones," Jenny said.

"This guy brought you back to life?" Jack asked Esther. Everyone ignored Jenny.

"Yeah, with the Zuar ship that crashed in New England in the 1800s," Esther said, "The same one Edison used to build that soul-sucking machine."

"Him? He salvaged antique alien technology and brought you back to life?" Jack was incredulous.

"It must have been him. I recognise him, I saw him standing over my grave after he dug me up that night," Esther explained. Rose, Nios and Jenny listened too. Sally continued to look around the living room like it was the most remarkable thing she had ever seen. Oswin returned from the medibay holding a laptop. Not her fancy laptop, but one of Kent's that Esther had taken out of the office block with her.

"Did you see this language he was writing in?" she was saying, mostly to Esther, "It's something he's invented, a whole coding language. This is like something _I_ would come up with, and that's dangerous. Can't have two people with my intelligence running around, the death toll is practically unfathomable. But he definitely didn't have these capabilities when Mitchell hacked into his computer systems in 2014 and did a master delete."

"Is that his other power, then? If he's a Manifest? Hyper-intelligence?" Jenny suggested, sticking the tray in the oven and setting a timer. Esther wondered what sort of buns she was making. Hopefully not anything weird, like those anchovy cookies she had tried to pawn off on Sally the other week.

"It must be. Do you have an adrenaline inhibitor?" Oswin asked Rose.

"Those things don't work."

"They don't work on you lot, because you're all mutants after that coffee debacle. But they _will_ work on _him_. Don't want him getting control of the TARDIS and pulling an Elle," she said. Until she vanished in a shimmering flurry of gold, Esther completely forgot that Rose Tyler could teleport. Sally hadn't known she could do that at all, and jumped.

"You're acting like you're meeting a celebrity, or something, being on this ship," Esther muttered to her, and she scowled. Rose reappeared the same way and held out a silver, metal bracelet to whoever wanted to take it and put it on Kent's wrist. Jack was the one who volunteered to do that.

"I wanna know what else he knows," Jack declared. Rose sat back down with Nios at the table with the Monopoly board on it.

"Do you want me to put the squeeze on him?" Jenny offered, speaking mostly to Oswin, "You know, rough him up a bit?"

"He won't be very helpful if you put him into a coma," Jack quipped.

"I wouldn't hit him _that_ hard," she argued, crossing her arms.

"Alright, you can _both_ interrogate him, or whatever," Oswin said, "I don't really want to do it. Try not to have any lover's tiffs though, alright?" Both of them glared at her, but she didn't care. "We still have that room from when Other Clara was made into a vampire, stick him in there, with the one-way mirror." Jack and Jenny went to pick up Kent – Jenny at his head and Jack at his feet – and carry him away into the rest of the TARDIS.

"I'm gonna go with them," Esther said to Sally.

"But I don't want to."

"So?"

"So what am _I_ supposed to do?" she questioned, and Esther thought for a moment.

"Hey, Rose," she said, "Earlier, in the car, Sally totally yelled at Clara."

Rose was immediately interested; "Did she? What for?"

"For being a nymphomaniac," Esther answered, "She'll tell you _all_ about it." That was the way to get on Rose Tyler's good side, get on Clara Oswald's bad one.

"Oh yeah? Do you want to play Monopoly? You can take Martha's place while she's in the medibay," Rose offered.

"I'm not really very good at Monopoly, I always lose."

"Even better," Nios remarked, "Martha's winning, and it's her turn."

"Don't sit in that chair, though, the cat's sleeping on it," Rose warned, nodding at the chair on the left of Martha's where the ginger thing purred in its sleep.

Esther really did feel like Sally was a lost toddler she was stuck having to supervise, but left her to play Monopoly as she herself followed Jack, Jenny and Oswin, having to almost run to catch up with them because she didn't know where this interrogation room was. When they arrived, though, and when she and Oswin slid into the dark observation room, Esther couldn't help but pity Clara Ravenwood if_ that_ was what she had woken up to after joining the legion of the undead. A big, glaringly white room, nearly clinical, and a freakish wooden chair that looked like it had been dragged out of a medieval torture chamber, complete with leather wrist and ankle straps.

"You had Clara locked in here?"

"Yeah," Oswin said, "It looks cruel, but we didn't know whether or not she might frenzy and start attacking people. So, we strapped her to the chair and sent Jenny in to talk to her. I say 'sent' – Jenny _begged_ to be let in to talk to her."

"Can you decode that stuff?"

"I can translate it," she said, "I'm reading it right now."

"What? You learnt how to read it that fast?"

"You know, the amount that I go on about it, I'm really surprised how often people seem to forget I'm the most intelligent human who ever lived. You _do_ know my IQ is three-fifty-two?" she said to Esther, who didn't know that. She'd been figuring it was around two-hundred, maybe.

"Well what is it, then?"

"Old Torchwood files, I think. There's a different signature for all the files depending on where he got them from, and none with his Torchwood stamp go beyond 2009," Oswin said, skimming through the illegible data extraordinarily quickly, "The data on the Echoes is pooled over a longer period of time, so is data on you. You're some kind of pet project of his… look here…" Oswin proceeded to hit a button on a microphone on the desk in front of her, which caused a crackle of feedback in the interrogation room itself. Jack and Jenny were lurking in there, leaning against opposite walls, Kent tied down to the chair. "Listen to this: '_Subject E responded positively to alien intervention, and from what I gather, is fully self-aware and in control of her own actions. The remarkable thing is how rotten she-_'"

"Don't read it," Esther told her, and she stopped.

"'Subject E?' This guy is a serious loon," Jenny said from the next room.

"Eurgh, he's encoded a picture," Oswin muttered.

"Please-"

"It's fine, I deleted it before translating the pixels," Oswin assured her.

"Thanks."

"Seriously, though, this bloke's almost as clever as me," she complained.

"Are you jealous, Os?" Jenny joked. Oswin grimaced.

"If he's almost as clever as me, that means he's definitely cleverer than _you_, Jen," Oswin retorted. Esther remembered Clara telling her not long ago at all how much Jenny hated being called 'Jen.' At any rate, she did _not_ look happy about it. Jack laughed.

"Don't laugh at my expense," she said coldly.

"Alright, Jen. No laughing."

"I'll break your jaw if you call me that again," Jenny threatened him, and he shut up. Probably because that wasn't an empty threat. Strange, Esther saw Jenny Harkness all the time, and she only ever saw this streak of aggression when she was around her ex-husband.

"Sure. Fine. Whatever. I guess now all we gotta do is wait for Sleeping Beauty here to wake up," Jack said, crossing his arms and leaning against the wall. And that was what they did.

* * *

"He's crazy. That's it. Some totally insane guy who happened to get superpowers on a trip to London one fall," Esther said to Sally Sparrow almost as soon as she returned to Nerve Centre, an hour later, in a bad mood. She had been expecting some grandiose reason for everything, something that really connected them all together, something to make her resurrection even remotely _meaningful_. Maybe 'expecting' was the wrong wrote. 'Hoping for' would be more accurate. Esther had been _hoping for_ a reason. But for an hour she had listened to the ranting of a stark-raving lunatic, who believed he had been abducted by multiple UFOs belonging to species unfindable in the TARDIS databanks, he was wanted by the government for his knowledge of conspiracies, he was killing Clara's Echoes for the good of the general populace. Liam Kent made Oswin Oswald look mentally stable.

"Really?" Sally asked her. Esther wanted to sit in the seat next to Sally, who was still playing Monopoly because Martha was still in the medibay checking on Clara's healing, but Princess Sparkle Tutu was still curled up in it. She couldn't push the cat off without risking an electric shock, and had already electrocuted enough living things for one day. For one lifetime, even. "That's it?"

"Yes. That's _it_. A nut-job, a psycho, a maniac, that's _all_ he is. Obsessed with Torchwood, became hyper-intelligent and decided to bring me back to life. Said he admires Jack, called me a 'failure.' I don't want to stick around here, we have to go meet Elliott where I left the car," Esther said.

"What? Elliott? Why?" Sally questioned. Rose and Nios listened, but were also quite invested in their game. There were at least six red hotels on the board now, and a dozen or so houses, and _everything_ had been bought. Sally was direly running out of money, though. As promised, she had lost Martha's game for her.

"Oswin was looking into Undercoll. She, unlike me, could actually hack in. They have prisoner holding facilities down there. She hacked the personnel files and got his phone number, and we have to hand Kent over to him to take down to London. It's apparently some kind of peace offering to try and build bridges with 'New Torchwood,'" Esther explained, "I wanna leave now."

"Are you sure you can't stay for a bit? We could play Cluedo?" Rose suggested, "Or Buckaroo, there's definitely Buckaroo hidden somewhere on this ship."

"What about Risk? Esther loves Risk," Sally said. She _did_ love Risk, but she also wanted to go home.

"We're not playing Risk. I'm driving us home, remember? It's late, and it's been snowing."

"Well… _yeah_, but-"

"But nothing, you just don't want to talk to Elliott. Wait in the car, or something," Esther said, the same time the door opened and Jack and Jenny returned carrying Kent through. He was unconscious again. He'd ranted so much and had been so sickeningly creepy and obnoxious, Jenny had decked him and knocked him out cold. "I don't want to hang around with him either, you know."

"Elliott's the one you said Clara was banging on about?" Rose asked for clarification, and Sally told her that yes, he was. She didn't say anything more, though. Jack and Jenny just loitered next to Kent, wondering where they ought to put him, Esther assumed. She doubted that she and Sally Sparrow would be strong enough to carry him around anywhere, though. Oswin returned to the room with the laptop again, brushing straight past everybody to get to the medibay. On her way, she muttered a hasty goodbye to Sally and Esther, assuming that they would be leaving any minute now. If Esther got her way, they would be. She promised Rose to send Martha back out so that they could continue with their Monopoly game.

"Hey, where are we taking Dr Frankenstein here?" Jack asked.

"Out," Esther answered, "C'mon, Sally."

"Fine," Sally got up and pulled her coat back on.

The TARDIS had been sitting there next to Esther's Mini Cooper for the whole while they had been inside; it hadn't flown off anywhere or gone into any kind of orbit. James Elliott had yet to arrive, so there was no danger of Jack or Jenny (or both) staying back to chitchat with him, which made Esther and her desire to get as far away from Nottingham as possible quite pleased. Jack could talk the ear off of anybody.

"So? The TARDIS? Finally seeing the rest of it?" Esther said to Sally, nudging her some time later. Esther spoke just after the ship had dematerialised with that loud vworping noise, vanishing into thin air and blowing cold wind towards them. It was the night time now, eight o'clock, and it was snowing again. The roads were going to be a nightmare.

"I didn't really see the rest of it, I saw one other room," Sally said.

"There's not a whole lot more to see. Not that I ever did. Apart from some of the bedrooms, they have _really_ fancy bedrooms. I heard there's a pool, though, and a garden, a library, and a garage full of Adam Mitchell's cars," Esther said.

"Was Adam Mitchell himself not there? I've never met him," Sally said, "He's probably the closest thing to a boyfriend that you've ever had."

"Hilarious," Esther said dryly, "Oswin said he was out. I don't know where. You'd like him, he's a conspiracy nut, like you, all into UFO sightings and stuff."

"Like Kent?" Sally questioned, nodding at Liam Kent. He snored, propped up against Esther's car as they waited for Elliott, who was apparently en route.

"I guess so," she shrugged, "But he's nice."

"Here we go," Sally murmured, changing the subject. A pretty sleek, black car with tinted windows pulled up from the road towards them; undoubtedly Elliott.

"I told you to sit in the car," Esther said.

"I don't want him to think I'm avoiding him, I don't have anything against him," Sally said, "It was just Clara bothering me. It's none of her business."

"I agree completely, you know me. Always a stickler for privacy," Esther assured her.

"Are you still buying food on the way home?"

"Yes, definitely." Kent grunted behind them, but he was still out, and then Elliott parked his car and opened the door. Of course, his eyes found Sally first, but it was Esther who greeted him.

"Hi," she said, "Got your prisoner right here." She nodded at Kent next to them.

"Good. Have to get back to London, anyway, Lowe says the servers are under cyber-attack, somebody broke into the personnel files and was looking at our facility blueprints," Elliott said.

"Oh, no, that was Oswin, it's fine. Uh, accept this serial killer as some kind of consolation," Esther said, "That thing on his wrist is an adrenaline inhibitor that stops his superpowers from working." She then had to tell Elliott everything she had already had to tell Sally, about how Kent was just plain crazy, nothing else sinister at bay, how he had grown obsessed with Clara and an untrustworthy government, and Torchwood, and how he was the person who had brought Esther back from the dead.

Elliott didn't ask either of them for help, and they didn't offer it, as he dragged Kent's body across the snowy carpark, and then shoved him clumsily into the backseat of what Esther assumed was a company car. He brushed his hands clean on his jeans and closed the door.

"You know, I got orders to offer you two honorary positions in Undercoll," he said, "Hollowmire branch, Darling said."

"Darling?" Sally asked.

"Our leader, she's called Darling. Said you'd be invaluable. We get all sorts of tip-offs about your strange town."

"Oh yeah? Really?" Sally inquired.

"I'd rather not be involved with anymore clandestine organisations, thanks, not after the last one got me killed," Esther said.

"What's the pay like?" Sally asked.

"It would be voluntary."

"Oh. Definitely not, then," Sally said. Esther felt like commenting that she didn't do an awful lot of anything anyway, but if Sally was getting tip-offs about places to investigate, she dreaded to think what her own life would become. She'd soon be reduced to a paranormal taxi service. She was _already_ a paranormal taxi service. Sally Sparrow's personal chauffeur.

"Well. You can handle him, I'm sure. We'll be off, I guess," Esther said.

"Wait," Elliott said, then he spoke to Sally, "Can I talk to you? Alone?" Esther looked at Sally and waited to see what she was going to say.

"Uh… sure. Okay," she said. Esther didn't need to hear that twice to know this was her cue to get into the car immediately, and that was what she did, glad that the steering wheel was on the left and, accordingly, further away from _those two_. It was nothing to do with Esther, anyway. She finally had a chance to resume what she had been up to that very morning while they waited around in the car by the crime scene for the Twins to arrive; she took out her cell phone and started playing _Flappy Bird_ all over again.

She got lost in that stupid game, with that stupid bird, for a good ten minutes, at least, utterly engrossed in the plight of that tiny, useless thing as she tapped the screen repeatedly to make it jump the pipes. For the first time that day, Esther Drummond became elated when she beat her score of twenty-four to get all the way to twenty-nine, a five pipe sweep. She beamed and spared a glance out of the window. And then she had to do a double take when she saw Sally Sparrow and James Elliott _kissing_. Surely they hadn't been doing that the whole time, had they? Going by the way, quite quickly, Sally pushed him away from her, Esther supposed they hadn't. She must've just chosen a very pertinent moment to look away from her phone screen.

Sally appeared to mumble something to him and step away quickly. With the interior lights off, she couldn't see that Esther was watching through the window. She waved, brokenly, over her shoulder, and fumbled with the door handle. That had all been over _very_ fast, and Esther wanted to know what was going on, but she also didn't want to pry.

"Drive, please," Sally said, putting her seatbelt on.

"What was _that_?" Esther asked. Definitely prying. Oops.

"Doesn't matter, just drive." Esther didn't. "Seriously, Esther."

"Right. Sure. Sorry." She put her phone away in her coat pocket and started the ignition, the lights coming on when she did. Sally slouched as far down in her seat as was allowed, like she was hiding. James Elliott stood uselessly by his car and watched Esther pull out of the carpark. She felt bad for him, though she didn't know what was going on. She had a niggling desire to roll down her window and tell him goodbye again, be a bit more polite, but thought that if she did that Sally would definitely kill her.

"So?" Esther broached the subject fifteen minutes into their ride home. She didn't know if she'd ever heard Sally Sparrow stay quiet for fifteen entire minutes before.

"_So_?"

Esther sighed, "You seem shook up. What's the matter? What's going on?"

"Nothing's going on."

"Sally. This is me. We live together, I can't help but be worried," Esther said.

"Worried?"

"I don't know, you're acting strange. Stranger than normal, which is saying something."

"Unbelievable, you find the bloke who brought you back from the dead, and you're more bothered about _me_?"

"There's nothing to say about him. He's just crazy. Didn't have any other reason to do it. Maybe I should be grateful, I don't know, it's not something I want to talk about while I'm driving in this awful weather," Esther said, "Maybe he'll tell Undercoll if there was something else going on. Why _are_ you so dead-set on not going out with Elliott anywhere?"

"Because I was with someone for six years. _Six years_. For three of those I was engaged. Then he left me, a month before we were supposed to get married, for god's sake. And it still hurts. So, forgive me for not jumping at the first opportunity to go on a date with someone I hardly know. I knew Larry for a year, and I already knew a lot about him because his sister was my best friend. And what would it be, anyway? A 'chance at happiness?' I'm happy enough already without risking further upset. I really don't see another relationship as anything remotely fulfilling. Then with Clara going on like 'finding somebody' is the be-all end-all of life, it just got to me. I've never cared much about that stuff. Human beings are not broken souls looking desperately for their 'other half.' And he _does_ live in _London_, for the record, long-distance never works."

"Hey, you know I'm the last person to be trying to pressure you into dating somebody," Esther said, trying to lighten the mood, "Why were you kissing him, though?"

"You saw that? I thought you might have missed it, playing your game."

"I was playing it, then I looked up and saw the pair of you, you know."

"He just sort of did it. He was trying to get my phone number again. I gave him it, in the end, because I didn't want to explain about Larry. Besides, it might come in handy," she muttered, "He was asking me about you."

"About _me_? What about me?"

"I kept looking back at the car when I was trying to think of a way to leave, and he asked me if you would be in a mood with me for holding us up," Sally explained.

"Really? What did you say?"

"I told him no, you'd be fine, you'll wait for hours because you're playing _Flappy Bird_. Then I said you're getting into the craze late, trying to catch up with what you missed when you were dead, and I told him how you can't get higher than thirty, but I also said it was cute. Like how a kitten trying to jump onto something high but it can't make it and sort of hits it and bounces off is cute," Sally told her.

"I can't even tell if that's a compliment or not."

"Yeah, well… we didn't really talk about a lot. I ended up saying we should just be friends, and that was when he decided to kiss me, and I more or less ran away. Which you saw."

"Yep. I did see."

"Can we stop talking about him now? It's been a long day."

"Says you, you haven't done anything. I've been driving all over the place, electrocuting people, watching interrogations. Paying your expenses."

"I keep telling you to get me insured on your car so that _I_ can drive it."

"And _I_ keep telling _you_ that there's no way in hell I'll ever let you," Esther said firmly. It was an argument they had a lot.

"Where are you gonna stop for food? There's only one set of services on this motorway, and they only have a Little Chef. You don't wanna go to Little Chef."

"Right… I'll just take us to McDonald's, okay? I could kill for a milkshake."

"Sounds like a plan, Est."

"Sure does, Sal."

**AN: The Twelfth Doctor (Beta Twelve, Old Twelvey) was supposed to actually be in this storyline, after hearing about clone murders, but he was really only there to hinder and annoy them and be confused about who they are (except Sally, who he recognises, but pretends like she doesn't remember anything about the Doctor or Weeping Angels.) At one point he was meant to try and push Esther into that swimming pool and then Sally would push him in herself, and also ask Clara a bunch of weird questions about her husband. I wrote him out in the end, though, for being irrelevent.**


	471. Other Halves & Counterparts III

_Other Halves &amp; Counterparts III_

_Oswin_

"I don't believe you."

"Why not?"

"You're not that type of person!"

"What type of person is that?"

"The type who spontaneously goes out and buys a yacht. Where is this yacht? What are you going to do with it? _I'm_ not going on it, I hate the sea, and I can't swim."

"You could get, like, a boat motor, and attach it to your thigh."

"A _boat motor_? For a _leg_? Even _I_ think that's stupid, Mitchell."

Clara made a groaning sound and interrupted Oswin's conversation with her boyfriend about this yacht he had allegedly purchased earlier on, while he'd been out. Apparently, he'd gotten a call pretty soon after she'd left that morning with her sister that Ellie had gotten into trouble at school and he desperately needed to come in and sort it out, though he had yet to tell Oswin what sort of trouble this had been. Then, somewhere along the line, he'd had the genius idea to buy a massive boat. Clara making noises cut them off, though.

"Clara?" Oswin asked. They were no longer in the medibay, she had enlisted Jenny's help in lugging Clara back into her own bedroom, in search of the Doctor. The Doctor was not around, though, and while Jenny had hung about with Oswin until Adam Mitchell returned from his outing, she had left now to get back to those muffins she'd been baking. She had been cooking a lot since her latest regeneration.

"Where m'I?" Clara slurred. Her brain probably wasn't running at full capacity yet.

"In bed, on the TARDIS, you've been unconscious for over three hours," Oswin said. Without Kent intervening with the nanogenes, Clara would have healed in no less than ten minutes. It was a serious lag he had caused. Clara couldn't die, though. Thirteen's visit had made that pretty clear; in fifty years, Clara Oswald was still alive and kicking.

"Wha' happened?"

"You were going to kill Kent, so Esther stopped you. You've suffered a minor electrocution."

"_Electrocution_?"

"_Minor_ electrocution. You're going to be tip-top and dandy by the morning, at most," Oswin said.

Adam muttered to her, "_Tip-top and dandy_?" and she elbowed him in the side. Oswin had brought Clara's piano stool over to sit on, while Jenny had dragged one of the chairs from she and Adam's dining table through the Bedroom Circle earlier, and had swapped seats with Adam when he arrived.

"Why don't you go take your shoes and coat off?" Oswin suggested to him, "And make some coffee, maybe. Or something to eat." He frowned at her, and then realised she was trying to get rid of him, and he was going to play it to his advantage. Ugh, _boys_, she thought, they only ever had one thing on their minds.

"What's in it for me?" he questioned. It was a good thing Clara was too out of it to listen to them.

"I don't know. I'll think about it. I already told you I'd go on that date," she said, "Why should you have to have a reason to be nice? Clara's probably starving. Go back to the kitchen and make her a sandwich."

"You know," he said, standing up, "You're terrible sometimes. Feminism is lost on you." He was kidding.

"How is it lost on me? _You're_ the one in the kitchen," she retorted, and as he walked out of the room she saw him stick his tongue out at her, like a child. In response, she winked, and then he left (bumping into the doorframe on the way.) Immediately, her attention turned back to Clara, "Are you alright? How do you feel?"

"Confused," Clara said shortly, then she squinted to look around the room, "Where's the Doctor?"

"Not here. He left you a note," Oswin said, reaching to the bedside table next to Clara's head, "He has very girly handwriting, for the record." _Far girlier handwriting than Thirteen_, she added internally, _and Thirteen _is_ a girl_. "He says that Craig called the TARDIS and asked him to come and sub for someone in a football match, and to call Craig or Sophie if you need anything from him, and he'll be back late because he's staying for dinner. And that he loves you, which _I_ think is gross."

"Did you call?"

"No, I thought I'd best leave that up to you when you woke up. Besides, we all knew you were going to be fine anyway, there's no real reason to make him rush back, especially when you've been unconscious this whole time. Do you want to ring up now?" Oswin asked, and Clara shut her eyes for a second.

"No. Leave him," she answered.

"You can't keep avoiding him, honey."

"I'm not avoiding him. Like you said, I'll be fine, no reason to make him rush," Clara sighed, "I miss him."

"You only saw him yesterday, Clara," Oswin remarked, "Co-dependency is actually quite unhealthy, as a matter of fact." Clara grimaced, but didn't defend herself.

"How did I get electrocuted?"

"Esther did it. She did it to stop you from killing Kent. He's alive. Undercoll have him in their custody now, a sort of gift. We figured it would be best not to piss off this 'New Torchwood,'" Oswin explained. Clara didn't say anything. The full extent of the lightning burns on her arm were visible now, it looked like a bright red lightning bolt itself crawling across Clara's skin, spreading out from the much nastier epicentre where Esther's hand had been. Clara was looking at them.

"Why don't I have bandages?"

"They'll heal," Oswin said.

"They haven't healed yet."

"No, the nanogenes prioritised non-cosmetic things first, I think they're still fixing up your brain. Kent messed with them, they're going slowly," Oswin said. Clara stared and stared at the burn, lifted her arm up to look. The thin streaks and branches of read spread down onto her fingers and all the way up to her shoulder.

"Leave them," she said.

"What do you mean…?" Oswin asked carefully.

"I mean, reprogram the nanogenes. Let it heal on its own."

"It'll scar, Clara, you'll have a huge scar. I mean, the burn ointment would get rid of it, but-"

"No, don't get rid of it, leave it alone," Clara said firmly, almost through gritted teeth, looking at Oswin seriously. Oswin was at a loss for what to say.

"Why?" she asked simply.

"Why don't you program your left leg back?" Clara challenged, and Oswin clenched her jaw.

"River used a biological lock to-"

"No she didn't. I know she didn't, Oswin."

"To remind me of what I did."

"And you wear that ring for the same reason," Clara said, talking about the black ring on Oswin's right index finger, the one with the names of the Dust War's dead stored within it*. All those who had died in the bombing of Heph.

"Yes, all the things I've done wrong, so that I don't forget. But you haven't done anything wrong. You didn't kill Kent. You've never really killed anybody. You're one of the most compassionate people I've ever met, why would you want to do this to yourself?" Oswin questioned.

"Because I would have killed him, Oswin. _You_ made me immortal, you made me this way, and I have to stay this way to help them. I'm not going to let anybody else hurt them or hunt them like he did," Clara said.

"Clara, honey, you don't need a lightning scar to remember that," Oswin said.

"Of course I do, Cara was kidnapped, and now she's _dead_. I should have known that she was in danger, I should have thought, and been there. I should know every single one of them, and I don't care if that makes you jealous, or something, because I'd protect all of them with my life. Regardless of if I know them as well as I know you, none of them should have been killed just because of who they are. And _I_ made them, so _I_ have a duty to do. All of you are my responsibility. They're dead, I can't get off scot-free. I _can't_. _I'm_ responsible," Clara said.

"You remind me of me. And you nearly lost it, you nearly killed him. It sounds like you were exactly like me when I tried to blow up Io. And then with Martha saying all that stuff about…" Oswin stopped talking, like she had vanished into her thoughts. Clara frowned.

"Martha? What's Martha been saying?"

Oswin sighed, "You know she saw you when you woke up from your nightmare? Just over a week ago**?"

"No. Why didn't you tell me? What was she saying?"

"Martha thinks you have post-traumatic stress disorder that's never been treated. She thinks that you having that when you made your Echoes makes _me_ more susceptible to mental illness, that _that's_ why I'm… you know. The way I am. And now you're doing this? Keeping yourself injured because of a personal crusade? I can tell you from experience, it isn't good. Self-persecution isn't a path you want to be going down, Clara," Oswin said.

"Did she tell anybody else? About my nightmares?"

"She mentioned something to Adam and he asked me if I ever got them, but I haven't. I repress my experiences; I don't remember them while I sleep." Clara wasn't happy at all hearing that Martha Jones seemed to be prying into her personal life, even if she _was_ a doctor. Then again, she wasn't the sort of doctor who specialised in diseases of the mind.

"Esther's job needs to change," Clara said.

"Change? Why?"

"From passive surveillance to active surveillance. And I want files and data on every single one of them. I need to know them _all_, past, present and future. You know, I'll just do it myself, I'll ask the Doctor to lift my ban on computers when he gets back," she decided.

"I'll help you," Oswin offered, as much as she didn't like the idea. She hoped it wouldn't lead to her keeping tabs on Eyeball. But she didn't want to have more blood on her hands because she refused to get involved in the protection of her… whatever they were. She didn't generally like to compare herself to the rest of them.

The door to Clara's room was opened, and Oswin peered around to see who it was, thinking it would either be Adam or the Doctor himself returned. It was neither, though, it was Jenny, carrying a box of something.

"I've made _way_ too many muffins," she declared, "Do you want some? Or some for Clara, when she… oh, hey." Jenny smiled when she saw Clara was awake, not that Clara was in a good mood, and not that Jenny would do a lot to lighten it, either. "Do you want a muffin? They're your favourite, chocolate with white chocolate chips." Neither of them answered though. "…Did I come at a bad time?"

"Tell Clara why she can't keep those scars," Oswin said. Jenny came over, put the box of muffins down on the foot of Clara's bed.

"Why can't she?" Jenny asked.

"Because it's an injury, you're not supposed to want to keep injuries."

"Says you and your leg," Jenny remarked, "I always thought humanity have an odd view of scars, in all honesty. You all see them as bad, or unsightly – I think how pleasant something is to look at is all relative. I used to have loads of scars, two-hundred years' worth of them. I saw them like wrinkles. They showed my age, that I'd lived. Gone now. Miss them sometimes. Clara wouldn't like them. Ravenwood, I mean."

"See?" Clara remarked to Oswin.

"Why do you want to keep them?" Jenny inquired curiously.

"So that I remember I have a duty of care to all of my Echoes, so that I stop any of them getting hurt like those four who were murdered ever again," Clara said.

"Huh. It's sort of noble. Besides, when that heals, _I _think it'll look kind of cool," she said, "Do you want a muffin, then? Or two? Three? Oh – what's your favourite sandwich?"

"Sure," Clara said. Jenny being nice to her must have actually cheered her up, contrary to what Oswin thought, "Why do you want to know my favourite sandwich?"

"Reasons I assume are obvious without me having to say them," Jenny answered, picking two muffins out of the box and holding them out to Oswin, who put them down on the bedside table, along with the Doctor's note left behind for his wife.

"Can you not just ask Ravenwood what her own favourite sandwich is? Do you not share information with one another?" Oswin questioned. She wanted Jenny to leave, because she still wanted to convince Clara to have the lightning scars healed, and Jenny was not helping.

"Maybe I want to surprise her," Jenny said.

"Ham and egg salad with extra mayonnaise," Clara answered, "But, when I say _extra _mayonnaise, I mean about four times as much mayonnaise as any normal person would ordinarily eat."

Jenny frowned, then turned to Oswin and remarked, "What _have _I gotten myself into? Although, that gives me the idea to make some mayonnaise from scratch… I have this great recipe all of my own…"

"Would it be weird if I ask you to let me have some of that if you end up making any?" Clara asked.

"No, of course not. I'll probably make way too much anyway; I'm not very good at portions." Jenny didn't say much else then, Oswin looking at her darkly to try and make her go away. She went to pick the box of muffins back up, "I'll just-"

"How are you, Jenny?" Clara asked her, and she stopped, "Now that she's gone."

"Well, I… haven't really…" she didn't know what to say.

"You okay?" Oswin inquired. Thirteen had asked her to make sure Jenny was okay, and Jenny was her friend, so she would try her best.

"I'm fine. Totally fine. I'll see her again soon. I'd best be off, though, I have muffins to deliver," she said quickly, evidently wanting to get away from more questions about her mother, "You know, I feel like an usherette in an old-time cinema carrying this about."

"And what an adorable usherette you make. You can leave now." Jenny left then, waving slightly over her shoulder, but desperate to get out of the room all of a sudden. Oswin watched her go, as Clara picked up one of the muffins to examine it.

"_She_ almost makes me jealous of the Other One," Clara muttered, "Wandering around, making mayonnaise from scratch."

"Only you could ever be seduced by mayonnaise, honey."

"My husband won't be nearly so understanding about these scars," Clara said after sighing, trying to reposition herself in bed and wincing as the sheets brushed against her burned skin.

"He never has to see them," Oswin said stiffly, "I won't let you keep them."

"Oswin, it's my choice. And it's not like, if I change my mind, you can't just get rid of them."

"…God, you know what? Fine. If you're that bloody intent on messing up your own skin because you're being self-righteous, I'll change the programming," Oswin grumbled, bringing up her emerald-coloured hologramatic screens, navigating them too quickly for Clara to follow what she was doing. She was tapped right into those nanogenes, had already altered their priorities once that day. And now she did it again. "There. You'd better be a bit more careful, though. I've set them so that now they only heal fatal injuries or illnesses. Anything not fatal, you'll just have to live through. And I'm going have to go drag Martha in here to bandage you up. Keep your scar; I hope you're happy with it."

*_chapter 600_

**_chapter 892_


	472. A Series of Unfortunate Events

**AN: FYI, I added some extra bits to the last chapter and replaced the document, just if any of you want to go back and read the additions which carry over slightly into this one.**

**DAY 133**

_A Series of Unfortunate Events_

_Eleven_

_Did he think this was the way the day was going to go? Locked up in a rotten old cellar in Ukraine, listening to his only daughter scream and whimper in pain? It didn't matter what he thought when he had his pleasant morning, wished for the pleasantness to continue indefinitely, as he looked at the blood and dirt on her face and hands, the filth in her hair, mud on her clothes. The only source of light they had was a dark yellow bulb swinging on a mouldy string between them, and he guiltily tried to focus on that as Jenny suffered beside him. Again, he thought, how had it come to this?_

It all started, he supposed, when his wife shot down his plans for the day and left him floundering with nothing to do, nobody to speak to, her going and isolating herself with Helix and her sister in the laboratory, something to do with her Echoes. He didn't have a key to that room, and doubted they would take kindly if he sonicked it open. Adam Mitchell was allowed inside, but he had been told to go do something else. It didn't occur to her that he had nothing else to do, and he didn't like how she seemed to be shutting him out, especially now she had that god-awful lightning burn spreading down her left arm. Two days ago she had been just fine, and now she had sunk away from him. Why?

So, he did the usual, gathered a peculiar envoy out of little more than boredom and a want for company. He had asked the Ponds, but Amy had brought his integrity into question, the way she always did when it looked like he was only speaking to them in the absence of Clara. Perhaps he was. Rory came, though. Rose decided she may as well – apparently Ten was acting strange; Eleven wondered if that was anything to do with the alleged proposal that was in the works. And it was to his great surprise that Jenny offered her company, because he had rather been under the impression that there was a tacit rule between them that that they ought not talk much anymore, given certain…_ personal choices_ of hers. But, she asked to come, so he let her.

The Doctor stepped out of the TARDIS and immediately sank down into eight inches of snow, a biting wind whipping around the ship and carrying over to him and the other three the sound of close-by shouting. He was glad he had worn his coat, and glad he was so warm blooded.

"Christ, this is a nightmare," Rose said right away, and then she told him to hold on because she had to get a coat. Rory muttered the same thing, and the pair of them vanished. Jenny didn't need to leave, because she had a bag on one shoulder, made of dark brown leather, worn-looking, circular, about the size of a plate. She unzipped it, not sparing him a second glance, and reached a hand into its depths.

"What are you doing?" he questioned, "What sort of bag is that?"

"Girls' clothes generally have a bit of an issue when it comes to pockets," she explained, "They stitch them up, have fake ones, don't have any at all. This bag is more useful. Transdimensional."

"You what? _Transdimensional_? Who taught you how to make anything transdimensional?" he questioned her as she pulled out a leather jacket with a fur lining inside. Of course, she had to be warm _and_ stylish. She couldn't settle for just being warm. Did she not have a body temperature as high as he did? The shouting still carried over the dreadful wind, and he craned his neck to see where it was coming from.

"Nobody, it was a present."

"Present from who? That's Time Lord technology."

"Good thing it was from a Time Lord then," she said sharply, like she was unhappy with him questioning her, talking to her. Well, he thought, if she didn't want him to talk to her, she should have stayed at home. "From mum. Before she left."

"Oh, _her_? _That_ woman?"

"Yes," Jenny said coldly, "My _mother_. And now she's gone, and I don't know when I'll see her again."

"Still, though, she wasn't really around for very long to begin with," he told her with an indifferent sort of shrug, hoping Rory and Rose would hurry up so that it wasn't just the pair of them. So that he could start walking to investigate the voices, perhaps warm up a little more by getting some movement in his muscles.

"It surprises me, you know, that you'll be her one day. I don't see how it can happen," she said scathingly. She said it like an insult, but he didn't quite understand where it came from, or what it really meant. He opened his mouth to say something else, question her on why she called Thirteen the colloquial term 'mum' when she rarely so much as called _him_ 'father.' Rose and Rory came back though with coats and scarves and gloves, and he rolled his eyes.

"Look at the pair of you – acting as though it's cold. It's almost tropical," he said smiling.

"There's almost a foot of snow," Rory argued.

"I once knew it to snow right in the heart of the Congo," he informed them, reaching in between Rose and Rory to close the door to the TARDIS, leaving the box sitting there.

"Yeah, during the last ice age," Rory grumbled, "I was there."

"It's not so bad," Jenny said, smiling at the pair of them, wearing her optimism like a badge of honour, "Reminds me of where I grew up. Give me a crossbow and I'll be right at home – I could have a meat stew to die for whipped up in less than an hour." Eleven began to lead them away, following the voices on the wind to their source, dragging his feet through the snow and fighting against the battering wind. It was the middle of the day, the sun high in the sky, its cold light sending a chill through him. The cold was worse with the sun out, because it created the assumption that the light should bring warmth, and it did not.

"What do you mean, 'where you grew up?'" Eleven asked her.

"What do you mean, what do I mean?"

"You were never a child. You've never had to do any growing."

"What a superficial perspective," she said, and that was all she said.

"Where, though?" Rose asked, but Jenny did not answer properly. She smiled again, told Rose, "_Here, there, everywhere_." Her smile did not reach her eyes, though, they stayed as blue and as cold as the clear sky above.

The voices came from what appeared to be a protest. There was a gaggle of people, clearly very dedicated to whatever their cause was to be out in the harsh weather, gathered around at the gates of a very tall and very far-reaching chain link fence. It stretched as far as the eye could see, and had multiple warning signs along it, warnings about radiation, biohazards, an electrified fence. Not to mention the armed guards standing there with guns and surly expressions. They weren't threatening the crowd, though, just trying to ignore them. They continued to shout and wave signs, chanting for a variety of things.

Curiously, the Doctor stepped forwards to get a look at what the signs read, and was quite shocked. There was one reading _MUTANTS BE GONE_, another reading_ TELL US YOUR SECRETS_, a third saying _RESPECT THE NEW SPECIES_. These people were clearly not all protesting the same thing. Mutants? Secrets? A new species on Earth? At least, he assumed it was Earth; everyone was very human-looking. Hiding things away behind guards with guns was a human thing to do, as well. He pushed through the crowd and went to address one of the soldiers, dressed up for the cold weather, a blue and yellow flag sewn onto his shoulder; the Ukrainian flag.

"Excuse me, could you perhaps tell me what's going on here?" he called loudly over the wind. With the wind the way it was, nobody would have really noticed the sound of the TARDIS materialising. The guard gave him a slightly confused expression, studying him, wearing goggles to protect from the snow and the wind.

"They've got monsters locked up in there," a woman shouted behind him.

"They're not monsters, we made them, they deserve to be recognised, just like anybody," a young man argued right back.

"Nobody knows what they are, because the government are denying knowledge. They say there's nothing, but they put up this fence! There's never been a fence before," a second woman argued.

"The fence is to stop people like you wandering inside," the soldier told her coolly. There were only the pair of them.

"Inside where? Where are we?" Rose was asking. _Good question_, he thought.

"What about the people who live inside? They can't get out."

"It's illegal to live inside the exclusion zone. They should have left at some point in the last hundred years." Exclusion zone?

"People weren't getting out much anyway, because of the mutants, picking us off, eating our flesh!" the first woman yelled, and a few people made angry, jeering noises of agreement.

"Whoa, whoa, whoa – flesh-eating mutants?" Eleven questioned.

"Just an urban myth, sir," the soldier told him. The soldier talked monotonously, with an air of boredom, like everything he said he had said a thousand times before. With a crowd like that, he probably had, "Are you four the scientists we were told to let through?"

"Yes, yes we are, here are my credentials," he said, searching through his pockets for his psychic paper. He didn't have any psychic paper on him, though, "Must be here somewhere…" He felt through every last one of his pockets and found nothing at all, "I tell you what it is, the wife must have stolen them. For a joke. We _are_ the scientists, though." He smiled. The soldier sighed and went to open the gate, the picketers getting rowdy as he did so.

"Doctor," Rory hissed to him, coming up by his shoulder, "Do you see that tower in the distance?" He did see the tower, a big white column with red stripes running down it – at least, that was what it looked like from where they were. Closer than he would like, _much_ closer. "That's Chernobyl."

"Yes," he said, "I know."

"We can't go _in there_, we could _die_," he said.

"What? What did he say about us dying?" Rose interjected.

"Nothing, I'm sure we won't die. You heard what he said, a hundred years. That makes is 2086, I'm sure it's fine."

"They've put up a fence! We don't even have hazmat suits!"

"Hazmat suits? Why would we need hazmat suits?" Rose continued to argue.

"We don't need hazmat suits; Rory is being a drama queen. This is merely the sight of a very minor, uh, major nuclear disaster. Look," Eleven sighed and reached around in his pockets for something else, _not_ the psychic paper Clara had stolen from him. He dragged out a big yellow, metal box with a handle on it and a dial, and an attached metal rod, "Perfectly safe, I have a Geiger counter. We'll all be fine."

"As long as the flesh-eating mutants don't get us," Jenny added.

"I forgot about those. Too caught up in the deadly radiation your father is dragging us towards," Rory complained. And then the soldier had opened the gates of the checkpoint for them to be allowed into the Chernobyl exclusion zone to look for these alleged mutants. What luck the soldiers just believed they were scientists. Then again, he _was_ a scientist. He had a Geiger counter, and everything. He held it up, not looking forward to the point in time when his fingers would freeze onto it, and it crackled quietly.

"Thank you for letting us pass. We'll have the test results with you shortly. Probably. Most likely. Don't hold me to that, though," he said.

"No member of the Ukrainian military is under any orders to go in there and rescue anybody. You're on your own," he said in that dry tone of voice. He really didn't care if they lived or died? Eleven wondered if his casualness meant he thought the notion of people entering the exclusion zone and not coming back was ridiculous, or if it was so commonplace it was dull.

"Rescue us?" Rose asked.

"Don't you know anything about Chernobyl?" Rory questioned her, "The biggest nuclear disaster in Earth's history?"

"Not by a long shot," Eleven interrupted, "In a few centuries you lot will make a whole moon go kaboom, an entire quadrant of your solar system cordoned off for the best part of a millennia. In fact, you know, I'm quite sure that the fallout from that event is what created that toxic dust cloud that blocked off Titan in Oswin's lifetime."

"I don't get it, what is it?" Rose asked.

"A nuclear reactor exploded, back in 1986. Now there's an isolation zone 2600 kilometres big, and it's not supposed to be inhabitable for twenty-thousand years. Which makes _this_ remarkable…" he mused, looking at the Geiger counter, "There's hardly anything. Hardly any radiation at all."

"That's impossible," Rory said. The Doctor frowned, told Rory to hold the device, which he did, and went searching through his pockets for a third time, this time for his sonic screwdriver. His sonic screwdriver which, he now remembered, he kept hidden in his dressing gown to keep it out of his wife's mitts. Which he had forgotten to retrieve.

"Ah. No sonic. Do you have one?" he asked Rose.

"Why would I have one? I don't steal from Ten, not like Clara does from _you_," she remarked, and he scowled. Jenny, who had been quieter than usual, then cleared her throat and held something out to him, something silver and long and thin. A sonic.

"Thank you," he said, going to take it, and she snatched it out of his grip.

"This is mine. _I'll _check the Geiger counter," she said coolly, and he stuck his hands in his pockets and allowed her to do this, Rory still holding the thing. Her sonic had a pink light on the end, and as it scanned, he couldn't really remember if he had ever seen it before. "Nope, you're right. It's working fine. Chernobyl isn't nearly as radioactive as it should be, not at all."

"Well then. I suppose we'd better see what's happening around here," he said, taking the Geiger counter back, but Rory resisted.

"I'm the only one worried about the radiation, _I'm_ keeping it," he said, "Besides, you don't have any gloves." Eleven sighed, and let him. "I know what you're going to suggest, anyway. You're going to suggest we go into the Black Zone, right into Reactor Four."

"What's the Black Zone?" Rose asked.

"Right now we're in the Red Zone," Eleven answered her, "The area that will one day become habitable again. The Black Zone is the bit of Chernobyl where nobody can ever live again. Well, or so we thought, perhaps not, given these readings. I'm sure if we get into any danger, Rory will tell us immediately."

"We're in danger right now. Remember? Flesh-eating mutants? I've seen _Chernobyl Diaries_," he declared.

"That film is ridiculous," Jenny said, and Rory and Rose gave her a funny look, "What? It is. It's awful. It's insensitive, and it's not scary."

"You don't watch films," Rory reminded her, "That film is from 2012, since when did you watch modern films?"

"Modern is relative," Jenny said, "And… you know… it's just the sort of thing they play very late at night, when there isn't much on television."

"You're watching telly now, as well?"

"I was watching it with Clara," Jenny finally admitted, and Eleven wished they hadn't pushed her. He didn't know that she was watching _films_ with _Clara_. He wanted nothing to do with it.

"Why do you like her?" Rose asked. He wanted to ignore them, tried to listen to the howling gale and the snow crunching underfoot instead, the distant shouting of the picketers calling after them to make sure they take photos of the 'mutants.' He couldn't manage it, though. "I can't stand her."

"I know you can't, you're very vocal about it. I remember when you all picked me up, months ago, now, and the first thing I did was try to make the pair of you get along. It didn't work, though," Jenny sighed. Rory was mumbling more things about the stages of radiation sickness in Eleven's ear, but Eleven wasn't listening. He both never wanted to hear his daughter say Clara's name again, and wanted to know every last detail of her feelings to check she was behaving herself. Given her past record, the Doctor thought she was liable to cheat, and he would not have that.

"Really, though," Rose implored.

"Alright. You know how you get those people who seem awful, and cruel, and like they don't care about anyone or anything at all, but then deep down it turns out they have a heart of gold, after you scratch the surface and get through the initial layers of hatred?" Jenny asked, "Clara's like that, except, instead of layers of hatred, she has layers of… annoyingness. If you ever spend extended time alone with her, she's actually really _sweet_, and _caring_, and _understanding_, and _kind_, and _generous_, and… well, you get the picture."

"Huh," Rose said. That was all Rose said. She didn't ask Jenny anymore questions about the Doctor's wife. Just how smitten _was_ his daughter?

Rory's voice came back into focus, so did the wind, so did the sound of the snow crunching heavily beneath them. His face and his fingers were beginning to get exceptionally cold already, and he could no longer hear the picketers behind them over the gale. They continued to walk, dragging their feet through the thick snow, heading in the vague direction of the tower atop the Chernobyl Plant itself, usually a very mournful omen of impending doom. But _now_ it was an omen of impending mystery.


	473. Ghost Town

_Ghost Town_

_Rory_

In the summer, it may have been beautiful. Sad, desolate, but beautiful. He could picture lush trees breaking apart the concrete of walls, green fields stretching along the roads through cracks in the asphalt. Vines and ivy hanging along the tops and the windows of collapsed old buildings. But it was not summer, and all of the plant life was shrivelled and dead, buried under layers and layers of snow.

They were protected slightly from the howling wind from the shelter of the decaying ruins, battered old walls and bits of scrap stopping the worst of the gale getting through. Rory wished he had changed into proper boots, but every time he thought that he just glanced at the Doctor, with his tweed suits and sensible shoes, who was suffering terribly compared to the rest of them. Strangely enough, though, Jenny seemed right at home in the wastes of Chernobyl, the Ukrainian winter slowly freezing Rory to his core. The closer they got to that looming tower, the colder it seemed to be. Even the snow itself was nearly frozen solid.

"I'm dying to go back to the TARDIS and drag Martha out," Rose said. The thought of Martha walked around radiating heat and melting the snow beneath them like she was parting the Red Sea was a daydream to Rory, whose gloved hand was frozen stiff onto the yellow Geiger counter. He had to keep wiping bits of dirt and off the readout, but it was beginning to freeze, just like everything. "But I'm too cold to teleport."

"It's just a bit of cold," Jenny said. The Doctor stared at her. He was shivering notably, but she was alright. He had his arms wrapped around himself as tightly as he could get them. Inside the Chernobyl exclusion zone was one of the most sinister places Rory had ever been; a dead city with such a well-known story of disaster. They kept passing rusty yellow signs with warnings on them, telling them how highly radioactive the area allegedly was. However, according to the Geiger counter, they had still encountered nothing remotely significant. The background radiation at present was about as powerful as an x-ray, which was hardly harmful at all.

"So you keep saying," Rory commented, "When did you get so used to the cold? Don't you come from some kind of Eden?" Jenny's expression became disgruntled.

"I come from lots of places," she answered shortly.

"Your desire to stay a mystery must be genetic," Rory remarked dryly. If she wasn't going to explain, she should just be quiet, and stop making enigmatic comments about everything. Her father kept looking like he wanted to say something, but couldn't. Be that because the cold had sealed his mouth shut or because of some other reason, Rory didn't know. He was glad for the silence, though. Before Eleven had stopped talking, he had continually talked about the horrific dangers of the radiation, had frightened Rose half to death giving her a detailed account of the stages of radiation sickness in such an offhanded way.

"After I regenerated, when I wasn't more than six hours old, my shuttle malfunctioned and crashed and left me stranded on an ice planet called Tungtrun," Jenny said.

"That's d-d-desolate," Eleven stuttered through chattering teeth.

"Nearly." Rory waited for more explanation, for her to say something else, but she didn't. Rory had never thought much about Jenny, about his best friend's daughter, but wasn't she two centuries old, or something? And yet he had never heard her talk about her life or herself.

"Were you saying people still live in here?" Rose asked, staring around, "It doesn't look like anyone's lived here for…"

"A hundred years?" Jenny suggested, and she nodded. Rose Tyler was nearly as bad with the cold as the Doctor. Unless she was terrified as well, which she could be, after Eleven telling her how her hair could fall out if she was exposed to too much radiation. He didn't help himself by adding that if they got into an area chock-full of rads, the TARDIS might not even risk materialising to fetch them.

"Lots of people who just refused to leave are still around, probably," Rory explained.

"How come you know so much, anyway?" Rose questioned him, "Bit of a weird hobby, nuclear disasters."

"Well, you know, I've got a passing interest in physics," he shrugged, "It's an important event in Earth's history."

"He's a g-g-geek," Eleven stammered again.

"_You_ should have brought a coat with you," Rose said, "Tweed isn't a good insulator."

"I'm f-fine, R-Rose," he told her sharply. Well, he _tried_ to make himself sound sharp, he didn't really succeed. Then he tripped over something buried underneath all the snow and would have fallen right into it, had Jenny not been there to catch him by his arm and pull him back to his feet. "Th-thanks." She didn't say anything after steadying him. It was more like she saved him as a reflex, rather than because she cared. But he was her father, so surely she did?

Rory thought to himself that Amy had definitely had the right idea that morning by staying on board the ship. If he had to hazard a guess, he would say she was hanging around River, or perhaps Jack, or even Martha. In that place, though, just the thought of Martha Jones made him want to ask Rose to please act on her earlier suggestion of fetching her. Pyrokinesis would be a godsend.

"Whoa…" Rose said, something catching her eye. She was having a far easier time than the rest of them moving through the snow, using her superstrength to aid her. The fact she was wearing ordinary trainers and not fancy, military-grade snow boots wasn't hindering her at all. She was further ahead and had just passed some hollow old buildings – the purposes of which were entirely indiscernible after an entire century – and had spotted something which just added to the tragedy of Chernobyl.

If Chernobyl was just the power plant, out in the middle of an abandoned wasteland, surrounded by nothing and nobody save for empty space, it wouldn't be nearly so sad. But it was a town, a city, with a doomsday device working away inefficiently in the midst of so many civilians. What Rose had found was a mournful reminder that it wasn't just adults there, wasn't just power plant workers, wasn't just old, nondescript offices. There stood a skeleton of a Ferris wheel, carriages hanging off it. One of them had rusted completely through and lay buried underneath snow on the ground. The old thing creaked in the wind and the snow atop it shone brightly in the sun. All four of them found themselves looking at it.

"It's like a warzone," Jenny said, staring around, "When you're in urban combat, and you could be camped out somewhere, and you find a teddy bear in a corner. Worse if you find it in the street. Something so small and so symbolic of everything that's been displaced and lost. Makes you want to cut and run. At least, it always made me want to."

"Have you been in a lot of wars?" Rory asked her. Eleven was looking at his daughter with a strange kind of look on his face, one that burgeoned on disgust, nearly.

"A few. I usually do tactics, from behind the lines, I'm very good at it; never lost a soldier," she told him, quite proudly. The Doctor's expression was softened by surprise. "All of this… just makes me remember why I always leave Earth eventually every time I come back." And then Jenny was the one who turned to walk off again, past the ghostly, empty kiosk at the foot of the rusty wheel.

They were heading for that tower again, and the Geiger counter still stayed impossibly low. Of course, though, to go with that he was also trying to be on the lookout for any of the fabled flesh-eating mutants that frequented the exclusion zone. Well, _ear_-out. But it was hard to hear much of anything, even for him, over the wind. He wondered if it was as deafening for the others.

"Are you sure that thing's not broken?" Rose asked Rory, fretting over the counter.

"It's definitely not, it's in full-working order," Jenny informed, "Maybe the government have come up with some kind of chemical, neutralising agent? That's the sort of thing they'd want to keep a secret from other countries in the world, in terms of warfare."

"W-war, ag-gain," muttered the Doctor. His teeth knocking into themselves were as loud, to Rory, as the wind.

"What do _you_ think's going on, then? Hmm?"

"G-g-government l-lying."

"About what? About Chernobyl?" Rory asked.

"S-soviets."

"The Soviet Union wouldn't have lied about a major nuclear disaster, it just highlighted the inefficiency of the entire regime," Rory said. Eleven shut up.

"Again, _why_ do you know all this?" Rose questioned him.

"I did A Level History," he said, "What did _you_ do for your A Levels?"

Rose laughed, "I didn't do anything." She then turned to Eleven, and said, "Her idea's good, why are you being weird about it?"

"I'm n-n-not. D-don't like s-s-soldiers." He cast a look at Jenny, and she scowled.

"Not having this argument again." Then she sped up and managed to catch up with Rose, still complaining about her attire. She kept saying how she needed a new coat. Then she started wondering if she might enlist Oswin in making her a coat, but how she didn't trust Oswin's fashion sense.

"Didn't Oswin say she was going to make spacesuits for us all? I swear she did, at least a month ago," Rose said.

"She has made spacesuits, just so happens nobody's needed to use them yet," Jenny shrugged.

Rory went back to paying more attention to the Geiger counter and listening out for 'mutants.' He wasn't really interested in the inventions of Oswin, and with the girls getting ahead, he was soon going to be saddled with only the Doctor for company, and the Doctor appeared to be in some kind of mood. He was _always_ in a mood with Jenny around, and Rory couldn't help but think that it was getting pathetic. Could he not just talk to her? Wouldn't she listen? Then again, he would be surprised if Jenny Harkness ever listened to anybody but herself.

As predicted, a while later, the tower even closer and scarier than it had been so far, Rory fell far enough behind to be next to the Doctor, who was slowly becoming an alien-flavoured ice lolly.

"You really should have grabbed your coat," Rory sighed, "You _have_ a coat. You wear it all the time."

"I'm _f-fine_." He was showing off. He was terrible for doing that. Like when River poisoned him and he just _had_ to put on a flashy tuxedo, or when he just _had_ to show up at he and Amy's wedding part way through the reception, when he just _had_ to blow up a whole fleet of Cybermen ships for dramatic effect (Rory had always been morally conflicted when it came to that last one.) And now he was doing it again, but Rory couldn't think who he was trying to impress. He was doing an awful job of it, though.

"What's the matter with you?" Rory questioned.

"The th-things she s-s-says," he stuttered, "So wr-wr-wrong."

"Jenny? If you have something to say to her, say it to _her_."

"N-never l-l-listens."

"Then say it nicely, and try not to freeze to death before you get the chance," Rory said. He nearly tried to speed up to get away from Eleven, but his ankles wouldn't let him. Besides, if the Doctor suddenly fell victim to hypothermia (which wouldn't surprise him, at this rate), he would probably need a medical professional close-by.

So they walked and walked through the frozen ruins, icicles hanging perilously from old drainpipes and dead trees. At one point they passed something even more spine-chilling than the Ferris wheel, an old playground, the swings still creaking in the wind as though the ghosts of Chernobyl's children were playing on them. Soon enough, though, the houses stopped. The buildings stopped. They were left at the mouth of a lonely little road that led right towards the plant itself. And still, the radiation was inexplicably far from being lethal. It was terrifying in the shadow of its infamy.


	474. They Came and Ate Us

_They Came and Ate Us_

_Rory_

Lucky thing they had Rose with them, it turned out. Superstrength came in very handy where breaking into quarantined, toxic facilities was concerned. There were metal gates around the way into the plant itself, and Rose pushed the bars apart like she was tearing through plastic wrap, leaving a gap more than big enough for the rest of them to push through.

"This is remarkable," Rory said, "There's still hardly any radiation. This is the Black Zone, it's supposed to be permanently uninhabitable, _forever_, and it's… _safe_."

"Hopefully there's something in there to give us a clue," Jenny said.

"It doesn't _look_ like it exploded," Rose squinted up at the wreck of Chernobyl.

"All that metal on the roof? That looks like a scaffolding? It's called a sarcophagus. They lowered it down over where Reactor Four was to contain some of the radiation," Rory explained.

"_Sarcophagus_? Very promising," Rose mumbled. A fair point, he supposed. Entering a radioactive 'coffin' wasn't what he would call a sensible plan. But still, the Geiger counter said it wasn't radioactive, so he supposed it couldn't be. At least it would be shelter from the god-awful wind. His ear lobes, he was convinced, had fallen off long ago. They must have been wandering determinedly through the exclusion zone for over an hour, maybe two. Yet they had not seen another living soul so far, not even any flesh-eating mutants. Not that he had any idea what the flesh-eating mutants looked like.

They walked towards the plant, the Doctor shuffling, zombie-like, behind them. Soon he was going to be frozen solid, and would blow away like a twig in the wind. Rose had offered at least twice to just take him back to the TARDIS; they could solve the mystery of the radiation on their own, the Doctor was practically useless. He refused though, and every time he did, his daughter scoffed at him.

"_That_ is _bad_," Jenny said, nodding at the way into the plant. There had been a large sheet of metal in front of the doors, blocking them off completely, but there was a hole torn through it, like it had been punched by an enormous fist. Or ripped through. Rose could do something like that, but it hadn't been her, "That's steel, but it's new. Uh, newish. Twenty years."

"Why would they put up a blockade twenty years ago? Eighty years after the disaster?" Rory questioned.

"You never know. The unfortunate deaths of urban explorers who ignored all the warning signs?" Jenny suggested, "Can't turn back now." It was her who led the way for the rest of them into the plant, and everything just got weirder and weirder. For a start, the Geiger counter increased, crackling louder, but it was still low at barely five counts a second. But that wasn't as strange as the fact the lights were on.

"Do you feel that?" Rose asked, "It's almost warm."

"It _is_ warm," Jenny said, then she crassly remarked, "Lucky for _him_," and nodded at her father. Rory suspected he would have glared, but his face didn't have the capacity to show any emotion other than extreme discomfort at the moment.

"Do you think it's just the people who live in the zone? That they're in here? Maybe they've got the plant running and they have electricity?" Rose was trying to find the most logical explanation, the least creepy one.

"It's too quiet for the plant to be running," Jenny said, getting her sonic screwdriver out again. It lit up pink and she scanned the air around them, held it up to the walls. The Doctor watched her like he was judging her, but she was oblivious. Rory and Rose stared around, and he found himself thinking about all the people who had gone to work that day in 1986, and the few of them who hadn't come out again.

At the end of the corridor a shape moved. It was like a shadow, something dark and large, ran straight across his field of vision before vanishing behind a wall again. He jumped and made a scared sound that was less masculine than he would have liked, his eyes fixed on that space ahead of them, the only way there was to go.

"What?" Rose asked him, "Did you see something?"

"Yeah, there was something there, something ran across," he pointed, or tried to point. It was tricky when he was still carrying the yellow Geiger counter around, "I don't know what it was, just a shadow, but huge. Like a creature. Do you think it was one of those flesh-eating mutants?"

"Rory, I hate to point out, but because you're a Manifest and you aren't a vegetarian, _you're_ technically a flesh-eating mutant," Jenny whispered to him, putting her screwdriver away, "This place is using izonal electricity."

"What's _that_?" Rory questioned.

"Advanced, way too advanced," she said, the Doctor watching, listening, "Safer than alternating or direct current, and it's completely silent, and wirelessly transmitted. Esther Drummond's Syphon works using an izonal core."

"So the mutants are from the future?" Rose said.

"We don't know for a fact that there even _are_ any-" Jenny was cut off by a huge, guttural roar coming from the end of the corridor Rory had seen the whatever-it-was. And whatever-it-was was looking right at them, though it didn't have any eyes that he could see. It was huge, built like a bear, a hairless bear with grey skin and teeth like a sabretooth tiger, claws that were more like talons, scales around its toes. It was definitely what Rory would call a flesh-eating mutant, if he had to.

The thing charged for them, and Jenny reached as though to grab a gun, but she obviously didn't have a gun on her because she backed away towards the wall a second later, dragging Rory with her by his arm, and Rose stepped out straight in front of the oncoming beast. At the last moment, she held up just the palm of her hand, and the force of the creature coming for her sent it flying backwards when her skin connected with its chest. It crashed to the floor and rolled, making a whining noise like a dog, and scrambled to get back to its four legs again.

Rory expected it to come right back at them, expected Rose to be their last line of defence between this beast and certain death. The reality, however, was far more strange. It dragged itself away from them, and then it stood up on its hind legs. It still looked to him just like a mange-ridden bear, until it opened its eyes. It wasn't just opening them, though, the eyes protruded from its head on stalks, like a snail, shiny black spheres on top of them, no visible pupils. Whatever it was, it looked at them. And _then_, it _spoke_.

"What are you?" the monster, the mutant, asked, "You don't smell like the others." It took them all greatly by surprise.

"What others?" Jenny asked, and it looked at her.

"What's your species?"

"Time Lord," she said.

"You aren't of this world, either," it said.

"No," she said. So it wasn't a mutant, it was an alien?

"Those two. They smell odd."

"They're human. Uh, human-plus. It's complicated. They're not from around here, though, none of us are," Jenny was explaining, taking on the role the Doctor normally would.

"Wh-what about y-y-you?" the Doctor stammered his question for it. So he didn't know what it was, either.

"We are the Immeo," it said, "I'm Kavlon, a son of Tururon, brother of Fivlon. This is our home." Jenny appeared to have a brain wave.

"_That's_ it! Sorry, sorry I didn't recognise your species," she said, smiling quite warmly at the Immeo, at Kavlon, "I've met an Immeo before when I lived in the Osiris Colony. On Themis, you know, in the Luestea Galaxy? It's kind of south of Fladus IV?"

"What's the Osiris Colony?" Rose asked.

"Oh, it's a big city, half underwater, hailed as one of the most multi-species cities in the Greater Paladeus Sector of space. I was in a thieves' guild. Anyway, I met an Immeo called Vuldron, didn't recognise them at first because Vuldron wore this suit all the time that was coated inside with an incredibly radioactive isotope. They absorb radiation, need it to survive, like you need oxygen. But what are the Immeo doing in Chernobyl?"

"Rakiveon was destroyed," Kavlon said, "An environmental disaster caused the planet to implode, there are only thirty of us left. Our ship came down here investigating the high levels of radiation in this area, looking for a suitable new home, but our engineers underestimated Earth's gravity and our ship was pulled into a marsh, unable to be freed. That was almost twenty Earth-years ago."

"And you live in here now? Inside the Black Zone?" Jenny asked curiously, a type of intrigue that reminded Rory of Ten evident in her demeanour, and Kavlon said she was correct. That solved the mystery of why there was hardly any radiation, if these Immeo were absorbing it. Rory really hoped they weren't going to try and eat them, he didn't think even Rose could take on thirty of the creatures at once. Then again, he had always been taught not to judge a book by its cover.

"Why did you attack us?" Rory asked, wanting to know.

"We saw you coming, we thought _you_ were coming to attack _us_. The humans who live here have killed nine of us since we arrived, they string us up like trophies," Kavlon said, "They won't listen when we tell them we are peaceful, that we only need to find a new home. What's wrong with that one?" Kavlon was talking about Eleven. Jenny clenched her jaw.

"Sorry about him," she said stiffly, "My father. He's an idiot. Do you have coats in here? Or a fire? Blankets? He might get frostbite if he doesn't warm up soon. And is there someone in charge we can speak to?"

For Kavlon to trust them so easily and lead them into the home the Immeo had made for themselves inside the wreckage of Chernobyl, right in the heart of one of the most dangerous places on planet Earth, Rory figured they must smell _very_ different to the other people who lived out there, out in the desolate, winter wilderness. For once, he was glad he was a Manifest, glad it got him a free pass not to be lumped in with whoever had been hunting down the Immeo.

The highest the Geiger counter got to was eight counts per second, which was still very far from lethal, as they got further and further into the plant. And _then_ they were in the decimated area that had been Reactor Four, the part that had exploded, the big concrete sarcophagus high above them. The electricity may be on, powered by some advanced, alien technology, but the Immeo still had fires lit. If it had been empty, Rory would have assumed people lived there. It was a small, indoor shantytown, with bits of wood and metal and barrels with toxic symbols on them making up buildings, salvaged old beds from parts of Chernobyl and Pripyat and whatever other towns littered the exclusion zone.

"They c-call it the alienation z-z-zone," Eleven tried to say, "F-funny because this is an alien n-n-nation." It very nearly was funny, if they weren't in such an abysmal place. There were more Immeo there, some who barred their savage teeth, others who looked at them curiously. They knew the TARDIS crew were not like the other humans.

"What's the count?" Jenny asked Rory quietly, and he told her it was anywhere between eight and twelve. He got the feeling they were going to be sticking around in the Immeo settlement for a while, and really wished they had radiation suits of some kind. It couldn't hurt to make sure they were protected. It turned out they did have coats and blankets, though, and one of them leant the Doctor a very heavy quilt he was supremely grateful for.

Kavlon took them to another Immeo, sitting at a fire, who he said was his aforementioned father, Tururon. Freezing, Rory thought the fire might be a mirage. He wasn't looking forward to leaving, as worried about his hair falling out and his skin burning as he was. It was quite a tribal sort of place, at first glance. Well, some would say tribal, others would probably say it was like the little societies homeless people made in train tunnels.

They were also offered food, but they all turned it down. Except for Jenny. Jenny, of course, beamed widely and said of _course_ she would have some food, and then it was apparently manners to wait until she had that before Tururon would talk about anything aside from the wind. When she got it, she seemed quite pleased, but Rory looked over her shoulder and saw the stuff was like pink and red slime. They just called it 'broth,' and he suspected it was just ground up, radioactive meat. To eat she had nothing more than a flat bit of metal to scoop with, and the stuff came in an old, yellow safety helmet. If he wasn't worried about disrespecting the Immeo and getting savaged, he would have told her she was almost definitely going to get food poisoning, if Time Lords could get food poisoning.

"So," Jenny began, positively lapping up her offal-goo, "Tell me about the radiation here."

"We were scanning for it, in our ship, trying to find somewhere suitable to live. We didn't have any data on Earth, didn't know it was inhabited, that the radiation here didn't occur naturally, and we underestimated the pull of the gravity, miscalculated the trajectory, and crashed into the forest near here. Then we came to this building, and have been here ever since, since what the humans call 2068," Tururon told them, more or less the same thing Kavlon had.

"And you're peaceful? Have you killed a human?" Jenny asked. Rory could hardly stand to watch her eat that meat stuff. Now he _really_ wanted to know what kind of life that woman had led, that she would eat food so obviously grim. She didn't even know what kind of meat that was – it could be the bodies of the people the Immeo had murdered, for all he knew. What with them being allegedly flesh-eating.

"Only the ones who trespass," Tururon said.

"I think you're the one who's trespassing. How many?"

"Three. They killed many of us first."

"Careful not to start a war, though," she advised, "This place is hardly radioactive at all now."

"We know. That's why hardly any of us have hair left."

"Oh, really? So, you have sort of, _reverse_ radiation sickness? Your fur falls out if you don't have enough radiation?" Jenny asked curiously.

"Yes. But we don't have the parts to fix our ship, and the humans have said they're going to start attacking, they've been trying to notify the outside," Tururon said, sounding worried. Probably should be worried. If there was one thing humankind were good at, it was killing things they didn't understand.

"But is it s-s-salvageable?" Eleven asked, "With the right p-parts?"

"Yes. It's been there so long, though, we don't know how broken it might be."

"We'll l-look," Eleven said, and then he spoke mainly to Jenny, "Won't we?"

"Uh… I suppose. We could figure it out, I'm sure," Jenny said, sounding as though she were suspicious of her father addressing _her_ when he talked about saving the Immeo ship. Well, Rory thought, it wasn't as though he and Rose would be of much help when it came to running diagnostics on a decrepit, alien vessel. "How long would it take you to fix, though? Wouldn't it be better to just take them to a new planet in the TARDIS?"

"No! They're an independent sp-sp-species. They can help thems-s-selves. We'll get the p-parts. And it would be t-t-toxic for the T-TARDIS"

"If the humans are planning to attack, though, they'll need to be out of here as soon as possible," Jenny added, scooping up more of that gunk on her metal stick.

"We could talk to them?" Rose suggested, "Rory and I. While you two do that. We won't be much help to you, anyway, and I'm good with people. Most of the time. Plus, you two _are_ aliens, best not to let you get into the hands of a bunch of crazy people who still live in radioactive ruins, right?" Rory didn't really think it was a good idea for _any_ of them to get into the hands of the crazy people who still lived in Chernobyl, but he would feel a lot safer there with Rose. He probably wouldn't be of much use if it came down to any kind of fight, though. Yes, he could turn invisible, but in that snow? They'd be able to see his footprints clear as day. Rory would be sticking to the super-strong Bad Wolf like glue.

"I suppose we could," Rory agreed with Rose in the end. Who knew, the humans might have decent food. "What _are_ you eating?" he finally asked Jenny, and she frowned.

"Not sure. I can definitely taste deer, and moose possibly. Very strong rat-vibes," she answered, and he made an appalled face. She was eating _ground-up rat_? "It's good, wholesome stuff. Nutritional. Could do with pepper, but it's fine." Fine? _Fine_? Even the Doctor looked queasy watching her eat that stuff.

"Where _are_ the humans, then?" Rose asked Tururon, then she motioned to Jenny, "I'd like to get away from her and her eating habits as soon as possible. No offence to whoever cooks your food."


	475. She's All Thumbs

**AN: Pre-emptively, I'd like to say in my own defence that I'm gonna try and make at least Day 135 and 136's storylines a****_ lot_**** lighter than it has been lately. I'm ****_trying_**** to make this one especially dark (it's Chernobyl, what can you do), but I will try my best to make the next few more fun and ****_way_**** less angst-ridden.**

_She's All Thumbs_

_Eleven_

Ah, yes, the Doctor thought, _that_ was how it had happened. _That_ was why he and his daughter were locked up in a dingy little cellar in Ukraine. Because the people who still lurked in the wastes of the Red Zone had, in the summer, most likely many summers ago, set traps around the Immeo ship. He and Jenny and gone to find it, him shuffling and lugging a heavy quilt with him because the Immeo did not have coats so that he would keep warm.

They had walked right up to the funny, smooth bulge buried underneath the snow, surrounded by old, splintered trees with a frozen slipstream still visible behind it from when it had crashed. And, lo and behold, there were traps. Net traps. Very well-maintained, efficient net traps, hidden underneath the snow. Neither of them had been looking for such things, neither of them had been warned by the Immeo. Perhaps the Immeo themselves didn't know the humans had set up traps.

And, well, from a distance, of course, they looked human. Up-close, too, they looked human. Externally, everything about Jenny and the Doctor screamed_ human_. But when the net had sucked the pair of them up to be suspended in the air, a flurry of snow falling down below them, Jenny had hit her head on a branch, rendering her unconscious. Jenny hung their uselessly, and from his own net he could see her. When one trap triggered, the rest did too; there were four other nets hanging from the trees, but those were all empty.

The Doctor hadn't been thinking clearly. He was so desperate to make sure she was alright, since regenerating in front of these folk would be a huge mistake, he had more or less _begged_ the humans who had appeared in ghillie suits and old fatigues as if from nowhere to check if she was okay. And so, thinking she was human, they took her pulse. They should _not_ have taken her pulse. He realised his mistake too late, found himself fumbling, as they cut her down and dragged her off with them. Then a group of them came for _him_, to check _him_, and though he resisted, they managed to pull his hand through the rope net and take _his_ pulse, too, commenting on how freakishly hot his skin felt by comparison to theirs.

After that they had clouted him with what may have been a branch or a bat – it was hard to tell, really – and he woke up some time later tied to a chair in a freezing old basement with Jenny, held identically, on his left, ropes and belts keeping them restrained. Then they were accused of being mutants, predictably enough.

"We're not mutants, there _are_ no mutants," Jenny argued adamantly. There was only one person in the room with them, a man, a gaunt face and thick beard, a revolver holstered onto his belt. He kept stretching, moving in a way so that his coat pulled back and the gun was visible. It had been polished. When Jenny said that, he hit her around the face.

"Don't you touch her," Eleven said, furious, glaring at the man, who laughed.

"Why? What will _you_ do about it?" he said, crouching down and putting his hand on Jenny's face, as though stroking her cheek. She spat on him, and he hit her again, and Eleven managed to kick him in the ankle with his free foot (the left one they had not restrained for whatever reason – perhaps there hadn't been enough resources.) For his trouble, he got a punch in the face from their captor.

"Leave her alone," Eleven ordered him.

"You're not in a position to make any demands, mutant."

"I'm not a mutant. She's not a mutant, neither of us are."

"Ha! Not a mutant? You're in cahoots with those other ones, those ones who live in the plant. What kind of creature could live in there and survive? One borne of radiation," he argued. He flashed his sidearm again. If he pointed at them, either of them, they would be helpless to stop his bullets. On the ceiling in one corner Eleven could see a mould patch growing, black and toxic, caused by decades of rain falling onto the floor above through what he could only assume was another ruined ceiling. Was there even a room above them? Or were they just stuck in the ground, like corpses?

"The mutants don't exist," Eleven said through gritted teeth.

"He's right," Jenny chimed in, and he cast her a look trying to get her to shut up, to draw their interrogator's attention onto him, to make him leave her be.

"Who is she to you?" the man asked, leaning into Eleven's face. He smelt of halitosis and his teeth were yellow. Couldn't be much hygiene in a place that had been more or less off-limits for a century, the people born and raised there sinking back into the habit of doing the bare minimum to take care of themselves. He wouldn't be surprised to find that they had regressed to a society of hunter-gatherers. Eleven did not answer. "A girlfriend? A wife?"

"_What_?" they both exclaimed, abject disgust evident in their voices. Jenny, appalled, said, "That's rank."

"So what relation are you? Why does _he_ care so much about _you_?" the man wandered over to Jenny again, giving Eleven a leering, sick smile as he did so, pushing a strand of hair out of her face and tucking it behind her ear while she tried to lean away from him as far as she could. She didn't answer.

"Don't touch her. Don't you dare touch her at all," Eleven demanded.

"Or what?" He was standing so that Eleven couldn't reach to kick him again now, mostly on Jenny's left.

"You'll regret it."

"Let's get something clear: both of you are going to die. Well, _she_ might not. She might be useful. _You_, though? These are your last few hours of life. And you're going to tell me what I want to know about the mutants, about _you_, what they can do, why they want to kill us."

"They don't want to kill you," he said.

"I thought they didn't exist?"

"I…" Eleven stopped, "They're not what you think they are."

"Then what are they? Chameleons, like you? Can they blend in with us, with the humans? The _normal_ people? Do they have weapons?" he questioned. Eleven said nothing, and the interrogator put his hand tantalisingly close to Jenny's neck. She was leaning back as far as she could, but he would be able to strangle her no matter what. "Tell me, or she goes blue."

"Whatever you do to her, I swear, I'll do to you," Eleven said.

"You'll be dead. You won't be able to do _anything_. You won't even know about the things I have in store for this one. Why do you care about her so much? Is she your sister?"

"_Sister?_ Of course not," Eleven said before he could really think through the impact of his words. Jenny was glaring at him. If he had just told the man, right there, that Jenny _was_ his sister, things… may have ended differently. They may not have, too, but in retrospect, if he had just thought a little more about what he was saying…

"What else could she be? If not a lover?" Eleven said nothing. "But you'll kill me over her? I would say you were her father, based on your actions alone, but that…"

"Ridiculous," Eleven said after scoffing, but he wasn't very convincing, not at all. That was the moment he had realised his mistake in not acting like Jenny was his sister.

"_Oh_," the man realised, glancing between them, "You _are_ her father. But you're both so young. Is it something to do with being mutants? How old were you when she was conceived? How old is her mother? You couldn't even be ten years older." Jenny, at that moment, looked more furious than he had ever seen her, and he had seen her quite angry before. Still, neither of them spoke. "You'd better start talking."

"Not while I'm being threatened," Eleven said darkly.

"Then I won't threaten you," he said, smiling in a twisted way, "I'll threaten _her_, and _you'll_ tell me what you know. She doesn't seem to share the same compassion for you, that, or she just doesn't know anything. Tell me how to kill the mutants, or maybe I'll stop your little girl from being able to tell anybody anything ever again." Why wasn't Jenny saying anything? Why wasn't she arguing? Fighting back? All day it had been stories of her being in wars, tough situations – was it all talk? A bluff? Why the silence _now_? When silence would get them killed?

"Let us go and I'll explain everything."

"Letting you go isn't any fun," he shrugged, then he took hold of Jenny's right hand, wrapped his fingers around her thumb, "Tell me everything."

"Free us," Eleven tried to bargain, even though he really wasn't in a position to do so. That was when he stared pushing her thumb back, pushing it in the Doctor's direction. "Stop it."

"Tell me everything," he kept pushing her thumb, and then she started making wincing sounds, scrunching up her face.

"They're aliens!" the Doctor finally gave up when she showed the slightest bit of pain, "They're aliens. _We're_ aliens, a different species. We're Time Lords, we have two hearts. They're called the Immeo they – stop, leave her alone."

"Aliens? You expect me to believe that?" He didn't stop.

"Stop! They feed on radiation, they absorb it! They crashed here looking for a new place to live!"

"The truth! How do we kill the mutants!?" He kept pushing, the Doctor looking on in horror.

"I'm not telling you how to kill them, they're peaceful. Stop hurting her!"

"Stop lying to me!"

"_I'm not lying_! They just want to-"

The Doctor heard the snap, he heard his daughter scream, and then her thumb wasn't where it should be anymore. Did their captor let go, though? No. He didn't.

"STOP!" Eleven shouted, and Jenny wailed when he just kept pushing her thumb, and Eleven could see blood on her hand now, the skin broken. "They just want to leave! They're peaceful! Leave her alone! That's my _daughter_!" He gave a savage wrench on Jenny's thumb, the thing already bleeding and broken, and she screamed again. Only then did he let go, and Eleven saw what he had done, what that man had done to his _daughter_, his only child.

"I suppose your dad doesn't care about you as much as he should, if he's going to keep lying instead of telling the truth about who you are, and what those things are. Coming up with this stories about _aliens_ – as if," he said to Jenny, leaning down to get in her face. Out of nowhere, she head-butted him, and he swore and staggered backwards and called her a whole string of profanities Eleven wouldn't repeat. "I'll be back. And I'm going to bring a screw for that thumb of yours, see how you like _that_."

"I've had worse," she said, but she said it hoarsely, with a kind of hollowness the Doctor didn't like to see in her. He glared and punched her around the side of her face again. But then, mumbling curses to himself, he left.

"Hey, Nikolai, did you get them to talk?" somebody asked him when the door was opened, but the door closed before the Doctor could hear his answer, leaving he and Jenny alone.

"Are you alright? How bad is it?" the Doctor asked Jenny urgently, trying to shuffle in his chair to face her.

"I'm fine," she said, but she couldn't hide her thumb from him. It was grotesque, bleeding, twisted, like her hand had been mauled.

"You're not fine, of course you're not," he told her, "Rose and Rory will find us."

"When? Before or after they shoot one of us and find out we have a bit of a habit of rising from the dead?" she remarked coolly, "You know, I'm not one for relying on other people all that much."

"It's good to have friends."

"It's good to be able to help yourself, too. It would be better if we didn't need rescuing at all. You should have listened to me, we should have just taken them in the TARDIS, we could be-" she flinched noticeably and gasped. She had tried to move her hand, he assumed. "This is the worst side of humanity. The hypocrisy is what's sickening. People like this are why I left after the war."

"Which war?"

"World War Two," she answered. In her pain, she was done being enigmatic about everything, "After they bombed Japan, I couldn't stand it anymore."

"You fought in the Second World War?"

"No. I stayed in Britain, did a lot of nursing for the RAF. Sometimes I fixed their planes. It was a long time ago."

"Where did you go?"

"Far away. Don't act like you care."

"Why wouldn't I?"

"You've never cared before. And now, what? You feel guilty? So you're asking me questions? You're just looking for something about my past to judge – god forbid I _had_ been a soldier you would've ripped me apart, injuries and all. But because I was in medicine that, what, makes you _proud of me_? Artificial pride for a woman you don't know the first thing about. You couldn't even be bothered to name me," she said. More than the words themselves, it was her tone of voice when she spoke that hurt him the most; she was completely monotonous. She sounded rehearsed, and melancholy, like she couldn't muster any feeling behind what she was saying at that moment.

She surprised him again though by making good on her philosophy of not waiting around to be rescued, and instead just rescuing yourself. Not that he knew what she was doing at first when she tipped her chair forwards and then violently threw her whole self and the chair back. Then he saw what she had done, the chair broke beneath her and she wailed again in pain as she landed funny on her right hand. But the chair was broken, splintered apart, and the ropes on her other hand became loose and allowed her to untie her ankles, and tentatively release her bad hand from the leather belt wrapped around it.

For a split second, the Doctor did not think Jenny would help him get out too, thought she might expect him to pull off the same trick. She assisted him, though. She struggled a little, holding her right hand close to herself and not daring to touch a single thing with it and her mangled thumb. Every time he saw it, it looked more and more sickening. How she wasn't writhing in pain, he didn't know, but she did keep flinching.

"You call him back in, I'll take him out," she told him, "Stay in the chair."

"What? Take him out – what do you mean 'take him out?' You're not going to kill him."

"Kill him? What do you take me for? I'm not a murderer. All he's done is… given me a bit of a sprain, that's it," she said. _A bit of a sprain_? It most definitely was not a sprain – he could see the bone piercing her skin. If she wanted to think of it like that though, to make herself feel better, he supposed he couldn't argue. "Now shout for him, alright? Leave the rest to me."

Begrudgingly, still unsure what Jenny was planning on doing, he shouted, "Oi, Nikolai! I think I'll talk now, about the mutants!" Jenny stood behind the door, so that she would be obscured when it was opened. They only had to wait a few seconds before he came in, a red mark on his head from where Jenny had heat-butted him. He came swanning in, so smarmy and full of himself. Then he frowned, saw Jenny's chair was empty. She pushed the door closed behind him and he turned to face her.

"You little-" Nikolai didn't get to finish his sentence, because he had underestimated the Doctor's daughter. The Doctor, truthfully, had also underestimated her. She didn't say a word, just jumped high enough to deliver a roundhouse kick to his face. Lucky he wasn't very tall. He slammed into the concrete wall and slumped down, completely unconscious after just one blow. Jenny had hurt her hand moving so quickly though, and was flinching again.

"What next?" Eleven asked. She didn't answer, she went and crouched down by Nikolai and plucked his shiny, silver revolver off his belt, "Ah – no, no, no. No guns, don't like guns, never carry them." She ignored him. "Didn't you hear me? Put it back, Jenny."

"Get over yourself," she muttered, and then she flicked the cylinder out of it and held it up so all six rounds dropped down onto the floor and clattered. The bullets rolled away, but Jenny kept the gun.

"Why would you do that?"

"For leverage. Nobody knows it's empty save for you and I. Now all we have to do is bluff our way out of here and find Rose and Rory."


	476. Last Night On Earth

_Last Night On Earth_

_Rory_

If the humans and the Immeo were removed from their respective dwellings, there would hardly have been a single difference between the squalid encampments. They got understandably shifty looks from the people as they tried to enter through the blockades that had been built, presumably as defence from an entirely peaceful group of alien refugees. But Rory waved the Geiger counter, said they were scientists sent by the government to analyse the 'problem.' He didn't specify what the 'problem' was, but it was a good enough excuse for them to be let in.

There were fires in old metal barrels with toxic symbols printed on the sides, the snow had been shovelled into piles against the rotten buildings. They had got there by following Kavlon's vague directions and distant smoke in the clear sky. The wind had let up quite a lot while they had journeyed, and the buildings had been made into an adept enough fort that they protected from the gale adequately.

"What, exactly, were you planning on saying to them to broker peace?" Rory whispered to Rose, having to stoop to get close enough for only her to hear.

"Uh… well, you know, it's what I'm good at. The Doctor – _my_ Doctor – always used to say it was what he liked about me. Called it the 'domestic approach.' All we have to do is find out who's in charge, and if there's any funny business, then I'll… you know," she said.

"You'll what?"

"_You know_."

"I don't. What will you do?" he questioned. It seemed Rose herself didn't know what she was going to do. She had made the plan to wing it and hope their assortment of superpowers would be enough to get them out of any scrape. He just hoped she had been joking earlier when she said it was too cold to teleport.

"Well first I'd like for _you_ to have a little more faith in me," Rose said, and he rolled his eyes and they kept moving through the encampment.

They were being looked at by the denizens of the exclusion zone like _they_ were the mutants. Well, he supposed they _were_ mutants, but none of these people were to know that. His biggest worry was really the fact that when he got scared or nervous, his invisibility had a tendency to trigger (he was terrible at controlling it), which would undoubtedly not go down well with a bunch of irradiated xenophobes. And they really _were_ irradiated, some of them had sparse hair on their heads and dark patches of skin he recognised as radiation burns.

Just when, perhaps, Rory was having a little more faith in Rose Tyler, she went and ruined it all by yelling as loud as she could, "Oi! Who's in charge around here? We're from the government. Doing a… radioactivity, uh, survey. Tests, and stuff." Nobody said anything, and Rory felt the invisibility threatening, and could hear people whispering, questioning if they really _were_ scientists. He did an exaggerated show of waving the Geiger counter around his immediate area. "Well? You must have a leader?"

"Yuri is the leader," a little boy said, pointing at a middle-aged, gaunt man, standing with his hands over one of their fire barrels that had once contained toxic waste from Chernobyl, it looked like. Most of these people had been born in the exclusion zone, and Rory saw more than a few visible deformities in them as he looked around. Did they know anything of a life where radiation and mutants and freezing to death wasn't a constant worry?

"You're from the government? The same government who fenced us in with those things in the plant?" Yuri came up to them, questioning them, Rory desperately trying to see if he had a gun on him.

"I'm sure you were instructed to leave thousands of times in the last century," Rory said, "And it's about those 'things' we're here to talk to you about, really. You see, we were investigating, doing our survey, and we stumbled-"

"They're aliens, mate," Rose interrupted. _Great going_, he thought bitterly.

"What?" Yuri questioned.

"They speak English," she said, then frowned, "I mean, Ukrainian. Because we're from Ukraine. Just like you lot. Born and bred."

Then, nearby, Rory heard the very distinctive sound of a gun being cocked. But it wasn't Yuri, wasn't any of his cohorts. A voice, behind them, said, "You know _exactly_ what they are, you set traps around their spaceship." He and Rose turned to see Jenny and the Doctor there behind them, both of them with red marks on their faces, Jenny clutching her right hand to her side and nearly bending over it, as though trying to shield it.

"Traps?" Rose said, "I'll have you know that under new global law, all spacecraft are meant to be reported to the government. And _we_ are the government." She had no idea what she was talking about, and failed to register that Jenny Harkness was right there behind them, a look of death on her face, holding a revolver in her left hand that was all ready to fire straight at Yuri's head. How much of a loose cannon was she after her last regeneration?

"Who let the mutant prisoners escape?" a man next to Yuri demanded, looking around.

"Prisoners? They're not mutants, look at them," Yuri argued, "Why did no one tell me about this? Who are they?"

"Nikolai found them," the man said, "Out by the… artefact."

"Spaceship," Jenny said through gritted teeth. Yet Eleven stood right there, didn't say a word, didn't say a single thing to try and stop his daughter from aiming that gun. If she so much as squeezed the trigger, someone in that encampment would die. "It's a spaceship. They're refugees. They just want to leave. They just want peace."

"They attacked us," the man by Yuri, some sort of advisor-type, argued.

"No they didn't. They acted in self-defence," Jenny argued.

"Doctor, she has a gun," Rory said to Eleven, and Eleven met his eyes for just a second, then looked away again. Did the Doctor condone this, suddenly? He was a fan of murder? He normally hated when Jenny acted violently, and she was so prone to violent outbursts sometimes.

"You told me they attacked us on sight," Yuri argued with the advisor.

"They… they would have!" he argued.

"What do you mean, 'would have?'"

"He means they've been acting the way all humans do, just trampling out anything they don't understand. They do it to animals, do it to each other, and now to the Immeo. That's what they're called, _Immeo_, and they came here looking for somewhere safe. Their own planet is gone! And what do they arrive to? Your people hunting them? Killing them?" she ranted, still holding that gun.

"Doctor," Rory said. Rose was watching the gun carefully now, too.

"Shh," Eleven said, watching Jenny.

"What do you-" Eleven stopped Rory with a glare.

"Is this true? For all these years, you've been lying to me?" Yuri questioned the advisor, "You and Nikolai?" He said nothing. "Answer me, Petrov!"

"Look, look! She has Nikolai's gun, she must have killed him, him and Andrei, they were guarding the mutants!" Petrov exclaimed, pointing at Jenny.

"They're unconscious," Jenny said, "Neither of them are dead, because I'm a better person than you. All of you. But that's the last of their species out there, and I'd sooner sacrifice the whole lot of you to give them another shot, when they're the victims here, and all the human race have ever been good at is multiplying. And don't underestimate me like they did. Nikolai did _this_ to me, and I still let him live, barely a scratch on him." Then, when she brandished it, Rory saw why she had her right hand so withdrawn.

Rose made quite a loud, gasping sound of disgust and looked away, and Rory flinched seeing Jenny's thumb practically just hanging there off her hand, like it had been torn away by force. How she wasn't crying in pain was beyond him – but was Jenny, hurting so much physically, liable to resort to murder? Yet the Doctor still did nothing.

"Somebody shoot them! They're mutants!" Petrov shouted, and guns were aimed at the four of them, which left Jenny unfazed, though the Doctor was getting worried. If those people shot, they were practically done for. _Just convince her to lower the gun_, Rory thought, looking at the Doctor_, she's your daughter, can't you just talk to her?_ Maybe then they would be listened to, if Jenny stopped threatening them.

"They're not mutants!" Yuri argued, "How could they be!?"

"Don't you hear the way she talks? Calling us _humans_? I took her pulse, and his, they both have two heart beats. _Two_!" he exclaimed.

"You've got me, we're aliens as well, different ones, and we came here to _help_," she said.

"You're not helping anybody by pointing that gun," Rory hissed at her, and she blanked him.

"Leave them alone," Jenny ordered, "Leave them alone until we can help them fix their ship and they can leave. They've sucked all the radiation out of this area, you know, that's what they _do_. Clean the environment. And you _kill them_? When they've made this place hospitable again? You give them _death_ in return?"

"They would have killed us," Petrov argued.

"They wouldn't have killed anybody! _You're_ the killers! _You're_ the sick ones!" Jenny shouted.

"Nobody shoot! Everybody lower your weapons!" Yuri ordered, staring around at his people, and then he turned to Jenny. Jenny wouldn't listen to Rory, and the Doctor wasn't trying to convince her of anything at all, but she did what Yuri asked. She flipped the gun in her hand so that she was holding it by the barrel, and then dropped it into the thin layer of snow at her feet. Rory jumped, expected it to go off, but it didn't.

"Leave them alone," she said coolly, "Leave them, and we can help them get off this godforsaken planet. Nobody who comes to Earth ever wants to stay – I certainly don't."

"They're really peaceful? They can really speak?" Yuri asked.

"Yes, they've learnt your language," the Doctor _finally_ said something, Rory glaring at him as he did. Rose didn't want to say anything, lest she exacerbate the situation and cause somebody to fire a gun. Though, it seemed that, aside from all the firearms, Jenny was doing a perfectly good job of getting their point across to try and broker peace between the humans and the Immeo. "They've learnt Earth culture, learnt how years and dates work, learnt about the disaster, about the exclusion zone, all of it."

"Will they accept an apology?"

"_Apology_? They killed Katya!" Petrov exclaimed.

"_You_ killed Fivlon," Jenny said, "They have names as well. Fivlon's brother and father are still living in that plant, coping with that loss just like you are. A fight _you_ all started, because you wouldn't listen. You should listen now. In a few days, they could be gone. If you just leave them alone. They've never come here and attacked."

"No, they haven't…" Yuri said, somewhat thoughtfully. Clearly, his advisors had all been lying to him about what was going on between them and the Immeo. Funny that he believed Jenny over them, but there was something very convincing about her as she threatened them, as she besmirched humanity. Almost like she believed her own words. And still, Rory marvelled at the amount of pain she could withstand, _was_ withstanding, still.

"So? What's it to be? Are you going to leave them alone?" the Doctor asked.

* * *

"What? It was really that easy?" Martha Jones asked Rory as he related the whole story back to her – as much of the story as he knew, at least – in the medibay, him mixing plaster in a bowl.

"I wouldn't say it was easy," Jenny said flatly, not having a lot of fun sitting there with her hand resting on a table, a tray underneath, as they talked. She was in a bad mood, understandably. Martha was just getting her x-rays at that moment, to see the extent of the damage, but she would most definitely need a cast, that was for sure.

"The Doctor and Rose are still there, making sure the Immeo get off the planet and the humans leave them alone," Rory explained, stirring, "He made me use the emergency teleporter to bring Jenny back to the ship."

"Jenny didn't need bringing back to the ship, Jenny is fine," Jenny said stiffly.

"As a matter of fact, Jenny is _not_ fine," Martha countered, pegging the x-rays on the brightly lit board hanging on the wall at the back of the room, "You've broken the proximal phalange _and_ the metacarpal of your thumb, and it's dislocated at the basilar joint. Must have been a strong bloke, if he managed to do this to you. I'm going to need to set it. What kind of painkillers do we have in here?"

"Painkillers? I don't need painkillers, it barely hurts at all," Jenny told her, grimacing the whole time. Rory didn't believe that for a second, looking at her mangled appendage in front of him. It turned his stomach to look at, and if that was _his_ hand, he'd want somebody to cover it up so he didn't have to see it. Martha narrowed her eyes at Jenny and then reached down to touch her hand. She couldn't have prodded the skin hard at all, but Jenny gasped in pain. Before Rory knew what was going on, her other hand had swung round in an instinctive punch, and Martha caught it in mid-air.

"Did you forget I have super-agility and reflexes?" Martha questioned, letting Jenny's left hand go. Jenny scowled at her.

"You didn't have to touch it."

"I have to set it. If you can't cope with me just touching it, you won't be able to manage us putting it back so we can get it into a cast."

"It doesn't need a cast," Jenny argued.

"I'm a doctor. It _definitely_ does," Martha said, "I've had plenty of people trying to refuse treatment before and playing the hero, don't you worry. You don't look brave; you just look stupid."

"You have terrible bedside manners," Jenny muttered, watching Martha go and search through some of the drawers on the opposite side of the room, looking for painkillers. It really wasn't good that he and Martha, the only actual medical professionals on board the TARDIS, didn't know their way around the medibay.

"You have terrible patient manners," Martha retorted, then she came across something, "Ah-ha, morphine."

"_Morphine_? You're not giving me morphine!" Jenny protested.

"You're a Time Lord, you'll burn this stuff off five times as fast as a human, and it won't be nearly as potent. I'd give you gas and air, if I thought that would have any effect _at all_, but it won't," Martha said, "Morphine is all we've got, anyway. I'm not risking any of this weird alien stuff, god knows what it is. You're just lucky it's an injectable and not a suppository." That remark just made Jenny more aggravated. Rory wished Martha _would_ give her the gas and air, at least then she might be in a better mood. She wasn't pleased to see Martha getting a sterile syringe out from a box on the side.

"I hate injections," she muttered.

"And you'll hate getting your thumb set even more. Morphine probably won't numb it completely, anyway. You're still going to feel plenty of pain."

"Oh, brilliant. Aren't you supposed to tell me it won't hurt at all? It'll be perfectly fine?"

"Depends on how cooperative the patient's being."

"Were you actually going to shoot any of them?" Rory asked Jenny while Martha was busy, possibly trying to take her mind off things. He didn't know what else to ask her about to distract her. It was shameful, really, how little he knew about her.

"Who?"

"The people back there, when you were pointing that gun."

"It wasn't loaded. It's a trick," she explained offhandedly, paying more attention to what Martha was up to, "Acting. The Doctor knew, he saw me empty the bullets out of it, that's why he didn't try and stop me."

"You should be more careful," Martha told her, "That's my professional, medical opinion. It wasn't even ten days ago that you last regenerated."

"I didn't do this, Martha. It was done _to _me. Because the Doctor suggested we go look at the Immeo ship instead of just using the TARDIS. It's his fault." Martha came and sat back down, checking the syringe was working. Jenny shied away from it. It was fair enough, really; nobody really liked being stabbed with needles, even on a good day.

"It's not his fault," Rory said, "It's the fault of whoever did it to you."

"Yes. Him. By taking us there," she said. It wasn't worth an argument. She probably wasn't thinking straight, anyway, she was having to put so much effort into pretending _not_ to be in horrible pain.

"You're not the universe's punching bag, Jenny," Martha said with a sigh. Jenny winced and bit the knuckle of her good hand as Martha injected the open fracture on Jenny's hand with morphine.

"Yeah? Tell that to the universe."


	477. Another Girl Another Planet XIV

_Another Girl Another Planet XIV_

_Ravenwood_

It was quarter past midnight on a Saturday (well, it had been a Sunday for fifteen minutes, she supposed), which meant that Clara Ravenwood was doing what she was always doing at that time of night; she was watching _Kitchen Nightmares USA_ on More 4, lounging on the sofa, eating a jumbo bag of Quavers and getting yellow-coloured, cheese-flavoured dust all over the place. She thought about what her life had come to, and then counted her blessings that Gordon Ramsay wasn't yelling at her for her horrific kitchen skills. She couldn't cook for toffee, everybody knew that, but at least she wasn't deluded enough to have the audacity to start a restaurant. Which was why, in spite of her skillset, she would still watch with amusement as America's equivalent of Tweedledum and Tweedledee tried to cook Italian food and cried when Gordon told them their establishment was filthy.

He was gossiping with the server about how disgusting the meatballs were when she heard someone knock on her door, which was a cause for alarm. Not because she was unused to callers, even at stupid times of night (cough _Sally Sparrow_ cough), but because the door that was knocked on was the back door. It was a loud knock, too. If she wasn't a vampire, she probably wouldn't have been able to hear it over the thunderstorm lashing outside. It was a bad one, too, lightning and everything. Esther was probably loving it. Well, Esther was probably asleep, truth be told.

Perplexed, Clara dropped her bag of crisps onto the coffee table and tried to brush the powder and crumbs off her clothes. She was licking the residue off her fingertips when she answered the door, faltering briefly when she couldn't remember where she'd left the key. Imagine Clara's surprise to see her girlfriend standing there, absolutely sopping wet. Clara smiled warmly; she hadn't seen Jenny for a good few days.

"Oh, hey," she said, "You know, I was just thinking about calling you and seeing if you wanted to come over, I've got pizza, and… Jenny?" Clara had stood aside to let her in, but she hadn't moved, just stayed out there in the rain. Clara's smile vanished. "What's wrong?"

"I've… had a bad day," she admitted.

"Why? What's happened? Are you okay?" Clara asked urgently, debating stepping out into the rain.

"Just… don't freak out. Please."

"Freak out? Why would I freak out? I won't freak out. What have you done? What's the… oh my god," Clara gasped and put a hand to her face when Jenny moved her right hand from where she had been hiding it behind her back, and Clara saw a huge cast on it, encasing her whole forearm and her thumb and leaving just her fingers free to move, blue in colour. Then she _did_ walk out into the rain, "Are you alright? What happened?" she asked softly, cupping Jenny's face with her hands so that she could meet her eyes.

"I broke my thumb. Sort of. Someone else broke it. A Ukrainian, trying to get information out of my… out of the Doctor," Jenny explained, "I don't want to talk about it right now. Martha says it's got two fractures and it was dislocated, they had to give me morphine."

"Morphine? Well are you alright now, how are you _now_? How long have you been standing out in the rain?"

"You don't have to fuss over me," Jenny said.

"You're upset and I love you, of course I'm going to fuss," Clara told her, trying to smile, "You would do exactly the same if it was me and you know it." Jenny hugged her, and she hugged back tightly. "You know, there's a reason why people put roofs on houses, so that they don't have to stand in the rain," Clara joked, Jenny burying her head in her shoulder.

"Martha said it'll take a few weeks to heal," Jenny told her, slightly muffled.

"Thank god you're ambidextrous then. You'll be alright."

"She said it'll never move properly again, until I regenerate."

"You'll… get used to it. It'll be fine," Clara said, Jenny relinquishing her finally, "Do you want to stay? You can stay, you know you can, always. Like I said, I have pizzas, and I have so many mind-numbing programmes recorded. Let's get out of the rain, though, hey?" She brushed a lock of Jenny's hair behind her ear and smiled, and Jenny took her by surprise and tried to kiss her. But Clara got a whiff of something pungent and coughed and leant away as far as she could, "What's that smell? Is that your breath?"

"Hm?"

"_What_ have you been eating, woman?" Clara asked, smelling it even more now over the stink of the rain and the wet grass.

"Uh… this stuff these aliens made that was, like, ground up, irradiated meat. Mostly rat," Jenny said, and Clara looked at her in abject disgust, "I was hungry, and it's rude to turn down food."

"It _stinks_, Jen. Even if I wasn't a vampire. And you're soaked. Come have a shower and brush your teeth; I'll get you dry clothes from downstairs, and I'll make us drinks. Hand on my cold, dead heart, I'll make you the best cup of hot chocolate you've ever tasted, guaranteed," Clara said, pulling Jenny into the house by her good hand so they could escape from the awful weather, thunder rolling overhead. "I've got marshmallows and chocolate sprinkles and whipped cream and _everything_, alright?" Jenny managed a weak smile.

"Alright."

"Why did you knock on the back door, though? And I didn't hear the TARDIS land," Clara inquired.

"Oh, I didn't come in the TARDIS, I came in my own ship," Jenny answered, "Oswin and I finished building it just the other day."

"Really?" Clara asked, intrigued, looking out into the dark back garden. Now she looked, she could see a dark silhouette out there, and remembered the flying saucer looking thing she had spied weeks ago, right after her un-death. "Can I look at it?"

"Maybe later," Jenny said, and Clara pouted and gave her heart eyes, but it didn't work. Jenny wasn't in the mood for giving any guided tours.

"What if somebody sees it? You've parked a UFO in my garden," Clara said.

"Perception filters, don't worry about it," Jenny assured her, closing the door so that Clara couldn't pry anymore. Clara finally got tired of the meaty stench hanging on Jenny Harkness' breath and more or less ordered her to go shower, giving her a plastic bag and some sellotape so that the cast wouldn't get wet. Then she vanished upstairs and Clara was left having to go down into her bedroom – or, 'the crypt' as Sally Sparrow annoyingly called it – to find Jenny pyjamas. It would help if their clothes weren't so mixed together she hadn't a clue what belonged to who anymore, and she briefly wished she was going out with a boy so that it would be easier to tell. Jenny didn't care, though, so Clara just dragged out the most comfortable things she could find and left them in the bathroom, along with a towel, while being ordered not to sneak a look behind the shower curtain. She called Jenny a spoilsport for that.

Then she made hot chocolate and left it on the coffee table, returning to her earlier activity of watching Gordon Ramsay shout at idiots, trying to clean up the mess from all the crisps she had been eating. She was going to have to hoover, she resolved, whenever she could be bothered. She was still worried about Jenny, though; she was very off. Maybe she was just tired and needed to sleep. After all, Clara would probably be foul if she had had her thumb broken. Truthfully, Clara spent a lot of her time thinking about what dangerous situation Jenny had got herself into, out there wandering through space and time, and every time she thought about that a niggling sense of hypocrisy crept into her mind and she thought about how this was how Danny must have felt when she used to run around with the Doctor. And then the Doctor had got her killed, and he couldn't even remember her name anymore.

So she sat there, fretting, half listening to the television and half listening to the storm raging outside. She nearly wanted to open the curtains so that she could get a look at the lightning, watch the rain run down the window pane, catch a glimpse of the moon. She never opened her curtains, though. They were heavy and they blocked out every ounce of sunlight; Clara Ravenwood lived in perpetual darkness, and she was beginning to enjoy it, morbidly enough.

Jenny returned sooner than Clara thought she would, and she scared her by creeping down the stairs and then jumping over the back of the sofa. Clara nearly spilt her hot chocolate.

"What?" Jenny asked innocently.

"You frightened me, sneaking up like that."

"You're not very good at being a vampire if you're letting people sneak up on you," Jenny remarked, spotting her mug, a mountain of marshmallows and chocolate sprinkles rising out of it, on the table.

"Well excuse me for letting my guard down around the woman I love," Clara retorted, and she glimpsed Jenny smile. Clara waited for Jenny to drink the hot chocolate and give her verdict on it, trying to ignore the swearing on the television. The restaurant had been renovated and cleaned now, it almost looked respectable.

"Wow, I thought you were exaggerating about the hot chocolate," she said, awestruck.

"I never exaggerate about drinks."

"You need to always have marshmallows in your house, Clara," Jenny told her seriously.

"Your wish is my command."

"What's going on in this episode, then?" she changed the subject and nodded at the television. Clara couldn't tell if getting Jenny into Earth TV was something she ought to feel guilty about. Admittedly, she _did _think it was cute when Jenny didn't know what the most basic shows were, and the more she learnt, the less adorable naivety she would have.

"These identical twins own a restaurant, and now he's making them box so that they admit they're scared of failure so they stop being lazy and actually be decent chefs," Clara explained (badly.)

"Another one where the restaurant is rubbish? Is every episode like this?" Jenny was idly picking the marshmallows out of her mug and eating them with the fingers of her bad hand.

"It's called _Kitchen Nightmares_, what do _you_ think? Of course every episode is like this. Now, why don't you talk to me and tell me what happened today?" Clara asked softly, turning to face Jenny on the sofa. Jenny met her eyes only for a second and then slouched down, displeased. Clara watched her and waited, though.

"We were in Chernobyl," she answered.

"_Chernobyl_?" Clara exclaimed.

"In 2086, investigating why the entire place had suddenly stopped being radioactive…" and, though she didn't enjoy to, Jenny told Clara the whole story of what had happened that day, of how she had broken her thumb, of how she blamed the Doctor for it because it had been _his _idea to repair the spaceship instead of just listening to her. Clara wasn't really sure it _was _the Doctor's fault at all, and she wasn't sure that Jenny was right about him only being concerned about her out of guilt, either. But what could she gain by arguing about it? Jenny was upset already, why add to that and fight with her about something which really might not be any of Clara's business.

"You're alright now, though. You're here, with me, and it's warm and quiet," Clara tried to console her.

"And you've got all of your creepy candles lit," Jenny added. That was true, Clara did have candles, everywhere. She always did. The vampiric lifestyle was expensive.

"Bright lights hurt my eyes…" she mumbled in defence of herself, and Jenny smiled. "So, what was it like? In the exclusion zone?"

"It was sad. Like it was haunted. But bits of it were peaceful, and there was this Ferris wheel that was _really _freaky," her smile faded. Clara didn't know what to say to that. She would kind of like to visit Chernobyl, she thought, but briefly, only to see it. Were vampires affected by radiation? She doubted it. She'd probably be fine out there in the irradiated wastes. "It's ridiculous, right? That I finally get proper use of this hand back after it was amputated, and a week later _this_ happens?" Jenny grimaced at her own hand.

"It's not so bad. I think the blue really brings out your eyes," Clara complimented her, "You've always had a gift for accessorising." Jenny actually laughed, for the first time since she'd arrived at Clara's house. "I broke my jaw when I was twelve, you know."

"Did you? How?"

"Somebody dared me to bite down on a gobstopper, so I did. It didn't go very well for me. And every time somebody asked what happened to my face, because it was all bruised, I had to tell them what an idiot I'd been. My parents thought it was hilarious. Your cast's a bit cute, anyway, like mittens, or something," Clara said, trying to cheer her up. It was working, too.

"As if you would bite down on a gobstopper."

"They said they'd give me a tenner if I could bite through it. Seemed like a good deal. I broke off a bit of one of my teeth, too, but it was a baby tooth, thank god. I haven't thought about this for years," Clara said thoughtfully.

"Well be careful not to do it again, or you might break one of your fangs."

"Oh, I wouldn't risk doing that, they work very well as bottle openers. How about those pizzas I mentioned, then? Do you fancy them? Of course, I'm asking you because _you'll_ have to cook them, after the last time." The 'last time' had been a while ago, where Jenny had argued that Clara couldn't possibly be so inept she couldn't put some frozen pizzas in the oven. It turned out she _was_ that inept; the things had slid through the grills and she had had to spend forty minutes scraping up burnt cheese.

"Honestly, Clara, I love you, but logic dictates that you should have died a _long_ time before age twenty-seven," Jenny remarked, going to put her mug back down on the table now that she had finished her hot chocolate, just like Clara had already done a few minutes earlier, "It's still early, anyway, it's only one o'clock."

"I suppose. Can I talk to you about something?"

"Always," Jenny said sweetly, "What's up?" Clara had practically turned the girl's mood completely upside-down.

"It's my day off tomorrow, and if you're staying the night – I mean, you _are_ staying the night, aren't you?"

"Uh, I… was gonna ask if I could," Jenny said.

"Well you can, you always can, so that's sorted. Do you remember the other week? The night Esther moved in down the road? You… promised me we could go and tell my dad I'm alive*. Half-alive. And now you're here, and you'll still be here in the morning, do you think we could do that tomorrow? I hate the idea of him thinking I'm dead, not having anybody else, probably stuck talking to my Aunt Fiona. And you know what she'll be saying – well, you don't know what she'll be saying, really, do you? She'll be telling him I was always a terrible daughter and a smear on their good name, or something," she grumbled, "I hate that woman. She never liked my mother and she never liked me. And she hated me even more ever since I accidentally copped off with a girl at one of her parties years ago – her neighbours' daughter, or something."

"You 'accidentally' copped off with a girl?"

"Yes."

"You have a habit of doing that, don't you?"

"What can I say? It's both a blessing and a curse. I also ate all the garlic bread, which she disliked more than the thing with the girl. Not that there's much danger of me eating garlic bread anytime soon," Clara said, disgruntled, "Well? Can we go see him? I don't want to go without you, and you've been so busy lately."

"Of course. If you're sure. You've got to be sure, because it's a big thing," Jenny said, and Clara couldn't help herself, she dragged Jenny across the sofa into a tight hug, just like she had when Jenny had originally promised Clara could tell her father she wasn't dead. Not entirely. "I already said you could, not that I really think you need my permission."

"It's your company and help I want," Clara said, letting her go, "Since I have to lie to him and say I'm in witness protection, or something."

"It'll be fine. I'll play the bad guy, pretend to be from the government and just keep saying you're not allowed to tell him stuff," Jenny shrugged, "I have enough black leather to make it believable I'm a government agent. Don't worry about all that, let me have it on my conscience. We'll have to go in the spaceship, though, it's got a rift manipulator."

"What's a rift manipulator?" Clara asked, intrigued. Jenny didn't shift back to where she'd been sitting before, just stayed there, right at Clara's side, Clara leaning on the back of the sofa with her elbow.

"It's like a vortex manipulator, but bigger, more powerful, and it locks onto different signatures of cosmic background radiation in the universe to locate Doors. Because you know how all of the alternate universes have different CBR?"

"No."

"Well, they do. Cosmic background radiation is, you know, static in your TV, it's leftovers from the big bang. Every single parallel dimension has different traces of it, and the gaps in space where they leak through are how you cross into other universes and actually know where you're going to end up. They're much safer than say, a black hole, or a worm hole. You know you can just walk right through Doors? Can't walk through black holes. Well, maybe you can, I've never actually been into one," Jenny explained, "It's actually very simple." She loved listening to Jenny talk about science. She loved listening to Jenny talk about _anything_.

"I'm just excited to see your fancy spaceship now that it's finished. You've been building it for god knows how long," Clara said, "I remember it looking like a proper, retro flying saucer and everything."

"It does. Vertical propulsion is the way forward – runways are _so_ archaic." Clara laughed.

"Have I cheered you up, then? Made you feel better?"

"You always make me feel better," Jenny assured her, taking Clara's right hand in her left, the one in the cast hanging over the back of the sofa.

"Does it hurt?" Clara asked, looking at it. Jenny lifted her arm back up.

"Yes. Ordinary painkillers don't really work on me. Sort of makes me wish you would bite me and make me a vampire, so that stuff like this wouldn't happen."

"I'd never do that in a million years. And you never know, you and I might actually _have_ a million years."

"Well then I'll ask you again when those million years are up," she promised, "Martha said I was lucky not to need surgery, she said I definitely would've needed it if I was a human. It _did_ need stitches."

"_Stitches_?"

"Yeah, six of them, I had an open fracture. It was very mangled, I'm glad you don't have to see it. No doubt it'll scar. Speaking of scars, Other You has a nasty one on her arm now, after Esther had to kill her," Jenny said. And that warranted a whole other explanation, Clara thought, but Jenny shrugged it off and said she wasn't there, and she'd do best to ask one of 'the Spooks' (as Oswin was now apparently calling them) about it. "It's like she's been struck by lightning, all burned, she wouldn't let the nanogenes heal it."

"Why on Earth not?"

"My influence, I think," Jenny said somewhat guiltily, biting her lip. They were still holding hands. Clara was desperate for pizza by then. "Because I said I always used to like having scars. Which sounds more grizzly than it is. I saw them like wrinkles."

"Nobody likes wrinkles, Jen."

"I mean that I look so young and inexperienced, and everybody used to laugh at me when I said I was a Time Lord, no matter how old I was. But eventually I just kind of accumulated all these scars, and I used to have some tattoos, and a brand," she said.

"A _brand_?"

"Yeah – I don't want to talk about that, though. Bad memories. _Very_ bad. Scars on my feet from the high wire when I was an acrobat, I used to have a fair few scars from bullets. None on my face, though," Jenny said.

"Oh, thank god," Clara said, "If anybody ruined your face, I'd have to kill them."

"They were marks of experience, you know? I didn't really think they were unsightly, or bad. It gets boring looking exactly the same for years on end. I'm sure eternal youth is different for you, because for nearly thirty years you and your human mind spent all your time worrying about the latest breakthrough in dermatology, undoubtedly, trying not to think about your inevitable and impending death and all the side-effects of ageing to go with it. I've never had that. I've always just… been. I just am. Like this. Forever. Which is why I used to like my scars. You could've seen all of them if we'd slept together before the stuff with the facehugger."

"I had a boyfriend," Clara reminded her, "Anyway, that's enough brooding from you for one night, I think. What do you want to do now?" Clara laced their fingers together properly and Jenny slid low enough on the sofa so that she could rest her had on the back of it, looking into Clara's eyes for a long few seconds.

"Dunno," she finally said.

"Wow. _Where_ did you learn to be so decisive?" Clara asked sarcastically, "Not to pressure you, but I'm_ dying_ for pizza. They're both pepperoni. I'm salivating just thinking about them."

"Ooh, sexy," Jenny joked.

"I'm always sexy. I'm also worried about how much nutrition you've been getting lately, if you've been off eating meat-paste."

"I was eating it out of a dirty old helmet too, with a bit of metal," Jenny remarked, letting go of Clara's hand and getting up from the sofa. Clara was, again, disgusted by this woman she had chosen to be with.

"Eurgh, that's rank. You're an atrocity. You did clean your teeth, right?"

"Yes, twice, and I used mouthwash _and_ floss," Jenny assured her from the kitchen.

"If _that's_ the case, how about when those pizzas are ready I put _Man of Steel_ on and we can watch that, and while the pizzas cook we can – I don't know – make out?" Clara suggested, and she heard Jenny laugh, though she wasn't looking into the kitchen, she was looking at the TV, because _Kitchen Nightmares_ had finished and _16 Kids and Counting_ had come on without her noticing, something which she didn't fancy watching (guiltily enough, the reason she didn't want to watch that documentary was because she'd seen it before.) "If you're not too weak and enfeebled, that is?"

"Of course I'm not. Sounds like a plan," Jenny said, "What was that you said you'd put on? It's not porn, is it?"

"What? No! It's about Superman. You're so uncultured, Jenny," Clara said as she returned from the kitchen. This time, she didn't jump over the sofa, she came and sat on it like a normal person.

"Why do you want to watch a film about Superman?"

"A hot alien from an advanced, dead race stranded on Earth trying to be a hero? What can I say – I thought you might find it relatable."

*_chapter 826_


	478. Another Girl Another Planet XV

**DAY 134**

_Another Girl Another Planet XV_

_Ravenwood_

If Clara had thought Jenny Harkness would be in a better mood when the following morning – or, early afternoon, she supposed – rolled around, she was severely mistaken. Undoubtedly, something was eating away at her girlfriend, keeping her in a grounded state of melancholy, and Clara's ability to get her to brighten up was dwindling as Jenny retreated into herself. And there was Clara, feeling as though she and Jenny were on on opposite sides of a pane of glass. Clara actually suggested they postpone visiting her father, when they were curled up in bed that morning, Clara hoping that maybe just her proximity would coax Jenny into talking about what was bothering her, but Jenny wouldn't hear of it. She'd gotten up after that and had left Clara alone with a warm space between her arms, which Jenny had spent her whole restless night wrapped up in, to make herself burnt toast and bitter coffee for her late breakfast.

One of the best mornings of her life had been recently, where she had woken up late and dazed on clear-skied Sunday, the smell of bacon frying enticing her out of bed. And she'd wandered up the cellar stairs to see Jenny in the kitchen, singing a melodic song Clara didn't recognise that might not have even been in English, the curtains open for once, sunlight pouring in. Maybe it had burned her eyes, but in that moment she thought she was looking at a postcard, and she had wanted to take a photograph to freeze everything in that one, picturesque instance. She remembered thinking that Jenny was the most beautiful girl she had ever seen in her life, the most beautiful anyone or anything. When she looked at Jenny that morning, watched her brushing her teeth in the reflection of the bathroom mirror, she saw in Jenny's haggard expression ghosts of that moment. Jenny couldn't see Clara in the mirror, didn't know she was there. It was only when she thought she was alone that Clara saw the pain in her eyes that she was trying so hard to bury, those eyes that looked more like Eleven's every time Clara lost herself in them.

"Do you keep that mirror hidden from me?" Clara inquired. While Jenny had been eating her burnt toast, Clara had been showering, and then they had switched and she had to put the plastic bag on her fibreglass cast again to protect it from the water. Clara had lurked downstairs and eaten a yoghurt, contemplating, until sneaking back up. She didn't mean to spy, but when Jenny didn't notice her come into the bathroom, she had found herself doing so.

Jenny jumped and nearly dropped her toothbrush.

"God, you scared me," she said.

"Gets you back for jumping over the sofa last night," Clara said, leaning on the wall. Clara was trying to stay upbeat, trying to be the perkier one of the two of them. In reality, she was scared, worried both about Jenny's state of mind and what her father was going to say when she span him the story that her death had been faked and she had been put into witness protection. "The mirror, though?"

"…Yes, I keep it hidden," Jenny admitted, "Sorry. Should I not have? I didn't know if you having a mirror around the place and not having a reflection would upset you, and I never really knew how to ask, I thought I might sound narcissistic."

Clara smiled, because even if Jenny had been a little misguided, her hearts had still been in the right place in doing something so small as keeping a mirror out of sight, "It's fine, I'd never want to deprive anybody of looking at _your _gorgeous face, now, would I? Even you yourself. Self-confidence is all the rage in the modern era. You don't have to hide that thing. I pass mirrors and windows all day long – I kind of like it, the sense of anonymity, makes me feel invisible."

"Well I'd hate if you were invisible, _then_ who's gorgeous face would the world be deprived of?" Jenny said, and Clara was surprised that she was flirting back. She hadn't expected it that morning. Not that she complained, of course not. Jenny still had toothpaste around her mouth, which she realised, going to rinse it with the glass by the sink. "Did you want something? Or were you really just trying to scare me? You can be very creepy sometimes."

"I was going to ask if you if you're okay, but then I didn't know whether I should or not, because you don't seem very thrilled with me worrying about you," Clara said seriously. She met Jenny's gaze, but only for a second, until Jenny looked away.

"There's nothing to be worried about, I'm fine. Today's all about you. You and your dad," Jenny managed a smile, but Clara was sure it was only half real. In fact, it was almost like Jenny was only half there, the rest of her was off thinking about something apparently not to be shared.

"But if, hypothetically, something _was _bothering and upsetting you, you know you can always talk to me about it? You can talk to me about anything, I'll always listen," Clara said, and Jenny sighed and was thinking again.

"Of course. I know I… I know you're there for me," she said, changing her words part of the way through her sentence. Clara wondered what they had originally been. Clear as day, though, she wasn't getting anywhere. It was like trying to get blood out of a stone, and Clara Ravenwood knew a lot about the places where you could get blood those days. From inside delicious-smelling human beings. Although, she found that human beings generally didn't like it when she described them as 'delicious-smelling.' "I was reading yesterday's paper that you left out earlier." She changed the subject and walked past Clara to leave the bathroom, leaving the mirror out.

"The paper? Why?" Clara followed her. Clara was already dressed, but Jenny wasn't. Clara trailed after her all the way down to the cellar where the wardrobe was. It was still raining. The storm had raged all night. Neither of them had slept very well – they must have spent half the night trying to think of idle things to say to distract one another in a cycle of being woken up by their own emotions and the thunder outside. And once when, to Clara's absolute horror, she had somehow ended up rolling onto Jenny's hand and broken thumb. She had screamed, and Clara had been mortified.

"It's one of those things I always miss on the TARDIS, you know? The news. I love it, reading about all the little things that happen during the day to random people. There's something endearing about it," Jenny said, "There's this whole article about how scientists think one of their radio telescopes has picked up the construction of an 'alien megastructure' somewhere in the galaxy. How cute is that? All of you running around trying to solve the answer to 'are we alone in the universe?' And here _I_ am right under all of your noses, proof of life among the stars. What an adorable species you come from." Listening to her talk, Clara felt for sure that for a split second she was speaking to the Doctor himself again. Jenny was distracted enough searching for clothes that she didn't notice Clara briefly taken aback by how much she reminded her of her father.

"They're not really my species anymore," Clara reminded her eventually, trying to ignore how spooked she was, "Not that I've ever really met any of my own species. As far as I can tell, _your _species have made it your primary objective to wipe us out. Thanks for that, by the way."

"You're far too wonderful to wipe out. But I wonder if there really _is _an alien megastructure out there? Watch, I'll fly all the way out to it and it'll be a fuel depot. Have you moved my clothes? Or do I just have less here then I thought? Should I bring more?"

"Just borrow mine. And don't insult my dress sense," Clara added, because she saw the look Jenny got on her face. Jenny looked away again and actually listened to Clara, "How's your hand? I didn't make it worse, did I?"

"No, I don't think so. I'll ask Martha to run another x-ray the next time I see her. No doubt I'll get an earful about safety, again. Maybe I shouldn't, come to think of it, else I might be under doctor's orders not to share a bed with you, and _that_ would be the real tragedy, I think," Jenny finally found clothes to wear, but who they actually belonged to was a mystery to Clara. "Have you had breakfast?"

"Oh, I had a yoghurt and a biscuit," Clara answered.

"You don't want to stop somewhere, then? The alien megastructure could be a restaurant, for all we know. A renowned one with lots of foot traffic – speaking of, where are my shoes?" Jenny looked around.

"Upstairs, in the kitchen."

"Right…" she said, leaving the bedroom. She walked quickly around the house and Clara, who was all ready to leave and had been for a while, followed her around like a lost dog. "Wouldn't be foot traffic if they were in spaceships, would it?"

"Suppose not."

"You don't want me to make breakfast?"

"No, Jen, it's fine," Clara assured her, "I'm not very big into the idea of food right now, anyway. I'm not exactly calm." Clara stood with her hands in her coat pockets in the kitchen, Jenny balancing on one leg and having a pretty tricky time of it trying to pull on one of her boots while her right hand was sealed in a cast. Jenny met her eyes for a second, then managed to force her shoe on; she was too lazy to untie the laces and do it properly.

"How are you feeling?" Jenny asked, standing there wearing just one boot.

"Excited. Scared. I don't know. Nervous? How are you meant to feel when you're going to tell your dad you're not dead?" Clara didn't know if Jenny Harkness was the best person in the universe to ask that question, or the absolute worst. "I don't know how he'll react."

"Hopefully better than mine did," she said quite bitterly, going to force her other boot to bend to her will as she forcefully shoved her foot into it. She was never normally so aggressive when it came to everyday activities. It was probably something to do with whatever was on her mind. "Where's my jacket? Did you move it?"

"Yes, I hung it up by the back door so that it wouldn't drip rainwater everywhere," Clara said, picking up her keys from the kitchen counter.

"How about blood? How much blood have you got with you?" Jenny asked seriously. Clara had the one full bottle of blood, but Jenny _insisted_ they take another thermos of the stuff, 'just in case.' Clara couldn't be bothered arguing. Plus, the thought of an abundance of human blood sent a sick kind of rush through her. "I need a new coat."

"So you keep saying," Clara said as Jenny tried to find her keys. She was being unnervingly flighty that morning, forgetting where she had left things. Preoccupied, distracted. Jenny was always complaining that she needed a new coat. In fact, she was always complaining that she needed new lots of things. She didn't seem to have a lot of anything, to be honest. Clara got the sense that Jenny had lost a lot of material possessions, and after months of the TARDIS replacing them as the need arose, she was maybe getting tired of it.

Jenny sighed, "Time to go, then?" and Clara went to unlock the back door. Jenny would have done it, she was closer, but she only had a key for the front, and at the last minute Clara remembered she needed to wear her 'sunglasses.'

They had to run from the door of the house to the dry sanctuary of the underside of the spaceship, so Clara didn't get as good a look at the thing as she would have liked, but she saw enough. It really _did_ look like a flying saucer, and it was an eerie thing to see in her own back garden. Perhaps the spookiest thing about what really was your typical UFO was it didn't have any landing gear, it just floated there, silently. The whole thing was silver, too. It wasn't nearly polished enough to be a perfect mirror, but it reflected the dead winter grass on the bottom and the grey storm clouds on the top, and there was a dark blur of shape representing Jenny. Of course, there was no shape for Clara, Clara had no image.

Rain bounced off the smooth metal above them, the entire thing looking like it had been carved out of one gigantic block of aluminium.

"It's not really very big," Clara said as Jenny fidgeted with her keyring, picking out a small lump of plastic that looked exactly like an ordinary, electronic car key. She met Clara's eyes with an expression of shock, like Clara had offended her.

"Have you learnt nothing?" she questioned, then she managed to crack a smile, "It's bigger on the inside."

"Oh, of course," Clara said, "So is it just another TARDIS?"

"Nowhere near. It's big_ger_, not _big_," Jenny told her, pushing one of the buttons. A hatch in the ship's base slid open to reveal bright interior lights. As though the material the thing was made from melted and reformed itself, stairs descended down to them and touched the ground below. It was remarkable, because before that hatch had opened, the surface had been completely smooth, not a single blemish. "After you."

"How much effort did you and Oswin put into just making this thing as stylish as possible, then?" Clara queried, in such awe of the ship (and she hadn't thought spaceships were even capable of amazing her anymore) she nearly forgot about where they were actually going.

"Well _I_ didn't put any effort into that – you know me, I care more about practicality than aesthetic," Jenny said, following her up into the ship itself, the stairs ascending back up into the ship's shimmering body behind them, "Usually it's a question of having to sacrifice good looks for comfort, or vice versa, but I suppose with a brain like that she finds a way around those sorts of problems. You should see the spacesuits she made."

"Spacesuits?" Clara asked absently, looking around the interior. Was it the most remarkable thing she had ever seen, on the inside? No. Jenny was right about it being bigger, but not big. It was sleek, though. The space that there was – which was a more than adequate amount, it just wasn't _infinite_, like the TARDIS – was utilised very well. To the left were the controls, to the right were doors, and the thin sliver of corridor she was in presently appeared to be a galley.

"I'd show you, but I don't have one on here. I should probably get one, actually…"

"You don't have those baggy, orange ones?"

"It's a universally agreed upon fact that those orange spacesuits are the ugliest things in all of creation, Clara," Jenny said matter-of-factly.

"I dunno. They grow on you after a while, if you give them a chance," Clara defended them.

"The helmets are poorly designed, too, they give you no peripheral vision. The best helmets are the ones that look like fishbowls, where the respiratory system is built into the collar," Jenny explained, "But enough about spacesuits – what do you think of the space_ship_?" Jenny was looking at her expectantly, as though she genuinely wanted to know what Clara thought of the vessel, like Clara was some sort of authority. She didn't know _anything_ about spaceships aside from the Doctor's, and that was one of a kind.

"How come there's no window?" she asked, looking at the cockpit. There were two big fancy chairs fixed to the floor, and a whole range of controls, but where she would expect to see a window, she just saw a white wall.

"There is, but windows aren't really very important for space travel, and you're not really supposed to see into the time vortex, so I have the inner shields up. There's really not a lot to see out in space, and you'll never get anywhere trying to navigate by eyesight. Plus, I thought, do I open the windows to let all the sunlight pour in while I show my vampire-girlfriend around? And I decided to be slightly more accommodating. Not that the colour scheme helps much…" It really was _very_ bright on board, "There's an observation deck, anyway. Uh, more of an observation _pod_. Sort of a dome. Up that ladder." Jenny pointed out a set of rungs on the wall just opposite where the hatch had let them in.

"Huh."

"Well?"

"_Well_, it's small, pretty on the outside and cute on the inside, so I think it fits _you_ perfectly," Clara told her, "Not that you've shown me around properly yet."

"I thought you'd want to rush off."

"We can spare five minutes," Clara said. She was _dying_ to see around the thing that had taken up so much of Jenny's time ever since the pair of them had only been sleeping together on the sly.

"There's not really a lot in here. I haven't a chance to move on any personal effects. Not that I have many."

"I don't get it, you're two-hundred years old, but you don't have any stuff?"

"I used to have stuff!" Jenny said defensively, "And then somebody set fire to a lot of it. There was this whole thing with these space pirates, and there was a mutiny – they got rid of me because I wasn't a violent enough captain and they wanted to go on a wild goose chase after some cursed artefact."

"How long ago was _that_?"

"That? Eight months?" Jenny said unsurely, "Hard to tell. They dumped me on a planet called Trancha II, hoping that the Vashta Nerada invasion on that planet would be enough to kill a Time Lord. Then after two-hundred years the Doctor finally comes to the rescue." Clara had never heard the story of how Jenny had actually come to be back on the TARDIS, how the reunion with the Doctor had even happened.

"I've never asked," Clara said, "Sorry. I should have, I think."

"It's okay. There's not much down there. The door in the middle is the bedroom, though."

"Oh, really? And what interest do you think I would possibly have in your new bedroom, can I ask?" Clara feigned obliviousness.

"A passionate one."

"We'll have to see about that later then, I suppose…"

"This hallway also doubles as a kitchen – it's got fold-out tables in the walls and all sorts," Jenny confirmed what Clara had suspected: it was a galley.

"Why is it all so narrow here?"

"Because of the engines, they're huge. I don't have a dying star to power this, do I? They go from the pivot thrusters at the bottom all the way up to those four domes on the roof you couldn't really see from the ground. That's why there's only space to put rooms at either end. The other two rooms don't really have anything in them yet, I haven't decided what I need them for. Anyway, you're putting off leaving."

"Do you think?" Clara _was_ putting off leaving.

Jenny walked up to her and put her hands on her waist, "Clara, it'll all be fine. I promise."


	479. Ideal Father

**AN: Writing ****_Jenny Who?_**** has made Jenny into such a tortured character. I could write ****_tons_**** of meta on her – she's probably a more complex character than Oswin is by now. I really am going to lighten the tone after all this. This is, like, the most angst-ridden thing I've ever written, but after this there's only one more chapter of it and then it's a switch to different characters. This stuff is a necessary evil.**

_Ideal Father_

_Jenny_

And it all _was_ fine. For Clara. Jenny's promise came to complete fruition, and soon enough she found herself a lonely third-wheel at a family reunion. While Jenny had suggested that elation due to Clara's resurrection might be enough to blast out of the water all of his prejudices about her sexuality, Clara didn't want to risk trying to dig up a bombshell she had dropped ten years ago that still hadn't exploded. That was why, as far as Dave Oswald knew, she was no more than a passing acquaintance of Clara's, somebody who worked for an unspecified and clandestine area of government, who sat there in a corner and eavesdropped to make sure Clara wasn't letting slip anything 'sensitive.' She was not, to her discomfort, Clara's girlfriend to him, and her position – or lack thereof – in Clara's personal life meant it wasn't her place to make a single comment about anything.

It drove her crazy. Everything was driving her crazy. Ever since Thirteen had told Jenny she was leaving, going back to her own time, she felt like she was fighting an uphill battle against an avalanche of her own emotions, and she was losing. It was all adding fuel to the fire; being in that limbo waiting for the only parent who had ever shown her the affection she'd been dying to receive for two centuries to vanish; having to watch her go without so much as a wave goodbye, or one last hug. Then she had been trying to distract herself with baking, everybody had been more worried about the effect Thirteen leaving would have on Alpha Clara, not on her. She had not told Clara Ravenwood. She didn't know a single thing about Thirteen, didn't know that Jenny's broken thumb was just another crime to add to the long list she was building up in the case against her father. Didn't realise that her being there, while Clara got along so well with Dave…

Was it selfish and wrong of her to not be able to stand it? It didn't matter, because she couldn't. For everything she was trying to suppress, Jenny reached a breaking point, and she couldn't be silent any longer. So she excused herself, told Clara she had just remembered an 'errand' she had to run 'for the government,' something incredibly important. And Clara, because she had decided they ought to act like they _weren't_ in love, couldn't do a single damned thing to stop her leaving, or to ask her what she was up to. Jenny just assured her that she would be back 'soon.' She walked and walked through the rain until she dug out her emergency TARDIS teleporter from her pockets and vanished in a shimmering light of blue.

And now? Now Jenny was on the most peaceful planet in the universe. At least, that was what it was hailed as. Funny when it had be borne of a seemingly endless war between clone factions. And now it was a literal, tangible Garden of Eden. All of those old houses that were buried underground were underground no longer, and the skies shone mint green above a metropolis that was as dense with gorgeous plant life as it was with people of all different races. Including two Time Lords just arrived in that ancient, out-of-place blue box.

The Eleventh Doctor had been more than a little confused when she had shown up and asked that he come somewhere with her, she had something she needed to show him. But he came, so that was… something, she supposed. A start. She was sure Clara was fine without her. The Doctor wandered around and looked at the plants, the trees, the flowers, the bright sky – it was a beautiful planet now. She wished she had come back earlier, she thought, as she went to sit down on a bench. This wasn't even an area of the city where people lived, it was a park, she supposed, a space park. It looked like one, sealed in a dome like a botanical garden, warm and windless.

"How's your hand? How badly was it broken? I couldn't find you to ask you yesterday," he said.

"Quite badly. It needed stiches."

"Stitches!?" he exclaimed, and he walked right over to sit next to her on her right, and she slid away from him on the bench, something which he most definitely noticed, "How many? How long will it take to heal?"

"Two to three weeks, Martha reckons," Jenny said, and she didn't say anything else.

Finally, he asked, "Where are we? What planet is this?"

"You don't recognise it?" she asked, and he frowned, "This is Messaline. This is what the Source did, apparently, rejuvenated everything. It's quite nice, I wish I'd come back sooner. Wish I hadn't been so quick to leave. Things might have been different." Jenny sighed. And then she remembered the old creation myth that she had been born with in her head, that when the deity who had made the Source looked at what she had created, she sighed.

"Is it?" he stared around some more, "Looks different. This is what the Source did?"

"Apparently the Source stretched out to the three moons, as well, they're all forests now," she explained, "Very habitable, but I'm not sure whatever government has sovereignty around here have decided what to do with them yet. Useful places to know about, never know when you might have to relocate a whole species."

"Suppose not. Happens a lot with me, anyway, generally… why did you bring me here? Us here? Just to have a look?" He remained confused.

"No. Because…" she couldn't find the words. For two-hundred years – _two-hundred_ – she had been thinking about what she would say to the Doctor when she found him, the words rehearsed over and over again in her head, getting more and more angry and tormented with every passing year, every passing decade. And she thought she could bury it, forget about it, that when they were reunited he would say all of the things she wanted him to say, and they could be a father and a daughter. But he hadn't. And Ten hadn't, either (she didn't expect anything from Nine, she never thought of him as a father so much as the other two.) They just turned a blind eye to her, unless she was doing something they didn't like. And she had dealt with it, and she had hoped, and then? Then Thirteen came. Then Thirteen paid her attention. Thirteen _remembered her birthday_. Thirteen knew her aliases, her past, knew about her life – she was everything Jenny had ever wanted from a parent, and now she was gone. Now she didn't have anybody again, and she couldn't cope with trying to go back to the way things were.

"Jenny?" he asked.

"Do you think of two centuries as a long time? You're over a thousand. Is it nothing to you?" she asked him.

"Well, no, I suppose it's a fair length of time…"

"Why didn't you wait?"

"Excuse me?"

"You didn't wait. I came back to life, I regenerated, if you'd waited, you would have seen. You just left. Why didn't you take my body? Why did you just leave me? I've read up, you know, I've had a lot of time on my hands; Time Lords are meant to be cremated. You didn't cremate me. Didn't give me a proper funeral. You just _left me_."

"Isn't it a good thing I didn't cremate you?" he asked. He hadn't been expecting her to ask him these sorts of questions, he was stunned, taken by surprise, he didn't have answers prepared like he did for everything else in his life. "If I had, you wouldn't have come back at all."

"And what did I come back to? I came back and I crashed on Tungtrun, on the surface, and the heater broke, and I thought I was going to die again, I thought I was done for. I didn't know anything about Time Lords, or regenerations, I didn't know where you'd gone, why you'd abandoned me. I lived underground in caves and hunted game on the surface for a year and a half. Is that the kind of life you wanted for me?"

"I don't think I had time to think of what I wanted for you," he said seriously.

"Yeah. Right. Because you forgot about me, immediately? You've been trying to pretend I don't exist for months?"

"Of course I haven't been trying to pretend that you don't exist!" he defended himself, wearing such a face of shock she almost believed him, like he was appalled she had his character so wrong, hurt, even. She wasn't sure she did have him wrong, though. She might be the only person who had the Doctor _right_.

"Of course you have. I'm just another dead person on your conscience, just another one you let die," she said, "And now I'm here, and I've been here for months, and the only words you ever have to say to me are about how you disapprove with whoever I choose to date."

"So this is all about Clara, is it?" he asked sharply.

"Of course it isn't about Clara! None of this is about her! God – you're so self-absorbed!" she shouted at him, getting up from the bench now because she couldn't stand to be sitting so close to him, "Bringing every problem I have with you and making it sound like I'm being petty! A year ago, I didn't even know who Clara Oswald was. Two-hundred years of struggles and you're reducing them all to a girl – oh my god…"

"Struggles? All you said was you had to live in a cave," he said, and _that_ was it. The final straw. Of course, Jenny thought she had got to the final straw many, many straws ago, but she had been wrong.

"Oh, I haven't struggled? I haven't suffered? Not at all? Not when I lived in a swamp for five years all on my own? I used to bake myself birthday cakes and sit there, alone, waiting for you. Every year I sing happy birthday to _myself_ because I've never had anybody else to sing it to me. My entire life I've had one birthday present," she said. She didn't add that the singular birthday present had been from Thirteen, "But no, of course you're right, I haven't suffered, not at all."

"It's different."

"_What's_ 'different?' Enlighten me, go on."

"Likening us to one another! _Suffering_ doesn't make you… it… you've never lost your entire race."

"Yes I have! There's only one other person in my entire race, that's _you_, and you abandoned me!" she shouted at him, "You left me!"

"I thought you were dead!"

"You didn't even dignify me with a funeral! Why is that? You still don't see me as 'worthy' of you? Of being a Time Lord? You and your ideas have made my entire life a nightmare! I've never been able to do _anything_ without thinking if it was something you would approve of. Do you have any idea what it's like obsessing over something like that for your _entire life_? My life has always revolved around you, and I find you, and you barely even acknowledge me."

"Why would _my_ ideas be making your life a nightmare!? You mean me teaching you not to kill!? That there's always a choice!?"

"There is always a choice, but sometimes the choice isn't between killing or not killing, it's between dying or not dying."

"And what's _that_ supposed to mean?"

"Oh, I don't know, maybe that I spent a good five years of my life being tortured in a cell and let out at intervals to go assassinate people?" she said, and he stopped, "And don't you dare give me any spool about morality – I know about morality, but what am I supposed to do when I'm being brutalised every day? Maybe that's why I was a lot less upset than I should have been having to live through it again yesterday – I'm used to it. To being hurt so that I do what people want."

"You've killed people?"

"_You've_ killed people. And so have I. And I hate it. And I hate myself for ever doing it. Every single time, no matter how 'necessary' I just hear you, in my head, and I think maybe I should have just let myself die instead. That me staying dead, like you thought I was, would mean I actually gain some respect from you. But not enough respect to give me a funeral, of course. If you had let me kill Cobb that day, the day I was born, I'd be travelling with you. Or would you be too disgusted with the sight of me to let me on the TARDIS? If I killed him, he wouldn't have tried to kill you."

"You can't know that somebody else wouldn't have tried to kill me, or killed you directly out of vengeance."

"So it was alright that I died, then? _You_ made me feel that level of guilt for those things. Nobody else, I'll bet, still thinks, two-hundred and six years later, that if they had shot someone when they had a chance, someone else would still be alive." She was talking about Emmett, but he didn't know that. Nobody knew about Emmett. "And look at you now, look at me coming to you for _forgiveness_. Why should you forgive me for anything? I'm still seeking your approval and I _hate it_, it's driving me _insane_!" she shouted at him.

"What is it that you want from me? Why don't you just tell me? Actually, why are you talking to _me_ and not to Ten? Isn't he your 'real' father?"

"Ten has a second chance at life, and his life revolves around Rose Tyler. But you? You're the present Doctor. You're the one who has the responsibility to your daughter."

"The responsibility to do what? Your life is your life, I can't go back and change that, Jenny."

"I wouldn't ask you to do that, I know how timelines work, I'm not an idiot. Why am I even arguing with you? You haven't cared for centuries, why would you care now…" she grumbled, a mostly rhetorical question, muttering to herself.

"Of course I care – I didn't know you were alive. How many times I can I reiterate that I _thought you were dead_. I can't go chasing ghosts. I had no reason to think that you were alive somewhere."

"You should have known! You should have stayed! Why did you leave, Doctor!? Father!? Why did you abandon your daughter's dead body on this forsaken planet!?" she demanded, "That's the one thing I've wanted to know for two-hundred years and you still won't tell me! Just give me an answer! Is it because you _still_ don't think I'm a Time Lord? I don't share your history? Your heritage? It isn't like you've ever been around to tell me about any of it. I was alone in the universe and all I knew how to do is kill and that's the one thing I was forbidden from doing. I remember being on Tungtrun, looking at the star in the sky I knew was Messaline, and wondering if you ever went back. Wondering if I'd missed you. Wondering if you'd ever land. Thinking, I'm your daughter, you must know I would come back to life. He wouldn't just leave. But he did leave. _You_ did leave. And you've never even asked what I've done with my life, what I've made of myself, as though you like to pretend the only bits of my life that matter at the bits you're in too."

"What have you done, then?" he asked. She laughed coldly.

"I'm a renowned tactician in maybe six different militaries, always famous for the same reason: I've never lost a soldier. Is that something you can be proud of, or is the fact I was ever in a war at all shameful? _I_ was the one who volunteered on the rescue missions, on the hearts and minds campaigns, always the first one to leave when I stopped agreeing with the ideology behind the bloodshed. I'm was a very good professional chef for a while, I can make gourmet food out of anything. I have degrees in advanced astrophysics, mechanical engineering and depth Atelerixian history. I ran a smuggling ring to get food and coal from West Berlin into East Berlin. I was a star acrobat in an intergalactic circus. I always try to save lives, in everything I do, and be a good person, be a hero, and help, and make lives better, and you don't even care. You've never cared."

"You keep saying that I don't care, when I do, of course I do," he said, "I came to see you the last time you regenerated!"

"And what's that, then? Your one good deed? The thing that makes up for the two centuries I've been alone? That fixes everything, does it? Because you paid me a visit? Because you asked about my thumb? It's your fault my thumb is broken in the first place."

"_My_ fault!?"

"Yes! Because you didn't trust me! Didn't listen to me! I said we should take them in the TARDIS, and you said no! We had to do things _your_ way, and I've suffered for it, and you're fine. I am _sick_ of you acting as though I'm nothing to you, like I'm worthless."

"I've never thought you were worthless. You're putting words into my mouth, you're projecting. If you would calm down so that we can talk properly and you wouldn't keep _shouting_-"

"I DESERVE TO SHOUT AT YOU! YOU DESERVE TO BE SHOUTED AT!" she yelled as loud as she could. She didn't know if she'd ever shouted so loud at anybody in her life. She thought the trees around her very nearly shook when she did, like the rivers might swell with the tears she was suppressing. Her head was going to explode. She was so _exhausted_. It was, finally, the end of Jenny's tether. Jenny DeLacey, Jenny Acallaris, Jenny Young, Jenny Kitzler, Valentine, Aloisi, Howler, Raxis, now Harkness, _all of them_. Two-hundred years' worth of heartache and abandonment and sheer loneliness all came pouring out of her in undiluted rage.

And round and round and round it went. He would not tell her why he had left her body behind on Messaline. He would not apologise. He would not admit that she had had a hard time of anything, that her life had not been all sunshine and rainbows, and he even more refused to believe that any of it was, remotely, his fault. It maybe went on for half an hour, a full hour even, of just arguing back and forth and back and forth until Jenny just couldn't deal with it for another second. They fought and fought and every drop of anguish she had ever felt came spilling out, and she thought the migraine she had earnt was all the tears she was managing not to cry building up behind her eyes.

It was the most unbearable thing she had ever experienced, and she stormed away from that man, that man who was hardly a father to her, and she flew the TARDIS away and left him on that planet. See how he liked it. Somebody would fetch him eventually. But Jenny, in that moment, didn't think she _ever_ wanted to see the Doctor again as long as her hearts were still beating.


	480. Another Girl Another Planet XVI

_Another Girl Another Planet XVI_

_Ravenwood_

Suffice it to say, when Clara's father found out that his daughter wasn't really dead, he was over the moon. Well, she _was_ dead, she was quite considerably dead, sometimes her heartrate got as low as only one beat every two minutes. If she was on life support, she would be unplugged. Not that he needed to know that. Now that declaring her alive-ness to her dad was out of the way, her whole attention swung back to Jenny, who had upped and left at least three hours ago.

Now Clara was the one being distracted, off elsewhere, and her dad was trying to find out what was bothering her. She lied, of course. She wasn't going to tell him that the mysterious and oddly young government agent was actually an alien she was dating, so she just said she was worried she'd left the door unlocked. Then he lectured her about contents insurance she assured him that she _did_ have contents insurance – the contents insurance that was reliance on the goodwill of Adam Mitchell, who would most certainly replace things in her house if somebody stole them. He had bought practically everything that was in her house to begin with.

They didn't have the most exciting of conversations – unlike the Alphaverse version of her father, this one didn't know squat about her travels through time and space. God knows how he thought she had died. _She_ still didn't know how she'd died; she was waiting on the Shadow finding Ashildr for that information. No, it was dull, but she loved it. She had been right when she thought he wouldn't have been coping too well after her death, the house was a mess, and apparently her dreaded Aunt Fiona had been calling in frequently.

"Can I tell anybody else? That woman never said," he inquired, meaning Jenny.

"Uh…" Clara didn't know if he could tell anybody else, so she played it safe, "You know, best not."

"Are you sure? Geoff says his lad's been devastated by the news of your…" he didn't finish the sentence.

"Geoff? Geoff _Sawyer_?" she questioned, and he nodded, "You mean Wade Sawyer has been upset that I'm dead? I mean – _was_ dead. Presumed dead. I haven't spoken to Wade Sawyer for twelve years, or something." Wade Sawyer was her first _ever_ boyfriend. Whom she had left, quite promptly, when his best friend's girlfriend suddenly became available. So much for integrity.

"Maybe you should tell him," her dad said.

"Why…?"

"I just think you should."

"Dad. Don't try to set me up with one of my ex-boyfriends."

"You're single, though, aren't you?" _No_, she thought, _I'm not remotely single at all_. If only her dad wasn't friends with Geoff Sawyer, but they were golfing buddies, or something.

"I, um…" she faltered. As if the girl was coming to her rescue – which, really, she was – Clara's phone buzzed with a text alert on the table in front of her, and when she glanced down she saw it was a message from Jenny, who said she was waiting in the spaceship where it had landed, the door was open, and she was waiting. Clara was getting, all of a sudden, quite anxious to leave. She didn't want her dad prying into her love life anymore, and she was running dangerously low on blood. Having never run out of blood when she had been out of the house before, she wasn't particularly interested in seeing what happened when she did, especially not in the company of her nearest and dearest. Besides, if Jenny was waiting in the ship for her, something was up. More up than it had been all of that morning and the previous evening.

It was very difficult for Clara to disengage herself from her father's company, because he had been convinced she was going to hang around to have tea (not that he had anything in to cook tea, so she hadn't a clue what he'd been planning on making so last minute). She assured him that now she lived in an undisclosed village in Yorkshire – she didn't tell him she was living in Hollowmire because she didn't want him to pop by unannounced and see her vampiric digs – she was far closer than when she'd been in London, and would drop by as often as she could. Probably not that often though, when she only had one day a week off and she rather liked spending that one day a week with Jenny.

She did get out of there eventually though, telling him she would call tomorrow, she would try to call a fair few times a week. He tried to get her to agree to come down the following Sunday, but she had to shrug him off. What was she supposed to do? Next Sunday it was Valentine's Day.

Clara was glad that it was almost six o'clock and that the sky was dark, it meant there was less chance of anybody recognising her and shrieking because they thought that had seen her ghost. The spaceship wasn't parked too far away, at least. It was in a very odd place on top of a roundabout, but at that time on a weekend there weren't a lot of cars whooshing about. It was invisible, too. Along with perception filters, it had a fully-fledged cloaking mechanism. She could see the silver stairs, though, and the bright interior lights pouring down from above them, and hoped the perception filters were holding up and nobody else saw that.

"You won't believe this, he's trying to convince me to tell my first ever boyfriend I'm not dead because apparently he's still into me," Clara said loudly as she came into the ship, the stairs ascending behind her like they had done before. Jenny didn't answer, but as soon as Clara boarded she started messing with the controls again. "How come you didn't come and get me? You could've convinced him the terms of my witness protection mean I'm not allowed to date anybody. Save for the devastatingly beautiful government agent assigned to my case, of course. That's a brilliant idea for a book, actually…" Jenny still said nothing. Clara's old tact of trying to distract her with humour and compliments had lost all effect, clearly. Seriously, she asked, "Jenny?"

"Mmm, yes, heard you, book, excellent," she mumbled.

"What's wrong?" Clara came to sit in the co-pilot's seat on Jenny's left. The ship had taken off already; there was no window, but she could feel it moving, hear the engines working.

"Nothing. Nothing at all. Just have to go somewhere quiet. Empty. Don't…"

"What?"

"Don't worry. You've had a good day. Don't let me ruin it."

"You're not ruining anything. Won't you talk to me?"

"I said I'm fine, Clara!" she shouted. Jenny had never shouted at her before. The look on her face said she regretted it immediately. Jenny put her head in her hands. She was not fine. She was the opposite of fine. Where were they flying? Where was she taking them? Somewhere quiet and empty? "I'm sorry. I just…" The ship jolted as it landed, and Jenny looked up to see on the various readouts and holoscreens. Then she got up and almost ran straight over to that ladder she had pointed out to Clara in the morning, the one she said led to an 'observation pod.'

"Jenny? Where are you going? What's the matter?" Clara stood up to follow right after her. For a girl who only had the use of one thumb, she climbed up that latter shockingly quickly. Clara kicked her high heels off before even attempting it, leaving them on the floor and climbing up second.

The 'pod' or 'dome' or whatever you wanted to call it wasn't big enough to stand upright in, even for someone as short as her. The whole thing was made of glass, though, just perched there on top of the spaceship, the four big bumps in the silver roof where the engines stuck up visible on all sides. And there were two chairs in there, reclined back, like deck chairs, metal and long but covered in a padding she found surprisingly soft when she sat on the one Jenny wasn't occupying. She nearly forgot about her girlfriend's strife when she saw their surroundings, though, a sun high in the distance, everything orange and red coloured for endless, desolate miles all around. Jenny was right, it _was_ quiet, and empty, wherever it was.

"What's happened to you?" Clara asked softly, "What's going on?"

"I'm fine. I _should_ be fine."

"Well you're not, anyone can see that, especially me. So are you going to get a grip and talk about it, or not? Keeping everything bottled up won't do anybody any good, Jen, you'll start taking it out on other people. Unless _I'm_ the problem?"

"How could you be the problem?" Jenny asked her, her anger fading for a second as she met Clara's eyes, tears threatening her own, upset that Clara would think any of her woes were _her_ fault, "You're the most precious thing in the universe, how could I ever be angry at you?"

"If I'm so precious, you can tell me what's wrong," Clara entreated, sitting on one of the reclining chairs, leaning towards Jenny.

"I'm sorry. I couldn't stand it. Seeing you, and your dad, being happy. I had to leave. I went to talk to the Doctor."

"I know the two of you don't really get on, but why all this now, all of a sudden? Because of _me_?"

"No, Clara, of course not because of you, it was just… like icing on a very, very old cake. A two-hundred-and-eight-year-old cake. I just couldn't cope. Is that bad? Is it selfish? Of course I'm happy for you, but it was too much, because why can't I have that? Why does he have to be so stubborn, _all the time_?" Jenny asked her, like Clara held the answers to what was going on in the mind of the Doctor. Nobody held _those_ answers, though. "And he just… and…" Jenny burst into tears, she buried her face to stop Clara from seeing. Clara hadn't ever seen Jenny Harkness cry before, and she moved to sit on Jenny's recliner and pulled her into a hug.

"It's okay, crying's good. Crying gets rid of chemicals linked to stress, in your brain. At least, it does in humans… it's still good, though, I'm sure," Clara consoled her.

"She's gone," Jenny sobbed.

"Who's gone?"

"The Doctor. My mother. She left."

"_What_? Why didn't you tell me? You haven't said anything about that."

"Because you'd think I was being pathetic for being upset about her going."

"Why would I think that?" Clara asked softly, stroking her hair.

"Your mother's dead, and you won't see her again, and mine's not, and I will, so I'm being a baby. I should just get over myself."

"Whoa, hey, I wouldn't think that. I don't think that, I promise. You're not being a baby, you're upset, and it's fine to be upset. If you never got upset about anything, _that_ would be the warning sign."

"It's not fine, though. I always knew she would have to leave, have to go back to the future. It's not like I could change it. And she left, so I should just be able to deal with it, I shouldn't be crying." Everything Jenny was saying she was mumbling.

"Listen to me," Clara said, letting go of her and lifting up Jenny's head so that she would look at her when she talked, brushing a tear away with her thumb while she did, "You know what you're doing? You're grieving."

"How can I be grieving, she's not dead, she's just gone," Jenny said bitterly, trying to look away, but Clara didn't let her.

"Grief is about loss, that's not always synonymous with death. I'm sure all of the people who wrote those books and articles about grief didn't have this incredibly specific situation in mind, and the general consensus on what justifies it isn't something you should be holding your own emotions to. Why do you think you went and shouted at your father?"

"Because I hate him."

"You don't hate him, Jenny," Clara said, "You're so angry because you're not dealing with anything in a healthy way. You're trying not to deal with anything at all."

"Ignoring things works."

"Is it working right now?" Clara challenged, and she didn't say anything. "No. And I guarantee that screaming at him didn't make you feel any better, either, did it?"

"I don't know how else to get through to him."

"I think what you've done is you've built up, in your head, for your whole life, what you'd do when you found him. And you're expecting way more from him than he could ever realise. You've done a Gatsby, as I call it," Clara joked, and Jenny got a strange look across her face, frowning, "What?"

"What does that mean? Mum said that, she said it to Other You right before she left, told her 'don't do a Gatsby.'"

"It's where you idealise someone for a long time to a point where they could never, _ever_ live up to the ridiculous, romanticised image you've fabricated. I'm not surprised Thirteen said that to the Other One. Like the book, you know? _The Great Gatsby_? Very famous. I'll make you watch the film, I know you have an aversion to fiction and you'd never read it." Jenny always said she preferred her reading to have a 'real world application.' Which was why she read boring stuff about physics usually. "It probably would have been best if you'd spoken to him a long time ago, but you've done it now. Finally."

"Didn't go very well," she mumbled, leaning her head on Clara's shoulder. Clara looked out at the blank landscape ahead of them, all of it rust-coloured and deserted. Oddly familiar.

"You don't know that yet. He's not an idiot, Jenny. Well, he _is_ an idiot, a moron, to be honest, but… you said what you needed to say, or shouted what you needed to shout, and he heard it, and he'll remember, and he won't just forget."

"He'll be angry at me. I left him on Messaline."

"You _what_?"

"He left me on Messaline two centuries ago, so I left him now. Somebody'll go get him, it doesn't matter. People will care enough to look for him. Not like me."

"I'm sure he cared, and I'm sure he still cares, he's not a monster," Clara continued. What Jenny desperately wanted was for Clara to sit there and justify to her everything she had done, agree with it all, but Clara wasn't about to start lying. Lying would only make it worse.

"But he left me."

"Didn't he think you were dead? You died?"

"But he should have taken my body, shouldn't he? Had a funeral? Time Lords get cremated. Am I not Time Lord enough? I asked him. I kept asking him, but he just avoided it," she said quietly. She was still crying steadily, but she was calming down, Clara thought.

"I'm sure he has a reason, and it's probably not a very good one, and not one that would ever make you feel any better, so he kept it to himself. You obviously sprang a lot of stuff on him out of nowhere, Jen, and no matter how many myths he might be the basis of, and no matter how many species might worship him as some kind of god, he's just a man. An alien man, but still a man, who makes mistakes. Just like you do, because you're the same."

"Why would he leave me there without a funeral, Clara? What reason?" Jenny asked her hoarsely. Clara was at a loss.

"I don't know. Probably a really terrible one he thought made sense at the time, one he didn't think he'd ever have to explain to you."

"Then he should tell me and he should say sorry."

"Yes, he should, and he still could, he probably will. You might live forever, Jenny. Two-hundred years is a long time, but so is the rest of eternity, and if _now_ is when he realises, soon the decades will go by until it gets to a point where you've had a real parent for longer than you haven't. He's made that mistake, and _you've_ made _this_ mistake of not telling anybody – namely me – any of what you're feeling, and then it all comes pouring out like _this_ in the worst way possible."

"I never want to see him again."

"You know that's not true. All this anger you're feeling will go away, alright? It will, I promise, and you'll calm down again, and _then_ you can talk to him, properly, and then he'll listen to you if you don't scream at him. Nobody wants to be screamed at."

"I'm not going back to the TARDIS until he talks to me, then," she said firmly.

"You can stay at mine, then," Clara told her, smiling, "Unless he takes weeks, or something. But if he takes weeks then _I'll_ be the one going and shouting at him and telling him to get his act together." She was sure it wouldn't take weeks for the Doctor to think things through, so she wasn't too fussed about inviting Jenny to stay with her for a prolonged length of time. Besides, Jenny had stayed with her for days on end before, and that had been before they were actually together. "Probably best to keep you away from dangerous time machines while you deal with _this_, too, I think?" she lifted Jenny's right hand by the fingers that weren't sealed up by the cast. Even if the Doctor _didn't_ get a grip, Martha Jones would come down on Jenny like a ton of bricks if she didn't let her check her hand was healing okay.

"You really think it'll be alright?" Jenny asked her, pulling her hand out of Clara's grasp and putting her feet on the chair, wrapping her arms around her legs and resting her chin on her knees.

"I've met your mother, Jenny, I _know_ it'll be alright eventually. And I'm _sure_ Other Me will tell him straight what he ought to do. Or Oswin. I think you need a holiday, to be honest, you're not very good at relaxing. It'd do you good. Maybe I'll make you go to a spa."

"I'm not going to a spa, Clara. I might just stay here. It's serene," she said, looking at the red view.

"Where _is_ here, exactly…?" Clara asked, and Jenny looked at her, puzzled, "What?"

"What do you mean, where is it?"

"It's not Earth, is all I can see. I'm not good with planet names."

"It's Mars, Clara."

"Oh, right. I've never been to Mars."

"Haven't you? I thought everybody had been to Mars."

"But then… what's _that_ out there?" Clara pointed at something she spotted out in the distance, some kind of large, mechanical robot-thing, something out of _Robot Wars_. Jenny actually laughed. "What? You know there are aliens on Mars? The Ice Warriors live here. One of them tried to blow up Earth with a Russian submarine in the 1980s."

"_That_?" Jenny pointed at it with her good hand.

"Yes. Is it a robot?"

"Yes, it's a robot, it's the Curiosity Rover. God, for someone who travels in space, you don't really know a lot about, well, travelling in space."

"_That's_ the Curiosity Rover!? I thought that thing was tiny?"

"No, it's huge, it's the size of a car. I think it's cute. I might hang around on Mars for a bit and watch it catalogue rocks. NASA satellites in your century can't detect a spacecraft this advanced, anyway, especially when it's invisible."

"…I hate to point out that I'm nearly out of blood," Clara said, "Unless you're planning on dropping me off home and coming back?"

"I'll tell you what we could do," Jenny said. By this point, she had stopped crying. She had cheered up somewhat, her anger was subsiding. _See_, Clara thought, _I told you it would be better after you talked about things and let your feelings out_. She didn't think Jenny was in the mood for an I-told-you-so, though, "Go back to yours, put together a picnic, get more blood and come back to Mars. It's peaceful. And this ship _does_ have a television. Well, it has a holobox, which is just a TV, but it projects holograms of shows instead of having them on a proper screen, you know? It picks up Earth's channels, is what I mean."

"…Sure," Clara agreed after some deliberation. After all, it wasn't like she had anywhere else she needed to be, gone were the days when her free time was dedicated to marking schoolwork. Now her free time was dedicated to consoling space aliens, apparently. "A picnic on Mars. You're a real romantic at heart."

"Hearts."

"It's not proper grammar to say 'at hearts.'"

"No offence, but your petty Earthling grammar certainly doesn't apply to me, and it certainly also doesn't apply on Mars."

"Fine. You're a romantic at hearts. Happy now?"

Jenny actually smiled, if weakly, "I'm always happy when I'm with you."


	481. Missing Persons

**DAY 135**

_Missing Persons_

_Jack_

"How pregnant is it, then?"

"What do you mean 'how pregnant?' There aren't varying degrees of pregnancy, Rose. You're either pregnant or you're not – put it down," Martha said to Rose, who went to try and lift up Princess Sparkle Tutu to see how bloated her stomach was. The cat just purred. That cat never stopped purring, and it never stopped sleeping. Rose dropped the cat the few inches back down onto the sofa and it curled back up.

"Yeah, but… how pregnant?" she asked again.

Martha looked at her flatly, then said, "Quite pregnant," and Rose scowled.

"Helix?" Jack, bored of them, called into the room.

"_Yes, Captain Harkness?_" the virtual intelligence answered in its smooth voice.

"How long has the cat been pregnant for?" Jack asked.

"_Eight weeks by my estimates, Captain Harkness_," Helix said.

"There you go, that's your answer," he told Rose and Martha. Jack was in the kitchen, and had disengaged himself from their conversation a few minutes ago, while he made a frankly abominable tray of tea for everybody in Nerve Centre at present. It was really just the usual suspects, though; himself, Rose, Martha, Mickey, then Amy and Nios. The Tenth Doctor and Rory were still asleep, apparently, and god knows where River and Nine were. Nobody really wanted to know, so nobody asked. The Twins and their other halves never had breakfast with the rest of them. Why was that, Jack wondered?

"Well, then – Helix, how long until the cat gives birth, do you reckon?" Rose asked it.

"_Approximately two weeks, Miss Tyler_," Helix said. Every time Helix spoke, or they addressed it, Nios pulled a face, or scoffed.

"What are we supposed to do with a load of weird, space kittens?" Mickey questioned, searching everybody who was there to see if they had answers.

"Drown them," Nios said dryly. Everybody stared at her, and she pretended as though she hadn't noticed.

"Looks like _somebody_ woke up on the wrong side of the charging port…" Amy muttered, making a face and then going back to whatever book she was reading. Jack picked up the small tray of tea and came over to deliver it to the singular table everyone was sat at, Jack having to pull an extra chair over to join them so that he wouldn't be on his own. That age-old system of colour-coded mugs had gone to pot months ago, now they just had an abundance of generic crockery, and no one cared what belonged to who anymore.

"I'm sorry if I don't condone the involuntary servitude of one of my own kind – I didn't realise the lot of you on your moral soapboxes could forgive outright slavery," Nios said sharply, glaring at them all in turn.

"What's got _you_ in a bad mood? Apart from the slavery thing?" Jack asked her, sitting down, everybody mumbling thanks for the tea to him.

"I don't see how any of you are in _good_ moods, to be honest, with everything going on lately around here," Nios said.

"Why? What's going on?" Rose asked, quite urgently. Rose Tyler, Gossip Queen of the TARDIS, out of the loop? How could this be, Jack thought jokingly to himself?

"Thirteen's gone, Donna's gone, Jenny's gone – who's next? Everybody's just leaving," she said, and then there was outcry as everyone there started asking what had happened to Jenny.

"She's not gone, I saw her yesterday, and the day before," Rose said. Jack was now completely engrossed in whatever Nios was saying.

"Yeah, you're not the only one. I saw her as well, while I was charging in the console room," Nios explained, "Saw her drag the Doctor out somewhere, then come back and scream, then she flew off without him and walked off out, hasn't been back since, as far as I know. Two hours after that Clara dragged Oswin into the console room and made her fly back to whatever planet the logs said she'd landed on, he comes back on and starts talking about how they had some kind of fight. None of them knew I was listening."

"Jenny had a fight with the Doctor? The Eleventh Doctor? About what?" Amy inquired.

"Abandoning her, it sounded like."

"She must've finally lost it at him," Jack said, trying to sound indifferent to his ex-wife's plight. He was not indifferent, he was a little worried, "Where'd she go, then?"

"Oh, get a clue, Jack, where do you _think_ she went?" Martha asked him, and he grimaced. Martha turned back to Nios, "Are you sure she's not coming back? She might have just gone away for the night. She needs to come back soon, though, so I can check on her hand."

"She broke her emergency teleporter, trampled it on the floor of the console room," Nios said, "So that's three of us, just gone."

"Donna will come back, though," Amy said, "She'd better come back, at least. I need someone to go to spas with."

"She's only staying on Earth until Shaun's better," Martha sipped her tea. Then her phone rang, and she glanced down at it and quickly rejected the call. She resumed talking as though nothing had happened at all. "I rang her last night to ask how he's doing, just in case she wanted me to take a look, and she said he's fine."

"I didn't know you and Donna go to spas," Rose said to Amy, caring more about that then about the wellbeing of Donna's husband. In fairness, none of them had ever met Donna's husband, aside from those who had had the pleasure the other day. It nearly annoyed Jack, because he was _very _interested in meeting Shaun Temple.

"Used to," Amy said wistfully, talking as though Donna had died, or something. Wouldn't she just text her? It was Donna Noble, of course she wasn't going to leave the TARDIS, she'd only ever done that once and it hadn't at all been by choice. Jenny was the one, he thought, they _ought_ to be worried about. Donna was probably in a villa somewhere in the Canary Islands, living it up and having a wonderful break from the claustrophobic spaceship she stayed on.

"Well I'll go to a spa with you," Rose said, and Amy looked up.

"But you're always too busy hanging around with the Doctor to go anywhere," Amy pointed out to her.

"_Yeah_, but… he's been acting really weird lately. Haven't any of you noticed it?" Rose said to the group, and they all feigned noises of confusion. Of course, the Tenth Doctor had asked everybody he could get his love struck hands on what the best way to propose to a girl was. The one person he _should_ be asking about proposing – or rather, should be _actually proposing to_ – was the only one of them still in the dark about what Ten was planning.

"Probably just thinks he's dreaming, or something," Jack said quickly, them all having to think of something to tell Rose to keep Ten's plans a secret. He could do himself a few favours though by being a bit less obvious, Jack thought resentfully. That man was so damn old, and he still didn't have a clue about women. Even the one he wanted to marry.

"Yeah. He's been after you for years," Mickey said.

"He's always weird," Amy said, shrugging, "Feel free to come to the spa if he's doing your head in." Rose said she would go to the spa, and as long as Amy kept her mouth shut the whole time, it would probably glean only positive results. Ten was clearly a wreck, and needed a break from trying hide all of his innermost thoughts from the girl he lived with.

For the second time that morning, Martha Jones' phone rang in front of her.

"Why don't you just answer it?" Mickey said to her quietly, and she glared daggers at him, like answering the phone to whoever was calling was completely out of the question. Her expression certainly put Mickey back in his place, Jack figured, because he shut up and went back to his tea, and again, Martha declined the call, and put the phone face down on the table now.

"You know, _I'm _still thinking about Jenny," Jack said, and they all groaned.

"She dumped you a month ago. A whole month," Amy said, "Change the record, Jack."

"I don't mean thinking like _that_, I mean, isn't anybody else remotely worried that she yelled at her father and crushed her teleporter and stormed off?" Jack said to them.

"She's two-hundred, I'm sure she can look after herself," Mickey said.

"None of you know her like I do. This is bad."

"Pardon me if I'm wrong, but I'm _pretty_ sure that what Jenny's doing is none of your business. After she _dumped you_. A _month ago_," Rose told him. _Just because you're heartless and you never think about what Tentoo might be up to, doesn't mean the rest of us are_, Jack thought. But he didn't say it, because he knew it wasn't true. And he also thought Rose might kill him (literally) if he brought up Tentoo. _Nobody_ spoke about Tentoo.

"Well she still has my name, so I think it's plenty of my business," Jack said, which he didn't believe, but he was annoyed at them all for writing her off.

"Your name isn't your name, you nicked it, remember?" Martha challenged him, and he scowled at her. Then her phone rang again, for the third time. A fair few of them had noticed by now, Martha's habit of routinely ignoring whoever was incessantly trying to get in contact with her. And Jack, because he was a bit miffed, decided he didn't want to put up with it anymore. So before Martha could stop him – so much for quick reflexes and super-agility – he grabbed the phone from where it was and answered himself, standing up to leave the table when she lunged right after him.

"Hello? Martha's phone, Jack speaking," Jack said, not having time to look at the caller ID.

"_Oh, thank god, Jack_," it was Francine, Martha's mother, "_Is Martha okay? Has something happened? Why hasn't she been answering her phone?_" Shame on Martha, putting her poor mother through all sorts of strife by trying to pretend she didn't exist, for whatever reason.

"I don't know. Why haven't you been answering your phone, Martha?" Jack asked her.

"Give me that, Jack. Hang it up."

"_Is she there_?"

"Yeah, she's right in front of me. What is it you want to say to her?"

"Hang up!" Martha hissed, "Just ignore it!"

"_It's Annalise – that cow_."

"Annalise?" Jack frowned.

"Seriously, Jack, I'm warning you," Martha threatened, lighting a fireball in the palm of her hand, coming towards him. He backed away. Everybody else looked on, quite amused, wanting to know what was happening.

"_Yes, Annalise, her father's gold digger_."

"Gold digger?" Jack asked, and then his hair was on fire. Martha took advantage of him being distracted to take the phone back, and he jumped the bar to get into the kitchen and stick his whole head under the faucet on full, cold blast. He couldn't really be surprised that a pissed-off pyrokinetic had set his head on fire, but that didn't mean he was happy about it. Who would be?

"Hi, mum," Martha said, glaring at Jack. _Everybody_ was listening in. "I wasn't ignoring my phone, Jack took it, for a joke, or something… Yes, I got your texts… Because she's lying! … Of course she _seems_ convinced of it, probably wants to know if she can claim money from the government… No, she can't, that would be ridiculous… I'm not coming to check… Because she hasn't been abducted by aliens!"

"Uh, what?" Jack looked up from the sink, bumping his head on the tap as he did so and wincing, "Did you say abducted by aliens?" He shared a glance with Mickey, but Mickey seemed almost as annoyed as Martha, and he seemed even more annoyed at _Jack_ for being the catalyst of this conversation.

Francine complained and complained, Jack tried to listen and was threatened by Martha and the fireball in her hand, Mickey tried to cease to exist, and Rose and Amy got bored and lapsed into talking about spas again. Jack had almost finished his cup of tea by the time Martha finally managed to make her mother get off the phone, and when she did he got a look that almost killed him. Perhaps it might have killed him, if Martha hadn't been practicing with that ability she had to make things spontaneously combust with her mind so that it would stop happening by accident.

"Thanks for that. I knew exactly what she was calling about, and I was ignoring it because it's obviously Annalise being attention seeking. Now you've got me stuck playing peacekeeper."

"Hey, she could have actually been abducted," Jack said, "I mean, the Doctor sure as hell makes it a habit of his to abduct young women."

"Oi!" Rose argued.

"Case and point," Jack nodded at her.

"Oh, don't worry Jack, you're definitely coming along if _I_ have to go," Martha told him darkly, "Since this is all your fault. And you," she turned to Mickey, and then softened, "Mum'll want to see you, you know what she's like." Mickey didn't dare argue with his wife. Then again, Mickey and Martha had never been a pair who argued a great deal in the first place. And he'd been there the whole way, rooting for them. They'd gotten _really_ sick of it, actually.

"Awesome. I _am_ an expert in close encounters of the third kind. Well, many kinds, and _very_ close encounters, if you catch my drift," he said, winking at Mickey.

"Just get your coat."


	482. Close Encounters

_Close Encounters_

_Jack_

Through their time together with the Doctor, then their time together at Torchwood, and now, again, living together on the TARDIS, Captain Jack had come to know a great deal about Martha Jones, her personal life and her family. The middle child, born after Tish and before Leo, she was always the one who played peacekeeper. Between her siblings, between her parents, sometimes between people on the ship. And this time was no exception. Mickey and Jack loitering behind, Martha went and knocked on the door of her mother's house, her dad's sports car parked outside, and they had to wait for the shouting inside to subside.

"This is going to be a nightmare," Martha complained, then she shot Jack a dark look, "And it's _your_ fault. This is the last thing I want right now, having to put up with more of Annalise's – hi, mum!" Martha immediately changed tone, halfway through her sentence, once the door opened and Francine stepped out to hug her daughter.

The thing about Jack in comparison to the Doctor was he had never been the one who put Martha in harm's way. Martha's family – well, mostly Martha's mother – did not like the Doctor. Francine had never liked him, even before everything with the Master keeping them all prisoner on board the _Valiant_. But Jack? They liked Jack. The daring hero who had been killed over and over again, who, as far as they knew, had kept Martha very safe after she had left UNIT (Francine thought Torchwood was safer than UNIT, and nobody had ever thought it necessary to correct her and tell her Martha was in even more danger with Jack than she had ever been with the United Nations.)

Francine went to hug her son-in-law next of all, and finally Jack. Well, it was a bit more of a matter of Jack hugging her, but she didn't complain. Not about that, at any rate. She closed the door and stepped outside, and then complained _aplenty_ to the three of them.

"I can't stand that woman," Francine said, "She's been here all morning – why didn't you answer your phone?"

"I was eating breakfast," Martha lied, "Got distracted."

"Really? Not busy on some alien planet?" Francine asked in a challenging tone of voice, and Martha rolled her eyes.

"_No_, I haven't been to an alien planet for weeks."

"_Weeks_, she says. Like that's normal," Francine addressed Jack.

"You don't wanna look at me as an example of safety, wasn't even ten days ago that I was on one of the most dangerous spacestations in the galaxy," Jack said, "Lawless, the whole place. The ex-wife nearly got killed over a game of skrips."

"What about you, Mickey? Have you been alright?" Francine asked.

"Suppose so – even though we got attacked by bugs a few days ago," he said, casting a look at Martha.

"Bugs?" Francine asked.

"_He_ got attacked by bugs, _I_ was fine, they left me alone. Don't ask why, haven't got a clue, I asked the Doctor, but he didn't know, either," Martha said, "Anyway, better get this over with, what's Annalise done this time?" Martha would rather talk about that than about what she got up to on the TARDIS, clearly. She'd never been one to enjoy her mother prying into the other aspects of her life. Especially if they involved space travel.

"All week, all she's done is cause chaos saying she's been abducted by aliens," Francine grumbled, crossing her arms and standing on the doorstep. Jack wished she'd invite them inside, it was November and chilly. "She just has to be the centre of attention, it's the most ridiculous story I've ever heard."

"You know, it's entirely possible she _could_ have been abducted by aliens," Jack pointed out, playing devil's advocate. Obviously, neither Martha nor Francine wanted to entertain the possibility that Annalise was anything other than an attention-seeking liar, and here was Jack, upsetting the delicate status quo of the Jones family.

"You don't know her, Jack," Martha told him knowingly, "She'll be making it up. Every other instance of alien life on Earth before now she put down to mass hallucination."

"Yeah, and it seems like a legitimate alien abduction would be the sort of thing to change somebody's mind about that. Did _you_ believe in aliens until you met the Doctor?" Jack challenged Martha, who glared at him.

"Hardly legitimate," Francine said, "Just wait until you hear the details, Jack, you'll agree. Are you coming in?" She went to open the door and invite them into the house. Martha stepped through first and she and her mother vanished, calling back to shut the door on their way in, but instead of following Jack grabbed Mickey by the arm.

"Who is this Annalise?" he asked him, thinking that Mickey would know more than him about Martha's family, after being married to her for a fair few years.

"Her dad's on and off girlfriend," Mickey said, then he lowered his voice and said, "She's _awful_. I try to stay out of anything to do with Martha's family, _especially_ her parents. Hanging around here always makes me miss Jackie Tyler. Don't tell my wife I said that." Jack trailed into the house last, behind Mickey, locking the door behind him and going into the very crowded living room.

It was absolutely _full_ of family photos. Pictures of Leo, Tish and Martha graced every surface and every bit of wall, one of the largest being Martha's graduation photo when she became a fully-fledged doctor. The only member of the family not present appeared to be Leo. Tish was there, sitting, bored, in the chair by the window, with Martha's father Clive and Annalise, a skinny blonde smothered in fake tan, sitting right next to each other on the sofa. Jack wondered what strings Leo had pulled to get out of this family meeting.

"Decided to show up, then?" Tish said scathingly to Martha, barely taking her eyes off her phone. Jack could see over her shoulder that she was just playing games on it. These family conferences happened a lot then, he presumed.

"Nice of you to be so pleased to see me," Martha quipped back. Her mother went to sit back down in the other chair in the room, and the other three were left standing. At least until Martha pushed Tish's elbow out of the way so that she could sit on the arm of her chair. Then it was just Jack and Mickey without perches.

"I've been here listening to this for two hours already," Tish complained quietly to Martha.

"Put your phone away, Letitia, your sister's here now," Francine told her, and Tish rolled her eyes, but listened.

"You had to bring _him_ along, did you? He's trouble," Clive said, nodding at Jack.

"Hey, I'm the resident alien expert here," Jack defended himself.

"You're just upset because he's going to prove your trophy girlfriend is a liar," Francine snapped.

"I'm not anybody's trophy _anything_," Annalise argued, talking in a very high-pitched and even more put-on voice, then she turned to Clive, "Your old family are so crazy sometimes."

"Oh, _we're_ crazy?" Tish argued, "What about you, going on about being sucked up in a ray of light?"

"I _was_ sucked up in a ray of light."

"Bit like how Martha in the hospital was sucked up with the rain?" Tish countered.

"No, because _I'm_ telling the truth."

"Here we go…" Martha muttered.

"He'll tell you," she pointed at Jack, "Go on."

"I can't tell anybody anything yet, not without a proper examination. Probably best if we take her onto the-"

"No way is she going anywhere _near_ the… house," Martha interrupted.

"But the 'house' has all the best scanning equipment," Jack argued with her.

"What house? What are you talking about?" Annalise interrupted.

"Not more of this spaceship nonsense, Martha?" Clive said. Everybody else then opened their mouths to argue, and a whole string of incoherent bickering began, mostly between Tish and Annalise, with a few sly comments from Francine to go with them.

"Does anybody want a cup of tea? I think I might make everyone tea," Mickey said quite loudly, causing them all to be quiet. For a few seconds, nothing, then everyone in the room murmured various yesses, and Mickey triumphantly slunk off to the kitchen, having escaped the argument. Jack saw him cast a look at Martha on his way out, and in response, Jack was sure he glimpsed Martha mouth, "_Help me_."

Regardless of if he was seeing things, Martha definitely mumbled a second later, "I am in hell," and only he and Tish heard.

"You and me both," Tish said. Jack didn't think it was so bad. Yet. But then, he wasn't Martha, he hadn't been putting up with this sort of stuff for nearly thirty years.

"So, Annalise," Jack began, "Why don't you tell Martha and I all the details of this abduction? So we can make a proper assessment."

"Bloody hell, everyone's already heard it a million times," Tish grumbled.

"Yeah? Well _I_ haven't. Don't make me treat you like children. One person speaks at a time, no interruptions, okay?" Jack said, giving them all dark looks, speaking with authority. He was very good at speaking with authority, at making people listen to him. Of course, with people like Gwen Cooper, Rex Matheson and Owen Harper serving under him, he had to be good at bossing them around, they were the ones who always fought against orders. Not like Esther Drummond or Toshiko Sato, who always trusted him, and listened. Or Ianto. Who had followed him to the end.

Not to think about that, though.

"It was two weeks ago," Annalise began, cutting Jack off from his thoughts, "I was out, down the park, late at night-"

"Hold on, why? What time?"

"Midnight. Been out drinking, with the girls," Annalise said.

"Course you had…" Martha muttered.

"Hey," Jack said to her, "I said no interruptions. That goes for you as well." Martha was livid. She was just dying to make up an excuse as to why she had to follow Mickey into the kitchen.

Annalise resumed, "I was walking, out there, by the playground, when there was this blinding light, from the sky, like. I thought it was a helicopter, but it was totally silent. And it pulled me up, it was green. I could see the whole of London. Then I was on this ship, and everything was white, I think they did that thing where they knock you out on purpose, or something-"

"Sedation," Martha corrected her.

"Alright, smart-arse," Annalise quipped, glaring at her, "We're not _all_ doctors."

"It's a very common word," Martha said, looking at her like she was an idiot.

"I bet everyone who went to doctor school says that."

"_Doctor school_?"

"Alright, alright," Jack cut them off again, "Annalise, carry on, they knocked you out, everything was white."

"There were these things, with masks on, like, surgical-y masks, and gloves, and they had all these tools, and they drilled into my head."

"What things?"

"Aliens."

"Well, what did they look like?" Jack asked.

"Like they do in films. They had huge heads, black eyes, grey skin, and they were tiny, with these really long fingers."

"Long fingers? Good thing Clara isn't here or she'd be getting over-excited," Jack said to Martha, who sniggered.

"Now who's interrupting?" Tish remarked, and Jack cleared his throat.

"Sorry. Continue."

"Who's Clara?" Annalise asked.

"Doesn't matter," Jack assured her.

"Who is she? If you're making fun of me, I want to know what you're talking about."

"Oh, we weren't making fun of you, we were making fun of _her_," Martha said, "It's not important."

"No, I want to know. Who's this Clara, and why would she be excited about long fingers?"

After a long pause, Martha finally said, "She's gay." Then she paused, and asked Jack, "Wait, can you call bisexuals gay?"

"Usually, yeah," he answered, "I'd be fine with somebody saying I'm gay, at least. Anyway, enough about her, woman can't keep her hands in her gloves, if you know what I mean." He wasn't sure they did know what he meant, but he wasn't going to explain his analogy, "Please. Carry on telling us about the aliens." Martha said quietly to Jack that she was going to text Clara and ask.

"Well, they were grey, like I said," Annalise resumed, "And they were experimenting on me, cutting me up."

"Do you have any scars?" Martha asked.

"No. They went in through my nose, with their instruments."

"What kind of 'instruments?'" Jack asked wryly. Martha elbowed him. "Fine, fine. Anything else you can tell us?"

"They locked me in a chamber, and kept taking me out to do more experiments, and they didn't speak any English, and then they dumped me back down two days later right where they picked me up. And now nobody believes me."

"Right…" Jack frowned. Francine had been right; he _was_ beginning to agree about the illegitimacy of Annalise's abduction claim now that he had heard the frankly ridiculous details. Little grey aliens picking people up with tractor beams and running surgical experiments? "Martha and I are gonna go into the kitchen, I think, and have a talk about all this."

"You mean you don't believe me either?" Annalise said, then she talked to Martha, "Fat lot of good you are, always going on wanting people to believe the mental things that happen to you, but now one of them happens to me, and you can't even begin to consider I'm telling the truth?"

"You _were_ pissed out of your mind," Tish pointed out.

"How would _you_ know?"

"Rebecca told me."

"Since when did you talk to Rebecca?"

"Since you got abducted by aliens."

"Come on," Martha whispered to Jack, tugging on his elbow and dragging him off into the kitchen to join Mickey as the rows started up again. "I told you it was a load of rubbish," she said as soon as she shut the door to close them off from the others and muffle the arguments. Mickey was very slowly dolling out sugar into seven mismatched mugs all in a line on the work surface. He asked what had happened, and Martha quickly related back to him Annalise's insane tale of levitating up into a flying saucer and being experimented on.

"She was probably just drunk," Mickey said. Jack's vortex manipulator beeped, but he was more distracted by Martha's phone going a second later.

"That's what Tish said, now they're having a fight about it, because apparently she's been getting Rebecca involved, and you know what Rebecca's like."

"She's the one who tried to eat a nicotine patch when she quit smoking?"

"No, that's Becky," Martha told him, "Rebecca's the girl who dumped the bloke who works in the newsagents because he wouldn't shave his weird feet. You remember? She kept showing me pictures of them to figure out if he had some kind of disorder, and I told her to get a life?" Jack's vortex manipulator still beeped.

"Hang on, what was wrong with his feet?" Jack asked, dismissing it.

"I don't know, I wasn't very interested in helping when she shoved the pictures in my face," Martha said, then her phone went, "She says it _is_ okay to say she's gay."

"Who? Rebecca?" Mickey frowned.

"No, Clara."

"But she's not gay," Mickey said, "Why are you asking her that?"

"Because I don't want to accidentally be homophobic." The vortex manipulator beeped continually.

"It's kind of a blanket term," Jack explained, "You know, gay rights, gay marriage. Gay marriage doesn't _just_ mean gay people can get married, it means everybody who isn't straight and was previously not allowed to get married can. Which would go for two pansexuals, say, who just happen to be the same gender."

"Why were you talking about that anyway?"

"Jack made a joke about her being excited about the long-fingered aliens if she were here," Martha said disapprovingly, putting her phone away, "And _your_ stupid thing's been beeping for ages, what's wrong with it?" She grabbed at Jack's arm and lifted it upHe pulled his wrist out of her hand and checked it himself.

"It says… hang on… it says alien technology of unknown origin has been detected in my immediate vicinity." They all exchanged looks.

"Are you joking? She's telling the _truth_?" Martha questioned, and he shrugged and walked past her, opening the door into the next room and having to break up yet another family argument, asking if Annalise wouldn't please come through into the kitchen for a 'once-over.'

"Oh, yes please," Tish grumbled. She was back on her phone. There was minor objection from Annalise about this, but Jack won in the end and she skulked on through to join them.

"What?"

"Here's the thing," he said, "We need to do a scan, because my gadget here has picked up that _you_ are carrying advanced alien technology on you. Somewhere. So if you could sit still and not say anything, that would be a real help." Annalise was a bit less mouthy when she wasn't trying to prove a point to Francine in the living room. In fact, now she was just with the three of them, she nearly looked scared. Well, why wouldn't she be scared, if she was genuinely telling the truth about her textbook alien abduction?

"What does it say, then?" Martha asked.

"There are devices, implanted into her head," Jack said, "Through the nose, like she said. I can't tell what they are, though, but they're emitting some kind of signal and transmitting huge amounts of data somewhere, measuring life signs and all sorts."

"They're measuring me? The aliens?" Annalise questioned.

"Apparently."

"Can't you get a lock on it and teleport?" Mickey asked.

"Not since the Doctor broke this thing again, doesn't teleport at all now. Unless you want to try your hand at fixing it?" Jack questioned, wondering if Mickey's technopathy would stretch to fixing the vortex manipulator. Mickey shrugged and did reach out his hand, putting it over the screen of the device.

"What's he doing?" Annalise asked, but nobody said anything. After maybe ten long seconds, Mickey gave up.

"It's not working right now."

"Oh, how convenient," Jack said dryly.

"What? Like I want to make our lives harder?"

"Can't you just do surgery? Take this stuff out, whatever it is?" Annalise asked. She sounded desperate.

"Uh, I hate to break it to you, but among those devices is… well, it's a bomb. A micro-bomb," Jack said, "And if we tamper at all, it'll probably explode, and take the whole house with it." And then, Annalise fainted, and would have cracked her head open on the floor, had Mickey not quickly gone to catch her.

"What do we do, then?" Martha asked, going to help Mickey sort out Annalise so that she would be lying flat on her back with her feet elevated to try and get the blood back to her head. "We can't follow the signal, we can't extract the implants, we're useless."

"Not entirely. Which park was it she said she got abducted from, again? I think the three of us should go for a walk."

**AN: Sorry for not updating for four or five days or something ridiculous. It's because I've (for once) had stuff going on lately, had to get my A Level results and spent all of yesterday at a funeral, and today I've had writer's block. If anybody's interested, I got into my first choice university to go do an English Literature degree, which I'm sure surprises none of you. Didn't update the day before results day because I was that stressed about it the whole time. But I'm back updating now, empty schedule until the end of September. Feedback on the last few storylines would be nice? All the stuff I've done since I got back off break?**


	483. Childish Things

**AN: Being lazy with my updates, sorry, no excuse really – you'd think I'd hurry along considering I've been dying to start part three ever since I came off hiatus, but earlier I was procrastinating be re-writing my introductory author's notes to both ****_3D9C_**** and ****_4D12C_**** and the closing one of ****_3D9C_****, for some reason (though, there is a major clue in the author's note of the very first chapter of ****_3D9C_**** for things still to come, if anybody wants to look for it. Spoiler alert.)**

_Childish Things_

_Jack_

"This is it," Jack said, "This is the thing I always miss being in space all the time: the weather." He took a deep, exaggerated breath of air and Mickey and Martha looked at him like he was crazy. It was cold and the air was thick with fog, but what could he say? He liked it. Hadn't seen a whole lot of the old weather recently; the last time he'd been out he'd been crawling around Zeniph Nega in the dark.

"Try to look a bit less mental," Martha said dryly. She was still in a bad mood. They'd successfully escaped from her family to go investigate the local park in this area of suburbia, and Annalise had been telling the truth all along, it looked like, but she was still unhappy.

"What's eating you?" Jack asked her, "Something wrong?"

"Not really," she shrugged, "Suppose I've just not been feeling well lately. Probably because we don't get out much – it can get really tiring on that ship all the time."

"There's been a lot of that going around lately, huh?" Jack commented. It was just like Nios had been saying when she mentioned everybody leaving that morning. Esther, Thirteen, Donna, now Jenny. Admittedly, Thirteen was a bit of a special case, but the others? They all just wanted a break. A permanent break, in Esther's case. He'd like to go check up on her in the village, but apparently that crazy housemate of hers had something against him. Plus, if Jenny really _was_ hiding out down there (like everyone figured she was), he didn't fancy bumping into her on the street.

"Maybe we should have a holiday. The whole crew," Mickey suggested.

"Oh, because that's gone so well before?" Martha challenged him, raising her eyebrows, "Don't you remember when everybody went camping together?"

"I mean to a hotel, or something," he argued, "You really _are_ in a bad mood."

"I'm not having a good day!" she protested. Mickey didn't bother to question her further, perhaps it was just one of those days. Jack saw him look at his wife with some degree of worry, though, perhaps wondering if it was something _he_ had done that had caused her to slump.

Nevertheless, Jack saw it best to get back to the matter at hand, and he walked through the park on that dreary day with his vortex manipulator on his wrist, scanning for areas of interest (abductions always left some kind of residual energy that could be picked up on.)

"Do you really have no idea what sort of aliens this could be?" Mickey asked Jack, "Tractor beams and experiments? That's what everybody thinks when they think of aliens."

Jack shrugged, "I guess we'll find out. There's definitely some kind of signal out this way." Jack, truthfully, had no idea what was going on. When did he _ever_ have any idea what was going on, though? Compared to the Doctor, whom they saw every day, Jack was hardly an expert in extra-terrestrials. He was practically ashamed.

"My parents used to bring me here all the time when I was a kid," Martha commented wistfully. Jack hadn't been back to where he grew up since he had left to join the Time Agency at a young age, hadn't returned to the Boshane Peninsula for thousands and thousands of years. He didn't think he wanted to. He also got the sense that Martha wasn't talking to him, she was talking to Mickey. "I miss it."

"It's just a park. All parks are the same, really."

"No, because this one has _memories_. I broke my arm here."

"You miss it because this is where you broke your arm?" Mickey questioned her.

"Yes. That's when I knew I wanted to be a doctor. Fell off a swing."

"Oh, the nostalgia," he said sarcastically. Jack laughed, and then caught them both looking at him funny, and he realised he shouldn't have laughed because he wasn't supposed to be eavesdropping. His smile faded and he cleared his throat.

"That swing, actually," Martha said, nodding. A playground crept out of the mist towards them, gloomy and empty. The simple joys of falling off rusty old toys and breaking limbs was something that had always escaped Jack, and looking at the grotty little place, he couldn't say he thought that was too unfortunate. Humanity would idealise anything if they were away from it for long enough.

"Lucky for you this is where the energy traces are highest," Jack said, holding up the vortex manipulator to scan the area around them. Martha seemed pleased with that and walked ahead, pushing through the gate to get into the playground, Jack and Mickey following. He wondered why there weren't any children there. Maybe it was cold out, but kids didn't care about that, they'd drag their parents out to play no matter the weather. That was why they all got so excited about snow days. "How'd you break your arm?" Jack asked Martha. He supposed Mickey, who had wandered off to look at a climbing frame, had heard the story before.

"Tish's fault, but _she'd_ tell you it was an accident, and mum would never take sides," Martha said, going up to the swing and sitting down on it, "Thought it would be a good idea to try and get the swing to go all the way around the bar."

"Oh yeah? Did it?"

"No, I sort of flew off, landed funny, was in a cast for five weeks," Martha answered him, "Still, wouldn't be the woman I am today if that hadn't have happened. If I hadn't been a medical student I'd never have met the Doctor. Or Mickey."

"Or me?"

"Or you," she corrected herself, smiling at him. He winked back, which Mickey saw, coming back around the other side of the climbing frame and leaning on the slide.

"Are you flirting with my wife?"

"She started it!" Jack protested, and Martha laughed, "Oughta keep your woman on a tighter leash."

"Oi," Martha protested, but she knew he was kidding.

"And if you need to borrow a leash, or any other kind of restraints, I have plenty to spare," Jack offered with a shrug, and Mickey grimaced.

"Who are you three? What are you doing in there?" a woman interrupted their friendly repartee on the other side of the small, metal fence guarding the foggy playground. She had paused on the path outside with a pushchair in front of her. Martha, presuming she looked a little odd being a grown woman sat on a children's set of swings, stood up immediately.

"We're just having a look around," Mickey said, walking over, away from the yellow, plastic side covered in condensation.

"Why?" the woman asked sharply, "You shouldn't be in there, it's dangerous."

"Dangerous?" Mickey asked.

"People go missing around here," the mother told them matter-of-factly, "Lots of them."

"But they come back though, don't they?" Martha inquired, then she proceeded to tell the old lie, "We work for the government." They all lied so much about working for the government, Jack was seventy percent convinced he really _did_ work for the government. He was always surprised when they went back to the TARDIS after their escapades and he didn't have to fill out a few desk loads of paperwork. Risk assessments in their line of work would be a nightmare; _large chance of death with any endeavour_. Thank god Torchwood had never had the same red tape and bureaucracy that hindered UNIT and so many other areas of the _real_ authorities.

"Maybe. But they're never the same afterwards," she said, "You shouldn't hang around in there, you should leave."

"How many people have gone missing? How many have come back? Is it always here, or are there other places?" Jack asked when she began walking off with her pram again. She glared at them over her shoulder, "Hey! I asked you a question!" She sped up, and soon enough disappeared into the thick fog. Jack sighed. "Typical. She just wants something to complain about, doesn't care about actually helping find a solution."

"Annalise didn't mention that there have been other people going missing," Mickey said.

"Because she's an attention hog," Martha pointed out, "It's always got to be about her – trust me, I've been dealing with it for years. She's never, _ever_ gonna shut up about this now."

"Funny this 'New Torchwood' haven't been out here looking into things," Jack said.

"Of course they haven't, it's 2013. I'm pretty sure they don't exist yet. Without them and without Torchwood, it's us or bust. What's your plan, anyway? This is where they got picked up from, but without your vortex manipulator, how are we supposed to get ono this ship?" Martha questioned him, and he paused. He had a plan, of course he did, he was Captain Jack Harkness. Was it a plan Martha would like, though? Nope. And she saw this in his hesitation and asked in a darker tone, "What?"

"I thought maybe if we hung around out here long enough-"

"Oh my god, we're live bait, aren't we? For those aliens? Your plan is to get us abducted!?"

"Well, yeah, it's a solid plan. These aliens clearly love abducting people. It's just like going undercover. You've gone undercover in risky places before, remember? The Pharm?"

"Yes, and Owen died that day," Martha reminded him coldly. A low-blow. "You'll be singing a different tune when they suck you up and anal probe you."

"Getting sucked up an anal probed? That's foreplay where I come from," Jack quipped back at her. She rolled her eyes, irritated. It was a good thing Mickey still had his mind on the job and was paying attention, because if he hadn't been, god knows how long Jack and Martha would have just stood around bickering. Hours, probably.

"Hey, come and look at this," Mickey called, and Jack looked over. Martha scowled at him, but they both shut up and went to follow Mickey's voice to the other side of the climbing frame, where he was looking at something on the ground. "What do you reckon that is?" he pointed at it, "Hopscotch, or something?"

Jack frowned, "Pretty weird kind of hopscotch." It was funny symbols, on the ground. Mickey was right, they did initially look a bit like the designs painted onto the floor in playgrounds, but they weren't. In fact, they were where the energy readings spiked _even more_.

"They're a bit like crop circles," Mickey said.

"Crop circles? Good eye. I once, uh, let's say _commandeered_ a Chula ship that had a levitation beam. In fact, I once caught Rose with it – the girl was hanging onto a blimp, for crying out loud. Anyway, it used to leave burns on the ground, just like this. These marks are from a teleportation ray, by my best guess. AKA-"

"A tractor beam," Martha finished, rubbing at the marks with the toe of her boot.

"Readings like this, maybe we won't have to be bait, maybe I can get a lock and transfer the data to the TARDIS and fly us onto the ship. Then again, could be cloaked. There are always dozens of ships orbiting Earth," Jack was saying, "But it's probably a safer bet than…" Jack's voice faded and was replaced by a creaking noise.

They looked around to find the source of it and saw the roundabout moving nearby, the metal thing rattling as it rotated.

"Okay. That's weird. There isn't any wind," Martha said quietly, the three of them with their eyes trained on it.

"Yeah. Weird. Good diagnosis, Dr Jones," Jack commented. It continued to move, getting faster and faster, then Jack's vortex manipulator started to beep again and he glanced at the blue, flashing screen. "Oh. Uh-oh. Looks like my initial plan might have… worked…"

"What do you mean?" Martha asked through gritted teeth. It wasn't just the roundabout now, the swings were going wildly, too, so were the spring riders that looked like motorbikes, so was the seesaw. Everything. It was like being in the middle of a storm, but there wasn't the slightest hint of a breeze, and the fog stayed heavy and thick around them.

"It's the tractor beam," Jack said, "This is waste energy, taking kinetic form, making everything go haywire because the ray is so powerful. This much waste energy, their ship might not even be in orbit, could be further away than the moon."

"But there _is_ no tractor beam," Martha pointed out.

A bright green glow encompassed him, a big column of light coming down from the sky above and piercing right through the clouds and fog. Jack felt his whole body getting lighter, his feet pulling themselves from the ground as he began to float.

"You just _had_ to jinx it, didn't you?" Jack questioned her, seeing identical cylinders of emerald light projecting down around Mickey and Martha, too.

"Oops…"


	484. Big Brother is Watching

_Big Brother is Watching_

_Jack_

He spent an indeterminable amount of time fading in and out of consciousness, his level of awareness rising and falling. Everything was either black, when he was asleep, or blindingly white, when he was awake; piercingly bright lights shining into his eyes keeping him dazed and dogged. Sometimes he would try and raise a hand or make a whimpering noise to signal to his assailants he wanted them to stop, to leave him alone, tell them he wasn't their pincushion to stab and cut apart, but he could scarcely make a sound. Then he would be forced under again by powerful, unknown sedatives, bulbous grey faces with white coveralls and spindly hands drifting around in his mind. His own washed up memories.

Jack's head swam and he was dully aware of instruments and knives pushing into him, drilling his head, slicing apart his torso like he was a corpse going for a post-mortem – and he'd had plenty of post-mortems in his time, so he knew what that felt like. His experiences were simultaneously numb and excruciating; he was completely unaware but also knew too much. He wanted to be fully asleep or he wanted to be alive and kicking at the extra-terrestrials who had made him their own personal pet project, stabbing him over and over and over again.

He didn't know how long things went on like this for, him getting woken and put to sleep and then woken up again, and he was pretty sure these extra-terrestrial mad scientists had figured out the certain twist in his physiology that was immortality, and that was why everything he felt was getting progressively more excruciating. But suddenly his hazy recollections were shot to pieces by the sensation of something cold and thin being pulled out of his throat through his mouth, and he heaved a breath and felt the urge to vomit overcome him, and he fell over. Well, he didn't quite fall over. He tried to fall to his knees, and hit his face on something like glass, which dazed him again as he coughed and gasped for air.

"I tell you, that's not a pleasant sensation, even for a guy so used to long objects being crammed down his throat," Jack panted, not knowing who he was talking to or if they even understood him, placing his palms on the surface he had hit his head on. His vision was a big blur of bright lights and pale colours and he had to squint, but he wasn't on an operating table, and he wasn't sedated. Of course, he also wasn't wearing the clothes he'd put on that morning, he was in some sort of medical gown. He wondered if it was split at the back, leaving his whole rear on show (and Jack's rear being on show could only be a good thing.)

Breathing heavily, everything around him grew sharper as his eyes adjusted from their bleariness to reveal his surroundings, and to reveal somebody stood there. Somebody who looked exactly like those aliens who had been operating on him, just a lot smaller, less wrinkly, wide, almost excited eyes, just standing there in front of him. He was in some kind of pod, too, he realised, which reminded him unnervingly of a coffin. Jack had been in coffins a fair few times throughout his life, and the experience only got less enjoyable as the years rolled by.

"Hi?" Jack asked the little alien watching him from the other side of his pod, or cell, or whatever it was, "Are you here to cut me up again?" But if the other aliens he had seen had been the adults of their race, what was this smooth-skinned, dark grey little creature? And was it wearing a _t-shirt_? A t-shirt with a… a UFO on it? A flying saucer? And the caption, _I want to believe_? The alien said nothing, and Jack nodded at its clothes, the shirt practically a dress on the thing, "Is that an _X-Files_ shirt? What is that, irony?" It looked at him blankly. "Uh… are you gonna let me out? Or stare at me? What's going on here?" The alien moved its mouth like it was talking. Perhaps the pod was soundproofed?

Jack banged his fist on the glass and made it jump, and then it showed him some device in its hands, which it then stuck in some kind of orifice next to the pod that Jack couldn't quite see from within his tiny prison. The whole glass front of the pod split apart in the middle, half of it retreating into the floor and half into the ceiling, and Jack stumbled right out of it in all his barely-clothed glory. No shoes, no socks, _definitely_ no underwear, and the greatest crime of all – no coat. For a moment, Captain Jack cared more about where his coat was than where Mickey and Martha were.

"What the hell is going on around here?" Jack demanded of the four-foot-tall alien, which looked positively terrified of him. It stared, and he stared. Why did it let him out? "Can you understand me?"

"Yes," it finally said. It spoke English? Or was this the translation matrix? The TARDIS was up in the time vortex somewhere; surely it was too far to be affecting Jack? Plus, the aliens who'd been prodding him earlier had definitely been speaking to each other in some unintelligible tongue.

"You speak English?" he resolved to just ask.

"Yes. Little."

"Uh-huh. Where'd you get that shirt from…? If you have David Duchovny stashed somewhere on this spaceship, I'm going to need to see him. Ask him about his invasive probing experiences. Ask him if he wants a couple more invasive probing experiences," Jack said. The alien looked at him blankly.

"Found," it said, then asked, "Name?"

"_My_ name? I'm Jack. Captain Jack Harkness. What about you, do you have a name?"

"Vulno," it answered, "Boy."

He paused and looked at Vulno the boy alien for a few seconds, before frowning and asking, "Are you a kid?" and Vulno nodded.

"Fan," Vulno said, "Fan of Earth."

"You're… a fan? Of Earth? Planet Earth?" Vulno nodded again. Jack sighed and crouched down, "Listen, Vulno, I had two friends with me when your tractor beams brought me up here, do you know where they are?" It only took one glance around the room to see Jack's was the only pod in the whole place; Mickey and Martha weren't there. He also glimpsed a bloody operating table, and assumed that was where they'd been cutting him up. But if they really had figured out he was immortal, what if they went around trying to figure out if other humans shared his capabilities? There would be a massacre.

"This way, sir," Vulno said. _Sir_, Jack thought? Nevertheless, Vulno trotted off away from him.

"Wait, where did they put my stuff?" Jack asked next, seeing his vortex manipulator was no longer on his wrist, "I need my stuff. My coat. My wrist strap."

"This way," Vulno said, and Jack was stuck without a choice. Looking around his lodgings, he didn't see anything that belonged to him, and he didn't see any boxes where they could be keeping anything, either. They better not have creased his coat…

He had to follow Vulno, the mysterious, childish fan, out of the room, using that funny device of his to unlock the forcefield-sealed doors along the way. It was some kind of key card, Jack supposed, a digital skeleton key for the whole ship, with its silver walls and green lights and fancy, sleek buttons. He wished the inside of the TARDIS looked this fancy sometimes; so what if he liked spacey aesthetics? It was hardly a crime to want everything in Nerve Centre to be a bit less 1980s sci-fi. The exterior was retro enough without the interior having to match.

At one point on their journey Jack glimpsed a trio of shadows coming around the corner ahead of them, and Vulno more or less pushed him sideways into an alcove, hissing at him to hide, and Jack bashed into a forcefield and came away with the whole side of his arm singed. He winced, but stayed pressed against the wall, hiding out as the aliens spoke to Vulno, and Vulno spoke back. Jack, for the life of him, didn't know what they were saying. He hadn't a clue what this species was. Everything they said sounded spookily similar to words like "bleep" and "bloop" and "blarp." A few clicks here and there. Totally unintelligible.

Whatever Vulno said to them, it worked. After a few seconds of silence those spindly, grey fingers closed around Jack's wrist and dragged him back out into the shiny corridor, pulling him forcibly down towards a totally different door, which Vulno opened the same way as all the other doors.

"Hang on, what does this screen say?" Jack asked Vulno. On this door, unlike some of the others, a screen on the outside appeared to have alien writing on it. He had seen one outside his own door, but it didn't say nearly so much, and the other panels like this were switched off. This was the only one of note.

"Three lifeforms within," Vulno answered, having to study it and think for a few seconds. Then the green forcefield that was like tangible static disappeared and allowed them access.

And in that room Jack saw what he had been looking for – his trusted companion, his oldest friend, "Oh, baby, did they hurt you?" he practically cooed, running over to the corner where his trench coat was hanging up. Oh, yeah, and Mickey and Martha were there in two more of the strange pods just like the one Jack had been in. But priorities, right? "Vulno – let them out, would you?" Jack asked, looking around for the rest of his clothes. He didn't spot them, though. It was a blessing to feel around in his pockets and find his vortex manipulator safe and sound. They must not have been able to figure out what it was, thank god, he thought, putting it back onto his arm.

Mickey was awoken first, a plastic tube being pulled out of his mouth by machinery. Jack assumed it was some kind of breathing aid, but that didn't make it any more pleasant. Mickey's eyes shot open and he was sick on the glass too, just like Jack had been. The glass slid apart and Mickey fell down.

"Don't you come near me! Trying to stick me with things again!" Mickey shouted at Vulno.

"Hey, hey! Calm down! He's friendly," Jack said, "He let me out, and brought me to you. Go let Martha out, Vulno."

"It's got a name!?" Mickey exclaimed.

"Oh, come on, you can't judge a whole species based on a few bad eggs."

"They drilled into my head, Jack!" Mickey protested.

"And they've been killing me over and over again, so I kind of think you got off lightly. Now be nice, he's helping us, he's a fan," Jack grinned. Martha gasping awake as the breathing apparatus pulled itself out of her throat interrupted them. She was the only one of them who wasn't sick, but she _did_ fall right over as though she'd fainted when the doors of the pod opened, and Mickey pushed past Jack to catch her. The pair of them were both in those medical gowns, too. To Jack's dismay, they were not open at the back. Disappointing. He'd hate to deprive people of seeing the behind that won Rear of the Year in 5094, but hey, that was life.

"Are you okay, Martha?" Mickey asked her urgently as she coughed and he helped her stand up. Maybe the tube wasn't for breathing, it pumped them with sedatives. As soon as it was removed, they woke right back up, alert and ready to run for their lives. Jack wished he'd brought a gun. Funny, though; when Jack looked around for this third lifeform that had been declared on the screen outside, another abducted human in need of rescuing, he didn't see them.

"What's that?" Martha asked, struggling to get away from Vulno, "Why is it wearing a shirt with a flying saucer on it?"

"You've never seen _The X-Files_?" Jack asked.

"What?" she frowned.

"Forget it. Vulno's the one breaking us out, you should be grateful, he's just a kid. A brave one," Jack said.

"A kid? Helping us escape a spaceship? Where are our clothes? It's a bit… drafty," Martha shifted uncomfortably. The medical gowns were like short dresses, _very_ short dresses (Jack was loving it.)

"Beats me, I only found my coat," Jack shrugged, "Vulno's a friend. A fan. A fan of Earth, he said. He speaks English."

"What do you mean fan? How can you be a fan of a whole planet?" Martha asked Vulno. She was more keen to trust Vulno than Mickey was.

"Earth is…" Vulno paused and thought, not speaking English all that fluently, "Telly."

"Telly? Like, TV? Television?" Jack asked, and Vulno nodded, "Wait, what do you mean Earth is television?"

"Experiments, they give cameras," Vulno pointed at Jack's head, "In brain. Translate and broadcast for us. Uh… entertainment. Name _Earth Vision_."

"You put cameras in peoples' heads and broadcast it? For entertainment?" Mickey asked, shocked. Appalled, even.

"Best reality TV in the universe, I assume," Jack said, "It's not that weird. Could be worse, they could be taking you and putting you in a zoo, like you do to intelligent animals like chimps and dolphins."

"It is wrong," Vulno said, "Bad. Cruel. Have to stop them. You are the only ones who have chance, have knowledge." A sympathetic, teenage alien, standing up for what they believed in? Jack was gaining a lot of respect for Vulno.

"_Earth Vision_ is a crap name," Mickey muttered, "How are we supposed to stop this? There's three of us, and we don't even have any clothes."

"Uh, we've got Techno Boy and Blowy-Up Girl right here," Jack said, looking at the pair of them, "If anyone can sabotage an alien spaceship, it's you two."

"Please don't call me 'Blowy-Up Girl.'"

"Just Blowy Girl?"

"Definitely not."

"The Exploder? Fire Woman? How about just, _Kaboom_?" Jack asked her. She glared at him. Mickey didn't seem half as annoyed about being called 'Techno Boy.' Jack turned back to Vulno, "But there's only these two in here – why did the screen outside say three?" Vulno shrugged.

"Malfunction?" he suggested.

"Oh, who cares why it said three?" Martha complained to Jack, "We have to find and destroy alien broadcasting equipment beyond repair, so let's hurry up about it so we can get home and I can put some underwear on."

"Martha," Jack said wryly, "There's _never_ any rush to put underwear on."


	485. Mothership Down

_Mothership Down_

_Jack_

In the bridge of the doughnut-shaped, alien mothership, mauve-coloured warning lights flashed from every screen and readout, and a funny sounding alarm rang through the entire ship. _Earth Vision_ was down. Some of the Earthlings had escaped, were roaming the halls, breaking all the important equipment needed to broadcast the Milky Way's best reality television show across the entire grey alien empire. Their signal relays were gone, their backup life support and auxiliary engines were destroyed, their connection to all the micro-bombs in the Earthling subjects _and_ their cranial cameras and bio-monitors were severed. The aliens, in their ship, were completely cut off from Planet Earth.

The alien captain – who was wearing a coverall exactly the same as the silver coveralls of the engineers and pilots around them, only blue, along with a funny hat – was at a loss for what to do. In her mind, it was impossible for the humans to get out of their stasis chambers, to escape the augmentation wing of the ship, to crawl around through vents and hallways, taking out patrol teams and innocent workers as they did, to sabotage all the extra-terrestrial systems. Yet half a dozen patrol teams were not responding, shown to be unconscious by their monitors, and the systems clearly _had_ been sabotaged. Computers malfunctioning, overheating to the point of destruction, plain smashed to pieces – it was practically a terror attack. All of this as revenge for some light-hearted, prime-time entertainment?

Her underlings demanded of Captain Polix what to do; should they go into lockdown? Turn off everything except basic life support, go completely dark until a police starship could come and sort out their crisis? The last one was the best idea they had, or it would be, were they not possibly, maybe, _slightly_, breaking the intergalactic laws lain down by the Shadow Proclamation. Like, "don't abduct and experiment on lesser developed species," yadda, yadda, yadda.

A technician shouted to get Polix's attention, and she looked over and was told that the teleport pad into the bridge had been accessed by some unknown lifeforms coming from the freshly damaged engine core. The humans, of course. They had only a handful of seconds (which was rather more seconds than you found in a human handful, due to the grey aliens' very long, thin fingers) until the humans who had been running about destroying their sensitive equipment would appear. Polix ordered them to arms, to their defensive stations, and there was perhaps she and a few others who had blasters on them.

Guns pointed at the teleport pad at the end of the room, the thing lit up green all around, a shining column of green light, and four bright shapes appeared within it like an image being brought into focus.

* * *

"Hands up, alien scum," Captain Jack Harkness ordered. There were perhaps twelve aliens in the bridge of the mothership, and about half of them were armed. But Jack was armed, too, he had two blasters on him, had Techno Boy and Kaboom on either side, and Vulno, their guide throughout the spaceship, cowering at the back with his oversized and ironic t-shirt. Did he understand the concept of irony, Jack wondered? "Put your guns down," he ordered, and they looked at him blankly. He turned back and hissed, "Hey, Vulno, translate?"

Vulno said something in the alien tongue, stepping around from behind Mickey and Martha, the latter of whom had grown oddly protective of the little creature. Then the alien leader, standing there with a stupid hat that looked like a beehive hairdo and wearing blue rather than silver, shouted something at him. Jack really wished the translation matrix was working, because it wasn't fun trying to interact with aliens when they just made funny noises.

"My mother," Vulno answered.

"Wait, your mother is in charge of this whole operation!?" Jack exclaimed, "This whole time!?" Vulno's mother said something very harsh-sounding to her son.

"Says she is disappointed," Vulno told Jack. Vulno's mother being in charge at least explained where Vulno had got that skeleton key-card that unlocked every door on the ship from.

"Tell her she should be proud of having a son who stands up for what's right. And tell her I've planted a bomb in the engine core, the exact same as the micro-bomb that got stuck in my head, only I've amplified it," Jack said smugly, looking at Vulno's mother, who didn't understand a word he said. It had been tricky trying to get that micro-bomb out of his head, and the one out of Mickey's head. Thank god they had Martha there to work the delicate alien surgical instruments they found – even if he _was_ reminded painfully of Owen Harper's endeavours with the singularity scalpel. For whatever reason, Martha hadn't had a bomb implanted in her head, or any cameras. She'd barely been experimented on at all. They didn't have time to sit around and try and figure out why, though. She'd removed the bombs, Jack had synced up the vortex manipulator with them, turning it into a remote detonator, right there on his arm.

After Vulno spoke, the aliens began to panic, two of them dropping their guns and holding up their hands in surrender immediately.

"Good, cowardice, exactly what I like to see," Jack told them, still holding his own two stolen blasters up. Every now and then, Mickey scratched the little, bloody scar on his temple where the bomb had been. It was out now, out and safe. He and Jack weren't going to blow up. Well, not unless Martha lost her temper, they weren't. It was a good thing they had so many mugs back on the TARDIS, because in the last week alone, Martha had made three of them explode by accident. Funny, her pyrokinesis never used to be so volatile, and she hadn't been particularly aggravated when it had happened…

"What's your mother's name?" Martha asked Vulno.

"Polix," Vulno replied.

"Great. Tell Polix that my wrist strap here is a detonator, and if this ship doesn't hit warp speed and get out of my Solar System in the next ten minutes, this whole place is going boom," Jack threatened seriously, "So how about we seek a peaceful solution, huh? You leave, nobody dies. You stay, _everybody_ dies."

"_What about my son?_" Polix asked, translated to English courtesy of Vulno.

"Your son will get back to his home planet safe and sound," Jack said, "Or he could come with us. Get raised by people with a sense of morality."

"Really!?" Vulno exclaimed.

"We'll talk about it later," Mickey assured him quietly.

"_We'll detonate the other bombs, the ones on Earth_," Polix interrupted.

"Doesn't your willingness to do that prove that this _Earth Vision_ is already finished? Using a whole planet for reality TV – illegally, I might add, because I'm sure no Shadow Architect in their right mind would grant permission for you to mine a Level 5 planet for entertainment. It's wrong. They're real people. You can't just abduct them and stick things in their heads."

"_And you would see us all killed?_"

"I'd rather see you all leave. Leave and never come back. Or maybe I'll report you to the authorities? This isn't a stalemate, Polix. We've won. Humanity have won," Jack said, "Thanks to your own flesh and blood doing what's right."

"You can't blow up the other bombs anyway," Martha began arguing, "We've disabled them all. Your telemetry centre has been melted. You won't be able to repair it without leaving and coming back."

"And you'd better not come back, because if you do, we'll give your orbital coordinates to UNIT," Mickey joined the fray, "Let them use salvaged Sycorax technology to blow this entire ship to pieces from Earth itself. We've been merciful."

"Exactly," Jack finished, after pausing to let Vulno, translating slowly and having to take great care as he did so, "So, you see, Captain Polix, we hold all the cards. You can't do anything, except shoot us where we stand. But I'll be able to hit this button and blow the ship up before you can even try. You leave, or you die. Or maybe I'll tell the Shadow Proclamation? Get the Judoon out here to take a look around your digs? I could contact them right now, with my wrist strap." That was a lie, but they weren't to know that. Maybe the Shadow Proclamation would send _the_ Shadow down to deal with this mess if they got wind of it.

Jack stopped talking then. So did Mickey and Martha. It was the point in negotiations where they had to pause and wait for the aliens to decide what to do, wait for Polix to figure out there really was no choice, they really did have to leave if they wanted to live. Jack really didn't want to blow up their ship, though. Didn't want to commit genocide by killing them all. Something so drastic was more the Doctor's speed – which was funny, because everybody always acted like Jack was the one with so little mercy and compassion by comparison, like _he_ was the trigger-happy one.

While the extra-terrestrials conferred, Jack's eyes wandered to the large window behind them. Bright Earth-light made the ship's bridge gleam silver, and he could see the whole planet stretching out below, the sun behind them, Mars visible in the distance with the moon floating along close by. It was a beautiful view, with twinkling stars making up the background, the type of view hardly anyone on the planet itself would ever see in their lifetime. But then, Jack knew people who had grown up on distant space colonies and had seen sights like this every day, but had never had the pleasure of seeing a crimson sun fall below the horizon, or a waterfall turn to glitter in the midday heat. He liked to think he had the best of both worlds – hell, the best of _every _world, millions of them, living on the TARDIS.

"_We are a completely peaceful race, and you have attacked us. This is a declaration of war_," Polix said to Jack.

"A declaration of war!? Of course it's not! And if it is, like Mickey said, we'll alert Earth's authorities. Or I'll just blow this place sky-high. Leave. Now."

"_Fine. You win, we will leave_," Polix finally said, Vulno following along clumsily, "_And bring you with us._"

"Oh, I don't think you will," Jack said. But they were right, they had no way off the ship. No phones, no emergency teleporters, everything had been confiscated and hidden. Well, everything except… "Mickey, take this, fix it," Jack ordered, pulling off the vortex manipulator and tossing it into Mickey's hands.

"I can't fix it! I already tried!"

"You _have_ to fix it," Jack said.

"You leaving!?" Vulno exclaimed, Martha mumbling words of encouragement to Mickey, knowing their only hope to escape rested in that vortex manipulator and his ability to repair it, after the Doctor kept breaking it to stop Jack from being able to teleport. What the Doctor thought he was going to do with the ability to teleport, Jack didn't know. He wasn't one for needlessly causing chaos.

"Hopefully," Jack answered. Polix shouted something in her alien babble, but Vulno ignored his mother.

"Can I come too?" Vulno asked.

Jack faltered, "Uh, no. No, not really, you can't."

"You live in spaceship!"

"Yeah, yeah, we do, but it's a spaceship full of humans, and Time Lords." Vulno didn't appear to know what a Time Lord was.

"Like humans."

"I know you like humans," Jack stooped down. He supposed Vulno must be about the mental equivalent of a human twelve-year-old or so, but a very clever one who had taught themselves to almost fluently speak an alien language. The Doctor would love that kid. "You can't come with us though. You're got to stay here, with your mother, and the rest of your species. Teach them how they're wrong for using Earth as entertainment."

"Jack's right," Martha said softly. The last thing he wanted would be Vulno trying to grab one of them when they teleported out and being brought with them, "You can't come with us. Maybe one day, when you're older, if you find us again." Polix was still trying to order Vulno around, but wasn't very successful. Vulno stared between Jack and Martha with those big, black eyes, no visible irises or pupils or anything.

"Done it!" Mickey declared.

"You have to stay," Martha said to Vulno, Jack going over to the vortex manipulator. The aliens were shouting at them again, raising guns.

"Martha, come on," Mickey entreated. Martha seemed greatly upset about leaving Vulno there, but it was for the best, so she stood up and went to put her hand on the vortex manipulator.

They disappeared just in time to miss a barrage of energy blasts that went straight for them, Jack dropping both of his stolen weapons on the floor of the ship as immense pressure closed around him, the sensation that his blood was being boiled beneath his skin. God, why had the Time Agency never figured out a way to make teleportation without a capsule comfortable? It felt like a giant had its fists wrapped around his lungs for those brief few seconds his whole self was reduced to atoms and shifted a few hundred miles away.

The three of them were dumped indiscriminately back in the playground they had been plucked from originally, who knew how many hours later. Annalise had been missing for two days, but she hadn't been broken out by a rogue, teenage grey, like they had.

"Oh, god, it's freezing," Mickey said, shivering immediately. It was November, in London, and none of them were wearing particularly warm clothes. Well, they _had_ been, then they had had their clothes stolen from them by aliens. Jack was lucky, he was in a coat.

"We're gonna have to walk back to my mum's house like this," Martha said, sounding very disheartened, "And tell her what happened. And say that Annalise was right. And then borrow somebody's phone to ring the TARDIS."

"Great. I've never been more excited about anything in my life," Mickey grumbled.


	486. Among the Stars

_Among the Stars_

_Jack_

"But, are you _sure_ this wasn't some kind of hallucination?" Amy Pond asked, glancing between Jack, Mickey and Martha. This was the third time she had asked, the third time she implied they had somehow been drugged, or it had been a simulation, or none of it was real, because it just sounded _that_ crazy.

"Yes," Martha said firmly, "It was real. As if it's any weirder than those cow suicides."

"It's a _lot_ weirder than those cow suicides," Amy argued.

"Alright, as if it's any weirder than…" Martha took a good while to actually think of anything, "Than that story Clara told about dildos two months ago."

"Ah, yes, my story that revolved around people thinking they'd been abducted by aliens when they hadn't, a prime example," Clara said sarcastically. She was in the kitchen, making tea for everybody, and it was very odd to see her in Nerve Centre. A bit like seeing one of those flying fish sailing through the air above the ocean – expected, and not strictly speaking _wrong_, but a plain funny-looking phenomenon. There were only six of them in the room; Clara, himself, Mickey and Martha, then Rose and Amy, back from their trip to the spa. "Are you suggesting you were anally probed?"

"Not for the first time," Jack joked, the same time Mickey very definitively said, "_No._" Honestly, Jack couldn't remember _what_ had been done to him, just that it involved a lot of sharp, surgical instruments, and it had been very painful. All he knew for certain was that, at some point, they had _definitely_ shoved a needle through his nose. That had been the thing he remembered most vividly through his sedatives.

"Your brain isn't even inside your head!" Martha exclaimed, remembering that factoid about Amy. It was true, Amy's brain was not inside her head, it lived in a jar in her bedroom. If she ever banged her head particularly hard on something, her skull would cave right in, like a baby's.

"She's got a fair point about that," Jack said, "You and Donna were both taken into another universe and experimented on."

"Yeah, but-"

"Speak of the devil," Rose cut Amy off, elbowing her (elbowing her a little too hard, thanks to her limited control over her superstrength; Amy nearly fell off her stool, not that Rose noticed.) Rose was looking at the door, behind them, and the familiar figure who had emerged from the console room to be standing there awaiting notice.

"I'm back!" Donna Noble shouted, grinning, very happy to have returned to the TARDIS.

"Welcome home," Jack said, smiling, waving her over to the seat next to him. She had a suitcase in one hand, but no husband. A shame. Jack had rather been hoping he'd get to meet Shaun, that perhaps Donna would bring him for a tour of the ship, or that he would have asked to join them on their adventures. "No Shaun?"

"Are you mental? Of course not," Donna said, sitting by his side on the end of the table, "Not on here. With you lot."

"What's wrong with us lot?" Rose questioned her.

Donna faltered, not knowing how to explain the problems riddling the TARDIS crew to the girl who was generally the cause of them in a nice way, and it was Clara who came to her rescue, "Do you want a drink, Donna? I'm doing drinks. Any drink. Martha's having cappuccino. I'm foaming the milk."

"Really? I'll have a cappuccino, too, then, if you're offering," Donna said, glad for the rescue.

"So? How's Shaun?" Martha inquired, "His bites all cleared up? Don't want me to take a look at him?"

"He's loads better, thanks for asking, you shouldn't need to see him," Donna was grinning, "Knows all about the TARDIS now. I've spent the last few days trying to tell him everything, but do you know how much everything is? Had to try and make it all sound a bit safer… What have I missed, then? Five whole days away from this place – feels like a lifetime."

"You've missed loads," Mickey told her, "Should someone go get Nios? This morning she was pretty convinced you weren't gonna come back."

"Yeah, she was quite upset about that," Rose added, "She was so upset she suggested drowning kittens. But she's in the medibay, recharging, or whatever it is she does."

"Why was she bothered about people leaving?" Donna asked.

"Thirteen's gone," Amy said offhandedly. There was a smashing sound in the kitchen and everyone looked over at Clara, who looked back at them and couldn't think of anything to say for a moment in defence of whatever she had just broken.

"Oops. Dropped a mug. Clumsy me," she said uneasily.

"Bloody hell, what happened to your arm!?" Donna exclaimed, spying the bandages wrapped around Clara's entire left arm, her wrist to her shoulder.

"Esther murdered her," Rose informed matter-of-factly, not that that really helped Donna understand what was going on. Anyone who'd talked to Esther Drummond for more than five minutes knew the girl couldn't possibly outright_ murder_ somebody.

"Someone was killing my Echoes," Clara explained stiffly, throwing the remains of the mug she had smashed by accident into the bin and going back to the various coffees she was brewing, "Same guy who brought Esther back to life, he was a Manifest, I was gonna kill him. She stopped me. Now he's locked up with New Torchwood." Jack hadn't heard a lot about Clara's burn, only the stuff Martha had related back to everybody else yesterday. He couldn't really understand why she wouldn't just get it healed. He _hated_ injuries that didn't heal – he'd had enough of that during the Miracle.

"What's 'New Torchwood?'" Donna inquired, "I really _have_ missed a lot, haven't I?" Jack explained quickly about what Undercoll was, about James Elliott's role (seeing as Donna had met him the same day she, like Amy, had her brain removed by crazy future-drones posing as Martians) and about where Liam Kent was now residing, locked up wherever Undercoll's secret base was. "God. Is that it?" After Jack had finished, Clara had also finished making relatively extravagant drinks for everyone, as though they were in a bistro.

"No, Jenny's gone," Rose said.

"_Gone_? What do you mean, 'gone?'"

"You'd have to ask Clara," Rose told Donna, right as Clara telekinetically floated a cappuccino down in front of her.

"Me? Why?" Clara asked, "What have I got to do with anything?" It _was_ weird having Clara there, Jack thought again. She was normally the subject of so much gossip – it was very odd having her hanging around being the source of it. Jack wanted to know more about what was going on with Jenny, too.

"Because it's _your_ husband she's had a fight with," Rose pointed out, "Doesn't he talk to you?" Jack wondered if perhaps Clara and the Doctor had had some kind of argument themselves, and that was why she was hanging about in Nerve Centre instead of holing up in her bedroom for days on end.

"It's just the sort of stuff you'd expect," Clara shrugged, wandering back over to the kitchen, "From what he told me, it mostly hinged around her wanting to know why he left her body behind and never gave her a proper funeral." Lucky there weren't any Doctors there at present, Jack thought. "And he was pretty upset about it all, and it's not actually any of my business, so I didn't pester him."

"Why are you in here? You're never in here," Rose asked her coldly. Jack supposed Rose didn't mean for it to come out _quite_ so hostile, but it did.

"I live here…?" Clara said. She was up to something in the kitchen; always a bad sign.

"But where's she gone, though?" Donna interrupted, "She's just _left_? For good?"

"Who knows," Amy sighed, "She broke her thumb, too."

"Oh, it was brutal," Rose added, "This Ukrainian bloke snapped it almost clean off."

"It wasn't 'almost clean off,'" Martha argued, "It was dislocated and it had two fractures. She needed stiches. And I need to check on it, so she'd better decide to come back soon, or answer her phone, which she hasn't been doing."

"I hope she's okay," Donna said.

Donna seemed to be the only person aside from him actually worrying about Jenny. Everybody else just kind of supposed she'd be alright soon enough, but what had happened was bothering Jack, and he _wished_ he was at a level with her where he could go ask how she was doing. But he couldn't. They were on good terms, sure – that was, they usually existed amicably in the same environment without fighting – but he couldn't ask her about the Doctor. She didn't talk about the Doctor to him before, so she wouldn't talk about the Doctor to him now. Plus, going to speak to Jenny probably entailed speaking to Jenny's girlfriend, and he'd rather not ever have to do that.

"Didn't miss anything else, then?" Donna asked, looking around. Her eyes lingered on Rose.

"What?" Rose asked unsurely, noticing this.

"Nothing big?" Donna implored, glancing down at Rose's left hand, "No big questions?" Jack kicked her in the ankle underneath the table.

"No, no," Jack said, smiling at Donna, trying to tell her with the sharp look in his eyes to shut the hell up. Through gritted teeth, he implored, "Nothing of the sort." Then Donna slumped down a little, seeming disappointed, and Rose looked at her suspiciously.

"What _are_ you eating?" Jack's train of thought was cut off by Mickey questioning Clara, who was munching away at something and hovering close to the table, like she was debating pulling up a chair or not.

"…Food," Clara said uneasily.

"Have you been cooking? You're not allowed to cook," Amy warned her. Clara was eating something out of a bowl.

"Is jus' cereal," she mumbled after shoving a spoonful of whatever it was into her mouth.

"Knowing you it's cereal with mayonnaise on it, or something," Amy grumbled, like Clara's eating habits directly affected her.

"Don't be ridiculous," Clara said, swallowing, "It's Lucky Charms with Skittles-flavoured milkshake." Donna, Amy, Mickey and Rose all simultaneously made noises of plain disgust at hearing that.

"That's the most unhealthy breakfast I've ever heard," Jack remarked, "And it's six in the evening. Your life is a mess." Clara scowled at him.

"Is it really?" Martha asked Clara. And that was when things got weird, because Martha was the only person (aside from the girl in question herself) in the room who _hadn't_ been appalled at Clara's choice in cuisine. And now Martha was staring, practically enchanted, at Clara and the bowl she was holding.

"…Yes?" Clara said unsurely.

"Can I have some? Please?" Martha asked.

"What? Why do you want some of that?" Rose stared at her.

"You don't like Skittles, Martha," Mickey said.

"What? Since when don't I like Skittles?"

"Since as long as I've known you."

"Well I've… changed my mind, alright? Now can I have some?" Martha practically asked Clara to share her food through gritted teeth.

"I suppose so?" Clara said, and Martha might as well have been a starving dog unleashed upon a succulent joint of meat, the ferocity with which she sprinted over and grabbed the bowl.

"You're sharing her spoon? That's grim," Amy commented. Mickey looked on in shock. Clara was shocked, too. Somebody was eating her food? It had probably never happened to her in her whole life. And if it had, Jack assumed whoever had eaten it was dead somewhere as a result of whatever she had fed them. Martha made a borderline inhuman noise.

"This is the best thing I've ever tasted in my life," Martha declared.

"Are you okay? You've been acting really odd lately," Mickey asked her concerned.

"Yeah," Jack said, "I'm with him. Is something the matter?" Thinking back, Jack remembered Martha complaining multiple times to him about how she thought Skittles were gross and overrated, and she didn't get the fuss about them when M&amp;Ms and Smarties were so much nicer. But, really? Skittles-flavoured milkshake? On _Lucky Charms_, of all things? How was she not dead from some kind of sugar overdose? The woman was a doctor, for crying out loud.

"I'm fine," Martha said. And she took the bowl away from Clara and went to eat it on the corner, a greedy animal not sharing her food.

"Why are you making yourself nasty food, anyway?" Donna asked Clara, trying to steer attention away from Martha's new taste for the disgusting, "Doesn't your husband usually cook everything for you?"

"Yeah, but I lost a bet," Clara shrugged.

"What bet?" Amy frowned.

"Oh, you don't want to know," Clara assured them, "It was to do with orgasms. To be honest, I think I'm the real winner, because I had eight of them. Couldn't care less about where my supper comes from."

"You knew we didn't want to know, yet you told us anyway," Amy muttered.

"I'm shameless," Clara said dryly, "And she's nicked my tea. Does anybody fancy Pizza Hut? Because I do, so if anyone else wants some, I'll go get some." There were resounding sounds of eagerness from everybody in the room in response to that, and Clara paused for a second, thought, then said she would go and retrieve Adam Mitchell to make him pay.

"You don't have to, I'll pay," Donna offered, "My treat, because I'm glad to be back."

"Well then I still have to get dressed. Haven't got any knickers on."

"Again," Amy began, watching Clara leave the room, "Too much information."

**AN: For the record, I'd really love to be doing chapters about Jenny in the background to these, but they'd be very out of place. She ****_is_**** fine, though, she and Clara are having a whole lot of fun with the Spooks. The four of them have a group chat called ****_Spooky Vampliens_**** on an ambiguous app, and it's very funny IMO, but is unfortunately one of those things that won't ever be relevant to the actual fic, just like most of the Clarenny/Spooks shenanigans. But, you know, if any of you WANT to know what Jenny's up to, feel free to PM me and ask, because I do have a hoard of background chapters and fluff one-shots that will otherwise go forever unseen.**


	487. Black Goo from Outer Space I

**DAY 136**

_Black Goo from Outer Space I_

_Rose_

Rose couldn't for the life of her figure out what was the matter with the Doctor. For days he'd been nothing more than a flighty bag of nerves, and everything he did was plain weird. For all of yesterday, she'd been out at a spa with Amy, but Amy could offer her no enlightenment either, and hadn't been very happy with Rose complaining about the Doctor all day and told Rose, "_I can't hear you over the noise of the cucumbers on my eyes_," which was nonsense enough for Rose to fathom it meant "_shut up_."

After getting back she lingered in Nerve Centre, employing some uneasy avoidance tactics, and shared Pizza Hut with a handful of the TARDIS' lodgers. When she got back to her room – their room, she supposed – his behaviour had reached a pinnacle of ambiguous nervousness. It was like he'd had something in his hands, paper, maybe, he'd been examining, and when she walked in he'd hastened to hide it. Of course, she had asked him about it, and he told her he didn't have anything, and before she could try a stick a stray hand in his pocket to investigate he excused himself from the room. He had babbled some excuse about not being able to remember the chemical composition of Zuar anatomy, said something else that was almost definitely a lie about Esther asking him things about the Zuar (what with scavenged technology from a Zuar ship crashed in New England being the catalyst of her resurrection) and left for the library.

Rose hadn't seen him for the rest of the night, and she'd waited up, too, up until she couldn't keep her eyes open anymore. She couldn't tell if she ought to be worried or not, and wondered if maybe she was just reading into things. It wasn't like she was getting any hints through the time vortex – every time she tried, where this was concerned, it was just a void. Like she didn't really want to know, in case the answer was something bad. Or perhaps there was no answer at all and she was paranoid.

She woke up to an empty bed and a note on her pillow in messy handwriting saying sorry for not coming back last night, but there would be breakfast waiting for her in Nerve Centre whenever she woke up. Her favourite, the Doctor assured her in his message. She stuck the slip of paper under the pillow, again wondering what on Earth was going on, and shuffle-walked towards the ghastly communal bathroom she was still forced to share with the other girls. Not that it was so bad, it was really only Martha and Amy, Jenny when she was at home, and Nios. The first time Rose had bumped into Nios in the bathroom it had been pretty weird, because she hadn't really thought that synths would be able to shower without short-circuiting, or something. "_Do you expect me to just wallow in my own filth?_" Nios had asked her coldly, then she had skulked away.

So she trudged, wet-haired and wearing the same pyjamas she'd had on before her shower (there wasn't much point getting dressed until she knew if she was going somewhere, and where that somewhere was going to be) into the living room to find the usual suspects. Still pretty tired from her poor night's sleep, it took Rose a few seconds to realise she'd walked into an argument, and that the line-up in Nerve Centre was slightly more unusual than normal, in that there were three of the four Doctors present. Wait, no, that was wrong. Three of the three Doctors. All of them. She forgot Thirteen wasn't around anymore. She kind of missed her, she liked having a girl Doctor.

"What's all this?" Rose asked Nios quietly, Nios sitting on the sofa next to the pregnant cat reading a book. Or rather, pretending to read a book, and actually observing the argument in the kitchen, which was quite heated and between Ten and Eleven. Nine wasn't involved at all, he was talking to River so quietly Rose couldn't hear a word at the table closest to the door to the medibay.

"They're having a fight over who gets to use the hob," Nios explained.

"Really?" Rose frowned. Ten and Eleven weren't ones to argue normally.

"Yep. Ten says he needs to make breakfast, Eleven says he was there first. Which is true, he _was_ there first," Nios elaborated, "Apparently it's a 'special' breakfast, or something." Rose would have liked to listen in on their fight a little more, but it wasn't destined to be, because the Ninth Doctor got sick of it. Or perhaps he got sick of River paying more attention to Ten and Eleven bickering than to him.

"Oi! Shut up," he shouted at them from across the room, "She's here now, so why don't you just take her for breakfast somewhere else? Or install another kitchen?" Nine waved a hand in Rose's direction. She wasn't really aware _she'd_ been a part of this fight, she just figured Eleven was hogging all the frying pans so that he could make sure his inept wife didn't starve to death, as usual.

"Rose!" Ten exclaimed with horror. Why horror, Rose wondered? "I was just… I was making breakfast."

"_I_ was making breakfast, Rose can make her own breakfast because _she's_ not incapable," Eleven muttered, making a dig at Clara, who was not present.

"That's not the point," Ten argued like a child who had been told to share his favourite toys with someone a sibling he didn't like. He practically had, to be honest.

"It's fine, it's just breakfast," Rose, confused, assured him, leaning on the back of the sofa with one hand.

"It's not just breakfast!" Ten complained.

"Oh, I'm sick of this," Nine declared, "You're pathetic, both of you. I don't have the foggiest idea how I could ever become you two." He got up and swept away towards the console room.

"Me? _I_ haven't done anything! It was all him!" Eleven shouted after his past self, continuing his sentence even after the doors had closed behind Nine and he could no longer hear, Eleven brandishing a fish slice in Ten's direction. Ten hit the thing away bitterly. "Oi!"

"Just calm down, I'll have toast," Rose said.

"No! I wanted to…" Ten began, meeting her eyes.

"Wanted to what?" she asked, expectantly.

"Just…" he dropped his gaze, "Just fancied cooking…" Again, she sensed that was a lie.

"She can have some of these sausages if she's that desperate," Eleven snapped at Ten, then he softened and turned to her, politely asking, "Do you want some sausages, Rose?" Then she paused, and deliberated her answer. Ten looked like he would be mortally offended if she accepted the offer of breakfast from a different Doctor, but on the other hand, Ten was pissing her off.

With that in mind, Rose smiled, and said, "That would be great, thanks."

"There, everybody's happy now," Eleven said, "And that's the end of this." Nios was snickering behind Rose and kept exchanging telling looks with River, as though the pair of them were both in on something.

"What?" she asked them, and they both stopped immediately, River looking at Rose with sudden innocence. Rose narrowed her eyes.

"Did you want something?" River asked, trying to be polite. But she was _too_ polite.

"What were you laughing at?" she asked. River and Nios both maintained that they hadn't been laughing at anything. Even more annoyed (what a brilliant start to the day…), Rose said to River, "Why'd he just abandon you like that?" nodding at the doors through which Nine had vanished.

"I've hardly been abandoned," River said coolly. Rose couldn't be bothered arguing, so she meandered over into the kitchen, where Ten still lurked and glared at Eleven, and went about retrieving a breadboard from one of the cupboards.

"What are you doing?" Ten asked her as she got a butter knife out of the cutlery draw.

"I was just going to butter some bread and have a sausage sandwich," she said. The butter was already out, Eleven had been using it, but Ten grabbed the knife out of her hand.

"Don't do that. I'll do it," he declared, practically pushing her out of the way.

"Bloody hell, fine!" she shouted, annoyed, "It's like you think I'm helpless, or something!"

"I don't think that!" Ten protested pitifully, but Rose disappeared in a haze of gold atoms, and reappeared in the chair Nine had just vacated, on River's right, slouching down on the table grumpily. "Rose?"

"No, you just go ahead and treat me like an idiot," Rose said coldly.

"Rose, that's not what I-"

"Guess who's back!?" someone shouted from the doors into the Bedroom Circle. It was Donna, come to announce her presence to anybody who hadn't been around last night to see her come back. Ten had run off from Rose so quickly, she didn't get a chance to tell him Donna had returned to the TARDIS. He lost his train of thought immediately and dropped the butter knife, running over to go and hug her.

"Oh, brilliant, so he's not even making the sandwich now he pushed me out of the way?" Rose complained to River. Eleven heard this.

"I'll do it," he called over to her, then he shook his head and muttered to himself, "_Ridiculous man_…"

"Rose, Donna's back!" Ten exclaimed.

"Yeah, I know, I saw her last night, but you ran away from me," Rose snapped. Donna glanced between them with an odd look of worry. "What?" Rose questioned her.

"Are you alright?"

"Oh, I'm _peachy_," Rose grumbled.

"She's fine. You're fine, aren't you?" Ten said to her. She didn't even reply, just glared at him. He glanced back over to the kitchen, "What are you doing!? That's Rose's bread!"

"For god's sake, leave the woman alone," Eleven snapped, "You are clearly utterly incapable when it comes to relationships, perhaps you should go speak to her like a person instead of obsessing over her breakfast."

"He's right," Nios said, "You look like a lunatic. How nice you're all behaving for Donna now she's back." Ten finally did give up, and Rose was debating going and seeing if Martha perhaps wanted to do something that day. Go shopping, maybe. God, she could _really_ go for a girly shopping trip… she thought she'd even take Clara Oswald's company over this. Maybe she would even go find Jenny.

"Sorry, yes, Donna, back," Ten said, "How have you been? How's Shaun?" While Donna talked about Shaun and said the same stuff to the Doctor that she'd said to everyone else yesterday, Ten picked up a chair from one side of the table and brought it around so that he could sit next to Rose. Rose had chosen Nine's chair because it didn't have another one next to it, to perhaps make him leave her alone. She couldn't win – both being in his company and away from him were equal parts infuriating when he was being so weird.

Ten got very irked when, a few minutes later, Eleven came over and delivered unto Rose her sausage sandwich.

"Oh, yes, before I leave, the wife thought we ought to let everyone know we're getting married again. No date, or anything – it's slow-going, been in the works for a long while. Just thought you should all be aware," he said, smiling, looking at Ten mainly when he talked, almost smug.

"You can't get married again! You're _already_ married!" Ten shouted after him as he walked off to pick up two plates of breakfast from the kitchen.

"What do you mean? Why can't they?" Rose frowned, "Let them do what they like. If there's a free bar, who cares? And this is Clara, I'm _sure_ there'll be a free bar."

"Well, just, because, you know – it's unfair, them having three weddings when some people don't have any," Ten spluttered a very strange argument.

"I don't see what you mean, how would it be unfair? Unless there's somebody else getting married we should be aware of?" Eleven asked with faux-innocence Rose couldn't determine the meaning behind.

"I think you should take Clara her breakfast before it gets cold, sweetie," River quipped at him. He met her eyes, even smirked, before he took his leave. River and Nios watched him go with amusement, Donna with annoyance, and Ten? Ten looked like he'd been punched in the face. What the hell was up with people on the TARDIS lately? Jenny really _did_ have the right idea by getting off the damned ship.

"Is that sandwich alright, then?" Ten asked Rose, like the answer was incredibly urgent. She took a bite of it, and stared at him. Didn't say a single word, "What? Maybe he did something to it."

"Yes, you're right, he probably poisoned her," River remarked sarcastically, "You know what the Doctor's like, always poisoning his significant others." She paused, "Oh, wait, that's me."

"Do you want to go out today?" Ten asked Rose, leaning obnoxiously close.

With her mouth full, she said, "Wha'?"

"Ooh, are you going out somewhere?" Donna inquired, listening in, sitting on River's other side. Rose chewed her breakfast (was it wrong of her to say that Eleven was a better chef than Ten?)

"Well, no, not really," Ten said.

"But you _just_ asked me if I wanted to go out somewhere?" Rose said.

"Yes, I did, but, I meant…" he trailed off.

"What did you mean?"

"Just…"

"Why can't Donna come, too? It's her first day back," Rose pointed out.

"Yeah, it's my first day back," Donna echoed, "Where are you off?"

"Hadn't really, um, thought about… much…"

"If you're looking for something to do," River began after sipping her tea, "I got a message this morning from one of my old contacts. Of course, I say contacts, I mean ex-wife. One of them."

"'One of them'?" Donna frowned.

"A lot of long stories. In fact, while we're talking about me poisoning people, I _did_ have to kill the most recent one, a princess. Well, the entire secret wedding was part of an assassination plot, where _I_ was the assassin," River said offhandedly, "Anyway, it's Forty-Second Century, late, something to do with a mysterious death on an extra-planetary oil rig."

"You have an ex-wife who lives on an oil rig?" Rose asked incredulously.

"She's in charge of the oil rig, actually," River said curtly, "The marriage was only a green card sort of thing."

"Sounds exciting," Donna said. Rose didn't think an oil rig sounded _that_ exciting, but she'd definitely take it over spending the whole day one-on-one with Ten. "Don't you think, Doctor?" Ten was at a loss.

"I… yes. Fine. I suppose. Sounds very exciting…" he said despondently.

"Brilliant! Now, what's the weather going to be like?" Donna asked River, _very_ seriously.


	488. Black Goo from Outer Space II

**AN: This storyline was a kind of last-minute thing I had to think of the other week to replace the one that was initially going to be here, which was a Rose/Clara exclusive where they would have to investigate an abandoned motel with some evil, humanoid insects living in it, but I thought it would be way too Clara-heavy if I did that, and it's not really pertinent to anything whether Clara and Rose are best friends or not.**

_Black Goo from Outer Space II_

_Rose_

The oil rig exceeded her expectations. Admittedly, it was an oil rig, so she didn't have many expectations for it to begin with, but it was still more intriguing than she initially presumed. If cold. They walked out of the TARDIS onto a dusty old rock underneath a black, starry sky, a tiny, red star burning in the distance.

"Haven't seen anything like this for a while," Rose said, staring around, "We don't really go to many planets, do we?"

"It's not a planet, it's a planetoid," River corrected.

"What's that when it's at home?"

"A big asteroid in orbit around a sun," she said, "Not a planet. Planets generally support life. This won't support anything."

"But if this is just a rock, how are we breathing?" Donna asked, looking around. There was the dark, night sky above them, the light as harsh and cold as the temperature, and everything around them was just mounds of rock, like being in a quarry.

"Artificial atmosphere. Poor workmanship, though, going by the temperature," Ten mused, staring up at the sky, then he grinned, "Oh, this is the Delfax System, isn't it? That's their star, the first ever red dwarf star discovered by the human race. Because they have white dwarves, and red giants, but no red dwarves. Then they found this around the Thirtieth Century and had to rewrite _all_ the books on astronomy."

"Where is this oil rig, though?" Rose questioned, hovering closer to Donna than the other two. The Doctor was doing that thing he always did when they came to a new place, wandered around absently in circles with his mouth hanging open, taking in their whole environment, "Because I don't see any…_ whoa_…"

Just as she said that, something appeared on the horizon. Bright lights emanating from below, previously hidden by the craggy edge of a great pit, right there on the surface of the planetoid. They came to the crest of it and she looked down and saw what was, most definitely, this oil rig of River's. Deep below she could see huge bits of machinery, hear the loud, constant sound of mechanisms working, and could see corridors and large rooms hanging like scaffolding off the cliff face itself.

"Right there," River said, nodding at it, then going and directing them towards a pretty flimsy looking metal staircase that allowed them to descend down into the pit.

"Are there any planets out in this system?" Donna asked the Doctor, Rose following River and just keeping an ear out for their conversation, looking for clues as to why his behaviour was so off. Try as he might to act disgruntled about their locale, though, he just couldn't hide his boyish excitement when he saw the place built there on a deserted lump of sediment.

"Nah," he said, "Not really. Trillions of stars in the universe and less than one percent of them are actually capable of supporting life. Still, one percent of a trillion? More than enough for variety, give or take a few billion empty solar systems."

"Glad I don't have a fear of heights," Rose commented, peering over the side of the staircase she was on at the pit below, maybe hundreds of metres deep and vast across, like a canyon, the rig's base sitting like a leech on the wall. It didn't help that the stairs weren't even proper stairs, they were the kind with the gaps between them. She'd never liked those stairs; even though she knew it was impossible, she always thought she'd end up falling through them when she was little. As an adult, they still left her a little uneasy.

They weren't on the stairs for long, though, they soon enough reached a big, dirty, yellow door with a valve on it.

"Sonic this, would you, sweetie?" River asked Ten, who frowned.

"Why? Aren't they expecting us?" he asked uneasily, perhaps not wanting to break in.

"Yes, but I like to make an entrance," River shrugged. Ten sighed, but didn't put up any resistance, and squeezed past Rose on the stairs to pull out the screwdriver and point it at the panel on the side with a digital keypad built into it. For a few seconds, numbers scrolled wildly on the readout, until the display turned green and pinged, and vents on the door hissed and let off steam as it unlocked, River twisting the valve and pushing it open.

Rose was immediately hit by a wall of solid heat, made to feel even warmer in contrast to the chilling temperatures of the outside.

"God, it's hot," Donna stated the obvious.

"Shouldn't be," Ten said, looking around, "Quite an excessive amount of heat – and the outside being so cold. There should be some kind of balance…" He had nothing more to say than that, though, but he made his perplexed face and stuck his hands in his pockets. Donna caught up to River, and Rose fell behind so that she could talk to him.

"Doctor?"

"Mmm?" he snapped right out of his confusion to pay attention to her.

"Am I the only one getting serious Krop Tor vibes?" she asked him quietly. He smiled.

"Oh, yeah. This _is_ just like there. Not surprising, same century," he shrugged, "I told you, they make the bases out of kits. These things'll be mass produced." He slapped a hand on a metal support beam above them, as though to showcase the sturdiness of human ingenuity, but there was a very worrying creak, and he flinched.

River looked back and scowled at him, "Don't hit the precariously positioned space base, Doctor."

"Right you are…" he said awkwardly, moving his hand off the wall and scratching the back of his head, then he went back to Rose, "Drilling into a big pit, and everything. Hope there aren't any Ood on here. There's always trouble when they're around."

"Not to mention the Devil," Rose reminded him.

"Well, I was trying not to, but you've gone and done it now."

River, listening, interrupted and said, "It's nothing to do with the Ood being around when there's trouble, it's to do with _you_ being around when there's trouble."

The steam vents on the door River had just been about to open began to hiss, and the four of them stepped back as it was pulled open and they came face to face with a middle-aged woman holding a gun out in their direction. Then she saw who it was – well, she saw River – and grimaced, but she put the gun down.

"Don't you know how to knock, or announce yourself over the comms?" she snapped. River shrugged.

"I'm keeping things interesting."

"Interesting doesn't mean a lot around here, we have a lot of 'interesting' things going on. People are edgy enough without you creeping around, Song. And who are these? Tourists?" she looked at Donna, Ten and Rose with great distaste, dirty with oil and sweat.

"This is Donna, Rose, and the Doctor," River introduced, then to the three of them she said, "And this is Kirst. The ex-wife I was mentioning." Kirst, who was nearly as tall as Ten, eyed him up with a look of disdain and judgement.

"_This_ is the Doctor?" she asked, looking at River like she was thoroughly disappointed with what she saw, "Him? _The_ Doctor? The one you've been obsessed with as long as I've known you?"

"Hey! What's that supposed to mean?" The Doctor asked, offended.

"Well there's not much of you, is there? You're like a stick in a tailored suit," Kirst said, and Donna failed to stifle a laugh.

"Donna!" Ten exclaimed.

"It's true," she said, "Besides, I've never got what everyone sees in you in _that way_. No offence, Rose." Rose just raised her eyebrows.

"It's not even this one she married," Rose began, addressing Kirst and talking about River, "_She_ married the one who looks even younger than this and wears tweed suits and fezzes." Kirst seemed so unimpressed by the Doctor – Rose wondered what stories she had been told of him courtesy of River Song – she couldn't even bring herself to comment when she was told about Eleven. God forbid River had convinced _him_ to come along.

"…What's with the temperature, then? Why is it so hot down here?" the Doctor wanted to change the subject away from his shortcomings. Rose probably would have defended him, were she still not a bit peeved about breakfast. At least he was being more himself now they were off adventuring somewhere.

"I'll explain on the way, follow me," Kirst said. On the way where, Rose wondered?

"Lead on, then," the Doctor smiled. Kirst gave him another odd look, like she couldn't fathom his involvement with River. Then again, the Doctor didn't really have any involvement with River; hadn't he only met her once before he regenerated? "Does this planetoid have a name?"

"9Q-D47," Kirst answered shortly.

"Oh, catchy," Rose muttered. Kirst left the corridor they were in to take them into another, identical corridor (just like the ones the base on Krop Tor had used), ordering them to close the doors behind them.

"Computer's on the fritz, there's supposed to be VI controlling everything around here," Kirst told them.

"Oh, really? We've got one of those, called Helix," Donna said.

"Yeah, well, if you're keen to share, ours is broken beyond repair, just like everything around here. The computer's broken, the atmospheric regulators are broken, the heating vents are broken – the only thing that _does_ work is the drill and the air conditioning," Kirst said.

"The air conditioning _works_?" Rose inquired, surprised.

"It's on full power right now to keep us from roasting alive, so it won't work for much longer, and we'll need to do an evacuation back to the Delfax Hub in the emergency shuttle when it packs in. Doesn't help that six months ago all the Ood got taken away after they stopped responding to commands. Without any supplementary staff, I might add, so this entire place is operating using a skeleton crew, and we're still expected to run at full capacity to get oil to the Empire," Kirst complained, "Along with all that, we're two men down now."

"What is that, general engineering faults?" Ten asked, "Has the base surpassed its lifespan?"

"Nowhere near it," Kirst said, talking fast and walking even faster. Sometimes when they went through the yellow, mucky doors, Rose heard a stutter over the comms, like the computer was trying to declare which doors were opening and closing, but couldn't manage it. "It's sabotage."

"Then can't you just find out who's doing it, and stop them?" Rose asked, and Kirst gave her a completely reproachful look. She was _not_ friendly. Rose was affronted. Looking away, she spotted a room on their left that they passed without it being acknowledged, one with tables and people in it. But Kirst swept them away.

"What do you think we've been doing, sitting on our hands? We've been putting out fires as they come up, but none of us are detectives. Besides, none of the damage has been immediately fatal, not until yesterday," she said, "That's when I contacted River. _And friends_." She added 'and friends' with a very bitter tone of voice. "We'll take care of the drilling operation, and you four can find out what to do to stop the sabotage."

"What's so mysterious about these deaths, then?" River asked.

"I said we were two men down. Our technical support girl, Tilney, apparently got into a scrap with her fiancé Jameson while they were supposed to be repairing a downed power relay – one of the only things that's broken around here on its own. This girl was hardly five feet tall, and he was nearly six and a half-"

"Blimey, they must have looked a bit funny," Donna commented.

"Not my place to say, but I had to order them to knock off the displays of affection enough times and reiterate the rules about crewmates not sharing bedrooms to know they were pretty damn devoted to each other. Security cameras saw the whole thing; Tilney threw Jameson off one of the exterior balconies into the drill pit, then stood around and tried to mess with the power relays again for a few minutes, until she nearly collapsed, then jumped off the balcony after him. Except she landed on one of the lower walk shafts and crashed right through the roof – I'm telling you, retrieving the body wasn't a nice task."

"Sorry, she killed her fiancé, then killed herself? After messing with, what, cables?" Rose asked incredulously.

"Yes. That's the mysterious part," Kirst explained, then she put a code in on a keypad to open another door, "And as far as we can tell, she undid all the repairs she and Jameson had been doing beforehand. There you go, knock yourselves out." Kirst pointed at something in the middle of the room, which was definitely some sort of medical wing.

"Oh my god, is that a body!?" Rose exclaimed. It _was_ a body, a girl's body, Tilney's body, presumably.

"Bloody hell, you could've given us a bit more warning," Donna said coldly to Kirst.

"Well where did you think I was talking you?" Kirst snapped, "Jameson was our medical officer, with him gone, we have no one anywhere near qualified to be examining a body. It's not like I asked for Song to bring a load of tag-alongs."

There was a buzzing noise overhead, "_Kirst, another extraction pipe leak in Sector K5_." Kirst swore and then went over to the speaker on the wall to talk into that.

"Really, Vashtee? Why would you call me and not Pembroke?"

"_Pembroke's dealing with a malfunction with the water reclaimer in B2, nobody else has the engineering expertise to repair it_."

"And it's beyond you to use a blowtorch to seal it now?"

"_Just because things are breaking down is no excuse to go against the law, it's not my department. I'd hate to risk making things worse_," the voice of Vashtee, a male voice, said. Kirst shut off the comms, swore again and said something quite foul about the underling requesting her help, then turned the comms back on.

"I'll be right there." She switched them off again. "Whenever you finish up here, find me in the canteen, this is my lunch break we're cutting into, and I had to skip breakfast to deal with a blockage in the plumbing."

"The canteen? Where's that?" the Doctor asked.

"I saw it, it's back the way we came," Rose said. Kirst nodded and left the room, at which point Rose and Donna both made sounds of relief. "She's a piece of work, isn't she?"

"She's a good engineer, and she's clearly under a lot of stress," River defended her ex.

"Doesn't like you, does she?" Donna said to Ten, who wasn't happy about that being pointed out again, and slipped between the pair of them to follow River to Tilney's body, which was very bruised and stank to high-hell in a room so hot.

"Terrible environment for a morgue," the Doctor commented, looking around.

"_Makeshift_ morgue. They don't make oil rigs with body storage," River said.

"No. S'pose not." He got his sonic screwdriver back out, River going to see what she could glean from a nearby, bulky computer terminal.

"It's filthy here," Rose said, "It was filthy on Krop Tor, as well. Do these bases just come dirty? Don't they clean them?"

"I'm sure if you want to volunteer to clean the place, Kirst will let you," River quipped.

"…No thanks. Just making an observation…"

The Doctor was holding the sonic screwdriver over Tilney's semi-mangled body, the heat already making her a sickly colour with waxy skin, decomposing faster than bodies usually did. He scanned and moved the screwdriver along, left to right and back again, the whole thing scanning the whole time.

"All the medical data is gone," River told him.

"She said the computer broke," Ten pointed out.

"No, it's not corrupted, it's wiped. Someone deleted it."

"Why delete medical records?"

"Probably the saboteur we're after," Rose said, "Who knows, maybe it was this Jameson bloke all along? That's why his fiancée killed him."

"Seems a bit petty, killing someone you love just because they deleted some files and broke a few things," Donna said, "Maybe it was her and he figured it out?"

"Clearly not, if everything's still breaking."

"Who was that on the comms, Rose?" the Doctor interrupted.

"Sorry?"

"On the comms, who was it?"

"How should I know? I've never been here before."

He looked up from Tilney's body, still scanning, puzzled, "I recognised his voice. Didn't you?"

"No."

"What about you, Donna?"

"I don't know him, either. You're probably imagining things." The Doctor was still confused, but he shook his head and went back to the body, Rose trying to remember where she had been in her conversation with Donna.

"Ooh, hello," the Doctor found something, "There's residual traces of some kind of infection here."

"Is there?" River asked.

"Mmm, in her brain, mostly. Shame we don't have any high-level medical equipment, I doubt they have much more than a sewing kit and a couple of plasters in this place. Nothing to fight brain disease."

"But you said traces?" River frowned.

"Yeah, like it was gone before she died, what I picked up was scar tissue, more or less," he said, crossing his arms and pondering, "Maybe it's contagious."

"Contagious?" Rose asked, alarmed.

"If it _is_ it must be non-lethal," Ten said, "I'm sure she would have carried out that evacuation she was talking about if people were dying left and right. Plus, whatever it is, she clearly survived it and was quite healthy. You'd have to be to go about pushing your six-and-a-half-foot tall fiancé off a balcony."

"Nothing apart from that?" River asked.

"No. Well, apart from the usual trauma you'd expect when someone throws themselves into a pit," Ten said, "I think she's onto something with the canteen, though. If it's lunchtime, that's where the rest of the crew will be, and I think I'd quite like to talk to them."


	489. Black Goo from Outer Space III

**AN: BTW, every storyline I write, I basically think, "Wouldn't this be even better if Jenny was there?" and they probably all would. Also, I keep adding Days to this damn thing and thinking of more storylines to do. God knows when the horror will end.**

_Black Goo from Outer Space III_

_Donna_

"Oh. My. God. Are you _seriously_ going to eat that?" Donna, appalled, asked Rose, who was helping herself to the buffet-like lunch served up in 9Q-D47's (which, like Rose had said, really wasn't a catchy name at all) cafeteria. Everything was just gunk in different colours in big, steaming vats, and she ladled this and ladled that onto a metal tray with eight compartments eagerly. "You _just_ had a sandwich."

"Yeah, I know, but I love this stuff. It's brunch, I s'pose," Rose shrugged. Donna thought it all looked disgusting. "We should get this on the TARDIS. It'd save people having to cook meals for Clara."

"What, if we fed her goo?" Donna stared, "Look at it, it's rank, it looks like something that's already been digested once and didn't go down well the first time."

"Yeah, well, _you_ like tuna, so I think it's about the same," Rose said decisively.

"In my century, ninety-five percent of food is processed mush like this," River informed. She was just as bad as Rose, pointing out what was what to her, which of those was Protein 5, which was Soy 2, and Carbo 19-S (which was like mashed potatoes, but it was a bit too yellow for Donna's liking, and apparently had added salt. Probably just to make it taste of _anything_ at all.)

Donna shook her head and decided she'd had enough of trying to figure out if food on the oil rig was worth eating (it wasn't), slinking away from Rose and River to find the Doctor, who was waiting for someone to join him so he could question the meagre crew. There couldn't be more than four people in the room aside from them, and one of them was in the kitchen doing the washing up. The Doctor didn't notice her come over, though, and he looked like he was muttering to himself. River followed her closely, leaving Rose on her own to look at the poor excuse for a meal.

"Doctor?" Donna asked, touching his arm to get his attention. The man practically jumped out of his skin, though, like one of those water tube toys children played with that flew all over the place when they were squeezed. And he very nearly dropped something, too, something very shiny, and silver, which Donna recognised well. "What are you doing with that out!?"

"Shh, shh," Ten hissed frantically, sticking the thing back in his pocket and glancing over at Rose, but she wasn't paying attention.

"Was that a ring?" River asked, who had glimpsed it before he had time to hide it.

"Quiet," the Doctor ordered, but Donna ignored him.

"Engagement ring," she said, and River's eyes widened.

"Hold on, you're _really_ proposing? Properly?"

"Don't talk so loud, she's right there," the Doctor said frantically, and then his tone changed, "What do you sound surprised for?"

"Didn't think you had it in you to propose in a normal way," River shrugged, "You never did to _me_."

"Hardly normal, we're on an oil rig in the future investigating a murder suicide," Ten grumbled.

"Wait, you were…? Oh my god. You were going to propose _today_?" Donna exclaimed, "That's why you were making such a fuss about breakfast!? And why you didn't want us to come!? I am _so_ sorry for barging in!" She put her hands over her mouth in horror at what she had done. The Tenth Doctor had finally, _finally_ worked up the nerve to actually _ask_ Rose Tyler to marry him, and she and River had ruined the whole thing by third and fourth wheeling him and just inviting themselves along for the day.

"Well you can't do it here," River said, "It's godawful."

"I wasn't _going_ to do it here, _you_ brought us here. What was I supposed to say? Tell her you two can't come out because I'm planning on proposing!?" Ten was getting frantic.

"Are you alright?" Rose, hearing more his whiny tone of voice than any of the words he was saying, called over. She'd just about finished serving herself eight portions of sludge in various levels of viscosity with slightly different hues, and took it upon herself to meander over and join the other three.

"Yep. Fine. Just talking about these murders. Ghastly," Ten said, smiling. He was practically shaking.

"Good god, you're a mess," River whispered before Rose was in earshot.

"I still think this stuff's great," Rose shrugged, eating some of her abhorrent slime with a spork. The only bit of cutlery anybody seemed to have on that rock was a spork. Then again, made washing up a lot easier, Donna supposed. "Can't we get it on the TARDIS? Everything would be so much easier."

"We already have the right dispensary system," River shrugged, and Rose looked at the woman like all her Christmases had just come at once. Why was she such a big fan of that stuff? "We have a hydrofier on the TARIDS nobody's ever used, too, interestingly."

"What's one of them?" Donna asked.

"Re-hydrates food packs," River said, "Makes goo like that. It's like a microwave, only wet." Not a very pleasant description, Donna thought. "None of you have ever wondered what the tube on the wall in the kitchen is for?"

"I thought it was for…" Rose began, then she frowned, and couldn't think of anything, "I suppose I've just been ignoring it. It's just sort of, there."

"Talk to Oswin about it – lord knows she loves that stuff as much as you do," River said, "It's all they ever eat on Horizon." Rose nodded thoughtfully, then balanced her silver tray on one hand.

"That's a very good idea, I think I'll text her right now…" she turned absent after saying that, digging her phone out of the pocket of her jeans and texting. Unbelievable, Donna thought, they were going to get a tube that dispensed edible gunge in the kitchen. God, it was like a Saturday morning kids' TV show. "It's weird that she picked him up and threw him off the balcony, though, isn't it? That's like me picking _you_ up and throwing _you_ off a balcony," Rose said to the Doctor, putting her phone away and looking up at him, getting back onto the topic of the gruesome murders.

"Well, no, not – not _really_, because we're not, you know. We're not… we're not engaged, or anything, so it wouldn't really be…" Ten spluttered, having no idea what he was saying. He was being ridiculous – Rose wasn't onto him at all. She didn't have a clue he kept fumbling with that engagement ring in his pocket Donna had purchased the other day, and if he'd just stop being such a bag of nerves she'd remain utterly oblivious.

He stopped talking, though, apparently noticing something the rest of them didn't, over Rose's head somewhere.

"Doctor?" somebody asked. The same voice they'd heard down the comms earlier, Donna was convinced, and there was a man standing there. A young man. An easy-on-the-eyes young man. Who apparently knew the Doctor. Looking back at Ten, he appeared to be thinking, then his face split into a grin to match the boy's when he realised who it was.

"Riley!" he exclaimed, "Riley Vashtee, of course – knew it was you, recognised your voice!" Riley Vashtee's eyes (_pretty_ eyes, Donna thought) scanned the three faces behind the Doctor, then he became disappointed.

"No Martha?" Riley asked.

"Martha? No, no, not today. She's fine, though, don't worry about her, completely fine," Ten assured, going to shake Riley's hand. Donna couldn't tell if Ten was happy because he'd met an old friend, or because said old friend had offered him an escape from the awkward spool he'd been giving to Rose about how they weren't engaged. Rose was more invested in her early brunch, anyway.

"Who's this, Doctor?" Donna asked.

"Friend of mine, Riley," the Doctor said, "Well, friend of Martha's more, I suppose, they spent a lot of time together."

"A lot of time with Martha? One-on-one? Getting up to what?" Rose asked wryly, raising her eyebrows at Riley. Just like Donna, Rose had noticed he was more than a little cute.

"We were just… a bit busy. Crashing into the sun," Riley said, "She kissed me."

Rose wolf-whistled, and Donna, amused, asked, "Oh, really?"

"They'll be having a lot of fun reminding her of that later, I'm sure," River sighed.

"Really? Where is she?" Riley asked.

"With her husband today, I think," Ten said, and Donna gave him a look. He wasn't supposed to just _say_ she was married like that, so offhandedly, while scratching his head. They should let him down gently, because he seemed nice. "What?" Ten, oblivious, asked, "Is she not?"

"She's married?" Riley questioned, disheartened.

"Yes, sorry if you were hoping of any follow-up kisses, or anything," Donna told him.

"You never know, though, she kissed Clara," Rose pointed out.

"I don't think 'kissed' is the verb you meant," River interrupted, "I think what you meant was, 'set-Clara's-face-on-fire.'"

"Yeah, but, she did it with her lips."

"She was on drugs! She doesn't even remember it," River said.

"Uh, what?" Riley, understandably confused, asked, and Ten cleared his throat.

"Forget about that – funny old life we lead, travelling through time. Anyway, Riley met Martha and I on a ship that was illegally harvesting fuel from a parasitic sun that fought back. Nice of you to stay in the same industry, sort of," Ten said, and Riley smiled and shrugged, "And Riley, this is River and Donna, who I travel with, and this is Rose. She's my… um… my…" He had a frog in his throat, and Rose raised her eyebrows at him as he stuttered.

"Girlfriend?" she suggested.

"Yes, that. Girl-what-do-you-call-it. Thingy. Friend. Yep. Anyway…" he moved on, Rose rolling her eyes at him, but in an overall fond way, "What can you tell us about these mysterious deaths?"

Riley went to sit down at the nearest table, sliding onto the bench, and the other four followed suit, Rose quite glad to have a place to put her gunk tray. Riley didn't even go get any food – perhaps he'd lost his appetite now he'd heard about Martha Jones' unavailability.

"So. What did Kirst tell you?" Riley asked.

"That that woman, Tilney, threw her fiancé over the balcony and killed him, then killed herself," River said, "Then she took us to look at the body."

"We found traces of some kind of residual brain infection," Ten added.

"So she didn't tell you _everything_?"

"Is there more to tell?" Ten, intrigued, inquired.

"Is she asking you to catch the saboteur?" They nodded. "You won't be able to. It's everyone."

"Everyone?" all four of them asked.

Riley nodded, "Everyone. Even me, even Kirst. People forget things, have blackouts, and when they wake up, things break where they were. I think that's what happened to Tilney, she killed Jameson, then when she became aware, she couldn't bear to live without him."

"What, all of you? Wasn't this ever investigated?" Ten frowned. Riley opened his mouth to say something else, but then Ten shushed him and dug around in his pockets, "Do you mind if I just examine you? I am a doctor, after all."

"No you're not," River told him.

"Shush. Close enough. Look over here," Ten said, pulling the sonic screwdriver out and holding it up to Riley's eyes like it was a torch and he was checking for concussion. They got some odd looks from the other people in the room doing this, but the Doctor didn't pay attention. "Weird. Same stuff on you as on Tilney, residual traces of a brain infection, like something was there, but it's healed now, it's gone." He put the sonic away again, and Riley blinked and rubbed one of his eyes.

"Anything else you can tell us?" River asked.

"Yeah, people usually start acting funny when there's leaks in the system, in the extraction pipes. They run all the way through the Sanctuary Base, taking oil from the drill to fill the tankards waiting for pickup," Riley explained, "There's always leaks, everywhere." They were all talking in very low voices by this point, like they were afraid of being overheard. Donna wondered why Kirst hadn't mentioned these memory loss symptoms to them.

"I'll tell you what _I_ think," Rose said seriously into the tense atmosphere, beckoning them all to lean in closer to her so that she could whisper, "_I_ think… that this stuff… would go really great with chips." And she ate another sporkful of crap. They all groaned, annoyed, and scowled at her.

"And I think that stuff would go really well in the bin with all the other rubbish," Donna grumbled.

"Oi, don't knock it til you've tried it."

"Strange, though…" Ten mused, "What you said, about the leaks… because when Kirst left, she said… she said…" His eyes widened and met River's, who was on her way to making the exact same epiphany, going by her expression.

"She said she was going to fix a leak in Sector K5," River realised, and the Doctor practically leapt out of his seat to get to the door to find Kirst again, yelling at them all to follow him immediately.


	490. Black Goo from Outer Space IV

_Black Goo from Outer Space IV_

_Donna_

The five of them (Riley Vashtee was tagging along now) burst through the scuzzy yellow door into Sector K5 to go after River's ex-wife and the extraction pipe leak she was investigating. K5 was some sort of maintenance area, a room full of tubing and screens to monitor it all, a window on one wall showing them that they were hanging right out over the drill pit. Just a few inches of steel between them and oblivion. Wasn't that a nice thought?

They came through the door, all of them sticky and sweating from the heat of the malfunctioning base, and walked in to see Kirst bashing a computer to monitor to pieces with a very large spanner. Above was a pipe with a hole in it, like it had been burst from within, but nothing was dripping out of it. There was no oil in sight. Were the pipes not carrying any at this particular moment?

"Kirst?" Riley asked, and Kirst looked over at them blankly, freezing with the spanner in her hand. "Why are you hitting the controls for the CO2 filter? We need that to keep the air clean." Kirst looked Riley in the eyes for a few long seconds, the entire room growing very tense, and then she made them all jump and wince by hitting the controls with the spanner again. The electronics sparked, and a vent overhead hissed and sent steam down at them that made Donna lightheaded.

"I think she just broke the filtration system," the Doctor said quietly.

"It's fine, there's a backup in the command hub off Habitation 2," Riley assured them, "It'll take a few minutes to kick in."

"But shouldn't she know that? She's in charge," the Doctor said. Kirst continued to stare at them, like she hadn't a single clue who they were, she was just empty. The Doctor frowned and took a few steps closer, and Rose grabbed his arm.

"Careful," she said, "If Tilney killed her fiancé, god knows what Kirst might do to _you_." Ten waved away her concerns and stepped forwards, towards Kirst. Rose held onto his arm for a few seconds, but didn't want to move to continue to do so, so she had to let go.

"Kirst?" he asked tentatively, "Are you alright?"

Kirst narrowed her eyes, then spoke: "Routine maintenance."

"Destroying your air supply is part of your routine now?" River quipped, and Kirst's eyes snapped to her immediately, frowning, squinting, like she was trying to recognise her. Even if their wedding _had_ only been some sort of 'green card deal' (like River had said it was), surely it was hard to forget someone you'd _married_? In fact, no, it was completely ridiculous. Kirst knew them, all of them – this was not Kirst.

"Do you recognise her?" Donna asked, nodding at River.

"You remember the choke point on the Rilarium smuggling route?" River asked her.

"_Choke point_?" Rose mouthed at Donna, who shrugged.

"And the wedding? For the papers we needed?"

"Wedding?" Kirst frowned, then robotically said, "Of course. Wedding. Wife. I love you." River was utterly taken aback.

"I thought you said it was a green card thing?" Rose asked her.

"It _was_, we needed marriage paperwork to go with the cover that we were honeymooning and not smuggling weapons into Rilarium space," River said, "Though, of course, we _were_ smuggling weapons into Rilarium space. The choke point is the only way into the cluster, you have to go through it and the galactic colony to get in."

"You're not Kirst, are you?" the Doctor said, stepping closer and closer, _very_ carefully. Kirst raised the spanner above her head, as if to strike, and he stopped his advances. "What are you? Using her? Using these people? To break this base – why? To make them leave? It must be easier to kill them then to go to all this trouble, so why? What do you want?"

Kirst swung the spanner down at the Doctor, but he dodged out of the way and hit something else. He'd done it now, though. Whatever this was, it wasn't about to be reasoned with, and they needed some way to stop it from affecting Kirst without killing her. That, though, was going to be pretty difficult now that Evil Kirst was on the warpath and trying to bludgeon the Doctor to death in the cramped room.

"Someone! Do something!" he shouted, dodging another spanner-strike.

"Like what!?" Donna exclaimed.

"I don't know! Anything!" he said, then he yelped and ducked and Evil Kirst's spanner sailed right over his head where his ear would have been seconds earlier, "Now!?"

"Right – uh – Riley, the heating's broken, yeah?" Rose began, thinking.

"Yeah, completely, won't turn off, the air conditioning is on max."

"And these pipes, are any of these pipes the air conditioning?" Rose asked him, Ten making another terrified noise and ducking, which caught Rose's attention.

"The ones with the blue bolts are the air conditioning, there," Riley pointed for her, "But I don't see what good that'll do."

"How cold is it?"

"Hurry up!" Ten demanded. Kirst went for him again, and he lifted up a hand to stop the spanner. He _did_ stop it, but not without injury, and it didn't matter anyway because Kirst retaliated with a sharp punch straight to his gut, leaving him winded.

"How cold!?" Rose shouted at Riley.

"Minus thirty Celsius, at least," he finally answered.

"Right, great. Oi! Kirst! Get a load of this!" Rose said, teleporting. She moved such a small distance it almost looked like she had become a golden streak, had blurred across the room like light, and then she was in front of Kirst, next to Ten, and she jumped to grab at one of the blue-painted pipes above them.

Evil Kirst looked up for a split second and met Rose's eyes, and then Rose tugged on the pipe enough to break it off and sent a gust of freezing air straight into Kirst's face, knocking her back. She let go of the spanner in the process, leaving it in Ten's hands, and fell right over. Riley, playing the hero, dove to catch her and break her fall, lowering her down to the ground while Rose made a fuss over Ten.

"Are you alright?"

"I'm fine, I'm fine – do something about that pipe," he told her, getting out of the way of it, still blasting cold air into the room (which was a great relief to Donna, giving how roasting hot it was in the Sanctuary Base. Rose reached up and bent the metal thing back to where it was supposed to be, managing to connect it back up again like it was just a piece of Lego.

"How did you do that? Those pipes are made of tungsten," Riley said, awestruck, crouched down next to Kirst on the floor.

"What can I say? I'm strong," Rose said.

"Oh my god, Doctor, look," River exclaimed, pointing down at Kirst on the floor. Kirst was unconscious, but it was like she was crying, but not crying normal tears. Out from the corners of her eyes spilled a heavy, black liquid, leaving traces on her cheeks and crawling down onto the floor. Riley jumped away from the liquid as it pooled above Kirst's head, and then, as though it was alive, it began to move, all as one, trailing along the floor and climbing its way up the walls.

"What _is_ that?" Donna asked, all of them staring at it. It was heading back to the burst pipe, the one with no oil in it, the one Kirst had been sent to fix originally, "Is that _oil_? Moving?"

"Looks like it," Ten breathed, staring.

"Can't you stop it?" Rose asked him.

"Stop it? With what? It's liquid. I don't have anything to put it in." They stared, until all the stuff had left Kirst and disappeared back into the extraction pipe. Their silence was interrupted by Rose's phone going off, and everyone looked at her. She didn't really notice them looking at her, because she was distracted by the device.

"Nice of you to pay attention," River said.

Rose stayed quiet, then, a few seconds late, asked, "What?" absently.

"Nothing."

Rose laughed, "Get in! _Guess who's having Protein 4 for din-ner_?" she half-sang the last bit, and Donna groaned.

"Can't believe she's installing that stuff for you, it's disgusting."

"I dunno. Said something about her brother appreciating it – isn't her brother hot?"

"Rose, focus?" Ten said.

"Yeah, right, sorry," she snapped out of it and apologised, putting her phone away in the back pocket of her jeans while the Doctor shook his head.

"What was that, then?" River asked him.

"Oil, I think," he answered, though he sounded unsure. He proceeded to crouch down next to Kirst again, and River did the same, Riley, Donna and Rose all watching. He started to scan her head with the screwdriver while River lifted her hand and took her pulse from her wrist.

"Still alive, normal pulse," River said.

"By all medical standards, she's fine. Must have just been a shock to the system, knocked her out. Good thinking, Rose," Ten said, looking up at her and smiling. He kept his eyes trained on her for a few seconds longer than was necessary, and didn't stop until Donna cleared her throat and gave him a questioning look. "Right, yes, pay attention. She's got the same traces of brain infection as you and Tilney had," he said mostly to Riley, "Even stronger."

"So it's that stuff, the oil? It takes people over? Makes them break things?" Donna suggested.

"Looks that way. Clearly not for very long, though, and she didn't retain any memories, so it can't be _too_ powerful… hope you haven't been harvesting a living thing for fuel again, eh?" Ten said to Riley. His words sounding joking, but his tone was much too serious.

"If… if it _was_-" Riley began.

"Oh, here we go…" Ten grumbled.

"And if it can do _this_, then why wouldn't it just break the drill? Or cut all the power? There are hundreds of things it could do that would kill us and we wouldn't have a clue until it was too late," Riley argued, and Ten thought about this.

"Good point… but if it _is_ the oil, and it's alive, or something's controlling it, and it comes up through the drill… maybe we should head down into the pit and investigate? Never a good idea. Nothing good ever comes of going down into alien pits," Ten said, sparing a glance at Rose, who rolled her eyes.

"You're telling me. Good thing there really aren't any Ood here, then we'd all be in trouble. Hold on, we don't have to wear those awful orange spacesuits to go down there, do we?" Rose asked. Donna wanted to know that, too, because she also thought the orange, baggy spacesuits were ghastly.

"Shouldn't need to," Riley interjected, "The artificial atmosphere covers the whole planetoid. It'll be cold, but breathable. Another thing that could have been broken completely to kill us, that wasn't."

"It _is_ weird that it wouldn't break anything damning. You'd have thought that, by now, it would have managed to. Even these CO2 filters have a backup," Ten said, casting a look at the control console Kirst had smashed up. She was still there, on the floor, bits of ice covering her face from the freezing air conditioner, "Well then, Riley, suppose you'd better switch off that drill and take us down there, hadn't you?" Ten asked him, putting the spanner he was still holding in his pocket. Riley nodded.

"Take a radio down, I'll stay in contact from the command centre up here, until Kirst wakes up," he told them, "It's this way to the exterior doors."

"Right you are," Ten nodded.

"Why are you keeping that spanner?" Rose asked him quietly.

"Think I might make it into a laser spanner. Used to have one of those, you know, very useful. Did wood, not like this screwdriver. Then Emmeline Pankhurst nicked it!" he exclaimed as they followed Riley, closing the door behind them and leaving Kirst to regain consciousness on her own, "Years ago now. God knows what the suffragettes were doing with an explosive device. Well, making things explode, I assume…"

**AN: Funny story, last night I was watching ****_Victoria_**** on ITV2 (which is Jenna Coleman's new show where she plays Queen Victoria, if some of you didn't know, and it's also really good) and there she is being all polite and well-spoken with good manners, always presentable, and it was the most surreal thing to have that side-by-side with the last thing I wrote Clara Oswald doing – which was, if you don't recall, eating a bowl of Lucky Charms with Skittles-flavoured milkshake for dinner in a room with six other people, without any pants on, talking about how many orgasms she had that day. The contrast was obscene. What's even more shocking is that Clara's one of the most developed and complicated characters in this whole fic, and probably my favourite to write (though, I'm sure all of you have known for years that she's my favourite to write.) It's funny considering what a raw deal she always gets with these injuries and everyone disliking her. Clara will have a slightly classier time of things in the next storyline, for the record.**

**P.S., before anybody asks, I'm not writing in something about Queen Victoria actually being a Clecho.**


	491. Black Goo from Outer Space V

_Black Goo from Outer Space V_

_River_

River Song was no stranger to following the Doctor into dangerous, unknown places. Travelling through time and space was always a battle between the sensible part of your brain and the adventurous part – and to get the most out of any journey, the latter _had_ to triumph nine out of ten times. That was why she didn't think twice about descending down into a drill pit on a very rickety metal lift with him, and probably why Donna and Rose didn't think twice about it, either. It was very true what people always said about the Doctor turning people in soldiers; here they were, marching into battle, not having a single clue what they were going to face.

"_This husband Martha has, then, what's he like?_" Riley Vashtee asked over the comms, controlling everything from Kirst's command hub back in the base. It was freezing outside, and the pit below them was dark and perilous. Above, the lights of the oil rig looked just as distant as the stars in the sky. They'd all come a long way facing all sorts of horrors to be scared of heights, though, even if the chain link floor was a _little_ unnerving.

"Oh, Mickey's great," Rose, who was in possession of the radio, said, "I used to go out with him."

"_What? And now you live together?_" Riley questioned.

"Uh, yeah. It's a bit weird when you say it like that…" Rose trailed off, thinking about her undeniably queer living situations, "Everyone's happy, though. Anyway, enough about us, you should be telling us about this pit. How long left until we get down there?"

"And can you speed it up a bit? It's _freezing_," Donna added.

"_Not long now, a few minutes_," Riley assured them.

"Did you scan for life in the oil, then?" the Doctor asked. He had his arms crossed and had been thinking obsessively about their current oil conundrum, perhaps to avoid thinking about his current Rose Tyler conundrum (which wasn't a conundrum at all, more sort of – oh, what was the word? Ah_, cowardice_, River thought.)

"_I don't know; I wasn't here from the start. And it wasn't my decision not to scan for life on the _Pentallion_, anyway, I was the pilot, it was all McDonnell_," Riley said, and Ten groaned.

"Really? The same thing twice? No doubt all we'll have to do is give the oil back and it'll leave you alone." He seemed unhappy with the apparent predictability of their situation. It was, River supposed, as the saying went: variety is the spice of life. And of course, if the Doctor wanted everything to be the same all the time, he wouldn't travel through time and space in a box.

"_Except the Torajii sun was killing the crew_," Riley said.

"Whatever this is killed Jameson," Rose pointed out.

"_But its intention was obviously just to carry on sabotaging the power relay,_" Riley argued, "_Like I said, it could have killed us all months ago, but it's only started acting out recently. If there even is an 'it,' and if it's down there in that pit_." Riley Vashtee's comms clicked off with a buzz of feedback and left the four of them alone in the lift trundling downwards.

"Being out here in the cold almost makes me miss it up there with the broken heater," Donna grumbled, "God knows how they've been living there for so long like that. If I was Kirst, I would have already reported all the problems and ordered the evacuation."

"Wouldn't work, you need permission to evacuate," Ten said, "Whoever's in charge of this oil rig will probably put the system failures down to the lack of Ood, after you and I freed them all from servitude. I'd be inclined to agree with them, if it wasn't for what we'd seen with Kirst."

"But if it's willing to kill – which, clearly, it is, since it killed Jameson _and_ tried to kill you – and if it wants to stop the drilling, why wouldn't it just control the entire crew? It could switch between them and take them all out, one by one," River said, "So Riley must be right. This can't be self-defence; it must be something else."

There was a creaking noise and the lift jerked a little. It had just hit the floor at the base of the pit, too dark down there to see. Right as River was about to complain that they should have asked Riley for headlamps or lanterns of some description (they must have some for when people would come down and do maintenance on the drill), it became unnecessary by Rose displaying those superpowers of hers for the second time that day. She conjured an orb of what looked like pure light from the palm of her hand, and it floated above them, a golden spectre, hovering and showing the way. It illuminated the base of the enormous drill, twice the size of a house, and the cave systems around them, black oil leaking down the walls.

"It's that way," Rose said, her eyes glowing gold, pointing into one of the bleak caves ahead. The Doctor looked at her for a second like he didn't even know her, like she was some alien creature (well, if one cared to forget that to him she _was_ some alien creature) he had never seen before. Then she blinked and the glow faded away, and she caught him looking at her, "What?"

"Nothing," he said somewhat darkly, "It just unnerves me when you have her eyes." Rose sighed and watched him begin to walk off in the direction she had pointed.

"'Her' eyes?" Donna questioned, "Who's 'her?'"

"Bad Wolf," Rose answered quietly, "He thinks I'm not me when I tap into the time vortex. I_ am_ me. It doesn't live inside me, like it did that time he regenerated. It kind of moves _through_ me."

"How does it work?" River asked. They were now following Ten, who cast a displeased look over his shoulder at the trio for asking Rose these sorts of questions, like he wanted to forget she had any extra 'talents.' River supposed she was used to it, and that maybe he had reason to be paranoid, since Rose's dabbles with spacetime had caused him to die once before.

"I don't really control it, or anything, it's more sort of… like that TARDIS. I ask it things," Rose said.

"You speak to the time vortex?"

"The Bad Wolf. In a way. It's hard to explain. I ask for a light, and I get a light, I'm not manipulating it myself. I ask to go somewhere, and the universe moves around me to take me there. It's a lot more comfortable than a vortex manipulator," Rose said. Then she turned to Donna, "Anyway, _you're _the one who can open portals into different universes. I can't do that."

"Can we pay attention to this oil, then, please?" the Doctor interrupted them, looking back, like he was uncomfortable with the conversation. He probably was. He was such a stickler for rules – human beings able to cross into other universes at will probably made him question everything he believed in, science-wise. The way he looked at Rose and Donna in that moment was the same way he sometimes looked at Captain Jack Harkness, like they were mistakes the universe had failed to fix. Not a nice way to look at one's own soon-to-be fiancée, River thought to herself.

The tunnels were lined with sticky, shiny oil. It oozed out of every crevice of the wall and dripped down from the ceiling onto them. Before long, River's shoes were covered in the stuff, and the muck of it in the air was getting all over her. They were going to be filthy, that was a guarantee. Then odd noises began, deep sounds like heavy bubbles bursting somewhere, sploshes and rumbles.

"Definitely something down here, then?" Rose whispered to Ten, sneaking up to take his hand as they crept along. Sometimes the sole of River's boots would get stuck and she would need to tug herself free. The oil shone all around them in the bright glow of the ethereal, golden orb they were accompanied by.

"_Do you see anything?_" Riley's voice interrupted them loudly from the radio hanging on Rose's belt, and she jumped and fumbled to pick it up.

"No, not really. Well, a lot of oil, oil everywhere, actually, all through these tunnels, but nothing too… too…" Rose stopped talking. Nothing too what? Too strange? Too alien? River supposed it didn't matter, because what they suddenly came across was both strange_ and _alien. It was a large room, a cavern, circular, the floor sloping down from the edges to the centre a few metres lower than where they stood. Oil slicks crept like webs along the floor around them, spreading out from a great, gluttonous blob of black stuff festering away there in the middle of the room. "Forget that. I think we've found it."

"_Found it? What is it?_" Riley asked. The stuff resembled boiling tar, pooling in the dark in front of them, bubbles bursting on its surface, and it writhed around as though it were leaving. Well, it _was_ living.

"Is it _laughing_?" Donna asked Ten. It was certainly making some sound of noise that did remind River inexplicably of a belly laugh. Rose switched off the radio so that Riley couldn't keep talking.

"Rose," began Ten, "You remember the Nestene Consciousness. Well, meet its distant relative. I should have known. The Nestene Consciousness was born on Polymos, another planet circling a red star, unable to hold real life. And here it is, adapting, controlling the oil. And yes, Donna. It's laughing." Ten dropped Rose's hand to put his own in his pockets, walking down the steep decline towards the monster in the floor.

"What's a Nestene Whatever-He-Said?" Donna asked Rose.

"It was this big, sort of, blob thing, that controlled plastic. You remember when the shop window dummies came to life?" Rose said, and Donna looked at her blankly, "You know, they started shooting people? Laser hands? March the 5th? 2005?"

"Oh, _then_? No, I was in Australia that week, great holiday on the Gold Coast. I have a mansion there now." Rose gawped at her.

"If that's the same sort of thing as the Nestene Consciousness, it can control all the oil that's already been shipped off this planet," River said to Ten, "It could take over the entire human empire – Doctor, that's three galaxies."

"Probably hid itself from any life scans," Ten said, looking at it, "It's a hive mind. Just like the Autons were. Controlling them, killing, but it can't do it from here. It's not strong enough. That's what you want, isn't it? That's what the sabotage is about? Trigger an evacuation. Leave with humans. Get somewhere closer, with a bit more pull, enough power to use all the fuel in the empire and have it for yourself. Is that right?"

Something unprecedented happened. Whatever that monstrous blob was, it began to move, it began to melt away in the middle, like a sinkhole, giving way for something else to rise up. Something humanoid, coated in oil. The oil dripped off the body to reveal a broken, male face, white, dead eyes in lifeless, filthy skin. Ten backed away, held out his arms to make the others do so, too.

"Jameson, I assume?" River asked. Kirst said Jameson had been thrown into the pit, that his body had never been recovered, like Tilney's. What little of his face wasn't covered by oil was brutalised and messy.

"_You assume correctly_," the corpse said in a deep, hissing voice. The oil continued to bubble like a boiling tar pit beneath the body, held up by black tendrils of goop.

"Using him as a mouthpiece. Cowardly," she remarked.

"_You are right, Doctor. I am going to spread my seed through the entire human empire._"

"Eurgh, poor choice of words," Rose muttered.

"_And I can use you as a vessel. With someone like you, with your capabilities, the distance between myself and my children would be surpassed from here_," Jameson's corpse declared.

"I – what?" Ten hadn't thought about that. River looked behind them, but the tunnel they had entered through was now covered by a thick, gloopy wall of oil. The entire tunnel could be blocked up, impossible to run through. That wasn't the only thing the oil could do, either. Around them, it started rising up, started making shapes, shapes with four limbs and heads, dripping constantly onto the floor and lumbering, zombie-like, towards them.

"Doctor, what do we do?" Donna asked, beginning to panic.

"No, no. Sorry. That's not really a very good idea…" While the Doctor backed away from Jameson's body and the new hoard of oil-people advanced, he pulled his hands out of his pockets, and something else tumbled out with them. Something silver, and shiny, and small. It fell down into the oil, the golden glint on it from the orb high above catching the eye of Rose Tyler.

"Doctor?" she asked, stooping down and picking it up from the oil slick at their feet. He looked at her and followed her gaze to the engagement ring in her fingers, "What's this?" River met Donna's eyes, Jameson's corpse laughed, men made of black goo were coming towards them with the intention to kill and maim.

"I – that – well, that would be, that…" Ten fumbled his words, then met her eyes, "Would now be a bad time to ask you to marry me?"

**AN: Curious, do you guys like Flek as a character? Also I'm pushing for a double update today, just to warn you all.**


	492. Black Goo from Outer Space VI

_Black Goo from Outer Space VI_

_River_

Rose was utterly stunned, but Rose being stunned wasn't really helping them, as they were about to be overcome by a monster made of living oil. It really made the term 'fossil fuel' sound ironic. She stood there, holding the engagement ring, and Ten stood and stared at her, and Donna stood watching them, and the black goo couldn't give a damn because it wanted to absorb the power of the Doctor's mind to project itself through the galaxies.

"I'll do everything around here, shall I!?" River shouted angrily. Honestly, how could Rose possibly be surprised? How could she be so shell-shocked? For crying out loud, she had already married the man once before, it couldn't be that hard to mutter a hasty 'yes' and shove a bit of metal on her finger. River had never even _had_ a ring when _she_ married the Doctor. She pulled out her sonic blaster she took everywhere and aimed it for the nearest goo-man. Ten realised what she was doing and shouted at her to stop, but she wasn't too inclined to listen to him.

"Don't do that!" he yelled, but she did it anyway, she shot a blast of blue energy straight through its head. But it just kept coming, kept walking. Its head, a little lopsided briefly, just reformed out of more oil as it slunk towards them.

"Oh no," she said, "A little help here, maybe!? Superpowered help!?" she glanced between Rose and Donna. As soon as Donna stopped being so distracted by what Ten and Rose were doing, she turned to face the nearest oil-man and let out the shrillest wail River had ever heard. She clamped her hands over her ears and watched the one closest to Donna explode, the air rippling with soundwaves, a hail of black goo splattering all over the four of them. But the oil on the floor just lumped back together, just climbed out of the ground again, and there were more of the shadowy forms being made every second.

And after that it was a free-for-all. River was shooting them left and right, willing the sonic blaster not to run out of charge; Donna was shrieking and screaming, making them shatter into black droplets, just to have them get right back up again; Ten was using the sonic screwdriver to alter their molecular binding and eliminate the telepathic control the hive mind had, which made them collapse in a big sloshing mess, and Rose was punching them out left, right and centre, her engagement ring clenched in her fist, yet nothing was making all that much difference. They were being overwhelmed.

"The thing is, Rose," Ten began, sonicking another oil-man that came near him, making it splash apart at his feet, "Ever since I've met you, you've changed me! You've made me better! Helped me-" he paused to sonic another one apart, "-grow!"

"That's nice!" Rose shouted back. The bulbous blob in the middle of the cavern carried on making those belly-laugh noises, cackling at the lot of them trying to fruitlessly fight an endlessly regenerating army of black slime.

"And I think you've made me a better man! And I'm in love with you! Have been since the moment I grabbed your hand and told you to run!"

"Right! Got it!" Rose answered.

"And you're basically, you know, completely perfect, and-"

"Listen, Doctor!" Rose shouted over the Donna's screaming, River's gun, the sonic screwdriver and the blob commanding the army, "I appreciate the gesture and what you're trying to do-" she punched one of the oil men to smithereens, the whole torso coming off and spray black gunk over River, "-and my answer is obviously yes-" she ducked a swipe and from another coming for her and then smashed it around its gooey head, "-but I really don't feel like this is the time for a romantic speech!"

"But I had it all written, I've been practicing for ages!" he protested.

"_YOU TWO ARE ADORABLE_!" Donna shrieked, and the three of them clamped their hands over their ears. She shouted it so loud that all the oil people in a five metre radius or so exploded. The four of them were sliding all over the place now, covered in oil, completely filthy.

"This isn't going to work!" River shouted, "There's too many of them, they just keep coming! How did you defeat the Nestene Consciousness before!?" Jameson's corpse continued to laugh and jeer at them with its hollow expression and broken limbs.

"I had a chemical compound! Specially made! I don't really carry around a handy spare, and it wouldn't work anyway because that was plastic and this is oil!" Ten argued, "Freezing it would work!?"

"Well great!" Donna shouted sarcastically, "Why don't we just _freeze it_ then!? All that ice we've got lying around!"

"I could stop it," Rose said a little quietly. They looked at her. River shot another of the oil people apart. There must be fifty of them now, coming from all angles, crowding around the four of them.

"What!?" Donna, who had deafened herself with her own shouting, shouted (she had a very counterproductive superpower.)

"I said I could stop it!" Rose yelled back, "I could use the time vortex! Make it cease to exist, across the universe!"

"That's dangerous!" Ten argued with her darkly, "It could take you over!"

"I won't take me over," Rose said, "It's different, and what other choice do we have!? It's going to kill us and take over half the universe!"

"She's right," River said, "Let her try. She has to – there's nothing else we can do."

"No," Ten said, "No!"

"Doctor, it's going to kill us," Donna told him.

"I have to destroy it," Rose said, opening her hand and holding out the engagement ring, which was still quite clean, considering it, "Hold onto this, alright? And the next time I see it, you'd better be down on one knee." She smiled.

"No!" he argued, "You won't be able to – Rose?" She disappeared from in front of him in a flurry of gold. And then the three of them were being backed against the wall by the oil freaks, and Rose's golden orb of light disappeared from the air above them. They were plunged into darkness, about to be sucked up and absorbed by a monster made of oil, with even more of its sticky minions heading their way. In the dark, the Doctor grabbed River's arm and dragged her in a direction.

"Where did she go!?" Donna hissed, "Do you think those things can see in the dark!?"

"I think they can definitely hear you – who taught you how to whisper?" River questioned her.

"Shh, shh!" Ten ordered them. They shut up.

"_I don't have any eyes to see you to begin with, do you really think the dark will make much of a difference_?" Jameson's body questioned in the distance.

"Well I'm glad Rose is being so bloody helpful!" Donna shouted angrily.

Their surroundings exploded in glittering light. They were bathed in a golden glow as all the dozens and dozens of oil creatures began to disintegrate from the head down. They turned into shimmering dust and flew upwards into nothingness, and the golden infection worked its way downwards, corrupted them, took them all over and made them disappear. In the centre of the room, Jameson's corpse roared its last, stolen breath. It was as though his body was bleeding golden light from its cracks and crevices, and the body fell down into a heap on the floor, dead like it was supposed to be, all of the oil gone from him.

And there was Rose Tyler, in the middle of it all, standing behind Jameson's body with an ethereal light encompassing her, her eyes a bright and wild gold. She stood there, where the glob of sentient oil had been before dissolving like its slaves, her arms wide, looking like an angel.

"Rose?" Ten called. His voice echoed in the now-empty cavern, "Are you alright, Rose?" Rose didn't move. He stepped forwards tentatively. Donna and River stayed behind to watch. Rose might as well be a statue. Then she gasped hugely and the light around her disappeared and she collapsed, the Doctor sprinting forwards to catch her and get her back on her feet. She was filthy, completely filthy, the dirtiest of all of them by far.

"Did you teleport _inside_ of that thing?" Donna asked, shocked. Rose was coughing, spitting up black globs of oil onto the back of her hand, Ten holding her tightly to keep her steady. She nodded in response to Donna's question, still coughing.

"It was really warm," Rose said.

"You did it, though, you killed it," River said, smiling, "Well done."

"And I didn't get taken over," Rose said a little pointedly. Eventually, when she regained her breath enough, she pulled the radio off her belt and tried to see if it still worked. Remarkably, it did. "Riley? You still there?"

"_We thought you were dead!_" Kirst spoke to them rather than Riley.

"_I'm still here_," Riley himself fought to have his voice heard.

"We nearly were," River said into the speaker, "How about you? Everything good up there?"

"_Yes, except all our oil tankards just emptied themselves_," Kirst sounded disgruntled, like they'd done more harm than good.

"It was a consciousness, a hive mind, using the oil, it was going to spread and take over the human empire," Ten explained, "We couldn't let it. We stopped it. Rose stopped it."

"_She – what? Made all the oil vanish?_" Kirst asked incredulously, not remembering Rose's earlier feats of teleporting across the room and tearing the pipe of the air conditioner apart.

"More or less," River assured Kirst, "You'll all want to get off this planetoid now, though. No oil anymore. Tell whoever your superiors are to stay away from systems with red stars though, right? We'll head back to the lift now."

"_See you in thirty_," Riley said, and the comms clicked off again. Slowly, the four of them began to meander out of the cavern, until Rose stopped them.

"Hang on. You asked me to marry you?" she said, looking at Ten, staring at him, studying him, "Is that why you were being so weird about breakfast? And why you didn't want them to come? And why you've not been yourself lately?"

"He's been a mess," River told Rose matter-of-factly, "Honestly, complete mess, asking everyone he could get his hands on for advice."

"And everyone told him the same thing – it's you, of course you'll say yes, he doesn't need to worry so much," Donna added, "Thank god it's out there now, I felt like _I_ might have to propose to you if he didn't bloody get around to it soon enough." Rose laughed at him, and he was going red.

"I was nervous!" he protested, "Being nervous isn't a crime!"

"You can fight off a fleet of hostile alien spaceships against impossible odds without batting an eyelid, but you can't ask a girl to marry you?" Rose asked him incredulously.

"Well, I… you…" he stammered, "I had this whole speech! It's ruined now!" Rose was still laughing at him. He _really_ needn't have worried.

"Oh, come on, it'll make a great story," Rose said, going up and taking his arm, pulling him along through the tunnels with the other two, "'_How did the Doctor propose to you?_' 'Well, I'm glad you asked, it all happened when were stuck on a planetoid on the Forty-Second Century with a massive blob of living oil…'"

"And I thought my story about the fancy restaurant and the barber shop quartet was good," Donna joked, "Then again, Shaun's not a spaceman."


	493. Another Girl Another Planet XVII

**AN: Well you people wanted to see what Jenny's doing, so you can see what Jenny's doing. This is mostly because I couldn't think of anything to put in the TARDIS-based evening chapter, other than Ten and Rose fluff, but I don't really like Ten and Rose. I like them in the canon, but not my own versions, funnily enough, because of the whole stuff with her cheating and having no integrity and making lots of poor life choices (which, I know, is all my own fault.) So instead have a couple with a nice, healthy relationship I actually enjoy writing.**

_Another Girl Another Planet XVII_

_Jenny_

"What kind of animal is this I'm devouring, then?" Clara asked her, looking down at her plate. There they were, just after midnight, eating candlelit dinner in the kitchen. Perhaps the candles littering every surface _did_ add an air of romance to the affair, but the effect was lost since Clara's house was _always_ illuminated by dozens and dozens of candles, the only light she could stomach for long periods of time. It was a good thing it was the winter; in the summer, there in the dark with fire all around, Jenny thought she would evaporate. But it was February, it was freezing out, so it was more than pleasant.

Jenny laughed, "It's literally just a steak, from a cow. Not an ordinary cow, it's actually wagyu beef, which is the incredibly fancy beef that allegedly tastes better because they massage the cattle and feed them sake. Which is a myth, by the way, but considering I stole these cuts of meat, why not go for luxury?"

"You're a blight on society," Clara remarked, and she laughed again, "I thought you'd made something alien, and that's why it looks so… I don't know, different."

"It looks different because_ yours_ is blue rare. Practically still mooing. Thought you'd appreciate the extra blood." Clara was drinking blood at present out of a glass that looked like a skull. Honestly, she'd moved into that place weeks ago, with all the ridiculous, themed tumblers and mugs and cutlery that looked like bones. But, obviously Clara had begun to enjoy the gimmick since she hadn't gone about replacing any of the novelties.

"I've never even heard of steak being blue rare," Clara said.

"The benefits of dating a master chef, I suppose," Jenny shrugged, taking a sip from her own skull-shaped glass. Except she was drinking orange juice, not human blood that had been warmed up in the microwave to make it feel more alive.

"Ew, narcissism."

"Ew, hypocrisy," Jenny copied her tone of voice, and then she laughed and cut another bit off her steak. Funny how she thought it had been something alien. Jenny could probably serve her all sorts of Earth-originating things and claim they were actually alien, the girl knew that little about food.

Jenny hadn't slept on the TARDIS for three nights now, and it was about to be made four. Every so often she caught Clara looking at her, studying her, as though she was worried. She probably _was_ worried. Jenny, who had a greater appetite and just generally ate faster than Clara did, had already finished dinner. She had zoned out staring at the glass skull on her right. When she blinked and looked up, she met Clara's eyes, who quickly looked away and acted as though she hadn't been staring.

"Strawberries and cream for dessert, by the way," Jenny remembered to tell her. She'd been cooking more lately to distract herself – the cream was homemade, and everything. She did it all while Clara was at work. Ordinarily, she would go exercise, but with her hand the way it was – all bound up and bandaged in a fibreglass cast – it was very hard to do that. It was hard enough cooking, really. She supposed, though, that it was hard to do anything with a severely broken thumb.

"Pudding," Clara corrected her, "You mean for pudding."

"I thought pudding was something specific?" Jenny frowned, "That's what Esther said."

"Esther's confused because she's American," Clara told her matter-of-factly.

"Well, whatever, there's still strawberries and cream."

"How's your hand?"

"You ask me that at least three times a day."

"I know," Clara said, smiling fondly, "So? How is it?"

"Very sore, from all the cooking."

"You don't _have_ to cook, you know," Clara said.

"I need something to do," Jenny muttered, sighing, putting her elbows on the table and slouching, breaking the rules of etiquette. Not that Clara cared. She wasn't liking having this injury that stopped her from doing basic things. Well, perhaps advanced gymnastics wasn't a _basic_ thing, but Clara had been very clear when she had advised Jenny to just take it easy for a few days. Jenny didn't exactly know how to 'take it easy,' though. She'd never been good at _relaxing_. Again, she zoned out, and again, she caught Clara staring at her and trying to hide it. "What?"

"Nothing."

"Clara."

"I said nothing." Jenny narrowed her eyes and stared at Clara pointedly, long enough to make her uncomfortable and force her to take notice. Clara grimaced and put her knife and fork down, all done now, just chewing the last bit of steak. "Have you not spoken to anybody on the TARDIS?"

"My phone's been off," she answered shortly, then she cleared her throat and tried to change the subject, "I'll take these plates, shall I? Wash them up before pudding?" She smiled at Clara when she said 'pudding' and not 'dessert,' but Clara just raised her eyebrows in response.

"For two days?" she questioned, not stopping Jenny from picking up the plates and taking them to the sink behind her.

"More or less."

"Jen…"

"Don't do your disapproving voice." She heard Clara sigh again, hot water pouring into the sink from the high-pressure, fancy faucet Adam Mitchell had built in. Waiting for the washing up bowl to fill at least halfway, Jenny turned around and saw Clara watching her again. "What? Why do you want me to talk to them? So they can pry into my life? Is my life any of their business?" Clara continued to look at her. "Don't give me those eyes."

"I'm not giving you any eyes," Clara lied. She was. In the dim candlelight, Clara's brown eyes were nearly black, and they bored into her, painfully doleful. "They keep texting me to ask about you." Jenny was taken aback hearing that, and she couldn't think of any words to say. She opened her mouth and closed it again, struggling, before crossing her arms tightly and thinking for a few seconds.

"Ask what about me?" she asked finally, keeping an eye on the sink behind her.

"If you're okay, obviously," Clara said, sitting up straighter, "Mostly Oswin, not many of them have my phone number."

"Well, what did you tell them? Did you say that I'm okay, that I'm not okay?" she asked urgently, and Clara was at a loss. She noticed the sink was full enough and switched off the tap, pouring a relatively meagre amount of blue washing up liquid into the water and picking up Clara's marigolds from the countertop to put them on (she didn't want her strawberries to taste soapy later, and she had to keep her cast dry, though it was tricky to pull the rubber over her hand.)

"I didn't really know what to say, I just said you're fine," Clara said, Jenny dropping one of the plates into the water, "I couldn't have told her you're _not_ fine or she would've come down here, or worse, questioned my abilities as a girlfriend and accuse me of being incapable of cheering you up."

"You're very good at being a girlfriend so far. I think so, at least," Jenny assured her, hearing Clara's wooden chair scrape on the floor as she got up to come over. Jenny turned to look at her, "I don't want to talk to them."

"I hate to be 'that person,' but you have to," Clara said, leaning on the cupboards on Jenny's left, "Oswin's your genuine friend, you know that. You can't ice them out."

"Why do you always have to be right…" Jenny grumbled, "Fine. When I finish doing this, I'll go turn my phone on, and see. No promises. But I'll see."

"I'm glad," Clara said, smiling at her. And then Clara proceeded to, for want of a better term, scare the living daylight out of Jenny Harkness, and she dropped the plate she was holding into the sink when icy arms wrapped themselves around her waist, a dark blur grabbing her.

"Oh my god, I keep telling you not to do that," she said, and Clara laughed in her ear.

"But I _just_ figured out yesterday I have this vampire speed," Clara said, holding her from behind, putting her chin on Jenny's shoulder. If Jenny was a human, she'd presently be terrified a set of sharp fangs were about to plunge themselves into her neck.

"You were right there, you didn't have to be all _Twilight_ about it," Jenny grumbled.

"You just don't like being taken by surprise."

"I remember the last time somebody took me by surprise in your kitchen – she was called Ashildr, and she stabbed me to death," Jenny said, begrudgingly picking the plate back up and continuing to wipe the meat juices off it with the sponge. Clara didn't say anything more, just kept hugging her. Then Jenny glanced up and caught her own eye in the reflection in the window, the curtains of which were drawn back to let in some moonlight from the garden. She saw herself, and only herself.

Clara kissed her cheek, then remarked, "Don't we look cute together?" upon seeing Jenny looking at the glass. Jenny smiled slightly. "We should take a couples' selfie." Jenny laughed. "You know, Jen, you don't _have_ to do the washing up. Especially not when you can hardly hold the sponge between your fingers. I do know how to do it. I could do it from here."

"No you couldn't, you'll just get distracted and try to touch me."

"Yes I could!" Clara protested, "Give me the sponge." She waved her arm to try and grab the sponge off of Jenny, but Jenny lifted it up where Clara couldn't quite reach. "I'm being serious. _I_ should be doing things for _you_ while you're an invalid."

"Go on, then, sure," Jenny gave up and let Clara have the sponge, but she didn't take the gloves off. Clara never wore washing up gloves, anyway. With her other hand she took the plate off Jenny, too.

"If I wash, you can dry."

"Really? While you have your entire body wrapped around me?"

"I do not believe you if you tell me you have a problem with me being wrapped around you." Clara was right, she didn't have a problem with it, so she reached over to grab the towel from the side and took the clean, soapy plate right back off Clara so that she could dry it and put it away. "You know, to be honest, if you're going to be here for a while, it might be worth our while to come up with some kind of agreement on chores."

"Oh, brilliant, you'll be asking me to move in yet. And why? I do practically everything."

"Yeah, I know, and… well, it bothers me a little, you're my girlfriend, not my maid."

"I'm the guest."

"You're not really a guest, Jen, and the more this goes on the more we become like Vastra and Jenny Flint. And that's not something I want, to be honest, so how about I do the washing up from now on?"

"And you'll dry, too? Won't just leave it dripping wet? Because crockery always smells funny when you leave it to drip," Jenny told her knowingly.

"Yes, I'll dry too, I always dry, which you'd know if you didn't take over all the menial household tasks." She handed Jenny the second plate. It was just cutlery now – neither of the glasses were empty. "It doesn't matter right now, anyway, we'll talk about after these strawberries you keep talking about."

"Sure," Jenny said, putting the second plate aside, too.

Neither of them spoke again until Clara was all done with the knives and forks and was just waiting for Jenny to be, too, at which point and put her arms around Jenny's middle again and said, "You know, sometimes I just want to hug you, but hug your head, for like an hour, with my legs."

"Clara, has anybody ever told you how _amazingly_ subtle you are?" she joked in response, Clara with her head on Jenny's left shoulder. Jenny could smell the shampoo on her hair; it was nearly intoxicating, she was that in love.

Feigning surprise, Clara remarked, "People never actually stop telling me. I'm very discreet. _You_ probably haven't even figured out I'm not straight."

Jenny fake-gasped, "You're not straight!? How long have you known? I can't believe you've never told me."

"I'll give you a very detailed explanation of how I've come to terms with my sexuality if you would just turn around now you've finished drying those forks." And she did turn around, and when Clara immediately pressed her lips on Jenny's, all Jenny thought was, _I should've seen that coming_. When they broke for a second, Clara's arms on either side of the counter keeping Jenny pinned beneath her, Jenny felt Clara smiling when she returned the favour and kissed her back. That flung the Doctor's daughter into a strange kind of limbo where she would have _liked_ to put her hands on Clara's face, but her hands were in damp, rubber gloves, so she just sort of hovered. Then she had to go and ruin it all by slipping on some stray soap suds on the floor. At least Clara was there to catch and steady her right away.

"Never realised washing up could be so dangerous," Jenny muttered, Clara finally stepping away from her and the sink after that.

"Bloody homophobic water ruining everything," Clara complained, "Oh well. We'll resume later?"

"We had better," Jenny said, stepping away from the puddle, dropping the tea towel onto the floor to soak up some of the mess. She pulled off the marigolds. "Eurgh, my hands are sweaty now… won't you be an angel and go get my phone from downstairs while I sort out these strawberries?"

"Where is it?"

"Under my pillow."

"I'll be right back," Clara said, and she meant it, too, because she proceeded to move so quickly she practically disappeared, leaving just a dark streak behind, like the mirage in your vision when you looked at a bright light for too long and kept seeing it behind your eyelids. Jenny stared at the space where Clara had been, in shock, until she came whizzing back a second later.

"Seriously, Clara, that's frightening," Jenny said, Clara holding out her phone to her.

"You knew I was a vampire when you asked me to be with you," Clara reminded her, then she got a look of genuine worry in her face, "Wait, you're not having second thoughts or something, are you?"

"Of course not."

"I mean, Jen, let's be real for a second, you're an alien and I've seen you regrow your entire hand before."

"Yeah, well, you already adjusted to hanging around Time Lords and extra-terrestrials," Jenny pointed out, switching on her phone, "Let me, you know, adapt. It was weird enough last night when you 'popped out for some milk,' and a second later a bat carrying a bottle in its tiny, clawed feet comes crashing into the window."

"Hey, I really hurt my head doing that," Clara said, "It's very tricky learning how to fly and shapeshift into a rodent."

"I appreciate that, I just mean…" Jenny stopped talking and almost dropped her phone when it began to vibrate like crazy, and she put it down on the table and watched it flash and buzz with a bajillion missed calls and unread texts from a dozen different people. She left it there and went over to the fridge to pull out the large bowl of strawberries she'd put in their earlier with the jar of homemade cream.

"Your phone is vibrating so much I could get myself off with it," Clara commented.

"What a nice image to put into my head."

"I told you they were worried about you."

"Suppose so," she muttered, shutting the fridge with her foot and bringing the bowl over, "Open the jar, please?" Clara took it off her and did so, easily, and Jenny poured the cream generously over the strawberries in the bowl, strawberries picked in the middle of summer in a different country earlier that day. Clara went to go retrieve some spoons and Jenny sat back down, picking her phone up to look at the notifications. When Clara returned, she pulled the bowl over to herself and picked out one of the biggest strawberries in the whole thing.

"Well?" she asked.

"Don't be nosey."

"I'm being supportive. What do they say?"

She sighed, "I have six missed calls from the TARDIS, two from Other You, _twelve_ from Oswin, one from Adam Mitchell, three from Martha, one from Donna and two from Jack. Then I have almost thirty texts total from the lot of them combined, asking if I'm alright. Oh, god, what _has_ Jack been texting me…"

"Uh, what's he been texting you…?" Clara asked uneasily.

"He says, '_I know we're not really friends and we're not really anything else, either, but I'm worried about you running away like this. I'm always here to talk to_.' Gross. I would block his number if I didn't live with him, to be honest. It's like he doesn't know how great you are, or something… Martha wants to know how my hand is desperately, Donna wants to know if she can talk to my father for me – god, no. And Oswin…"

"What about Oswin?" Clara asked, seeing Jenny frown.

"Pretty sure she's sent me a running commentary of her entire life for two days, or something. Half of these are just flirting with me, though… asking if I'm alright… apparently Mickey, Jack and Martha claim they were abducted by little grey men but everybody else thinks they were on drugs… ugh, she asks, '_How's the fingering going with your hand the way it is?_'"

"Oh yeah, she asked me that, too. I didn't answer."

"And apparently the Tenth Doctor has finally proposed to Rose, and they came back onto the TARDIS all dirty and covered in oil," Jenny explained, chewing on a strawberry while she talked, "These strawberries are from France, you know."

"That's nice for them." Jenny locked her phone and put it down, shaking her head. "Are you going to reply?"

"Maybe. Later. The night's still young," she ate another strawberry, then resolved she was going to change the subject, because she didn't really want to talk about her disengagement from the TARDIS. Well, it was more the Doctor. If the Doctor were to come and talk to her, then she would think about going back. Not before. She'd promised herself that. "I'm glad you're finding positives about being a vampire."

"There are so many negatives, I like finding new things I can do. Makes up for the lack of garlic bread, or that every time someone sings a carol or a hymn on telly I have to mute it, or that I have to walk for an extra twenty minutes to get into Hollowmire because there's a stream in the way I can't cross, or that animals run away from me and babies cry when I go near them. And the whole no-going-outside-in-the-sunlight thing, which is a real pain in the arse."

"I can see how it would be."

"But, still. I don't need the sun, do I? I've got you. You're warm and bright and full of energy, and you're the centre of my whole universe. Practically a star unto yourself, Jenny Harkness," Clara told her, and she found herself beaming, "You know what they say, opposites attract. You're the day, I'm the night."

"The sun and the moon?"

"Exactly."


	494. The Doctor Dances

**DAY 137**

_The Doctor Dances_

_Adam_

"I hate that woman. Her and her mysterious notes saying, '_go out dancing the next chance you get_.' _Hate_ her, her and her stupid, pretty face and her charisma and ease of manner – I swear to god, as soon as that damned Doctor gets back to the future, I'm going to punch her right in her cute mouth," Oswin ranted, copying Thirteen's American accent when she quoted the letter.

"That'll be nice for her," Adam Mitchell said with a sigh.

"Fifty years I'm going to have to wait to hit that cow, tell her how sick of her and her cryptic messages I've been for all that time."

"Babe, it's not so bad."

"_Not so bad_? Mitchell, we're in a room with nearly a hundred other people _dancing_. To – bloody – maritime music!" she complained, "I don't even like this sort of music. You know I only have one leg? And Clara's got me in heels, of all things, dragging us out here on some sort of double date…"

"It _is_ spooky, you being nearly the same height as me," Adam said. They were right opposite each other, him with his hand on her waist and hers on his shoulder, and the heels Clara had convinced her to wear almost bridged their entire seven-inch height difference. It was very odd being able to look into his girlfriend's eyes as they talked without them lying down.

"To top it all off, the bloody room is swaying," she hissed. Of course, it _was_ swaying, because they were on an ocean liner out in the middle of the sea as it crossed the Atlantic that evening in 1937. Well, the Doctor had assured them it was 1937, and it _looked_ close enough. One side of the room was draped with Union Jacks, the other side with the Stars and Stripes. It was a voyage straight from New York to Dover. And there he was, feeling pretty lucky seeing Oswin Oswald all dressed up in a ball gown with her hair done up, even if she _was_ in a foul mood.

The lighting was dim and the hall was thick with the dregs of cigarette smoke, the smell of tobacco and champagne lingering in the air as people drifted around and chattered and drank with the music singing in the background. He never got to see this side of life on the TARDIS. He always ended up in familiar presents or bleak futures, never idealised moments of the past like this, with such a reputation for class and finery. In Adam's mind, the suaveness of the decade was some sort of pinnacle of sophistication. Well, aesthetically. Socially and politically, the era was just as bleak as the polluted Earth of the Fifty-Second Century.

"You _did_ promise me a date the other morning because I stayed awake with you," he reminded her for the umpteenth time that day. She clenched her jaw and looked away into the middle distance. As grim as her expression was, she was still holding his hand gently, not clamping down on his fingers in anguish. And he still thought she was gorgeous. He always thought that, no matter what she was doing.

"We're not on a date, though," she said bitterly, "We're third and fourth wheeling my sister's date because for some reason husbandy saw it fit to drag us out, too. I'm only here because I'm in love with you, let's get that straight."

"Well I can't really complain about you being in love with me," he said softly. She was still scowling.

"I hate the sea, and boats, and dancing, and heels, and I hate my brother-in-law-"

"Since _when_ did you hate the Doctor?"

"Since he drove his daughter off his ship by being an inconsiderate arsehole, that's when," she said. He really wished she wouldn't swear quite so much. Maybe the words weren't so bad, but this was the 1930s, and everyone kept casting the pair of them reproachful looks because of Oswin's profanities.

"He didn't _drive her off_, Oswin, she left. Give him a break, he has Jenny to worry about, then Clara's been melancholy for days because of you-know-who leaving," he lowered his voice when he said that, because he glimpsed Clara and Eleven not so far away, and didn't want them eavesdropping. They seemed to be having a good time. Made him slightly jealous, since his girlfriend was such a persistent killjoy. "Then on top of all that he has to put up with _you_."

"_I_ think he's being a twat. We'll have to agree to disagree. The only good thing to come out of this is getting to see you in a suit, because I really didn't think it was possible for you to do anything to make me _even more_ attracted to you, but here you are," she said that like it was a complaint, too, but it was one of her usual cruel-sounding compliments. She managed a smile at the end of it. "You don't half scrub up well. And with the cute glasses to top it all off."

"I can say exactly the same about you, Oswin. Minus the bit about the glasses," he told her.

"Yeah, well, it's pretty hard to hide my fake leg in this dress, or any dress, so enjoy it while it lasts."

"I most definitely will."

* * *

_Eleven_

The atmosphere was excellent, in his opinion. Ballroom dancing was, perhaps, his guilty pleasure, because he very much _did _enjoy throwing on his best tuxedo – the exact same one he had worn to Amy and Rory's wedding – with his best bow tie and his best top hat (and his best socks, not to forget) and sweeping his wife off her feet. They were slow-dancing closely with everybody else in the room, quite a way away from his sister-in-law, merely enjoying the company of one another. He hadn't really seen Clara in a good mood for days, but now she was smiling, humming along with the maritime music drifting across the room from the band on the stage at the other end.

"Darling, I'm afraid I have a confession to make," he began, and Clara, who had been swaying along with her head against his chest, moved to step away and look at him expectantly.

"What sort of confession?"

"A devastating one."

"A devastating confession? Whatever shall I do?" she asked, correctly sensing the underlying sarcasm in his tone of voice.

"I've been lying to you all this time."

"You _have_?" she mock-exclaimed.

"Yes, I'm sorry to tell you this is all a cunning ruse, it wasn't actually my idea to come dancing at all."

"However shall I forgive you?"

"It was all our brother-in-law's ploy," he said, referring, of course, to Adam Mitchell, who still did not know that in private they called him that, "He wanted _me_ to suggest going dancing, because he didn't think Oswin would agree to it otherwise."

"Well, I must say I'm _very _disappointed in you for being dishonest."

"Oh, as am I, of course," he nodded along.

"Honestly, I'm appalled. I can't even stand the sight of you."

"Nor I you."

"We'd best get a divorce then, I suppose."

"Excellent idea, Coo."

"I'll take the TARDIS?"

"I wouldn't have it any other way."

"Good, I'll sell it on for scrap, what do you think?"

"I-"

"What are you two talking about that's so amusing?" They had inadvertently drifted closer to Adam and Oswin through the throngs of couples, and Oswin had interrupted their conversation. Being as it revolved around something Eleven was expressly forbidden from telling Oswin about, they found themselves at a loss for words. Clara and the Doctor exchanged an unsure look, with her left arm draped around his neck, hand on the back of his other shoulder. That was the arm wrapped entirely in bandages because of the burn she refused to let heal. He had tried, like everyone else, to talk her into fixing it, but had given up ultimately. It was exactly like her smoking habit she wouldn't quit all over again – why was he so attracted to extreme stubbornness?

"Private things, Os," Clara covered for them, smiling at her. Oswin turned her nose up as though they were repulsive, and muttered to Adam to escape with her. A few seconds later they were gone from the Doctor's immediate vicinity again, and Clara made a face at him.

"What?"

"She wants to kill you. More than usual. I think it's very sweet of you to help Adam out and come dancing, even if my sister _is _being a nightmare," Clara told him, "I do wish she liked you more." He looked back at the bit of the crowd they had just vanished into, clarinets crooning beneath the warm glow of the chandelier above.

"Everyone related to you hates me," he grumbled, "Why is she after me this time? What have I done?" Clara faltered when he asked her this, as though she was debating telling him or not. He hadn't actually thought he had done anything to annoy Oswin, not more than he did the rest of the time. "Clara?" She met his eyes.

"She's angry about Jenny," Clara finally answered, and the Doctor tensed.

"Why? What have you said to her?" he asked, and she scowled at him.

"What do you think I've been doing, trying to turn my own offspring against you?" Clara asked incredulously, "She hasn't asked me anything, so I haven't told her anything. I assume she's making guesses. Besides, what could _I_ possibly have told her? I only know what you've told me."

"Wonderful, she'll talk Oswin but she won't talk to me…" he complained, then he caught the look Clara was giving him.

"Sweetheart, we're on a date. We're on this fancy ship in the Thirties, with music, and dancing, and you in a proper tux, so let's not spoil it, alright?" she said softly, smiling at him, "Considering Oswin wouldn't like anything more than ruining the day for everybody else. She's probably doing a number on Adam as we speak, the poor boy." He supposed she was right, Oswin _would_ enjoy if she managed put them in bad enough moods to equal her own.

"Do you know what the date is today?" he forced a smile and attempted to change the subject, "By which I mean, the date to _you_, not the date on this ship."

"No, what's the date?"

"It's Sunday, the 17th of November," he told her, "Your birthday in six days, no less." The song in the background died away and switched to something else, a new band coming out with a female singer heading them, and the music became a little more upbeat with energetic trumpets and piano.

"Is it? Wow. Didn't think I'd have a husband by the time I turned twenty-five," Clara mused, "Happily married, and everything. Don't have a job, though."

"A _job_? Mrs Oswald, you are on a boat presently that is the height of Twentieth Century luxury and you are, dare I say, the most beautiful creature to ever step foot on it, and you're worrying about having a job. How perfectly quaint you can be," he said, and she laughed, "It's a terrible shame I've brought you out dancing today instead of waiting a week, I'll have to think of something else for us to do…"

"Oh, you don't have to do anything special, it's just a birthday. It's not like I really _am_ getting any older anymore. Do _you_ have a birthday?" she asked, taking him by surprise.

"Me? Not one on your calendar, and not one I can remember," he answered, and she grew disappointed. He took her by surprise and twirled her, and she giggled when he pulled her back again with his hand on her waist.

"So, how do you know how old you are?" she asked.

"I have a general feeling. The perks of being a Time Lord, don't you know," he said, half-joking, "So, did you hear the news about Ten and Rose yet?"

"I more sort of saw it this morning, over breakfast. She's got a terrible case of ring hand."

"_Ring hand_, darling? What in the world is that? It sounds like some sort of skin disease," he remarked, turning his nose up at the phrase, and she laughed.

"It's what happens to people who are recently engaged, they start doing everything with their left hand to show off the ring. I do it," Clara said, moving her partially bandaged hand from his shoulder to show him the silver band on her finger, "I just _love_ having a wedding ring. And a husband, of course, that too." The song changed again. Same band, but something else, something bouncier, and this one he recognised, and it worried him. "What's wrong?"

"This," he said.

"_This_?"

"Oh, the song, I mean," he answered, glimpsing a flicker of worry in her eyes. She paused and looked over towards the band, but didn't seem too able to see them over the heads of other men in the crowd and through the fine layer of foul smoke festering in the air (which, he was sure, she was greatly enjoying.)

"I know this song."

"Yes, it's _Jeepers Creepers_," he said, "Premiered by Louis Armstrong."

"And?"

"In 1938."

"But you said-" she began, but was interrupted by the boat suddenly moving and swaying. If he didn't know full well the air was still outside (he wasn't going to risk getting caught in a shipwreck) he might have thought they suddenly entered a storm, and Clara fell right into his arms. He nearly toppled over himself, the movement took him that much by surprise. It unnerved the whole band, too, who stopped playing, one of them dropping his trumpet. "What was that? Is there a storm?"

"No, no," he assured her, seeing Adam and Oswin wending their way back through the people to come towards them, "It felt like a course change…"

"Have you seriously got us all dressed up just to look into some spooky crap?" Oswin hissed at him, getting funny looks from the people around them. She really didn't have a penchant for blending in with the period. Clara had had a bit of a battle to try and make her wear a proper evening gown earlier.

"Of course not," he told her a little sharply.

"Best see what it was, though," Clara added, and received a glare from Oswin. Clara, unlike the Doctor and Adam Mitchell, wasn't intimidated by Oswin and her bad mood, though.

"Yes, you're right, I daresay," he took his wife's hand.

"Feel free to stay here, the pair of you," Clara said, "I'm sure we can look into whatever it is alone." The band began to play again, resuming _Jeepers Creepers_ from the first chorus.

Adam looked as though he would gladly take Clara up on this offer (and as if the Doctor would ever object to having time alone with his wife, no matter the circumstances), if only his girlfriend didn't have different ideas, "No chance. I'd rather be anywhere than in this hell."

"Come along, then, but hurry up about it," Eleven said, pulling Clara towards the exit from the main hall.


	495. In the Shadows

_In the Shadows_

_Eleven_

"Perhaps it would have been better if we'd stayed in the ballroom and _hadn't_ decided to investigate the mysterious course change?" Clara suggested timidly next to him. She had been holding his hand, but had dropped it upon them breaking into the captain's quarters, and now kept crossing and uncrossing her arms and fidgeting. The electric light in the room was flickering, broken, plunging the room into darkness every few seconds. And in those alternate few seconds a sea of skeletons was illuminated before them, dry corpses with grey skin littering the floor wearing the uniforms of the ship's crew.

"Did you know about this?" Adam Mitchell whispered to the Doctor, like there was somebody in there who might overhear them.

"About what? _This_? I don't even know what _this_ is," he said, glancing around at all the bodies, "Well, the crew, actually, that's what, but I couldn't tell you how they died. All of them, so quickly, just corpses…" He spied maps and navigational tools on the captain's desk and stepped over bony legs to get to it. He didn't do a very good job of it, he tripped right over some skeleton feet. Clara was looking at him with her eyebrows raised. "Whoops?" he said meekly.

Of course, when she followed him, _she_ didn't have to do that, because _she_ could turn intangible. She walked right through them to hover by his side, with Adam and Oswin lingering near the door. Maybe a good mystery was exactly what the celebrated smartest girl in the universe needed to put her in a better mood. Distract her enough from her dislike of him, at any rate.

"We spend so much time actually following tips and reports about strange occurrences, I forgot how the rest of the time we happen across them by accident," she sighed. Adam and Oswin were talking, but he wasn't listening to them. He would listen to Clara, but not them. She leant on the desk next to him with her hands on it.

"Ah-ha, here we go. _Jeepers Creepers_, told you, Clara," he said, holding up a newspaper he had just found.

"Brilliant, you got the date wrong."

"Wrong? What do you mean wrong, how wrong?" Oswin interrupted them, "If you tell me that this is 1913 and we're actually on the _Titanic_ and we're going to sink-"

"Don't be ridiculous, the _Titanic_ sank in 1912," he said offhandedly.

And then she exclaimed, "This _is_ the _Titanic_!?"

"What? No! Of course not, look," he tossed the newspaper in their direction, across the skeletons, the lights still flickering above. Adam Mitchell caught it. "It's October, 1941. Not quite as pre-War as I hoped, unfortunately… still, not all bad, this ship's American, the Americans aren't in the war yet. Not until December."

"It's cold in here," Clara whispered, Adam examining the newspaper. The lights still flickered above them.

"Of course it is, darling, it's autumn and we're in the middle of the ocean…" Eleven sensed her looking at him, even when he finished talking. "What? What do you want?" he asked, semi-distracted by the papers littering the captain's desk, trying to find something of any use.

"I mean, we're in the middle of the Atlantic-"

"I just said that."

"It's bloody cold-"

"Yes?"

"I'm in this _very_ thin gown without any coat-"

"And?"

"Let me have your scarf."

"It's silk, Coo, it won't warm you up at all," he said, but she still tugged it from around his shoulders where it hung. He'd never quite got the trend of wearing scarves with suits, and he supposed now he didn't have to, because he no longer had a scarf to accessorise with.

"I'll have the hat, too," she said curtly, and he looked up at her, affronted, at which point she just smiled brightly, "Please?"

"The nerve of you." She didn't even say anything after that, just waited expectantly. He scoffed and gave up, taking the hat off his head and dropping it onto hers, where it predictably fell over her eyes. Then he ran a hand through his hair to try and sort it out, and noticed, like white noise, someone shouting Clara's name.

"Hmm?" Clara asked.

"God, finally, it isn't like I've been trying to get your attention for ages, or anything," Oswin said pointedly.

"Have you? I didn't hear," she said, "Sorry. What did you want?"

"Nothing, it's clearly not important if you block me out whenever you speak to him."

"I didn't hear you!" Clara protested. Oswin was just in a bad mood in general, though. Eleven was reading the captain's log for the last two days of the voyage across the sea, since the boat had left New York, and skimmed over a few words about important cargo, but that wasn't what he was looking for. Clara leant as close as she rightly could to whisper, "God, she _is_ in a bad mood." He just grunted in agreement. "Hey?"

"What?"

"I love you." The Doctor smiled and glanced at her.

"Bit of an odd time to declare that, don't you think? With all these dead people?"

"I just felt like it. Don't think I've really told you enough recently." He smiled at her. He supposed, thinking back on the last few days, they had both been more distant than usual with one another. He just put that down to Clara's business with the Echoes, and his own business with his daughter. Clara's attention was drawn to the window in the wall, a tiny porthole, but there was little to see out there, it would just be dark. Eleven supposed that she could be eyeing her own reflection, it wouldn't surprise him.

"Look, here." He said that mostly to his wife, distracting the others with the paper, touching her arm lightly to get her attention. She glanced at him and moved off the desk, turning around. He was pointing at a map of the world. "This is the course pinned here with a string – New York to Dover, a straight shot across the Atlantic, but according to this nautical compass, we're going more sort of…" he lifted the pin out of the corkboard and moved it, glancing back at the compass, "…this direction."

"That's Ireland," Clara said with he moved the string.

"Yes, it is," a male voice that echoed slightly with the resonation the Doctor associated with your average voice synthesiser said, ringing through the room. He jumped, dropped the pin, and turned around to face a dark corner, the lights still going on and off wildly. He couldn't see what was lurking, though, until he fumbled around with the pockets of his jacket enough to pull out the sonic screwdriver, pointing it upwards and fixing the lights on permanently. Then he saw what it was – it wasn't _in_ the shadows, it _was_ the shadows.

"Oh, well. That explains all this mess, then. This was you, was it? The Shadow, I assume?" Eleven questioned coldly, spying the figure standing in the corner, no discernible features, no discernible anythings, just a big, dark mass in the vague shape of a person, looking like it might just suck up light. A humanoid black hole. And it, the Shadow… looked at him. He could tell that much. "I don't think we've ever been properly introduced; I've only heard about you through stories, and far be it from me to be impolite, even if I am speaking to a mass murderer. I'm the Doctor. And you've met the wife."

"Sort of," Clara added behind him, "Met your victims, some of them."

"And Adam Mitchell and Oswin Oswald, yes, I know," the Shadow said.

"That's funny, 'I.' You say I, then? Even though there must be, what, a million of you? Packed together in that glass suit?"

"What's funnier is your daughter said the same thing to me the last time I saw her," the Shadow said, and Eleven went cold.

"Jenny? What have you done to Jenny?"

"I haven't done anything to her, we had a run in – why don't you ask her about it? And why don't you stop accusing me of doing things I haven't done?" the Shadow questioned him, "I didn't kill these people."

"Oh, you didn't?" Eleven asked, though he didn't believe it for a second, "So we find a hoard of freshly-dead skeletons and a swarm of Vashta Nerada in a suit just hanging around, and you expect me to believe that this is all a coincidence? You're not exactly a trustworthy source, I daresay."

"It's not a coincidence."

"Then what is it, hmm?"

"It's an Augix," the Shadow told him, and he opened his mouth to argue, and faltered. Cast a glance at the bodies around them again. Not eaten, they still had skin, they were dried out, like human-shaped raisins. Reminded him of Richard Lazarus' victims, similar sort of energy absorption. Martha Jones wasn't there to point that out to, though.

"Ah. Yes. Well. Hmm. I suppose that would explain this, then."

"What's an Augix?" Adam Mitchell asked.

"Spectral entity, needs a host body. Doesn't react well with humans, feeds on life force, drains them dry. Could easily adapt to take out a whole group of people at once – so this isn't accidental. This Augix is dangerous, whoever it is. Did you catch it?" Eleven questioned the Shadow, "That's why you're here, isn't it? Hunting it? Just like the Frir, the Slitheen, the Xenomorph, Jenny?"

"I wasn't hunting Harkness," the Shadow said in what sounded like a bored tone of voice. It took Eleven aback hearing her called that – she still went by Jack's name? Did he really know so little about her? When she'd been living under his own roof, and everything? "I was trying to apprehend a criminal for a bounty, the same thing I'm trying to do here, and then she hired me to find some people for her in exchange for an Arcadian diamond."

"_Find people_? Who!?" he demanded.

"God, just go bloody talk to her yourself!" Oswin shouted at him.

"Right, this Augix, what does it want?" Clara interrupted, getting them back on track.

"It came through a rift in spacetime and got separated from its ship. The Augix ended up in America, the ship ended up on the outskirts of Dublin. It's trying to get back to the ship so it can leave, and I've been hired to stop it," the Shadow said.

"Not doing a very good job," Adam remarked, nodding at the bodies. The Shadow turned to face him. Remarkable, it didn't have any eyes, or a face at all, just a black mask, and yet it _still_ managed to convey the sentiment of a deadpan expression, strongly enough that Adam Mitchell shut up.

"It's using host bodies. I don't know how to find it. That's where you come in, Doctor," the Shadow said, "I need your help."

"Do we get a cut of the money?" Clara asked.

"Money? What do we need money for?" the Doctor frowned.

"It's a useful thing to have."

"No, no. Who needs money? I want something else."

"I'll give you the location of the ship wreck," the Shadow offered, "I haven't been paid to recover it. Better to not let it fall into the hands of humanity, not in this decade." No, he thought, best not. They'd had enough of that sort of trouble with that old Zuar ship stuck in the mud in New England – first Thomas Edison trying to suck souls out of people, then Liam Kent using it to resurrect Esther Drummond and give her superpowers. They were lucky it was Esther, really, there were probably thousands of humans who would immediately go on a killing spree as soon as they learnt how to throw lightning bolts with a wave of their hand.

Begrudgingly, the Doctor said, "Fine. But only because I can't stand around and watch this Augix terrorise the people on this ship. Or anyone else in the universe."

"That's what I'm counting on. It would be best if you didn't draw attention to yourselves. As in, if you left this room full of skeletons," the Shadow told them.

"Oh, you do sarcasm, do you? Nice to know. Got a lot of human mannerisms, haven't you?" The Shadow shrugged. "Shrugging now! Marvellous. You're practically a joke, all of you, tiny little pests."

"It would probably best if the clever ones stay trying to find out how to track the Augix," the Shadow said.

"Hold on, what the hell do you mean by the 'clever ones?'" Clara argued.

"The Doctor and the genius," said the Shadow.

"Yeah, but, which genius?" Adam interjected.

"He means me, babe," Oswin told him quietly.

"_I'm_ a genius too, though!" he protested.

"Yeah, and I'm not exactly an airhead either," Clara continued.

"…Maybe he's right," Eleven said.

"Of course you'd say that, he just stroked your bloody ego," she complained.

"You can… you know, do surveillance."

"_Surveillance_!?" Adam and Clara both exclaimed.

"Try and see if you can just sort of, spot whoever the Augix is possessing," Oswin shrugged.

"Sit on our hands, you mean?" Adam said.

"Fine, then," Clara decided, "If the pair of you think we're so useless." She took off Eleven's top hat at that point and left it on the desk (not that she relinquished the white, silk scarf.) "Psychic paper?"

He reached a hand into the inside of his jacket to pull out the wallet, and she snatched it from it immediately. "Why? What do you want with it?" he asked as she phased her way back through the skeletons littering the cabin's floor to go to where Adam Mitchell was.

"Because apparently, 'who needs money?'" she quoted the Doctor back at himself, "If Adam and I aren't allowed to help, then Adam and I are taking this psychic paper to the bar to get free drinks." Clearly, Adam didn't have a choice in this matter, because she dragged him out of the room without letting him say any kind of goodbye to his grumpy girlfriend and slammed the door telekinetically behind them.

"Well," Eleven said, looking at the door.

"_You're_ in trouble," Oswin said to him.

"Probably. Anyway. Let's get started on this tracking device." He tried to turn back to the desk and stumbled on bones again.

"Perhaps you'd better find a different room first. Like I suggested," the Shadow said.

"Yes. Let's do that… too many skeletons in this closet for my liking…"


	496. A Wonderful Guy

**AN: I'm rushing with these chapters a) because I'm excited about them and b) because I'm ****_dying_**** to start Part 3.**

_A Wonderful Guy_

_Adam_

"And here we are," Clara slid into the other chair at the tiny, circular table on the edge of the dance floor carrying two glasses and a bottle of white wine. She dropped the psychic paper onto the table between them and handed the wine to Adam Mitchell so that they could 'enjoy it chilled,' as the saying apparently went. He held the bottle in his hands for a few seconds and a fine coating of frost developed on it. "Apparently that's the most expensive bottle of wine they have on the entire ship."

"Oh, really?" he asked her, watching her light a cigarette with the vintage table lighter. Though, he supposed it wasn't really vintage yet, considering they were in 1941. Banners and flags around the dim room were all red, white and blue, and the music had lapsed back into more instrumental jazz. Strange how there was a war going on in the continent the luxury liner was heading towards, and here were rich people having a party. Or perhaps it wasn't strange at all. "Maybe we ought to save it and not drink it, then?"

"Nonsense," Clara said, blowing a stream of smoke to her left, "We don't have anything else to do. Besides, I can always go get more, I was thinking I would nick a bottle of champagne or two before we leave. Champagne is always useful for schmoozing."

"You have people to schmooze?" he questioned, and she shrugged, then frowned.

"Not really. My father? Try and make him like my husband?" she suggested, watching him unscrew the cap of the bottle and then pour freshly-chilled wine into her glass, "The Doctor is _always_ giving my dad vintage bottles of alcohol and ridiculously aged wine. Dumps it in the middle of space somewhere and comes back for it fifty years later."

"Does that work?"

"No. My dad hates him."

"Shame," Adam sighed, pouring his own glass second.

"How are you today, then?" Clara asked him. He rarely spoke to Clara, and they were never alone together when he did. He had heard Oswin talk about Clara more than he had heard words out of Clara's own mouth. When she asked him that, he made a face, then he sipped the white wine and made an even worse face, and wished Clara really_ had_ got champagne instead. She was still wearing her husband's silk scarf. "Not good, going by that expression? The Doctor told me this was all your idea, not his." He met her eyes, and she leant across the table. "Tell me the truth. Has my sister been an arsehole?"

"I wouldn't say that," he defended Oswin, and Clara laughed.

"Which means yes." He gave her a look. "Oh, come on, you can tell me. You know it's weirder to _never_ get annoyed at your significant other than to sometimes be a little angry at them? Conflict, in small doses, is healthy," Clara said knowingly, then she smoked some more. There was a whole tobacco-scented cloud hanging around her, her contributing to the greater smell of smoke in the whole room. Adam wasn't a fan of smoking, nor was he a fan of the lax (or non-existent) anti-smoking laws of the Forties. A drunk couple stumbling through the room bumped into their table and apologised.

"She wouldn't even have agreed to come at all if it was _me_ who asked her. Besides, I don't know anything about history, not enough to pick somewhere good to go dancing."

"I don't think my husband did a very good job of it either, what with all the, you know," she lowered her voice so as not to alarm the passengers nearby who didn't know anything of the crew's massacre, "_Skeletons_." She sipped her wine. It was, perhaps, almost coercive of Adam to suggest they go dancing, anyway. He knew it was in Thirteen's farewell letter, so he knew Oswin would have to come. He didn't know anything about these murders, though. Didn't really know what he thought would happen upon following the advice of a Time Lord from their own future.

"She never wants to go anywhere, or do anything," he complained.

"Probably because she was locked in an attic for twenty-five years," Clara said.

"Are you guilt-tripping me? After you _just_ told me to whine to you?" he questioned, and she laughed.

"Nah. I'll go dancing with you," she offered, and he raised his eyebrows, "I'm serious! I will. You can drag me out to fancy restaurants if you like, too, at least then you'd be with someone who can actually taste the food. And I'll pretend to be your girlfriend, I'll do everything she does." He was laughing now, and she was smiling, "Honestly. I'll, you know, cut off my leg, I'll flirt with attractive women, I'll swear excessively, and I'll insult you in public."

"Now that's an offer I can't refuse."

"See? Anyway, Thirteen always made it sound like it was just the four of us living together in the future, however far away that is," Clara said. Clara, who did not know that Thirteen was forty-nine years away, "Probably means you ought to get used to my company. And considering how surprisingly hot you look in that tuxedo, I don't have _any_ objections in the _slightest_ to _your_ future company, Adam Mitchell."

"Wow. You really _do_ flirt with everybody you meet, don't you? Even your sister's boyfriend?"

"It's kind of my thing. Haven't you realised yet?" she joked, "But, really, I'm sorry she's in a bad mood and she's probably wrecked your evening. And I _will_ dance with you if you like, later. My husband won't mind."

"My girlfriend might."

"She should've been a bit nicer to you, then, shouldn't she?" Clara said, "Watch, we'll have an affair, that'll teach her. Then she won't have her basically-perfect man anymore, with his money and his charms and his apparent incapability to actually get angry about anything. And you're clever and you can cook."

"You really sound like you're trying to convince me to dump Oswin," he pointed out to her, because she was getting a little _too_ sarcastic for him to follow (and he thought _Oswin_ was bad when it came to taking jokes a tad too far.)

"Of course I'm not – I mean, I go both ways," Clara said, which was definitely also a comment about her own sexuality, going by the brief smirk she wore, "And by that I mean, I could also sit here and quiz you when it comes to your intentions with that girl."

"Intentions…?"

"Yeah," Clara said, beaming, and then her beam disappeared in an instant and she very seriously asked, "When are you thinking of asking her to marry you?" Adam, who had been drinking some more wine at the time, couldn't even manage to stop himself spitting it out everywhere, Clara, unamused, phasing so that the wine and saliva wouldn't get on her. He assumed she phased the chair, as well. Then he laughed nervously. "Well?"

"Uh… we've not even been together for three months, Clara. And she would say no. Not that I am… I mean, I'd love to… one day. _One day_, in the far flung future, I'd definitely _like_ to… why are you laughing? Oh my god." Clara _was_ laughing, she hadn't been able to maintain her serious demeanour for long enough to hear him make some sort of romantic spiel about Oswin.

"I'm kidding," she said.

"Please don't do that. The deadpan thing. It really freaks me out. You remind me of Fyn."

"Fyn?" Clara frowned, "What's Fyn got to do with anything? Do you not like Fyn?"

"I…" Adam stopped speaking and thought about his words, "It's not _that_, I think _he_ doesn't like _me_. Because he's just monotonous and dry all the time, and he just says things, and then Oswin laughs like it's hilarious. I can never even tell he was making a joke! That's why I suggested about the wine, because… shit."

"What?"

"I wasn't supposed to tell you that."

"Tell me what? You haven't told me anything. But now you'd better, or I'm going to, I don't know, let slip to Oswin you asked for tips on buying engagement rings," Clara threatened.

"You wouldn't," he said, and she raised her eyebrows in challenge. He could not, again, tell if she was joking, so now he had to make the choice between risking that (not that she'd stop pestering him for information anyway, he knew that much about Clara Oswald, she was a very accomplished annoyance), or telling her the truth and facing the wrath of his girlfriend later on. "Fyn's maybe coming for dinner tonight."

"Oh he is, is he?" Clara said, getting a kind of glazy look about her. Her cigarette had burned down quite considerably by now. Adam drank more wine to make up for that which he'd spat out a few moments earlier, letting Clara have her daydreams about Oswin's brother for a few seconds longer than was really necessary. It was so dark in that room it made his eyes hurt trying to focus on Clara, even with the lamp between them. Or maybe that was the wine. He had never been a big drinker. Clara actually snapped herself out of her own fantastical delirium and cleared her throat. "How come it's a maybe?"

"Something about him moving to Venus, bringing stuff onto the TARDIS – has to ask your husband's permission, out of politeness. That's one of the things she's not happy about. She doesn't like having to ask his permission for things. She wasn't even going to until I pointed out we do both live in_ his_ spaceship," Adam explained, though he didn't like to. The jazz continued in the background. What would happen if one of those people were to realise there wasn't any crew left on the ship? In fact, what were _they_ going to do about the lack of crew, even if they caught this Augix? It struck him they hadn't really been keeping watchful eyes out for unusual behaviour while they sat there, doing little more than gossiping.

"Just Fyn?" Clara asked, "On his own?"

"What do you mean?"

"Well, he's married. Is his husband hot? Actually, what's even his husband's name? Oswin never tells me these things."

"That's because you go all weird whenever she mentions her brother."

"Because Oswin's brother happens to be the hottest guy, like, _ever_," Clara told him.

"Uh-huh."

"Is that you agreeing with me?"

"It's me trying to ignore you."

"Is he hot, though?"

"He's called Atoc. And I wouldn't know."

"What do you mean you 'wouldn't know?' That's like me saying I 'wouldn't know' if the girl on stage singing right now is hot, and she most definitely _is_ hot," Clara said. Adam took her word for it, he wasn't really interested in craning his neck to try and get a look at whoever was singing. He was barely even listening to the song.

"It's not like that at all, because _you're_ gay and _I'm_ actually straight, believe it or not."

"I'll believe it when I see it."

"I don't even want to know what you mean by 'see it.' You completely missed the point of me bringing up Fyn at all, anyway – I brought him up because if he does come for dinner, _I'll_ be nervous about it."

"Oh, sorry. You'll be fine. I'm sure Fyn likes you. If Oswin says he does, then he probably does," Clara shrugged, "She wouldn't lie." Adam wasn't so sure. He wouldn't put it past Oswin to lie to him to make him feel better. "You could always think of an excuse to get out of it?"

"How can I when _I'm_ having to cook?"

"Say you urgently have to go hang out with Esther, and I urgently also have to tag along and have very important words with Sally Sparrow about, um, I don't know… how nice her face is, or something."

"Yeah, cos _that'll_ work, for sure," he said flatly.

"I could kill you?" she suggested 'helpfully' (not helpfully at all.) "Adam, dinner with the future-in-laws is just something you'll have to put up with. You're having drinks with another of your future-in-laws right now. You could always invite the Doctor and I to dinner?" He laughed at her.

"No chance. I was literally forbidden from mentioning any of this to you because of your infatuation with Oswin's brother," Adam said.

"What you _could_ do…" Clara began, "Is call up Ravenwood and convince her to invent an emergency that needs the attention of the landlord immediately? She could ring you right in the middle of dinner and say the boiler's on the fritz. Then just go play video games in Esther's house, or something. And, again, I will come just to make sure Sally Sparrow's face is, you know, up to code. Face code."

"That would work if we didn't live in an actual _time machine_," he said, ignoring the ridiculous remark about Sally. Should they be discussing this a bit quieter? Probably not. Everyone around them was drunk, anyway, it didn't really matter. It was a shame, because getting Ravenwood to call him would definitely work if they had remotely normal lives. "She's letting them have our bed, too," he added.

"How long are they staying for?"

"Just until tomorrow, I think," Adam said, "I think she insisted on them staying."

"Well then, where are you two gonna sleep?"

"Jenny's room, apparently."

"Really? Well, at least Jenny will be happy she finally got my sister into her bed," Clara remarked, and he gave her an unhappy look, "…Sorry."

"You know what? I'm starving. There's a restaurant on the upper deck, I saw signs earlier."

"Oh yeah? Sounds great. This is about time for lunch, probably," Clara shrugged, glancing over to the door, which was behind Adam. She had been smiling, but at that moment, her smile faded, and she whispered, "Look." He did, and saw a group of at least half a dozen men in green coloured uniforms, military uniforms. Soldiers. "Why are there soldiers on here?" They were filing into the room slowly and looking around.

"It's the middle of the World War Two," he reminded her, "1941."

"But you heard what the Doctor said, he said this is a civilian ship, and America haven't entered the war yet," Clara pointed out, "Not until Pearl Harbor in two months. And those soldiers are American, not German, so this isn't some kind of pre-emptive Nazi coup."

"Maybe they're here to guard all the rich people?"

"Or guard something else. It's like the _Lusitania_," Clara said, "You know, the ocean liner that got sunk by a German torpedo in 1915? There was a conspiracy theory floating around – no pun intended – that it was secretly carrying munitions to supply the front."

"They look like they're looking for something. Or someone," Adam said, getting nervous.

"Probably for whatever slaughtered the entire crew, the Augix," she whispered, "They must have found the bodies. Which really isn't good for us. We might have the psychic paper, but Oswin and the Doctor don't, they're mysterious stowaways. Adam, if there are weapons on this ship that those soldiers are here to protect in secret, and if the Augix gets its hands on them…"

"It could blow up the boat."

"Yeah. And then we really _would_ be just like the _Lusitania_. Come on, let's get out of here, quickly," she said, standing up, snubbing her cigarette out in the ashtray, "The captain's cabin will definitely have a shipping manifest in it somewhere."

"And about a hundred skeletons," he hissed, "You don't think they might have a guard stationed there?"

"I guess it's lucky I can walk through walls, then, isn't it?" she said, grabbing his hand to drag him out of the room, "Now hurry up."


	497. Twentieth Century Blues

_Twentieth Century Blues_

_Eleven_

The Doctor had lugged – with the embittered assistance of his sister-in-law – a great deal of navigational and radio equipment out of the captain's cabin and into one of the empty bedrooms. He supposed that if somebody tried to come to be he would have to tell them he was some sort of Bletchley Park operative, or he worked undercover for MI6 and had reason to suspect there were Germans planning to board the ship. Although, if they were attempting to keep people calm, saying there was an ambiguously impending Nazi attack might not be the best way to go about it.

The Shadow had dispatched itself (himself, whatever) from their company in order to make sure the ocean liner didn't drift into northern waters littered with famously deadly icebergs, so it was just he and Oswin, sitting there in the fancifully furnished boudoir with silk sheets and golden trimmings, him with broken bits of radio littering the vanity mirror after he had pushed all the residents' makeup onto the floor in a big heap of overpriced cosmetics. All tested on animals, he assumed; typical for the decade. He was sonicking bits and pieces, would have perhaps liked to get his hands on a television to disassemble, but broadcasting signals wouldn't reach to beam whatever programmes people in the 1940s watched into the middle of the sea.

Still, there was a tension in the room, between them. Oswin was doing calculations on her vivid-green, translucent holoscreen, projected out of the invisible, floating Sphere, scrawling illegible calculations in the air with her index finger. She was trying to find out what sort of frequency the tracking device he was building would need to be set to in order to locate their escaped alien criminal. Through its emerald haze, reflected in the ornate mirror opposite the Doctor, he could see her grimacing at him occasionally. He tried to ignore her. Eventually, though (as was obviously her intention) it got to him, and he dropped his sonic screwdriver onto the surface in front of him with a clatter.

"What's the matter, then?" he asked her finally, coldly. She acted briefly as though she hadn't been looking at him at all, but she was too tempted to torment him to keep it up for long. "Have I done something to offend you? I know we're not exactly the best of friends, Oswin, but I hardly think giving me the cold shoulder to this degree is necessary." She glared at him outright then.

"I'm just thinking," she said coolly, "Wondering why you pulled Adam and I out here today. I have stuff to be doing, you know. Did you really not know about the Augix?" The Doctor raised his eyebrows at her, deliberating what he should say next. She scowled. "What?"

"Do you know, I was sworn to secrecy about this, but it wasn't actually my idea to come here," he told her dryly, "Your boyfriend suggested it, and then he convinced me to bring it up because he didn't think you'd agree otherwise. And I'm sure he's been having an excellent time with you and your attitude all day." Then Oswin's harsh, superior demeanour all but melted, and her expression softened into a familiar one he associated more with his own wife than with her. Oswin ran a hand through her hair and, for a short second, looked like she had been slapped. Then she covered her mouth with one hand and sat there, neglecting her calculations, horrified. "I'd let him have his dance and make it up to him after this Augix business is resolved, if I were you. Love is compromise, after all." She met his eyes for a second with an unreadable expression, and then he decided to just go back to forcing random segments of nautical instruments to slot together in the hope he would build something successful.

"I have to… ask you something," Oswin said to him, after he felt her watching the back of his head again for a few minutes. He glanced up to meet her eyes in the mirror this time, rather than turning around fully. "My brother's moving from Horizon to Venus Zeta, can I use the TARDIS to take him there? And his stuff? And his family?"

"Yes, of course you can," Eleven said, "Why shouldn't you be able to?"

"Tonight?"

"Yes."

"It's just that, if Fyn's on the TARDIS, it would probably be better if, you know, Clara's not there," Oswin told him slowly, "She freaks him out. Will you keep her away?"

"Spend time with my wife? What a monstrous suggestion."

"I think I preferred you before you picked up her irritating sense of humour," Oswin said dryly, shaking her head slightly. Perhaps this was something to do with that bad mood of hers. No doubt that she didn't like asking his permission to bring people onto the TARDIS and use the ship for things, but he was grateful for it. After all, no one else ever asked him. The other Doctors all seemed to forget that, really, it was _his_ TARDIS. They were under _his_ roof.

"Why do you not seem happy about this?" he inquired, "Fyn's the brother you get along with, is he not?"

"Yes. I'm just not a fan of the reason he's moving. One of the reasons. Can't blame him for wanting to get away from Horizon, now that I've gone, and Zalur's gone, too," Oswin sighed. She had a look in her eyes, a heavy one, a little more tortured than usual. That was a sad thought, wasn't it, he supposed? _More tortured than usual_.

"Why?"

"He… reckons our father is there*."

"I thought your father was dead?"

"So did we. He found these letters mother hid, thinks dad's a hologram on Venus, he's going to look for him, I don't know if it's… if it's entirely for the best."

"He could be a hologram," Eleven told her, "You're a hologram, after all."

"Yes. He could be," she said quietly. There was something about her that was off.

"Do you not want to? What do you think of him?"

"It's not what I think of him that worries me, it's what he'll think of me. His dead, mass-murdering, mentally ill daughter. Because I know this girl, Doctor," she began seriously, "Who spent a very long time looking for _her_ father. And it's not really been going well for her since she found him. He doesn't really seem to be able to see quite how wonderful she is." _Ah_, he thought. There it was. She met his eyes for a moment, but he couldn't hold her gaze and had to look away.

What was it Clara had said? Oswin was angry about Jenny. Of course she would be. As far as he knew, Jenny wasn't speaking to anybody on the ship at all, so most likely, Oswin was making assumptions. The worst kind of assumptions. What was he supposed to have done? She dragged him all the way out to Messaline and shouted at him for the best part of an hour before storming off and leaving him stranded there. And after that she was gone, and he didn't think she was in much of a mood to be followed. Hence why she hadn't answered her phone either of the times he had tried to call from the TARDIS. Perhaps calling Ravenwood would be a better tact, but he wasn't going to do that. There were some things he just couldn't quite stomach.

But then again, Oswin was, he was sure, closer to Jenny than anybody else on the ship, and that included Captain Jack. So surely, if there was anybody with an answer to his dilemma about Jenny, it was Oswin, who was quite probably her best friend. He got to thinking about her again, about some of the things she had said to him. Or, shouted at him. Or muttered bitterly when her thumb was torn from the rest of her hand. Should he, possibly, have followed her to Hollowmire where she almost certainly was?

"She's here, you know," he said, finding himself unable to focus on the device anymore. It was coming along quite well, though.

"Who's where?"

"Jenny," he said, turning in the chair again, but he didn't look at Oswin, he looked towards the dark, damp porthole in the wall. He could see the moon, like a pearl, hanging in the black sky above them.

"On this ship?"

"No. In 1941. In Britain, with the RAF, nursing, she told me," he said. Then he met Oswin's eyes. "I could stay on this ship and go get her."

"You can't go back into someone's personal timeline," she reminded him.

"Yes, well. Perhaps Time Lords should have that privilege." He had thought like that before, a long time ago, when he was still in his Tenth incarnation, and thought he might be able to save the crew of Bowie Base One on Mars. It hadn't done him any good then, and he doubted it would do him any good now. What was Jenny doing, he wondered? On October 16th, 1941? Would she remember if he asked? "Would it not be worth it?"

"To what? Erase decades of her life for her? She would hate you."

"She already hates me."

"She doesn't hate you," Oswin told him, "She wants to, and she's putting a damn good effort into it, too, but she doesn't. She can't afford to hate the only family she has."

"What does she want, then?" he asked, looking at Oswin finally, "Hmm? If you know so much, why don't you tell me? Because I'm at a loss, Oswin. I've been a father before, a thousand years ago, but not like this."

"If I were you, I'd start by telling her why you left her body behind on Messaline." He clenched his jaw and looked away from her again. "Maybe try and talk to her like the adult she is."

"Yes. Well. Have you done those sums yet?" he questioned her. She didn't seem happy with him trying to change the subject away from his unruly daughter, but she also didn't seem surprised. Disappointed, perhaps. It probably looked like he was trying to ignore the matter of Jenny, and he had a niggling feeling that Oswin had been dying to question him about this ever since Jenny left. Probably wanted to make him out to be the villain.

The lofty silence between them returned and he could hear the very distant whispers of music coming from the ballroom. Not a song he recognised at his distance, but he strained his ears to try and pick out stray words while he resumed building his tracking device. Another ten minutes melted away, and he was more or less done, all the tracker required was the equations from Oswin. It looked, when he held it up, a little like the PKE meter from _Ghostbusters_. There it was with a large compass making up half the body, a few stray dials running down the side, and a little meter at the top from a HAM radio, usually used to measure signal strength. Well, it was still measuring signal strength, but rather the signal strength of alien lifeform emissions. Especially those fine gaseous emissions an Augix left behind. The compass would say the direction, the meter would say the strength, and the other dials would be used to change the settings. It worked with high-frequency, modified radio waves.

"What do you think? I think it's rather good," he said, standing up, holding it out to Oswin, who was sitting with both of her legs crossed on the bed. She glanced away from her maths for a brief moment to look at his tracker.

"It's not very sleek. I could've made something prettier."

"Well it's very last minute," he defended his creation as she looked at it down her snobbish, genius-nose. Blech. It still did irk him sometimes that she was cleverer than him.

"Yeah, I know, but it could all be optimised if you would just-" she reached out a hand to take it, and he pulled it away from her.

"No. You're not messing with it. You're going to use the screwdriver to put it on the correct settings, and that's all," he told her. She shook her head, sighing.

"Fine, give it here." He handed it over then, and the sonic screwdriver, and kept a very close eye on the girl to make sure she didn't go trying to fiddle with his design. He thought it was very of-the-period, it fit in rather well as far as alien tracking devices went. Clara would like it, he was sure. He wished she was there. What was she up to, he wondered, watching Oswin program the thing?

His thoughts were cut off when the device started to hum at a very low frequency, and the compass span around wildly to show them which way to go.

"Ah, see, it works. No need for optimisation," he said proudly to Oswin, who was getting up from the bed, "And it says the Augix is that-a-way." He pointed at the corner of the room and made towards the door so that they could follow the signal. Trace the Augix, capture it, go find Adam and Clara and continue the evening. It had all the makings of an excellent plan. What could possibly go wrong?

*_chapter 747_


	498. I Don't Want to Set the World on Fire

_I Don't Want to Set the World on Fire_

_Adam_

While Clara snuck back into the captain's cabin – that being, the now heavily guarded room full of skeletons – to retrieve the shipping manifest and hopefully see what kind of cargo, if any, the passenger ship was carrying, it was Adam Mitchell's job to keep watch. And 'keep watch' meant 'hide,' because if those soldiers found him lurking about, even with the psychic paper, he might get dragged off and arrested. It didn't help that he didn't actually know how to work the psychic paper himself, nobody had ever shown him, and he'd heard that it was tricky to make it say exactly what you wanted. And he didn't even know what to make it say that would convince some soldiers he was supposed to be there.

So, he lingered, holding the rest of the bottle of white wine Clara had got for them earlier, which was still mostly full. If he had to have dinner with Fyn and Atoc, he was bringing the fancy wine. He hadn't even decided yet what he was going to cook. It would have to be of Earth origin, but bland enough that it wouldn't be too much of a shock to the system for people who had only eaten processed slime their whole lives. Then again, Rose Tyler had convinced his girlfriend yesterday to install those funny-looking chutes in the kitchen to dispense exactly that kind of futuristic gunk, so if Fyn was desperate for something 'homely,' he could always have that.

He was very slyly checking his phone when someone knocked right into his side. He was, right away, full of fear that it was one of the soldiers and that, upon seeing his advanced technology, they would assume he was some sort of secret, German spy. He didn't know whether or not the fact he actually spoke German fluently would help or hinder him in that situation, either. Probably best to keep his mouth shut and wait for rescue courtesy of Oswin. As luck would have it, though, it wasn't a soldier, it was just Clara, returned with some papers in her hands.

"What are you checking your phone for!? You do know this is 1941?" she hissed, "I haven't even got my phone on me, the Doctor has it."

"Yeah, because _you're_ in a dress without a bag and no pockets," he pointed out, "And I was only looking at it for a minute, see if I had any texts from… well, I don't know, someone might want to text me. Oswin, maybe."

"Isn't hanging around with your phone out remarkably similar to the reason the Ninth Doctor kicked you off the TARDIS to begin with, Adam?" Clara quipped, and he scowled, having no way to defend himself because she was more or less right, and just stuck his phone back in his pocket after making sure it was on silent. He didn't want it ringing at some inappropriate time, after all. Like when the American soldiers got suspicious of him and took him to be interrogated.

"Did you get the shipping manifest, then?" he asked. It had taken her at least fifteen minutes. There must have been people in the room, or something, he supposed.

"Yes. I basically had to float it across all those skeletons when the soldier in there had his back turned. God forbid if he looked around and saw that, he'd start thinking there was a poltergeist," she muttered, showing him a large, leather-bound, A4 volume that was meant to be read landscape, flipping it open. Adam kept an eye and an ear out in the hallway for soldiers. He was _very_ paranoid that day.

"There's a disembodied cloud-thing going around possessing people, it seems pretty close to a poltergeist to me…" He peered over her shoulder as she skimmed through the pages (the captain had pretty bad handwriting, but he was so used to seeing Oswin's handwriting about the place he was practically a master calligrapher.)

"Ah, there you go, private storage in the hold carrying what they only describe as 'stock,' under the name of… _Beaverbrook_?" Clara frowned, "That can't be a real name, it's ridiculous."

"Yeah, it's so ridiculous that I recognise it; Lord Beaverbrook was the Minister of War Supply – I mean, _is_ the Minister of War Supply, right now, in Britain, part of Churchill's war cabinet," Adam explained.

"_How_ do you know that?"

"I'm a genius, Clara, I have an eidetic memory. Just because I'm not your sister doesn't mean I'm not useful," he kidded, "So, what would the British Minister of War Supply want to secretly get delivered from America in 'private storage?'"

"Weapons," she said, "So we just need to go down to the hold, find them, and make sure the Augix doesn't get its hands on them. If it has hands, I mean. I guess, if it's a cloud, it doesn't. What do I do with this?" She held up the shipping manifest.

"I don't know, just leave it?" he shrugged, "The whole crew is dead, I don't think they'll be that bothered about the shipping manifest ending up on the floor." Clara dropped it by the wall, and the pair of them left to follow signs down to the lower deck, where the hold was situated. "You know, for a luxury liner, this ship is quite small. My new yacht is almost as big as this." He saw Clara frown for a moment.

"Wait, that conversation was _real_?" she questioned, "When I woke up to you telling Oswin you bought a yacht the other day, after I died, that actually happened? I thought I imagined it. What are you going to do with a yacht?"

"I don't know, it was a bit of a spontaneous purchase," he admitted, "I've always wanted one. For holidays, you know? This ship is smaller than ferries to France."

"Yeah, and it doesn't have a soft play area," Clara said.

"What? What do you care if there's a soft play area?"

"…I haven't been on a ferry since I was a kid," Clara shrugged, "And you know, I've always looked so much younger than I really am, I could still get into kids' play areas til I was way too old to be there." Adam stopped in the corridor.

"Sorry, did you meant that to _not_ sound creepy? Because, it sounded _really_ bloody creepy, Clara," he said, and she faltered.

"I mean, like, thirteen. Not, like, _now_, at twenty-four, I'm hanging around in play areas. For a start, like I said, there isn't even one on this boat. Now, this is the door to the hold." He had walked past it and she had to grab his arm and steer him back to it. She kept hold of his arm tightly, and before he knew it he was being phased through a door without being prepared _at all_. He had _never_ walked through a wall before. It was a bit like having a very extreme case of goose bumps across your entire body for just a few seconds, or walking through a waterfall that left you dry on the other side.

But when they came out into the dim hold of the ship, they walked in on the back end of a conversation, and saw two painfully familiar faces being held at gunpoint in the dark.

* * *

_Eleven_

Clearly, the answer to the question, 'what could possibly go wrong?' was thus: a lot. A _lot_ could go wrong. Especially when he decided it was in his best interests to take a haphazard, thrown-together tracking device and go after a _very_ dangerous alien fugitive without a single notion of how to catch it. More so since, when it was in its true form, it was a big, blue, sparkly cloud. They _really_ should have thought this through and concocted some kind of trap, because now he and Oswin were being held at gunpoint by what looked like an American soldier. And American soldier whose eyes occasionally glowed a very unnatural shade of blue – the same shade of blue as an Augix, he knew.

"I don't know what you are, either of you," the Augix drawled in the accent of its host, a young man who was very haggard looking, most likely due to the strains of soon-to-be-fatal, extra-terrestrial possession, "But you're a long way from home, just like me. I can smell it on you. _You're_ from another planet, too, and you? Are you even alive?"

"Strictly speaking, no," Oswin said, quite brightly, her eyes fixed on the gun. She was smiling, but it was out of nervousness. They were both holding their hands up. He'd at least managed to put his new tracking device down on one of a multitude of crates being kept down in the hold, and hadn't had to drop it on the floor where it would have undoubtedly broken apart. It was still working quite well, humming away behind him.

"Well. How am I supposed to shoot you, then? I suppose I'll just shoot him twice," the Augix shrugged. Ah. That was bad. If he _was_ shot, and he started to regenerate, and he was shot _again_… well, suffice it to say Clara Oswald would never meet Thirteen. Not that the Augix knew what he was, it had just said very clearly that it _didn't_, which was, however, no excuse not to shoot him if golden energy started streaming out of his limbs and neck.

"How about nobody shoots anyone?" Oswin suggested.

"Yes, there's an idea, an excellent one, in fact," the Doctor nodded with his hands behind his head, "You should most definitely not shoot us."

"You're working with that monster, aren't you?" the Augix questioned.

"Monster?" Eleven asked.

"The one who eats people, eats anything organic, straight to the bone."

"That's rich, coming from the creature who sucked the life energy out of the entire crew and turned them into skeletons. I don't see how you're any better than the Shadow," Oswin said, and Eleven hissed at her to be quiet. They would be better off to pretend they didn't know the Shadow at all, to tell a half-truth that they were merely time travellers, that they would be on their merry way. Couldn't the Shadow solve its own problems? It defeated a Xenomorph, after all, the one that came from Jenny.

Briefly, he had the startling thought that he, perhaps, was related to that creature. A grandfather. But then, it _was_ an evil, predatory parasite, it _had_ killed her, and it_ was_ now dead after having its flesh consumed in an airlock, to his knowledge. It was probably better to not invite it to any family get-togethers. Actually, he should probably focus on inviting his daughter herself to any family get-togethers, since without her, it wasn't so much a get-together, more sort of just him hanging around in a room on his own. Sometimes with Clara. That was every day for the Doctor, though, really.

"So you _are_ working with it," the Augix said.

"You shouldn't have let that slip," Eleven hissed, then added louder, "Not really working _with_ it."

"For it, then?"

"_For it_? Blimey, that's even worse," he complained, "I'd like to say we were working with it, but it doesn't appear to be showing up to rescue us right now while you have us here with a gun to our heads. My head, mainly."

"That thing is living shadows, it could be anywhere."

"Well I haven't a clue where it is, for the record," said Eleven.

"You can pass on a message. It can't be here, can't have found me. If it had, I'd be dead. Funny thing, when I possess one of these weak humans, I get bits of their memories."

"Yes, and what else is funny is why you're using a soldier for a disguise. This is a civilian ship. It can't be working very well. Is that why you're hiding down here?" he questioned it. It laughed using the poor man it was controlling's mouth.

"This ship is crawling with soldiers, all hidden," it said, "Guarding a very interesting, top-secret shipment in this hold, in those boxes you're standing in front of." Eleven tried to glance behind him at the wooden crates, but couldn't really see any hint as to what was in them. _Hold on_, he thought, US soldiers guarding a secret shipment of something going to Britain?

"There're weapons here, aren't there?" Oswin reached the punchline before the Doctor could. But the Doctor was distracted by something on the staircase behind the Augix threatening them, coming from the upper deck. Not a something, but rather, someone, _two_ someones, one of whom was his wife.

Clara and Adam Mitchell crept in on the level above, just one measly staircase between them and the Augix. But what in the world were the two of _them_ going to do to stop it? How had they even figured out to come into the hold? Weren't they supposed to be laying low in the ballroom, drinking, or something? God, he hoped Clara wasn't drunk. If she was, she wouldn't even be able to make it down that staircase without tripping and falling the whole way. Oswin saw them, too, and then quickly brought her eyes back to the Augix. Eleven saw Clara put a finger to her lips, and the two of them began to sneak down the stairs. He really hoped they had a plan.

"Yes. Bombs. For aircraft," the Augix explained, "All of them live, ready to be loaded into planes, and all of them down here. What do you think happens if I shoot one?"

"They all go off," Eleven said seriously, "You're threatening the lives of everybody on this spaceship."

"You tell that Shadow that either everybody dies, or nobody dies. We all go down together or not at all," the Augix declared, "I'm going to go to Dublin and fetch my ship and leave this rock, and you're going to let me if you care at all about everyone else on here, including yourselves. Whatever you are, I doubt you can survive that kind of explosion." Adam was carrying what looked like a bottle of wine, but he whispered (very quietly) something to Clara, and she took it from him carefully.

"Suppose you'd be right," Oswin, to whom the Augix was talking, said. She was rigidly keeping her eyes _away_ from Adam and Clara, who were desperately trying not to make the stairs creak. He saw Clara was actually floating telekinetically a centimetre or so above the actual step. Adam didn't have quite as much finesse, but he was doing a much better job of remaining quiet than the Doctor would in that situation. "Still, though," Oswin continued, "Explosions. They're pretty hot, aren't they?"

"What?" the Augix was confused.

"I mean, wouldn't you rather, you know? Cool down?"

And on his girlfriend's partially humorous cue, Adam Mitchell made a lunge for the Augix, and he clamped his hands around the soldier's head and _froze_. It was almost instantaneous. Once the head was frozen, the Augix must have lost control enough for it to be prevented from shooting at them. Still, the Doctor found himself ducking, just in case. He didn't fancy regenerating just yet.

"Is he dead? Is _it_ dead, I mean? I don't want to kill him," Adam said quickly, "I thought if I froze him fast enough he'd be alright to, I don't know, defrost later?" The soldier was practically a block of ice. Seeing that Adam was distraught with the possibility he might have killed someone, the Doctor drew out his sonic screwdriver to scan for life.

"No, he's alive still. So is the Augix. Excellent job at cryostasis," Eleven commented, then he glanced at Clara, "Reminds me of Skaldak, don't you think?" She ran up and hugged him, taking him by surprise. "What? What's wrong?"

"What do you mean what's wrong? That crazy alien was holding a gun to your head threatening to blow up the boat!" she exclaimed, letting go of him, "I was worried!"

"Why are you two even here? Weren't you supposed to be in the ballroom?" Eleven asked, glancing over at the other two, but Oswin was very softly trying to calm Adam Mitchell down, because he was still a little worked up about the cryostasis thing.

"We were, then some soldiers showed up, so we thought, why would there be soldiers here when America aren't in the war? So we figured they must be guarding something, i.e., weapons, so I snuck back into the captain's cabin and stole the shipping manifest and saw there was an order for 'stock' being held in 'private storage' down here in the name of Lord Beaverbrook-"

"The Minister for War Supply?" Eleven frowned.

"Yeah. Adam knew that, not me," she said, "So we came to the hold to try and stop the Augix. And look, we did, aren't you glad?" A smile broke on his face.

"I'm _very_ glad," he said, hugging her again, but properly, lifting her off her feet.

"All done?" that smarmy, synthesised voice asked, and the Doctor nearly dropped Clara in order to turn to the Shadow, who had just emerged from, well, the shadows. The darned thing was devilishly good at blending into the dark. Though, that was rather the point, he supposed.

"You were going to let it shoot us!" Eleven said angrily, "You wanted our help, but we didn't get any help from you when it mattered!"

"On the contrary, I _couldn't_ help," the Shadow argued, "Unless you wanted me to devour the whole soldier? Let an innocent man die?" Eleven glared. The Shadow pulled out what looked like a gun, a very funny-looking gun with an attachment that looked just like a very high-tech glass jar, "This is the same thing I used to catch that Frir you agitated, remember, Doctor? It works slowly. If I tried to use it just then, the Augix would have time to shoot those bombs. I was just thinking of how to sneak up on him, when Mitchell did it for me."

"Oi!" Oswin objected, "Only _I_ call him Mitchell." The Shadow didn't seem to care.

"I'll do my job now," the Shadow said coolly, unimpressed with the Doctor's attitude, pointing the gun right at the soldier. It was a bit like one of those tiny, handheld vacuum cleaners, but instead of cleaning up dust it cleaned up blue-glowing, spectral energy that reminded him of ethereal candyfloss. The Augix was getting sucked out of the soldier and into the miniature containment facility. "I'll return it to its own people to be sentenced. They're the ones who hired me, after all. And, since you lost faith in me, I'll hang around and make sure this ship actually manages to get to its real destination, and that this soldier survives being defrosted."

"Yes. Well. I appreciate it. I suppose," the Doctor said begrudgingly, taking Clara's hand – the one not holding the bottle of wine she had acquired at some point – and making for the way out, being sure to pick up his new tracking device and bring that along too, "I think we ought to go back to the TARDIS now. Before the soldiers here take an interest in us…"

**AN: I'm at a loss and keep flicking back and forth in my head between which one of these I should write next so: as the next storyline – AKA, the very first storyline of the third part – would you guys rather have me more or less resolve the Jenny/Eleven arc with a storyline revolving around some space pirates Jenny used to be the captain of recovering a cursed artefact (which she's mentioned vaguely before), OR do you want to finally see the resolution of the ongoing Manifest arc which will feature all eight of the TARDIS Manifests and a myriad of supporting characters and will most definitely end up being pretty damn long? Note, this isn't which do I do, it's just which do I do ****_next_****, the other will be the one straight after it. If it helps anyone decide (spoiler alert), the storyline after these two is a Clarteen exclusive set in the future I already have a lot of drafts for and it is very light and ****_very_**** hilarious (I think so, at least.) So, space pirates or superheroes? (This is a vote, btw, so if you have an opinion either way make sure to tell me.)**


	499. A Matter of Family

_A Matter of Family_

_Adam_

"Jado's not coming, by the way," Oswin told him, looking up briefly from the mug of tea she was holding between her hands. She sat at the black marble island in the middle of their kitchen, on the opposite side to him. At present, he was chopping up courgettes and humming along to the music he had on. It wasn't music _she_ liked, but he said if he was having to cook dinner, he was going to put on whatever he liked. She didn't really complain after that, though. In fact, she'd gotten quite melancholy.

"Who's Jado?" he asked, glancing up only for a second because he didn't want to accidentally cut his finger while he chopped vegetables.

"My nephew," she answered, "Fyn and Atoc's son. You haven't met him. He's staying with Reker while they get everything moved in, then I have to make another trip in the TARDIS to bring him, probably later tomorrow. He's only six, this isn't really the best place for him to be."

"No," he agreed, "It was bad enough with my sister." The bottle of wine from 1941 was in the fridge, still mostly full since he and Clara had only had two glasses out of it. Lucky they remembered to bring it, and lucky he hadn't smashed it around the Augix's head, like he had, admittedly, been tempted to.

"Are you mad at me?" she blurted out suddenly, taking him by surprise.

"What? Why would I be mad at you?" he frowned, looking up at her, putting the knife down and leaving the courgette alone.

"You're not talking to me."

"I'm just trying not to chop my finger up, Oswin," he assured her. He wasn't mad at her at all, where was she getting these ideas from? Still, she looked into his eyes almost as though she were frightened, "Is something wrong?"

"I'm really sorry, because the Doctor told me that going out today was _your_ idea and _you_ wanted to go and then I spent the whole time in a really bad mood because I thought it was _him_ and I'm pissed off at him for everything with Jenny and-"

"Oswin, calm down," he interrupted her when she spoke very quickly without really taking a breath. Not that she needed to take breaths, really, but it was still unnerving. "I'm not angry at you for not wanting to dance. I mean, I was taking advantage of that stupid letter Thirteen left anyway. It's not important."

"It _is_ important, because I've spent the whole day being a complete nightmare!" she protested, "And now I'm forcing you to cook dinner for my brother, and I know you don't even _like_ my brother-"

"Whoa, hang on, you didn't force me, I offered. I'm not letting your uptight brother eat takeaway and carry on to complain about how awful Earth and Earth-food is. I mean, I'm from Earth, the food's great," he said, "And it's not that I don't like him, it's that he doesn't like me."

"Yes he does, of course he does," Oswin said, "He told me he does. If he didn't like you, he'd definitely tell me, babe. How could anyone _not_ like you?"

"Yeah, but… but I mean… he prefers Flek, though, right?"

"_Flek_? Flek Phisj who still thinks the bombing of Heph was justified? The Cluster Spores all but destroyed Horizon, and she still believes in their ideology. It was Fyn's home, too. He's leaving it because of what they did. What they made _me_ do," Oswin told him, "Of course he doesn't prefer her. They're friends, just like _I'm_ friends with her as long as she doesn't bring up her bloody activism."

"I thought you and Flek weren't talking?"

"We're not, but that doesn't mean we're not friends," Oswin said. He didn't really see how that made sense. Softly, she added, "Stop worrying about Flek, Adam. You're the embodiment of everything good in the universe and I wouldn't ever leave you."

"But Fyn married a Cluster Spore, how could he dislike them?"

"Atoc is an _ex-_Cluster Spore who became disillusioned. They had a lot of people under their spell at one point, the lifestyle of travelling around fighting for what's right always sounded romantic. Funny that that's kind of what I do now, I suppose. Without the moral superiority complex. At least, I _hope_ I don't have a moral superiority complex… but you're not angry at me?"

"No. But it would be nice if we could go on dates without you having to owe me one," he said, picking the knife back up and resuming chopping the courgette. Earlier, she had asked him what all the vegetables he had out were. He was startled to find out Oswin had never seen a bell pepper with her own eyes.

"There's never anything I want to do, though, and I feel really bad about that," she mumbled. Her tea must be completely cold by now, he assumed, yet she was still holding it between her hands. "I don't understand dates." She slouched down. He finished with the courgette and pulled over an onion, scraping the courgette slices into a bowl. He had a myriad of bowls out, all of them with bits of different vegetables in them, the onions were the last ingredients for the main course he was doing.

"You can't understand _everything_," he told her.

"Well I should! What's the point of a three-hundred point IQ if I can't?" she argued, and he smiled.

"It's fine. Your sister offered to go dancing with me, anyway."

"Did she?"

"Yeah, she said she'd pretend to be you, that she'd cut off her leg, flirt with women, and insult me in public," he related back to her the topics of conversation during his liquid lunch with Clara, "She said she'd let me take her to fancy restaurants, too, but I think that's just because she wants to go to dinner somewhere and not pay."

"Clara goes on enough fancy dates with her husband," Oswin pointed out. He shrugged.

"She was pretty excited about that yacht I bought."

"Well _she_ would be…" Oswin grumbled, "I just don't like the sea, it's not a crime. I can't swim. You try swimming with a fake leg, it's very heavy. What _are_ you making, anyway? Vegetable salad?"

"_Vegetable salad_? No, babe, it's ratatouille," he said, and she gawked at him, "…What?"

"You're cooking _rats_ for my brother!?"

"It's vegetarian," he told her, shaking his head, "It's really cute when you don't know stuff, by the way. I mean, finally I don't feel inadequate around you, when I'm cooking. Since you have to actually get used to eating meat, I thought it'd be best not to cook that. I mean, does the processed stuff on Horizon actually contain any meat?"

"Not really," she said, "So, it's just vegetables?"

"Yes, it's a stew," he told her.

"Then what's in the oven?"

"Meringues," he said. She'd only been watching him cook since he started on the vegetables, after putting the meringues in the oven. Before that she had been in her lab, running tests on blood samples belonging to Liam Kent, mostly. Probably trying to teach Helix how to tell jokes again, as well.

"What's that?"

"Just egg whites and sugar," he explained.

"Ugh. You're doing all this, and you're so great, and I'm not doing _anything_. I'm useless," she complained, and he laughed again.

"You can break the meringues up if you want?" he suggested. There were very few things he would trust Oswin to do in a kitchen, but bashing meringues to pieces was one of them. She looked at him like he was crazy, though. What a great contrast this must be to just adding water to every meal to make something hot and vaguely meat-flavoured (even if it _was_ Rose Tyler's new favourite food. Completely inedible, in Adam's opinion.)

"But you've just cooked them!"

"It's Eton mess, babe. You break the meringue into pieces and then mix it with strawberries and cream. You should really spend more time watching _Come Dine with Me_ with Clara, you know," Adam said, "She can't cook at _all_, but at least she knows what things are."

"Yet another reason why you clearly prefer my sister to me…"

"She suggested we have an affair."

"I'll knock her out," Oswin told him, "Don't you go letting her touch you, now."

"I would never," he assured her, "But, _do_ you want to break the meringues up into pieces? Because that's the only thing I'll ever let you do. And pouring the wine. You'll pour the wine, won't you?"

"Of course I'll pour the wine. And I'll break the whatever-you-saids. Just let me wash my hands."

* * *

"That's been bothering me the whole time we've been here," Atoc Kyris said, pointing at the scenic walls on one half of the room, those ginormous windows that could be programmed to show all sorts of things. At present, they were showing a gorgeous view of Saturn and its rings which was, Adam knew, a very typical view one could see on Horizon. "Is it a window?" Atoc had never seen the TARDIS before. Fyn had, but Atoc had not, and marvelled at its transdimensional qualities and its Twenty-First Century décor (well, in Adam and Oswin's rooms, it was very Twenty-First Century, not in the rest of the place.)

"No," Oswin laughed, "They're scenic walls, big screens with retina display. I thought Saturn would make it more homely." To Adam's pleasure, the ratatouille had been enjoyed. He had thought, the blander and simpler the food was, the better, for people who weren't used to digesting anything _real_. Plus, he liked it._ Ratatouille_ also happened to be Ellie's favourite Disney film. He'd originally learnt how to cook it because a few years ago, when she was just ten, she had been dying to know what it tasted like. "You could change it to something else though. Where's the remote, Mitchell?"

"On, uh…" he paused, straining to remember where the remote for the scenic wall was. He shrugged. It usually _did_ just display Saturn in all its gaseous glory, and he rarely asked her if it could be changed. In fact, he didn't even _know_ how many different scenes they could display. He shrugged, in the end, and told her he didn't know. "It has the wall controls over there." He nodded at a small console that looked a little like a thermostat just next to their bedroom door.

"Then I'll go change it to something else," Oswin said, getting up. She told Fyn and Atoc, "Adam always likes to have it set to the sea." He only ever set the one in their bedroom to the sea, since they worked separately. "Should I do the underwater one?"

"You _hate_ water," Adam reminded her.

"Yeah, not _fake_ water," she said, "Besides, Fyn's never seen the sea. We should swing by Earth before you go to Venus, we could go to Hollowmire and force you to meet Sally Sparrow."

"You mean you want an excuse to see Esther?" Adam questioned as Oswin flicked through different displays. When she did, all the colours in the room changed. They were a bit like screensavers, just _giant_, incredibly realistic screensavers that offered full, panoramic views of a hundred different landscapes on a thousand different planets, and then some. She scrolled past a view from the top of a mountain; a vivid green rainforest; the one Adam liked of a grey-skied beach with choppy seas; a cityscape, then the same cityscape again with a storm raging above; until she finally came to the underwater one, which he was also fond of, and showed a coral reef with all sorts of creatures swimming past. The room was bathed in soft, blue light as she came back over.

"Should I take these plates?" she offered. Everyone had finished, so she did take them. The white wine was finished off, too, and there wasn't much else alcohol-wise. Oswin suggested just making Fyn drink the apple juice that was in the fridge, because he'd never had apple juice made from real apples. Oswin had been put in a good mood by the fact Fyn had brought her all five of his books, including a copy of her own unpublished biography, as well, which Adam was only grateful for after her sourness for most of the day.

"So, apart from this whole thing with the ocean liner, what else have you been doing lately?" Fyn asked Adam in his usual, monotonous way. It always sounded like he was disinterested with everything he said.

"Well I haven't really done much of anything," Adam said, "Apart from, uh, those cows."

"Don't talk about the cows, Mitchell, not while people are eating," Oswin said, returning with the fabled glasses of apple juice. She better not have used it all, he thought. He liked apple juice.

"There was that kraken, you never told me the particulars," Fyn pointed out.

"Oh, god, don't start with Squidzilla," Oswin muttered, "I haven't been doing much of anything, because I've spent weeks helping Jenny build her spaceship. You know, the Doctor's daughter. Anyway, I finished doing that, and now she's gone because she's had a falling out with her father, so I've been analysing the blood samples of a serial killer for days. And the serial killer isn't really dinner conversation, either."

"The cat's pregnant?" Adam suggested.

"Eurgh, I hate that thing," she grumbled, "You should never have brought it on here."

"Who's this Esther you want an excuse to visit?" Fyn asked her.

"Haven't I told you about Esther? That's a wild story," she said, "I think Adam should go out with her."

"She's aromantic, and I have a girlfriend," Adam reminded her, to which she shrugged.

"You should go get pudding out of the fridge while I tell this story," she told him, and he sighed and said fine, he would, pushing out his chair. "Basically, this girl, Esther Drummond, used to be a CIA agent, then she joined Torchwood – who are like, a secret organisation who protect Earth from aliens – and she ended up getting shot and dying. Then this crazy bloke – the serial killer I mentioned – used Zuar technology to bring her back to life, the same time lightning struck it, and now she has lightning powers. We call her the Lightning Girl. She's _adorable_, I've never met anyone cuter. I asked her to marry me, but she said no." Fyn didn't seem surprised by Oswin explaining how she had asked Esther to marry her, and did, continually, ask Esther to marry her, all the time.

And then they were distracted by the Eton mess Adam brought out long enough for him to text Esther herself and tell her she was being talked about to Oswin's brother. Esther replied: _What is she saying?_ and he responded: _About how she wants to marry you._ Five minutes after that, when Oswin was making fun of Fyn for how he'd never eaten a real piece of fruit until the strawberries in the Eton mess, he got another text from Esther saying: _I want to have a threesome with you and Oswin_. Which he assumed was code for: _Sally Sparrow has stolen my phone and is texting you_. So he put his mobile away after that.

What he returned to, though, was a very tense conversation between Fyn and Oswin about their father.

"Come on, Os, I don't see how you're not interested. And neither is Dret."

"Fynny, if you want to find dad, you find dad, but it's your crusade." Fyn's plan to move to Venus Zeta in search of their father had been hatched over a month ago, and in that month, not once had Oswin mentioned it to Adam.

"Why aren't you more excited about this?" Fyn questioned.

"I'm just not, okay? You don't even know he's there."

"All the letters-"

"Yes, you keep telling me about the letters. This is something you want to do. I'm allowed to say I don't really want a part of it."

"What are you trying to do? Leave your whole life behind?" Fyn questioned.

"My life didn't turn out very well, as a matter of fact," she said sharply, "I don't think that's the sort of thing dad wants to hear about. He'd rather hear about his famous, writer son. I'm not talking about this anymore."

"But-"

"Fyn, she doesn't have to talk about it if she doesn't want to," Atoc said. Adam didn't say a word throughout the exchange, but was surprised when Oswin took his hand under the table. It seemed that, because Fyn had now made the mistake of irritating her, that whole thing about giving her brother the bedroom to sleep in and dragging Adam across the hall to Jenny's empty room was dead in the water. She started telling Atoc about how to work the sofa bed, which hadn't been pulled out since Thirteen had left a week ago. The atmosphere wasn't really the same after that. When Oswin announced, quite soon after that, that she and Adam were dying for an early night and would probably have to retire, he didn't even complain.


	500. All the Small Things

**AN: One thousand chapters of this nightmare! And what better way to close part two than with a Whoufflé chapter? I figure, 3D9C started and ended with Clara, so 4D12C should start and end with Clara, since 5TC will not.**

_All the Small Things_

_Clara_

She was hard done by to recall, upon awakening in the middle of the night, what she had been dreaming of, but was sure it had been something to do with her having to do the _Total Wipeout _obstacle course covered in oil to save the life of a spaniel. Perhaps that was why she wasn't entirely annoyed about being woken, because it was a welcome escape from _that _horror. Clara didn't even like dogs that much, and while the list of Things Clara Oswald Would Do While Covered in Oil was relatively extensive, nothing on it consisted of public humiliation and injury at the metaphorical hands of inflatable, red balls.

The bed was empty. Of course the bed was empty. She would not be being woken up by gentle piano trills if the bed were occupied. Well, not unless something incredibly sinister was going on. The sheets were a crumpled mess, and in the absence of her husband, she had managed to grab his empty pillow and pull it towards herself in her sleep. _That_ was what she woke up with her arms around, _not _the Doctor. The Doctor was elsewhere. And she was cold. It took her a second longer than it should have to realise she was probably cold because she was naked (aside from the bandage wrapped around her left arm), and by the time she realised _that_, she also realised she needed the toilet. This gave her the perfect opportunity to drag herself out of bed and find some pyjamas somewhere, and probably proceed to question the Doctor on why he was playing _Clair de Lune _at three o'clock in the morning. And, more importantly, _why _was he playing it wrong? In fact, he was playing a lot of it wrong, and that irked her so much she decided that correcting him had to be first on her list of tasks to carry out.

So, Clara yawned, then mumbled, "You're playing it wrong," and the music stopped abruptly. When it was silent, she dragged herself upright, her hair a complete mess. The bathroom light was on, the door ajar, presumably so that the Doctor could see what he was doing. _He_, unlike her, _was_ wearing pyjamas. She still thought it was amusing how the Ponds – and various others – assumed he slept in a tweed suit, bow tie and everything.

"I thought you were asleep," he said apologetically.

"I _was_ asleep. You woke me up."

"Sorry." There was a pause where she was contemplating where she should go to the toilet first or get dressed, and he merely stared at her, which she wasn't awake enough to notice until he said, "You're beautiful," as she was midway through another yawn which promptly morphed into a very odd kind of smile.

"I've just woken up, it's the middle of the night, I'm a mess."

"Yes, and you're beautiful. Don't argue with me, I know these things," he said, and she smiled because she didn't quite have the energy to laugh. She was dying to collapse back into bed and fall asleep again.

"Do you know what else I am? Cold," she told him, looking around on the floor for anything she might be able to wear, "Whose turn is it to do the washing? Is it my turn?"

"Yes," he said. That would be why the washing hasn't been done then, she supposed, because she didn't know it was her turn. Accordingly, the floor was covered with dirty clothes. It was barely even three weeks ago that he'd done renovations and made them a new and improved bedroom, and she had already made it a pigsty.

She spied a sweatshirt of hers that was two sizes too big she only had to wear in bed and dragged it towards her, not really caring how dirty it might be. It couldn't be _that_ bad, though, and she was too tired to care, at any rate. Yawning, again, she pulled that on and then got out of bed, legs stiff, taking a second to get her bearings.

"What are you doing?" he asked while she rubbed her eyes.

"Going to the loo," she answered. She never liked waking up in the middle of the night. Generally, she was one of those people lucky enough to sleep straight through for round about seven hours. She trudged past him to the bathroom, leaving the door open, practically blinded by the bright lights within.

By the time she returned, shaking water from her hands after not towel drying them all that well, he had started playing (or trying to play) _Clair de Lune_ again. She was a little more awake now, though, and more aware of what he was doing wrong.

"You're still not playing it right," she said, putting her hands on his shoulders, "You're playing in D when it's in D-Flat."

"I'm playing the original."

"The original?"

"Yes, the original. It was in D at first, then I had a run in with Debussy and I told him he had to change keys. It would never have become so famous without my input," he said.

"Really? You're not just lying because you can't remember exactly how it goes?" she questioned him. She didn't believe his story about Debussy.

"Perhaps you ought to show me, put your money where your mouth is," he said, looking around at her, moving his hands off the piano completely, "I've never seen you play, after all." She wouldn't put it past him to have designed this entire occurrence in the dead of night just to try and get her to play the piano. "You are _always_ saying how good you are." He moved on the bench to make room for her, and everything, and she deliberated what to do next. For once, she didn't outright refuse, but that came more from the fact she was a little worried about the Doctor, and had been for the last few days.

Before sitting down she meandered back over to their bed and picked up a pillow (_his_ pillow, incidentally, because it wasn't like he was using it) and folded it over on the bench to sit on.

"Look at you, your feet don't even touch the floor now," he remarked, "That jumper is far too big for you."

"It's for sleeping in, that's the point," she said, rolling the sleeves up on it, ignoring his pained expression when his eyes glanced over her bandages.

"You're like a person in miniature. Or like somebody put you in the wash and you shrunk."

"Very witty," she said dryly, "Because nobody's _ever _made a comment about my height before. You are oh-so-original, sweetheart." Then she began to play the opening of _Clair de Lune_ as best as she could remember it. Which, incidentally, wasn't very well. She played a few bum notes and got annoyed and stopped, too tired to put up with the mistakes and move on.

"I mean – if I had the _music_, it would be exquisite, I'm just saying," she defended herself.

"Oh, really?"

"I still have it more right than you do," she said, "And I'm out of practice."

"Because you always refuse to play for anybody. Except Oswin. Why is that?" he asked. He seemed legitimately curious. He asked her that a lot, and she always found some excuse to avoid the question and not answer him.

"I'll tell you that if you tell me why you're doing this in the first place," she offered an ultimatum, but not one he was all that pleased with, clearly. Clara resumed, "Because, when everything's fine, you stay in bed all night. And when everything _isn't_ fine, you go to the library or the console room and leave me a note. So if you're staying in here and doing something to risk waking me up, that means everything is _extra _not-fine, and that I think you were almost _trying_ to wake me up, on purpose, for company." He looked at her with his eyes narrowed in a way that told her she was absolutely right. Something _was _on his mind, and it didn't appear to be anything to do with her. That was good, because she didn't want there to be a problem in their marriage, but it also meant she would have very limited abilities when it came to doing something about whatever was bothering him.

"Alright then. You first."

Clara sighed and went about trying to recall the beginning of that godawful piece her sister had convinced her to learn – the same one that had caused the vampirism of her alternate self, "When I said I had lessons since I was nine, that wasn't, strictly speaking, _true_…" she paused as she slowly tried to remember how the fervent notes went, it also being the same piece that had caused the death of some guy called Fitzpatrick in that hellish, underwater city, "My mother used to play, see. She was actually a prodigy, she was a concert pianist until she ended up spraining her wrist and she could never really do it the same way she used to. And then, you know, she met my dad, and _I _was born… then when I was nine she started teaching me how to play, and she carried on teaching me. We used to do duets at Aunt Fiona's parties, which of course Fiona always hated and she thought mum was a layabout for not having a 'proper job' – but my dad was a GP before he retired, so it's not like we _needed _two incomes, desperately. So she taught me, until I was sixteen. Then she died. And now I don't really play the piano much at all anymore." She stopped after that, not being able to put the notes together the way they were supposed to be while she was so tired and out of practice.

"Your mother was a concert pianist?"

"Yeah. Not a famous one. Maybe one day, if she hadn't have stopped; maybe in another universe. Anyway. Your turn?" she prompted him, and now he had to return the favour and confide, since she'd finally told him why she hardly ever played.

"I was just thinking about Jenny, that's all."

"You can always talk to _me_ about that, you know," Clara reminded him, "I'm your wife, after all. You're meant to be able to confide in me." He smiled slightly when she said she was his wife.

"I don't know what there is to confide. I don't know what I'm supposed to do, if I'm supposed to do anything. She always seems to be dying for independence, and then she runs away?" he questioned Clara, as though she knew all the answers to his problems. She just listened. "I wish someone would just _tell me _what I have to do. And then I have your sister making snide comments about how she 'knows someone' who 'recently found her father' and he 'can't appreciate how wonderful she is.'" When he talked, he bitterly made inverted commas with his fingers.

"Well _do_ you appreciate how wonderful she is?" Clara asked him.

"You think she's wonderful now, do you?"

"Uh, well, I don't know. She said the other day that she would make some mayonnaise for me. Well, no, she said she was going to make it for Ravenwood, but that if there was any left I could have it," Clara said, "You know she's nice. She's… like sunshine, if sunshine were a person." He was giving her an odd look. "What? Why are you looking at me like that?"

Then he blurted out, "Do you fancy her?"

"Do I _fancy _her? My _stepdaughter_? Of course not, I don't fancy anybody except you."

"Not even Oswin's brother? Or Sally Sparrow?" he questioned.

"No, not even them. Maybe I have a tricky time thinking properly when they're in the same room, but you know, out of sight and out of mind. Not like you, you're _always_ on my mind," Clara assured. Was he worried about her fidelity? She would never cheat on him, or on anyone. If the amount of guilt she felt just hanging around with Thirteen was anything to go by – and that was a very grey area when it came to faithfulness – if she ever actually tried to cheat she would most likely explode. But she couldn't tell him the part about Thirteen. "Do you really think I would two-time you? _You_? The _Doctor_?"

"I don't know. You do put forward a certain impression, Coo, by flirting and ogling everybody you come across," he said. Well. That was a fair point, she supposed. Hadn't Adam Mitchell been saying a frighteningly similar thing to her earlier?

"I only have eyes for you, promise. And I'm much too tired to lie about that right now," she said, "You have to make an effort to actually get to know your daughter, sweetheart."

"How do I do that?"

"By talking to her? Like a person?" Clara suggested, "I don't know why you're having such a hard time with this – it's not like you're a twat, no matter what my sister thinks. Just be nice?"

"…She _did _scream at me, darling."

"Because she was upset."

"But why did she pick _then _to be upset? After more than four months?"

"Because Thirteen left," Clara told him. She didn't want to talk to him about Thirteen at all, lest he question what she had to do with it all, but _someone _had to tell him. "And Thirteen… treated her like an equal. As far as I know. And you don't, really. You should start."

"Yes. You're right," he said, then he paused for a few seconds, "I should go talk to her right now." He tried to stand up and she grabbed his arm and pulled him back down.

"No, you should probably, you know, wait until the morning," she advised, taking his hand to keep him sitting down, "I mean, it's three in the morning. If you go now, her girlfriend will be awake. And she'll kill you if she sees you."

"Why would Ravenwood kill me?"

"Because you upset Jenny," Clara explained, "If someone upset _you_ like that, I'd probably get pretty riled up at them if I saw them. I just doubt that anyone _would _be able to upset you like that. And I don't think you would really run away. Just go in the morning."

"So that I can make you breakfast, you mean?"

"_No_, I could always see if Adam will make it."

"Oh, yes, you mean, you'll go drop by and see Oswin's brother whom you are forbade from going near?"

"I wasn't thinking about that," she said, and he looked at her incredulously, "I wasn't! Honest! I decided while we were out earlier that he's actually alright, you know? He's really nice. And he might be related to both of us one day. I hope he will be. He's good for my sister. And he can cook breakfast, more importantly, but I suppose if I'm not allowed across to hall, I'll just have to eat some of Rose's new slime from the dispensary in the kitchen. Do you know he has a yacht?"

"Who?"

"Adam."

"Why?"

"I don't know. For… yachting. And stuff. We can use it for holidays."

"You live on a spaceship, your entire life is a holiday, Coo."

"Not exactly a _yacht_, though," she muttered, "Might want a break from the TARDIS one day."

"I doubt it, I haven't taken a break from the TARDIS for centuries. Well, I suppose for except after I… after the Ponds, you know, when they… anyway," he cleared his throat, "Won't want to spend time on a _yacht_. It's gaudy."

"Where _do _you want to spend time? Do you, by any chance, want to come back to bed and spend some time with me? By which I mean I'm going to immediately go to sleep," Clara said, "But I don't sleep well without you there. You can think all about what you're going to say to Jenny."

"If she'll let me get a word in, that is…" he mumbled as she stood up, tugging on his arm to try and pull him along.

"Come on," she pleaded.

"Alright, alright," he gave in, "Let me go turn off the bathroom light." She dropped his hand and wandered back over to the bed, which she promptly collapsed onto, still _completely_ exhausted. She collapsed a little too hard onto her bad arm, though, and flinched. Curling up, she tried to ignore him as he complained she had left the pillow behind on the piano stool, listening to him drop it down next to her.

Within five minutes, the room pleasantly dark again, she was warm and curled up in his arms, listening to his hearts beat.

"I was having this really odd dream when you woke me up," Clara recalled.

"Really? About what?" he whispered.

"I had to do this obstacle course covered in oil," she explained, "Something to do with a dog."

"Covered in oil?"

"Mmhmm."

"Drenched in it, would you say?"

"Completely."

"That shall give me plenty of things to occupy myself imagining while you sleep, I suppose," he joked. But she wondered if he really_ would_ picture that; she had never asked him if he ever really fantasised about her. Unfortunately, though, it wasn't the time to make that query, as she felt sleep creeping back up on her. "You think I should talk to her, then?"

"Yes."

"Tomorrow?"

"Probably for the best."

"You're the only one who's spoken sense to me about this mess."

She smiled, "That's my job. Speak sense to you."

"I love you, Clara Oswald, more than anything in the universe."

"I love Clara Oswald more than anything in the universe too, sweetheart," she said groggily, and just before she slipped into her queer dreams again she was aware of him kissing the top of her head and pulling her even closer.

**AN: So that's it, FOREVER. No, obviously not. I waited ages to upload this so that I could jointly upload the first chapter of _5 Time Lords, 13 Companions, Can Anything Else Go Wrong?_ (5TC for short) at the same time, which I have been _dying_ to do for a _very_ long time. So go read that, and I know a lot of you probably follow me as an author and get updates for everything regardless of following them individually, it would be really great of you to actually follow it so that I have a general idea of how many people are still, you know, interested. Makes me feel appreciated. And it's space pirates and Jenny/Eleven next, just FYI.**


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